Review: Google Nexus 4
There are two numbers you need to keep in mind as you read this review. Firstly, 239, the remarkably small number of beer tokens Google wants in return for an unlocked, Sim-free 8GB example of the latest Nexus phone. And 2, which is the number of months it has taken me to actually get hold of one for a long-term test. The second …
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Re: Battery life...
They should offer us a choice though - "bigger, thicker battery, useful" model or "tied to a charger slimline" one.
It just seems like all the usefulness is countered by the battery at the moment..
Re: Battery life...
Galaxy Note 2 is still thin, and has epic battery life too. I get 9-10 hours of screen on time from mine.
Of course, it's large, but since the 5.5" screen is a selling point, it is intentionally so.
Re: Battery life...
There are after market battery extenders for most popular phones. There are generally 3 options.
1) External usb battery. These vary in size, usually about the same size as the phone itself and give 1-3 full charges (depending on quality/size/cost).
2) "cases" that have batteries built in. The phone sits in the case like a cradle. They can make a phone a bit bulky.
3) Larger batteries and replaceable back covers. You replace your stock battery and back cover with new larger versions. Makes your phone a little chunkier but not too bad really.
3.1) Higher rated batteries that squeeze more juice into the same package size. Just watch out for cheap knock-off batteries that say they' hold more power but actually hold less.
"They should offer us a choice though"
Samsung sort of do - the Galaxy S2 at least has an official extended battery which comes with a replacement back cover for the phone. With the extended battery the phone is about 1mm thicker. It's an option more companies should consider offering.
Re: "They should offer us a choice though"
The Xperia TX has a replaceable battery, and I think the TL has a longer battery life but I'm not sure.
Re: Battery life...
Nokia does. The 920 with all the features and bulk, the 820 with some of the features and the option to add wireless charging and extra memory via SD if you wish.
Re: Battery life...
You'd be wanting a Motorola RAZR MAXX HD then. Several mm thicker, but double the battery power, and generally a pretty solid phone.
Re: Battery life...
Only one company does this by default, Motorola, with their RAZR and RAZR MAXX (and the newer HD models).
With them, it's a no-brainer that you'd pick the MAXX version, every time.
If other companies tried the same thing, with more well known devices, maybe they'd see people will want another 2mm across the device to gain a sizeable battery gain.
Re: Battery life...
Apple seem to manage it with the iPhone 5 - larger screen, faster processor, slimmer yet battery life is the same as the 4/4S.
Re: Battery life...
I know it may sound smug, but my two years old iPhone 4 is right now at 79% battery after 16 hours off the charger. I usually charge it every other day just to make sure.
I was very interested in the Nexus 4 since my Nexus 7 is a nice (although certainly not perfect) tablet. But after reading the first reviews and detailed battery benchmarks I just lost interest. Just as well it seems, it's unavailable anyway.
I also didn't like the speaker right on the back -- why do they do that? Even the Nexus 7 with its speaker pointing halfway down/backwards is almost unusable for Skype without headphones if I actually want to look at the front of it at the same time. It seems I can either look at the screen or actually hear what's being said but not both.
Re: Battery life...
9 - 10hrs ? That seems appalling ... although my phone is very old and up until last year I had a barebones nokia ... that lasted a week.
Missed chance
Google lost another sale here with their amateur logistics (or planning). Have been waiting for the chance to buy one but having seen the new phones from CES, will now wait a couple of month and get the Sony Experia ZL (import). LTE, microSD, 5" screen in a case just very slightly larger than the N4 - suddenly the only real selling point of the Nexus is the cost.
Re: Missed chance
They're like any big arrogant monopolistic company with a prat in control. So long as their wages are being paid they don't give a stuff about the customer.
Re: Missed chance
"....suddenly the only real selling point of the Nexus is the cost."
But it's still a remarkably good cost. It's about the same spec as an iPhone 5 (with a bigger screen) and less than half the price.
