Google's Nexus 5 smartphone made its debut on October 31, 2013 (Click Image To Enlarge)
Google's Nexus program has a simple goal: make the best, purest, most perfect Android phone. And, beginning with last year's Nexus 4, Google did all that at a remarkable price, charging with no strings attached what most carriers and manufacturers would charge with a two-year contract. The Nexus 4 had a few issues — its missing LTE support chief among them — but overall it was an excellent phone, a refined and usable example of Android's prowess and possibilities.
That's why Google's new device, the Nexus 5, has been so remarkably hyped. It's been leaking for months, speculated about for much longer — and today Google's finally pulling the veil all the way back on the device that it hopes will show the world what Android can really do. The Nexus 5 is here.
The Nexus 5 is available today at the Google Play store. It's a fully unlocked device, priced at $349 with no contract for the base 16GB model. The 32GB version prices in at $399, and both are available in white and black. It will work across a wide array of carriers — in the US, it will work on everything except Verizon.
The Nexus 5 is as surprisingly inexpensive as its predecessor. Unlike its predecessor, though, it manages to actually support LTE, a complete necessity in this day and age. But releasing a flagship-caliber phone at that price comes with trade-offs, and Google had to pick carefully what it could and couldn't compromise with the new Nexus.
A SMALL BEZEL WORKS WONDERS
The good news is that the new Nexus 5 is largely based on the same guts as the LG G2, a phone that is pretty great if you can get past its lackluster software. But where LG added plenty of unnecessary cruft in its eternal quest to keep up with Samsung, the Nexus 5 is pure, unadulterated Android, running KitKat. The Nexus 5 has a blazing Snapdragon 800 processor and a crisp 5-inch display at 1080p resolution. Luckily, Google kept the bezels around the screen to an absolute minimum — not unlike the Moto X — meaning that it manages to not feel wildly gargantuan when you hold it in your hand.
That's the good news. Unfortunately, the bad news is that the Nexus 5's build quality isn't quite up to the kind of watch-like craftsmanship we've come to expect on flagship phones like the iPhone 5S or the HTC One. It's unapologetically plastic, to borrow a phrase that Apple has used to describe the 5C. The back has a very nice feel to it, however, with a soft-touch finish that's very grippable — Google calls it "silky," and that's actually a fair description.
Various views of Google's Nexus 5 (Click Images To Enlarge)
The back is also slightly curved and non-removable, but the edges where it meets the rim of the phone are squared off, bordering on sharp. If you've ever held a Nexus 4, the Nexus 5 will feel a bit familiar — albeit bigger and, curiously, lighter. It's only 130g, which is 9 grams lighter than its predecessor, and it really feels it when you pick it up. It holds a 2300mAh battery, which we're hoping will hold up to a full day's use. The display is Gorilla Glass 3, which means it's relatively thin and lightweight as well, but presumably very durable.
WILL IT HOLD UP TO A FULL DAY OF USE?
While the LG G2 has the dubious "innovation" of placing the buttons on the back, the Nexus 5 fortunately doesn't follow its lead. Instead, they stay in the same place as they are on the Nexus 4: power on the upper right, volume on the left right. The buttons are made of ceramic, though the benefits of that aren't entirely clear. The earpiece speaker is a curiously tiny circle in the top-center of the device, and on the white version it's actually white, helping you position the device as you hold it — since it's a monolithic black slab with the same curves on the top and bottom, it's helpful, if a little weird looking.
In all, the Nexus 5 feels more utilitarian than beautiful. While finding beauty within that utility is certainly within the realm of possibility, it takes some effort.
Google's Nexus 5 smartphone backside (Click Image To Enlarge)
The big question with nearly every Nexus phone has been the camera — since at least the Samsung-manufactured Galaxy Nexus Google has talked big game but the actual results have been disappointing. We haven't had enough time with the Nexus 5 to give it a full verdict, but our initial impression is that this won't make iPhone 5S or Lumia 1020 owners think that they're missing out. It's an 8-megapixel shooter with optical image stabilization, but camera specs on paper and camera performance in the real world are wildly different things.
