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 …
I also ordered one thinking for the price I'd be able to live with the purported poor battery life. Thankfully though, the order backlog gave me a chance to consider further the slowly increasing poor reviews of the battery life of the phone. I cancelled and bought a Note 2. Even though it's cost me more money, it's saved me a shedload of hassle with poor battery life which was the achilles with my creaking DHD
Eh, I have a Desire HD and the battery life is decent.
Maybe that's just because I'm running a custom ROM?
I can get about ~4 days if it's on standby and I don't really use it at all.
~2 days is trivial with my normal use - checking email all the time automatically, a little web browsing each day, a few emails sent.
Asking a big screen backed with a quad core CPU in a compact phone body to last more than a day when used for CPU/GPU intensive tasks is inevitably not going to happen based on current battery and screen tech.
Admitedlly I'm not the heaviest user, but in a typical day I probably send about 20 or 30 texts, maybe 10 minutes of phone calls, a few hours connected to bluetooth, an hour or so of web/app use - but using it like that I can comfortably get two "working" days out of it before it calls time, off charge at about 8am, pretty much at the point of switching itself off at around 8/9pm the day afterwards.
If I chuck a bit of gaming into the mix and use it more intensively for other tasks I can still easily make it through one day without it needing charging. I honestly can't see a problem with it.
I do accept I'm very, very lucky to have one though, the whole ordering process has been a complete debacle. Have Google *really* not got the capability to take pre-orders?
One could always compare it with the Windows Phone 8 User Experience.
Not exactly a fair comparison there though. They were messing about with their phones and flashing firmware, so it's not exactly the "Windows Phone 8 User Experience" you are attempting to mislead people into believing it is. But then what else can be expected from someone as obviously anti-MS as yourself.
"Incidentally, the Nexus 4 supports inductive wireless charging and eventually you will be able to buy a charger-cum-stand which looks a lot like the old Palm TouchStone charger."
You can buy QI standard wireless chargers now - eg. the Maxell Air Voltage, the LG WCP-700, etc
It's not a question of waiting for the Google branded accessory (which may be some time...)
Google's supply chain team need sacking or a good flogging.
I have a Nexus on order. It's like it's 1981 again and the terms "allow 28 days for delivery" are back but only worse.
I'm also trying to buy a Samsung Google Chromebook. Nope cant get them for RRP either. All gone.
It's an odd way to try to gain market share.
I'm sure you'll be delighted to hear that said Chromebook is a superb device ;) especially with CloudHQ and Cloud 9 for easy backup and development if you want to avoid Windows bloat for a while.
Seriously though if you are in the UK it may be worth trying a physical store. I did a 40 mile round trip to get one from Coventry PC World where they have a Chromebook dedicated area (I know, I know, PC World ... but given the online availability sometimes needs must, and they can confirm availability and reserve it).
They don't want to sell it to you. They want to offer it to you, but you won't be able to buy it. It's not about taking market share. It's about setting a standard and driving the price down. This is so obvious, why does everybody pretend they don't see this?
Also, what's with the battery life??? Is everybody taking this to an expedition to whatever white area on the map you're exploring, and there's no socket? I drive from my home to my office in my car, or to clients, using my car. I can charge it at my home, in my car, at my office... When is it going to run out of juice?
Simple. We are no longer scoring products. Actually, we haven't done so since November 2012, but only on this and one other occasion has anyone noticed.
I decided scores, while handy for people who don't read reviews, are generally of little value. Scores are dynamic. Give a product a rating at one time, and mere weeks later it might warrant a different rating following the release of other products and/or updates for the reviewed one.
Look again at a reviewed product - as we might in a Ten... round-up - and it won't necessarily score the same second time around. That confuses some readers, if the comments are anything to go by.
So, no scores. If you feel strongly that you'd like them back, I'm open to persuasive advocacy. But for now, since one reviewer's 65 per cent can be another's 95 per cent, and both will change after a month or two, we will not be scoring reviewed products in standalone reviews.
