Official Avail. Nov 13th - Android 4.2 - LG Nexus 4 - Asus Nexus 7 - Samsung Nexus 10

[Skurge]

I have a windows phone and I can tell you IE does not crash as much. On my SGS2 I've seen enough Chrome freezes. I will admit Chrome has improved dramatically in the last month or so.

On another note the camera is absolutely horrendous. I went gingerbread house making today at a friend's place (feel free to judge) and I snapped a few photos. On my Nexus I felt like I had to spend extra effort to autofocus and make sure it was steady, and yet a whole bunch of pictures came out blurry.

Meanwhile on my iPhone 5 i snapped pictures completely randomly and carelessly and every one was razor sharp except for ones where people were clearly moving. The blur on the photos for my Nexus was clearly due to hand shake. I felt like my SGS2 would've done better. Also given the Nexus' size, I feel like it's imperative to use 2 hands and not 1. Compound that with the poor low light photos, I think it's a must.

I haven't had IE crash on Lumia and chrome crashed once on my Gnex, but IE is absolutely horrendous. I don't surf the web at all on my Lumia, just cause IE is so bad. I couldn't get to my PC and I had to do a bank transfer on my phone and the submit buttons at the bottom of the page would not show up at all. It also does this weird thing to text which makes it unreadable.

Chrome is miles better than IE in every way.

 

[Eug]

Hmmm... I was in a meeting and when I finished I checked my email, to find out the Nexus 4 was on sale at 12 noon PST in Canada.

Nexus 4 will be available for purchase later today!

Order yours from Google Play starting today, December 3 at 12:00 noon PST (Canada only).

However, I only read the email at about 1:20 PST (4:20 EST). Nonetheless, to my surprise, the 16 GB was still available for order, so I ordered.

Interestingly, after my order, the status on Google Play states:

Thank you for your previous order. You have reached the limit for this item.

The 8 GB is now out of stock. I dunno about the 16 GB. Now comes the wait.

 

[Sureshot324]

Hmmm... I was in a meeting and when I finished I checked my email, to find out the Nexus 4 was on sale at 12 noon PST in Canada.

Nexus 4 will be available for purchase later today!

Order yours from Google Play starting today, December 3 at 12:00 noon PST (Canada only).

However, I only read the email at about 1:20 PST (4:20 EST). Nonetheless, to my surprise, the 16 GB was still available for order, so I ordered.

Interestingly, after my order, the status on Google Play states:

Thank you for your previous order. You have reached the limit for this item.

The 8 GB is now out of stock. I dunno about the 16 GB. Now comes the wait.

I just ordered mine too. Shipping time: 7-8 weeks

 

[Eug]

Yeah, it was supposedly 1-2 weeks early on in the ordering, but I missed that and now it's 7-8 weeks. Ouch. The 8 GB is sold out completely though.

<- Click to enlarge, to see the 1 unit per person limit.

EDIT:

According to other forums, the 8 GB never actually was in stock. Only the 16 GB. Strange.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I haven't had IE crash on Lumia and chrome crashed once on my Gnex, but IE is absolutely horrendous. I don't surf the web at all on my Lumia, just cause IE is so bad. I couldn't get to my PC and I had to do a bank transfer on my phone and the submit buttons at the bottom of the page would not show up at all. It also does this weird thing to text which makes it unreadable.

Chrome is miles better than IE in every way.

Well yeah IE is horrendous as a browser. Windows Phone in general is horrible as an OS if you want to get anything done. It's fine for email and texting. But the crashes I've seen in Chrome are more annoying than anything else. It's like my whole system stops responding. On my Nexus 10 it just flat out soft reboots (stock AOSP 4.2). That said on my Nexus 4 things have been ok so far, but based on my SGS2 and Nexus 10 I wasn't a very happy Chrome user.

I'll give it more time to see how it runs on my Nexus 4.

 

[Eug]

I'm curious. Those of you who ordered in the first batch on Nov. 13, how many of you have not received your Nexus 4 yet?

 

[kevinsbane]

I made an order and my Nexus 4 is on order for "1-2 weeks". We shall see...

 

[dagamer34]

I'm curious. Those of you who ordered in the first batch on Nov. 13, how many of you have not received your Nexus 7 yet?

I got mine last Thursday.

 

[Robert Munch]

I had to return my 16GB Nexus 4 because the IMEI sticker on the backside is fading and the casing near the USB port on the bottom is loose doesn't seem secured. Makes a metal button popping sound if you press on it

Did some recording at a concert and the audio playback isn't all that either, it's rather distorted. Had a HTC One S that had no issues with playback when i'm at venues. Samsung seems to do a terrible job at audio playback as well (S2 + S3 variants).

One more thing I noted is that when I hook up the Nexus 4 via auxiliary in my car there is a loud screech if the person on the other end raises their voice a notch.

