The N4 is good enough in bright light, as most high-end smartphones have been for a couple of years, but even in indoor lighting it's pretty mediocre. It's a lot better than the Galaxy Nexus - it'd be hard for it not to be - but it's nowhere near the current crop of flagship devices (One, S4, iPhone 5, Lumia 920/5/8, Xperia Z, Find 5, etc), or even the better cameras from the last generation like the One X/S or S3. Look at Brian's review if you don't believe me.
Falling short of flagships costing twice as much isn't the worst thing in the world either. For people like me coming from smartphones two generations down, the shots look pretty nice. People don't buy the Nexus 4 for the highest end experience, even if you want stock Google there's the stock Android S4 now being offered. The Nexus 4 is for most of the high end experience in a much lower price bracket.
And I know you weren't trying to start a debate with that and I'm rambling, but a cheap small P&S camera is still worlds ahead of the best smartphones if you really care about IQ, for me at least a smartphone camera just has to be serviceable in a pinch while a dedicated camera still does anything worth taking.
I'd rather have an N4 than the S4GE for a bunch of reasons, too. But yeah, I mean, I love the hell out of the Nexus 4, it's probably my second favorite handset out there right now after the One, but I'm not going to pretend like the camera is particularly good. Certain things had to get cut for the Nexus 4 to hit that price point, but that's only a justification for why camera performance isn't an end of the world problem.
The Nexus 4 is a lot smoother in day to day use than the Galaxy 4 is. It's actually pretty upsetting how much stuttering goes on with the S4 considering the internals and for me, at least, makes for a less than premium experience while operating it. Plus, with a rooted phone and customer kernel, the N4 is faster than my stock Galaxy 4 when opening apps or doing just about anything. It's just a nicer experience though even if left stock IMO.
Are you comparing AOSP and AOSP? I'd be interestedin how the GS4 NUE does. Theoretically it should outperform the Nexus 4. But in reality, things differ. Just like theoretically the Nexus 4 should have great battery life, but in reality all the Nexii suck. Why? Who knows? AOSP isn't optimized? Theoretically the GS2 should rock the GNex in AOSP, but due to broken butter, CM 10/10.1 always looks horrendous on the GS2.
We'll wait and see, but I don't think comparing GS4 on Touchwiz against AOSP is fair in terms of performance. We all know the OEM skins = LAGfests.
While the N4 is priced low, I think we need to stop making excuses for it based on price. Google's trying to throw a wrench in the pricing of phones. We all know phones don't cost $600 to build yet they've always been this price (esp for smartphones). Google's also realizing it has to compete in a US market that understands NOTHING but subsidized phones. As a result they need cheap phones to compete. Even $499 or $529 or $549 is hard to sell. Look at how many people have a Nexus 10 (the XDA section is completely empty and the CM devs totally ignore the device). Price matters.
Furthermore, the N4 isn't even priced at $299/$349 in the rest of the globe. Why? Because people value unlocked phones quite a bit and they're selling for even higher price.
The reason the camera sucks is not because they priced it at $299/$349. Even if they priced it at $599, it would have the same sucky camera. It's not going to all of a sudden have a winner. The Galaxy Nexus was high priced and had a horrendous camera. They cut LTE out because the LTE battery issue on the GNex gave it a bad rep. Furthermore, not enough users around the world have LTE yet and its tricky to have an LTE phone work in the US AND around the world. The demand for LTE wasn't as high that they could get away with it then.
Honestly, the camera and LTE and battery life are huge issues on the Nexus 4. I dont think we should ever be excusing any of these issues due to pricing.
No, the Nexus 4 camera does indeed suck, Vivek is correct. Sugar coat it all you want, no Nexus has to date shipped with anything close to a decent camera.
are you kidding me? I carry an iPhone 5 for work and a Nexus 4 for personal reasons. I have about 16 photos on my Nexus 4 and 300+ on my iPhone 5. Hmmm. I created an iPhone 5 versus Nexus 4 photo album for people to pick the better photo and out of all 10 photos I posted where I took photos using both phones of the same subject, everyone picked the iPhone 5 camera.