One of the big features in KitKat, at least on the Nexus 5, is something Google calls HDR+. It's a pretty standard HDR feature — silently using a burst mode to take a bunch of photos and composite them together. We tested a few shots with a super bright window in the background and they came out better than we've come to expect from Android phones — but of course anybody familiar with said phones knows this could be damning the camera with faint praise.
Google's Nexus 5 smartphone side view (Click Image To Enlarge)
Each Nexus is meant to be a showcase for the latest version of Android, and the Nexus 5 is no different. Google made a big deal over the (re)branding of Android 4.4 as "KitKat," but unless you've been paying very close attention to the development of the platform you can be forgiven for not knowing what's new here.
THE CAMERA COULD STILL BE A CONCERN
The biggest change is probably the launcher, which now integrates Google Now with a quick swipe to the left (You can still get to Google Now the old way — swiping up — as well). It can also can be activated just by talking — similar to the Moto X, but in this case the command is simply "OK Google."
Visually, KitKat is a little cleaned up. Google has excised the Widgets tab from the app drawer, simplifying that experience immensely (you can still long-tap to add widgets). The icons are bigger and nicer, but more importantly the status bar and button bar on the bottom are now translucent, showing content underneath them in certain cases. The wallpaper bleeds under them — as does Google Now — and developers can also set apps to go full-screen, hiding both entirely. A new, condensed version of Android's custom Roboto font helps readability, but truthfully the visual changes here are tweaks, not overhauls.
Hangouts now can send and receive SMS messages, and though SMS is completely integrated, Google Voice still isn't. If you've been waiting for that massive step forward, you need to keep waiting.
Though it certainly doesn't apply to the Nexus 5, the other big change is that KitKat is now able to operate on low-end devices. It's possible, however, that even high-end devices will benefit from the cleaning and tightening Google had to do the OS. Chromium, the web engine behind Chrome, is finally the web engine that powers third party apps in KitKat, which will hopefully make more apps faster and better-looking.
In terms of performance, it's honestly difficult to give a final verdict. Everything seemed crazy fast when it came to launching and switching between apps. That's often the case with a fresh Android phone, however, so we'll need to spend more time with the device before we can render a decision.
Google's Nexus 5 close-up of camera (Click Image To Enlarge)
Speaking of rendering, the old bugbear of Android has always been scrolling performance. Especially in Chrome, there's always been a sense of lag that seemed completely out of place on top-tier devices. On the Nexus 5, we're very sad to report that the situation doesn't seem any better. There is still not a one-to-one relationship between your finger and the screen, and it's still crazy-making.
Google has tried a few different strategies to move its Nexus devices into the mass market — from overly ambitious attempts to overtake carrier stores to making deals with the likes of Verizon and Sprint that compromised the spirit of what Google actually wants for the Nexus program.
It seems as if the company finally landed on a formula with the Nexus 4: make a pretty great device and then sell if for way less than anybody else. With that device, the company wasn't even able to keep its online store up and running to meet the demand. Hopefully Google will do a better job with the Nexus 5 — especially since it hews to the same idea of selling a powerful phone off-contract for hundreds of dollars less than the competition. And this year the Nexus can compete spec-for-spec with the best that's out there — barring questions about the camera.
Overall, the Nexus 5 looks like a wildly capable Android phone. It's fast and big with a beautiful screen and all the accoutrements you'd expect on a flagship phone. As we said above, it has a lean, utilitarian aesthetic that doesn't quite feel beautiful, but is certainly workable and isn't without some charm. Like the Nexus 4 before it, we don't expect it will take the wireless world by storm — but we do expect a tiny slice of users to be very happy with what Google is offering.
COMMENTARY: On Friday, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) finally unveiled its new Nexus 5, the company’s latest handset in the Nexus series, which boasts the Android 4.4 KitKat mobile operating system, the most up-to-date version of the platform. The device is currently available on the Play Store in white and black, starting at $349 for AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint customers.
