
Google Nexus 4 Review - sciwiz
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6440/google-nexus-4-review
======
martythemaniak
I'm glad to see Anand focus so much on the price in the conclusion. A lot of
the other reviews talked at length about lack of LTE etc, but that misses the
point of this phone.

While it may disappoint many people who just want the best at any price, you
can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its
class. The price really is the killer feature of this phone.

I suspect there is lots of demand out there for this phone amongst regular
folk. No want likes being chained to a carrier and everybody likes getting a
great deal. I told my sister (non techie) about it and her eyes popped. She's
very very excited about it.

~~~
kenjackson
_While it may disappoint many people who just want the best at any price, you
can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its
class. The price really is the killer feature of this phone._

Ignoring OS, there are other phones that are getting much cheaper. Example is
the new Lumia 920 that is $449 on ATT w/o contract. While it is $100 more
expensive than the the 16GB Nexus you do get the following in addition:

* 32GB (+16GB)

* LTE

* [Removed]

Is this worth $100? I think probably so, but in any case, I think it shows
that phones in this class (flagship like devices) are actually more price
competitive than people may think.

Edit: To remove wireless charging per comment.

~~~
lawdawg
I'll take a lighter device + $100 over 16GB + LTE at least until LTE is widely
available in my city (which is probably 2-3 years away).

But again, _ignoring OS_ which is generally not a good idea when making a
phone purchase.

~~~
kenjackson
Ignoring OS is the only way to make a fair comparison, since OS preference
probably trumps the feature and price delta ( whether you prefer WP or
Android).

~~~
cryptoz
The only way to fairly compare devices is to ignore the single most important
aspect? No, I don't think so.

~~~
kenjackson
The single most important factor is also the most subjective. I personally
dislike Android and wouldn't use this phone if you gave it to me for free, but
I can still respect the price for hw. I'm surprised this even needs
explaining.

~~~
cryptoz
Have you ever used Android 4.2? This phone ships with a new OS version that I
don't think is out anywhere else yet. How do you know in advance that you will
subjectively not like it? I hate Windows Phone 7, but I wouldn't dare say I
hate Windows Phone 8 since I've never seen it IRL. How could I make such a
judgement? It's not purely subjective, either. What's the point in having more
RAM or a bigger screen if the OS doesn't handle those well? Or, if it handles
it exceptionally well, that should be noted as well.

~~~
nailer
Android 4.0 is reasonably similar to Android 4.2 for many people. Just as WP7
is reasonably similar to WP8 too.

------
UnoriginalGuy
Is anyone else slightly concerned about the glass back? Several reviews
including The Verge had their back crack while testing it.

For me that is the biggest concern. The nice thing about plastic is that it
absorbs some of the energy from a drop or shock. Glass gets cracks and then
shatters.

I would have liked to have seen the same "rubber" back the Nexus 7 (by Asus)
has. I would have alternatively taken Samsung's "cheap" feeling plastic backs.

~~~
bitcartel
The Play Store is selling a Nexus 4 Bumper - it's like the iPhone 4 all over
again. Why do designers always pick form over function? What's the point in
having a great looking phone that needs to be bubble-wrapped?

Still, the good thing about Android is you can choose from many manufacturers.
This new Sony phone is waterproof:

[http://www.sonymobile.com/global-
en/products/phones/xperia-g...](http://www.sonymobile.com/global-
en/products/phones/xperia-go/)

------
peeters
I've already decided I'm buying this phone, but I have to ask:

Why should I care about wireless charging? I can't see this feature enriching
my life in the slightest. Ok, it looks cool sitting there. But docks look cool
too. Is it more convenient? I would argue no (saves maybe two seconds of
effort per charge). Is it more portable? Definitely not.

Is this only hyped up because of the "coolness" factor?

~~~
Maakuth
I think the manufacturers are trying to make restaurants, public transport and
maybe even office furniture companies to add those charging surfaces
everywhere. That way your phone would pick up some power here and there.

~~~
ygra
I wonder how much that would increase lost phones on public transport ;-)

------
k2xl
So I've been looking at reviews of Nexus 4 all week. I have had IPhone for the
past few years (3g then 4).

I want to switch, but I don't know if Nexus 4 is the one to switch to... I
don't quite understand the differences between Android versions of S3 and Note
2, but apparently this has a vanilla android version.

What is the best choice? S3? Note 2? Nexus 4? What advantages do each one have
over the other?

~~~
blhack
I will say that I just switched from a iPhone 4 to a S3 and it seriously makes
the iPhone feel like a toy.

~~~
boundlessdreamz
How so?

~~~
blhack
The size really is a big thing. This phone feels like it's the right size. The
iPhone just feels...small.

And then the OS. I didn't like the built-in keyboard, so I downloaded and
installed another one. Now "keyboard" is just a preference in the settings
menu, and I choose which one I want.

But it's a whole lot of small things like that. Android just feels grown up,
to me. iOS feels like a sandbox, like something you'd find in a school or
something, or "baby's first telephone".

------
nilsbunger
In the US, what's the best kind of cellular service plans to get if you come
in with an unlocked phone? I would love to get out of the 2-year contract
thing.

But I have this vague understanding that a lot of the prepay, mvno, or non-
contract plans don't give access to parts of the big guys networks (like
roaming relationships).

