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It sure is a nice phone! But it can't match up to the competition these days, by for example HTC One M8 (see http://www.consumertop.com/best-phone-guide/). I wish Google was as good at making phones as they are at search engines or email!
Like a fine wine? It is not my intention to start an argument but have you really had any fine wine? If you actually did, you would not call any android platform unit a fine wine. One of the worst analogies seen online.
You got it raazman; I think the review itself is top notch. I, like most people, wish the phone were more polished. Gotta love the intertubes for the entertainment value though - an unfavorable review of my review of Brian's review.
On the other hand, I don't think you could say Android hasn't matured fantastically over the years. I've been a fan since the start (G1 > Desire > Desire Z > Atrix > SGS2 > One X > Nexus 4) These days, I look forward to using Android more than any other platform I interact with on a daily basis... Even 1.5 on the G1 felt like an upgrade from the busted original iPhone it replaced (maybe not graphically, but certainly functionally - Notifications and Copy/Paste!) And I really wouldn't want to use anything pre-ICS these days.
And not being a fan of wine, I'd take an Android device any day over the offer of a glass of super priceless vintage wine :)
The Moto X has some really innovative ideas that are unlike any other phone in the market. I think that phone showed that Motorola is aware that there's a lot more to a great smartphone than just bumping up specs and PPI. The Nexus line, at least to me, seems to be about providing a stable platform to push out Android releases and offer a clean and conservative platform to build upon or strive for. A Moto version of Nexus would likely be just another boring smartphone, which is what I find most Nexus phones to be - great phones, sure, but really boring :P
Thanks for the review, Brian. Looks like I'm pulling the trigger on the Moto X for roughly the same price
Completely agree. For a while I wanted a Motorola Nexus but after the Moto X I am happy with Motorola doing their own thing because they've been doing a great job. If anything it would be nice if the two camps (Moto and the Nexus team) learned from each other.
I'm fine with the Moto X *IF* it's supported roughly as fast and long as the Nexus line. I figure the Moto X might be, as it might sort of be an unofficial Nexus, given it's supposed to be pretty clean android, and is technically FROM Google.
I wouldn't touch anything else with a 10 foot pole. Gross 3rd party goop on top of the OS, and if you're lucky you get one OS update, and then it's 8 months late (but hey, that's okay, malware writers are good about waiting for everyone to update before they attack, it's just good sportsmanship).
The goop Samsung and the rest slop on top of Android reminds me of the bad old Windows 3.1 days, although with Windows 3.1 at least some of the ideas there were interesting, and you could revert to the real interface.
As long as the nexus line, is that a joke? I just sold a less than 2 years hold Galaxy Nexus that won't even see 4.4, even Samsung devices last more wrt upgrades...
the beauty of the nexus line is how damn easy it is to install a custom ROM with 4.4. i know that the average user wouldnt be interested in installing a custom rom, but then again nexus buyers usually arent your average folk.
Erm, since the design language is from Google, I'm not quite sure what you're hoping for... Does the Nexus 5 look like the G2? No, it doesn't. Does the Galaxy Nexus look like the SGS2/3? No. The Nexus 4 looks more like the Optimus G than the others I've mentioned with it's sparkly glass back, but it's still more Google than LG given the hardware platform is the same! What have you got against Korean design anyway? It's not like anything Motorla have produced since the original RAZRs could be regarded as stylistically interesting... All smartphones look pretty much the same, it's just something we're going to have to grow to live with. A big slab of glass with a speaker at the top and a mic at the bottom is just that, and you can't really deviate too far without hampering ergonomics.
The Verge review was a joke in this regard, stating "During our time with the Nexus 5, it's been hard to get a real grip on how its battery truly operates.". Instead of taking the time to figure a methodology to test the phone, they simply rushed out the review without real facts about battery life. I'm very pleased to see real data here at Anandtech.
I totally agree. However I would also like to see some "idle" battery life tests, with display off, but with push notifications turned on. It would be more representative of the average use than browsing the web over wifi for 8 hours.
It's good to see battery life data, but something more representative of the typical user would be good.
Also, I feel that Anandtech are pulling their punches here with regard to non-removable versus removable batteries: Is it really the case that the design choice of a non-removable battery gives 40% better life? Somehow I doubt that... but it's what the charts seem to show.
So a more detailed explanation of the pros and cons of non-removable versus user removable batteries would be good, along with some data.
I'm not saying that such explanation had to be in *this* article, but the recent separate "explanation" of AnandTech policy with regard to an emerging history of neglect of these issues was heavy on defense and short on details with regards to assertions that non-removable batteries increase battery life, and thus are simply design choices with trade-offs. How much trade-off? 5%, 10%, 20%, 40%?
I'm thinking that for typical users that a 20 - 30% increase in battery life would probably be needed to offset the "hassle-factor" of not being able to change your own batteries at will. For example, if like most users you can get through the day okay, or you can get through the day on one session of say, a half hour of opportunistic charging, then a 30% increase in battery life might be enough to get you through 2 days of more or less the same behavior. That could be significant enough to sway the decision strongly in favor of a non-removable battery for most people.
Basically, I think in days and weeks on this issue. I have to charge a moderately used BB-Z10 once every 36 hours (1.5 days). A lightly used Samsung Galaxy Note 2 that I also always carry with me requires charging once every 3 days. A feature phone that I use as a bedside alarm clock needs charging once every 2 weeks.
A nitpick is that AT recently committed (somewhat unconvincingly) to being agnostic on non-removable batteries versus user removable batteries, and to not discriminate. I'll admit that I was surprised and impressed by AT's attempt to be just that... this article was much better than some others of late. However, to follow through and complete the act, being truly neutral requires openly characterizing the pros and cons, and describing them accurately.
This needs to start with descriptions. Calling these batteries "internal" versus "non-removable" is close, but not quite adequate. Both types of batteries are "internal." The correct two subsets that the category breaks down into are "user removable," and "user non-removable." In this way, the uninitiated reader who happens upon an AT article is clearly informed that the battery in the device that they are considering purchasing (in this case, the Nexus 5) is of the type "user non-removable."
Moving on to a discussion of the best way to get access to the battery: Seeing the back cover off of the Nexus 5 in the AT photos makes it plain that changing the back cover to a tool-less user removable design would be both desirable (from a consumer perspective) and not-so-challenging (from the manufacturer's perspective).
Overall, the Nexus 5 looks like a great affordable mid-range unlocked phone with a few flagship quality design features such as a great SOC (finding an unlocked phone at this price / quality is a rarity, and is to be commended). Unfortunately, the lack of a user removable battery will remain one of the Nexus lineup’s weakest points.
As an alternative, the Blackberry Z10 can occasionally be bought unlocked direct from Blackberry USA for half price (it was recently on sale at $200 each). It has a user removable battery, great multitasking OS with awesome messaging hub software (that consolidates all messages, call info, and notifications in one place) that is a real time saver, but inferior camera. The Samsung S4-Mini is another reasonably priced unlocked phone with a user removable battery.
Going up the range to a higher-end flagship, there is also the Google Play variant of the Samsung S4 that has a user removable battery... if that is important to you... since we *are* being "neutral" on the subject.
the removable or not battery is a samsung argument only, you can get external batteries for any device, some even can work with multiple brands of phones, and the price is ok
While efficiency is obviously a concern,I don't see how that means they all suck. You can get a 5,600-6,000 mAh battery for like $35 that's still smaller than the phone itself, built in micro cable and everything... Such a battery is basically good for two full charges (or more).
There's smaller ones, the tiniest are usually cylinder shaped, but the built in cable and flat form factor of the former seems the most useful IMO. I've been using one for a while and I really don't miss rebooting plus taking my case & battery lid off just to swap batteries.
Obviously everyone's needs are different, some may not have the time or space for a USB battery to top up the phone in a bag/pocket. Thankfully there's still OEMs catering to all needs in the Android ecosystem.
Just from my own experience at 'idle' with nothing disabled (wifi, cellular, GPS, Goolge Now, full sync'ing of 2 Google accounts, etc) I would estimate the battery drains btw 1-1.5% hour. I've never had a phone that sips battery as well as it does at 'idle' when everything is enabled.
Maybe I missed it, but you mention that you have both a black and a white nexus 5, so are the benchmarks you list for the black device, the white, an average of the two, or do you get the exact same numbers for both devices?
In my experience, running the same freaking benchmark twice on the same device yields different numbers so I would be curious to know if the two devices had similar or identical results.
... Maybe because they might use a different revision of hardware, or different thermal throttling due to the difference in material and design used for the case. You never know. Most likely identical though.
On page 2, what does "Delta" mean in the bottom two tables? Are lower numbers better in the table Dalvik vs ART? (I usually rely on the key on graphs to explain i.e. "Lower is better")
Thanks for your hard work Brian, enjoying reading it so far :)
1) Lower is better in the tables, and 2) Delta is essentially the of percentage of difference between the two results, with 1 being no difference, a number below 1 being a regression in performance, and a number above 1 being an improvement in performance. E.g., 1.065x = 6.5% improvement.
I inferred from the Delta and thought it should be "lower is better". but I downloaded AndEBench myself and ran a few tests. it says "iterations/sec". shouldn't it be "higher is better"? Thank you for answering.
Serious question from someone whose mother tongue is not English: If I understand correctly even if the acronym starts with consonant it should be preceded with "an", instead of with "a"?. could someone confirm?
Do you have any information on if the 5 will support VoLTE? I am assuming there is no technical reason why the hardware can't do it...Google just needs to supply the SIP client.
Indeed, the Nexus 5 is a much worse buy in Europe than over in the US.
In Sweden, the 32GB N5 is €460, while the LG G2 is €475. Those extra €15 will buy you better battery life, better camera and a bigger screen. The 16GB N5 is €415, so if you're sure you don't need the extra local storage, it might be a reasonably good deal. You can also get the G2 on contract of course, and pay 25 - 50% less over the course of 1-2 years.
Also, the 32GB is gray market since LG has chosen not to sell this version. I managed to order a 32GB from the UK play store, and including P&P, shipping proxy fee and toll, it will still be some €'s less expensive than the 16GB.
You pay /less/ for a phone on contract? Here in the Netherlands we have about the same prices for phones, which I would also consider the g2 were I to replace my n4. However, last time I checked it was cheaper to buy a phone of contract and get a 'sim-only' contract.
Just swap the words "substitute good" to "good substitute."
He is clearly saying that Android and iOS are more or less on par with each other, with neither OS having a compelling advantage over the other.
It now seems more important to read the details of the articles with regards to the specific functions of each of the operating systems.
The iOS camera software is superior at this point, and a weak point of the Android OS, if that is important to you.
As I have recently come to understand (having used Apple iOS, Android 4.3, Blackberry OS 10, and WinPhone8), there is no OS that consolidates all emails, SMS, call data, and notifications in one easy-to-read list as good as BB OS10 does. A real time saver. But, you get a crappy camera.
So the Nexus 5 gets good camera hardware and crappy Android camera software. Hopefully there is a fix on the way soon.
If you want a read-out of "true" North on the compass, then iOS will easily do that, but BB-OS10 won't.
WinPhone 8 won't read FLAC audio files.
BB OS10 won't let you format the Micro-SDXC storage card using the exFAT file system. Android will.
We are now in the days where there is finally a very close neck and neck competition amongst the mobile OSes for the best quality and functionality. Unfortunately, all of the OSes have some basic features missing. They all have some catching up to do to get it right.
"A good" means an item with value (as opposed to a bad such as pollution which has negative value). Most people encounter the word in the form of "goods and services."
"Substitute good" is a standard English term, meaning a good which is an adequate replacement for another good.
Still reading the battery life section and. gotta say, "Great things do take time"!
Seriously, battery life numbers are clearly the biggest surprise. Who would've thought that N5 would beat iPhone 5s in some battery life tests!? All, 'Tech' blogs who rushed out for reviews & giving scores for getting clicks should really consider their reviews' process & use the device as their daily driver for considerable amount of time!
As for me, I was just waiting for Brian's review & his finding on battery life & am really happy to see the results!
@Brian, for the difference between G2 & N5 in battery life, could the PSR be the reason!? Just curious!
Thanks for the quality review as always! It was totally worth the wait! Really appreciate the effort you and whole of AnandTech people put in!
Most "tech" sites just looked at the number of mAh and concluded that it must suck given that it's smaller than the G2's. I call them "tech" sites because they are becoming more like fashion magazines, putting the emphasis on how they feel about the product.
Best Nexus5 review, by far. Thanks. I whitelisted anandtech on adblock because of this review: you guys really deserve it. I bought a Nexus5 and I read many of these reviews before doing so, but I confess that I hesitated a bit. Now I am (even more) convinced I made a good purchase.
so AT approved your buy thus you give them back, how about, for a change, ack that AT is a great site for every device, apple included, can you write that?
Maybe it's because AT validated what he/she now already knows based on firsthand experience, while the other tech sites proved to err more on the side of naysaying?
I don't know if the comment author has received their phone yet, but of they're like me, what I found was that a lot of the review sites blast the Nexus 5 on "poor battery life" and a "lousy camera", when in fact I've found battery life to be quite good, easily lasting a day out (in fact, on my light usage, it goes 24 hours+) and even while I take pretty good quality photos in all sorts of light (just that the camera UI is kind of messed up [slow and a bit buggy]). Also, the overall feel and responsiveness of the device "feels" really nice :)
Hey, this was a great review, and, in general, I enjoy AT. I don't believe all reviews are as stellar as this one, although they're all definitely good. How can you manipulate someone's positive comment to the point of making it sound as a negative thing? Dude, chill.
Great review, I avoid The Verge like the plague lately. AnandTech, Ars Technica and to a lesser extent, Tom's Hardware are basically the only useful technology news sites from my point of view.