Re: Missed chance
So long as you go Android, I'm sure Google will be glad to lose your custom. Their choice is either you buy another Android handset, or you buy the Nexus 4, which they've had to pay LG a subsidy to make. Clearly you going to AN Other Droid is therefore a win for them. Hence the suggestion that the dire lack of stock is deliberate.
Re: Missed chance
"which they've had to pay LG a subsidy to make"
Do you have a source for that or is it just a rumour that you are now presenting as fact?
Re: Missed chance
" Google lost another sale here with their amateur logistics (or planning)"
Isn't that the same as saying screw MS, I wanted a Surface Pro but because there aren't enough units they have lost my sale. I am going to instead buy a Dell with win 8 and office 2010?
Re: Missed chance
"which they've had to pay LG a subsidy to make"Do you have a source for that or is it just a rumour that you are now presenting as fact?
DaLo,
It is an assumption admittedly. But given the fact the phone is massively cheaper than all the competitors with equivalent tech in them, and the iSuppli figures suggest that there was only about $5 margin on the Nexus 7, I think it's a fair assumption that Google are giving the manufacturers some sort of kick-back. That's possibly in the form of free marketing/advertising and/or free access to the Google apps that manufacturers have to license normally.
Re: Missed chance
Well as the phone is made for Google by LG then the advertising is all down to Google anyway and it would be Google giving itself a free licence to it's own apps.
There is a big difference between Google selling at cost (or with a small profit which I would suspect) and paying LG a subsidy to make it. That has all sorts of implications including the whole gist of your post that Google would actually prefer you not to buy the Nexus at all.
When comments are presented as fact and then repeated it doesn't take long before it becomes 'true'.
Re: Missed chance
I'm not sure that objection makes sense.
Google sell them directly. Given that LG want to make a profit, either Google are buying them for more than they're selling them on for, or they're buying them at roughly cost and LG are operating at zero profit. Are LG a charity? I doubt it. And Google's goodwill is only worth a certain amount to anyone. So it's possible that Google are giving LG cash in some other form (my suggestion being money off the paid-for Google apps on their other phones). Or it could just be directly as a payment for design and build.
However it's done, I'm sure Google don't charge for the Google apps on Nexus devices. But they do charge for those apps on the other devices that manufacturers sell.
However, you can also buy the Nexus 4, at a higher price, from other people. For a UK example, Carphone Warehouse will sell you a Nexus 4 SIM-free for £389, or on a £26 per month contract. Which is about consistent with a £300-£400 phone. In this case it's joint LG / Google branded.
So I'd suggest to you that Google are, in some way, subsidising the phones when they sell them. How is pretty much irrelevant. But it's likely that LG are going to be pretty sad at losing the extra profit margin from selling the phones at £100 more than Google do. And will either want compensation from Google, or the promise of only limited sales at the lower price.
Re: Missed chance
The whole reason the Nexus 4 doesn't have LTE is due to how locked into carriers the technology is. This completely goes against the whole idea of the Nexus brand. You buy a Nexus and it has nothing to do with a carrier, how is the appeal of this completely missed? £288 and it's yours, stick a £12 a month sim in it and save a stack of money. Not to mention the only LTE available in the UK from EE is expensive and averages a heady 10mbps, which I can get on my Nexus 4's DC-HSPA+ (upto a theoretical 42mbps).
Re: Missed chance
The LTE Chipset on the Nexus 4 isn't compatible with UK networks.
"The 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm S4 Pro APQ8064 chip that hauls the coal may not feature the new ARM Cortex-A15 architecture used in the Nexus 10 tablet’s Samsung-made 1.7GHz Exynos CPU"
No, and it shouldn't either because Qualcomm don't use off the shelf ARM cores like the Cortex-A15 but rather use their own completely custom silicon which is instruction set compatible with the ARM licensed cores.
In practice, the Krait core in the S4 Pro, whilst most definitely not a Cortex-A15, is architecturally similar and can be considered of the same "generation" as the A15.