~~~
Kerrick
Straight Talk and Net 10 Sim are both great. You buy a SIM card, and then
every month pay $45-50 for unlimited service. I think they use AT&T's network.

~~~
Nursie
Wow that's pricy!

Over here in the soviet UK you can get a £10-15 pcm contract that gives you
unlimited (not tethered) data and a reasonable about of other stuff, so long
as you bring your own phone.

~~~
rogerbinns
There are some subtle differences between the US (actually North America) and
the rest of the world. You have probably heard how people in the US pay for
incoming calls, which is true.

In the North American Numbering Plan there are no area codes for cell phones
as there are in the rest of the world. Consequently a caller doesn't know if
they are calling a cell phone. In almost every country in the world, calls to
cell phones cost more. In the US the recipient pays the difference. Elsewhere
the caller pays the difference. In the US the recipient has bulk bargaining
power so those calls are cheaper than elsewhere.

So if you really wanted to compare like with like, you should compare the cost
of the US contract to the cost of what callers pay plus what you pay
elsewhere. Note that callers can pay _a lot_ more elsewhere - often 10 times
as much as a call to a landline. See international phone cards to get an idea.

There are two other factors. One is psychological in that US consumers are
very averse to variable billed amounts, and are prepared to pay more in order
to have a fixed known bill. (I once read a paper I've never been able to find
about this, showing it dated back to the earliest days of phone service in the
US.) You may recall hearing how local phone calls are free. They aren't - you
pay a higher base price. When I moved from the UK to the US my baseline phone
service price quintupled. The difference is the local calls were "free" in the
US while it was a few pence a minute in the UK.

The other factor is that there was no regulation requiring certain radio
technology or interoperability. While the original GSM was good, it wasn't
very future proof. It divided up frequency usage into time slots which meant
you had a fixed number of possible calls. It also meant neighbouring towers
couldn't use the same frequency. Qualcomm came up with CDMA which was very
future proof - a phone talking to a tower sees all other phones (when they
transmit) as background noise. Consequently it doesn't matter how the others
talked to the tower so they could advance specifications. You could also put
CDMA towers further apart than GSM towers. ("3G" etc are an evolution of CDMA
all over the world.)

CDMA was adopted by two of the major carriers, but because almost no one else
used CDMA that meant they had to source their own phones. That lead to a model
where consumers got used to getting their phones from the carrier with no
alternative. New phones were really cheap or free in return for a contract of
a fixed monthly amount, which included around $20 per month just to pay the
remainder of the cost of the phone.

Consumers are loathe to pay the real price of phones because they have never
done so before. And carriers are loathe to have bring your own phone plans
because the way their financial performance is measured is by ARPU - average
revenue per user. Additionally because the carrier is bulk buying phones they
can squeeze the suppliers, and they can "cripple" the phones to further their
own interests. Verizon has been a master at the latter - for example they
disabled bluetooth phonebook syncing several years back on a phone so they
could push their own over the air backup service, they pull stunts with
mapping (they have their own service) and even prevented Google's Wallet from
working on the Galaxy Nexus (yup, they have their own too).

So like many things American we have this unwholly complicated mess where no
one is paying the real price of anything, and what is actually going on is
hidden behind other things.

If you are interested in how GSM and CDMA evolved, this is an excellent
article <http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/10/GSM3G.shtml>

------
Penmane
Anand's new battery test suite gives counter-intuitive real world usage
suggestions; I don't turn on LTE to extend usage time on any mobile devices.

------
cryptoz
And it has a barometer!

~~~
phreeza
Does anyone have an idea what the use of this might be? Altimeter? Weather
forecasting?

~~~
cryptoz
I collect the barometric readings with pressureNET.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbu...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbus.barometernetwork)

We have about 11,000 total users (half are active) and are VERY excited that
the Nexus 4 and 10 both have barometers. We're looking to improve short-term,
local weather prediction asap. The project is open source at
<http://cumulonimbus.ca>

~~~
yock
Very appreciative of the tip here, it's installing now on my GNex.

------
conradfr
The phone with more reviews than stock :)

------
MojoJolo
Are there other ways of buying Nexus 4 rather than online in Google Play
Store?

~~~
apendleton
Yes; TMobile will sell them. The pricing will be much worse than the Play
Store pricing, though (I think around $200 on contract and $600 off), so
probably not actually a good idea.

~~~
MojoJolo
So the "no contract" or "no carrier" version is only available in the Google
Play?

~~~
dangrossman
It's the same unlocked "no carrier" phone, just at a higher price in-store, or
so I've read.

------
f1codz
I have a question here to ask: Why doesn't Google choose Motorola to
manufacture its handsets?

~~~
ConstantineXVI
The official line is there's no special relationship between Motorola and
Android beyond a common owner; thus they have to bid on Nexus devices like
everyone else (and so far, there's nothing to suggest otherwise). As well,
there's restrictions on how companies in the middle of an acquisition can
communicate, which would make a Motorola-produced Nexus this cycle
particularly difficult.

