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Comment by LandoCalrissian | Hacker News Reader

Honestly if you haven't tried Android yet this is the device to do it with. Really shows off what the system is capable of.

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It isn't the most powerful Android phone out there, but it does run stock, has regular updates, will run third party ROMs, and is absolutely the best value for an out of contract smart phone, even more so with the $100 price drop.

If you're in a T-Mobile coverage area, look at Simple Mobile ($50/month unlimited everything)

Or, if you don't talk a lot, the $30/month 100 minutes / unlimited / unlimited plan:

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans

"$30 per month - 100 minutes talk | Unlimited text | First 5 GB at up to 4G speeds"

Fine print: "New activations only." A new SIM card ($10) counts as a new activation. ;-)

For more detailed discussion: http://news.cnet.com/8301-33620_3-57587175-278/is-this-the-b...

I'm on this plan, and can definitely recommend it. Also, enabling LTE on the Nexus 4 is very, very easy if you're in a T-Mobile LTE area.

"don't talk a lot" - and "First 5 GB at up to 4G Speeds" - on a smart phone this is somewhat confusing. I talk a lot - 2-3 hours/day, typically conference calls, but also with family, friends - and I'm trying to recall the last time I used any of my "Minutes" with my telco. Skype and Whatsapp get used a lot on my phone @ 8kilobytes/second (=30 megabytes/hour, 1.8 Gigabytes/month @ 2Hours/day talking)

I'm on this plan, and it's adequate but the service is pretty shoddy during parts of my commute (...no reliable 4G within a 5 min drive either side of Golden Gate Bridge?!) VZW definitely didn't have that problem.

I'm not sure if it's T-Mobile hardware or towers, but given I just use the phone to f around and am not reliant on it for work, I don't really feel it's worth trying to RMA or anything

100 minutes talk is outgoing and ingoing. Learned it the hard way. Luckily the interview was over.

"First 500 MB of data at up to 4G speed"

Basically don't watch tons of videos or stream and excessive amount of music over the mobile network and it'll be no problem.

Anyways, for $10 more you can get 2.5 GB of 4G data, which should suffice for anyone.

Yeah, I'm not a heavy data user, but I almost always run out the first week of every month.

What app consumes the most data for you?

I've used 40 MB of mobile data in the past month and 1.6 GB of WiFi data.

To clarify, after that, you can use data, just not over 4G. You won't lose connectivity.

Or Ptel (PlatinumTel) - $40/month unlimited everything, except first 250MB data at 4G, 3G thereafter. Or $50/month for truly unlimited.

Also a T-mobile reseller, I believe.

EDIT: http://www.ptel.com/plans

EDIT2: ALSO forgot to mention that unlike most month-to-month providers, they actually allow conditional call-forwarding, which is necessary for using Google Voice as your voicemail.

I never stop wondering how those prices are possible. I had a 2e/month plan on my mobile, unlimited everything. Adding to that 0,07 e per sms/minute. Lucky me company now pays my bills so I save whopping 5e/month.

Buyer beware, it looks like Simple Mobile doesn't allow tethering. For 70/mo T-Mobile will give you unlimited everything and 500mb of tethering.

Serious question: how can they tell if you're tethering if you're on an unlocked phone?

The OS allows me to tether without issue.. I've only used it a few times, but it does work. Most of the time I'm in a location on WiFi.

Yup. I upgraded to a Nexus 4 from a Nexus S recently and the Nexus 4 is a much nicer device and the Android experience is great: fast, smooth & pretty. It has to be hands down the best value smartphone on the market at this price (it was already great value at $100 more).

Best value of well known brands perhaps. You get various Chinese brand ~5" phones with 1920x1080 resolution, 16GB ROM for that price or less now. And those are typicall dual sim, and take 32GB SD-cards too.

Build quality for most of them are probably not as quite high as the Nexus 4, but the one I have at least is very well built.

Just curious, but what version of Android does your phone run? Have there been updates/is there an ETA for 4.3?