Few typos, but I won't bother complaining. It's clear what you meant and they don't detract from the effort or lengths you went to for this review.
I'm working on the article as fast as I can. I had to get another sample of a phone to verify something but I believe I have enough data to write it now. It's just big so it'll take a few days possibly. Lots of work to get done but it's coming ASAP.
I will add to others comments that waiting for you guys to get it right is totally worth it. In spite of my nitpicks, Brian did great on this review, and I'm glad to hear that you are handling audio as a dedicated project.
I am very interested to see what you find on your audio quality investigations, especially since 90% of my audio consumption is now via mobile devices with content as follows:
- 80% are WMA-LossLess rips from redbook CDs;
- 10% mp3-360kbs from Amazon; and
- 5% FLAC 24-bit from various sources (and growing on this one).
Having tried numerous devices, I will comment in advance that I find the BlackBerry Z10 to be great for commuting in a noisy environment (good oomph for cutting through rumble over the car speakers) and the Samsung Note 2 and Samsung S-ATIV seem well refined for quiet environment listening at my desks (home and work).
My point being that the sound "profiles" of these devices may not be perfectly accurate, but nonetheless both have their applications and usefulness.
96 and 192KHz / 24-Bit recordings are gradually making their way into my collection in increasing numbers and I'm really enjoying the sound. So HD-Audio is also an interest, especially for material that can make good use of the bandwidth.
WinPhone 8 generally cannot handle FLAC audio files, thus the Blackberry and Samsung Android are my go-to devices for music now. I use them with Sennheiser, Grado, or B&W cans over my head depending where I am at (home / work / travel).
I occasionally use a Gen 1 Asus Nexus 7 for audio listening - it is okay but clearly isn't as good as the Blackberry and Samsung devices, is on par with Zune, and much improved over the old Sansa devices. Hopefully they further improved the audio quality in the Gen 2 device, although I will skip it for other reasons.
The Z10 has excellent volume, while the Note 2 is too quiet in the car on some songs... thus indicating that some devices need supplementary amplification to reach satisfying volume on some songs. Hopefully sound volume issues will get addressed in future mobile devices.
Could the camera performance be significantly improved with use of another camera app? I would be interested in seeing if you could do a comparison of the camera performance in the stock app, Camera Awesome, and VSCO Can. My thinking is that it could give us very valuable information on if the camera experience could in fact be one of the best on Android when provided with capable software. Thanks for the very detailed review!
Most of the camera negatives are implemented before an app would be given camera data I think. Will require an OS update. 4.4.1 is supposed to be that OS update so we shouldn't have to wait long.
On the lenses, isn't the lens the magnetic part, not the ring? Thus as long as the ring around the lens is made from a ferromagnetic material the lens would attach. n'est-ce pas?
...what are you showing? That it's possible to glue a magnetic mount onto a phone and use magnetic lenses? Yeah, we already knew that and it's not Nexus 5 specific.
"Google can claim that SMS and IM are now merged nicely together under one roof, but it’s still two basically two discrete threads and views. It’s amazing to me that it’s 2013 and nobody has still been able to merge the two together the same way WebOS did with the Palm Pre."
Windows Phone 8 does this perfectly with SMS and Facebook and Messenger using the same thread with a switch button to switch between them.
If its important enough to you, find a BB-OS10 device to play with for awhile. ALL communications data is in one integrated list (SMS, Call Data, Email Accounts, Notifications, etc.). Incredibly time saving and easy.
I bought the BB Z10 as a stopgap phone that I could wear on my belt and play my music for me while I waited for Samsung to offer something in the same size range. Dunno if I'll ever go there now.
I'm so hooked on the convenience and speed of the BB-OS10 Hub. I'm also hooked on the MS Windows-like multi-tasking windows.
Now I find myself getting a bit irritated when I use an Android, iOS, or WinPhone device. By comparison to the Blackberry, the "communications channels" seem fragmented and disorganized on those devices.
I never used a Blackberry before the Z10 so I have nothing to say about whatever happened in the past, but for an actual "phone" and communicator, based on my Z10 experience, I dread the thought of them exiting the market.
People ramble on about Linux, but for my money, WebOS and BB-OS10 are the ones who pushed / are pushing the market in the right direction.
I realize Linux has great underpinnings, but great GUI design is where its "at" when time is money, or time is satisfaction.
It's removable has in 'replace the battery with relatively little effort if it stops holding a charge' but not has in 'bring a spare camping to swap out for more juice.' Decide accordingly.
>nobody has still been able to merge the two together the same way WebOS did with the Palm Pre
WP does a good enough job interleaving and integrating the two that I'm almost completely agnostic over whether I use SMS, Facebook or MSN/Skype, and switch between them seamlessly based on my iOS/Android recipients' preferences.
I have one sitting here in front of me (a Samsung ATIV-S that I bought on the cheap to play with).
So let me point out that out of the 4 devices (3 operating systems and as many manufacturers) that I use, it is the only one that cannot handle my complete collection of music files (it chokes on FLAC files).
So after 20 years of making about 40 billion dollars a year, Microsoft cannot bring themselves to support the leading open standard for high quality 24-bit loss-less audio files?
Yeah, I'm surprised there's so many mentions of FLAC thru the comments... It's almost ironic, I really hope none of the people pinning for FLAC support are the same ones complaining about removable storage!
My entire CD collection is ripped to FLAC, it just makes the most sense got archival purposes, I wish more mainstream music was available in lossless formats just out of principle... However it's pretty pointless to be dragging FLAC files around on a phone.
You're not gonna be able to tell the difference vs properly encoded MP3s, even if you're traveling with $300+ worth of DAC/amp equipment and $500+ reference grade headphones or IEM (much less the kinda headphones most people use, never mind the line out or Bluetooth which would pose the weakest link in the chain).
Do a proper blind test, then try to rationalize why FLAC support is so important... Considering it takes no time at all to convert a big library and it's gonna take up a fraction of the space your FLAC library already does (I keep a discrete MP3 library on the PC just to mak esyncs quicker, the extra space is a drop in the bucket compared to the FLAC originals anyway).
I'd rather spend my time searching for new music than re-encoding and maintaining more sync lists of the music that I already have. Manufacturers that bake the support into the device make life easier. Syncs of playlists "just work."
64GB of NAND was $35 the other day at Amazon. 128GB is just around the corner. Is storage really all that precious so as to justify wasting time compressing it down into such a tiny space?
With storage becoming so reasonably cheap, then lossy compression becomes perhaps still useful for video, but is an utter waste of time on audio.
In fact, if tags worked properly on redbook audio CDs, I wouldn't bother compressing them at all and would just save them as .wav files.
Same thing with FLAC. If I buy it in a high-quality format, then why waste time and resources squeezing it down?
I don't spend any time re encoding or managing separate FLAC/MP3 playlists either... Media Monkey does it all for me seamlessly and it's far easier to configure it to your particular needs than something like iTunes. Should look into it, if you're really that much of a music lover it's just foolish to use 10x more space than necessary for storing music on a phone.
I bring a new CD home, open EAC to rip (simple one click process), and when I open Media Monkey later it's already set to find the new album and convert it on it's own (which doesn't even take a minute on a modern PC). When I sync it knows to only look at the MP3 library, there's truly smart playlists if for instance you wanna have a list of recently added music, etc.
My CD collection (+ online purchases) would never fit on a 64GB micro SD card encoded to FLAC, quite manageable as MP3 though. Easier to share too, or use as ringtones/alarms...
FLAC/lossless makes sense from an archival point of view, exactly because of scenarios like this. You can re-encode or edit files without taking a hit in quality... It's not a "high quality format" in the sense that you're hearing anything that you wouldn't from an MP3 though. The original mastering/editing usually has far more to do with that than the distribution format.
Umm, Where is the review of Lumia 1020? Or Lumia 1520? Oh wait, the greatest tablet in the market ( forget the app count for a moment) The Lumia 2520? Nokia hasn't sent you the devices? Simple, ask one, and they'll send you with a rush! I can't believe that you guys reviewed HTC One Max or Surface 2 and didn't do the same for Nokia devices which are probably the best in their category. Review the tablet please!!
Although our good friends at TheVerge suggests there's a major SW update coming in just few days improving that camera inconsistency, although not yet a new stock camera application. I look forward to you guys testing it and updating this article!
Even as far as non-Android/iOS tablets go the 2520 isn't the best. I'd much prefer Dell's Venue tablets. Full version of Windows on a Bay Trail SoC is so much more useful than RT on ARM.
Why don't you WinTards troll elsewhere? Enough of the whining and "poor me" attitude. The intertubes is big enough for your ilk, go visit a WP echo chamber like wpcentral.com and keep out of comment sections if you can't stay on topic.
Well maybe almost. Nokia specs show the Micro-SD slot to be a crippled version with a 32GB max capacity.
For many people, the low storage capacity makes it DOA, falling down straight out of the gate. There are just too many competing devices that have 64GB capable Micro-SDXC slots.
Of the course, the Nexus 5 is a zero in this category, since it has no slot for Micro-SD of any type.
I'm going to ignore the childish name calling for a moment and just say that while I am a big fan of WP and windows tabs I seriously doubt the 2520 is going to be the best tablet going, on paper it has decent hardware and Nokia build quality if great it is still going to be running RT.
RT has/had a huge amount of potential but without more app support it will never draw in the crowds and that will in turn not lead to more apps so it is a vicious cycle that I doubt will be changing any time soon. As an OS it is pretty great and you only need to look at some of the fan vids of it online where people are gaming on the tab while watching a video on a TV or vice versa, there is some serious potential to it but without the app support it is likely to stay at potential.
As for WP reviews I do agree that it is very disheartening to not even have some cursory reviews/overviews of them. It really wouldn't be that hard to get a few of the key devices and at least battery test them. At this point a few days of testing would really go a long way to showing how they stack up in terms of battery life.
It is disappointing to not have any real consideration for what is a good phone OS and its devices. Market share is increasing and as it does so will app support and if AT is not careful they could be in a position where WP is more of a serious player (it already is in some parts of the world) and none of the writing staff will have much of an idea about what it is all about.
Having a whole year to work on the device an two to work on Key Lime Pie, I'm surprised how rushed the Nexus 5 feels. The camera thing is a mess as if there were very, VERY late decisions to include OIS and exclude the new API, and ppl. are reporting wakelocks all over the place.
Build quality is extremely worrysome based on drops tests, each ending brutally plus the speaker placement blocks clear sound coming through, boyz @XDA improved it significantly drilling small holes into the plastic underneath.
And then there's the battery - it seems Google understands the flagship concept as far as specs and SW goes, but 4hr SoT on normal use of Google services is NOT flagship level. With a price bump I wonder how they failed to address the Nex4's biggest issue (not much real world improvement based on dozens of N5 XDA users).
Now when you have the camera focus right, when you manually improve the speaker, when you protect it from the smallest drops and when you use all around (excluding all non-KitKat compatible apps), the Nexus 5 is the most successful realization of the Google Phone. These annoyances however makes it a questionable buy, never mind the price tag. The Moto X might just be a better buy considering you get two for one Nexus 5.
No criticism, no improvement, buddy. I'm a Nexus user so hit any miss on your cyber bullying attempt, but thx for spotting out my Moto X - Moto G mix-up.
About the charging time,my unit [a black 32GB D820] charges in under 90 minutes using a 2A Note 2 charger [Samsung ETA-U90UWE] while on. Using the Battery Monitor Widget by 3c I observed that while idling on the homescreen the phone consumes around 450mA [shown as -445mA in the app] and when I plug in the Note 2 charger it shows the phone is charging at around 1500mA [shown as +1500mA]. My charging time with the stock LG charger is the same as your findings though.
I wonder why the reported times from the battery life benchmarks are so much higher than any of the reported screen-on times in 'real-world' usage? I am not trying to discredit the data, just honestly curious. How does one get close to 9 hours of constant screen-on time while the phone is being used, and why is there not a single battery stat from phones in use anywhere close to that number?
On a side note, do you plan on reviewing the Sony Z1? I am asking because it has generally received mixed reviews in terms of battery life, but actually seems to perform very good in 'real life' scenarios.
Anandtech is one of the few sites that set all phone to the same brightness(200nits) when battery testing. What you see from other websites is that they test every phone at their auto-brightness or max brightness setting. That's why Anandtech's battery life benchmark results are different from other sites.
I'm talking about real usage, i.e. people who own the phone post screenshots of Android battery usage stats. Not benchmarks. The best you see for the N5 is 5 hours+, even with WiFi only.
The tests performed here are controlled and I imagine that the phone is not being moved around a whole lot during battery-life testing (and it shouldn't be). However, one of the nicest things about having a smartphone are location-aware services. And they drain the battery. A lot.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest culprits is Google's own location reporting service, which itself is integral to various Google Now features.
Of course, there are also various bugs that people in the real world encounter that are not triggered by the very specific test conditions in the battery life tests here. For example, Android 4.3 had a bug that could cause a phone to never "deep sleep" after wireless charging. But there's really no way for a review site to try to hunt down all the battery bugs and reproduce them. That's not really within scope of a battery life test and reviewers aren't paid to do QA on a phone, so they can only report on specific bugs they encounter in their personal use of the device (or bugs that are so heinously obvious that everybody has heard about already).
In short, there's no way a review site knows what YOUR "real-world" usage is. So the best thing they can do is to perform a controlled study with a published methodology and report the results. You get to interpret whether that methodology can be extrapolated to your own "real life" use. Sadly, other "review" sites somehow extrapolate their own unscientific experience as representative of real life usage when in truth, there is no universal real-lifeusage.
At the end of the day what matters most is that AT's testing is under controlled circumstances SMS repeatable, thus you get a very fair relative comparison between the tested phones. You may not get 9 hours on wifi if you aren't sitting next to the router, at X brightness, with zero background syncs, etc etc; but you can easily tell whether phone A will so better than phone B based on their tests. Isn't that all that really matters when you're trying to decide whether to buy A or B?
