Nexus 5 Review

The LG Nexus 5

Ok, let's keep this short and sweet because god knows there isn't much to say. These Google phones are getting harder and harder to tell apart. This LG Nexus 5 is a tweaked Nexus 4.

Overall Experience
The LG Nexus 5 experience is essentially the same as the Nexus 4 experience, with some upgrades. Which is awesome. The Nexus 4 was an excellent phone and the Nexus 5 builds upon that legacy. Yes, that is the exact same sentence from my Nexus 4 review.

It's based on the LG G2, just as the Nexus 4 was based on the LG Optimus G.

Build
The Nexus 5 goes back to a plastic back. But it doesn't feel cheap. It feels nice and smooth, even if it is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. Mine is matte black, so it looks and feels a bit like the cowl of Michael-Keaton-Batman.

From the back side

The front is basically the same as the N4. The screen is a quarter of an inch larger. Which is great. But the body is 4 cm longer.  Which is less great; but barely noticeable, especially with the smaller top and bottom bezels. It's supposedly only 9 grams lighter, but it feels even lighter than that. It feels like one of those fake phones with no internals. The lightness is awesome. That, combined with the glassless back makes it feel a lot less breakable than the Nexus 4. I suppose it also makes it feel less expensive, but I've been schlepping around this N4 for a year so anything new feels fantastic.  The Nexus 5 is 0.5 mm thinner, and at this point you wonder why they're not keeping new phones just as thin and adding more battery.

Camera
The Nexus 5 has a great camera. In the daylight. Night pictures are still pretty grainy, but when there's light things look good. Sometimes touching the screen to focus has the opposite effect, making everything blurry. The optical image stabilization isn't noticeable.

Display
The Nexus 4 had a pretty much perfect display. The Nexus 5 seems slightly brighter with a slightly better contrast. The color reproduction seems better but it could just be the warmer colors. If the Nexus 4 display is a tad blue, the Nexus 5 is a tad yellow. It's 1080p versus the Nexus 4's 720p, which makes things seem a little crisper, but it's hard to tell. The sharp pictures and text could be due to the larger screen size.

Battery
The battery life is the same.  It lasts all day with light use. It's not removable.

The Nexus 4 (left) and the Nexus 5

Performance
The Nexus 4 was fast with basically no lag and the Nexus 5 feels about the same.

Data
Although I routinely got 7-13 Mbps Internet on my Nexus 4, the Nexus 5's LTE is a welcome feature.  I've seen 31 Mbps downloads from my Ookla speed tests, which is double the speed of my already blazingly fast cable Internet at home.

Storage
Finally, Google recognized that we're in the 2010s and that people need a reasonable amount of storage. The Nexus 5 has a 32 GB version (although I have the 16 GB version): enough space for most people's music collections and other data they might want on their phones.  There's still no SD card slot.

Operating System/Ecosystem
The Nexus 5 comes with Android 4.4 KitKat.  There are a lot of under the hood changes that most users won't notice.  What stands out:

• A new launcher with Google Now as the leftmost page and the home page as the second leftmost page
• Transparent notification bar, button bar and app drawer
• The Google Now search bar is always listening and will open if you say "Okay, Google"
• A new dialer
• Caller ID for businesses, so now the name and picture comes up when you dial that Pizza Hut number
• Letting you select your launcher in settings

But since KitKat is available on other devices, you may already be used to these.  The Nexus 5 does, however, have a few drawbacks that are only available on the Nexus 5!

• There is no more default SMS app. Unless you download a 3rd party texting app, you have to use Hangouts to send texts.  Which would be fine if I could list my texts separately from my Hangout conversations, but you can't.
• T-Mobile's Visual Voicemail doesn't work with the Nexus 5 (as of Dec 17, 2013)

There are workarounds here. You can use a 3rd party app for texting.  Or you can probably find the .apk for the old Messaging app.  What sucks is that since texting is stored differently than before, some apps like SMSBackup+ can't restore your texts from your previous phone. You need to use a SMS app that can act as your default SMS app.  What worked for me:

1. Download SMS Backup and Restore on both your new and old phones.
2. Use it to backup all your texts on your old phone (I'm not sure if it supports MMS).
3. Transfer the .XML file that contains your backed-up texts to your Nexus 5 (or other new phone) using something like Google Drive.
4. Restore your texts on your new phone.  When it asks you if you want SMS Backup and Restore to be your default SMS app, say yes.  If you don't check the box for duplicate detection, this goes very fast. Mine copied like 5,000 texts in less than 2 minutes.
5. Switch your default messaging app back to Hangouts (or whatever app you want to use).

As for T-Mobile's Visual Voicemail app, you can find the .apk file at xda-developers. Click on the file attached by o_z0ne. It works for me.

Everything else is the same as before:

• Android has fewer apps than iOS, but there are so many at this point that you can basically find whatever you want. There are more apps than Windows Phone.
• Android is way more customizable than both Windows Phone and iOS
• The hardware ecosystem is still excellent, of course. SlimPort for video output (it seems to work a lot better than the Nexus 4), micro-USB for charging, and NFC to send links, apps, and pictures to people.

Other Notes

The Nexus 5 is available on AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint (suck it, Verizon!). If you buy it from the Google Play Store, it's $350-$400, but it's more expensive from the carriers--reportedly because Google charges them more. I'm not sure what's stopping carriers from buying phones from the site and selling them for like a small markup.

Nexus 5,
posted up against the wall

So I recommend buying directly from Google and then getting a cheap no-contract plan.

Conclusion

Is the Nexus 5 worth the upgrade from the Nexus 4? Not just no, but hell no. GottaBeMobile agrees. It's just a few small, mostly unnoticeable upgrades. But most people have 2-year contracts, so it is definitely a worthy upgrade from the Galaxy Nexus for the performance, battery, screen and camera. Also, the Galaxy Nexus won't be upgraded to KitKat, so there's that.

The Nexus 5 slightly improves an already amazing phone: stock, always updated Android (ignore the Galaxy Nexus aberration); good camera; light; thin; good battery life; great performance; LTE; available on 3 carriers; fantastic display; and a 32 GB option; all for about half the price of any phone with competing specs. I'm going to make it easy for you: unless having a great night-time camera is important to you, I'd recommend this above all other smartphones.  If you want an awesome camera, get an iPhone 5S or Nokia 1020 or maybe a Galaxy S IV (I'm not sure what Android phone has the best camera).