Verizon LTE is nothing to sneeze at. I'm envious of it and I'm slightly concerned with breaking my AT&T contract now that LTE is rolling out, but they've been getting $101 per month from me for way too long. The T-Mobile $30 "Walmart" plan is tailor-made for me. I rarely use more than 100 minutes of cellular voice per month. Even if I were to go over by 200 minutes, the cost is still half of my AT&T contract plan. As far as I can tell, T-Mobile's HSPA+ is faster than AT&T's.

I've had every iPhone with the exception of the 4S. Apple's first mistake was their policy of not unlocking US phones which forced me to pick up an unlocked G1 for an extended trip to Germany. This gave me a taste of android with its relative freedom of wifi tethering, non-market apps, and deep Google services integration. I've been fiddling with Android and Windows Phone 7 for the past year or so after selling my iPhone 4 on eBay for a tidy profit. Apple's second mistake was not releasing an iPhone 5, which was what I was anticipating coming back to.

So, this is how I find myself with a Galaxy Nexus. Its pentaband radio is a substantial feature for the short while I'm keeping AT&T and T-Mobile service active. I can evaluate T-Mobile, and if it doesn't work out, the AT&T SIM will work just fine.

Anyway, the Galaxy Nexus is a tremendous phone. Ice Cream Sandwich and the gorgeous screen are what make it. ICS is clearly Google's smoothest, most polished mobile OS yet. It's barely recognizable as a descendant of Cupcake. I couldn't really say the same for Gingerbread.

Saying ICS is an iOS killer is pointless since some people think the earliest versions of Android already accomplished that. But, it's clear that Google is paying attention to what makes iOS so appealing. ICS is fantastic. Any die-hard iOS fan would have to admit it. It's too bad Sense and TouchWiz will probably ruin it for the majority of devices.