Am I the only one that finds it somewhat funny that a phone with no LTE, non-removable battery, no SD card slot and glass front and back is the most talked about Android phone to date?
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.
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.
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.
Besides, I think the most talked about phone award probably goes to the Samsung S3...
Don't forget: average consumer has no clue about nexus devices. But they do know about Samsung or Htc phones.
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.
Because those are pretty much all points on which the iphone 4 was derided/criticized by the android community 2 years ago?