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Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

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121–130 of 142 posts

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#121
post #106
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my top two uses for my smartphone are as an ebook reader and to browse the web. large screens are superb for both of those.

Well, if you don't care as much about portability, I think an iPad is far superior at both of those tasks than any smartphone I've encountered.

An iPad doesn't fit in your jeans pocket.

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#122

People who are hung up on this and that missing feature, I understand why, but that's missing the point imo. There has never been a phone this good, this high profile, sold directly to consumers from day one, for this price. This is simply the biggest shot so far in a strategic war Google is waging against US cell carriers and in the mobile device space against Apple.

What bothers me is why T-Mobile isn't marketing this more. That price point is HUGE. I'm wondering if Samsung and the Galaxy S3 have a deal with T-Mobile to continue to heavily market their phone.

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#123
post #100

$299 for an unlocked smartphone on NO contract, on lead device hardware, with the newest Android OS (and which will receive updates as soon as they're ready), and solid reviews? Yikes!!

And it's not just that you'll get updates--you'll also be able to grab the source directly from the Android site, make any tweaks you like, and build your very own image for your phone. You should be able to run bleeding-edge Android as it goes into the repo if you feel like living dangerously. It beats the usual "Well, we might get a Cyanogenmod ROM... maybe" for other phones.

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#124
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOA? LTE is way overpriced and not available in most areas. I don't see how LTE is even a 'big' innovation for apps. YouTube HD works perfectly on HSPA+, I'm not sure what else you need...

What do you mean by "LTE is way overpriced"? Do any carriers charge more for the faster network, or are you just referring to the fact that you can utilize your data quota much faster?

Mainly that T-Mobile HSPA+ @ 42 mbps is faster, cheaper, and more widely available than LTE on Verizon

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#125
post #84

From the article, "Android has a new champion. The Nexus 4 ... is the best overall Android handset currently available, and it’s one of the best phones to be released this year." And, "It’s as close to perfect as I’ve seen any Android smartphone get. But the Nexus 4 falls just short of perfection due to one major omission: It’s not compatible with any LTE networks. The Nexus 4 will run on just about any other cellula…

Honestly, the choice of HSPA+ over LTE is a no-brainer. The former is plenty fast and has better coverage domestically and all over the world; the latter is a smidgeon faster in limited cases and a battery hog. LTE offers some interesting capacity benefits for providers, but is being seriously over-marketed, as your post proves.

The iPhone 5 gets better battery life than the iPhone 4S when using LTE vs HSPA. My iPad 3 with AT&T LTE gets 27 Mbps down and 14 Mbps up on my most recent speed test. I doubt you will get anywhere near those speeds on HSPA+.

The Nexus 4 is a weird mix of premium components with last years radios.

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#126
post #10

Yes, I want this phone but it's huge. Please google, someone - make a decent phone that's not the size of a giant's thumb. I guess they've done their focus groups and their whatevers and decided that people want more screensize but please for the love of god make a small awesome Android phone for a girl's hands and purse and european small-sized car with a tiny dashboard (because I use mine for GPS every-single-day)…

You might like the Samsung Captivate. 4" screen and I am running Jellybean on it. Not current gen, but not poor performance by any stretch of the imagination.

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it an excellent opportunity for people with older phones to buy a nice new one. Only downside is the gigantic screen.

And the pitiful internal storage coupled with the lack of expandable storage. It's still much more convenient for me to sync music to a card than to wrangle with the various cloud services.

Wifi + sftp client have helped me manage my ebooks on my phone, copying them from my Linux box. You ought to be able to do something similar, just get on your home wifi network and pull over your music.

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#128

Some people will be unhappy because it doesn't have LTE, or a removable battery or a micro-SD expansion slot. However, there are probably other phones which do have the right mix of features and form factor. That's the nice thing about Android, consumers have a lot of choice.

Not having an SD Card should help shore up some security issues from attackers being able to pop and replace your card to get and put items on your phone.

The current bootloaders are not secure when unlocked and rooted -- there is no password protection -- so with a removable SD Card anyone can boot into your bootloader and put code on your phone, even if you have USB Debugging deactivated. Removing the SD Card is one step towards solving this.

The next step to hardening the phone would be to provide a security check to access the bootloader. One of the reasons given as to why this hasn't happened is because the keyboard interface isn't loaded in the bootloader so you can't enter a password. However, you can navigate up and down via volume keys so you could have sequence-based passwords like Konami codes in video games.

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#129
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't work on Verizon or Sprint. Do you have a source for this?

The article lists a bunch of GSM standards, but not CDMA or LTE, which it would need to work on Verizon or Sprint.

To be allowed on us networks they'd need Cdma and LTE. Nexus will have LTE again when that is no longer true.

Re: Google Nexus 4: Nearly flawless

#130
post #21

I'm having a terrible first world problem: I want to use both Nexus 4 and iPhone 5. It's literally making me insane. I currently own iPhone 5 but each time I read Nexus reviews, I want to get Nexus 4. I can't use both as I have just one phone number. Perhaps I'll get Nexus 4 and just switch the sim card around. That's terrible. ARGH.

Switch your sim card over to Nexus 4. If you buy Nexus 4 unlocked, it can probably do out-of-the-box WiFi tethering (My Nexus One could but not sure if 4.2 stock android still has that feature preserved). To use your iPhone 5, connect it to your Nexus 4's WiFi hotspot.
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