Google Nexus 4 Review
anandtech.com
anandtech.com
While it may disappoint many people who just want the best at any price, you can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its class. The price really is the killer feature of this phone.
I suspect there is lots of demand out there for this phone amongst regular folk. No want likes being chained to a carrier and everybody likes getting a great deal. I told my sister (non techie) about it and her eyes popped. She's very very excited about it.
I wonder why the phone is so much cheaper (both in absolute and relative terms) in the US than it is here in Sweden. Here it's exactly the same price as the SGS3 and the iPhone 4S and quite a bit more than the HTC One X.
Cool phone, LTE is a non issue for me since its not widely available here anyway and with the tiny amount of data your get here (i have 300Megs included in my contract after which it gets slowed down to dialup speeds) its kinda useless.
And a difference of 7% is substantial for a product with no margins.
Moreover, google and amazon do NOT sell below cost. They are near cost, for the cheapest version, at launch. Go look at how much tablets sell for in China if you think their tablets are below cost. (or miumiu phones).
"Lining those pluses and minuses up against those for the Nexus 7 – which garnered four stars – there's no doubt that this is indeed a five-star device. The 70% difference in comparative price is more than made up by the difference in build quality and software selection" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/31/ipad-mini-r...)
Not arguing one way or the other but this and a few other recent reviews have made me wonder why tech reviewers seem to pay so little attention to price.
Ignoring OS, there are other phones that are getting much cheaper. Example is the new Lumia 920 that is $449 on ATT w/o contract. While it is $100 more expensive than the the 16GB Nexus you do get the following in addition:
* 32GB (+16GB)
* LTE
* [Removed]
Is this worth $100? I think probably so, but in any case, I think it shows that phones in this class (flagship like devices) are actually more price competitive than people may think.
Edit: To remove wireless charging per comment.
But again, ignoring OS which is generally not a good idea when making a phone purchase.
GBP 554 Nokia 920 GBP 279 16G Nexus 4
Out of interest, would buyng the phone outright from AT&T mean it's unlocked? Also is the phone available in the US from a non-carrier shop?
At least here in Canada, we also have a few niche players (WIND, Mobilicity) who differentiate themselves with slightly lower costs than the big three, but no subsidy on phones. In this case, I can buy a $300 Nexus 4 and switch, saving about ~$35 a month on my bill. My prorated subsidy from Telus is $14 a month, so I still save $21 a month over buying a subsidized phone. Even the iPhone, which is very heavily subsidized, doesn't cover the price differential between these carriers and the big three.
In conclusion: find a small, regional carrier that doesn't offer subsidies, save big money.
http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans
I am on the $30/mo unlimited text, 5GB of HSPA+ data and 100 voice minutes plan and it's great. I reduced my monthly bill by 60%.
I'm on the $30/mo "walmart" prepaid plan, but I'm considering switching back to post paid because you can't use any data roaming at all on T-Mobile prepaid.
You also can't ignore the fact that in the US other phones in it's class are subsidized by $400 or more, upending this comparison greatly. Yes you're locked into a contract but it's not like Nexus 4 users get some special monthly rate. For some use cases being off contract is a god send, for most though, a subsidized iphone 5 or galaxy s3 is a better option at $100 cheaper (and a higher resale in case you want to break that contract).
No-contract is 50 dollars for unlimited everything ($70 if you want 4G): http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans
With a contract it is 90 dollars for unlimited everything (which I believe is roughly standard across the industry): http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/individual-plans.aspx
http://opensignal.com/coverage-maps/US/San%20Francisco/
T-Mobile in San Francisco makes AT&T's network look good and it's a shadow of Verizon everywhere.
Is it really, though? As an example, T-Mobile prepaid offers $30/month for unlimited data (5gb @4g) & SMS, plus 100min voice. Poking at ATT's site the most comparable contract plan I see for iphone 5 is about $90/month. That's over $700 more out of pocket in a year if you go with the subsidized phone.
That's the same savings you get with an iphone on Virgin Mobile/Cricket though [1]. Very few people do this though because Sprint's network sucks and the upfront cost is a turn off. In addition many people do not pay the full plan rate. My monthly AT&T bill is around $59 including fees.