4.1. No upgrades, and I don't expect any, though there are custom roms (haven't bothered, though I have rooted it - most of these phones are beyond trivial to root). Essentially I'm expecting to upgrade every year, as e.g. in a year it's gone from about $230 for my dual core phone with 1280x720 to about the same for a quad core with 1920x1080 with more memory etc., so I don't really care if there are few or no upgrades for the phone - the reduction in my contract compared to getting an expensive brand phone easily pays down the phone in 6-8 months.

If you intend to keep a phone even at this price range for more than 1-2 years, you'll want to do your research both regarding build quality and upgrades. Though the brands with regular upgrades and "premium" build quality, like Xiaomi, are also pretty much as expensive as e.g. Samsung.

Who sells these? I would like a cheap ultra phone.

http://www.lightinthebox.com/c/android-cell-phones_3309

None of them are 1920x1080.

Nor are any available with 2G DRAM, which is a big part of the N4's great interactive performance.

In fact, if you limit the search on that site to 1G phones with Jellybean and 4.6-5" displays, you get a lot of units with prices significantly higher than the new price of the N4. And the ones that are cheaper seem pretty universally inferior (e.g. 480x800 screen, minimal internal flash, etc...)

Tons of resellers on aliexpress.com. Note that they are shipped direct from China, so reading feedback is essential. You can also find some that sell via Amazon marketplace.

How is updatability? Will you be able to update it in a few years from now?

Who cares? Part of the reason why I've taken to buying these is that they're cheap enough that I can justify upgrading once a year or so.

(But yes, don't expect to get much in terms of upgrades from the manufacturer. Your mileage may wary, but the ones that do upgrade regularly, like Xiaomi, are also expensive high end brands - Xiaomi wants very much to be the "Chinese Apple" for example)

Would you mind writing up a review? I'm interested to see how they hold up.

Where can I see pictures of the phone(s) you're talking about?

Just a couple of brands:

http://en.thl.com.cn/

http://en.zopomobile.com/

http://europe.oppostyle.com/

http://www.ejiayu.com/en/

Here you can find other name for searching (no affiliation whatsoever with this shop, I don't even know if they sell in US, it's only the place where a couple of friends bought their chinese smartphone): http://www.grossoshop.net/Smartphone_Dual_Sim_Android_Proces...

try alibaba.com

>Which one do you have?

Good to know some are, which one is that?

Agreed, Nexus 4 was already a great deal, IMO, at $350, $250 is a ridiculous price.

Thing is unlocked to boot, great for working abroad. Unlocked iPhone, what, $650-750, no?

Having ditched OSX for Linux a few years ago, Android just makes cents, literally, lots of them ;-)

Damn I just bought one at regular price lol. Nexus 4, if you build your own o/s is amazing fast. Runs SEAndroid like a charm too, you can lockout audio, camera and mic whenever not in use

There's a buyer protection plan if you purchased after august 12th.

$100 refund by the looks of it.

You'll have to wade through the support prompts, but start at:

https://support.google.com/nexus/4/

and click 'Contact Us' to get to the form.

Edit: you'll need the order number and the device IMEI

Great success, thanks

I just stumbled across it looking for a 5 day pity refund.

Props to Google for it being an automated process, not so much for total lack of promoting the refund.

I'm a little irked. I ordered mine on the 7th, so miss out by 5 days. But it's a great phone so it's not all bad. But no one likes paying over the asking price, and had I waited a week, I'd be £80 richer.

Yeah, you too can watch as "Android OS" drains the battery in 6 hours. Honestly, if you get a Nexus 4 be prepared to be a beta tester, or scratch monkey every time there's an OTA update. Perhaps it's just "international" users, but I totally regret buying into the Nexus hype.

And then there's the hardware issues (bluetooth kills WiFi if you try to use both at once), firmware issues (WiFi doesn't roam properly, ARP offload broken), straight-up bugs (wireless charging power management holds permanent wakelock preventing deep sleep)...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2072930 really shows what Android is capable of.

I use a Nexus 4. I listen to podcasts via bluetooth headset while doing chores; that's several hours on the weekends, and about one hour during weekdays. When I drive, I'm playing podcasts and using Waze (which uses GPS and Wireless networking and the screen is constantly on); that's about 1 hour/day. WiFi is constantly on and I use it to read e-mails and other social messages. I also use it for reading books (Safari To Go) throughout the day. It always lasts through the day with this behavior. I typically only plug it in on my bedstand when I go to bed, and unplug it in the morning when I get up. The only time I find I need to plug it in separately is when I watch some Netflix videos.