Nexus 5, manufactured by South Korea’s LG Electronics, sports a few notable features that help the device compete against other high-end smartphones in the market, with a high-resolution screen, powerful processor and improved battery life, among other impressive specs.
Before making a comparison of the Nexus 5 with two new smartphones from the current market leaders -- Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone 5s and Samsung’s (KRX:005935) Galaxy S4-- it is necessaryt to have a look at the key specifications that Google’s latest model has to offer.
The Nexus 5 is powered by a 2.2-gigahertz Qualcomm processor with 2 gigabytes of RAM, and features a 4.95-inch 1080p display. The smartphone supports 4G LTE connectivity, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, NFC and inductive charging.
Interestingly, the Nexus 5 also includes a pair of sensors that are seen as a response to the M7 motion coprocessor found in the iPhone 5s. According to Google, “two new composite sensors — step detector and step counter — track steps when the user is walking, running or climbing stairs,” Apple Insider reported.
As for the Android 4.4 KitKat, Google has incorporated a number of user interface and app updates. The company has also slimmed the new OS down by removing unnecessary background services and reducing the memory consumption of features that are regularly used, allowing KitKat to be run on devices with as little as 512MB of RAM.
Review of Nexus 5
The Good
- Overall Feel: The phone is shaped to feel smaller than it looks, with subtly curved edges and slightly sharpened corners that nestle perfectly into the palm of your hand. It’s just nice to hold.
- Weight: It's surprisingly light, at only 130 grams and 8.6 millimeters thick. It's made completely of plastic, and obviously doesn't feel as high-end as metal phones like the HTC One or iPhone 5S — but it’s solid, not slippery.
- Style: Stylistically, it shares much in common with the new Nexus 7 and the original Chromebook, and that’s a good thing. Key style points: The large ring around the camera lens, which glints in the light and feels almost jarring next to the subtlety of the rest of the phone; it sort of looks like a spare part, attached at the last minute. Reviewers discussed the feature with either hated it or loved it; On the white version of the phone, the earpiece grille is colored white, which is striking against the black, glass face of the phone — it’s like a beacon.
- Display: The Nexus 5's 4.95-inch, 1080p screen is such a key tenet of the phone's appeal, and it more than gets the job done.The screen overall is bright, beautiful, crisp, and accurate. At 445 pixels per inch, it's a fantastic device for reading, working, browsing the web, or watching movies — a perfect window into Android. It's not oversaturated like the Moto X's AMOLED display, though it can look a bit washed out and desaturated next to a device like the HTC One or the iPhone 5S.
- Lightning Fast Microprocessor, Lots of RAM and Storage: It's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor clocked at 2.26GHz, and it's hard to find a better smartphone chip on the market today. It also has 2GB of RAM (four times what KitKat needs), an Adreno 330 GPU, and either 16GB or 32GB of storage. Likely due to some combination of this class-leading hardware and the newly optimized software, the Nexus 5 is just astonishingly fast. Even processor- and graphics-intensive games like Asphalt 8: Airborne play smoothly, though like any device they still drop the occasional frame and stutter every once in a while — we're not entering truly new territory here, just improving on what we have.
