Google Nexus S Is King of the Hill, at Least for a While: iFixit

by Michelle Maisto

The Google Nexus S is now available from Best Buy for $200 with a new two-year T-Mobile contract, or for $530 without a contract.

The Nexus S, which is made by Samsung, is the first smartphone to run “Gingerbread,” or Android 2.3. It also features front and back cameras, can act as a WiFi hot spot for up to six devices, has a 1GHz processor, and boasts one-touch copy and paste.

“The Nexus S is smiling at you!” the Fixit team jests on their Website. The phone is the first with a curved display—though iFixit found this a bit of a misnomer. While the glass is curved, the LCD and touch screen are not.

The Nexus S includes an NFC chip, which “looks like something straight out of Tron: Legacy,” wrote iFixit. The chip enables the phone to read information from “smart tags” and interact with payment systems that essentially can let a phone act as a wallet.

iFixit gave the Nexus S a “repairability” score of 7 out of 10. A heat gun is required to separate the display from its frame, and should the LCD or glass break, both would need to be replaced. On the bright side, they added, the battery is easy to swap out, and disassembling the rest of the phone can be accomplished with a Phillips-head screwdriver.

The Google Nexus One was Google’s first branded phone. It was made by HTC and paired with T-Mobile service, but Google offered it directly through its site, which turned out to be terrible for sales. Learning its lesson, Google is offering the Nexus S through Best Buy.

Critics point out that the Nexus S isn’t tremendously dissimilar from Samsung’s line of Galaxy S phones. The Captivate, AT&T’s Galaxy S handset, also has a 4-inch display, a 1GHz Hummingbird processor and a 5-megapixel rear camera, and will eventually upgrade to Android 2.3. The Nexus S separates itself with its curved display, unique user interface, updated OS and NFC technology.

Google’s first phone, the HTC-made Nexus One, features a 3.7-inch OLED display, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 1,400 mAH battery (the Nexus S’ battery is 1,500 mAH) and Android 2.2.