Been a weird day. Was really excited to get the phone via LetsTalk at 3am for $175...then by the afternoon I realized that they had messed up the orders and my phone was back ordered for atleast 1 week. Got annoyed with them and cancelled on principle and decided to stop by the VZW store to play with the Nexus, and see if it would tempt me into paying $250 for the upgrade. Here are my thoughts from playing with the phone for 20 minutes (Warning! Long review 
):
Screen -
Camera
Feel
Browser
Conclusions: The GN seems to be a great phone, but after having spent a while playing with it and evaluating it, I'm kind of glad that I didn't go with an impulse buy. I think it is a great phone, and the best phone currently available on VZW, but there are things that I don't particularly like, which make it hard for me to justify spending $200+ on it. My biggest issue is still the screen. I think that I'm realizing that pentile displays are just not for me and I will have to wait for a great phone to come out with a screen like the Rezound. The reason I won't get the Rezound is because I like the software buttons on the GN and the extra real-estate you get out of them, so I'd rather wait for newer phones that support soft-buttons.
Other than the screen, I was mostly happy with all the other things, but after spending 20 minutes on the phone, I didn't feel like I was blown away by any thing in particular that would make me feel like I'd wanna drop $250 on it at the store (they did have them in stock). I would probably pick it up for $150 or less...but for now, my valiant OG will keep me going.
PS - You deserve congratulations if you made it this far!
):Screen -
Brightness: This was actually a disappointment for me. I don't mind the slight color hue, etc, but I was surprised to note that at max brightness, the display of the Galaxy nexus looked dimmer than the Rezound and a blackberry that was sitting next to the Galaxy Nexus. I always thought that the Super AMOLED screens are supposed to be wayy brighter than regular LCDs, but unless this was a defective floor unit, the screen was definitely lacking in the brightness department compared to the phones with LCD screens (I checked to make sure it was set to Max brightness).
Pentile Display Artifacts: I think the Nexus screen pixel density hits the sweet spot where a pentile display begins to become an acceptable compromise while providing decent image quality. Everything looked great for the most part and I didn't see color bleed artifacts at the edge of dark boxes on white backgrounds as was evident with the Razr (much poorer pentile display due to lower PPI). HOWEVER, some cross-hatching was still evident to me (granted, I am more sensitive to display quality), and small text on webpages still had a bit of a cross-hatched look that made black text look gray rather than a solid black. So it didn't look great, but was still acceptable (to me), unlike on the RAZR. But when I compared the Nexus screen to the Rezound, it was a non-competition. The Rezound screen is just amazingly gorgeous, and text looks amazingly crisp and clear...even when zoomed out and displayed at a small size. All in all, the Nexus screen is great for a pentile display, but not great as far as other LCD screens go. I still prefer the image quality on my OG droid to the Nexus...pentile displays just aren't for me.
It is a bit of a sad commentary on the direction that manufacturers are taking with phone screens when my OG Droid screen provides better image quality than most of the latest Android phones on the market
Colors: A lot has been made out of the color hues imparted by an AMOLED display, but to be honest it didn't look like much of an issue to me. Sure, there is some difference between the Nexus screen and other phones, but that isn't a big deal. Your eyes adjust very rapidly to the color gamut of a display and unless there are some very strong color casts, things end up looking fine. I certainly had no issues as far as colors go. Screen looked great in that department
Resolution: AWESOME! I absolutely love the 1280x720 resolution with software buttons. This was a great move by Google and I can't wait for other phone to adopt this. GN wins hands down compared to all the other android phones currently available.
ResponsivenessPentile Display Artifacts: I think the Nexus screen pixel density hits the sweet spot where a pentile display begins to become an acceptable compromise while providing decent image quality. Everything looked great for the most part and I didn't see color bleed artifacts at the edge of dark boxes on white backgrounds as was evident with the Razr (much poorer pentile display due to lower PPI). HOWEVER, some cross-hatching was still evident to me (granted, I am more sensitive to display quality), and small text on webpages still had a bit of a cross-hatched look that made black text look gray rather than a solid black. So it didn't look great, but was still acceptable (to me), unlike on the RAZR. But when I compared the Nexus screen to the Rezound, it was a non-competition. The Rezound screen is just amazingly gorgeous, and text looks amazingly crisp and clear...even when zoomed out and displayed at a small size. All in all, the Nexus screen is great for a pentile display, but not great as far as other LCD screens go. I still prefer the image quality on my OG droid to the Nexus...pentile displays just aren't for me.