Because those stats aren't the product of a controlled test? Because some people in those tests have their display at high brightness, because some are playing games, and a thousand of each?
Hahahaha!!! Awesome comeback Brian. I like the fact that you have real testers at Anandtech that take that extra step and have unbiased comments about the product and its features.
good as it might be, the size/capacity of that battery is still a design fail. I own the 16 GB Nexus 5 model (I imagine 32 GB is exactly the same as far as dimensions go) and the phone is way too thin. LG could easily have made it 20-25% thicker so it would be more comfortable to hold, and the extra space could be used to beef the battery up to LG G2 level.
This and the limited storage (coupled with the fact that there is no microSD expansion slot) are my only complaints about this phone though; too bad such nice hardware wasn't designed into a better product.
What a great article! Very objective and evidence based. The attention to display accuracy rather than whoever pumped up the saturation the most, the clear analysis of the camera's hardware (potential) vs software (current usability), and the multitude of battery measures are very helpful.
Brian: Did you notice any differences in real world rf performance between the Nexus 5 and Nexus 4? Only a few data points on my end, but it seems like the N5 performs on average 3-5 dBm worse than the N4 (LTE and HSPA on Band 4). Also, does the N5 contain any of Qualcomm's tunable front end parts?
how about a battery test that's really useful for most people, how a device lasts over the course of a day with a typical set of apps? these rundown tests are really not that helpful.
What do you specifically propose for an objective, repeatable, platform agnostic test, hmm? What is a typical set of apps? What about the fact that apps are always changing? What about the fact that many apps are not multi-platform or aren't standardized across platforms?
The rundown test (based on something agnostic and universal like web page loading) is probably the best kind of objective test you're going to get; you'll just have to extrapolate your daily performance from that.
Besides, as a pragmatic matter, Brian's/Anandtech's reviews are already take so much time and effort to do, and that's with multiple a 5-9 hour long battery tests (LTE, 3G, Wifi...). One can't test any other feature of the phone while battery testing... you want to seriously add a suite of 12-24 hour tests on top of that?
Can't believe someone's actually pinning for less controlled/repeatable battery testing just because it might be closer to their own use... AT does the best battery tests bar none, whether they mimic your use or not is irrelevant, just find a phone you own or have owned on their list and extrapolate from there. It'll be far more accurate than a pseudo real world test with too many random variables to account for.
Jesus Christ, I cannot believe some of the comments on here. The battery life tests here and everywhere else are terrible. None of them reflect real-world usage whatsoever.
The only real test here is a synthetic web-browsing battery life test, and it gives results between 6-10 hours, I'll eat my monitor if anyone's phone actually lasts that long in real-life web-browsing. Obviously a synthetic benchmark can be a useful as a comparative tool between phones, but not much else. It's basically the equivalent of a 3dmark score.
It's a well-known fact.. actually, by now a universally foregone conclusion that smartphones die extremely quickly, and are super annoying to charge. Brian uses phrases like "It can last the whole day on a single charge" which are utterly meaningless. That just means you left your phone in your pocket most of the time. But when you actually want to use your phone in a pinch, or while travelling, or in an emergency, or for serious work, then it's a completely different story. Yet for some reason you wouldn't get that impression from most reviewers. And so we're forced to compromise.
Compare with laptops from a couple years ago, they'd advertise 5 hours of life, get 3 in reality in ideal conditions, and within a year be down to 2 hours. I'm sure a lot of people were happy with that. So what. The Macbook Air came along and gives you up to 12-16 hours. Now *THAT* is all day life. That is what we should be getting on smartphones. 12-16 hours of screen time and constant use. Then we won't need to go and do forty million battery life tests anymore, because the problem is *solved* for 99.9% of use cases. Instead we're getting price gouged like crazy for storage, and R&D goes to things like 500PPI displays and downloading at 150mbps, things which should be of slightly lower importance than making the phone stay alive.
No idle test. This is really important, the percentage drop should be less than 1-2% every 24 hours. No video test. No gaming test. Nobody seems to care about texting. People usually send *way* more texts than they make calls, and texting drains battery faster than calls do. I often run out of battery life on the train while texting, seems like a percentage point every minute or two even with my display on 0%.
The reviewers are definitely on the manufacturer's side on every single issue here: against microSD, against removable batteries, but *FOR* pointlessly thin, even to the point of sacrificing battery life and functionality. If they were on the *consumer's* side, they'd be tearing apart every single 16GB device, advocating the $1 microSD slot for *EVERY PHONE*, and demanding *EVERY PHONE* have either a version with a removable battery, and/or EXTENDED (MAXX) battery version.
My ideal device would be a 5" screen, LG G2 or RAZR MAXX-like device, 10.5mm thick, 4500mah, with 64GB microSD and front speakers like the HTC One. The closest thing right now is the HTC Butterfly S, IMO the best phone on the market by far, there are no tradeoffs at all.
Well the camera UI didn't go miserable in 4.4, but since 4.3. Navigating settings in 4.3+ camera UI is a pain as toggles have no feedback and there's no tell whether an option is a menu or a toggle. For the not focus problem, just tap another place and tap the original position again to refresh it.
I'm curious why you're calling 512 MB phones "mid-range", when you can find such a phone even for $100 unlocked these days. Even Moto G at $180 is a low-end to mid-range phone, and it has 1 GB of RAM. Is it because you don't want the iPhone to be considered mid-range?
Right. In addition to the screen size thing. And no NFC, or USB, no front speakers, no waterproof, no wireless charging.. there's actually a ton more..
To be fair, your first 3 points don't tell me high end at all. Those are just convenience features.
The 4th one isn't really all that important outside of a few select markets, so scratch that.
The software itself isn't really a good reason to decide high, medium or low end - there are plenty of Apple Zealots that will tell you the many things Apple does that neither BBX nor Android do, and they'll place some sort of unrealistic weight to that small feature. Curiously, the more I use my phone, the less I care about the fancy interface of the multitasker. Android's method seems to work just fine for me.
The interleaving of communications sounds great, but it comes with one HUGE caveat - crappy app support for EVERYTHING ELSE.
WMA isn't really a deal breaker at all - iOS will play FLAC audio (with an additional app), or the native AppleLossless format.
Though having used an OIS phone in the past, I would consider that a high-end feature..
What about performance? Camera quality? Eco system, app/development support and software available? Post purchase support? Immediate updates and 'point' updates to kill bugs? Oh, yeah... Performance? Did you happen to notice the 5/5s in the 'upper mid range' scoring in graphics, computational power, battery life (no need to replace batteries), a 64GB option (no need for an SD slot), who cares about dual SIM slot when damn near every "world radio" is built in? Buy a new SIM when you arrive at your destination, with minutes, for ten bucks! iPhones and iPads have long been able to playback lossless formats and FLAC. It's kinda cool, there's typically 'an app for that' when using iOS. Not so much using BB OS10. And Samsung's TouchWiz cream soup is thicker than mashed potatoes (I've got a Note 2). Their phones are more bloated than a new Compaq computer bought at Computer City in 2003 with Vista! I own Android and iOS devices. Daily drive a pair of phones. The Note2 and 5s. I can honestly tell you've got ZERO experience with iPhones...and need to before spewing such silly comments. Who needs 'tool less removable back covers' when your phone runs all day on a charge, doesn't break down, and has options for enough on board storage (that EVERYTHING can be loaded to vs. the VERY select few items I can put on my Note's SD card, essentially limited to media....which is available through iTunes Match via the cloud and doesn't need to be stored) to negate the need, again, to access anything inside! Couple other cool things. Post purchase support...Samsung? Fuggedaboutit! Apple? Take it to the store or call their number....usually they'll just hand you a new one... ...lastly, one thing I've found with my iPhones, I've always sold them and came out ahead after two year of usage! $300 out of pocket on the subsidy, use it two years, sell it for $375...pick up the latest model for $300 then enjoy a nice dinner...or pick up a Mophie case to double my 'juice' if necessary BBOS 10---the integration of communications is a good idea....in theory. Then again, it's kinda nice to separate email from SMS, Facebook from voicemail....for me at least. As I run a business, some things need to be responded to a bit more professionally than others. I can see myself confusing what I'm responding to. With iOS 7's notification update, this is irrelevant anyway, as it's all just a swipe down front the top of ANY screen within ANY app. Again....use one and you'll educate yourself. OIS is cool. But it takes up space to be done. And done right....HTC's ONE does get it right, albeit at the expense of shot detail (look at iPhone, Android of your choice vs HTC's pics, their all over as well as excellent reviews of each at dpreview, an excellent camera site, as well as DXOMark). Apple will incorporate it if the technology is there, allows it without sacrifice to shot quality or design aesthetics and usability. Their new burst mode is phenomenal....my 5s shoots faster (with s bigger buffer) than my Canon 7d! All the way up to 100 shots at damn near 10 shots a second....pics what it thinks are the best 'focus' shots so you don't have to dig through....and you can trash the rest. Again....use one. You might be impressed....unless you enjoy taking your phones apart, then you're absolutely correct. The iPhone isn't for you
Thank goodness there is still a site around that can do a REAL in depth review. I'm so tired of subjective reviews with opinions and no real substance. Other sites could learn alot from Anandtech!
Thanks for long-awaited and much appreciated review Brian. I was hesitating on buying the Nexus 5 given the shoddy battery-life scaremongering on other websites, but I couldn't wait any longer, so I bought the phone before your review came out. So far, I was thinking I was deluding myself because the battery life has been superb, but your review confirms that the Nexus 5 isn't a dud after all.
I also think the camera troubles are a bit overblown for "normal" users. Yes the camera app is wretched, and focusing is a mystery, but the phone can take good-quality pictures in good and low-light conditions. Photography geeks or more discriminating users might be able to tell the difference between the photos taken with the Nexus 5 and its competitors with better camera packages, but I think for most normal users, it's fine. And hella cheap!
One thing I'm interested in that you didn't cover Brian. Viewing angles of the display. The viewing angles seem great when looking at the display directly from the sides, top, and bottom, but when looking at it from the corners, it looks seriously washed out (gamma shift?). Just wondering why it does that when HTC's high end LCDs always seem to look good from every angle. If the Nexus 5 is using the same display as the Droid DNA, I would guess it has to do with the Nexus 5 lacking some additional component? A polarization filter perhaps? Know what I'm talking about? Any ideas?
Before people go saying "who looks at a device from the corners?", please consider the phone sitting on a table or desk. You usually don't sit it directly in front of you, but off to the side, meaning you're looking at it from a bottom corner if you want to quickly check a notification or something without picking it up. Or maybe you're just showing pictures to people around you. Chances are, they won't be looking at the phone directly from the side, but more from one of the corners. Your pictures might look great to you from directly in front of the phone, while looking washed out and crappy to others around you.
Google is updating camera firmware today. Brian are you updating this post with an additional test for the camera? By the way thanks for finally getting this done. I know the holiday season is horrible to get things like this out, but it was well worth the wait.
If you are looking at a great sms app in a phone, try out a lumia/ativ s. Seamless threaded IM/SMS between live, facebook and sms. not quite there yet( i for once i would have made a messaging api and forced app to use one centralized for everything, whatever viber/whatsapp/wechat, they could have their frontend loaded but just 1 thread, 1 notification per contact, 1 place to find all the messages.Cursed close garden/closed source things.)
I'm holding a white Nexus 5 right now. While I mostly love the device - it's my first smartphone, and I got the latest and greatest, I'm quite peeved about the color. Maybe it's just my eyes, or the lighting, but the back of my device looks more like linoleum than white. It's definitely not nearly as white as the one Brian has.
After the galaxy nexus update issue i just can't trust google nexus program, which has been nothing more than than a beta thing. Sad but true, HTC Sense and even Touchwiz are better, and upgrades seem to last longer...
Umm, no. The Galaxy Nexus might've had a shot at Kit Kat if it weren't for the fact that Texas Instrument isn't gonna bother supplying new drivers when they've left the SoC game, and then there's the Verizon factor...
Even if you ignore all that though, how do Sense/TW upgrades "last longer"? The One X and SGS3 are both newer than the Galaxy Nexus and AFAIK neither one has much of chance of getting KK... It's certainly not gonna happen for months if it does happen.
A few people commented about FLAC files. Have you noticed how Android 4.4 broke FLAC playback? Basically my Nexus 5 cannot play my entire music library... awesome. Apparently it has been fixed at source. It better be in 4.4.1.
Having eagerly awaited the Nexus 5 I had hoped that the Android WiFi experience would be improved, but unfortunately it will still not accept hidden SSIDS or DHCP. With exposed SSIDS there is a huge security issue especially with educated snoopers and as for no DHCP, fixed ip addresses are fine for a home network, but not a lot of good for the traveller at an Airport for example. Of all the devices that access WiFi on my home network the Nexus 5 is the poorest despite it's wonderful features otherwise.
Come on GOOGLE, GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER AND FIX, this issue has been around for years.
The first thing I did when I took my Nexus 5 out of the box was connect to my home network which has a hidden SSID.
Drag the shade down, click the the upper right corner for the settings shortcuts, click the wi-fi icon, then click the + button on the bottom. Select advanced options for DHCP settings.
I've had a hidden SSID at home (which btw, doesn't really afford much extra security) for the last 10+ years and I haven't had trouble connecting to the network on any of my five Android devices... DHCP's always worked too. Hell I've connected to college networks that required more credentials than a simple WPA password.
stupidest thing i have found is hangouts refuses to recognise contacts imported from vcards when displaying the 'owner' of a new text message. just display the number instead, even after associating that number with a contact.
Ya I have to say this was quite bad all around in terms of timing. I really want to read an ANANDTECH article on the 4.4.1 camera. Not read some other website which I find is never as indepth.