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@ bigphil9009
"Strange review this one - comes across that the review has made up his mind that he wasn't going to like it, then filtered the review through that decision."
au contraire, but I can hardly overlook poor battery life, a potentially fragile and slippery design (I've dropped my review handset several times already and had it slip off sofa armrests etc), the absence of a camera button and very limited storage options. Apart from those failings it's a cracking little device but it does have failings.
Managed to get one for my daughter for Christmas. She loves it, but it does need charging every day, it is slippery (got a case as well for it). But for the price there is nothing to touch it. There again the rumours that LG have stopped making them for something new, may make this review redundant... There hasn't been any stock on the play store since early December and no sign of any coming.
See top of page 2 for a brief mention of call quality.
To the first poster, after shelling out for a Note 2 I was a bit disappointed to hear of the Nexus 4 coming out for such a lower price point. However, after enjoying the Note 2 battery, I couldn't go back! Being able to use it inconsiderately all day and not have to worry about battery life saves so much hassle!
As noted, the article well discusses voice call quality and it is nice to hear that this phone is excellent in that regard.
However, I am beginning to think that it is a conspiracy to not review and discuss the useability of an Android phone in terms day-to-day living needs, Many Android phone reviews seem to be exclusively hardware discussions to get hardware geeks all frothy at the mouth in anticipation and build up an early product demand. Android's power, email, SMS and notification systems have been well behind established business-level competitors (which is why Google has been adding features to them for the past number of release updates), but that truth has never been openly discussed in major phone reviews. It is as if the reviewers did not use the phone systems completely or, conversely, chose to ignore/hide those issues to only focus on the positives.
I upgraded from WinMo 6.1, my friend upgraded from BlackBerry6. We are both quite disappointed that Android has useability issues for both of us, under different conditions; he is *massively* disappointed with Android's email and SMS system communication ability which he needs for his business communications (lack of ability to SMS from a calendar appointment, poor push email outside the Gmail system, etc.), while I am disappointed with power profile handling (read: lack of same, no power saving auto-off for WiFi upon display timeout), email / SMS UI systems (inconvenient email account / SMS thread switching) and notifications (multiple inbox notifications and do not turn off in a synchronized fashion once read).
Utterly disappointing, and I got NO WARNING of these failures from the reviewers or the blogsphere. It was all roses from everyone, "Android is awesome!". Rose colored glasses indeed!!
I'm not sure what phone you have but each manufacturer can change Android as much as they want which might add or remove some features.
However the Nexus 4 (which has completely standard Android):
You can SMS directly from a calendar appointment, click the guest and then click the text message icon
Push e-mail seems to work fine for me, I get my e-mails from exchange almost instantly, hotmail I set to 15 minutes but it works pretty well if on instant.
You can opt to automatically turn off WiFi during sleep (you decide when it goes to sleep) by choosing advanced in the WiFi settings
Also I can choose exactly which e-mail accounts have a notification which turn off when read and I can convert from one e-mail account to another just by clicking the header. I can also set up a shortcut to each individual account directly on the home screen
I can change to any SMS thread just by clicking the header and choosing a new one.
So it could be the brand of phone you have that doesn't do what you wish rather than Android. All of what you mentioned the Nexus 4 allows and does with stock android - and luckily due to the way Android works you can download any other app which can completely replace the built in one straight from Google play to do what you need (unlike on other phones where you may be able to download an app but the built in one remains the default).
@Snake
I found exactly the same thing - still not found a decent email client - Z9 does not touch the old WinMobile stock one despite looking plain and a little clunky. Also time management and contacts are shocking, The way I see it is as smart phones get more powerful and new toys, they also become dumber. 20 months in to my first Android phone the main reason I'm going for another is that as a heavy PDA user there's no real rival, especially with the direction MS have taken. In reality these are not smart phones, but rather app phones.
I found the call quality to be absolutely fine and every bit as clear/loud/composed as the Motorola Razr i that I use on a daily basis. And I should say that I found the call quality of the Razr very impressive from day one. It's one of the reasons I bought it after spending time with a review handset I had in for the Best Smartphones for Xmas feature.
