[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] ChazzMatt:
And that's quad core 3GHz, not just the Gnex dual core. ;)

Speaking of which, I'm giving my wife a white 32GB Nexus 5 for Christmas -- to replace her Galaxy Nexus (even though she still loves it). I got a black 32GB Nexus 5 when first released, and sold my Gnex for $200. (and that $200 helped make the Nexus 5 purchase price of $399 + tax and shipping a lot better.) Of course, I'm running Franco kernel on my new phone.

Her present has been hidden about a month now... After I give it to her, then I'll sell her "old" phone. Funny thing is a few weeks I told my wife I had already bought her Christmas present... and her response was "I hope it's nothing electronic." Oh. :( "Well, what ELSE would you like?" So, she'll also get a gift card or something.

We got our two Galaxy Nexus back in July, 2012. Been quite a ride! Franco kernel (wth Osm0sis help), Slim Bean ROM (and a couple of others prior), flashing basebands (Osm0sis helped there), flashing louder sound mod (Osm0sis helped there), and lots of other stuff. Thank you to Franco -- and to Osm0sis and all the others in this awesome thread who helped the Galaxy Nexus run better. One point in particular would be the on-demand overclocked GPU that Franco developed for this phone. AWESOME. After that would be the tunable settings the "Franco Team" helped collect. So, it's not only the developer but the users contributing.

Recently I've compared my wife's (very tweaked) Galaxy Nexus to my new Nexus 5, side-by-side. The Galaxy Nexus (SlimBean ROM, Franco kernel) is as snappy when opening apps or scrolling from desktop page to desktop page or swiping through the apps drawer. In fact, at those tasks, her Galaxy Nexus seems a hair MORE responsive sometimes, than my Nexus 5! What the heck! :confused: However, where it loses ground is when multi-tasking -- like an app downloading/updating while trying to do something else at the same time. The Gnex just bogs down for a minute or so, while the Nexus 5 doesn't miss a beat. The LTE speed on the Nexus 5 is great too, when away from Wi-Fi.

Of course, the Nexus 5 has much faster processor, better GPU, more cores, twice the amount of RAM, etc. But the Galaxy Nexus is still nothing to be ashamed of: 4.7" 720p 316ppi, 1.2 GHz dual core CPU, up to 512MHz GPU (on Franco kernel), pentaband HSPA+.

I'm convinced most of the Galaxy Nexus shortcomings would have been fixed with more RAM. Yes, it would have benefited tremendously from 2GB RAM, but back in 2011 that was not reasonable. But at least give us the RAM promised in the specs! :crying: Although the Galaxy Nexus is credited with "1GB" RAM -- in reality it's about 690MB accessible RAM with stock kernel, and still only 740MB accessable RAM with "big mem" kernels. :rolleyes: IF Samsung/Google could have given us 1 full GB RAM, this phone would still rock.

Or when KitKat is completely ported over to very stable status, that will keep the Galaxy Nexus competitive? (< I know the progress, I keep up with the Gnex SlimKat thread. Almost there.)

Yet, at some point you have to move on... The Nexus 4 wasn't enough of a jump to justify buying another two phones just a few months after the Galaxy Nexus (in 2012), but now the Nexus 5 does justify the cost. So, after I sell my wife's Galaxy Nexus (and accessories) I'll be leaving Maguro behind.

Thank you, all for your help and advice this past 1.5 years!

(and like The Gingerbread Man just above, hope to see a lot of you in the coming year in the Nexus 5 thread!)