The other question was whether Nexus 5 also uses a PSR (Panel Self Refresh) type display. This display is indeed a MIPI command mode panel, the same kind of system, so yes it does include those features.
This is incorrect. Just having a MIPI-DSI display interface does NOT imply that Panel Self refresh is supported. Almost every smartphone on the market, and the vast majority of tablets, interface with their displays internally using MIPI DSI (the exceptions being a few tablet holdouts using LVDS, and the iPad 3/4/Air & Mini Retina, which use embeddedDisplayPort).
Yes, I was sort of wondering about that - just having the right display type doesn't seem conclusive on this point. I had the impression that PSR requires having a separate framebuffer, or at least only by having a separate low-bandwidth buffer can one hope to achieve power savings.
Are you addressing this at the article author? Don't you think that inherently refutes your 'site dogma' hyperbole? If you've got a problem with Anand's op-ed then comment there. Why bring it up here where your only apparent point is that it disagrees (which is ostensibly your position).
I think the point is that the Nexus 5 doesn't have Micro-SDXC. For a flagship to be capped at 32GB with no expandability in 2013 is very restrictive for some users. The Nexus 5 and other flagships like it are in some ways going backwards.
My first smartphone in 2009 was a Nokia N900. It was 64GB = 32GB soldered NAND + 32GB MicroSD.
That should put some perspective on the frustration many of us have with the lack of storage and the price gouging on extra NAND in today's US flagships (Apple, Google, Micro-Nokia).
Hopefully, 2014 will be the year that changes all of that.
I think it's time to think about advancing your screen metrics to include more items to get a better sense of overall quality. Brightness and color accuracy are just two aspects. How reflective the screen is comes initially to mind.
Before "curved' screens come into the mainstream, you should think about how to refresh your approach on displays.
How good is the call quality on the nexus 5? Noise suppression and speakerphone quality/loudness?
Earlier there used to be page on this but it seems it has been dropped. (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-re... Can someone just give some subjective remarks on call quality and noise suppression? Is it good? Are there dropped calls? Does the voice sound natural?
" I’m thankful that Nexus 5 isn’t shy about pushing its exposure time out there, after all it does have ISO to damp out hand shake while running them. "
Guessing it should read OIS there rather than ISO, FWIW, though Brian's probably cursing Google right now for the timing of the camera update. :p
I'm disappointed in the NAND write performance. In my experience the largest performance issue with Android is NAND writes. When an app saturates the write bandwidth all reads also stop bringing the UI to a halt. This is most spectacularly shown by Chrome that by writing out newly cached data blocks reading of other cached data so much as refetching it from the net would be faster, resulting in 5-10s page load times for pages that should be <1s. Or at least this is my guess on what is going on based on my experience with Linux IO scheduler. Alternatively they could try to fix the issue by modifying the system IO mechanism to have separate read and write queues or sync and async queues, so low priority writes don't block user experience.
One other thing, for camera comparisons you should include 35mm equivalent zoom lengths and apertures. The former is very useful for deciding how wide a shot it makes, and the latter determines the amount of depth-of-field achieved (for cell phone cameras it's going to be very little) and more importantly the amount of photons the sensor has to work with.
I certainly would have prefered the Nexus 5, but when Sprint offered the LG G2 for $0 with a 2 year ball and chain I pulled the trigger. Been using a 2007 flip phone for several years since I have been a phone Luddite until just recently. Most of the under the hood stuff on the G2 is mirrored on the Nexus 5. My experience with the G2 tells me that the Nexus is a real screamer.
It would probably be more useful to run a test of how long it takes between opening the camera app to taking a picture in these reviews rather than worrying about how many dslr features are missing from the interface.
If you care about such tweaking options then a phone with a minuscule lens is not the device you should use for photographs. For everyone else, the usage pattern is heavily skewed towards "quick! take a picture!", so app and shutter lag (first time, not picture-to-picture) is far more important.
I agree with this. I don't really care how much post processing or pre-processing I can do on a DSP for the camera image. That's what I have Photoshop for (or any number of other photo processing desktop applications, assuming you can take a photo in RAW format). The ease of use of the camera, plus the speed of the camera (first shot from the home screen) are more important to me on a smartphone.
I think the maximum brightness posted on this review is unusually low for the Nexus 5. Other reviews which have measured the maximum brightness have had numbers closer to 500 nits (490 I believe), and I have also noticed that my Nexus 5 has a noticeably brighter screen than my old Nexus 4, but according to this review the Nexus 4 is 30 nits brighter. Something seems off.
Can you recommand a wireless charger for the Nexus 5? I heard that the ravpower one with built-in battery can function well with the qi compatible devices. Need advice on that. Thanks.
My biggest concern with picking the LG G2 over the Nexus 5 is the software. LGs software support seems to be horrible. So while you may get more polish I wouldn't expect more than maybe one version update out of the G2 if that. At least based on how the original Optimus G has been treated.
LG is quick to release a new hardware, but even though they have been the hardware partner for the last two Nexus phones, they are far behind in the software deparment. The Optimus G was almost the same hardware as the Nexus 4, yet it's still on 4.2.2, and will probably never see 4.3 even though the Nexus 4 shipped with it.
These days, a manufacturer even saying that there *will* be an update is a great stroke of luck. Maybe I'm jaded, but other than the Nexus line, I no longer expect to see any software updates on the devices I buy (though, it should be noted, that I'm a mid-range buyer; burned too many times by "high-end" devices).
I'm a bit dissapointed with LG/google this time around... I'm waiting for a 4th replacement of my Nexus 5. First one had a defective vibrator (noisy), second had a defective LCD and the third had another bad vibrate motor. Sheesh.
Ugh. The sentence that contains the phrase "memory pressure," and "at-boot footprint." Who are you writing to, Klug? Tech enthusiasts or a bunch of MBAs?
Why the absence of love for the Sony devices ? They never appear in the benchmark tables. I feel like they have made a good job on their Xperia line and would like to see them included.
Thanks for another great, super thorough, review. I'm always especially interested to see the noise suppression test. It's intriguing that Fluence seems to have improved, but I'm still disappointed in any phone that doesn't use Audience's noise suppression chip.
I went back and listened to the noise cancellation test in Brian's Nexus 4 review. He says here's that he's impressed with the Nexus 5, even though it's using Qualcomm's Fluence chip. But to me it sounds like the Nexus 4 was better, at least in the test. And my personal experience of the Nexus 4 is that it's nowhre close to as good as the Audience chip in the Nexus One.
Also, if you look at Brian's reviews the the iPhone 5, where he compares the noise cancellation in the iPhone 4 (Audience chip) to the iPhone 5 (Apple in house noise cancelling), you can see what Audience is like and how much better it is. The iPhone 5 is more like what you get from Qualcomm's Fluence.
Not here. They were quiet before now they're quite loud (after 4.4.2). The quality was always above average for me and even the highest volumes have minimal distortion.
Anandtech showed the top 2 or 3 volumes with headphones is more or less broken and should not be used though.
I just picked up a Nexus 5 and it prompted for the 4.4.2 update so I can't say before the update. But currently my only issue with sound is that it can't seem to go low enough. On the volume scale when turning down the notification and other sounds it is like I want to go one step quieter but that next step is vibrate. Seems that there isn't enough range.
Brian, first of all thank you for the awesome, complete review! But I have one lingering question I can't seem to find an answer to: if the snapdragon 800 has a low power core that can be used for "always on" listening (hardware), why can't someone create an app (software) that takes advantage of it like in the moto x?
Hello, What I would really love to see added to phone reviews on AT is whether or not the GPS will function without cellular connection. In other words if you are without service or in airplane mode, will the GPS functions of the phone still operate? I find more often they do not which is why I still own the HTC Amaze 4g. It is one of the only phones I can rely on the gps along with offline mapping. Important and I hope to see it added to future reviews. Thanks
At nearly same price point (in India), Nexus has the edge with the Camera (OSS) and processor. But the others have removable battery, SD card slot, larger battery (for G pro).
So, if price is not the differentiating factor, which want would be most desirable among LG Optimus G Pro, Sony Xperia ZL, HTC Butterfly and Nexus?
After using the HTC Aria for 3 years, I upgraded to the Nexus 5. I had it for a weekend, but felt that it didn't live up to its potential. The screen was gorgeous and the phone was free of bloatware. However, the phone was unwieldy due to the large screen, and the battery life was inconsistent. I am now on the iPhone and am very happy with my purchase. At least as far as the internals go, I will be able to run demanding apps for a long time.
The trend towards larger screens on cellphones in the Android space is disturbing. 4.5-4.7 inches would be nice, but any bigger and I would find it hard to hold. The likes of Galaxy Note are best replaced by a combination of a smaller smartphone and a tablet - it is just too big.
I got my 32 GB iPhone 5S for $224.99 with a 2 year contract. Also, Moto G doesn't have 4G LTE, which explains the low price. It may be a good phone for someone in a country like India though.
For what it’s worth, I switched from an iPhone 5 to a Nexus 5 and my battery life is SIGNIFICANTLY better on the Nexus. If I took my iPhone 5 ff the charger at 7AM, it would be down to ~45% battery when I left work at 5:30PM. When I do the same with my Nexus 5 my battery is at 75-80%.
I’m sure that others may have legit issues, but this phone has demonstrated AMAZING battery life for me thus far.
I've had my nexus 5 for a few days and its a fantastic phone for $350. My issue is the LCD display, I came from a galaxy nexus and going from an OLED display to an LCD display is a huge downgrade. I was shocked at the color and contrast difference when I put the two side by side.
I just loaded the example audio file into Adobe Audition for evaluation. It's not a wideband audio stream, so the Nexus 5 is NOT making HDVoice calls using AMR-WB. The review should be updated to reflect this fact.
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cynosure4sure - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Freaking Finally :Pjiffylube1024 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
+1.w0203j - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
+2JaimeCarlos - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
+3There was no reason to take it so long -.-
JoannWDean - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link
my buddy's aunt earned 14958 dollar past week. she been working on the laptop and got a 510900 dollar home. All she did was get blessed and put into action the information leaked on this site... http://cpl.pw/OKeIJospencersears - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
It sure is a nice phone! But it can't match up to the competition these days, by for example HTC One M8 (see http://www.consumertop.com/best-phone-guide/). I wish Google was as good at making phones as they are at search engines or email!nappingrat - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Like a fine wine - good things take time! Thanks Brian!pwr4wrd - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Like a fine wine? It is not my intention to start an argument but have you really had any fine wine? If you actually did, you would not call any android platform unit a fine wine. One of the worst analogies seen online.raazman - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
I'm sure nappingrat is referring to the article, not Android.nappingrat - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
You got it raazman; I think the review itself is top notch. I, like most people, wish the phone were more polished. Gotta love the intertubes for the entertainment value though - an unfavorable review of my review of Brian's review.Azurael - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
On the other hand, I don't think you could say Android hasn't matured fantastically over the years. I've been a fan since the start (G1 > Desire > Desire Z > Atrix > SGS2 > One X > Nexus 4) These days, I look forward to using Android more than any other platform I interact with on a daily basis... Even 1.5 on the G1 felt like an upgrade from the busted original iPhone it replaced (maybe not graphically, but certainly functionally - Notifications and Copy/Paste!) And I really wouldn't want to use anything pre-ICS these days.And not being a fan of wine, I'd take an Android device any day over the offer of a glass of super priceless vintage wine :)
blackmagnum - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
When will Google owned Motorola get a chance to build a Nexus? I'll be looking for a different design language than the Koreans.mrdude - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Never, I hope.The Moto X has some really innovative ideas that are unlike any other phone in the market. I think that phone showed that Motorola is aware that there's a lot more to a great smartphone than just bumping up specs and PPI. The Nexus line, at least to me, seems to be about providing a stable platform to push out Android releases and offer a clean and conservative platform to build upon or strive for. A Moto version of Nexus would likely be just another boring smartphone, which is what I find most Nexus phones to be - great phones, sure, but really boring :P
Thanks for the review, Brian. Looks like I'm pulling the trigger on the Moto X for roughly the same price
usama_ah - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Completely agree. For a while I wanted a Motorola Nexus but after the Moto X I am happy with Motorola doing their own thing because they've been doing a great job. If anything it would be nice if the two camps (Moto and the Nexus team) learned from each other.Wolfpup - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I'm fine with the Moto X *IF* it's supported roughly as fast and long as the Nexus line. I figure the Moto X might be, as it might sort of be an unofficial Nexus, given it's supposed to be pretty clean android, and is technically FROM Google.I wouldn't touch anything else with a 10 foot pole. Gross 3rd party goop on top of the OS, and if you're lucky you get one OS update, and then it's 8 months late (but hey, that's okay, malware writers are good about waiting for everyone to update before they attack, it's just good sportsmanship).
The goop Samsung and the rest slop on top of Android reminds me of the bad old Windows 3.1 days, although with Windows 3.1 at least some of the ideas there were interesting, and you could revert to the real interface.
