The torment and anguish is over, I just ordered my Galaxy Nexus and it'll be here tomorrow (UPS gods willing).

It's been a tug of war over do I want the pure "Nexus" experience or do I want better hardware. There are phones with better hardware out there. I'd much rather have a phone with an Exynos processor, micro SD slot, and HSPA+42 or LTE.

I finally decided I'd rather have the Nexus phone. While I can use custom ROMs and get the latest Android version on my phone, I really prefer not to do it. And it's such a hassle having to reload my apps and data everytime I load a custom ROM. With the Galaxy Nexus, I'll always get my updates quick and this phone will have a much longer support cycle from Google than other phones will get from their carriers.

I also ended up going with an unlocked international version. First time I've ever paid full price for a phone. $660 ouch. But I'm going to switch from my $80 a month T-Mobile contract to a $30 monthly plan. That'll be a savings of $1,200 over two years, that more than pays for itself in the long run.

What carrier is 30/month with data for a smartphone?

 

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Going with T-Mobile's Monthly4G plan. 100 minutes, unlimited text, "unlimited" data (throttles at 5GB).
http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans

Though T-Mobile doesn't make it easy for existing customers like me to switch over for it.
I have to cancel my existing plan, buy a new SIM card ($3), and then sign up.
I'm going to port my number into Google Voice so I don't lose it (T-Mobile won't port it between subscription and monthly plans).

A hundred minutes really doesn't seem like it would be remotely close to enough...you got some way around that minute limitation?

I probably use 50 minutes a month tops lol. HeyTell + Texting + Google Voice = not many real phone calls.

 

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I actually have to use my phone quite regularly for work. Doubt that would work for me. Can't really tell customers to text me instead :/

For me it's plenty, I don't talk much on my phone. Though there is a Android VOIP app I could try if I needed to get around it.... at the moment the name of the app is escaping my memory.

Ugh, rooting the phone is an absolute pain in the ass.

Then you are doing it wrong.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1392310

One click unlock, CWM, Root with drivers.

I really have no idea what you are doing to make this difficult...

It's quite a bit more than one click though. You need to load drivers for normal and fastboot modes. The fastboot driver was for some reason the big hang up for me. I kept getting a device failure in the device manager and the fastboot mode would freeze up, forcing me to remove the battery. After the third try it finally worked.

After that the unlocking process wipes the phone, so I needed to back it up since I already loaded some stuff on it.
The unlock was finally completed, had to wait for Google to resync the apps. Was thinking about canceling this since I did a back up, but things get squirrelly if I cancel a sync, so I let it go.
Then the restore.
And finally the root.

Was surprised a Nexus phone had a locked boot loader. And surprised again it had to be unlocked to root, since other devices I've looked at could be rooted with a locked boot loader.

Anyway, it was more work than other Android devices and that fastboot mode freezing up didn't help. But it's finally done. Unlocked and rooted.