At 9.1mm front to back, the Nexus is a gnat’s todger thicker than either - Unsure how big\small a gnats todger is - please can you specify?
A gnat's todger is about 9". At least according to any male gnat you happen to ask down the pub.
Female gnats may disagree...
Same as any other todger, somewhere between "plenty big enough" and "is it in, yet?"
re: Same as any other todger, somewhere between "plenty big enough" and "is it in, yet?"
People like to joke about size, but "ow, that's my cervix" is a lot less funny in reality than you'd imagine..
What's the height of conceit?
A gnat floating on its back down the river with a stiffy shouting "Raise the drawbridge!!"
Cancelled Google Play got it from CPW
Had mine on back order for ages.
Then just before Xmas CPW advertised it for £26pm with Unlimited calls and Texts and 1GB of Data on O2 plus its the 16GB version.
Very pleased with it compared to my old nexus s
I own a Nexur 4, so thought I'd weigh in with a few comments of mine.
I got mine (easily enough - Carphone Warehouse had them in stock and provided one free as an upgrade when i renewed my contract) last month, I knew it wasn't great in the battery department, but I've always wanted a nexus phone and not only was this particularly powerful, and brand new, but I fell in love with it when i saw one in a shop.
The battery life is indeed not much to write home about, but it's certainly usable. Personally - if i feel like playing games i'll do it on a tablet - bigger screen, better battery life, and so on.
The case does indeed feel sturdy and solid, though as the article states, care should be taken not to drop it to avoid damaging the glass. I have yet to peel off the plastic, so I cannot answer to the effectiveness of the oleophobic (anti-fingerprint) coating on the screen.
Photosphere is interesting, i haven't tried taking a panorama outdoors, but indoors it does seem to make the occasional mistake when stitching the picture together, not sure if this is a side-effect of trying to take large and full-360 panoramas, and may work better for a smaller image.
It does indeed include inductive charging and NFC, neither of which I personally have much use for, though I have tested the wireless charging once with a friend's charging pad.
I believe the device also includes an HDMI out over the micro USB port, though from what I've read on the internet it uses a different specification to the common and cheap MHL It does however include Miracast for wireless displays, not that I own one of those either.
Altogether - it's a pretty nice phone, nothing to write home about if you already have a recent nexus device, but if you're only upgrading from an old gingerbread device, it should be very nice.
If that 'photosphere' used exposure bracketing to capture light sources as well as dark shadows, the resulting composite HDRI image could be used to illuminate (and provide reflections for) 3D rendered objects, and so place them realistically into the scene you took a photo of.
In the mean time, a large silvered bauble and a zoom lens will have to do.
Contract prices are not so bad
Now that the dust has settled, contract prices from CPW are not too bad at all. If you worked out a 24 month tariff on a reasonable O2 contract, there is little in it between SIM Free/GiffGaff and the contract. Certainly the Nexus 4 remains significantly better value for money over the S III.
A bit of a spanner?
"you do look a bit of a spanner while using it in public. While I was taking the test shot, a passer-by actually stopped and asked if I was feeling OK"
Ah. Passers by asking people stupid questions of people who are taking pictures in the street.
Very common.
It's not you, Alun, or the phone's camera features.
It's the passers by asking stupid questions who are the spanners.
Re: A bit of a spanner?
re: Ah. Passers by asking people stupid questions of people who are taking pictures in the street.
I disagree... I actually got quite a warm feeling on reading that part of the article. Nice to see that a passer-by would take the time to see if he was OK. And lets face it, taking photos by spinning around probably does look a bit crazy if you don't know what's going on.
Re: A bit of a spanner?
You disagree? You're wrong. These are all genuine questing I've been asked by MOPs
Why are you taking pictures? Why are you taking pictures of that? Why are you taking pictures of me? Have you got permission to take pictures? Have you got a licence to take pictures? Don't you know you need my permission to take pictures of me in the street? Did you know it's against data protection to take pictures of that with me in it without permission from me in the street? Why are you taking pictures? Are you a paedophile?
