We managed to nab some time with the most hotly-anticipated phone of the moment - the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
Featuring a whopping 4.65-inch screen with a dizzying 1280 x 720 resolution, we're talking about a phone that really pushes the boat out when it comes to display technology.
It's 'only' Super AMOLED, rather than the Plus technology we've seen on Galaxy S2, but it's still pin-sharp - almost at iPhone levels but on a much larger scale.
It lacks the lightweight feel of the Galaxy S2, but at 135g it's hardly a hefty monster - it sits nicely in the pocket and has a solid feel to it too.
The back has a pleasant mesh feeling to it as well - like many other Samsung handsets, the mottled effect helps the phone from getting hot in the hand.
It's a thin phone as well, as the pictures show... with the larger screen it feels super thin in the hand. It might be over .3mm thicker than the S2 (massive) but you can barely feel the different.
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the first phone to be running Ice Cream Sandwich, so rather than talk you through bits of the OS, you should check out our in-depth Android 4.0 review, and we'll go through the hardware specific elements here:
Android Beam - featuring some nifty NFC technology Android Beam allows you to send Maps, Directions, Sites and more simply by activating the NFC and placing the phones back to back.
It's only available for Android phones at the moment, so the likes of the Nexus S with its NFC chip will be able to use the technology when Ice Cream Sandwich lands on the handset.
The camera quality on the phone is also immense - given it's 'only' got a 5MP camera you could be forgiven for thinking it might offer a poor snapping experience, but thankfully that's not the case.
The speed of the 1.2GHz dual core processor means taking snaps is blindingly quick - even beating the nippiness of the iPhone 4S in the process.
Another area the speed of the processor comes to the fore is the general use of the phone... when it comes to flicking through home screens of opening and shutting applications using the multi-tasking panes, the speed of the Galaxy Nexus was noticeably faster than some of the Android-powered tablets on the market.
However, when we overloaded the notifications menu we noted a real drop in speed, with the OS juddering rather badly. In fairness, we were playing with an older developer build, so we'll let that one slide for now.
The screen quality of the Galaxy Nexus is as sumptuous as ever when it comes to Samsung screen - it lacked the colour depth of the Galaxy S2 in our eyes, but the sharpness of the screen was unrivalled, so it's clear to see the 4.65-inch screen is going to be a real winner for movies and the like.
Internet browsing speeds were similarly blindingly fast, no matter which sites we threw at it. The sharpness of the screen was also really useful here, as even at full zoom, all text and pictures looked crystal clear and even flash video showed no lag when tapped up on a number of sites. Nice stuff.
Samsung Galaxy Nexus early verdict
It's always easy to like the flagship Android hardware, as Google always puts a lot of effort into creating a high spec device for each iteration of its OS.
We're pretty impressed with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, despite being a little underwhelmed by the specs. That's mostly down to the use of Ice Cream Sandwich, which is a nifty OS indeed, with a number of cool features making it a real next-gen device.
The large screen will be ace for watching movies, and the internet use is fantastic - we can see this being one of our favourite devices for browsing the net on the go.
Stay tuned for our full Samsung Galaxy Nexus review in the near future - we're really looking forward to bringing you our full run down of the first Ice Cream Sandwich phone.
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