Google Nexus 5

[saintbletch]

Well after a lot of hype and even more leaks it was launched on Thursday.

 

First impressions from the early reviews that I've read are that it's quite a bargain, but feels cheap in the hand. In keeping with other Android devices the camera is also nothing special. I'm also a little concerned by the battery size. We'll see.

 

I've ordered a couple, but am still waiting for them to arrive. Anyone else ordered one, plan to order one, plan not to order one, anyone got one yet?

[stevegrant]

The battery size is a (slight) step up from the Nexus 4, so it's a step in the right direction. Would have obviously preferred a 3000 mA one, but hey ho.

 

Ordered mine on Thursday night, got the dispatch email from Google this morning so should be with me on Monday, I reckon.

[Jonnyboy]

Shame they bumped the price up compared to the release price for the n4.

CPW are doing the best deal on HUKD.

[PaulSaint]

Getting mine Monday from CPW. Its £295 with a £50 Red Letter Day Experience thrown in.Nippers getting the N4

[saintbletch]

The battery size is a (slight) step up from the Nexus 4, so it's a step in the right direction. Would have obviously preferred a 3000 mA one, but hey ho.

 

Ordered mine on Thursday night, got the dispatch email from Google this morning so should be with me on Monday, I reckon.

 

Yes, I got my notification of shipping yesterday too.

 

Whilst the battery is a little step up, I'm assuming that all that extra power and larger screen will consume more power. Then again, I guess the rest of the innards might be very power efficient.

 

Either way, it looks like a pretty keen price given the spec. I've gone for the 32GB model in black.

[stevegrant]

I've gone for the 32GB model in black.

Likewise

[saintbletch]

So, my Nexus 5 has been sent to the wrong Parcel Force depot (Swansea). I'll now get it on Friday apparently. The guy I spoke to said a large number of Nexus 5s were sent to the wrong distribution centre - don't know if they were all from the Southampton area.

 

Beginning to wish I'd just popped into an Apple store and been violently wallet-raped and handed a beautiful box of Cupertino's finest*.

 

*Before essruu makes the same observation!

[terrypward]

I have had mine since Monday (only ordered Sunday god knows how I got it so quickly). Very impressed. Its a great bit of kit.

 

Kitkat is promising but would like it more once there's a similar ROM about that allows a bit more customisation to it's home screen (icons are too big so can only have 4 in a row). Then it'll be perfect.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Saint137]

Reasonably impressed with mine - lovely screen, super fast, and no issues with battery life. Not really worth the upgrade if you have a Nexus 4, and you can get an end-of-line Galaxy S3 for about the same price. Worked for me though as I really needed the extra space over the 8GB N4 (plus I get a shiny new gadget)

[saintbletch]

My thoughts after a couple of weeks.

 

Overall I'm pretty impressed with mine and for the price I'd say it's an excellent phone. Read on if you are considering getting one - or if you are having trouble sleeping...

 

On the negative side I'd say that whilst the camera is really very good for my purposes, it doesn't appear to be on a par with cameras from other high-end Android / Apple phones. The HDR+ mode is very smart and it seems to take multiple photos at different light levels and stitches them together to ensure that the image is consistently exposed - so that dark areas and light areas are not under/over-exposed. It works well, but the resultant photos do seem a little "unreal". It has image stabilisation, but on a "field trip" yesterday around some pubs in Winchester, it didn't do a great job of stilling this operator's shaky hand.

 

Battery life is OK. I live in a low signal area so my phones have always seemed to consume more power than most whilst attempting to stay connected to the network. That said, I'm currently easily getting a full day's usage, but if I'm planning to use the phone a lot then I could see that I might need to conserve power towards the end of the day. I'm sure there will be times when I miss not being able to swap batteries.

 

The screen is really very nice. It's large and bright, although it doesn't quite seem to be up to the quality of its big brother - the LG G2.