But then I got to the bit where you said there's no expandable storage. The 8gb would be unusable for me after I install my apps, games, a bit of music and record a couple short videos. The 16GB would just about get me by but I'd always be deleting my video recordings.
I bought a 64GB microSD for my Galaxy S3, so I now have a total of 80GB (minus whatever the OS takes up). I don't have a lot of big apps but HD video recordings do take up quite a lot of space.
Indeed, 8GB storage? is it 2007 again?
Makes me chuckle given all the Fandroid postings about the iPhone not having Flash (player). This barely has any flash (memory) and Android no longer supports flash.
No 4G? I thought Android phones were supposed to be cutting edge, not cutting hedge.
People who criticise the iphone for no expandable memory *do* criticise the Nexus series for the same.
The difference is, with Android you have choice, so there's loads of phones just as good, with expandable storage. Plus I think people are willing to excuse a phone that's so low cost, despite it otherwise having high end specs. Meanwhile an Apple phone is the most expensive phone on the market, yet you have all these compromises!
Similarly there are plenty of Android phones with 4G if you want that.
If you get a TouchWiz phone, you'll get timely TouchWiz updates when they are released. No, it's not the same schedule as vanilla Android, but that makes about as much sense as complaining that IOS updates aren't on the same schedule.
True, you can't get a vanilla Android phone with SD slot. I never said you have perfect choice of every possibility. But there's still a lot more choice than with Apple.
mmm after you take into account the OS, you've got say 5, 5.5 gb left. Add your apps and games and you're down to 3gb. Add a small selection of music and you're down to 2gb. A HD recording from your camera will eat up a gig in 20 or 30 minutes. So umm yes there's good reason to complain about 8GB on a modern top of the line phone (which this is).
Large amounts of onboard storage is the past, not the other way round.
How exactly do you suggest Google sell A Nexus device with LTE when each carrier's implementation is different? I don't think you understand the reason for its exclusion.
Although I hope I am wrong, I am starting to think that the Play store Nexus 4's were no more than a marketing gimmick. They got everyone talking about how amazing the phone is for that price. However, it could be that the it is heavily subsidised by Google for this, and stock limitations are intentional (so Google don't have to subsidise so many). In the mean time, to get one you have to pay at least £100 more in normal stores, put it into the price bracket of several similar (or better) phones.
I really hope I'm wrong, because I want one. I have some moneys put aside earmarked for this phone when it becomes available again. I'm not going to hold my breath, though...
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As far as LG management is concerned the Nexus 4 is just a marketing thing, they put little resources on the project and HQ didn't really pay much attention to it until the launch panic.
I managed to get mine and I am very happy with it, the battery life is manageable, the storage isn't an issue for me because I am used to my Nexus One, and I needed unlocked because I am a frequent traveller.
Hah hah, of course it is! This has been clear from day one. Google will be taking a bath on each unit they ship (as they will be subsidising LG), so they will want to ship as few as possible whilst have people talk about the device as much as possible.
Meanwhile all the freetards are banging on about how wonderful it that they can buy a phone for so little money and just how amazingly god dang benevolent Google are. They never realise that they are unlikely ever to be able to get their hands on one of the wonder phones.
Once again Google have got their customers bent over a table and are pumping away with a big grin on their face.......
...is the problem with all of these damned things.
They make them capable enough to do the stuff we want them to do, then not big enough batteries for us to do it.
Why don't they offer thicker models for us sorts that actually want to use the damned things, just just carry around an expensive token of our geekness.
PS don't bother replying with how you've removed all the running processes and underclocked your phone down to a speed less than a ZX81 and now it will run for 6 months without a recharge - I mean actually use stuff like wireless, GPS, apps, games and dare I even suggest it.... voice calls.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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'.
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.
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).
"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.
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.
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.
"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: 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.
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
>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.
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.
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
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.
'Literally' denotes that the following word be taken in its pure sense, no ifs, no buts, without qualification of any kind.
'Forever': until the end of days, the heat death of the universe etc.