Pr3ch34r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
As long as the nexus line, is that a joke? I just sold a less than 2 years hold Galaxy Nexus that won't even see 4.4, even Samsung devices last more wrt upgrades...Pr3ch34r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Hold = old, pls excuse this keyboardElrando Horse - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Please point me towards the 2011 Samsung phone getting the Kitkat upgrade.redundant - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
the beauty of the nexus line is how damn easy it is to install a custom ROM with 4.4. i know that the average user wouldnt be interested in installing a custom rom, but then again nexus buyers usually arent your average folk.Azurael - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Erm, since the design language is from Google, I'm not quite sure what you're hoping for... Does the Nexus 5 look like the G2? No, it doesn't. Does the Galaxy Nexus look like the SGS2/3? No. The Nexus 4 looks more like the Optimus G than the others I've mentioned with it's sparkly glass back, but it's still more Google than LG given the hardware platform is the same! What have you got against Korean design anyway? It's not like anything Motorla have produced since the original RAZRs could be regarded as stylistically interesting... All smartphones look pretty much the same, it's just something we're going to have to grow to live with. A big slab of glass with a speaker at the top and a mic at the bottom is just that, and you can't really deviate too far without hampering ergonomics.StealthGhost - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Finally a Nexus with good battery life. Great review as always Mr. Klug!danbob999 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
It's also one of the first review to actually back up the battery life claim with numbers. The others are all subjective.harpocrates - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
The Verge review was a joke in this regard, stating "During our time with the Nexus 5, it's been hard to get a real grip on how its battery truly operates.". Instead of taking the time to figure a methodology to test the phone, they simply rushed out the review without real facts about battery life. I'm very pleased to see real data here at Anandtech.danbob999 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I totally agree. However I would also like to see some "idle" battery life tests, with display off, but with push notifications turned on. It would be more representative of the average use than browsing the web over wifi for 8 hours.Laxaa - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Agree as well. Other reviews have made the battery a lot worse than it seems here(compared to the competition)hrrmph - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
+1, for the article and the comment.It's good to see battery life data, but something more representative of the typical user would be good.
Also, I feel that Anandtech are pulling their punches here with regard to non-removable versus removable batteries: Is it really the case that the design choice of a non-removable battery gives 40% better life? Somehow I doubt that... but it's what the charts seem to show.
So a more detailed explanation of the pros and cons of non-removable versus user removable batteries would be good, along with some data.
I'm not saying that such explanation had to be in *this* article, but the recent separate "explanation" of AnandTech policy with regard to an emerging history of neglect of these issues was heavy on defense and short on details with regards to assertions that non-removable batteries increase battery life, and thus are simply design choices with trade-offs. How much trade-off? 5%, 10%, 20%, 40%?
I'm thinking that for typical users that a 20 - 30% increase in battery life would probably be needed to offset the "hassle-factor" of not being able to change your own batteries at will. For example, if like most users you can get through the day okay, or you can get through the day on one session of say, a half hour of opportunistic charging, then a 30% increase in battery life might be enough to get you through 2 days of more or less the same behavior. That could be significant enough to sway the decision strongly in favor of a non-removable battery for most people.
Basically, I think in days and weeks on this issue. I have to charge a moderately used BB-Z10 once every 36 hours (1.5 days). A lightly used Samsung Galaxy Note 2 that I also always carry with me requires charging once every 3 days. A feature phone that I use as a bedside alarm clock needs charging once every 2 weeks.
A nitpick is that AT recently committed (somewhat unconvincingly) to being agnostic on non-removable batteries versus user removable batteries, and to not discriminate. I'll admit that I was surprised and impressed by AT's attempt to be just that... this article was much better than some others of late. However, to follow through and complete the act, being truly neutral requires openly characterizing the pros and cons, and describing them accurately.
This needs to start with descriptions. Calling these batteries "internal" versus "non-removable" is close, but not quite adequate. Both types of batteries are "internal." The correct two subsets that the category breaks down into are "user removable," and "user non-removable." In this way, the uninitiated reader who happens upon an AT article is clearly informed that the battery in the device that they are considering purchasing (in this case, the Nexus 5) is of the type "user non-removable."
Moving on to a discussion of the best way to get access to the battery: Seeing the back cover off of the Nexus 5 in the AT photos makes it plain that changing the back cover to a tool-less user removable design would be both desirable (from a consumer perspective) and not-so-challenging (from the manufacturer's perspective).
Overall, the Nexus 5 looks like a great affordable mid-range unlocked phone with a few flagship quality design features such as a great SOC (finding an unlocked phone at this price / quality is a rarity, and is to be commended). Unfortunately, the lack of a user removable battery will remain one of the Nexus lineup’s weakest points.
As an alternative, the Blackberry Z10 can occasionally be bought unlocked direct from Blackberry USA for half price (it was recently on sale at $200 each). It has a user removable battery, great multitasking OS with awesome messaging hub software (that consolidates all messages, call info, and notifications in one place) that is a real time saver, but inferior camera. The Samsung S4-Mini is another reasonably priced unlocked phone with a user removable battery.
Going up the range to a higher-end flagship, there is also the Google Play variant of the Samsung S4 that has a user removable battery... if that is important to you... since we *are* being "neutral" on the subject.
Pr3ch34r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
the removable or not battery is a samsung argument only, you can get external batteries for any device, some even can work with multiple brands of phones, and the price is okdanbob999 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
and they all suck because they basically discharge on the USB port to charge your phone, wasting at least 30% in the processImpulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
While efficiency is obviously a concern,I don't see how that means they all suck. You can get a 5,600-6,000 mAh battery for like $35 that's still smaller than the phone itself, built in micro cable and everything... Such a battery is basically good for two full charges (or more).There's smaller ones, the tiniest are usually cylinder shaped, but the built in cable and flat form factor of the former seems the most useful IMO. I've been using one for a while and I really don't miss rebooting plus taking my case & battery lid off just to swap batteries.
Obviously everyone's needs are different, some may not have the time or space for a USB battery to top up the phone in a bag/pocket. Thankfully there's still OEMs catering to all needs in the Android ecosystem.
dynamited - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
No, it's about the overall life time of the battery and after 18 months you are at 50% capacityflyingpants1 - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
So basically, you don't use your phone, therefore you can get "3 days" of battery life. Got it.I'd rather just increase battery life to 16 hours of constant use.
webwarmiller - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Just from my own experience at 'idle' with nothing disabled (wifi, cellular, GPS, Goolge Now, full sync'ing of 2 Google accounts, etc) I would estimate the battery drains btw 1-1.5% hour. I've never had a phone that sips battery as well as it does at 'idle' when everything is enabled.flyingpants1 - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
I just wish everyone would stop. These anecdotal examples mean nothing at all.nathanddrews - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Archer. Best part of the article. ;-)speconomist - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Couldn't find that reference in the review, where exactly is it?djpavcy - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Brian,Maybe I missed it, but you mention that you have both a black and a white nexus 5, so are the benchmarks you list for the black device, the white, an average of the two, or do you get the exact same numbers for both devices?
Jumangi - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Why would you expect different numbers from the same phones with different colored cases?dave_the_nerd - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
DA RED WUNZ GO FASTA!1!Wade_Jensen - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
HAHAHAHAHAHAH BAHAHAH BAHAHAH!!!! YOU Legend!!djpavcy - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
In my experience, running the same freaking benchmark twice on the same device yields different numbers so I would be curious to know if the two devices had similar or identical results.flyingpants1 - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
... Maybe because they might use a different revision of hardware, or different thermal throttling due to the difference in material and design used for the case. You never know. Most likely identical though.pseudo7 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
On page 2, what does "Delta" mean in the bottom two tables?Are lower numbers better in the table Dalvik vs ART?
(I usually rely on the key on graphs to explain i.e. "Lower is better")
Thanks for your hard work Brian, enjoying reading it so far :)
NeoteriX - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
1) Lower is better in the tables, and2) Delta is essentially the of percentage of difference between the two results, with 1 being no difference, a number below 1 being a regression in performance, and a number above 1 being an improvement in performance. E.g., 1.065x = 6.5% improvement.
jerrylzy - Sunday, December 22, 2013 - link
I inferred from the Delta and thought it should be "lower is better". but I downloaded AndEBench myself and ran a few tests. it says "iterations/sec". shouldn't it be "higher is better"? Thank you for answering.Wade_Jensen - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Thankyou very much for a spectacular review, Brian. We know you've been ridiculously busy.webmastir - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Brian,You have a typo on your Display Analysis page. You have "..a MIPI..", should be "...an MIPI*"..."
webmastir - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Please proofread your entire article. Thanks.cwolf78 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Please go F yourself. Thanks.NeoteriX - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
To piggyback on this, the link to the RF "Field Test Menus" app link ("awesome app with shortcuts already on the market.") is broken I believe.Mil0 - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Also on the camera page one mention of ISO is meant to be IOS. But these are all nitpickings, awesome article Brian!speconomist - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Serious question from someone whose mother tongue is not English:If I understand correctly even if the acronym starts with consonant it should be preceded with "an", instead of with "a"?. could someone confirm?
xaml - Sunday, December 15, 2013 - link
Ann ate an ananas after reading through an AnandTech review anticipating an antagonising effect on other publications.celltech1 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Do you have any information on if the 5 will support VoLTE? I am assuming there is no technical reason why the hardware can't do it...Google just needs to supply the SIP client.gescom - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
349 $ / 349 EURHow's that?
349 $ = 257 EUR + tax = ~ 305 EUR.
gescom - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I was wrong.It is more like 450 $ / 400 EUR - no contract
JimmiG - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Indeed, the Nexus 5 is a much worse buy in Europe than over in the US.In Sweden, the 32GB N5 is €460, while the LG G2 is €475. Those extra €15 will buy you better battery life, better camera and a bigger screen. The 16GB N5 is €415, so if you're sure you don't need the extra local storage, it might be a reasonably good deal. You can also get the G2 on contract of course, and pay 25 - 50% less over the course of 1-2 years.
ancan - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Also, the 32GB is gray market since LG has chosen not to sell this version. I managed to order a 32GB from the UK play store, and including P&P, shipping proxy fee and toll, it will still be some €'s less expensive than the 16GB.Mil0 - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
You pay /less/ for a phone on contract? Here in the Netherlands we have about the same prices for phones, which I would also consider the g2 were I to replace my n4. However, last time I checked it was cheaper to buy a phone of contract and get a 'sim-only' contract.DukeN - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
English Police alert: "Anyone who hesitated to move from iOS back then will find themselves with an OS today that is clearly a substitute good."Maybe just change it to "KitKat >> iOS"?
bplewis24 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
That would be a welcome change.edlee - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
yeah, I reread that sentence three times to fully understand what he was trying to say, it needs a rewrite.hrrmph - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Just swap the words "substitute good" to "good substitute."He is clearly saying that Android and iOS are more or less on par with each other, with neither OS having a compelling advantage over the other.
It now seems more important to read the details of the articles with regards to the specific functions of each of the operating systems.
The iOS camera software is superior at this point, and a weak point of the Android OS, if that is important to you.
As I have recently come to understand (having used Apple iOS, Android 4.3, Blackberry OS 10, and WinPhone8), there is no OS that consolidates all emails, SMS, call data, and notifications in one easy-to-read list as good as BB OS10 does. A real time saver. But, you get a crappy camera.
So the Nexus 5 gets good camera hardware and crappy Android camera software. Hopefully there is a fix on the way soon.
If you want a read-out of "true" North on the compass, then iOS will easily do that, but BB-OS10 won't.
WinPhone 8 won't read FLAC audio files.
BB OS10 won't let you format the Micro-SDXC storage card using the exFAT file system. Android will.
We are now in the days where there is finally a very close neck and neck competition amongst the mobile OSes for the best quality and functionality. Unfortunately, all of the OSes have some basic features missing. They all have some catching up to do to get it right.
Galcobar - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
The sentence is correctly written."A good" means an item with value (as opposed to a bad such as pollution which has negative value). Most people encounter the word in the form of "goods and services."
"Substitute good" is a standard English term, meaning a good which is an adequate replacement for another good.
Pr3ch34r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I'm going to iOS, tired of beta Android versions ever since 4.0, that and the 18 month since device announced update policy...Alpeshkh - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
FINALLY!!!Still reading the battery life section and. gotta say, "Great things do take time"!
Seriously, battery life numbers are clearly the biggest surprise. Who would've thought that N5 would beat iPhone 5s in some battery life tests!? All, 'Tech' blogs who rushed out for reviews & giving scores for getting clicks should really consider their reviews' process & use the device as their daily driver for considerable amount of time!
As for me, I was just waiting for Brian's review & his finding on battery life & am really happy to see the results!
@Brian, for the difference between G2 & N5 in battery life, could the PSR be the reason!? Just curious!
Thanks for the quality review as always! It was totally worth the wait! Really appreciate the effort you and whole of AnandTech people put in!
danbob999 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Most "tech" sites just looked at the number of mAh and concluded that it must suck given that it's smaller than the G2's.I call them "tech" sites because they are becoming more like fashion magazines, putting the emphasis on how they feel about the product.
yankeeDDL - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Best Nexus5 review, by far. Thanks.I whitelisted anandtech on adblock because of this review: you guys really deserve it.
I bought a Nexus5 and I read many of these reviews before doing so, but I confess that I hesitated a bit. Now I am (even more) convinced I made a good purchase.
Pr3ch34r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
so AT approved your buy thus you give them back, how about, for a change, ack that AT is a great site for every device, apple included, can you write that?Paulman - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Maybe it's because AT validated what he/she now already knows based on firsthand experience, while the other tech sites proved to err more on the side of naysaying?I don't know if the comment author has received their phone yet, but of they're like me, what I found was that a lot of the review sites blast the Nexus 5 on "poor battery life" and a "lousy camera", when in fact I've found battery life to be quite good, easily lasting a day out (in fact, on my light usage, it goes 24 hours+) and even while I take pretty good quality photos in all sorts of light (just that the camera UI is kind of messed up [slow and a bit buggy]). Also, the overall feel and responsiveness of the device "feels" really nice :)
yankeeDDL - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Hey, this was a great review, and, in general, I enjoy AT. I don't believe all reviews are as stellar as this one, although they're all definitely good. How can you manipulate someone's positive comment to the point of making it sound as a negative thing? Dude, chill.hamiltenor - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Great review, I avoid The Verge like the plague lately. AnandTech, Ars Technica and to a lesser extent, Tom's Hardware are basically the only useful technology news sites from my point of view.Few typos, but I won't bother complaining. It's clear what you meant and they don't detract from the effort or lengths you went to for this review.
