Samsung Nexus S / Galaxy Nexus

A family portrait of Nexus devices, or at least their boxes.

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to be a Nexus user — not only are they sold unlocked, but they’re easy to root and have the widest available selection of custom ROMs.

The Nexus S (purchased in April, 2011) was my first device with NFC on board. I used it in December of that year to make the first documented mobile payment in Canada — unless someone can prove otherwise?

Later that month I took it with me to Hong Kong, and the next spring on to Barcelona. It took until the summer of 2012 to wean my girlfriend off of my her Nexus One, and accept the Nexus S as her next hand-me-down.

My next phone (current as of this writing) was another Nexus product from Samsung, the Galaxy Nexus. I got it this past spring from my new carrier WIND Mobile. It’s cursed with MTP but blessed with a dual-core processor and a 720 by 1280 pixel “HD” display — perfect for my gaming addiction of the moment.

The Galaxy Nexus was also the first pentaband Android device — that is, the same model worked on all 3G and AWS frequencies. Note that the US carrier Verizon got a separate CDMA-based variant. Sucks to be them.