The official Nexus 5 thread.

[vshah]

i've been playing with my N5 since yesterday. Kitkat is awesome, phone feels great in the hand. actually really like the new launcher.

Camera:
Autofocus is a tad bit slow, and very sensitive. if you keep the phone still you can snap pics in rapid succession. but if you move it forward/backward a bit, it will refocus before taking the next shot.

Low light is pretty good. much much better than N4

HDR+ mode might be a little slow, but it is AWESOME. zero blurring. OIS & HDR+ is a great combination.

speaker sucks, especially coming from an HTC One.

Screen is excellent, a little less bright than an HTC one.

I'm torn. I love the speakers and fast camera of the one, but the nexus will have better dev support and has better camera resolution. I'm tempted to keep it since I can still get a good price for the HTC one, and then get whatever HTC comes out with in the spring & sell the nexus.

decisions....

 

[poofyhairguy]

the moto X is still has 8 cores...

You are on the wrong forum. A CNET comment section might be more your speed.

 

[Viper GTS]

Battery so far today:

~1 hour screen time so far, ~30 minutes of high quality Play music streaming via BT (1/2 with nav going). Sitting on wifi since I got to work.

Viper GTS

 

[Zivic]

Ooook... Never mind. You've clearly bought in to moto's marketing hook, line and sinker.

How do you figure? I thought the same thing as everyone else when saw the specs of the x.... J never considered it. I went I store to buy a note 3 and played with the x while waiting for the lady to bring out the note. Using the phone for all of a minute instore made me rethink the note. Went home and looked at the reviews And ended up ordering one .. Mainly after mkbhd'S review. No Motorola bs i bought based on snappiness, form factor, battery life .. The moto crap was just a nice addition

 

[Seven]

I hope I am pleasantly surprised. I want this phone to be the best

I wanted as well, but the experience is a let down. I was mainly the N4 user, but I've held the Moto X and its vastly superior to N5. I thought the N5 could get close to Moto, but sadly it doesn't. The Moto X is a refined phone and the N5 is just a generic Google stock. Besides the whole KitKat fuzz wasn't needed because it doesn't bring anything exciting, only a few updated apps.

 

[bearxor]

How do you figure? I thought the same thing as everyone else when saw the specs of the x.... J never considered it. I went I store to buy a note 3 and played with the x while waiting for the lady to bring out the note. Using the phone for all of a minute instore made me rethink the note. Went home and looked at the reviews And ended up ordering one .. Mainly after mkbhd'S review. No Motorola bs i bought based on snappiness, form factor, battery life .. The moto crap was just a nice addition

Just never mind. Because no one's really arguing about the experience of using a moto X and the "is the moto X really worth $600" argument went on for pages and pages in the actual moto X thread and this is the Nexus 5 thread so I don't want to sidetrack it anymore.

phone feels great in the hand.

I was wondering. A lot of phones now seem to be suffering from the 'too thin to comfortably hold' syndrome (I'm looking at you, Apple) and the N5 looks like it might be the same.

Camera:
Autofocus is a tad bit slow, and very sensitive. if you keep the phone still you can snap pics in rapid succession. but if you move it forward/backward a bit, it will refocus before taking the next shot.

Low light is pretty good. much much better than N4

HDR+ mode might be a little slow, but it is AWESOME. zero blurring. OIS & HDR+ is a great combination.

speaker sucks, especially coming from an HTC One.

Screen is excellent, a little less bright than an HTC one.

I'm torn. I love the speakers and fast camera of the one, but the nexus will have better dev support and has better camera resolution. I'm tempted to keep it since I can still get a good price for the HTC one, and then get whatever HTC comes out with in the spring & sell the nexus.

decisions....

Bummer to hear about the camera, but it is always a sore spot on Nexus phones, no matter how hard Google seems to try.

Just sell you HTC One and use the N5. You're going to want to trade your phone out every six months regardless so best to get the old stuff out of your hands early to get the best resale value.

 

[foghorn67]

Ooook... Never mind. You've clearly bought in to moto's marketing hook, line and sinker.

who cares? It benchmarks well, and it's fast in daily usage. Nerd less.

 

[Zivic]

who cares? It benchmarks well, and it's fast in daily usage. Nerd less.