It is a bit of a sad commentary on the direction that manufacturers are taking with phone screens when my OG Droid screen provides better image quality than most of the latest Android phones on the market
Colors: A lot has been made out of the color hues imparted by an AMOLED display, but to be honest it didn't look like much of an issue to me. Sure, there is some difference between the Nexus screen and other phones, but that isn't a big deal. Your eyes adjust very rapidly to the color gamut of a display and unless there are some very strong color casts, things end up looking fine. I certainly had no issues as far as colors go. Screen looked great in that department
Resolution: AWESOME! I absolutely love the 1280x720 resolution with software buttons. This was a great move by Google and I can't wait for other phone to adopt this. GN wins hands down compared to all the other android phones currently available.
The phone was quite smooth in most areas. Still a bit stuttery on occasion, but as far as android goes, I think it is the smoothest phone out there. I played with the Rezound and Razr as well, and the GN seemed to be the best in this department while the Rezound seemed to be the worst...most likely due to Sense running on top of android. Still, I would like to see Google do a lot more to improve in this area. As much as I love Android, my first gen iPad still feels smoother than the Galaxy Nexus. Anyways, that isn't why we all love android, but I sure would love to see this get better because a responsive and smooth UI really does make a world of difference to your overall experience with the phone and OS.
Having said that, the multitasking works really well on the GN and Icecream Sandwich. There were tons of open apps on the GN as this was a floor model and the phone was still running great. I used the task-switcher to switch between apps and didn't have any issues. The task switching window could use some more tweaking and polish though. It doesn't seem to give any feedback about how many windows/apps are still open and available off screen above and below...so you don't know which direction to scroll to look for open apps, and it can make you mistakenly think that you only have 3-4 apps open when in fact you have 15+ running in the background.
Having said that, the multitasking works really well on the GN and Icecream Sandwich. There were tons of open apps on the GN as this was a floor model and the phone was still running great. I used the task-switcher to switch between apps and didn't have any issues. The task switching window could use some more tweaking and polish though. It doesn't seem to give any feedback about how many windows/apps are still open and available off screen above and below...so you don't know which direction to scroll to look for open apps, and it can make you mistakenly think that you only have 3-4 apps open when in fact you have 15+ running in the background.
Camera
I think several people have covered this already. It was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I absolutely loved the tap to focus, and zero shutter lag, but the image quality wasn't the best. It is still great for a phone, and miles better than my OG droid...but the Rezound and iPhone cameras are definitely a cut above the GN camera. I also miss having a dedicated camera button like on the OG Droid...and even more so with the GN because I find that the zero shutter lag actually results in more blurry photographs as you have to tap the screen with your finger and that shakes the phone/camera and the picture is taken immediately. Maybe it will get better with practice, but it still feels a bit flawed to have to tap the phone screen and cause it to vibrate/move while simultaneously capturing an image.
Feel
The phone feels great. I was hesitant when I first saw it because it looks HUGE, but I really like the form factor. Certainly seems nicer in form factor compared to the RAZR and I like the balance of the phone in your hands. I do hate the battery cover though. It feels uber cheap, and things were made worse by the fact that the battery cover could not manage the weight of the security tether that VZW stores have on the back of their phones. As a result it kept popping off, making you feel like you had a really cheap phone in your hands. The security alarm would also go off every now and then when people were playing with it because of the loose battery cover. I'm not too confident about how this phone would do if dropped. While it feels nice in your hands, it doesn't inspire much confidence in terms of mechanical robustness.
Browser
Awesome! I compared the browser on the Razr, Rezound and the GN, and the GN certainly wins here. It was the smoothest browser on the same webpage (NYTimes Homepage - Desktop Version). Multi-tabs works well and I like having the extra vertical screen real estate due to the software buttons.
Conclusions: The GN seems to be a great phone, but after having spent a while playing with it and evaluating it, I'm kind of glad that I didn't go with an impulse buy. I think it is a great phone, and the best phone currently available on VZW, but there are things that I don't particularly like, which make it hard for me to justify spending $200+ on it. My biggest issue is still the screen. I think that I'm realizing that pentile displays are just not for me and I will have to wait for a great phone to come out with a screen like the Rezound. The reason I won't get the Rezound is because I like the software buttons on the GN and the extra real-estate you get out of them, so I'd rather wait for newer phones that support soft-buttons.
Other than the screen, I was mostly happy with all the other things, but after spending 20 minutes on the phone, I didn't feel like I was blown away by any thing in particular that would make me feel like I'd wanna drop $250 on it at the store (they did have them in stock). I would probably pick it up for $150 or less...but for now, my valiant OG will keep me going
.PS - You deserve congratulations if you made it this far!