
Nexus 5 Teardown - mmastrac
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus+5+Teardown/19016
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ChikkaChiChi
KitKat issues aside, there are a few minor concerns with the phone that seem
to be causing the most issues:

The vibration motor is at the top of the phone. This is causing some people to
complain on XDA that the haptic feedback is weak or non-existent. When you run
a vibration test its easy to hone in on exactly where the motor is located
which seems a bit off to me.

The speaker is absolutely anemic. I 'feel' the sound vibrating the back of my
phone more than I can hear it through the single tiny speaker located at the
bottom of the phone. Companies need to start emulating the HTC One and place
the speakers on the front.

Otherwise the device feels elegant and the texture allows for a softer grip
that allows longer use without getting crab hands.

Now KitKat (and specifically Hangouts) is a different story altogether...

~~~
eitally
So far, my biggest gripe with KitKat is that there is literally zero
customization available for the launcher, and if you switch to something like
Nova (my previous choice), you lose the 1) easy access to a Google Now screen,
and 2) "Ok Google" voice search. This wouldn't ordinarily bother me much but
there are two big UI/UX gripes I have with the KitKat launcher:

1) To quote a Reddit meme, the icons are just... too damn big! Yes, the screen
is lovely and the new icons are perfectly good looking, but they're huge! Even
on a 5" 1080P screen, you are only allowed a 4x4 grid. I used a 6x6 grid on my
Galaxy Nexus and think that size is far more appropriate, especially if you
want to take advantage of multiple widgets on your homescreens, or a mix of
widgets and shortcuts on the same homescreen.

2) Related to the first complaint, you can't create app folders in the app
drawer. This makes it impossible to "hide" things like LightFlow, News &
Weather, Keep Screen On, the default Email client, or other utilities and
random apps you don't ever want to see. At least you get five rows of four,
but still, the icons are infuriatingly large.

I haven't played with the camera enough to comment, and the battery is light
years better than my Galaxy Nexus so I have no complaints there (yet). I do
carry a Powerstick ([http://www.powerstick.com](http://www.powerstick.com)) in
my briefcase when traveling, though.

The fact that you can now do both video and voice, or just voice, Hangouts
while on cellular networks is enough for me to overlook quite a few issues.

One last tidbit: the new dialer & phone app is much, much better than the old
stock one (imho, this is something Samsung really did a good job of with
Touchwiz), but it is not intuitive and there are some wonky things about it,
like the fact that the standard dialing screen only shows 3 of your starred
contacts and there is no apparent way to scroll/view the rest of your
favorites.

I'm expecting a 4.4.1 sometime not too long from now because there are enough
things lacking polish to warrant a few extra weeks in the oven.

As for the hardware, not a huge fan of the sharp edges, but it does feel good
in the hand and the small side bezels make it feel smaller than a 5" phone
should.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Re number 2, is disabling apps from settings not a stock feature? I've never
needed to hide apps in the drawer, I just disable them and they never bother
me.

~~~
estel
Yes, you can definitely still disable apps in order to hide them. (Though this
isn't as flexible, especially when one app owns multiple Launcher icons such
as the Google Settings one).

------
pearjuice
Can anyone shed light on why the battery cannot be replaced like back in the
day with (smart)phones? This is a real deal breaker for me, especially with
the very limited battery life you would at least expect that it would be
easily replaceable. I don't mind carrying an extra battery pack with me. At
all.

~~~
qwerta
My 'dumb' phone lasts 25 days on battery.

~~~
latj
Over the years I have owned 1 blackberry, 3 models of iPhone, and 4 android
devices. About 6 months ago my phone began restarting constantly through out
the day. Instead of fixing it I decided to turn it off.

The decision was a combination of a lot of things- I save money. I am aware of
my surroundings. I think. A lot. Sometimes I talk to people on the train. Or I
will print out a paper and not bring anything else with me. "You read this you
lazy no-attention mfucka or you sit here and do nothing". I am learning to
draw- also on paper. I do not care which wireless company has been revealed
this week to have a direct back door for the NSA. No one ever calls me. This
is a big deal for me. Even when I had a phone, there is rarely necessity or
cause for disruptive synchronous communication.