Looking forward to the line-out audio comparison!
cheinonen - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I'm working on the article as fast as I can. I had to get another sample of a phone to verify something but I believe I have enough data to write it now. It's just big so it'll take a few days possibly. Lots of work to get done but it's coming ASAP.hrrmph - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I will add to others comments that waiting for you guys to get it right is totally worth it. In spite of my nitpicks, Brian did great on this review, and I'm glad to hear that you are handling audio as a dedicated project.I am very interested to see what you find on your audio quality investigations, especially since 90% of my audio consumption is now via mobile devices with content as follows:
- 80% are WMA-LossLess rips from redbook CDs;
- 10% mp3-360kbs from Amazon; and
- 5% FLAC 24-bit from various sources (and growing on this one).
Having tried numerous devices, I will comment in advance that I find the BlackBerry Z10 to be great for commuting in a noisy environment (good oomph for cutting through rumble over the car speakers) and the Samsung Note 2 and Samsung S-ATIV seem well refined for quiet environment listening at my desks (home and work).
My point being that the sound "profiles" of these devices may not be perfectly accurate, but nonetheless both have their applications and usefulness.
96 and 192KHz / 24-Bit recordings are gradually making their way into my collection in increasing numbers and I'm really enjoying the sound. So HD-Audio is also an interest, especially for material that can make good use of the bandwidth.
WinPhone 8 generally cannot handle FLAC audio files, thus the Blackberry and Samsung Android are my go-to devices for music now. I use them with Sennheiser, Grado, or B&W cans over my head depending where I am at (home / work / travel).
I occasionally use a Gen 1 Asus Nexus 7 for audio listening - it is okay but clearly isn't as good as the Blackberry and Samsung devices, is on par with Zune, and much improved over the old Sansa devices. Hopefully they further improved the audio quality in the Gen 2 device, although I will skip it for other reasons.
The Z10 has excellent volume, while the Note 2 is too quiet in the car on some songs... thus indicating that some devices need supplementary amplification to reach satisfying volume on some songs. Hopefully sound volume issues will get addressed in future mobile devices.
Impulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Looking forward to this.Alpeshkh - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Ah, should've curbed my excitement and read the display section fory that PSR thing!cgalyon - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Could the camera performance be significantly improved with use of another camera app? I would be interested in seeing if you could do a comparison of the camera performance in the stock app, Camera Awesome, and VSCO Can. My thinking is that it could give us very valuable information on if the camera experience could in fact be one of the best on Android when provided with capable software. Thanks for the very detailed review!Tetracycloide - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Most of the camera negatives are implemented before an app would be given camera data I think. Will require an OS update. 4.4.1 is supposed to be that OS update so we shouldn't have to wait long.AncientWisdom - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Also VERY interested in this.... We know the problem, question is are third party camera apps the solution?blind2haters - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Dude...the metal ring around the lens IS for magnetic lenses... It has already been tested and confirmed. Great research...not.Brian Klug - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Nope. http://cl.ly/image/0o2a2d342R0oEntirely cosmetic at this point.
-Brian
mike8675309 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
On the lenses, isn't the lens the magnetic part, not the ring? Thus as long as the ring around the lens is made from a ferromagnetic material the lens would attach. n'est-ce pas?NeoteriX - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
How come we can't see the Qi charger magnetic mounting points on this? Or am I not looking at this correctly?blind2haters - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/cell-phone-... Here I did ur research for u.NeoteriX - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
...what are you showing? That it's possible to glue a magnetic mount onto a phone and use magnetic lenses? Yeah, we already knew that and it's not Nexus 5 specific.skiboysteve - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
"Google can claim that SMS and IM are now merged nicely together under one roof, but it’s still two basically two discrete threads and views. It’s amazing to me that it’s 2013 and nobody has still been able to merge the two together the same way WebOS did with the Palm Pre."Windows Phone 8 does this perfectly with SMS and Facebook and Messenger using the same thread with a switch button to switch between them.
rwei - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I see you beat me to it, oopserrorr - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Unfortunately that is a relevant as palmOS doing it to me...hrrmph - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
If its important enough to you, find a BB-OS10 device to play with for awhile. ALL communications data is in one integrated list (SMS, Call Data, Email Accounts, Notifications, etc.). Incredibly time saving and easy.I bought the BB Z10 as a stopgap phone that I could wear on my belt and play my music for me while I waited for Samsung to offer something in the same size range. Dunno if I'll ever go there now.
I'm so hooked on the convenience and speed of the BB-OS10 Hub. I'm also hooked on the MS Windows-like multi-tasking windows.
Now I find myself getting a bit irritated when I use an Android, iOS, or WinPhone device. By comparison to the Blackberry, the "communications channels" seem fragmented and disorganized on those devices.
I never used a Blackberry before the Z10 so I have nothing to say about whatever happened in the past, but for an actual "phone" and communicator, based on my Z10 experience, I dread the thought of them exiting the market.
People ramble on about Linux, but for my money, WebOS and BB-OS10 are the ones who pushed / are pushing the market in the right direction.
I realize Linux has great underpinnings, but great GUI design is where its "at" when time is money, or time is satisfaction.
SpaceRanger - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
No Removable Battery?? No thank you.. I'll pass.Tetracycloide - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
It's removable has in 'replace the battery with relatively little effort if it stops holding a charge' but not has in 'bring a spare camping to swap out for more juice.' Decide accordingly.rwei - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
>nobody has still been able to merge the two together the same way WebOS did with the Palm PreWP does a good enough job interleaving and integrating the two that I'm almost completely agnostic over whether I use SMS, Facebook or MSN/Skype, and switch between them seamlessly based on my iOS/Android recipients' preferences.
PsychoPif - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I really love AnandTech, but I find the fact that they act like Windows Phones does'nt exist quite disturbing.I see 18 device on the battery chart, but not one runs WP8.
kyuu - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Brian Klug seems to have a personal beef with Windows Phone and, apparently, refuses to review them.hrrmph - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I have one sitting here in front of me (a Samsung ATIV-S that I bought on the cheap to play with).So let me point out that out of the 4 devices (3 operating systems and as many manufacturers) that I use, it is the only one that cannot handle my complete collection of music files (it chokes on FLAC files).
So after 20 years of making about 40 billion dollars a year, Microsoft cannot bring themselves to support the leading open standard for high quality 24-bit loss-less audio files?
munim - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Probably because it's useless to have such high fidelity support on a mobile device that you'll be using outside of a studio.Impulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Yeah, I'm surprised there's so many mentions of FLAC thru the comments... It's almost ironic, I really hope none of the people pinning for FLAC support are the same ones complaining about removable storage!My entire CD collection is ripped to FLAC, it just makes the most sense got archival purposes, I wish more mainstream music was available in lossless formats just out of principle... However it's pretty pointless to be dragging FLAC files around on a phone.
You're not gonna be able to tell the difference vs properly encoded MP3s, even if you're traveling with $300+ worth of DAC/amp equipment and $500+ reference grade headphones or IEM (much less the kinda headphones most people use, never mind the line out or Bluetooth which would pose the weakest link in the chain).
Do a proper blind test, then try to rationalize why FLAC support is so important... Considering it takes no time at all to convert a big library and it's gonna take up a fraction of the space your FLAC library already does (I keep a discrete MP3 library on the PC just to mak esyncs quicker, the extra space is a drop in the bucket compared to the FLAC originals anyway).
hrrmph - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
I'd rather spend my time searching for new music than re-encoding and maintaining more sync lists of the music that I already have. Manufacturers that bake the support into the device make life easier. Syncs of playlists "just work."64GB of NAND was $35 the other day at Amazon. 128GB is just around the corner. Is storage really all that precious so as to justify wasting time compressing it down into such a tiny space?
With storage becoming so reasonably cheap, then lossy compression becomes perhaps still useful for video, but is an utter waste of time on audio.
In fact, if tags worked properly on redbook audio CDs, I wouldn't bother compressing them at all and would just save them as .wav files.
Same thing with FLAC. If I buy it in a high-quality format, then why waste time and resources squeezing it down?
Impulses - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
I don't spend any time re encoding or managing separate FLAC/MP3 playlists either... Media Monkey does it all for me seamlessly and it's far easier to configure it to your particular needs than something like iTunes. Should look into it, if you're really that much of a music lover it's just foolish to use 10x more space than necessary for storing music on a phone.I bring a new CD home, open EAC to rip (simple one click process), and when I open Media Monkey later it's already set to find the new album and convert it on it's own (which doesn't even take a minute on a modern PC). When I sync it knows to only look at the MP3 library, there's truly smart playlists if for instance you wanna have a list of recently added music, etc.
My CD collection (+ online purchases) would never fit on a 64GB micro SD card encoded to FLAC, quite manageable as MP3 though. Easier to share too, or use as ringtones/alarms...
FLAC/lossless makes sense from an archival point of view, exactly because of scenarios like this. You can re-encode or edit files without taking a hit in quality... It's not a "high quality format" in the sense that you're hearing anything that you wouldn't from an MP3 though. The original mastering/editing usually has far more to do with that than the distribution format.
edi_opteron - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Umm, Where is the review of Lumia 1020? Or Lumia 1520? Oh wait, the greatest tablet in the market ( forget the app count for a moment) The Lumia 2520?Nokia hasn't sent you the devices? Simple, ask one, and they'll send you with a rush! I can't believe that you guys reviewed HTC One Max or Surface 2 and didn't do the same for Nokia devices which are probably the best in their category.
Review the tablet please!!
BoneAT - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Although our good friends at TheVerge suggests there's a major SW update coming in just few days improving that camera inconsistency, although not yet a new stock camera application. I look forward to you guys testing it and updating this article!A5 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
You can't just ignore the app count when talking about these devices. No way the 2520 is the best tablet.thunderbird32 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Even as far as non-Android/iOS tablets go the 2520 isn't the best. I'd much prefer Dell's Venue tablets. Full version of Windows on a Bay Trail SoC is so much more useful than RT on ARM.zoetrope - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Why don't you WinTards troll elsewhere? Enough of the whining and "poor me" attitude. The intertubes is big enough for your ilk, go visit a WP echo chamber like wpcentral.com and keep out of comment sections if you can't stay on topic.Wade_Jensen - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I am thoroughly against insulting people in such a manner, but WinTard is possibly the most hilarious thing since S-gimmick and S-fail.hrrmph - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
The greatest tablet? The 2520?Well maybe almost. Nokia specs show the Micro-SD slot to be a crippled version with a 32GB max capacity.
For many people, the low storage capacity makes it DOA, falling down straight out of the gate. There are just too many competing devices that have 64GB capable Micro-SDXC slots.
Of the course, the Nexus 5 is a zero in this category, since it has no slot for Micro-SD of any type.
jimbo2779 - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
I'm going to ignore the childish name calling for a moment and just say that while I am a big fan of WP and windows tabs I seriously doubt the 2520 is going to be the best tablet going, on paper it has decent hardware and Nokia build quality if great it is still going to be running RT.RT has/had a huge amount of potential but without more app support it will never draw in the crowds and that will in turn not lead to more apps so it is a vicious cycle that I doubt will be changing any time soon. As an OS it is pretty great and you only need to look at some of the fan vids of it online where people are gaming on the tab while watching a video on a TV or vice versa, there is some serious potential to it but without the app support it is likely to stay at potential.
As for WP reviews I do agree that it is very disheartening to not even have some cursory reviews/overviews of them. It really wouldn't be that hard to get a few of the key devices and at least battery test them. At this point a few days of testing would really go a long way to showing how they stack up in terms of battery life.
It is disappointing to not have any real consideration for what is a good phone OS and its devices. Market share is increasing and as it does so will app support and if AT is not careful they could be in a position where WP is more of a serious player (it already is in some parts of the world) and none of the writing staff will have much of an idea about what it is all about.
BoneAT - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Having a whole year to work on the device an two to work on Key Lime Pie, I'm surprised how rushed the Nexus 5 feels. The camera thing is a mess as if there were very, VERY late decisions to include OIS and exclude the new API, and ppl. are reporting wakelocks all over the place.Build quality is extremely worrysome based on drops tests, each ending brutally plus the speaker placement blocks clear sound coming through, boyz @XDA improved it significantly drilling small holes into the plastic underneath.
And then there's the battery - it seems Google understands the flagship concept as far as specs and SW goes, but 4hr SoT on normal use of Google services is NOT flagship level. With a price bump I wonder how they failed to address the Nex4's biggest issue (not much real world improvement based on dozens of N5 XDA users).
Now when you have the camera focus right, when you manually improve the speaker, when you protect it from the smallest drops and when you use all around (excluding all non-KitKat compatible apps), the Nexus 5 is the most successful realization of the Google Phone. These annoyances however makes it a questionable buy, never mind the price tag. The Moto X might just be a better buy considering you get two for one Nexus 5.
THX - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I'm guessing you went with a different phone and are trying to justify your purchase by trashing the shinier, newer, more performant option. :)Maybe I'm missing something but how is the Moto X half the cost of the $350 Nexus 5?
BoneAT - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
No criticism, no improvement, buddy. I'm a Nexus user so hit any miss on your cyber bullying attempt, but thx for spotting out my Moto X - Moto G mix-up.THX - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Nexus 4 user? Just sell your phone and get the 5.And I think anyone here would rather have a single fast phone than 2 slow ones, or was there a specific use-case you had in mind?
