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Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

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Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#91

Post by nollidge »

metatronscube wrote: post #56
eggbrain wrote: post #38

Am I the only one that finds it somewhat funny that a phone with no LTE, non-removable battery, no SD card slot and glass front and back is the most talked about Android phone to date?

Yeah for instance when Apple did this design a few years ago it was mostly unacceptable among Fandroids and HN crowd. Now its good, because its Android. Its no secret that HN is heavily biased against Apple (and to some extent MS). I don't know, must be all the Google employees here or something. Its always interesting to watch how these conversations turn out. Its been getting a lot more noticeable over the years on…

> HN is heavily biased against Apple

This is absurd. HN is not a monolith. Every time Apple has a new product there's plenty of people fawning over it, plenty deriding it, and most people somewhere in between who don't care enough to comment.

Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#92

Post by halefx »

Irregardless wrote: post #62
eggbrain wrote: post #38

Am I the only one that finds it somewhat funny that a phone with no LTE, non-removable battery, no SD card slot and glass front and back is the most talked about Android phone to date?

I didn't believe the specs when I first saw them. Those are some of the things that have always made Android phones a no-brainer over the iPhone for me. I've heard this phone still has huge appeal in the international market, but those are definitely deal breakers for a lot of U.S. users. 1. 4G tethering / hotspot is amazing and doesn't require an additional subscription on previous Nexus phones. 2. 16 GB (13 GB free…

Are you implying that tethering is different on the Nexus 4?

Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#93

Post by bryanlarsen »

mikelward wrote: post #85
hayksaakian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've dropped my galaxy nexus plenty, and its still getting by without a kink in the screen or the body, albeit scratches on the corners.

My screen broke somehow when it was sitting in my backpack. Not the best construction ever.

Considering that the Galaxy Nexus doesn't have Gorilla Glass, the fact that this doesn't happen to most people speaks to its quality construction.

IIRC, you couldn't get curved Gorilla Glass back then so Google decided to go with regular glass rather than give up the subtle curve.

Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#94

Post by nagrom »

With bluetooth and induction charging, can we now make beautiful, fast phones with no flaps to cover the ports? I've had two phones broken through water damage; surely the time has come for a manufacturer to add such an obvious feature to its high-end devices?

Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#95

Post by lmm »

Nursie wrote: post #73
lmm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're carrying a small tablet that can make phone calls, why bother with a separate phone?

There is that, yes! OTOH the use-case was pretty plane-specific, and you don't often need a phone on a plane. Perhaps a 7 inch tablet (to replace the kindle) would suffice. Though then we run into the same problem, the Nexus 7 has no SD slot either!

FWIW I've given up on a dedicated device for that use case; my 11" ultrabook-like (Samsung NP900X1B) can play a much wider range of videos (and also games, coding etc.) and is small enough to be comfortable on a plane. There's a very small space where I'd want a 7-inch-type device (on my way to/from a club is pretty much the only use case I can think of), but I'm not sure there are 7-inch screens much better than a big phone screen.

(personal experience, probably different for other people)

Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#96

Post by Irregardless »

halefx wrote: post #92
Irregardless wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't believe the specs when I first saw them. Those are some of the things that have always made Android phones a no-brainer over the iPhone for me. I've heard this phone still has huge appeal in the international market, but those are definitely deal breakers for a lot of U.S. users. 1. 4G tethering / hotspot is amazing and doesn't require an additional subscription on previous Nexus phones. 2. 16 GB (13 GB free…

Are you implying that tethering is different on the Nexus 4?

No, it's more about the lack of 4G. Streaming full-screen HD videos and playing games on a laptop over 3G is a stretch, but I have no issues doing either with the 4G connection of my Galaxy Nexus. Even loading large web pages was noticeably slower using the 3G connection of my previous Droid.

Verizon's 4G definitely rivals Comcast's cable in terms of latency and reliability, if not in raw speed.

Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#97

Post by Nursie »

gridaphobe wrote: post #75
eggbrain wrote: post #38

Am I the only one that finds it somewhat funny that a phone with no LTE, non-removable battery, no SD card slot and glass front and back is the most talked about Android phone to date?

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+.

Potentially there's less latency on an LTE connection, so far as I can tell from a quick search. This could be useful for a bunch of stuff - playing TF2 via a tethered phone perhaps?

Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#98

Post by kolleykibber »

mikelward wrote: post #84
nickik wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Nexus S (Samsung too) and I have dropped that phone many many times (I like the Swing the phone between my Fingers). That thing is stable, sure the cover springs of and the battery falls out but it keeps working and the screen still hole too. Good Phone the Nexus S.

It's really easy to drop the Nexus S. The back is too slippery.

I think the Nexus S is one of the most functional phones of the last two years. I kept returning to it after trying other phones. I will be upgrading to the Nexus 4. Although, I travel a lot with a backpack and having multiple batteries allows me up to 4 days without charging. I guess we're giving up functionality for design.

I might attempt a DIY groin charger.

Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#99

Post by danialtz »

gridaphobe wrote: post #75
eggbrain wrote: post #38

Am I the only one that finds it somewhat funny that a phone with no LTE, non-removable battery, no SD card slot and glass front and back is the most talked about Android phone to date?

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+.

The best part is that they give you high speed LTE but with only 3 GB/month cap, and after that it caps to GPRS; at least here for vodafone.de

Re: Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone

#100

Post by darrenkopp »

hayksaakian wrote: post #19
davidw wrote: post #7

> The other complaint I've heard is that this phone has a glass back, and it will break if you drop it. This is true, but guess what? Every phone will break if you drop it. Electronics aren't made to be dropped. Say what you will about their recent problems, but Nokia made phones that were solid. I dropped them on numerous occasions without problems. I've been pretty happy with the Samsung phone that replaced my Noki…

I've dropped my galaxy nexus plenty, and its still getting by without a kink in the screen or the body, albeit scratches on the corners.

Yeah I've dropped mine a lot of times and the screen didn't crack, just got a few minor scratches. Then I got some new jeans that were a bit tighter than my normal ones and I cracked it in my pocket with a hairline crack going across the screen horizontally.

Direct blows = pretty good. Torque from twisting = damn it.

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