I guess everyone buys into this logic buys a v8 regardless if a 2 litre 4 banger is just as fast, or faster and gets better fuel economy

 

[Capt Caveman]

N5 has been delivered to my house. Thought about racing home now to get it and bring it back to work but I'll wait. :-(

 

[swilli89]

My Nexus 5 is due to arrive around 4pm eastern today; I'm uber excited.

I dropped my beloved Optimus G (Nexus 4 sibling, just without the throttling and bad camera) into the toilet a few weeks ago. A family member lent me her old iPhone 4s and I can't wait to use an android phone again. how much I MISS THE BACK ARROW BUTTON.

Anyways I see quite a bit of discussion about the Moto X and I agree, its a great phone. I went by an AT&T store to check one out and the main thing I liked about it was the perfect (for me at least) form factor and its in-hand feel. I truly think 4.7" is the perfect size as it was perfect on my HTC One X and LG OG.

I really liked everything about the LG G2 except the awful awful buttons on the back side, WHY do something so gimmicky and risky like that? Would have been the perfect phone, especially with that battery

The main competitor to the nexus 5 for me was indeed the moto x. G2's buttons were THAT bad. The things I did not like about the Moto X which prompted me to wait for the Nexus 5 were:

1) AMOLED screen - been argued to death but I personally just prefer accurate LCD
2) 720P - I am very nearsighted and I am someone that can easily pick out pixels on a large 720p phone screen. 1080p is a must for me.
3) Last years dual core krait - I easily saw a difference in app loading and responsiveness compared to the LG G2 with its quad core S800.

That being said I appreciate Vipers battery testing and will upload my own once I feel the battery has charges enough to be broken in. Excited!!!!

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Camera:

I really wish there was a burst mode, or if no burst mode at least let me click as fast as I can press the button like on the iPhone 5, which does like 5-6 fps easily? The reason I ask for this is because it really affects HDR mode. Everyone has been saying you need to stand super still for HDR, but given how fast most other phones take photos and shoot 8fps or higher like the GS4, HTC One, HTC One X, HDR has never been an issue. The only phone where I need to stand and hold still is the Nexus 4. The Nexus 5 seems to continue this trend although the HDR stitching is better to minimize blur. Still. On an iPhone, you can use HDR as a normal photo mode practically and not ever worry about blur unless you're actually running and taking a photo or something. On the N5, I still feel like I need to stand there for at least 1.5 seconds just for the 3 photos to be taken.

 

[jimv1983]

Just sell you HTC One and use the N5. You're going to want to trade your phone out every six months regardless so best to get the old stuff out of your hands early to get the best resale value.

For as much as phones cost(even the Nexus) getting a new phone every 6 months is a bit much. That is going to cost you a lot of money. If I pay several hundred dollars on a device I expect it to last several years.

 

[bearxor]

For as much as phones cost(even the Nexus) getting a new phone every 6 months is a bit much. That is going to cost you a lot of money. If I pay several hundred dollars on a device I expect it to last several years.

Then you're just not a gadget hound

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Then you're just not a gadget hound

I'd rather not have to buy a device every 6 months or year if I didn't have to. I think the issue is that with some device here, especially Android devices, they get dated fast. Hopefully that's changing as the platform becomes more friendly in terms of resource consumption. It may be because I have a Nexus phone also, but I don't feel like my iPhone needs to get upgraded yet. The fingerprint sensor is nice, but not enough for me to upgrade.

Meanwhile the N4 to N5 upgrade had me drooling all over. LTE, finally decent storage, and a big battery boost (yes I got ~5% drain over 3 hours, which is much better than 5% drain over 1 hour on an N4)

 

[ibex333]

Galaxy S4 vs Nexus 5

Does anyone think its worth selling a Galaxy S4 and buying a Nexus 5 instead?

Camera on the GS4 is already horrible so I cant see how it can get any worse on the Nex 5.

Speaker is VERY important for me. It's not so good on the GS4 but if its worse on the Nex 5, its a deal breaker for me.

Battery life? The GS4 easily lasts me from 9am to 1am. Often much longer. How's the Nex5 in this regard?