I recently destroyed the screen on my phone making it not possible to interact with it, so I've removed the sim and put it in a cheap feature phone. It still connects to WiFi (can't turn it off if I wanted to) and it beeps to let me know I have an e-mail. I can still listen to podcasts because my podcatcher automatically downloads and queues episodes and my headset has playback controls, and I have been using it for that purpose as much as I always have. Now when I go to bed, the battery icon has only the tiniest sliver empty; I expect it would last at least 4 days without plugging it in.

I think that it's safe to say Android OS is not draining my battery.

I'm happy that you haven't had this problem (although without a screen I'm not surprised you get multiple days use from a single charge.) Unfortunately, lots of people are not so fortunate, and I'm one of them. There are a number of known, reported, acknowledged bugs that might or might not be fixed in the latest patch update to 4.3 that cause "Android OS" (actually a partial wakelock held in the kernel) to stop the phone from going into deep sleep and draining the battery. For example, https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=52034 is one such bug. There are others (I don't use a wireless charger).

Until whatever byzantine download scheduler deigns to push the patch to 4.3 to my phone, it's basically unusable.

I ran into problems w/ stock Nexus and runaway CPU usage w/ the media process and while I had sworn off ROMs (too much maintenance), but after not being able to fix the problem otherwise, I ended up switching to CM 10.1, which fixed my issues and these days is mature enough that I never have to mess with it. The various custom kernels (Franco Kernel is relatively easy to flash and is focused on increasing battery life) seem to do good jobs at fixing various problems as well.

Still some work to do the initial flashing (wipe'restore), but as someone that hates futzing w/ the devices I'm actually using, I've been happy w/ how low maintenance things have been. If you just want the 4.3 factory image you can it here: https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images#occamjwr6...

Alternatively, if you are running stock and don't want to wipe and don't want to wait for the OTAs, you can get them directly:

4.2.2 (JDQ39) -> 4.3 (JWR66V) http://www.droid-life.com/2013/07/25/android-4-3-update/

4.3 (JWR66V) -> 4.3 (JWR66Y) http://www.droid-life.com/2013/08/21/download-android-4-3-jw...

BTW, for most issues, I find the CM bug reports have significantly better S/N than official Google or XDA. Here's one on the wifi/ARP: https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-558 and on BT/Wifi: https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-550

>Android OS drains the battery in 6 hours

My better life is around 20 hrs on average, with "medium" usage.

Good for you. If you hit the bug, it'll look like http://forums.androidcentral.com/attachments/google-nexus-4/...

6 hours?! Mine drains its battery in 12-13 hours and I use it regularly (facebook, whatsapp, google maps, spotify) all over 3g (I don't have access to wifi at the moment).

Is it really preferable, hardware-wise, to something like the HTC One?

That is, assuming the user is capable of flashing the HTC One with a third-party firmware to get a vanilla Android experience. Is there a draw to the Nexus in comparison to the likes of the One other than being vanilla out of the box?

I've used both phones extensively, the Nexus for 2 weeks and the One for over a month.

The One is the better phone, no doubt, but the Nexus is best for the price.

The One has a much better radio, especially for bluetooth. It's a lot more powerful, a consideration if you're playing games. The screen blows the Nexus' thoroughly mediocre display out of the water, and the stereo speakers are some of the best I've ever heard on a phone. The build quality is closer to Apple than Android. The camera is one of the best on an Android phone ever.

The major downside of the One for me is that it is slower in terms of slickness and smoothness, which I'm blaming on the Sense UI. If you flash it to vanilla, it should be fine. If you are a gamer, it does get very hot. Although build quality is better it doesn't feel any less likely to break if you drop it.

Weirdly, the call quality isn't that good on the One, the Nexus has it beat there.

The One is a better phone. But it's also now more than twice as expensive, and (IMO) the benefits are not worth that amount of cash.

