The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, one of the most eagerly awaited smart phones of the season, finally debuted yesterday after a month of delays. Based on our brief use of a press sample, this $300 Verizon 4G phone was worth the wait. It boasts a huge and dazzling display, among other features, and it’s the first smart phone to run Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich—a new OS that appears to more than live up to its high expectations.

The phone’s specs alone are impressive. It features a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, and the display is an ultra-sharp Super Amoled screen (720p) that measures a whopping 4.65 inches, the largest phone display we’ve seen to date. Despite the phone's size— at 5.33 x 2.67 x 0.35 inches and 4.76 ounces—it felt remarkably light and comfortable in my hands.

Like the Samsung Nexus S, the Galaxy Nexus supports NFC (near-field communication) technology, which enables the phone to act as a payment device at a small but slowly growing number of store registers (Google Wallet is not supported). Other features include a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video chats and 32GB of storage.

But its most noteworthy feature is that new operating system. Ice Cream Sandwich marks a significant upgrade from Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), which is still being offered on many newly launched smart phones. New features of the 4.0 OS include a Recent Apps button for accessing recently used apps, the ability to group apps into folders, better text-editing tools, enhanced voice-activated navigation and dictation, and a facial-recognition app that can unlock the phone's screen by having the owner smile for the front-facing camera.

Indeed, Ice Cream Sandwich is dripping with many more capabilities than I’ve had time to test or report on yet. But here are some highlights of the phone and its amazing OS:

Display. While our test experts haven’t yet formally assessed the screen, it’s the best screen I've ever seen on a phone. The fonts are designed to bring out the best from the ultra-sharp 720 x 1280 display, which has a density of about 316 pixels per inch.

Text truly popped. I could read the tiniest type, even on photos, and appointments were sharp and legible on all seven of my integrated Google calendars. And (as in most 4G phones I’ve tried), the display seemed quite fast and responsive and images appeared vivid, yet natural and accurate—even when viewed in fairly bright light outdoors.

Phone navigation. Getting around on the Galaxy Nexus is easy, thanks mostly to the Recent Apps button on the bottom in the systems bar at the bottom of the phone. Just tap it, and you'll see a beautiful stack of screen shots of your most recently used apps. Tap any one of them, and you can jump to that app.

Other improvements required time for me to master. For example, experienced Android users will immediately notice the absence of the customary Search and Menu buttons in the system bar at the bottom of the phone. The menu-button functions have been moved within applications and appear as three stacked dots on either the lower-right or upper-right of your screen within open apps. In some cases, a variety of menu options, such as Search and App Settings, will always appear at the bottom of the app's screen.

The navigation changes worked well, once I adjusted to them. My only quibble: For searches, you have to hit the Home key to get to the main menu and type or speak into the Google search bar at the top of the screen.

Customization. There are lots of new ways to change backgrounds and perform other cosmetic changes on Android 4.0, but the most practical improvement is the ability to group apps into folders, which saves space and is a great way to keep similar apps together for easier access. You can easily change out any of the five apps (phone, contacts, app drawer, messaging, and Web browser) that initially appear in the Favorite Apps bar at the bottom of the screen.

Adding apps to the desktop works a bit differently than it does on previous versions of the Android OS, where you'd hold your finger down on the screen and be prompted by the phone about which app, widget, bookmark, or contact you want to insert. With Android 4.0, it's the reverse: You open the app drawer first and press your finger against the app or widget you'd like to add to the desktop. I found the older way put more options at your fingertips, quite literally.

Voice activation. The Galaxy Nexus has the best voice recognition I've encountered on an Android phone, allowing you to dictate long messages and perform complex searches. It's nowhere near as smart as the iPhone 4S's Siri, though. It often fumbled when I asked it to perform simple tasks, like initiating and sending a text message or e-mail. And it wasn't smart enough to capitalize the first letters of proper nouns, including the names of famous cities.

Editing. There's only one type of keyboard, but it worked very well for me. Android's top-drawer predictive text feature seemed to come up with better predictions as I typed. And there's also a spell-check which underlines suspect words and offers intelligent suggestions. The Edit/Select tool also performed admirably.

Camera. There's nothing special hardware-wise about the Galaxy Nexus 5-megapixel camera, which records HD video in 1080p. Also, the new Android-powered controls are mostly fine, but some are a bit silly. I appreciated the Picasa-like editing tools for the still camera, which allow you to crop, straighten, and share your photos, as well as add special effects. There's also a button for capturing panoramic shots (for those rare occasions when you'll actually want to take a panoramic shot). The video controls are adequate, and—in the silly, if fun, part—include effects for distorting the faces of your subjects (giving them bug eyes, squeezing heads, and so on) and adding cheesy backgrounds—the kind you'd find in a low-budget, early-1970s sci-fi movie.

Facial recognition. The Galaxy Nexus comes with a facial-recognition tool that allows you to unlock your phone. The phone "learns" your face in only a few seconds, and the feature worked fine, for a while. Eventually, though, the phone started having trouble recognizing me when the background lighting was different, or if I changed the part in my hair (or even if I looked at it funny). If facial recognition fails, you can type in a four-digit PIN. But I found inconvenient and a bit humiliating to have the Galaxy Nexus fail to recognize me and then to have to type a PIN to use the phone.

Bottom line: The Galaxy Nexus is certainly one of the best Android phones I've handled, in large part because of the Ice Cream Sandwich operating system it runs on. I expect our full tests of the phone will confirm its status as a high-performing recommended model. But I also expect to see other phones soon that make as much or more of the capabilities of this fantastic new OS.