 

[Robert Munch]

Did anyone determine which battery pack/charger that will work well with the Nexus 4?

 

[Zink]

I had to return my 16GB Nexus 4 because the IMEI sticker on the backside is fading

Did you leave the back protective film on? ;D
The back should feel completely smooth. I was confused for a minute when I first got it because I could feel the sticker but it was just attached to the protective sheet.

 

[Eug]

Nexus 4 revisited: a cautionary tale

I&#8217;d hesitate to recommend the 8GB version. Saving $50 is not worth the hassle. With no expandable storage the 8GB Nexus 4 has only 5GB of usable space out of the box. I justified to myself the purchase by saying that I no longer store MP3s on my device, nor do I download massive games or watch offline movies. Nevertheless, I found that after a week or so I was left with under a gigabyte to work with, not from anything in particular but a steady buildup of cruft. Android devices get filled from various app caches, backed-up files, photos, videos and, yes, downloads. Unless you&#8217;re going to be vigilant about purging excess and unneeded files, 8GB will not be enough for you. Trust me.

[Eug's note: Interestingly, in yesterday's Canadian Nexus 4 sale, they had no stock of the 8 GB model at all. 16 GB only.]

The Nexus 4 also suffers from screen sensitivity issues. More specifically, some devices require users to exert more pressure than normal on the screen to perform common tasks. I immediately noticed this when typing on my 8GB Nexus 4 for the first time. My review unit, which was a 16GB model, experienced no such issues.

I wanted empirical evidence. I achieved this by going into Settings/Developer Options and turning on a setting called &#8220;Show Pointer Touches&#8221; and checking the value at the top of the screen associated with &#8220;Prs&#8221;. Normal Android devices such as my Galaxy S III register touches as light as 0.12. The minimum I can achieve on the Nexus 4 is 0.48. Sliding my finger across the screen allows it to drop as low as 0.26, but on the Galaxy S III I can register under 0.10.

it would seem that either LG is calibrating some of its Nexus 4&#8242;s incorrectly, or the screens themselves vary between devices.

Using LTE on the Nexus 4 has been an exercise in frustration. Even on HSPA+ the Nexus 4 does not exhibit great battery life. Indeed, I rarely get to 5pm without having to top up my phone for an hour to ensure it will last until bed time. With LTE enabled, the situation is much, much worse. I have found my phone at under 50% battery less than three hours after taking it off the charger in the morning. If that means I&#8217;m out of bed by 7:30 the phone, if used &#8220;normally&#8221;, will be close to dead by lunch. There are likely a couple reasons for this: first, the Nexus 4 was never meant to run on LTE networks, and the software has not been optimized for it; and the device doesn&#8217;t have great antenna performance, so it constantly has to boost its amplifier to the highest levels to maintain a connection to the tower.

 

[pm]

Did you leave the back protective film on? ;D
The back should feel completely smooth. I was confused for a minute when I first got it because I could fell the sticker but it was just attached to the protective sheet on top.

Yeah, it took me a while to realize that the sort of lame-looking sticker on the back wasn't actually part of the phone but was on the protective sheet.

 

[Zink]

Battery is relative. I stayed at home all weekend and didn't use my phone much so it went from Saturday morning to Sunday night and was at 49% charge. Yesterday was an average school day for me with an hour of screen use and it was around 50% when I went to bed. For me it's enough make it though a hard day of use.

 

[Robert Munch]

Did you leave the back protective film on? ;D
The back should feel completely smooth. I was confused for a minute when I first got it because I could feel the sticker but it was just attached to the protective sheet.

Lol yep, I just tore off the plastic covering and the IMEI sticker is attached how deceiving!! I thought that sticker was attached to the device.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I'm curious. Those of you who ordered in the first batch on Nov. 13, how many of you have not received your Nexus 7 yet?

Gah! I ordered my Nexus 4 on the 13th and STILL haven't gotten my Nexus 7. WTF Google?

 

[A5]

My screen data returns the same numbers as that reviewer and I have no issues. I've always been a pretty heavy typist, though.

 

[ponyo]

I finally had the chance to play with Nexus 4. I was pleasantly surprised by the relative light weight. I was expecting the phone to be heavier because of the glass back. I thought the screen looked very nice and sharp. The phone was definitely fast and smooth but not huge improvement over Galaxy Nexus. The speed and smoothness improvements were similar to iPhone 4s to iPhone 5. It's there but nothing I would upgrade over.

 

[Ravynmagi]

The Nexus 4 also suffers from screen sensitivity issues. More specifically, some devices require users to exert more pressure than normal on the screen to perform common tasks. I immediately noticed this when typing on my 8GB Nexus 4 for the first time. My review unit, which was a 16GB model, experienced no such issues.

