Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
androidpolice.com
androidpolice.com
Why on earth is every decent phone so bloody big? Now, I've never had a "large screen" phone before so my concerns may be unfounded but I feel that as I don't carry a handbag/manbag and my phone resides in my jeans pocket 99% of the time i'm on the move, anything over say 80/90mm long is just going to become an utter liability with respect to falling out and/or breakage? That aside from the fact that anything larger than that must be a pain to lug around?
Is this something anyone else has struggled with? Are my impressions unfounded?
For now I'm sticking with my old flip style Motorola Razor (beside it has the totally brilliant "Hello Moto" ring tone :)
If you are set on a smaller screen, look at the Moto RAZR M (or the RAZR i outside US). 4.3" display, where others normally fit a 4" display.
It fits into my jeans perfectly (and i cycle with it too). Of course, my choice of pants is more limited now, but I always loved big pockets.
I'm used to being to hold the phone easily in one hand, and thumbing through some random trivia on the train to work. I found this difficult, or at least precarious feeling, on the Galaxy Nexus because of just how damned big it is. I heavily disliked how the phone practically begged for two hands to be operated.
It also felt huge in my pocket, though I suspect it's not enough of annoyance to stop me from carrying a compelling enough device - but the Galaxy Nexus isn't that.
"First off the Samsung Galaxy S3 has an Exynos 1.4GHz quad-core processor (1.51GHz Snapdragon dual-core for US variants), 4.8-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display with resolution of 1280 x 720 and 306ppi, LTE (regional), 1GB of RAM and16, 32 or 64GB internal memory expandable via microSD to 64GB. It also has a very decent 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, autofocus,1080p HD video recording and the ability to simultaneously record video and images, along with a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera.
(...)
The Galaxy S3 Mini on the other hand has a 1GHz NovaThor dual-core processor, 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display with resolution of 800 x 480 and 233ppi, no LTE connectivity, 1GB of RAM, and 8 or 16GB of internal storage expandable via microSD to 32GB. There’s also a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, autofocus and 720p video capture plus a VGA front-facing camera, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, WiFi Direct, WiFi Hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, microUSB 2.0 and a 1500mAh battery."
http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/10/13/samsung-galaxy-s3-v...
480 x 800 resolution vs 720 x 1280 1 GHz Dual Core vs 1.4 GHz Quad Core 5 MP camera vs 8MP
It's very poor value for the money in my opinion, not even matching the specs from the S2 last year.
Because those are pretty much all points on which the iphone 4 was derided/criticized by the android community 2 years ago?
I'm guessing for a lot of the Nexus's target market, and for Google, faster updates win out.
http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569688/why-nexus-4-do...
A lot of people really don't need the extra space from an SD card, and LTE is just a more costly option with slightly higher speeds. The lack of a removable battery is somewhat of a let down, but be honest, when is the last time you replaced your phone's battery? I never have. People also seem to indicate that you can still replace the battery by removing a few screws, it is just a little more difficult.
I think the US market is moving towards prepaid, non-contract plans, and this is the PERFECT phone for it. On top of that, most of the rest of the world uses prepaid phone plans, which this is perfect for.
Or the people who disliked it when it Apple did it are a different group of people that like it when an Android phone does it. Or they see it as an acceptable trade-off given the non-subsidized price of the Nexus 4.
But hey, don't let that stop you from pointing out such a grave injustice.
This is absurd. HN is not a monolith. Every time Apple has a new product there's plenty of people fawning over it, plenty deriding it, and most people somewhere in between who don't care enough to comment.
1. 4G tethering / hotspot is amazing and doesn't require an additional subscription on previous Nexus phones. 2. 16 GB (13 GB free) is miniscule today, especially for a phone with limited streaming capability due to #1. 3. Non-removable battery also means no extended batteries. One of the first accessories I buy is usually an extra or extended battery.
That's not entirely true, it's less efficient but you can get charge packs or battery pack "case" which provide USB power to the phone, either on the go or to top up the battery.
Verizon's 4G definitely rivals Comcast's cable in terms of latency and reliability, if not in raw speed.
There is a lot of controversy on the reviews because it lacks LTE. Apart from that, the only thing that this phone have that is not found in many other Android devices is the glass back. The HTC One X (lacks non-removable battery, no SD card slot) and the GNexus (no SD card slot) are famous devices that have this problems.
My point is that the "beauty" of the Android ecosystem is that you can choose between a lot of different designs and specs. The Nexus 4 have glass back, no LTE, no sd card slot and non-removable battery. Will it be more popular than the S3, that don't have any of this "problems"? I don't think so.