Saying 'it lasts literally forever compared to other Android handsets' makes no sense. Either something is infinite, or it isn't. Infinity minus one is still infinity.
Regrettably, the non-literal use of "literally" is now acknowledged/accepted in non-formal contexts even in the Oxford English Dictionary:
"In recent years an extended use of literally (and also literal) has become very common, where literally (or literal) is used deliberately in non-literal contexts, for added effect, as in they bought the car and literally ran it into the ground. This use can lead to unintentional humorous effects ( we were literally killing ourselves laughing) and is not acceptable in formal contexts, though it is widespread." --> http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/literally?q=literally
Storage (16GB) isn't an issue for me - I can't imagine installing so many large apps (ie games) that it's used up and I'm not about to start loading DVD-sized videos onto it.
Battery life - pretty much the same as my S3, so no surprises there - power costs.
It looks and feels like a quality device, 4.2 is gorgeous as well.
Give me a grand to spend on a phone and this is the phone that I would buy - no contest.
Yes, Google Play is almost permanently out of stock, but for the few hours it isn't, may I recommend this checker app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.julienvermet.nexusavailability
Yes, a bit chicken and egg, but you've surely got another Android device somewhere? :-)
These can now be had for £250 sim free.
Albeit not the 4.7" powerhouse of the Nexus 4, in general use most people won't notice the difference.
They are also 16GB and have the 4.1.1 JB update, not the 4.2.
Some like HTC Sense, some don't, I personally prefer HTC's keyboard over the stock Android.
I also have no complaints about Battery Life - indeed it certainly lasts a LOT longer than the HTC One X ever did!
Personally I love this phone, I missed out on the initial batch - but I got in on the second batch, ordered within 2 minutes of them going back on sale - was told 7-14 days for delivery and sure enough 14 days later - it turned up. Haven't had a lot of luck with Photo Sphere yet - but then I've not had the chance yet to try it out outside - and I've been informed by the numerous Photo Sphere "experts" on G+ that it doesn't work too well indoors - and especially not at close range.
...now I'm not. A battery life of 10 hours is utterly ludicrous. What is it with this obsession in making phones the size of monoliths? Have our hands and pockets trebled in size or something? The battery for these things has got to be measured in days, and weeks for standby. If it's not, then it's not fit for purpose.
I'm still looking for a new phone, but there is nothing on the market. It's like laptops - all 16:9 1366x786 glossy screens and thus utter shit. Wrong aspect ratio, dreadful DPI., wrong finish. 16:10 matte screens are the only sensible choice.
Why is technology racing forward on the one hand,but engaged full reverse in the other?
I'm not sure what to do now. When the second batch went up in to the store some 5 weeks back I snagged myself a 16 GB one on 5-6 weeks notice (has anyone with shorter notice received theirs yet ?) as:-
1. My HTC Desire Z was near killed by the Gingerbread upgrade (known issue HTC refuse to acknowledge) (oh and none of the reliable rooting methods work beyond Froyo)
2. My Desire Z is rapidly failing (HTC don't seem to make them like they used to)
3. I can't swap my phone under contract until mid Feb
4. While tempted by a Note 2 for Feb I want to wait till Voda sell the LTE version (June/July ?)
I felt it was a decent handset for a silly price to tidy me over till June/July and then possibly sell. The problems for me are as to whether it will actually arrive, and more importantly battery life. My present and previous two phones have been fitted with extended batteries (HTC Desire Z, HTC Touch Pro, and HTC TyTn) as I like to have some juice spare by the end of the day and traditionally have travelled through low signal areas, which always hammers the battery. The repeated reviews claiming short battery life worry me.
The battery life feels about the same as my previous iPhone 4S. On paper it may not be (I haven't really checked), but day in day out I'm noticing a huge amount of difference. It's certainly better than the Nexus One I had before that, which struggled to get through a working day on standby! Being vanilla Android, it's trivial to toggle on things like Bluetooth, GSP and WIFI when you need them and have them switched off at other times.
