Andy Rubin, who's the head of Android at Google, said that the point of this phone is to spread the nexus brand to a lot more markets across the world, something that they didn't do with the Galaxy Nexus. Keeping this in mind, they chose not to put LTE since only a limited number of users in one country would actually benefit from it. It'd be great if this phone would actually go on to be a huge hit, say, like the galaxy series. A lot more people would get to use stock android that way, and see how good it actually is.
Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
161–169 of 169 posts
Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may not be widely deployed outside the US, but that doesn't mean new devices shouldn't support the new standards. Imagine if when Microsoft was designing Windows 7 they said "well, no one is using IPv6 right now so we won't include any support."
The difference between Windows 7 supporting IPv6 and the Nexus 4 supporting LTE is that LTE requires a physical chip that costs extra to manufacture. Why force all users to pay extra for an LTE radio if most users will not see any benefit from it?
The difference is Google will release another Nexus within one year that will likely have LTE. MSFT makes a new Windows version every 4 years or so.
Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
#163Not a single mention of how it compares to an iPhone. I know it's androidpolice.com, but it's weird to have such a long review without making ANY comparisons to the most-popular phone in the world....
Agreed, the iPhone is a bit of an elephant in the room here. Particularly when the author waxes lyrical about how nice it is to have front and back made of Gorilla Glass (exactly like the recently-superseded iPhone 4/4S).
Apples to oranges. iPhone 5 is severely limited when purchased in the US: you can't unlock and put a different (overseas) carrier's SIM when you're out of country, until you complete your 2 year contract.
Unsubsidized, the iPhone is $699. Unsubsidized Nexus 4 is $350.
Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember, outside of the US LTE is essentially a non-feature, so there are lots of people who don't actually care. Then there are the people who could use LTE, but find their current network fast enough. I live in a place with no LTE, but honestly if it were to degrade battery life I'd rather live without it: faster network is always nice, but the current one is fast enough.
It may not be widely deployed outside the US, but that doesn't mean new devices shouldn't support the new standards. Imagine if when Microsoft was designing Windows 7 they said "well, no one is using IPv6 right now so we won't include any support."
Current operators don't have voice working on LTE, phone vendors need to keep both 3G and LTE radios on to kludge around this.
When the operators/LTE network vendors get their voice act together, phone vendors can start selling proper LTE phones.
Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about funny; it's useful for a quicker GPS fix : https://plus.google.com/112413860260589530492/posts/jVJhPyou...
and pressureNET! ;) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbu...
What exactly is the usefulness of having thousands of barometer readings measured from the inside of a phone inside peoples' homes, purses, pockets, workplaces, and so on? Seems destined to be a network of meaningless bad reads.
Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me at least, the nexus brand's long OS support time is more than enough to pull me in. The fact that nexus S got Jelly Bean sounds a very good reason to go for Nexus.
And for me, the expandable storage on (most of) the Galaxy series is infinitely more important than official OS updates (which Samsung is pretty good at on their major phones).
> official OS updates (which Samsung is pretty good at on their major phones)
On what planet? The Galaxy S II was certainly a major phone (just one short generation older than current) and yet it's still officially on 2.x. The only good thing to say about Samsung's OS updates is that the CyanogenMod community behind their phones is diligent.
Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
And for me, the expandable storage on (most of) the Galaxy series is infinitely more important than official OS updates (which Samsung is pretty good at on their major phones).
> official OS updates (which Samsung is pretty good at on their major phones) On what planet? The Galaxy S II was certainly a major phone (just one short generation older than current) and yet it's still officially on 2.x. The only good thing to say about Samsung's OS updates is that the CyanogenMod community behind their phones is diligent.
Eh? Wikipedia says that 4.0 is the current version for the S2, and my S2 variant (the E4GT) is on 4.0.
Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember, outside of the US LTE is essentially a non-feature, so there are lots of people who don't actually care. Then there are the people who could use LTE, but find their current network fast enough. I live in a place with no LTE, but honestly if it were to degrade battery life I'd rather live without it: faster network is always nice, but the current one is fast enough.
It may not be widely deployed outside the US, but that doesn't mean new devices shouldn't support the new standards. Imagine if when Microsoft was designing Windows 7 they said "well, no one is using IPv6 right now so we won't include any support."
> Imagine if when Microsoft was designing Windows 7 they said "well, no one is using IPv6 right now so we won't include any support."
That's not a fair comparison. IPv6 is required so our internet doesn't crumble around us, LTE is just getting cat pictures to your eyeballs quicker.
Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an iPhone user (4S) that all sounds pretty standard! On a more serious note, I don't understand all the fuss about LTE. IIRC it's something like 20Mbps in practice, which is faster than most Internet connections in the US. What is the use case for such bandwidth on a phone? YouTube already plays just fine with HSPA+.
Wow 6 replies here and nobody has specifically called out latency. I have a verizon LTE device that I tether with from time to time, and the ping times I get to my home server are insane, usually around 20ms. When I tether on my HSPA galaxy nexus, ping times are usually around 100+ms. Now this could be verizon vs t-mobile and not LTE vs HSPA (or some mix). Verizon is the only/main LTE-supporting provider right now, s…
Ahh, a quick bit of googling does seem to suggest that LTE should provide lower latency than HSPA. That certainly is a benefit, much more so IMHO than the bandwidth numbers we see carriers boasting about!