
An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus 4 - jnazario
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/08/nexus-4-review-finally/
======
metajack
I just recently switched from iPhone to Android and from the iPhone 4 to the
Nexus 4.

Here are my impressions after a few weeks:

* Everything is so fast and smooth. It's the first Android device I've used that this was the case. My iPhone 4 was sluggish by comparison. I feel like iOS is getting slower while Android has been getting faster - at least on the phones.

* It's so much cheaper. $30/mo for tmobile pre-paid, no contract and unlimited data (though only 5GB/mo at high speeds).

* Lots of apps I used existed on the other side, and were as good or almost as good. Notably Gmail is better on the iPhone and Reeder still beats anything I've found on Android so far.

* I enjoy the bigger screen and find myself reading more on the phone than I did with the iPhone, but even with big hands it's some work to manage one handed use.

* The average quality of apps is pretty poor. So far I've managed to find nice ones for everything I wanted.

* Lots of things work in Android how they should work. The intents system is great.

All in all, I'm quite pleased. I don't think I'm ready to give up the iPad for
a Nexus 7 or 10 yet, but it no longer seems like I'd be losing all that much
even there.

UPDATED to add:

* The keyboard is just way better. I can type so much faster, and the result is that I'll actually use it to write emails now, instead of just waiting until I'm back at my desk. Some of this is due to increased size, but some is due to the keyboard software being that much better. For example, spelling correction is _way_ better on Android. Just tap and choose after you've written everything else.

* Cut and paste is sort of frustrating on Android. One example: try to copy the url from the Firefox address bar. I've managed to do it, but it took a few minutes of trying various things.

~~~
peatmoss
Oh my goodness--the keyboard. Yes. I'm a recent iPhone 4s -> Nexus 4 convert,
and I can say that the built-in keyboard is vastly better than the iPhone
keyboard. And the predictive accuracy (I have a friend in the business) of the
built-in Google keyboard is quantifiably and substantially lower than its
other Android competitors.

I'm told Apple's keyboard is abysmally bad because it asks the question on a
per-word basis: "Given these jabs at the screen, what is the probably that the
user meant 'foo'?"

Just about everyone else looks at the words preceding and includes that when
coming up with a probability.

I can understand that a swiping keyboard might be too freaky for some people
at Apple, but the predictive accuracy of the jabby keyboard is just
embarrassing.

The ability to quickly and accurately type things out is the number one thing
that will prevent me from moving back to an iPhone. Even given a choice
between stabbing at my much bigger iPad screen and swipe typing on my Nexus 4,
I've found myself putting down the ipad to respond to emails.

~~~
zarify
I agree about the keyboard with a caveat (and this is based on my experience
with the Nexus 7, I'm still hemming and basic about replacing my phone with an
Android device) - the touch recognition relative to where you actually touch
seems (if this makes sense) more accurate but less natural. iOS devices seem
to put the touch at slightly above where I tap, meaning that it triggers where
I'm looking at more than where I'm actually tapping. It's subtle but I find it
quite difficult to type and web browse on the Nexus sometimes.

I do love swiping words now I'm used to it though. Shame there's a palpable
mental shift that has to happen when I had to stop swiping for stuff like
proper nouns though.

------
sami36
My take as an iPhone 5 owner ( & every other iPhone before it.) iOS 6 is such
a dud. I don't care about a larger screen or NFC or wireless charging as much
as I am disappointed by the fact that iOS has barely evolved since it was
first launched. unless Apple cleans up its act & gets moving again, My next
(everyday driver) phone is probably going to be a Nexus.

~~~
guywithabike
"iOS has barely evolved since it was first launched"

That's like saying laptops have barely evolved since they weighed 15 pounds.
iOS has evolved a _hell_ of a lot since 2007, and it continues to do so. Just
because Apple hasn't slapped new paint on it every other year doesn't mean
that it doesn't continue to have new features and improvements every year.

