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Comment by switch007 | Hacker News Reader

Not to rain on your hyperbole parade ;), but how long is the "incredible" battery life? Asking for a friend with an ageing nexus 4, who swore not to spend that much on a phone again...

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well there are two areas to my incredible claim :)

first is that the battery easily lasts me 2 days sometimes into a 3rd day if I use it a little less than normal.

however I only ever charge it for 15-20 minutes and in that time the fast charge gets me back up to 80something %. It is amazing how fast it charges. I never worry about the battery life on this phone which is the first time I have ever said that since smartphone came along.

for me the fast charging is actually the more important thing for me as being able to get 50+% battery charge in around 15 minutes is just awesome.

Your battery life is great now, but what about 3 years from now? The current ~2 year phone refresh cycle should not last forever, and I think that both the S7 and the nexus have it wrong when it comes to batteries. Even at a gentle 50% Depth of Discharge, a typical li-ion is at only 70% capacity after ~1200 cycles. Bump that to near 100% DoD, and you're at 70% after only 300-500 cycles. Sealed-in batteries in a phone are, IMHO, even a bigger deal than the lack of expandable storage.

Reference:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li...

A fair point. However I buy my phone SIM free for cash. I do not expect to keep this more than a year because like you said a built in battery isn't great. I will sell this phone/trade it in and buy whatever the new phone I want is. Doing it this way means I still get a good price for selling my phone to offset the cost of the new phone. Sure I spend about £200-250 on a phone each year but I am not tied into a contract for 24 months and I am on a great SIM only plan with unlimited 4G data for £15/month. When I calculate it over 24 months I save money over getting the same phone on a contract.

Being off contract, you save the most money by the fact that you aren't forced to continually upgrade your phone to get your subsidy. I'm on a ~$25 USD/month plan with unlimited talk/text + 2.5GB LTE, and I typically keep my phones ~3 years. Having said that, as you stated, even if I needed to have new phones every year, it'd still be cheaper than a contract :).

Assuming you have a "One Plan" with Three, you won't have that tariff much longer.

I've been considering a... is it the "5x", now? Mid-range price. The camera is supposed to be excellent. Somewhat more pocketable.

And, being on Verizon, my understanding is that I can pop in the micro-SIM from my 2013 Moto X and it will "just work", despite Verizon not officially supporting the 5x.

For that is a primary concern of mine. Due to circumstances, I'm kind of stuck with Verizon (in the U.S.). But I will never again purchase a phone whose updates are under their control. It seems to be either a Nexus that I can get to work on their network, or an iPhone.

I have a Nexus 6P and got my wife a Nexus 5X thinking it would be a smaller version of basically the same thing. The 6P has been nice, but the 5X has all sorts of issues with bad performance. For example, opening the camera will often freeze the phone for 10-20 seconds. Google still hasn't fixed this after 4 months [1].

It frustrated my wife enough that we sold it and got a used Galaxy S6 instead. It worked a lot better overall (despite running an older version of Android).

It's really disappointing. On paper, the Nexus 5X looks like a great phone. But in practice, basic features like taking pictures don't work reliably.

[1] https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/nexus/8D7t6xJVw...

>[...]but the 5X has all sorts of issues with bad performance. For example, opening the camera will often freeze the phone for 10-20 seconds.

Odd, I have a nexus 5X and I do not have this issue. The camera is pretty responsive. I think I've experienced some momentary freezes (the number of which I can count on one hand after 3 months?). YMMV? Although using "ymmv" makes no sense because they are the same device...

Also, the battery life is great and it is an good device over all.

> the 5x has all sorts of issues with bad performance

I have a Nexus 5x and so far its performance has been absolutely fine for me. Opening the camera app has never produced a 10-20 second freeze.

I have seen some things online suggesting that the Snapchat app may be responsible for some 5x performance problems. Did your wife's 5x have Snapchat installed, by any chance?

Thank you! I will look into that further.

And I will consider the price bump for the 6P -- and how I will carry it around.

I had the same worry when i purchased a note 3. It really becomes natural after a few weeks(at least for me).

Just dont drop it on your face, reading in bed. A little more mass haha.

I've got a 5x and it's been awesome. Haven't had any issues with the camera.

Yes any activated Verizon SIM should work with either of the Nexus phones. (I used one from my M8 and it worked fine in a 6P. Also you'll need a nano SIM - you can cut your micro sim using any one of the SIM cutters from Amazon.)

Good luck. The nexus 4 was one of the cheapest flagship smartphones of all time.

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