Pr3ch34r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Not-everyone-buy-a-nexus-for-300-fucking-dollarsPr3ch34r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I think he hit the jackpotffh2303 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
About the charging time,my unit [a black 32GB D820] charges in under 90 minutes using a 2A Note 2 charger [Samsung ETA-U90UWE] while on. Using the Battery Monitor Widget by 3c I observed that while idling on the homescreen the phone consumes around 450mA [shown as -445mA in the app] and when I plug in the Note 2 charger it shows the phone is charging at around 1500mA [shown as +1500mA]. My charging time with the stock LG charger is the same as your findings though.rxzlmn - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I wonder why the reported times from the battery life benchmarks are so much higher than any of the reported screen-on times in 'real-world' usage? I am not trying to discredit the data, just honestly curious. How does one get close to 9 hours of constant screen-on time while the phone is being used, and why is there not a single battery stat from phones in use anywhere close to that number?On a side note, do you plan on reviewing the Sony Z1? I am asking because it has generally received mixed reviews in terms of battery life, but actually seems to perform very good in 'real life' scenarios.
sherlockwing - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Anandtech is one of the few sites that set all phone to the same brightness(200nits) when battery testing. What you see from other websites is that they test every phone at their auto-brightness or max brightness setting. That's why Anandtech's battery life benchmark results are different from other sites.rxzlmn - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I'm talking about real usage, i.e. people who own the phone post screenshots of Android battery usage stats. Not benchmarks. The best you see for the N5 is 5 hours+, even with WiFi only.sherlockwing - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Ofc having the phone run benchmark is going to result differently than real life usage since the scenario is different.Cinnabuns - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
The tests performed here are controlled and I imagine that the phone is not being moved around a whole lot during battery-life testing (and it shouldn't be). However, one of the nicest things about having a smartphone are location-aware services. And they drain the battery. A lot.Unfortunately, one of the biggest culprits is Google's own location reporting service, which itself is integral to various Google Now features.
Of course, there are also various bugs that people in the real world encounter that are not triggered by the very specific test conditions in the battery life tests here. For example, Android 4.3 had a bug that could cause a phone to never "deep sleep" after wireless charging. But there's really no way for a review site to try to hunt down all the battery bugs and reproduce them. That's not really within scope of a battery life test and reviewers aren't paid to do QA on a phone, so they can only report on specific bugs they encounter in their personal use of the device (or bugs that are so heinously obvious that everybody has heard about already).
In short, there's no way a review site knows what YOUR "real-world" usage is. So the best thing they can do is to perform a controlled study with a published methodology and report the results. You get to interpret whether that methodology can be extrapolated to your own "real life" use. Sadly, other "review" sites somehow extrapolate their own unscientific experience as representative of real life usage when in truth, there is no universal real-lifeusage.
Impulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
At the end of the day what matters most is that AT's testing is under controlled circumstances SMS repeatable, thus you get a very fair relative comparison between the tested phones. You may not get 9 hours on wifi if you aren't sitting next to the router, at X brightness, with zero background syncs, etc etc; but you can easily tell whether phone A will so better than phone B based on their tests. Isn't that all that really matters when you're trying to decide whether to buy A or B?Impulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
SMS = andWTB comment edit
augustofretes - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Because those stats aren't the product of a controlled test? Because some people in those tests have their display at high brightness, because some are playing games, and a thousand of each?tehh4ck3r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/5/5175568/fixing-t...Has Anandtech had a chance to play with this yet?
Brian Klug - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Nope, I have heard nothing about it and have no insights. Wait for real testing.-Brian
jamdev12 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Hahahaha!!! Awesome comeback Brian. I like the fact that you have real testers at Anandtech that take that extra step and have unbiased comments about the product and its features.Wade_Jensen - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Agreed haha, but its definitely confirmed. Poor Brian has to redo camera testing soon.Myrandex - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Windows Phone does great with threading IMs through Facebook and Windows Live messenger along with text messages...David-K - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Did you see this ?http://www.phonearena.com/news/Nexus-5-huge-camera...
A5 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/5/5175568/fixing-t...4.4.1 with camera fixes coming imminently.
theblacklaser - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
My next phone will be a Nexus Whichever-Version-They're-On-When-It's-Time-For-A-New-Phone. No question about it.Arnulf - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
good as it might be, the size/capacity of that battery is still a design fail. I own the 16 GB Nexus 5 model (I imagine 32 GB is exactly the same as far as dimensions go) and the phone is way too thin. LG could easily have made it 20-25% thicker so it would be more comfortable to hold, and the extra space could be used to beef the battery up to LG G2 level.This and the limited storage (coupled with the fact that there is no microSD expansion slot) are my only complaints about this phone though; too bad such nice hardware wasn't designed into a better product.
BearCatCow - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
What a great article! Very objective and evidence based. The attention to display accuracy rather than whoever pumped up the saturation the most, the clear analysis of the camera's hardware (potential) vs software (current usability), and the multitude of battery measures are very helpful.bioyuki - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Brian: Did you notice any differences in real world rf performance between the Nexus 5 and Nexus 4? Only a few data points on my end, but it seems like the N5 performs on average 3-5 dBm worse than the N4 (LTE and HSPA on Band 4). Also, does the N5 contain any of Qualcomm's tunable front end parts?BearCatCow - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Question: what were the differences in battery performance with ART runtime vs the default?nostriluu - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
how about a battery test that's really useful for most people, how a device lasts over the course of a day with a typical set of apps? these rundown tests are really not that helpful.NeoteriX - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
What do you specifically propose for an objective, repeatable, platform agnostic test, hmm? What is a typical set of apps? What about the fact that apps are always changing? What about the fact that many apps are not multi-platform or aren't standardized across platforms?The rundown test (based on something agnostic and universal like web page loading) is probably the best kind of objective test you're going to get; you'll just have to extrapolate your daily performance from that.
Besides, as a pragmatic matter, Brian's/Anandtech's reviews are already take so much time and effort to do, and that's with multiple a 5-9 hour long battery tests (LTE, 3G, Wifi...). One can't test any other feature of the phone while battery testing... you want to seriously add a suite of 12-24 hour tests on top of that?
Impulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Can't believe someone's actually pinning for less controlled/repeatable battery testing just because it might be closer to their own use... AT does the best battery tests bar none, whether they mimic your use or not is irrelevant, just find a phone you own or have owned on their list and extrapolate from there. It'll be far more accurate than a pseudo real world test with too many random variables to account for.flyingpants1 - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Jesus Christ, I cannot believe some of the comments on here. The battery life tests here and everywhere else are terrible. None of them reflect real-world usage whatsoever.The only real test here is a synthetic web-browsing battery life test, and it gives results between 6-10 hours, I'll eat my monitor if anyone's phone actually lasts that long in real-life web-browsing. Obviously a synthetic benchmark can be a useful as a comparative tool between phones, but not much else. It's basically the equivalent of a 3dmark score.
It's a well-known fact.. actually, by now a universally foregone conclusion that smartphones die extremely quickly, and are super annoying to charge. Brian uses phrases like "It can last the whole day on a single charge" which are utterly meaningless. That just means you left your phone in your pocket most of the time. But when you actually want to use your phone in a pinch, or while travelling, or in an emergency, or for serious work, then it's a completely different story. Yet for some reason you wouldn't get that impression from most reviewers. And so we're forced to compromise.
Compare with laptops from a couple years ago, they'd advertise 5 hours of life, get 3 in reality in ideal conditions, and within a year be down to 2 hours. I'm sure a lot of people were happy with that. So what. The Macbook Air came along and gives you up to 12-16 hours. Now *THAT* is all day life. That is what we should be getting on smartphones. 12-16 hours of screen time and constant use. Then we won't need to go and do forty million battery life tests anymore, because the problem is *solved* for 99.9% of use cases. Instead we're getting price gouged like crazy for storage, and R&D goes to things like 500PPI displays and downloading at 150mbps, things which should be of slightly lower importance than making the phone stay alive.
No idle test. This is really important, the percentage drop should be less than 1-2% every 24 hours.
No video test.
No gaming test.
Nobody seems to care about texting. People usually send *way* more texts than they make calls, and texting drains battery faster than calls do. I often run out of battery life on the train while texting, seems like a percentage point every minute or two even with my display on 0%.
The reviewers are definitely on the manufacturer's side on every single issue here: against microSD, against removable batteries, but *FOR* pointlessly thin, even to the point of sacrificing battery life and functionality. If they were on the *consumer's* side, they'd be tearing apart every single 16GB device, advocating the $1 microSD slot for *EVERY PHONE*, and demanding *EVERY PHONE* have either a version with a removable battery, and/or EXTENDED (MAXX) battery version.
My ideal device would be a 5" screen, LG G2 or RAZR MAXX-like device, 10.5mm thick, 4500mah, with 64GB microSD and front speakers like the HTC One. The closest thing right now is the HTC Butterfly S, IMO the best phone on the market by far, there are no tradeoffs at all.
bountygiver - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Well the camera UI didn't go miserable in 4.4, but since 4.3. Navigating settings in 4.3+ camera UI is a pain as toggles have no feedback and there's no tell whether an option is a menu or a toggle.For the not focus problem, just tap another place and tap the original position again to refresh it.
Krysto - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I'm curious why you're calling 512 MB phones "mid-range", when you can find such a phone even for $100 unlocked these days. Even Moto G at $180 is a low-end to mid-range phone, and it has 1 GB of RAM. Is it because you don't want the iPhone to be considered mid-range?Pr3ch34r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Tell me how would you consider the 5s (or even the 5c) midrange, because of ram and screen size? Both are top of the line, like it or not...hrrmph - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
iPhones are upper-midrange. They don't have:- Tool-less removable back covers (Blackberry, Samsung);
- User replaceable batteries (Blackberry, Samsung);
- Internal user expandable local storage such as via Micro-SDXC slots (Blackberry, Samsung, Sony);
- Dual-SIM slots (Samsung S4, S4-Mini, and Note 3 have variants that are so equipped);
- MS Windows style easy-to-open, easy-to-reduce-to-thumbnail, easy-to-close multitasking windows (BB OS10);
- Interleaving of all communications in one list, such as SMS, Call Data, Email Accounts, Notifications, etc. (Again BB OS10);
- WMA-Lossless audio file support (Android and Blackberry); and
- 4K-60fps OIS-stabilized video recording (okay, nobody has it, but a real flagship device should).
flyingpants1 - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Right. In addition to the screen size thing. And no NFC, or USB, no front speakers, no waterproof, no wireless charging.. there's actually a ton more..erple2 - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
To be fair, your first 3 points don't tell me high end at all. Those are just convenience features.The 4th one isn't really all that important outside of a few select markets, so scratch that.
The software itself isn't really a good reason to decide high, medium or low end - there are plenty of Apple Zealots that will tell you the many things Apple does that neither BBX nor Android do, and they'll place some sort of unrealistic weight to that small feature. Curiously, the more I use my phone, the less I care about the fancy interface of the multitasker. Android's method seems to work just fine for me.
The interleaving of communications sounds great, but it comes with one HUGE caveat - crappy app support for EVERYTHING ELSE.
WMA isn't really a deal breaker at all - iOS will play FLAC audio (with an additional app), or the native AppleLossless format.
Though having used an OIS phone in the past, I would consider that a high-end feature..
akdj - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
What about performance? Camera quality? Eco system, app/development support and software available? Post purchase support? Immediate updates and 'point' updates to kill bugs? Oh, yeah... Performance? Did you happen to notice the 5/5s in the 'upper mid range' scoring in graphics, computational power, battery life (no need to replace batteries), a 64GB option (no need for an SD slot), who cares about dual SIM slot when damn near every "world radio" is built in? Buy a new SIM when you arrive at your destination, with minutes, for ten bucks! iPhones and iPads have long been able to playback lossless formats and FLAC. It's kinda cool, there's typically 'an app for that' when using iOS. Not so much using BB OS10. And Samsung's TouchWiz cream soup is thicker than mashed potatoes (I've got a Note 2). Their phones are more bloated than a new Compaq computer bought at Computer City in 2003 with Vista! I own Android and iOS devices. Daily drive a pair of phones. The Note2 and 5s. I can honestly tell you've got ZERO experience with iPhones...and need to before spewing such silly comments. Who needs 'tool less removable back covers' when your phone runs all day on a charge, doesn't break down, and has options for enough on board storage (that EVERYTHING can be loaded to vs. the VERY select few items I can put on my Note's SD card, essentially limited to media....which is available through iTunes Match via the cloud and doesn't need to be stored) to negate the need, again, to access anything inside!Couple other cool things. Post purchase support...Samsung? Fuggedaboutit! Apple? Take it to the store or call their number....usually they'll just hand you a new one...
...lastly, one thing I've found with my iPhones, I've always sold them and came out ahead after two year of usage! $300 out of pocket on the subsidy, use it two years, sell it for $375...pick up the latest model for $300 then enjoy a nice dinner...or pick up a Mophie case to double my 'juice' if necessary
BBOS 10---the integration of communications is a good idea....in theory. Then again, it's kinda nice to separate email from SMS, Facebook from voicemail....for me at least. As I run a business, some things need to be responded to a bit more professionally than others. I can see myself confusing what I'm responding to. With iOS 7's notification update, this is irrelevant anyway, as it's all just a swipe down front the top of ANY screen within ANY app. Again....use one and you'll educate yourself.
OIS is cool. But it takes up space to be done. And done right....HTC's ONE does get it right, albeit at the expense of shot detail (look at iPhone, Android of your choice vs HTC's pics, their all over as well as excellent reviews of each at dpreview, an excellent camera site, as well as DXOMark). Apple will incorporate it if the technology is there, allows it without sacrifice to shot quality or design aesthetics and usability. Their new burst mode is phenomenal....my 5s shoots faster (with s bigger buffer) than my Canon 7d! All the way up to 100 shots at damn near 10 shots a second....pics what it thinks are the best 'focus' shots so you don't have to dig through....and you can trash the rest.
