Samsung Galaxy Nexus hands-on review

ANDROID FANBOIS rejoice, as the Galaxy Nexus will soon ship with the fabled Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system (OS), as Google aims to put Apple's IOS 5 back in its place.

But is Ice Cream Sandwich all it's cracked up to be? Our first impressions of the revamped Android OS were positive and even though Google has made significant changes, the interface didn't feel alien to us. Google appears to have successfully blended Gingerbread with Honeycomb and the latest version of Android is likely to be the best.

There are no longer any buttons positioned beneath the screen, instead there are three context sensitive buttons located on the screen - 'back', 'home' and 'recent apps'. The biggest change is removal of the 'settings' button from this group. This shortcut has been hidden away in the notifications bar so it is now a swipe and a click away. It's not a big deal, but for long term users of Android Gingerbread it could take a little getting used to.

Another change has been made to the main apps menu. Instead of icons now being shown on one page, they are split over pages and a quick swipe left and right allows users to navigate between batches. Setting up folders is now a doddle as well, as it is possible to do so simply by dragging apps on top of each other. The ability to resize the widgets is another addition, and means that users will have more control over how content is displayed on home screen.

We also had a poke at the Data Usage app, which is no doubt going to come in handy and help heavy data users keep on top of their usage, providing that you can still find an operator that give you a decent allowance.