Google Nexus S vs. Samsung Galaxy S

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up everyone John rettinger from techno Buffalo here this is a video by popular demand I've had a lot of questions being sent in people asking for a head-to-head comparison between the just released Samsung built Google Nexus S and the also Samsung built Galaxy S in this case we have the Verizon Wireless variant here the Samsung Fascinate so we're going to put these two head to head they're very similar in a lot of respects and see if we can determine what the big differences are and whether or not Android 2.3 makes a difference or whether or not you're better off having an older operating system with Samsung's TouchWiz put on top of it so let's go ahead and get started so for those of you watching that maybe aren't familiar with these two devices just a quick refresher we've got the Nexus S on one side which is running a completely naked skin free version of Android it's the current newest version of Android 2.3 called gingerbread on the other side we've got the Galaxy S running Android 2.1 with TouchWiz I know some people in the world have had upgrades to 2.2 we have not been endowed with that yet in the U.S so this test is going to be with Android 2.1 running on it so one of the big OS differences here well one of the cool things about Android is that it's an open source operating system and as such it can be completely skinned and Modified by manufacturers and users and that's exactly what Samsung has done so right here you've got some notifications in the pull down menu you can go ahead and automatically select Wi-Fi Bluetooth GPS and airplane mode without having to fuss around with any sort of settings you notice that you've got a four rows of icons at the bottom all the applications are encapsulated you've got a ton of additional widget functionality go ahead and show you real quickly what those are Android widgets and Samsung widgets you have a lot here that you can go ahead and add it's a decent amount of functionality it's a lot of visual flash but a visual flash also can take its toll when it comes to memory processing something that we'll talk about in just a little bit so here we've got the naked version of Android 2.3 uh you notice that we've got a little bit of a dock down at the bottom with new colored icons the icons at the top are now green the battery icon is sort of turned on its side or turned straight up rather versus what we've seen on older versions you've got a new keyboard for uh for text entry which I'll show you guys certainly one of the nice things about Android is that it's open source so you can go ahead and pull in new text entries I don't know who that person is we'll go ahead and leave their number public or they're going to go ahead and send out exam text messages uh you can see there's a new keyboard you can go ahead and use a ton of third-party keyboards as well there's a lot of under the hood API differences as well as far as how Graphics are processed 3D images and that kind of stuff uh and we'll see sort of what difference that makes if any when we do some speed tests just wanted to give you a real quick overview of these and I've done in-depth videos on Android 2.3 Gingerbread as well as the operating system uh on the Galaxy S and more particularly the Samsung skin touch ones all right so let's talk about the displays on these two because they are very similar uh both have four inch diagonal Super AMOLED displays with a resolution of 800 by 480 and what Super AMOLED means is that the touch mechanism on the screen is glass is actually built into the glass not sitting right on top there are a few other nuances in there but what that's going to translate to are darker darks richer colors and a lot better visibility in direct sunlight however the downside of that that you do have a little bit of a bluish kind of gray tint on the Super AMOLED screens when you use the phone on its own for a while you don't really notice it but if you look at it next to another display you will notice that there's a bit of a color tint to it uh sometimes I find it bothersome but for the most part the display is absolutely gorgeous vibrant and Beautiful on the Nexus S however there's one bit of a difference the display is a little bit curved I don't know if you can see that on camera but it does make for a little nicer experience moving your finger over and holding it up to your head nothing giant uh there but it is something to take notice when you're comparing the two devices on figuring out maybe which one is best for you uh from a processor standpoint once again the theme here uh is identical we've got one gigahertz cortex A8 hummingbird processors which are going to be powering both of these uh running with 512 megabytes of ram each uh cameras again same stuff uh on the back we've got five megapixel sensors on each and the fascinates case this is the Verizon Wireless version we do have a flash but not all versions of the Galaxy S do have a flash again the same five megapixel sensors and there's a flash here on the Nexus S if you flip it over here's where we see some differences uh the Nexus S has a front-facing VGA camera use that for video chatting I can also use that for taking really cool pictures of yourself uh out at some clubs uh something to uh uh to keep in mind camera wise the