And, for everything I miss about phone ownership, there is almost always
something good that came out of it. I miss maps. But I also never learned
where anything was. I always depended on my phone even after living in a city
for years.

I miss being able to immediately find the results to some shitty singing
compeition show. Others miss me being more responsive- my response time is now
~5-10 minutes during the work day but on the weekend it might be a few hours.
But really, its ok.

I would consider a really nice dumb device though.

~~~
marincounty
Yea, I notice a certain amount of freedom when I'm not walking around with a
any hardware.

------
Theodores
I think I will be sticking with my Nexus 4.

I acknowledge that the new 5 has bigger and better everything, however, I can
live without it. Furthermore, I think the Nexus 4 is a design classic, I like
the glass back with its embedded speckles. I am a bit the same way with the
N7, I prefer the original to the new and improved version. All considered, I
am pleased that I do not feel 'miffed' to have the old models of both tablet
and phone.

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ck2
_glass and LCD are fused to the display frame. Fixing broken glass will be
either expensive or very difficult_

~~~
bluthru
Why does he even bring that up? There's no going back. It's like complaining
that the processor is attached to the motherboard.

~~~
hatred
He had pretty good reasons for bringing this up since in other phones like my
Galaxy S3 , I was able to replace my broken screen for $80 instead of
replacing the entire display which would have been pretty expensive.

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pouzy
I've bought it the very first day, and it should arrive sometime tomorrow...
I've always been disappointed in my Galaxy Nexus, so I'm really hoping that
this one won't disappoint.

My hopes are pretty high though. And I thought the battery wasn't easily
replacable, but that video tells the contrary. I'll see for myself I guess.

------
jonjohn84
Seems there's some confusion about whether the nexus 5 ended up with a mems
camera. I thought that it did not...

"With a little help from our MEMS, you can still take photos in quick
succession with the speedy new autofocus."

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
I just tried taking some shots at my desk and while it focused fast, I
wouldn't say it's living up to the hype of 6 multi focal shots per second.

EDIT: It appears that they are using the MEMS acronym, not the branded
product. The component itself does not look like the MEMS|Cam branded
components either.

Edit 2: Just read more on MEMS and if this phone has MEMS, then the camera
software is NOT supporting it. It can take up to a solid second for the camera
to make even minute adjustments.

~~~
devx
It would surprise me if it had it, or if it supported it, because from what I
noticed, the photos tend to have some focus issues.

I also think Google needs a whole rewrite for the Android camera app, by
camera experts, because the camera is becoming a great competitive advantage,
and I think the Android camera app/driver framework is keeping a lot of OEM's
back. If they do rewrite it and make it very good for Android 5.0, they will
hopefully allow it to be installed to other devices, too, like they already
did for the keyboard and launcher.

~~~
zmmmmm
I don't care if they rewrite the camera app, so much as standardize a
sufficient set of fine grained APIs so that other people can write great
camera apps. I know there's a lot of low level, custom interaction with the
DSP that is hard to capture in an API, but the current level of granularity is
just woefully inadequate. If they just focused on getting a really detailed
standard API as part of Android I'm sure a thousand beautiful camera apps
would bloom and we might even see a whole new mini-industry come from
specialist camera apps for specific situations.

------
wissler
Why no microSD?

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Because storage fails and most of the tech world is tired of trying to recover
your data when it breaks.

In my opinion, the less you store on your phone the better off you will be.
I've seen the look on the faces of people who don't backup regularly and using
your phone as a USB drive for your life is a "Bad Idea"

~~~
wissler
That is a presumptuous attitude, completely wrongheaded.

I have a ton of music and that's what I put on the microSD. If I lose it, no
big deal, but it's really nice to be able to have all my music there.

~~~
dasil003
Yeah maybe he should join the majority of the tech world that doesn't feel
obligated to be everyone and their mother's free tech support.

Personally I'm pretty comfortable taking a quick glance and saying "Looks like
it's not working, I don't really know anything about these, you should try the
tech support number" without going all nuts or passive aggressive on innocent
friends and family.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
That is a presumptuous attitude, completely wrongheaded.

Instead of being comfortable feigning ignorance I instead choose to be
proactive in educating my friends and family about the dangers of local
storage and a haphazard backup schedule.

Don't be rude and assumptive.