If you don't mind having to charge it every evening, it's fine. As to the rest of the phone, it's gorgeous.
The battery life thing is a mystery to me.
I have what I would think of as a normal amount of apps running, and most of them set to receive new data immediately (whatsapp, email, farcebook etc). I make an average amount of texts and calls per day, and am either connected to wifi or mobile data all day. With all of this I manage to get around 1.75 days out of the battery, and to be fair have done on every android phone I have ever owned. The only thing I rarely do is play games on a phone (which as in a previous post, would rather do on a tablet for bigger screen etc).
Seems to me that people complain about battery life, citing the actual device, when in reality I would think it is more to do with the apps etc installed by each individual user?
It's always a problem with battery testing. What constitutes "average" use. To get around that I load up the same apps that I have on my own phone (the Razr i) and use the review handset for a few days in its place. With something like the Nexus 4 I also spend at least 30 mins per day gaming and the same watching video. I think the last two are reasonable, after all, why buy a large screen HD phone if you avoid doing the things many people buy a large screen HD phone to do?
As a matter of course I'm inclined to be more negative about battery life in a handset with a fixed battery simply because investing in a new battery after 12 months of run-of-the-mill degradation is not an option.
My 2p, as someone who got a 16GB model in availability window 2...
Battery life was initially appalling, to the point where if it hadn't been the Christmas break it would have probably gone back. It now seems to have settled down, and is no worse than my old Galaxy S2, although still not as good as the Galaxy Nexus I have from work. I'm convinced there's a bug in the firmware personally, as looking at the usage stats "Keep Awake" seems to be double compared to the Galaxy. It is now perfectly ok for my usage pattern though, so it's not a problem for me.
Photosphere is a fun gimmick, and works reasonably ok though I always get at least one stitching artifact somewhere. It seems to work much better with the phone held in portrait.
Overall, now that the battery life is ok, I'm extremely happy with it - it's lightning quick, very nicely designed (I was ready to call bullshit on the rounded edges business, but it does seem to be effective) and the screen is excellent. The combination of Google Listen for music and the fact that I use my tablet for video rather than the phone means 16GB is now enough for my phone - YMMV.
It does get surprisingly warm under heavy load but not to the point where I find it uncomfortable. For the price I paid it's unbeatable value - at the price the high street wants to charge I'd say it's still a good buy, but of course it's sat there sold out on Play with the price tag it's got....
Important last point though - either get a case or be bloody careful with it. A colleague dropped his from waist height on New Years Eve, and the front is smashed to bits. Gorillas notwithstanding, it's glass and it can break.
The Nexus 4 is affected by a current kernel bug which causes excessive battery drain by stopping the device sleeping properly. Should be fixed with the next update.
The Galaxy S3 is most definitely not cheaper than the Nexus 4. No other high end device is. I think saying the 4 is 'ordinary' because it has an extremely high ppi screen instead of a stupidly high PPI screen like the 1080p screens is daft. You can't see pixels on the Nexus at all.
"The Nexus 4 is affected by a current kernel bug which causes excessive battery drain by stopping the device sleeping properly. Should be fixed with the next update."
I don't understand why this sort of thing happens. This is the kind of problem that can be caught by giving it to any reasonably experienced person for a couple of day and then asking them, "what do you think of it?"
Two days after buying my Asus Transformer Tab, I had found three 'bugs' that were simple, obvious and annoying. After the next firmware update, those bugs were still there. I suspect that the developers (and managers) are under pressure to get the product released to a timescale, not to a quality level.
Im glad this was out of stock when I considered one last year - as the review says, the specs now look anything but cutting edge. I would have been very disappointed owning this when in a few months time 1080p screens with 10+MP cameras are commonplace.
Thanks for the stock problems, google!
" anything but cutting edge" You're kidding right? What more cutting edge components could they have crammed in the Nexus 4?
Why would you be happy you now have to spend twice the price on a device which will likely spend most of its life on outdated software? I'd be annoyed as hell if I missed out on the Nexus 4. Assuming you're OK with the onboard storage, it's not only the best deal in smartphones, it's the best Android device to date.