functionality is very very similar the VGA is added benefit on the front if something that you're looking for and something that you need it's good to have the option now as far as networks and how these are going to go on different carriers the Nexus S is unlocked but right now it only supports T-Mobile's 3G bands uh in the US so if you're T-Mobile customer you want to use their variants of the Galaxy S you know you can pick whichever one's going to be best for you if you're not a T-Mobile customer if you're not ATT Verizon Sprint uh you know you're going to be very limited at what you can choose and you may have to pick the Galaxy S if a Samsung built Android device is really what you are looking for so let me go ahead and run a little bit of speed test here and when I'm done I'll run the quadrant benchmarking test so let me go ahead and clear all the memory from each I've put a memory clearing program there we go right here on the Galaxy S it's not a it's more of a task killer I don't recommend using these sort of very regularly but I do want to show that we're starting from as clear memory as we can so we're going to go ahead and kill all selected apps on Android 2.3 I actually do have a task manager built in if you go into menu and go ahead and see manage apps and Samsung does include a task manager on their TouchWiz interface I just use a third-party one we'll go ahead and check out running it'll let me know what's running and you can see it's just settings Google services Android keyboard and stuff that sort of always has to be running uh on there so we've got uh clear on each let's go ahead and try and run some some similar applications see if we have any speed difference let's try one of my favorites and certainly different applications uh may have different speeds I can't do a test on everything out there but I do want to show you just some samples so let's start with one of my favorite games Angry Birds in this case it's Angry Birds Seasons and I will try really hard to put you at the same time it's more difficult than you might expect all right so I hit them both they got the Rovio screen exactly the same time it means it's almost identical so far as far as feed goes actually it was ready to play first on the Galaxy S over the Nexus S there you go Android uh 2.3 did not win and Samsung TouchWiz interface actually I'll launch things a bit faster go ahead and close these the music can be a bit on the annoying side all right so let's go ahead and try some browser speed and see if we have any difference uh in speed here as well so I'll go ahead and open up the browser I should mention that these are relatively clean installs uh of both operating systems all right so we've got a little techno buffalo on each and do a simple refresh you can see it's the swipe keyboard is loaded up here so like techno Buffalo uh these are sites that have been loaded before on each of these devices so considered a test of websites that you visit on a regular basis I'll go ahead and run this test and I'll give you my general Impressions uh on speed you can see that flash content is loading uh on both you got flash flash light support on the Galaxy S and you have flash 10.1 support here on the Nexus S let's go ahead and refresh both of these go ahead and do this and we'll hit go at least try and hit go at exactly the same time hit it there hit it there let's see if we have any speed difference and these are running on both the same uh Wi-Fi networks so again it looks like we are almost Head to Head maybe the Nexus S has a little bit of an edge and it did finish just a hair sooner uh so in using both these devices and noticing speed I will say that 3D gaming games that use a lot of 3D stuff things like Need for Speed or if you want to use the Google Earth uh is noticeably zippier on the Nexus S now is that little bit of speed increase which we didn't even see in these tests a reason to go out and want to ditch your new Galaxy S and pick up a Nexus S because it's a new phone on the Block most definitely not and the Galaxy S on its own is a really capable phone very quick and very robust and you may like Samsung's TouchWiz interface personally I don't like the encapsulated icons that you get in the menu system like I showed you guys in the beginning I'll go ahead and show you one more time so all these icons are encapsulated I prefer the native Android look of uh 2.3 which is going to be available on the Nexus S however that's just personal preference both devices are extremely well capable and very similarly specs if I have to pick a winner I would pick the Nexus Edge because there's a little bit of speed increase uh you've got that front VGA camera and I prefer sort of native uh Android in its unskinnedness over Samsung's TouchWiz but TouchWiz does add some functionality so really this is going to be a personal preference I was picking one again I would pick the Nexus S but it would be very close I've used the Galaxy S as my daily phone I was absolutely thrilled with it and I think you will be as well so hopefully this cleared things up for you guys and gave you a head-to-head comparison of each phones I am John rettinger from techno Buffalo be sure to check out the site for all your Tech news for exclusive content check me out at Twitter twitter.comlakers all those links are down in the what have you and I'll