From police, the latter from a sergeant.
Stop taking pictures or I'll call the police and have you arrested. Stop taking pictures or I'll arrest you.
http://photographernotaterrorist.org/bust-card/
http://londonphotographers.org/2010/08/photographer-threatened-arrest-forced-delete-images/
http://www.lawbriefupdate.com/2010/08/04/professional-photographer-threatened-with-arrest-and-forced-to-delete-images/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-16177043
http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2078605/press-photographer-arrested-covering-street-fight
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&tbo=d&site=webhp&source=hp&q=photographer-threatened-with-arrest&oq=photographer-threatened-with-arrestgs_l=hp.3...905.905.0.1196.1.1.0.0.0.0.38.38.1.1.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.UmR0UB_4h5Y
Re: A bit of a spanner?
>You disagree? You're wrong.
I think you're talking at cross purposes. He's saying it's nice that (in this instance) a passer by asked after his welfare having seen him going through the strange dance that is required for photosphere.
You're saying that he's wrong because some people ask stupid questions.
I also thought it was nice someone actually interacted in a positive way with a stranger - not enough of that these days.
Battery life?
I easily get two days out of my Nexus 4. In fact, right now it's sitting at 2 days, 21 hours and 20 seconds on battery and it's at 28%... I must be INCREDIBLY frugal compared to you guys!
Re: Battery life?
There are far too many factors that affect battery life. For example, my Nexus S, when at home with a decent mobile signal and connected to Wifi for data, it will easily last 3 days before a battery warning pops up. If I spend just a day out and about where data is over 2/3G and signal strength varies, that can drop to a day/day and a half.
I work from home with a Vodafone SureSignal, so have almost perfect signal here, but I live on the East Coast so as soon as I'm out of range of it it's struggling for signal.
Re: Battery life?
Currently sat at 3 days 6 hours and 29 minutes on battery with 14%. Connected to wifi most of the time at home and hsdpa at work/out and about. I've found battery life to be fine. The only thing i dont have switched on is Google Now. All other location services are switched on. I did switch off Mobile broadcasts however
Liking some of the "features"
Is that an out-of-the-box wallpaper? Or a personalised version?
Re: Liking some of the "features"
I seem to recall I nabbed it from http://www.desktopnexus.com/ originally.
Utter shambles
The more I see it written what a great bargain this phone is SIM free compared to the rest of the market the more I find myself gnashing my teeth.
That the Nexus 4 is half the price of an iPhone 5, or a good £100 cheaper than via O2/CPW, is all for naught when it's simply impossible to get a hold of one of them for this price. You can't even backorder them from Google, nor is there any way of being told when they're likely to be back in stock. LG and Google are completely silent on the debacle, and observers would be forgiven for thinking that it has been managed this way deliberately.
I tend to think now that the ground swell of opinion is turning against LG/Google with this phone. Whatever goodwill they earned from people believing that they were subsidising the phone is rapidly disappearing in the face of consumers who just want to buy the damn thing suffering LG/Googles inaction and silence over the supply issues, and being at the mercy of vultures and carriers gouging the price if they still want to get their hands on the handset. The true cost of the Nexus 4 for the apparent forseeable future is closer to £400 than £300, and taken in that context its appeal is greatly diminished.
As an iPhone owner looking to move to Android I'm bitterly disappointed, and Google have failed to convert me with their utterly useless management of the selling of this device.
Low Cost?
Call me a tight Yorkshireman but when I see a "low cost" Android phone review I'm thinking more £99.
Re: Low Cost?
Yes, just get yourself a Huawei G300 and you'll be delighted.
Re: Low Cost?
You can get Chinese Adroid phones from Amazon up to £140 for a 5.5" Galaxy Note look-alike.
Search for Star mobiles.
All phones are made in China anyway. (Though I am sure someone will point out that I am wrong)
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