I am buying the Nexus 4 because I love the design, I love stock Android and there is no LTE in my country yet. I always really liked the iPhone design and hardware, but the OS and the locked ecosystem are deal breakers to me.
On a more serious note, I don't understand all the fuss about LTE. IIRC it's something like 20Mbps in practice, which is faster than most Internet connections in the US.
What is the use case for such bandwidth on a phone? YouTube already plays just fine with HSPA+.
Aside from that, it's just another way for carriers to charge you $$$ for a feature that is only marginally useful.
No doubt that very few of the reviewers actually understand that and complain about getting not getting 50Mbps now.
I have a verizon LTE device that I tether with from time to time, and the ping times I get to my home server are insane, usually around 20ms. When I tether on my HSPA galaxy nexus, ping times are usually around 100+ms.
Now this could be verizon vs t-mobile and not LTE vs HSPA (or some mix). Verizon is the only/main LTE-supporting provider right now, so LTE and Verizon are conflated in my mind, for better or for worse.
Do you have real-looking latency data for the first few hops from your phone? (...keeping in mind that latency information for intermediate hops is not always accurate.)
100ms vs 20ms could be t-mobile peering with your home ISP in some far away city, while Verizon peers locally. Based on only pings, you'd never know.
Use case is everything you currently do, but faster.
No LTE doesn't affect people on non-LTE networks (eg all of Ireland) and isn't a deal breaker for people who mostly connect via wireless (eg all those people who are happy enough with highly restricted data plans).
If those two things contribute to the attractive price and/or design then for a big group of people these are good things. They still get a phone that works great at a low price without paying for features they can't or won't use.
This isn't the highest end phone on the market, but it puts a a lot of computer in your pocket at a price that people will be willing to pay.
What was the median price of a phone pre-iphone?
Also, I like the fact that a sealed case gives lint/dust/dirt less of a chance to invade my phone. I have a Galaxy Nexus and I have to take the back off every so often to clean the gunk out of the speaker & camera lens.
Eg, all of T-Mobile, which is the only official launch partner for the Nexus 4 in the US.
With case, you lose a lot of the sleekness.
Edit: Not being snarky. Just a minor correction.
Don't forget: average consumer has no clue about nexus devices. But they do know about Samsung or Htc phones.
I live in a place with no LTE, but honestly if it were to degrade battery life I'd rather live without it: faster network is always nice, but the current one is fast enough.
Not that it matters if your network has no LTE.
Imagine if when Microsoft was designing Windows 7 they said "well, no one is using IPv6 right now so we won't include any support."
When the operators/LTE network vendors get their voice act together, phone vendors can start selling proper LTE phones.
That's not a fair comparison. IPv6 is required so our internet doesn't crumble around us, LTE is just getting cat pictures to your eyeballs quicker.
Besides, I think the most talked about phone award probably goes to the Samsung S3...
Say what you will about their recent problems, but Nokia made phones that were solid. I dropped them on numerous occasions without problems.
I've been pretty happy with the Samsung phone that replaced my Nokia (wanted Android, not due to a fall!) - it seems well made, and I figured I'd get a new Samsung when the time came. This looks pretty compelling, although getting one in Italy might be a PITA.
The first few Galaxy phones by Samsung were terrible and turned a lot of people away from Android, but they've more than made up for it with the Nexus and recent releases.
IIRC, you couldn't get curved Gorilla Glass back then so Google decided to go with regular glass rather than give up the subtle curve.
Direct blows = pretty good. Torque from twisting = damn it.
And yet people drop them, all the time. So the philosophy of "build it as if it will never be dropped" may be worth re-examining.
I'm looking for a new Android phone that's as good as the Hero.
Good Phone the Nexus S.
I might attempt a DIY groin charger.
? :)
And I really don't think they could care less. Apple has never been about competing on market share. They care about profit. And I personally this strategy by Google may be great in the short term it has the potentially to really harm the platform in the long term. Because what it has done is set a price point that transfers margins from the OEMs to Google. And with some of the OEMs already struggling that can't be good.
> Will be interesting to see if Apple sees this and
> how it counters.
Do you want to pay $199 plus $90 month for airtime and data? Or $299 for an unlocked phone and... $90/month for airtime and data?
http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/10/31/thinking-of-leaving-...
Since the Nexus 4 doesn't support LTE, there's no reason to pay full price for ATT or Verizon.
1 - http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/Packages/ValuePackages.aspx?pkg...
I mostly make my long calls via Google Voice on my laptop anyway, so 100 minutes is usually plenty, and going over some months doesn't break the bank.