As an actual Nexus 4 owner, I don't have a problem with the battery life - I get around 36 hours between charges (right now: 1d 6h 58m, 30% remaining). I have a fairly typical set of apps installed and use my phone fairly regularly, although generally not for gaming or video. As long as it can last 24hrs, it can be charged overnight.
My previous phone (a HTC Desire) made it barely 14 hours between charges.
Worth pointing out here (unless someone already has) that this is an LG phone rather than a "Google" phone. I purchased on the basis that as it had Google's name stamped on it, and as I was buying direct from Google, that Google would take some sort of responsibility for product quality and customer care.
Apparently not so. As soon as you drop it, they'll hand you off to LG.
Whatever you do, don't treat it like your old Nexus S, and certainly don't drop it, you'll be without it for a LONG time! And you'll need another phone and lots of minutes if once you've send it back you ever want to see it again ..
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The manufacturer's warranty is indeed with LG (pretty odd) but remember in addition to that your Statutory Rights, which are always with the retailer. Which in this case is obviously Google. They're not allowed by law to fob you off and tell you to go to take it up with the manufacturer.
The flat glass back has a small 10x2mm cutout for the speaker grille. When the phone is on a desk, the speaker's air chamber is small, and the ring is very muffled because the sound of the phone's ringing is blasted into the desk.
It's a nice smartphone but not a great phone if you want to hear it ring. It's also the first phone I've had problems with Bluetooth headsets for many years: over 6-8 feet and there's a lot of breaking up.
Having lived with the N4 for a month I am pretty happy with my new phone. An android user for 4 years now and this is what I have been waiting for. The screen large enough to make a screen only keyboard usable, but not so large it doesn't fit into a pocket. Battery life is pretty good for me, a heavy email/twitter/music/browsing guy and I usually have 40% battery left at the end of the day.
The storage is the only issue I want to get around, but I might invest in an OTG connector and a few hacks to allow me to travel with films and tv programmes sufficient for journey times. Cloud storage is fine, but if I travel abroad I will have to find a hot-spot to update my on-phone collection which is a pain.
Overall 4 out of 5 from me.
Interesting comments - I'm looking for a new phone right now to replace my 'vintage' Desire. I've tried quite a few phones and current fave is the Razr i that the reviewer kept mentioning: great battery life, small enough to fit a pocket despite a 4.3" screen and it feels really well made.
But at the same time I'm really tempted by a WinPho8 device. The interface just seems so much cleaner, more intuitive, obvious and most importantly, easy to use. It seems like an interface designed for a touch screen, rather than a desktop system ported to a phone.
Depends what you want it for. If you want to have a big old variety of apps, and to customise the thing to buggery, then go the Android route. The downside of the Win Pho interface being easy to use, is that you're quite limited as to how to customise it.
For example, you have a screen brightness control in the settings menu. You can't have a quick shortcut to that on the main home screen, as you can with Android. iOS has the quick route to it, where you double-tap the home button and swipe right. In the end I've had to set my Lumia 710 brightness to full, as with auto-brightness enabled the screen is too dark to read outside if there's any sun at all, and I can't see to hunt through the setting menu. With my old Android I had a little widget on the home screen, that controlled Bluetooth, data, sat-nav and brightness.
Also WP only allows you to have one home screen. I find it much easier to group apps on different screens. But as I don't use many apps on my phone, and I also find the WP UI nice and easy to use I'm happy with my WP7 phone. My contract's up in April, so I think it's time for a new toy.
Oh, and WP's Marketplace is still more full of tumbleweed than useful apps. I don't use many on my phone, so don't care. But it's something to bear in mind.
I think it's worth mentioning that a qualcomm bug in the firmware is preventing Nexus 4 devices from going into dpee sleep - so the cpu stays on the whole time. Qualcomm have fixed the bug, but Google haven't pushed an update yet. The update doubles battery life. If you don't mind running a non-vanilla kernel you can get the fix right now. Google "msm_hsic_host wakelock" if for more info.
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