Samsung/Google Galaxy Nexus I9250 Initial impressions

I’ve been a Nokia Symbian user for basically all my life. Coming from my most recent Nokia E7, the Galaxy Nexus is my first real dive in to the Android world. In this first part of my review I’m going to give an overview of the hardware, my first impressions of the device and also my first impressions of accessibility on the Android platform.

Like most Samsung devices these days, the Galaxy Nexus is a black plastic slab. The device feels solid in the hand and seems to be of a good quality. The back cover of the device has a rougher texture which helps with the grip on the device but the plastic feels cheap and I don’t think it quite fits in with the rest of the phone. When taken off, the slightly curved back plastic cover is very flimsy and I think it’s bound to break at some point especially if you are going to open your phone a lot. The only physical buttons on this device is a volume rocker on the left and the power/lock button on the right side, so the front is dominated by the 4.65 inch touch screen with no physical home button as found on most other touch slab devices.

In terms of hardware specks this late 2011 device can compete with the latest smart phones of mid 2012.
As already mentioned it has a 4.65 inch touch screen and some of the other hardware highlights include:

·         1.2 GHz dual core Cortex-A9 processor

·         1 GB of RAM

·         16 GB internal storage (no SD card slot)

·         Bluetooth and NFC

·         5 MP camera, 1.3 MP front facing camera

·         Micro USB and 3.5 mm audio jack

·         1750 mAh battery

With the release of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean about a month ago, I hoped that this review device would run JB, but unfortunately it seems that it’s not available to South African devices yet so I have to be happy with version 4.04 Ice cream sandwich. On the up side, the Nexus is running Android as Google intended it to be without any changes made to the software by the manufacturer in this case Samsung. After switching on the device, I tried to switch on the built in Android screen reader called Talkback. As expected I wasn’t able to switch it on so I had to get sighted assistance. Theoretically you must be able to draw a rectangle on the screen using one finger and this will turn on Talkback but I never heard of someone using an ICS device who got this to work. The idea of “out of the box accessibility” is that a blind person should be able to take a phone out of its box, switch it on and then be able to start using it without requiring any sighted assistance. It would be harsh to blame the device for this, so I’ll rather call this a fail for the vanilla build of ICS on the Nexus.

After Talkback was switched on, I found that the device read some stuff, but it didn’t read the elements and menu items under my finger. After some more sighted assistance, I found that “Explore by touch” must also be switched on in the accessibility settings menu. I find this stupid to say the least, switching on Talkback must also switch on explore by touch, I can’t think of a use case for Talkback without explore by touch so one button should switch on both and this is the second fail for so called “out the box accessibility” for the Galaxy Nexus.

So far Navigating on the phone is fine with Talkback announcing whatever is under your finger and then you are able to click on it by double tapping. There is however some items in the menu which I am unable to enter even though talkback announces them, I am also so far unable to interact with items in the notifications bar, these include new messages, new emails and update notifications. Although the keyboard is a bit of a tight squeeze and takes some getting use to, it works fine also by tapping on a letter once Talkback announces it under your finger.

The Galaxy Nexus is a well rounded solid device and except for the few accessibility issues, it is so far a pleasure to use. In the next week I’ll do some more exploring and in the next part of the review I’ll go a bit deeper in to the accessibility and using the Nexus as an every day device.

Nokia Screen Reader

It all started back in October of 2011 at Nokia World 2011 in London. Nokia announced a free mobile screen reader for blind and visually disabled people and Nokia tasked a Spanish company Mobile Speak to build this screen reader. Code Factory already makes their own very popular mobile screen reader for Symbian called Mobile Speak and also a few other accessibility applications for mobile platforms including Android so they’re not newbie’s in the field of screen readers and accessibility.

Nokia Screen Reader v1.1 or in short NSR, currently supports four Nokia devices, the numeric keyboard C5-00 and c5 5MP and also the touch Symbian Belle 700 and 701. As already mentioned Nokia Screen Reader is a totally free application but before you associate free with sub standard excuse for a screen reader, allow me to explain. NSR is essentially a stripped down simplified version of Code Factory’s Mobile Speak screen reader but it is in no way too simplified to make your phone unusable. If I can explain it by comparing it to sports cars, The Ferrari F430 Scuderia is a stripped down racing version of the normal F430. The scuderia still gives you all the functionality of the normal F430 but because it’s stripped down it doesn’t for example have comfy adjustable leather seats and it also doesn’t have air conditioning or a booming sound system like the standard F430.