see you in the next video bye-bye foreignwhat's up everyone John rettinger from techno Buffalo here this is a video by popular demand I've had a lot of questions being sent in people asking for a head-to-head comparison between the just released Samsung built Google Nexus S and the also Samsung built Galaxy S in this case we have the Verizon Wireless variant here the Samsung Fascinate so we're going to put these two head to head they're very similar in a lot of respects and see if we can determine what the big differences are and whether or not Android 2.3 makes a difference or whether or not you're better off having an older operating system with Samsung's TouchWiz put on top of it so let's go ahead and get started so for those of you watching that maybe aren't familiar with these two devices just a quick refresher we've got the Nexus S on one side which is running a completely naked skin free version of Android it's the current newest version of Android 2.3 called gingerbread on the other side we've got the Galaxy S running Android 2.1 with TouchWiz I know some people in the world have had upgrades to 2.2 we have not been endowed with that yet in the U.S so this test is going to be with Android 2.1 running on it so one of the big OS differences here well one of the cool things about Android is that it's an open source operating system and as such it can be completely skinned and Modified by manufacturers and users and that's exactly what Samsung has done so right here you've got some notifications in the pull down menu you can go ahead and automatically select Wi-Fi Bluetooth GPS and airplane mode without having to fuss around with any sort of settings you notice that you've got a four rows of icons at the bottom all the applications are encapsulated you've got a ton of additional widget functionality go ahead and show you real quickly what those are Android widgets and Samsung widgets you have a lot here that you can go ahead and add it's a decent amount of functionality it's a lot of visual flash but a visual flash also can take its toll when it comes to memory processing something that we'll talk about in just a little bit so here we've got the naked version of Android 2.3 uh you notice that we've got a little bit of a dock down at the bottom with new colored icons the icons at the top are now green the battery icon is sort of turned on its side or turned straight up rather versus what we've seen on older versions you've got a new keyboard for uh for text entry which I'll show you guys certainly one of the nice things about Android is that it's open source so you can go ahead and pull in new text entries I don't know who that person is we'll go ahead and leave their number public or they're going to go ahead and send out exam text messages uh you can see there's a new keyboard you can go ahead and use a ton of third-party keyboards as well there's a lot of under the hood API differences as well as far as how Graphics are processed 3D images and that kind of stuff uh and we'll see sort of what difference that makes if any when we do some speed tests just wanted to give you a real quick overview of these and I've done in-depth videos on Android 2.3 Gingerbread as well as the operating system uh on the Galaxy S and more particularly the Samsung skin touch ones all right so let's talk about the displays on these two because they are very similar uh both have four inch diagonal Super AMOLED displays with a resolution of 800 by 480 and what Super AMOLED means is that the touch mechanism on the screen is glass is actually built into the glass not sitting right on top there are a few other nuances in there but what that's going to translate to are darker darks richer colors and a lot better visibility in direct sunlight however the downside of that that you do have a little bit of a bluish kind of gray tint on the Super AMOLED screens when you use the phone on its own for a while you don't really notice it but if you look at it next to another display you will notice that there's a bit of a color tint to it uh sometimes I find it bothersome but for the most part the display is absolutely gorgeous vibrant and Beautiful on the Nexus S however there's one bit of a difference the display is a little bit curved I don't know if you can see that on camera but it does make for a little nicer experience moving your finger over and holding it up to your head nothing giant uh there but it is something to take notice when you're comparing the two devices on figuring out maybe which one is best for you uh from a processor standpoint once again the theme here uh is identical we've got one gigahertz cortex A8 hummingbird processors which are going to be powering both of these uh running with 512 megabytes of ram each uh cameras again same stuff uh on the back we've got five megapixel sensors on each and the fascinates case this is the Verizon Wireless version we do have a flash but not all versions of the Galaxy S do have a flash again the same five megapixel sensors and there's a flash here on the Nexus S if you flip it over here's where we see some differences uh the Nexus S has a front-facing VGA camera use that for video chatting I can also use that for taking really cool pictures of yourself uh out at some clubs uh something to uh uh to keep in mind camera wise the functionality is very very similar the VGA