Google Nexus 5

Google Nexus 5 Review

Google Nexus 5 smartphone is smooth, has more space in its design, and comes with larger icons and crisper fonts. It is now much easier for one to arrange his or her furniture with the phone’s home screens by simply tapping and holding on an empty space, adding widgets, changing the wallpaper, or arranging various screens in one place.

Features

The Google Nexus 5 smartphone has an immersive mode that enables an application to take up the whole display. Unlike its predecessor, the phone’s Google Wallet does not have any restrictions and instead works with NFC for paying and tapping. The smartphone comes with a smart caller ID that helps in matching unknown callers with priority contacts, Google Maps listings, and full-screen movie art and album whenever the phone is locked. The phone’s Hangouts app helps in aggregating video calls, MMS, SMS and any other conversations into a single view. This smartphone’s users will also enjoy faster multitasking because of its better memory management that ensures that apps do not consume large RAM amounts.

Multimedia and Camera

On the phone’s 32GB loaner model is 26.42GB internal storage outside the box. Music tracks now sound clearer, thanks to its Bluetooth, video-wired earphones. The phone can smoothly play videos of up to 1080p; such videos will still look vibrant and sharp even in full-screen mode. The phone’s lock screen has a beautiful full screen album art. In addition to the device’s third-party options like Pandora and Spotify, its Google Play Store gives its users access to TV shows, thousands of movies, and millions of downloadable songs. The best bit about this is that all these can follow the user from one device to the next because they are all stored in the cloud.

The phone comes with an 8-megapixel camera that offers autofocus and optical image stabilization. In addition, the user will find it much faster and easier to focus and fire, thanks to its new camera app that works well in both low light places and the outdoors, and achieves white balance much faster than before.

The phone has less shutter lag, enabling the user to pinch-zoom its viewfinder in HDR+ mode. Google has also added a circular timer and sound effect to show the user how long the camera can be kept steady while completing its shots in HDR+ mode.

The Google Nexus 5 smartphone’s camera performance has improved significantly. For example, the user can strip up its focusing by aiming it at a lit Christmass wreath. The user will find it easy to focus and snap sharp photos both outdoors and indoors. In addition, the phone’s camera does not keep refocusing. All one has to do is tap its screen and get the desired focus, and then shoot. It is particularly fast in good light.

Google Nexus 5’s recorded 1080p videos look good and play smoothly both indoors and outdoors. The phone also has a 1.3-megapixel camera that faces the front and is ideal for test photos, video chats, and selfies.

Nexus 5 was intended to be Google’s official platform for development. As such, users will always get the latest updates of the OS. However, there is no solid camera app baked in the phone’s OS. In addition, the unlocked Galaxy Nexus cannot run KitKat, an indication that the phone can be fragmented by Android after some time; this period is usually shorter than what normally happens with most iOS devices.

That aside, the Google Nexus 5 smartphone is still the best phone if one does not want to be stuck on older OS versions since he or she will always receive Android updates in good time. Moreover, the smartphone is clean and does not have vendor and carrier bloatware that cannot be removed. This phone is a good deal since its competitors are way too expensive, yet they run the same OS. What’s more, Google Nexus 5 has a faster GPU than most of its competitors in the market. Most importantly, the phone’s subsidized price is impossible to beat. That is why many people insist on Google Nexus 5 unlocked smartphone with camera improvements and Android updates.

Design, Display, and Connectivity

The Google Nexus 5 is perfectly balanced to hold and it feels lighter than Apple iPhone 5 although that is not the case. The Nexus 5’s dimensions are 5.43 by 2.72 by 0.34, and is housed in a comfortable, rubber, soft-touch casing. The phone’s left panel has the volume rocker switch while the top edge has a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. The right side has the Power button at its top and a micro-SIM slot just below it. The bottom edge has the mono speaker and a microphone. The back panel has a small LG logo and a large Nexus logo. In addition, it has a raised circle for the camera’s sensor and an LED flash just below it. The phone’s raised portion looks quite strange, but appears scratch free and durable, thanks to a thin plastic ring around its edge.

Google Nexus 5’s HD IPS display comes with a 1920 by 1080-pixel resolution, a Corning Gorilla Glass3, and a tight 445ppi. It is sharp, detailed, and colorful, although not as bright as some of its competitors such as Samsung Galaxy S4. The former lacks the latter’s oversaturated colors, which could be a plus, depending on the viewpoint one decides to take. With Google Nexus 5, it is very easy to type with its on-screen keyboard, both in landscape and portrait models. The phone’s inbuilt sensor array has pressure, ambient light, proximity, compass, accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS and Hall Effect that helps in detecting changes in magnetic fields.

For easy connectivity, the Google Nexus 5 smartphone works with numerous bands, but all with an American bias. In the US, one will get the best experience on Sprint, T-Mobile, or AT&T, including support for Spark LTE network. Verizon Wireless does not authenticate Nexus 5 on its network, so it cannot be used there. While overseas, one will generally see HSPA+ compatibility instead of LTE. One can also find 802.11/a/b/n/ac Wi-Fi on both 5- and 2.4GHz bands, plus NFC and Bluetooth 4.0 LE. As such, the user will not experience any problem connecting to WPA2-encripted 5GHz network.

Call Quality, OS, and Apps

The Google Nexus 5 is an ideal phone for voice calls, although not the best in the market. This is not to say that the phone has a problem with its earpiece. Far from it, it has a fantastic voice quality with a clear, loud, warm tone that does not vibrate the owner’s handset, and delivers the caller’s clear sound. The problem is actually on the transmission end. The transmission through the phone’s microphone has a lot of hiss and distortion. Although the user’s voice is intelligible to other callers, it sounds muddled and indistinct.

The Phone’s Reception is Fine

Calls to the phone through a Bluetooth headset sound quite fine and there is no need for voice dialing. The mono speaker located on its bottom left edge sounds quite clear although not loud enough since it has some distortion at the phone’s top volume setting. Google Nexus 5’s 2300mAH battery is not removable. However, the smartphone supports wireless charging, and its battery lasts close to 15 hours of talk time on one charge.

The Google Nexus 5 smartphone has a 2.26GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB RAM, and a 450 MHz Adreno 330 GPU. These features make it a very fast phone with task switching, smooth animations and scrolling. One can also install Android apps very quickly on this phone. This smartphone is smoother and faster than iPhone 5. Although browsing the Internet may be inherently jerkier as is the case with many Android phones, this will not be the case with app drawer animations and home screens.

The Google Nexus 5 smartphone has recorded very good benchmark scores mainly because of its next-generation system integrated on a chip. The smartphone has also scored very well on 3D tests and on Browsemark. Some of Google Nexus 5’s features trail those of the Galaxy Note 3, which has the same GPU and processor but more RAM. Still, the Google Nexus 5 smartphone has proved to be ideal for gaming. Its Asphalt 8: Airborne is incredible with smooth frame rates. Moreover, even when the screen is full of computer-controlled cars, only a slight slowdown can be occasionally seen.