The HTC One isn't the greatest comparison because it comes in a Google Play Edition, which is a near-Nexus experience (though outside the US you are still stuck with ROM flashing, albeit from a source with solid base and guaranteed up-to-date drivers). Compared to the One, I'd say the major draw is price (and maybe the NFC secure element if you care about that).

The One still has the bs hardware buttons. Nothing is ever vanilla Android these days with hardware buttons IMO.

At least it doesn't have a menu key... (looking at you, samsung!)

An unlocked HTC One costs $599

I'd go with a one because I like HTC better than LG. Plus I've had both manufacturers (had a Nexus One up until about a year ago) when I got the Nexus 4, and I thought the HTC hardware was better.

Meh; it's alright. I've had the Nexus One (pre-ordered) when it first came out up until this phone. This phone is larger, but doesn't feel as good. Feels very plasticky. Biggest annoyances are when I'm talking on it and my ear selects something and I end up opening an application without knowing it (or worse, hanging up on the other party). Also, when I'm tapping in a string of numbers (taking someone's phone #), it sometimes doesn't respond fast enough (or it'll lag). Otherwise I guess it's a good deal. Nothing to go crazy over though.

The Nexus 4 (as well as pretty much all smartphones on the market) disables the screen if you're in call and it detects that your face is near the screen. You can test this by going into a call and putting the palm of your hand (or any other surface) close to the phone.

If your phone doesn't do this you should either get it fixed or go join a league of super heroes.

Some people appear to be invisible to proximity sensors. We have one guy who isn't seen by two Lumias and an iPhone. He's resigned to using a blackberry now.

Very odd phenomenon but it does exist!

My iPhone 5 (running iOS7 beta) doesn't detect me, but does everyone else. I'm forever muting myself.

I've had that happen a number of times. I'd start a regular call, Skype, or Hangouts call, and when done I sometimes realize some random app was launched or something was selected, etc. Doesn't happen often, but it did happen.

"Plasticky" is a weird way to describe a phone that's 95% Gorilla Glass.

Personally I wish the Nexus 4 was more plasticky. My phone always ends up on the floor because the glass on the back slides off everything.

The plasticky bit is so off base it makes me wonder if fourstar is inventing ownership to have an opinion. The bit about lag as well -- what? Maybe they're thinking of the 2012 Nexus 7?

> inventing ownership to have an opinion

How do you come up with stuff like this? I came from a Nexus One -- but you totally caught me lying about what Android phone I use on a website.

Feel around the edges of the phone: soft plastic where the bumper is, and the back is covered by the so-called `gorilla glass` which makes it feel even more like plastic.

There is definite lag, but maybe because I type in numbers fast and you don't? I don't know -- in my daily use, these are my gripes with it. Feel free to downvote me if you believe I'm lying though.

People lie on the internet. Don't be so offended by it.

So glass makes the phone feel like plastic? You realize that is nonsensical, right? The build quality and feel of the phone has pretty much universal praise, and you are the only person I've ever heard use that descriptive, so maybe you're just misusing it (the descriptive I mean). Design is subjective so I'm not by any measure saying that you have to like it or appreciate it, just that I don't see how a rubber and glass phone can be called plastic feeling.

As to the lag, again, you're completely on your own on that. You see to have no relative perspective to the market.

Yeah, those criticisms would make sense for a Nexus 7.

I got a sticky microfiber cloth as swag and stuck it to the back glass of my Nexus 4. Now it doesn't slide around and I have a screen cleaner.

I'm going to have to do something like that I think. It's the only phone I've ever needed to get a case for.

Strong disagree for me. I have no such issues with making "ear" selections and I find the overall responsiveness of the device to be incredible with the latest 4.3 release.

Woah I thought it was only me that was pressing stuff with my ear on the phone.

Usually it is "3" when listening to voice mail...which deletes the message!

Yeah, another thing is when I'm talking on it with someone for awhile and try to get back to the "call screen" which doesn't happen, and they are still on the phone (if I want to open a browser or do something while I talk on the phone). The screen never comes back though until I either press power or the other party hangs up.

That part is the most frustrating, although someone might reply to this saying that this actually doesn't happen.

Happens to me as well. I don't experience the lag you talked about in other comments, though.

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