I wanted empirical evidence. I achieved this by going into Settings/Developer Options and turning on a setting called “Show Pointer Touches” and checking the value at the top of the screen associated with “Prs”. Normal Android devices such as my Galaxy S III register touches as light as 0.12. The minimum I can achieve on the Nexus 4 is 0.48. Sliding my finger across the screen allows it to drop as low as 0.26, but on the Galaxy S III I can register under 0.10.

it would seem that either LG is calibrating some of its Nexus 4&#8242;s incorrectly, or the screens themselves vary between devices.

Using LTE on the Nexus 4 has been an exercise in frustration. Even on HSPA+ the Nexus 4 does not exhibit great battery life. Indeed, I rarely get to 5pm without having to top up my phone for an hour to ensure it will last until bed time. With LTE enabled, the situation is much, much worse. I have found my phone at under 50% battery less than three hours after taking it off the charger in the morning. If that means I’m out of bed by 7:30 the phone, if used “normally”, will be close to dead by lunch. There are likely a couple reasons for this: first, the Nexus 4 was never meant to run on LTE networks, and the software has not been optimized for it; and the device doesn’t have great antenna performance, so it constantly has to boost its amplifier to the highest levels to maintain a connection to the tower.

I tested the sensitivity on my Nexus 4 16GB. Lowest pressure I could measure is 0.46. However I've not had any problems with touch sensitivity with my normal usage. To get a 0.46 to 0.50 pressure reading I have to just so barely even touch the screen. I wouldn't be surprised if LG intentionally discards anything under 0.46 or so as just unintentional contact. There is a such thing as being too sensitive.


The phone doesn't officially support LTE. So any problems people are having with LTE are good problems to have, considering it's an unannounced bonus for some people with compatible carriers.


Battery life is a tad on the low side though. The phone also warms up doing the most trivial tasks. Hopefully the processor performance can be fine tuned a bit to not be so aggressive.

 

[Eug]

Gah! I ordered my Nexus 4 on the 13th and STILL haven't gotten my Nexus 7. WTF Google?

That's pretty disappointing. My order from yesterday says it should ship in 7-8 weeks, and that's sounding like it may actually be realistic. And to think that in early Nov. I was hopeful I'd actually get a unit by December.

At this rate I'm thinking February.

The phone doesn't officially support LTE. So any problems people are having with LTE are good problems to have, considering it's an unannounced bonus for some people with compatible carriers.

Agreed. BTW, I think Google may just remove that support for the Nexus 4 in future iterations of Android anyway.

 

[lothar]

That's pretty disappointing. My order from yesterday says it should come 7-8 weeks, and that's sounding like it may actually be realistic. And to think that in early Nov. I was hopeful I'd actually get a unit by December.

Not sure if serious...
Go back and read your original post that he quoted, his post response, and then your post in this quote.

 

[Eug]

Not sure if serious...
Go back and read your original post that he quoted, his post response, and then your post in this quote.

Yeah, I was serious... and seriously stupid. Mine was a typo, and I didn't catch his sarcastic response. Doh!

So, is anyone who ordered the Nexus 4 three weeks ago still waiting for theirs to come?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

another Nexus 4 issue: Does your speaker crackle? I work in vibrate 99% of the time, but I feel like the speaker powers on or something when I hit buttons that are supposed to cause sounds. Not sure what's going on. I see a lot of speaker noise issues on XDA though.

I really hate being the one complaining about issue A, B, C, D, because I typically dismiss those with problems as the minority or PEBKAC.

 

[sjwaste]

another Nexus 4 issue: Does your speaker crackle? I work in vibrate 99% of the time, but I feel like the speaker powers on or something when I hit buttons that are supposed to cause sounds. Not sure what's going on. I see a lot of speaker noise issues on XDA though.

I really hate being the one complaining about issue A, B, C, D, because I typically dismiss those with problems as the minority or PEBKAC.

Mine doesn't crackle. Or at least I haven't noticed.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

OK a bit more investigation as detailed in my Nexus 4 section. This is the speaker, not the earpiece where you make phone calls.

For the crackling, I noticed that it's when the speaker is supposed to make noise IF sound on. From an engineer's perspective, it seems that the speaker turns on, but emits at like 0 dB because volume is 0. That's probably why it's crackling. Crackling is typically switching from off to on. Don't know why it's switching on.

What I did:

Volume up: Notifications audible
Volume down: Notifications back to vibrate
Press random app in launcher (which is supposed to make sound if I had notifications on audible): CRACKLE.

I'm not getting this buzz people talk about on XDA but maybe my ears are bad.


Edit: FURTHER INVESTIGATION.

- Putting my ear next to the speaker, it seems the speaker turns on for every audible event. Regardless of whether you are in vibrate, sound, or silent mode.
- The speaker turns on for a few seconds at a time and stays on for a second or two after the audible event.
- Speaker then shuts off.
- In vibrate or silent, you expect no sound, but the speaker powering on is loud enough that you hear a crackle.