The 2 year lock in includes MSRP hardware amortization (at least on my provider), so if you attempt to break the contract, you're paying not only the cost of cancelling the contract, but also the remaining 'cost' of your hardware. That could add up to quite a bit, given that I've seen carriers state that a Galaxy S3 is worth 650. Breaking the contract halfway through its term might result in you paying 300+ for hardware that you actually wanted to get rid of.
The Galaxy Nexus first was $400 unlocked, then went down to $350, and the new phone is $300; this being the computer industry, prices will only get better from here.
Their value plans do still require a contract, but you aren't subsidizing the cost of your phone, so the plan prices can be significantly cheaper: http://slickdeals.net/f/4793292-t-mobile-Value-Plan-100-for-...
On what planet? The Galaxy S II was certainly a major phone (just one short generation older than current) and yet it's still officially on 2.x. The only good thing to say about Samsung's OS updates is that the CyanogenMod community behind their phones is diligent.
Sure the phone has better build quality. Sure it has more RAM and processing power. Both of those are important, but I don't think they're the biggest limiting factor in android's smartphone sales.
Right now I'm using a Verizon Galaxy Nexus with a custom stock ROM and kernel and I've had zero problems with speed. Sure the build quality could be better, but I don't think anyone ever bought an android for its build quality. It's the 4G speeds that made this phone better than the iphone 4S for a whole year before the 5 was released. I'm really disappointed in Google for not getting this right.
You know what would be even better than hardware support for 4G? Consistent coverage for 3G service.
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizons-shammo-well-fin...
So 250 million people can not be most people. And as I read it, the number of current LTE users must be much, much lower than that, since Verizon states that it had 111.3 million customers (using LTE or not) in Q2 2012: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57505803-94/competitive-wir... )
I love the community support for Nexus devices and the only disappointment about the Nexus One for me was that I didn't get until it was already out for 6 months.
Thoughts?
If you love watching films on your phone (something i never do), I can see the 16GB limit getting annoying though.
I also have a 50GB Box account on the Nexus 7 which I use (mainly) for pdf storage which helps out a bit.
If you _need_ more space than it comes with, then you'll want something with an SD card, but otherwise I wouldn't worry about it.
Frankly, at this point I wouldn't have any Android phone that wasn't a Nexus. So when I replace my Galaxy Nexus (another year or so) then I'll be looking to see what the successor to the Nexus 4 is. If I was buying next week I'd definitely get a Nexus 4.
Spotify is replacing the former use case for me (Google Music is currently not available where I am), but the second stands.
--edit-- Also I'm loving the phablet form factor, which is keeping me on non-nexus at the moment.
OTOH the use-case was pretty plane-specific, and you don't often need a phone on a plane. Perhaps a 7 inch tablet (to replace the kindle) would suffice. Though then we run into the same problem, the Nexus 7 has no SD slot either!
(personal experience, probably different for other people)
It works well because T-mobile data speeds are fast enough, and only time I remember missing my music was when I was on a long 12 hour flight, and really wanted to listen to that one song, and taking out my laptop wasn't worth the effort.
Storage: The Nexus 4 has only 16GB of storage, with no way to expand (GNex had 32GB). That's a step backward IMO.
Screen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. AMOLED has fewer sub-pixels. So what. The blacks are blacker, and the screen is more vibrant. I know the color gamut is different, but the contrast is better. The Nexus 4 looks washed out next to the GNex.
Network: Sorry, lack of LTE is a deal breaker for me. Verizon LTE is solid where I live, and very, very fast. That may not be the case for everyone, but I'm sure as heck not going back to 3Gesque speeds. And for what features? A slightly faster processor? More RAM? and a breakable glass case?
Fahgetabahtit.
Unsubsidized, the iPhone is $699. Unsubsidized Nexus 4 is $350.
The same was true with the iPhone 5: A lot of blogs that are mostly frequented by existing iOS users didn't bother to compare it to android phones, but just the iPhone 4S. E.g. these reviews were talking about the "huge" screen of the iPhone 5 and didn't compare to the dozens of android phones with bigger screens...
But I agree, either is weird.
I don't think AT&T's LTE coverage is as limited as stated here. I live about 20 miles outside of Boston and my town and the next town over both have LTE. And it is fast, very fast. On my LTE iPad I get over 40 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. In Boston I get about half that.
[And what's with the stupid chrome ('d plastic) strip, given that they were apparently at least aiming at a quality feel?! Why on earth do manufacturers feel the need to add tacky chrome "accents" to otherwise reasonable designs??? Guys: it doesn't make your phone look classy, it makes it look cheap.]
The iphone 5 really nails the physical phone; it's simply beautiful. Unfortunately it also features apple's wackymaps™... :(