 

Performance is excellent and everything just zips along, although that is always the feeling you get with a new device. It will be interesting to see if it slows down after a couple of months of app installations.

 

Memory isn't a problem for me as, for my sins, I've bought into the Google cloud philosophy. So it's easy to just "pin" the media I want on the device and then when I need to refresh that I simply pin/un-pin shows/films/tracks. I've got a subscription to Google's music streaming service and it works really well. My music collection (11,000+ songs) has been uploaded and I can then choose to pin a subset of that to the phone. Previously I'd had large memory cards and put all that music on the phone, but I only ever listened to a fraction of it. In addition I can also pin any other music (that I don't own, but instead "rent") to the phone and it sits alongside my own content seamlessly. I'm also watching Breaking Bad from the Google Play store at the moment, and I just download a couple of large episodes at a time and when I'm done I un-pin an episode and then pin a new one. Once you're into the routine of it, it works well. For others that rip a lot of their own DVDs, I can see that the 32GB might not be enough.

 

The KitKat OS features a load of new stuff, some useful some less so. A lot of the "smarts" are behind scenes restructuring of the code that controls low-level services. This means that it can run on lower spec devices and the user has more control over what runs and what doesn't. Hangouts is now used for SMS as well as for Google Chat - although being Android, you can use your own SMS app if you'd prefer. The SMS and Chat streams for a contact are kept separate which is a shame. I would have liked to see all interactions with a contact in the same stream.

 

I think the dialler and Caller ID stuff is really good. From the dialler screen the phone will not only search your contacts, but it will also search for nearby "things" that are relevant. Type in Costa for example and it will list your contacts that match and also all the nearest Costa Coffee outlets in order of reducing proximity. It's more useful than it initially sounds as it removes that whole "search->copy->paste->dial" step. The caller ID feature will also attempt to find out who is calling you if the number isn't in your contacts.

 

Google Now is fast becoming a necessity rather than the gimmick I thought it was initially. It's permanently tucked away as the left-most screen on the launcher. The other day, I Google'd a heating engineer on my laptop and when I left the house and looked at the Google Now panel on the Nexus 5, it offered me directions to the heating engineer's offices. With your permission, it collects information from all your interactions with Google and uses it to "guess" what you might find useful based on the time and your location. Walking close to a cinema and you get relevant cinema times, at bus stops you get relevant bus times, etc. Smart.

 

From a physical perspective, the phone's appearance / feel it's growing on me. It's clearly a more budget device than others I've looked at, and it feels incredibly light in the hand which initially lends the phone a slightly cheap feel. This is accentuated by the case which has quite harsh, 90 degree edges. But after a while it's grown on me. The back is sort of "rubberised" which means that it clings to your hand and those edges give you the reassurance that you're not going to drop it. It also makes it easier to use, what is quite a large phone, with one hand.

 

If you were to buy one of these and add a £12-£20/month unlimited data plan SIM from Three/GiffGaff, then you've got a hell of a lot of phone for a little cash.

[Jeff Le Taxi]

miss my nexus 4 ...how does it compare? ...stupidly traded up(?) to a note 2!

[pap]

I have had a Nexus 5 for the last few months now. The headphone jack on my S3 went (yes, yes Essruu - score a point - build quality was disappointing) and my contract is up this year. I was looking for a phone that would allow me to go on a lower tariff. I'm really impressed with it so far, to the extent that my iPad often lies uncharged and unloved for weeks.

 

The screen is fantastic. Full HD; rumbles around my inside pocket. I've dropped the thing a few times and it's still fine. The external speaker isn't that great, but it's a lot of power for the money. The young adult in the house has the iPhone 5s. Her phone seems dinky compared to mine. Really quick machine. Would recommend to anyone that wants a nice phone but doesn't want to spend too much.

 

On Android in general, it strikes me that if you're comfy with basic computing concepts like copying files, etc - it's the way to go if you've got a PC. Not sure how Mac connectivity is these days; I seem to remember Jamie having problems.