With that said I'm not trying to pimp the iPhone. The Nexus 4 just flat out sucks. I'll take my Galaxy S2 camera over the Nexus 4 as well.
I want the Nexus 4 soon, but I'm curious if any manufacturing tweak has fixed the thermal throttling issue yet. People have been fixing it with 0.5mm copper shims from ebay for a few cents, plus some thermal paste. It would be trivially easy in mass production. And I think the Optimus G already uses a similar method to pass the heat into the metal inner frame of the phone, like those modders were doing, so it seems like a safe method. Seems like nothing but cheapness and laziness preventing it.
It's not something I've run into, but there has been some help from 3rd party kernels. I wouldn't mind a teardown of the white N4 to see if there's a difference, though.
Those kernels by the way just increase the heat threshold by the way, they don't safely dissipate more heat or intelligently manage cores or anything. They just let the battery and SoC heat past where they should
I thought you had to manually do that, but yeah, that can help. But I'd much rather a physical manufacturing tweak than modifying its guts to make it work like it should.
"The White Nexus 4 is identical internally to the black Nexus 4 which we reviewed a while back. It's still the same 1.5 GHz APQ8064 inside with 2 GB of LPDDR2 and beautiful 4.7-inch 720p display. "
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VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
I am ridiculously jealous of you. I don't care that the camera sucks, I want one.andezzat - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Sorry to break it to you, but the Nexus 4 camera does not suck. At all!VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
The N4 is good enough in bright light, as most high-end smartphones have been for a couple of years, but even in indoor lighting it's pretty mediocre. It's a lot better than the Galaxy Nexus - it'd be hard for it not to be - but it's nowhere near the current crop of flagship devices (One, S4, iPhone 5, Lumia 920/5/8, Xperia Z, Find 5, etc), or even the better cameras from the last generation like the One X/S or S3. Look at Brian's review if you don't believe me.tipoo - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Falling short of flagships costing twice as much isn't the worst thing in the world either. For people like me coming from smartphones two generations down, the shots look pretty nice. People don't buy the Nexus 4 for the highest end experience, even if you want stock Google there's the stock Android S4 now being offered. The Nexus 4 is for most of the high end experience in a much lower price bracket.And I know you weren't trying to start a debate with that and I'm rambling, but a cheap small P&S camera is still worlds ahead of the best smartphones if you really care about IQ, for me at least a smartphone camera just has to be serviceable in a pinch while a dedicated camera still does anything worth taking.
VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
I'd rather have an N4 than the S4GE for a bunch of reasons, too. But yeah, I mean, I love the hell out of the Nexus 4, it's probably my second favorite handset out there right now after the One, but I'm not going to pretend like the camera is particularly good. Certain things had to get cut for the Nexus 4 to hit that price point, but that's only a justification for why camera performance isn't an end of the world problem.DukeN - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Vivek, not trying to be facetious here but why would you have the N4 over the S4GE? Only thing I can think of is size?tipoo - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Arguably build quality, the plastic S4 may have its reasons but it doesn't look or feel particularly high end.jaysns - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
The Nexus 4 is a lot smoother in day to day use than the Galaxy 4 is. It's actually pretty upsetting how much stuttering goes on with the S4 considering the internals and for me, at least, makes for a less than premium experience while operating it. Plus, with a rooted phone and customer kernel, the N4 is faster than my stock Galaxy 4 when opening apps or doing just about anything. It's just a nicer experience though even if left stock IMO.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Are you comparing AOSP and AOSP? I'd be interestedin how the GS4 NUE does. Theoretically it should outperform the Nexus 4. But in reality, things differ. Just like theoretically the Nexus 4 should have great battery life, but in reality all the Nexii suck. Why? Who knows? AOSP isn't optimized? Theoretically the GS2 should rock the GNex in AOSP, but due to broken butter, CM 10/10.1 always looks horrendous on the GS2.We'll wait and see, but I don't think comparing GS4 on Touchwiz against AOSP is fair in terms of performance. We all know the OEM skins = LAGfests.
