The Nexus 5 has been out for a while. I’ve been using one as my personal phone for several months now and I have to say this is one nice phone. If you have the money to spend and are looking into an unlocked phone get this one.
When we got a nice tax refund check (thank you obscure tax codes) we finally upgraded our smart phones at home and each got a Nexus 5 unlocked straight from Google. In fact if you are looking to buy the N5, save yourself some time and get it from Google. Shipping takes a little longer, especially if it out of stock, than getting it from Amazon or Newegg but you’ll save yourself $100 or more overall. I looked at several different websites, including Amazon, Newegg and eBay. The best deal is buying it straight from Google. You might be able to get it for the same price on eBay, but they are generally used. If you are going to pay the same for it might as well get it new.
Since the phone has been out for a few months I’m not going to give a complete review or run down. Just do a search and you’ll find websites galore with that. Instead I’m going to try and convince you why it’s worth getting. To get the unlocked phone will cost about $380 (including shipping) for the 16gb version. Three to four gigs is taken up by the operating system which leaves about 12 gigs to install apps, pictures, videos, etcetera. For my use this is plenty, someone who downloads lots of movies or music for offline use may want to spring for the 32gb version.
What makes it a great phone? First it’s thin and light and easy to hold one handed. Yes I have to move it around a little for one handed operation when opening apps but it’s not cumbersome. The 4.95” screen seems to be the right size between screen real estate and usability. In fact the overall size the phone seems to be about just right. Second is that it is fast. Between the Snapdragon 800, 2 gigs of RAM and stock Android it never seems to lag. The benefit of a fast phone and no bloatware.
Aside from the screen size the resolution is awesome. It is full HD at 1920x1080 which puts the PPI at 445. Everything is sharp and clear, movies, pictures and apps. Text is easy to read. I’m not one to notice color saturation or anything like that so I cannot comment. When you first use the phone the screen can seem a little dim however it is an easy fix to change the brightness. Originally I did not use the auto brightness feature in Android and used an app called Lux Lite Dash. It does a better job of managing the auto brightness and balancing power saving. However the app is pretty slow to respond and recent updates to Android seem to have improved the auto brightness. For a while I went back and forth between the app and the built in feature. I eventually didn’t notice a difference between the app and Android in terms of battery life.
The camera at 8 mega pixels does a decent job of taking pictures. I cannot say I would complain of the picture quality. The HDR function works well in low to normal indoor light conditions. Zooming in on the phone reveals no discernible quality loss. I have to open the picture up on a desktop computer and zoom in quite a bit for it to look fuzzy.
In short this phone is easy to use, fast, great screen and has all the features you would want in a premium smartphone. I only have a few caveats. I wish it had an auto HDR function that would determine if HDR is to be used when taking a picture. As it is I switch it on and off depending what I’m taking a picture of. Sometimes I’ll reshoot the same scene to determine the best shot. I’ve read the Samsung Galaxy S5 has this feature but is very slow when taking pictures. The back of the phone is quite slippery. In fact I dropped the phone after a few days and the screen cracked. However it turns out to be fairly easy though a bit time consuming to take the phone apart and replace the screen, so that was nice.
Finally the speaker; smartphone speakers are normally nothing to brag about (the HTC One with boom sound is a great improvement to that and I’d love to get my hands on that phone). It is located on the bottom so if you turn the phone horizontal to watch something it can be pretty easy to cover with your finger. It is also not incredibly loud. This is more of a concern with hearing the ringer or the alarm when it is in my pocket or the next room. Not impossible to hear but it would be nice if it could get louder. The plus however is that since the speaker is at the bottom not the back I can set the phone down and it does not get muffled.
Overall the phone is great to use is a Nexus device so it gets fast updates and is fairly low cost for a premium device. If you are not ready to pay full price, you can get one from Sprint for nothing down, of course you pay more per month. It would be worth checking out deals at different carriers. While the phone is not perfect (no phone is **cough** ‘iPhone’), it provides the best value for the money when it comes to premium smartphones. Buying the phone unlocked is definitely more expensive than getting it on contract, however with the price of the phone and depending on which MVNO you use, you will quickly save money each month.