 

[isekii]

Galaxy S4 vs Nexus 5

Does anyone think its worth selling a Galaxy S4 and buying a Nexus 5 instead?

Camera on the GS4 is already horrible so I cant see how it can get any worse on the Nex 5.

Speaker is VERY important for me. It's not so good on the GS4 but if its worse on the Nex 5, its a deal breaker for me.

Battery life? The GS4 easily lasts me from 9am to 1am. Often much longer. How's the Nex5 in this regard?

They're coming out with the Kitkat for GS4 soon. Personally i'd re-rom the GS4.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

^
WTF? The GS4 should not be that bad. If it's that bad to you, the Nexus 5 will be also. I'd take the GS4 camera over the Nexus 5 anyday. Battery life of GS4 most likely wins too given AMOLED and 15% higher capacity.

 

[jimv1983]

Battery life? The GS4 easily lasts me from 9am to 1am. Often much longer. How's the Nex5 in this regard?

9am to 1am? Really? My cousin would love to know what kind of magic you are doing to get that kind of battery life.

My cousin gets like 10am - 7pm with like 2.5 hours of screen on time.

 

[ibex333]

9am to 1am? Really? My cousin would love to know what kind of magic you are doing to get that kind of battery life.

My cousin gets like 10am - 7pm with like 2.5 hours of screen on time.

I had two GS4s. I bought both used. 1st one would last from 9am to 10pm or so. I later sold that one.

The one I have now is the one that has this awesome battery life. I'll tell you what I do.

1) I use the battery save mode (No reason to burn the batt if you're not playing games and don't need extra CPU/GPU power)

2)I turn off wireless, when not home. Not everyday or all the time. Just when I remember to do so.

3)I limit all background data when not home and using wi-fi. I only have data for email cause I need that for work.

4)Lastly I need to mention that my current GS4 is almost new. The guy claims he used it only 2 months. I am convinced battery deteriorates rapidly after 6 months use or so which explains why my previous phone did not last that long.
Also, I don't talk on my cell a lot and don't use it a lot. I keep my conversation very brief and straight to the point whenever possible. When I game on the train on way back from work, the phone gets very, very hot, and usual batt life DOES decrease by 2-3 hours.

They're coming out with the Kitkat for GS4 soon. Personally i'd re-rom the GS4.

Where did you hear that? They've been promising to roll out JellyBean on ATT for GS4 for ages, and they never did. Just a month ago they almost swore they'd release during October. That was a lie. If they didn't release JellyBean, I doubt KitKat is ever coming.

 

[jimv1983]

Where did you hear that? They've been promising to roll out JellyBean on ATT for GS4 for ages, and they never did. Just a month ago they almost swore they'd release during October. That was a lie. If they didn't release JellyBean, I doubt KitKat is ever coming.

What are you talking about? The GS4 was released with Jelly Bean right out of the box.

 

[foghorn67]

What are you talking about? The GS4 was released with Jelly Bean right out of the box.

c'mon, we don't remember the history of this guy?

 

[cliftonite]

c'mon, we don't remember the history of this guy?

What do you mean?

 

[poofyhairguy]

who cares? It benchmarks well, and it's fast in daily usage. Nerd less.

That is fine. There is a lot of good reasons to like the Moto X. It having 8 cores is not one of those reasons.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Where did you hear that? They've been promising to roll out JellyBean on ATT for GS4 for ages, and they never did. Just a month ago they almost swore they'd release during October. That was a lie. If they didn't release JellyBean, I doubt KitKat is ever coming.

I think by re-rom he implies flashing a Google Experience ROM on there, which should be released for 4.4 within a month.

 

[Zivic]

Been playing with the n5 now for an hour.
Thoughts
- back feels nice but there is a noticeable lip/hard edge around the screen. Uncomfortable to hold against your ear and makes the phone feel cheap

- icons feel very ios7.

-screen looks washed out (coming from amoled), but is very crisp

-bottom bezel is too large

-Speakers kind of suck. Bottom placement is an improvement vs the back, but they aren't much of a step up from previous nexus devices

-okay Google only works from home screen. Not anywhere near moto x like

Other thoughts. My moto x knows when I pick it up. I don't have to hit the power button then swipe. With the n5 I need to wake it up then swipe.

Haven't tried the camera yet