[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57449345-94/why-a-prepaid-i...
For me that is the biggest concern. The nice thing about plastic is that it absorbs some of the energy from a drop or shock. Glass gets cracks and then shatters.
I would have liked to have seen the same "rubber" back the Nexus 7 (by Asus) has. I would have alternatively taken Samsung's "cheap" feeling plastic backs.
Still, the good thing about Android is you can choose from many manufacturers. This new Sony phone is waterproof:
http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/phones/xperia-g...
Why should I care about wireless charging? I can't see this feature enriching my life in the slightest. Ok, it looks cool sitting there. But docks look cool too. Is it more convenient? I would argue no (saves maybe two seconds of effort per charge). Is it more portable? Definitely not.
Is this only hyped up because of the "coolness" factor?
Getting high-quality cables around here is pretty difficult.
I'd really love to toss away the cables (maybe keep 1 emergency one in my portable bag).
Wireless charging makes a lot of sense, I am going to buy one as soon as it becomes available
And same thing in the morning - I don't have to carefully pick it up, trying not to yank cord from charger, disconnect charging cable - just grab it, and go to bathroom.
And when I'm out of home, I can charge it with regular microUSB plug, but believe me, I curse it every single time.
For me, I'd love to be able to snap my phone in to a mount/charger in my car. My original Motorola Droid became useless to me when the micro USB connection started falling out unless I physically held it in place. Otherwise I'd still be using it.
Theoretically wireless charging could've saved me some trouble. Not a huge feature perhaps but nice.
Wireless charging 5-30 second operation into a 2 second operation
I want to switch, but I don't know if Nexus 4 is the one to switch to... I don't quite understand the differences between Android versions of S3 and Note 2, but apparently this has a vanilla android version.
What is the best choice? S3? Note 2? Nexus 4? What advantages do each one have over the other?
Also the lag on 3G is atrocious. When I'm streaming iTunes Match it's click, wait, start, pause, wait, and then start again. Apparently the ping times are much lower on LTE and this is a bigger deal (for me) than the bandwidth.
It's not bad, but most prefer stock Android for the crispness of the UI, lack of bloat and fastest OS upgrades (they come direct from Google without delay while Samsung/another third party adapts their stuff).
I had the Note 2 briefly - it's a powerhouse but ultimately decided it was too big for my taste (5.5" screen vs 4.7" on the S3/Nexus 4). It needs two hands to operate most of the time and the screen is the same resolution as the S3 so you're only gaining in size, not detail. In the end I was happy to come back to my Galaxy Nexus.
The Nexus 4 runs stock Android and is the same size as the S3. It's also cheaper and faster. I'd say it's the clear choice right now.
If I were looking to make the switch, it would be this phone.
Updates are nice because they extend the useful life of the phone.
And then the OS. I didn't like the built-in keyboard, so I downloaded and installed another one. Now "keyboard" is just a preference in the settings menu, and I choose which one I want.
But it's a whole lot of small things like that. Android just feels grown up, to me. iOS feels like a sandbox, like something you'd find in a school or something, or "baby's first telephone".
Often times, phones from Samsung or HTC or whatnot come with a customized version of Android, which has been made to look visually distinct, has some additional value-add packages, and whatnot. Most power users will tell you that they prefer vanilla Android. That said, most all the popular devices have aftermarket builds based on vanilla Android (AOSP), or a juiced-up fork of vanilla Android (CyanogenMod, my personal preference), and it's not that difficult to replace your factor-installed firmware with one of these packages if desired.
The S3 is a great device, though, and I don't think you'd regret it if you got it, but if you're looking to get an opinion of Android, a Nexus device is the way to go.
I'll tell you what I tell everyone looking for a new phone. Go play with them. Honestly, that is the best way to find the phone that you want considering most of the specs are similar unless you are a power user (ie, flashing new roms, rooting etc). Put the phone in your pocket, sit down, walk around with it etc and make sure it fits your daily life. This is specfically true for the Note 2 which is f'in huge. For me, it's size wasn't a huge deal and I returned my s3 for a note 2 last night. The note 2 is f'in awesome, but it may not be useful to you.