~~~
rplnt
We can also see that there's no connection in the lack of up-to-date Android
on Motorola phones.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
The carriers get as much blame in Android's update SNAFU as the OEMs (and
Google, by inaction[0]); the VZW Galaxy Nexus demonstrates this.

[0] While Google could have taken a stronger stance on Android re: updates, I
don't think they've ever been in a good position to do so. Early days,
carriers would have balked and Android would die; now, they'd just fork and
Android becomes the next BREW.

~~~
rplnt
In my case the OEM is to blame as it is only company I can associate my phone
with (bought it without a contract in a store). So it probably depends from
whom you bought the phone and under what conditions.

------
antman
It does not have a removable battery? I consider this as an important feature
me that I spend lots of hours outside the office. Also ejecting some mass when
the phone drops is always a good thing. Two broken Iphones on my drawer say
so.

~~~
bryanlarsen
It's not a "removable" batter, but it is easy to replace with the correct Torx
screwdriver. That doesn't help in your two scenarios, but it will be useful if
you want to keep your phone significantly longer than the 3 year half-life of
lithium batteries.

------
habosa
I don't get it, so I need someone to explain something to me. How can the
iPhone consistently blow everything else away in performance AND battery life,
despite having a smaller battery and seemingly lesser processor. I understand
that Apple had a time advantage by getting into the touchscreen smartphone
game first but how has nobody caught up yet? I am a huge Nexus fanboy but it
seems that the IPhone is objectively faster and more efficient, even with
googles full efforts to keep up.

~~~
mahyarm
You'll notice they are very strict about background processing in applications
and the usage of battery draining things such as GPS or cellular data. This
helps battery life significantly. Google didn't start prioritizing view
smoothness and efficiency until android 3 or 4.

The OS & apps are pretty much pure C from the ground up, with an objective-c
application layer. The entire view system (Core Animation) is GPU accelerated
with OpenGL from day one.

Objective-C on iOS does not have a GC, so apps are generally faster and more
responsive with manual memory management. Many apps can drop into pure C or
C++ to improve performance easily.

All of these performance choices give you a faster phone for less processor.

A slower processor also tends to use less energy too. Battery size is a pure
weight/size vs capacity tradeoff.

------
socialist_coder
Wow, it has about a 50% bigger battery than the iPhone 5 but has considerably
worse battery life.

2100 mAH battery vs iPhone 5's 1440 mAH, but iPhone 5 can browse the web for
almost twice as long.

How is there such a big difference? Or are these stats not 100% accurate?

~~~
Synaesthesia
Yes it is impressive. The iPhone engineers critically have done great work
with the performance/power consumption of their CPU and their power management
in the OS. They're also using a fantastic baseband which is extremely lower
efficient on LTE it seems. Lastly the screen area of the iPhone is quite a lot
smaller which does account for some of the iPhones lower power usage.

------
hadem
I have wondered about buying unlocked phones in the United States. Does my
monthly bill change when bringing an unlocked phone to Verizon or AT&T?

~~~
lawdawg
There are both cheaper plans available and you won't be locked in for 2 years.
Both, combined, are worth more than the ~$300-$400 phone subsidy over two
years that the telco provides.

~~~
Symmetry
And with T-Mobile you can get the same plan for cheaper if you aren't on a
contract.

~~~
SwellJoe
That's changed, unfortunately. Their "Value Plans" now also require a two year
contract. They have no contract plans, but they are pricier than the
contracted Value Plans. I was pissed to learn of this change when I wanted to
switch to a plan that would allow tethering (I have the old G1 plan, which is
unlimited data, but won't allow addition of tethering, and they shut down my
ability to tether with the native tethering app or third party apps). Since I
paid full price for a Sensation 4G less than a year before, in order to avoid
a contract, it's pretty darned frustrating. And, let's be honest, T-Mobile is
not a great network.

~~~
dangrossman
How did they shut down third party apps? I'm technically not supposed to be
able to tether on Sprint, but I can run PDANet or FoxFi to tether over USB or
bluetooth anyway, on a non-rooted phone.

~~~
SwellJoe
They monitor traffic, I assume. I have historically used both PDAnet and FoxFi
among others...all get shut down within a few minutes, and I receive a text
telling me to sign up for tethering service. I'll try it again after rooting
the phone, to rule out simply detecting all the common tethering apps, but I'm
guessing they're detecting NATted traffic or similar.

I'm considering picking up a Nexus 4, rather than bothering with rooting and
re-imaging the Sensation. I don't really like the Sensation, though all the
problems I have with it could be due to software. It's a custom build with
Sense, which I really don't like.

Anyway, it's a new phenomenon. I was tethering on T-Mobile for years without
trouble. About two months ago, they started shutting it down after a few
minutes of use, and redirecting all traffic to their T-Mobile site upgrade
page.

~~~
dangrossman
That's a bummer. The $30/month unlimited data plan plus $15/month for legit
hotspot service isn't too bad, though. I'm considering that.