- Android KitKat: Nexus 5 is all about the latest version of Android — KitKat. Google is moving away from the "holo" or more Tron-like elements we first saw in Honeycomb (3.0), and what's new actually seems to have more in common with recent efforts from HTC on the One than it does with previous versions of stock Android. White is everywhere, from the backgrounds of folders to the pattern unlock grid. Things have been lightened, tightened, and flattened in all the right places, making this latest incarnation of the ever-evolving software feel very fresh. Some of the aesthetic changes in KitKat seem to be focused on getting user interface elements out of the way — for instance, the status bar up the top is now translucent, allowing apps or pictures to take up every single one of the Nexus 5’s pixels. Google search is all over KitKat — and some users may take a moment to adjust to how much that changes the OS. Google Now is a left-swipe away from your main home screen, accessible very much like HTC's BlinkFeed. That means people who've been using that left space for icons and widgets will have to rethink their home screen strategy. Google voice search is also now deeply integrated into KitKat; you need only utter "okay Google" to start searching. You can also now search keywords from within the phone dialer, which is a bit like having Google Maps business info integrated perfectly into the app. On that note, the dialer has actually been completely redesigned, but Google needs to wrangle the UI in that particular piece of the puzzle as it's now relatively confusing to use. Elsewhere in KitKat, there’s a new unified file picker, letting you attach files from Dropbox, Drive, Box, and more all in the same place, and (finally) a unified way to print from your phone. If there's a major shift in the software beyond interface cleanup and additional under-the-hood improvements, it might be the new version of Hangouts. The messaging app now fully integrates SMS and MMS, and replaces the "Messages" app from previous versions of the software. You can now send texts, instant messages, voice calls, and video calls all from the same place, giving it a feel much more akin to iMessage. In all, Android is tighter, simpler, and more unified everywhere; the general UI hasn’t changed dramatically, but the visual tweaks and functional additions continue Android down a very smart path.
- LTE Support: Perhaps even more important than its new software, or its improved screen over the Nexus 4, the Nexus 5 comes with LTE. It works on carriers and in countries around the world, and in our tests had solid reception and download speeds (though of course your carrier's more responsible for how that works than your phone).
The Bad
- Camera: In a word: disappointing. The 8-megapixel camera on the back of the Nexus 5 is certainly capable of taking rather beautiful photos in the perfect setting. The Nexus 5 takes photos and video with too little contrast, too little saturation, and too little color (or inconsistent color) — when you can get the camera to focus at all. The camera app can be absurdly slow to focus and even slow to launch in the first place, which makes the Nexus 5 as a camera an exercise in frustration. The app just doesn't give you confidence in the outcome when you take pictures with the phone. Google intends for this phone to be pitted against the best that Apple has to offer, and I doubt anyone at the company would tell you they’re pleased that the camera doesn’t stand out. Help may be on the way. Representatives from the Android team say that software is to blame for the weak performance, not hardware, and reps tell me that a fix is coming to deal with the issues in the upcoming weeks.
- Scrolling Long Pages: There can be minor scrolling issues when you’re trying to tear through a long page, but that seems more to do with buffering than it does actual graphics performance. In fact, a big deal has been made about the "Android scrolling" problem, but nine times out of ten, the Nexus 5 feels considerably faster than most devices I’ve used — even the iPhone 5S (pro-tip: turn off all of your animations using developer controls).
- Navigation: General navigation and performance is buttery, and while Google still can’t match Apple’s best-in-class touch-response times, the difference is negligible as far as I’m concerned.
- Battery Life: It's been hard to get a real grip on how its battery truly operates. One day, it lasts less than eight hours of only moderate use. The next, more than 16. It lasted 3 hours, 43 minutes on the Verge Battery Test, which is among the lowest scores we've seen on a high-end phone in some time, but it would occasionally surprise with its longevity. The screen is clearly the catalyst, in most cases responsible for 60 percent or more of the battery's drain — as ever, the more you use your phone the faster it'll die.
Overall: The Nexus 5 is an excellent phone in many ways. It's solidly built and feels great to use. It's got serious processing power which means it can handle pretty much anything you throw at it. The phone has an absolutely gorgeous display. The KitKat update is polished and refined, and cements my belief that not only is Android leading the charge in mobile OSs from a functionality and user interface standpoint, but from a design standpoint as well. The battery life, while not perfect, appears to be good enough to get you through a day of work — which is certainly on par with its competition.
Now, with the new Android 4.4 KitKat and improved nuts and bolts, will the Nexus 5 be able to give the iPhone 5s and the Samsung Galaxy S4 a run for their money? Below is a head-to-head comparison of all the key details of the three devices.
Will Google’s Nexus 5 outshine its toughest competitors? Here is a comparison of the new smartphone with iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S4. (Click Image To Enlarge)
Courtesy of an article dated October 31, 2013 appearing in The Verge and an article dated November 2, 2013 appearing in International Business Times and an article dated November 4, 2013 appearing in The Verge
Comments