In response: S3: awesome phone, nice features, a few apps you can't delete (I had the AT&T version, YMMV) but overall a very nice feel. I really liked that phone and although it was large (4.7" screen), it was light and easy to use.
Note 2: LARGE. 5.5" screen..which is too big for most people. It also has a stylus (pen) that you can use to write on it and I really like that feature. however, if you have no use for that feature, don't bother.
Nexus 4: I haven't used this yet so I can't say much. what I can say is that it looks pretty bad ass and I'd highly consider it IF it had LTE connectivity. I live in NYC so LTE is all over the place and the difference between that and 3g is pretty significant. This, however, only matters if you have access to LTE networks.
Overall, I think you can't go wrong with any of the choices you are going to make. If you live in the states, and you are on contract, the S3 is going on sale at BestBuy for $50 on Black friday (2 yr contract required). If money is an issue, I'd almost think that is a no brainer.
To be short, just go play with the phone and see which one you like best. Everyone has an opinion, everyone has their own interests in mind, so the only way to really make the right decision is to just interact with the phone yourself. You aren't going to pick the wrong phone, all 3 of the phones you are interested in are pretty damn awesome:)
Oh and lastly, Youtube! Go search on youtube for the 3 phones and watch reviews.
But I have this vague understanding that a lot of the prepay, mvno, or non-contract plans don't give access to parts of the big guys networks (like roaming relationships).
Note, the data plan isn't truly unlimited. AFAICT the company will simply terminate your account if you regularly exceed 2GB/month.
Over here in the soviet UK you can get a £10-15 pcm contract that gives you unlimited (not tethered) data and a reasonable about of other stuff, so long as you bring your own phone.
In the North American Numbering Plan there are no area codes for cell phones as there are in the rest of the world. Consequently a caller doesn't know if they are calling a cell phone. In almost every country in the world, calls to cell phones cost more. In the US the recipient pays the difference. Elsewhere the caller pays the difference. In the US the recipient has bulk bargaining power so those calls are cheaper than elsewhere.
So if you really wanted to compare like with like, you should compare the cost of the US contract to the cost of what callers pay plus what you pay elsewhere. Note that callers can pay a lot more elsewhere - often 10 times as much as a call to a landline. See international phone cards to get an idea.
There are two other factors. One is psychological in that US consumers are very averse to variable billed amounts, and are prepared to pay more in order to have a fixed known bill. (I once read a paper I've never been able to find about this, showing it dated back to the earliest days of phone service in the US.) You may recall hearing how local phone calls are free. They aren't - you pay a higher base price. When I moved from the UK to the US my baseline phone service price quintupled. The difference is the local calls were "free" in the US while it was a few pence a minute in the UK.
The other factor is that there was no regulation requiring certain radio technology or interoperability. While the original GSM was good, it wasn't very future proof. It divided up frequency usage into time slots which meant you had a fixed number of possible calls. It also meant neighbouring towers couldn't use the same frequency. Qualcomm came up with CDMA which was very future proof - a phone talking to a tower sees all other phones (when they transmit) as background noise. Consequently it doesn't matter how the others talked to the tower so they could advance specifications. You could also put CDMA towers further apart than GSM towers. ("3G" etc are an evolution of CDMA all over the world.)
CDMA was adopted by two of the major carriers, but because almost no one else used CDMA that meant they had to source their own phones. That lead to a model where consumers got used to getting their phones from the carrier with no alternative. New phones were really cheap or free in return for a contract of a fixed monthly amount, which included around $20 per month just to pay the remainder of the cost of the phone.
Consumers are loathe to pay the real price of phones because they have never done so before. And carriers are loathe to have bring your own phone plans because the way their financial performance is measured is by ARPU - average revenue per user. Additionally because the carrier is bulk buying phones they can squeeze the suppliers, and they can "cripple" the phones to further their own interests. Verizon has been a master at the latter - for example they disabled bluetooth phonebook syncing several years back on a phone so they could push their own over the air backup service, they pull stunts with mapping (they have their own service) and even prevented Google's Wallet from working on the Galaxy Nexus (yup, they have their own too).