is added benefit on the front if something that you're looking for and something that you need it's good to have the option now as far as networks and how these are going to go on different carriers the Nexus S is unlocked but right now it only supports T-Mobile's 3G bands uh in the US so if you're T-Mobile customer you want to use their variants of the Galaxy S you know you can pick whichever one's going to be best for you if you're not a T-Mobile customer if you're not ATT Verizon Sprint uh you know you're going to be very limited at what you can choose and you may have to pick the Galaxy S if a Samsung built Android device is really what you are looking for so let me go ahead and run a little bit of speed test here and when I'm done I'll run the quadrant benchmarking test so let me go ahead and clear all the memory from each I've put a memory clearing program there we go right here on the Galaxy S it's not a it's more of a task killer I don't recommend using these sort of very regularly but I do want to show that we're starting from as clear memory as we can so we're going to go ahead and kill all selected apps on Android 2.3 I actually do have a task manager built in if you go into menu and go ahead and see manage apps and Samsung does include a task manager on their TouchWiz interface I just use a third-party one we'll go ahead and check out running it'll let me know what's running and you can see it's just settings Google services Android keyboard and stuff that sort of always has to be running uh on there so we've got uh clear on each let's go ahead and try and run some some similar applications see if we have any speed difference let's try one of my favorites and certainly different applications uh may have different speeds I can't do a test on everything out there but I do want to show you just some samples so let's start with one of my favorite games Angry Birds in this case it's Angry Birds Seasons and I will try really hard to put you at the same time it's more difficult than you might expect all right so I hit them both they got the Rovio screen exactly the same time it means it's almost identical so far as far as feed goes actually it was ready to play first on the Galaxy S over the Nexus S there you go Android uh 2.3 did not win and Samsung TouchWiz interface actually I'll launch things a bit faster go ahead and close these the music can be a bit on the annoying side all right so let's go ahead and try some browser speed and see if we have any difference uh in speed here as well so I'll go ahead and open up the browser I should mention that these are relatively clean installs uh of both operating systems all right so we've got a little techno buffalo on each and do a simple refresh you can see it's the swipe keyboard is loaded up here so like techno Buffalo uh these are sites that have been loaded before on each of these devices so considered a test of websites that you visit on a regular basis I'll go ahead and run this test and I'll give you my general Impressions uh on speed you can see that flash content is loading uh on both you got flash flash light support on the Galaxy S and you have flash 10.1 support here on the Nexus S let's go ahead and refresh both of these go ahead and do this and we'll hit go at least try and hit go at exactly the same time hit it there hit it there let's see if we have any speed difference and these are running on both the same uh Wi-Fi networks so again it looks like we are almost Head to Head maybe the Nexus S has a little bit of an edge and it did finish just a hair sooner uh so in using both these devices and noticing speed I will say that 3D gaming games that use a lot of 3D stuff things like Need for Speed or if you want to use the Google Earth uh is noticeably zippier on the Nexus S now is that little bit of speed increase which we didn't even see in these tests a reason to go out and want to ditch your new Galaxy S and pick up a Nexus S because it's a new phone on the Block most definitely not and the Galaxy S on its own is a really capable phone very quick and very robust and you may like Samsung's TouchWiz interface personally I don't like the encapsulated icons that you get in the menu system like I showed you guys in the beginning I'll go ahead and show you one more time so all these icons are encapsulated I prefer the native Android look of uh 2.3 which is going to be available on the Nexus S however that's just personal preference both devices are extremely well capable and very similarly specs if I have to pick a winner I would pick the Nexus Edge because there's a little bit of speed increase uh you've got that front VGA camera and I prefer sort of native uh Android in its unskinnedness over Samsung's TouchWiz but TouchWiz does add some functionality so really this is going to be a personal preference I was picking one again I would pick the Nexus S but it would be very close I've used the Galaxy S as my daily phone I was absolutely thrilled with it and I think you will be as well so hopefully this cleared things up for you guys and gave you a head-to-head comparison of each phones I am John rettinger from techno Buffalo be sure to check out the site for all your Tech news for exclusive content check me out at Twitter twitter.comlakers all those links are down in the what have you and I'll see you in the next video bye-bye foreign\n"