~~~
sami36
I beg to disagree. It barely did. The jump from iOS 5 to 6 was the most
egregious in terms of not delivering much besides cosmetics. Sure I like
iCloud, notifications & multitasking. But when you look at how far Android &
Windows phone have come since they first came out, it's no contest. The pace
of innovation is relative, & on the mobile OS front -that Apple spearheaded
with their once nothing short of mind-blowing iPhone OS- they're now a
laggard.

~~~
potatolicious
As an iOS dev, I _heavily_ disagree. If you look at the state of iOS3 vs. iOS6
the difference is immense. Much of this doesn't come in the form of directly
user-visible features, but in the form of platform improvements that open the
door for _much_ better apps.

Just about everything you see in apps today is impossible on iOS3 (or absurdly
impractical). Even something as simple as the ubiquitous slide-aside menu
would have been insanely hard to implement in the first iOS SDK release.

Since the SDK first landed we've seen Grand Central Dispatch which has helped
apps become _way_ more responsive than before. We've seen large improvements
to Core Data that helps apps cache more intelligently and easily. MapKit
didn't even _exist_ in the original SDK. The list goes on, and on.

This is a classic "frog boiling in water" phenomenon. You don't think there
have been any real improvements to iOS because you've grown along with these
evolutionary changes. If I gave you a iPhone 3G with iOS3 and a iPhone 5 with
iOS6 - along with common, well-developed apps of their time - you will see and
feel the difference immediately.

~~~
jmenter
As someone who develops for iOS and Android I agree. Xcode and the Cocoa Touch
frameworks have improved a huge amount in just a few short years.

Meanwhile, the Android frameworks seem to be crawling and it seems like no one
can be bothered to create a decent IDE for making Android apps.

------
qdog
This is like an audiophile review. "I didn't actually measure anything, but X
sure felt better than Y!"

I just upgraded to the Nexus 4 from a G2, I kind of like the G2 size and
keyboard better, but apparently physical keyboard aficionados are a minority.

After a couple of weeks, I have 0 crashes (and I bought my Nexus on Play, so
no t-mobile software installed), so I guess that's cool. I rarely use anything
but a weather app, maps, and the web browser, though. I'd say the biggest
single feature I'm interested in from the Nexus 4 is continual firmware
support for a long time. The G2 stopped getting updates after about 6 months.

Also, the Nexus 4 is just large enough, it's actually difficult for me to
operate with one hand sometimes, because I can't reach my thumb quite as far
across the screen.

~~~
metajack
"I rarely use anything but a weather app, maps, and the web browser, though."

This and cost were the reasons I initially thought about switching. I do
almost all of my real iOS use on my iPad. The phone just does calls, checking
email, and some web browsing when I'm out and about.

That said, I have expanded my phone use with the Nexus 4 considerably since
I've found it to be more pleasant. For example, I send emails from the Nexus 4
regularly, as opposed to never (or maybe in an emergency) on iPhone.

"Also, the Nexus 4 is just large enough, it's actually difficult for me to
operate with one hand sometimes, because I can't reach my thumb quite as far
across the screen."

This is probably the main thing I dislike, although it's hard to totally fault
this as I enjoy the larger screen when reading or web surfing. And apparently
the iPhone 5 is starting to have similar issues.

Better idioms for navigation that don't require long stretches to the top
edges of the screen will probably mitigate this in time.

------
asafira
This article really loves that dock, but I've heard mixed things about it on
reddit (/r/nexus4). In particular, the phone slides off when it gets dusty,
because the dock is NOT in fact magnetic (as the article mentions). You can
tell (apparently) because if you put a piece of paper behind the phone, it
isn't held up at all. The phone is completely held up by the rubber rings on
wireless charger. I don't have the wireless charger though, it's a bit
expensive for me; maybe someone else here on Hackernews has some more concrete
opinions?

~~~
vivekpreddy
I have a Nexus 4 and the dock. Honestly, it was an impulse buy and doesn't add
much value, but it's worked great for me so far. I haven't had a problem with
the phone getting dusty so haven't noticed slippage. The dock does charge
incredibly fast and the design is wonderful, but it doesn't really provide the
value that you'd expect for the extra $30, but it is still pretty cool.

------
manaskarekar
As an Android user, the loudest complaint about iOS seems to be 'it's boring,'
despite it's reliability and constantly improving feature set.

Seems like iOS's next killer feature needs to be customization/skinning/theme
support.

(Correct me if I'm overlooking an already existing feature like this in non
jailbroken iOS)

~~~
dmcy22
Nope, there's no skinning/theme support in iOS. The only thing you can
customize are the lock screen and background.

~~~
jnazario
not true. look for Black Orbs as one example.

via [http://www.redmondpie.com/top-tweaks-for-iphone-and-ipad-
tha...](http://www.redmondpie.com/top-tweaks-for-iphone-and-ipad-that-dont-
require-a-jailbreak/)