Getting back to NSR, it still gives you all the functionality of Mobile Speak but you can’t customize the reading options or verbosity settings. NSR works with nokia’s built in high quality TTS voices and in its current form supports eight languages English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish and Spanish. All it takes is a simple download from the Nokia Store just like you would download any other application, just remember that you’ll need some sighted assistance. After the download it’s a quick and easy installation process, a phone restart and there you go, your phone speaks. In my case it was a install on the Nokia 701 which is one of the newer Symbian Belle phones and because I know and have been using Code Factory’s Mobile Speak for a while now, I fortunately already knew how to use it so I was on my way immediately. For those not familiar with Mobile Speak, I would recommend you read the NSR user Manual even before installation.

Down to the business end, everybody’s first questions would be, 1. Is it any good, 2. What can it do and 3. What can’t it do?

Getting to the first question, yes it’s a good application in fact it’s very good if I saw it on someone’s phone for the first time I would have never guessed that it’s a free application and feature wise it doesn’t have to stand back for any other mobile screen reader on touch or non touch devices. Down to the second question, well to sum it up NSR allows a visually disabled or blind person to read and manage all phone menus, read and manage their contacts and calendars, send and receive messages and emails and it also allows you to browse the web. All this is done without any problems and with built in Nokia TTS guiding you every step of the way.

On the subject of the TTS voices, this is I believe a area where Nokia can still improve because I think this is the only area where NSR really lacks and can’t stand up to any other screen reader weather it’s free or not. The quality of the Nokia TTS voices is simply just sub standard and high quality only by name, fortunately I use Mobile Speak because I can’t see myself using NSR each and every day and I’m not saying this because NSR is not a good screen reader application, I’m  saying this just because of the TTS voices. I only tried the English voice so far but I can’t see that it will be different with the other languages, the voices are simply too mechanical which makes it hard to understand what it’s saying at times especially at lower volumes and higher speeds and low volume with high speed is the way most people use screen readers on their phones. Nokia could for example invest in the use of some third party TTS voices, a lot of companies make TTS voices which has much higher quality. NSR is free so it might be a bit unfair comparing the TTS quality to those used by companies like Code Factory, Nuance and Apple  in their screen readers but I believe the quality of the TTS voices will eventually make or break NSR. The question is, if Nokia can use better quality TTS voices in their maps application why can’t they also use higher quality for NSR? At first people will judge NSR not by its functionality but by the quality of its TTS voices so it runs the risk of being dubbed a bad screen reader just because of the sub standard TTS voices when measured against others. Stepping away from TTS and on to another major shortcoming but this time it’s not only a NSR shortcoming but a shortcoming of all other screen readers designed for the Symbian platform, Nokia Store can’t be accessed by NSR or any other screen reader and this is a big problem because the only option for visually disabled and blind people to get any applications from the store is to ask for sighted assistance. I see this as a Nokia problem and it falls in to the same category of Nokia Suite the pc application not being accessible with any pc screen reader but this is a subject for another day.

Getting to the third question, what can’t it do, well to be honest there’s not much, as I’ve mentioned you can’t customize the reading options and verbosity settings like you would in Mobile Speak and you can’t set up different customized user profiles but this is no problem because it seems that Code Factory has put some thought in to it and have selected the best settings which would suit the widest group of users and I personally have no problems with the current settings set out for me by the manufacturer.

I'm a heavy phone user and somewhat of a phone geek, I use my smart phone each and every day to its full potential. In the past two weeks or so of having NSR on my Nokia 701 I have used my phone like I normally would, I called, messaged, sent emails, used the calendar, made notes, used the web for Google searches,Facebook and YouTube and I also used Twitter via Tweets60. I did all this without any problems and with NSR running smoothly. I’m pretty happy with the application except for the TTS voices already mentioned.

Would I recommend it to someone?
Yes any day but I will of caurse warn them about the TTS voices not being up to standard in fact I’m so impressed with NSR if it wasn’t for me already having Mobile Speak I would have picked NSR any day. NSR is perfect for anybody first needing or trying out a screen reader for their phone and who knows, if you like it and the way it works but need a little more the upgrade to Code Factory’s Mobile Speak would be the logic upgrade.

As I said I am very impressed with NSR in its current form accept for the mentioned TTS voices and I hope they address this problem. It looks like Nokia is starting to take accessibility seriously so I really hope they continue the development of NSR and other accessibility applications in the future. I hope we see support for more phones and looking further ahead it will be nice seeing accessibility applications like NSR built in to the Nokia operating systems like we see in Apple’s iOS and some versions of Android. I might have high hopes but if Nokia continues with the development and investment in NSR, I can’t see why it and other accessibility applications can’t be integrated in to the Nokia operating systems of the future.