Affectionate-Bed-980 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
While the N4 is priced low, I think we need to stop making excuses for it based on price. Google's trying to throw a wrench in the pricing of phones. We all know phones don't cost $600 to build yet they've always been this price (esp for smartphones). Google's also realizing it has to compete in a US market that understands NOTHING but subsidized phones. As a result they need cheap phones to compete. Even $499 or $529 or $549 is hard to sell. Look at how many people have a Nexus 10 (the XDA section is completely empty and the CM devs totally ignore the device). Price matters.Furthermore, the N4 isn't even priced at $299/$349 in the rest of the globe. Why? Because people value unlocked phones quite a bit and they're selling for even higher price.
The reason the camera sucks is not because they priced it at $299/$349. Even if they priced it at $599, it would have the same sucky camera. It's not going to all of a sudden have a winner. The Galaxy Nexus was high priced and had a horrendous camera. They cut LTE out because the LTE battery issue on the GNex gave it a bad rep. Furthermore, not enough users around the world have LTE yet and its tricky to have an LTE phone work in the US AND around the world. The demand for LTE wasn't as high that they could get away with it then.
Honestly, the camera and LTE and battery life are huge issues on the Nexus 4. I dont think we should ever be excusing any of these issues due to pricing.
Brian Klug - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
No, the Nexus 4 camera does indeed suck, Vivek is correct. Sugar coat it all you want, no Nexus has to date shipped with anything close to a decent camera.-Brian
vision33r - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
It doesn't suck that bad but it isn't better than iPhone 4 camera and the default Android camera app blows.Not blaming Google at all when there are tons of other options in the Play store.
Affectionate-Bed-980 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
are you kidding me? I carry an iPhone 5 for work and a Nexus 4 for personal reasons. I have about 16 photos on my Nexus 4 and 300+ on my iPhone 5. Hmmm. I created an iPhone 5 versus Nexus 4 photo album for people to pick the better photo and out of all 10 photos I posted where I took photos using both phones of the same subject, everyone picked the iPhone 5 camera.With that said I'm not trying to pimp the iPhone. The Nexus 4 just flat out sucks. I'll take my Galaxy S2 camera over the Nexus 4 as well.
fenil - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
The camera is not bad at all. I have Samsung Galaxy S2 and this camera is far better than that even though the mega pixels are same.A5 - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Like Vivek said, the N4 is almost two years newer than the S2. It would have to try pretty hard to not be better.tipoo - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
I want the Nexus 4 soon, but I'm curious if any manufacturing tweak has fixed the thermal throttling issue yet. People have been fixing it with 0.5mm copper shims from ebay for a few cents, plus some thermal paste. It would be trivially easy in mass production. And I think the Optimus G already uses a similar method to pass the heat into the metal inner frame of the phone, like those modders were doing, so it seems like a safe method. Seems like nothing but cheapness and laziness preventing it.http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2...
A5 - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
It's not something I've run into, but there has been some help from 3rd party kernels. I wouldn't mind a teardown of the white N4 to see if there's a difference, though.tipoo - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Ditto. Anandtech, there's your queue :)tipoo - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Those kernels by the way just increase the heat threshold by the way, they don't safely dissipate more heat or intelligently manage cores or anything. They just let the battery and SoC heat past where they shouldjaysns - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
They also lower voltages pretty dramatically in some cases. My Nexus 4 doesn't get nearly as hot as it did when stock.tipoo - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
I thought you had to manually do that, but yeah, that can help. But I'd much rather a physical manufacturing tweak than modifying its guts to make it work like it should.sherlockwing - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
"The White Nexus 4 is identical internally to the black Nexus 4 which we reviewed a while back. It's still the same 1.5 GHz APQ8064 inside with 2 GB of LPDDR2 and beautiful 4.7-inch 720p display. "Nexus 4's display is 1280X768, it isn't 720p.
Brian Klug - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Thanks, fixed!-Brian
mikeymop - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
Is the chrome band around the white one the same color as the black one?