So I have finally managed to grab this phone, all thanks to a friend of mine in US who was able to get one for me for $420. I was really frustrated with manufacturers (Motorola!) screwing the customers by backing out of promised OS updates and I had pledged that my next phone would be a Nexus for sure. The phone is really a steal for the price it’s selling for. It has a premium feel to it when we hold it (sans the poetic borderline bumper). The display I feel is very good, coming from my Motorola Electrify with a crappy pentile display. The glittering back glass with the Nexus logo in silver is really a visual treat, the only reason for me getting a bumper instead of a case. The hardware revision of my device is 11 and I am not having any common issues reported by various Nexus 4 users especially on hardware revision 10 devices i.e. buzzing earpiece, distorted sound from earpiece and speakers, yellow tint on screen after using it for longer periods, rattling sound, creaky microUSB port etc.
Coming to the software part, the android version that it came with is 4.2 but as soon as I connected to a Wifi network for initial setup, it prompted me about a software update available and it updated itself to 4.2.1. I have already unlocked the bootloader and rooted the device as I’m lazy to install more than 130 apps, where Titanium Backup helps a lot. I have not installed a custom recovery yet as I suppose we won’t be able to install updates pushed by Google. The lockscreen widgets are cool too. The GPS gets a fix in less than 10 seconds, which is really good as my previous phones took more than 30 – 50 seconds to get a fix. I tried Android Beam/NFS with a friend having S3 and it worked without issues too. The OS is very polished and very snappy and there is hardly any lag noticed while using different apps. I was amazed to see the level of multitasking abilities of this device. Switching between apps is ‘maska’. The only thing I’m missing are the notification toggles like Cyanogenmod, which I was addicted to. Although the double finger swiping menu thingy serves a bit, still I would have loved notification toggles.
The call quality is better than my Motorola Electrify, something which I didn’t expect. The sound on the earpiece is very loud at full volume and I had to reduce it. On my Electrify it was always on maximum volume. The speaker is also loud enough but the sound is suppressed when the device is lying on a flat surface, still easily audible though. The sound from earphones is descent while using stock audio player but I use Poweramp which provides a much better sound quality. The network reception is also good enough, didn’t notice any issues yet.
Now the gaming part, I installed Asphalt 7:Heat just to test the GPU capabilities and played it for around 15 – 20 minutes and I didn’t notice any frameskips, uninstalled it as I’ve completed it already. In NFS Most Wanted I was able to notice some minor frameskips here and there, which happened probably because of the early thermal throttling bug which is yet to be fixed. The device does get warm while playing games and while using internet on 3G.
I am yet to test the camera properly as I hardly use it. Tried Photosphere but was not successful in getting a proper result. I think it requires practice.
The battery life is pretty average, again something Google would probably fix in the next update. Some users have reported better backup after flashing some custom kernels with undervolting capabilities, available on XDA, something I won’t be trying so soon. I get around 24 hours backup from 100 to 5% based on my usage. It may improve as this is just the second day. I was getting around 30 hours on my Motorola Electrify with a Tegra 2 and 1700mah battery. I was expecting at least similar battery backup.
I also have not benchmarked it as I don’t care. But if anyone wants me to do it, please let me know. If anyone wants me to check anything specific, I would happily oblige.
Apologies for bad quality pics, friend has taken my camera. This is taken using my Motorola Electrify.
The biggest post by me on IBF. Phew!!!
Coming to the software part, the android version that it came with is 4.2 but as soon as I connected to a Wifi network for initial setup, it prompted me about a software update available and it updated itself to 4.2.1. I have already unlocked the bootloader and rooted the device as I’m lazy to install more than 130 apps, where Titanium Backup helps a lot. I have not installed a custom recovery yet as I suppose we won’t be able to install updates pushed by Google. The lockscreen widgets are cool too. The GPS gets a fix in less than 10 seconds, which is really good as my previous phones took more than 30 – 50 seconds to get a fix. I tried Android Beam/NFS with a friend having S3 and it worked without issues too. The OS is very polished and very snappy and there is hardly any lag noticed while using different apps. I was amazed to see the level of multitasking abilities of this device. Switching between apps is ‘maska’. The only thing I’m missing are the notification toggles like Cyanogenmod, which I was addicted to. Although the double finger swiping menu thingy serves a bit, still I would have loved notification toggles.
The call quality is better than my Motorola Electrify, something which I didn’t expect. The sound on the earpiece is very loud at full volume and I had to reduce it. On my Electrify it was always on maximum volume. The speaker is also loud enough but the sound is suppressed when the device is lying on a flat surface, still easily audible though. The sound from earphones is descent while using stock audio player but I use Poweramp which provides a much better sound quality. The network reception is also good enough, didn’t notice any issues yet.
Now the gaming part, I installed Asphalt 7:Heat just to test the GPU capabilities and played it for around 15 – 20 minutes and I didn’t notice any frameskips, uninstalled it as I’ve completed it already. In NFS Most Wanted I was able to notice some minor frameskips here and there, which happened probably because of the early thermal throttling bug which is yet to be fixed. The device does get warm while playing games and while using internet on 3G.
I am yet to test the camera properly as I hardly use it. Tried Photosphere but was not successful in getting a proper result. I think it requires practice.
The battery life is pretty average, again something Google would probably fix in the next update. Some users have reported better backup after flashing some custom kernels with undervolting capabilities, available on XDA, something I won’t be trying so soon. I get around 24 hours backup from 100 to 5% based on my usage. It may improve as this is just the second day. I was getting around 30 hours on my Motorola Electrify with a Tegra 2 and 1700mah battery. I was expecting at least similar battery backup.
I also have not benchmarked it as I don’t care. But if anyone wants me to do it, please let me know. If anyone wants me to check anything specific, I would happily oblige.
Apologies for bad quality pics, friend has taken my camera. This is taken using my Motorola Electrify.
The biggest post by me on IBF. Phew!!!