So like many things American we have this unwholly complicated mess where no one is paying the real price of anything, and what is actually going on is hidden behind other things.
If you are interested in how GSM and CDMA evolved, this is an excellent article http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/10/GSM3G.shtml
Sadly, I didn't have a Nexus so I couldn't try it, but the tech is fascinating.
But the real reason it is there is that it speeds up getting an initial GPS fix. It provides a quick way to guess altitude, which lets it calculate where satellites should be better.
With enough satellite signals (4, given that you're locating in 4 dimensions --- 3 spacial and 1 time. Note that if the GPS receiver had a very expensive clock you could locate with 3 satellites, or if you knew your exact altitude to a high level of precision as well, you can locate with just 2 satellite signals).
Now notice that if you're solving a 4 dimensional equation, you can't have two of the spatial coordinates have precisions of less than 10 meters while one of them is inaccurate to the kilometer!
In practice, if you have a "good enough" clock and a "good enough" barometer, you can hone into the approximate city, or 100 meter radius circle much faster --- after picking up just two GPS signals. And for a lot of apps, this lets them begin the initial computations quicker.
The one part I'm not sure about is whether the long time is computational, or in actually waiting until you find 4 or more signals. Maybe somebody with more experience with GPS can clarify?
> 4, given that you're locating in 4 dimensions --- 3 spacial and 1 time.
I think your understanding is a little flawed. The time is necessary to determine the precise distance, since both you and the satellite are in motion. After the correction for that, the problem becomes locating a body in 3 dimensions based on its distance from N points. A single point gives you a sphere, and you may be located anywhere on that sphere. Two points gives you two spheres. You might be located anywhere at the intersection of those spheres (a circle.) Three points gives you three spheres. I haven't studied the geometry extensively, but Wikipedia says three spheres usually narrows it down to two points you might be at. Knowing your altitude allows you to rule out one of those two points.
"The primary purpose of the barometer is (at least, I've been told) to make GPS lockons faster. Locking on to a GPS involves numerically solving a 4-dimensional set of linear equations -- 3 dimensions in space, and time. ...
The barometer gives you a reasonable first-cut estimate for altitude."
Hah, hardly.
We have about 11,000 total users (half are active) and are VERY excited that the Nexus 4 and 10 both have barometers. We're looking to improve short-term, local weather prediction asap. The project is open source at http://cumulonimbus.ca
[0] While Google could have taken a stronger stance on Android re: updates, I don't think they've ever been in a good position to do so. Early days, carriers would have balked and Android would die; now, they'd just fork and Android becomes the next BREW.
The OS & apps are pretty much pure C from the ground up, with an objective-c application layer. The entire view system (Core Animation) is GPU accelerated with OpenGL from day one.
Objective-C on iOS does not have a GC, so apps are generally faster and more responsive with manual memory management. Many apps can drop into pure C or C++ to improve performance easily.
All of these performance choices give you a faster phone for less processor.
A slower processor also tends to use less energy too. Battery size is a pure weight/size vs capacity tradeoff.
2100 mAH battery vs iPhone 5's 1440 mAH, but iPhone 5 can browse the web for almost twice as long.
How is there such a big difference? Or are these stats not 100% accurate?
I'm considering picking up a Nexus 4, rather than bothering with rooting and re-imaging the Sensation. I don't really like the Sensation, though all the problems I have with it could be due to software. It's a custom build with Sense, which I really don't like.
Anyway, it's a new phenomenon. I was tethering on T-Mobile for years without trouble. About two months ago, they started shutting it down after a few minutes of use, and redirecting all traffic to their T-Mobile site upgrade page.
In Germany I was able to buy a 20 euro a month data only plan for my iPhone and I was perfectly happy.
I ended up ordering the iPhone 5 on Verizon at the subsidized rate ($300) and stuck it on my dad's Verizon account for $30 a month (cheapest data plan only) and then when I go back to Germany later next year I'll just cancel it and try to get out of paying the early termination fee. Even if I have to pay the fee it's only $350 which, added with the initial price of the phone, is the same price as out-of-contract iPhone 5.