Again....use one. You might be impressed....unless you enjoy taking your phones apart, then you're absolutely correct. The iPhone isn't for you
gus6464 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Will you guys be doing a Moto G review? It looks it would be an interesting review for the price it goes for and it's performance.Quicksand Jesus - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Thank goodness there is still a site around that can do a REAL in depth review. I'm so tired of subjective reviews with opinions and no real substance. Other sites could learn alot from Anandtech!naalex - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Thanks for long-awaited and much appreciated review Brian. I was hesitating on buying the Nexus 5 given the shoddy battery-life scaremongering on other websites, but I couldn't wait any longer, so I bought the phone before your review came out. So far, I was thinking I was deluding myself because the battery life has been superb, but your review confirms that the Nexus 5 isn't a dud after all.I also think the camera troubles are a bit overblown for "normal" users. Yes the camera app is wretched, and focusing is a mystery, but the phone can take good-quality pictures in good and low-light conditions. Photography geeks or more discriminating users might be able to tell the difference between the photos taken with the Nexus 5 and its competitors with better camera packages, but I think for most normal users, it's fine. And hella cheap!
grayson_carr - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
One thing I'm interested in that you didn't cover Brian. Viewing angles of the display. The viewing angles seem great when looking at the display directly from the sides, top, and bottom, but when looking at it from the corners, it looks seriously washed out (gamma shift?). Just wondering why it does that when HTC's high end LCDs always seem to look good from every angle. If the Nexus 5 is using the same display as the Droid DNA, I would guess it has to do with the Nexus 5 lacking some additional component? A polarization filter perhaps? Know what I'm talking about? Any ideas?Before people go saying "who looks at a device from the corners?", please consider the phone sitting on a table or desk. You usually don't sit it directly in front of you, but off to the side, meaning you're looking at it from a bottom corner if you want to quickly check a notification or something without picking it up. Or maybe you're just showing pictures to people around you. Chances are, they won't be looking at the phone directly from the side, but more from one of the corners. Your pictures might look great to you from directly in front of the phone, while looking washed out and crappy to others around you.
jamdev12 - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Google is updating camera firmware today. Brian are you updating this post with an additional test for the camera? By the way thanks for finally getting this done. I know the holiday season is horrible to get things like this out, but it was well worth the wait.chandgupt - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I believe the ppi is 445 instead of 480. This must affect your "dips" calculation for display size?sireangelus - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
If you are looking at a great sms app in a phone, try out a lumia/ativ s. Seamless threaded IM/SMS between live, facebook and sms. not quite there yet( i for once i would have made a messaging api and forced app to use one centralized for everything, whatever viber/whatsapp/wechat, they could have their frontend loaded but just 1 thread, 1 notification per contact, 1 place to find all the messages.Cursed close garden/closed source things.)BoneAT - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Huh, that was fast, I look forward for the article update on 4.4.1. Yeah, I agree Brian, couldn't Google release it like 3 days earlier? :DEgg - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I'm holding a white Nexus 5 right now. While I mostly love the device - it's my first smartphone, and I got the latest and greatest, I'm quite peeved about the color. Maybe it's just my eyes, or the lighting, but the back of my device looks more like linoleum than white. It's definitely not nearly as white as the one Brian has.BoneAT - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
You are holding it wrong.Pr3ch34r - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
After the galaxy nexus update issue i just can't trust google nexus program, which has been nothing more than than a beta thing. Sad but true, HTC Sense and even Touchwiz are better, and upgrades seem to last longer...Impulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Umm, no. The Galaxy Nexus might've had a shot at Kit Kat if it weren't for the fact that Texas Instrument isn't gonna bother supplying new drivers when they've left the SoC game, and then there's the Verizon factor...Even if you ignore all that though, how do Sense/TW upgrades "last longer"? The One X and SGS3 are both newer than the Galaxy Nexus and AFAIK neither one has much of chance of getting KK... It's certainly not gonna happen for months if it does happen.
Those phones are contemporary with the Nexus 4...
hrrmph - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
I want to give Brian and AT a big shout-out for the table of shame on benchmark cheating.Please keep that table going.
It probably wouldn't hurt to add Apple to the table on a future review, even if only to confirm that they are clean... if they are clean.
MRMsys - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
A few people commented about FLAC files. Have you noticed how Android 4.4 broke FLAC playback? Basically my Nexus 5 cannot play my entire music library... awesome. Apparently it has been fixed at source. It better be in 4.4.1.https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id...
ISwearImCool - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
So Bias. It is time for you to admit you get your marching orders from apple.Mr Majestyk - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Nexus 5 is about to get a massive Camera App update, so hopefully the review can also be updated with good news.ImTherious - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Best review thus far on the Net. Good job, Brian.manik. - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Great read.Terrypye - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
Having eagerly awaited the Nexus 5 I had hoped that the Android WiFi experience would be improved, but unfortunately it will still not accept hidden SSIDS or DHCP. With exposed SSIDS there is a huge security issue especially with educated snoopers and as for no DHCP, fixed ip addresses are fine for a home network, but not a lot of good for the traveller at an Airport for example. Of all the devices that access WiFi on my home network the Nexus 5 is the poorest despite it's wonderful features otherwise.Come on GOOGLE, GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER AND FIX, this issue has been around for years.
Egg - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
The first thing I did when I took my Nexus 5 out of the box was connect to my home network which has a hidden SSID.Drag the shade down, click the the upper right corner for the settings shortcuts, click the wi-fi icon, then click the + button on the bottom. Select advanced options for DHCP settings.
Impulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
I've had a hidden SSID at home (which btw, doesn't really afford much extra security) for the last 10+ years and I haven't had trouble connecting to the network on any of my five Android devices... DHCP's always worked too. Hell I've connected to college networks that required more credentials than a simple WPA password.tuxRoller - Thursday, December 5, 2013 - link
The low memory features of kitkat (ksm and zram) wouldn't really kick-in until you started loading some apps.ErickTapion - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
wow! the best review i have ever seen in my life O_O and i can say i will have the Nexus 5 thanks anandtech!R3MF - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
stupidest thing i have found is hangouts refuses to recognise contacts imported from vcards when displaying the 'owner' of a new text message. just display the number instead, even after associating that number with a contact.NeatOman - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Not the best timming, with 4.4.1 update which vastly improves the cameratential - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Ya I have to say this was quite bad all around in terms of timing.I really want to read an ANANDTECH article on the 4.4.1 camera. Not read some other website which I find is never as indepth.
psuedonymous - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
This is incorrect. Just having a MIPI-DSI display interface does NOT imply that Panel Self refresh is supported. Almost every smartphone on the market, and the vast majority of tablets, interface with their displays internally using MIPI DSI (the exceptions being a few tablet holdouts using LVDS, and the iPad 3/4/Air & Mini Retina, which use embeddedDisplayPort).Klug4Pres - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Yes, I was sort of wondering about that - just having the right display type doesn't seem conclusive on this point. I had the impression that PSR requires having a separate framebuffer, or at least only by having a separate low-bandwidth buffer can one hope to achieve power savings.Arbie - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
You obviously didn't read this:http://www.anandtech.com/show/7543/a-post-about-re...
1) Thinner is always better, regardless of the trade-offs.
2) Micro-SD is worthless, regardless of your needs.
In the future, please ensure you are aligned with site dogma before you post.
Tetracycloide - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Are you addressing this at the article author? Don't you think that inherently refutes your 'site dogma' hyperbole? If you've got a problem with Anand's op-ed then comment there. Why bring it up here where your only apparent point is that it disagrees (which is ostensibly your position).hrrmph - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
I think the point is that the Nexus 5 doesn't have Micro-SDXC. For a flagship to be capped at 32GB with no expandability in 2013 is very restrictive for some users. The Nexus 5 and other flagships like it are in some ways going backwards.My first smartphone in 2009 was a Nokia N900. It was 64GB = 32GB soldered NAND + 32GB MicroSD.
That should put some perspective on the frustration many of us have with the lack of storage and the price gouging on extra NAND in today's US flagships (Apple, Google, Micro-Nokia).
Hopefully, 2014 will be the year that changes all of that.
psuedonymous - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Remember that the N900 launched for close to double the price of the Nexus 5.dawheat - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
I think it's time to think about advancing your screen metrics to include more items to get a better sense of overall quality. Brightness and color accuracy are just two aspects. How reflective the screen is comes initially to mind.Before "curved' screens come into the mainstream, you should think about how to refresh your approach on displays.
adityarjun - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
How good is the call quality on the nexus 5?Noise suppression and speakerphone quality/loudness?
Earlier there used to be page on this but it seems it has been dropped. (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-re...
Can someone just give some subjective remarks on call quality and noise suppression? Is it good? Are there dropped calls? Does the voice sound natural?
Impulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Wait, are you saying this thing also makes PHONE calls? How quaint!Sorry, couldn't help myself... :P
MykeM - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
The screen on the 5c especially the saturation average is simply astounding.Impulses - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
From the camera section:" I’m thankful that Nexus 5 isn’t shy about pushing its exposure time out there, after all it does have ISO to damp out hand shake while running them. "
Guessing it should read OIS there rather than ISO, FWIW, though Brian's probably cursing Google right now for the timing of the camera update. :p
Nexus5Forum.com - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Awesome review. I'd love to see Brian's thoughts on the new 4.4.1 update in regards to camera performance on the Nexus 5.stepz - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
I'm disappointed in the NAND write performance. In my experience the largest performance issue with Android is NAND writes. When an app saturates the write bandwidth all reads also stop bringing the UI to a halt. This is most spectacularly shown by Chrome that by writing out newly cached data blocks reading of other cached data so much as refetching it from the net would be faster, resulting in 5-10s page load times for pages that should be <1s. Or at least this is my guess on what is going on based on my experience with Linux IO scheduler. Alternatively they could try to fix the issue by modifying the system IO mechanism to have separate read and write queues or sync and async queues, so low priority writes don't block user experience.stepz - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
One other thing, for camera comparisons you should include 35mm equivalent zoom lengths and apertures. The former is very useful for deciding how wide a shot it makes, and the latter determines the amount of depth-of-field achieved (for cell phone cameras it's going to be very little) and more importantly the amount of photons the sensor has to work with.w0203j - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
Thanks for the final review, it's very comprehensive and in depth.peckiro - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
I certainly would have prefered the Nexus 5, but when Sprint offered the LG G2 for $0 with a 2 year ball and chain I pulled the trigger. Been using a 2007 flip phone for several years since I have been a phone Luddite until just recently. Most of the under the hood stuff on the G2 is mirrored on the Nexus 5. My experience with the G2 tells me that the Nexus is a real screamer.chrone - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Makes me want more. <3Hairs_ - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
It would probably be more useful to run a test of how long it takes between opening the camera app to taking a picture in these reviews rather than worrying about how many dslr features are missing from the interface.If you care about such tweaking options then a phone with a minuscule lens is not the device you should use for photographs. For everyone else, the usage pattern is heavily skewed towards "quick! take a picture!", so app and shutter lag (first time, not picture-to-picture) is far more important.
erple2 - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
I agree with this. I don't really care how much post processing or pre-processing I can do on a DSP for the camera image. That's what I have Photoshop for (or any number of other photo processing desktop applications, assuming you can take a photo in RAW format). The ease of use of the camera, plus the speed of the camera (first shot from the home screen) are more important to me on a smartphone.dyc4ha - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Looking forward for the audio component of the review! Also, are you guys going to update the review with the 4.4.1 camera patch?PierLeon - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
I think the maximum brightness posted on this review is unusually low for the Nexus 5. Other reviews which have measured the maximum brightness have had numbers closer to 500 nits (490 I believe), and I have also noticed that my Nexus 5 has a noticeably brighter screen than my old Nexus 4, but according to this review the Nexus 4 is 30 nits brighter. Something seems off.NeoteriX - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Could be display vendor variation.adriangb - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
Can a comparison with the 4.4.1 camera improvements be added?blzd - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
There are already side to side Youtube and other comparisons of the camera in 4.4.1 versus 4.4 check them out.phoneface - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
Brian klug is a cool dude.rtret - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
Can you recommand a wireless charger for the Nexus 5? I heard that the ravpower one with built-in battery can function well with the qi compatible devices. Need advice on that. Thanks.blzd - Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - link
The official LG wireless one works great and is tiny. Otherwise any Qi will work with the Nexus 5 and in almost any case.djc208 - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
My biggest concern with picking the LG G2 over the Nexus 5 is the software. LGs software support seems to be horrible. So while you may get more polish I wouldn't expect more than maybe one version update out of the G2 if that. At least based on how the original Optimus G has been treated.LG is quick to release a new hardware, but even though they have been the hardware partner for the last two Nexus phones, they are far behind in the software deparment. The Optimus G was almost the same hardware as the Nexus 4, yet it's still on 4.2.2, and will probably never see 4.3 even though the Nexus 4 shipped with it.
Sadrak85 - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
These days, a manufacturer even saying that there *will* be an update is a great stroke of luck. Maybe I'm jaded, but other than the Nexus line, I no longer expect to see any software updates on the devices I buy (though, it should be noted, that I'm a mid-range buyer; burned too many times by "high-end" devices).synaesthetic - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
Could always throw CM10.2 on it.Amazing2u - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
I'm a bit dissapointed with LG/google this time around...I'm waiting for a 4th replacement of my Nexus 5. First one had a defective vibrator (noisy), second had a defective LCD and the third had another bad vibrate motor. Sheesh.
I've never had so many RMA for a single phone.
Sadrak85 - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
Ugh. The sentence that contains the phrase "memory pressure," and "at-boot footprint." Who are you writing to, Klug? Tech enthusiasts or a bunch of MBAs?Laphaswiff - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
Ἀφροδίτης ἑορτὴ δημοτελής, καὶ πᾶσαι σχεδὸν αἱ γυναῖκες ἀπῆλθον εἰς τὸν νεών. (1,1,5) τέως δὲ μὴ προιοῦσαν τὴν Καλλιρόην προήγαγεν ἡ μήτηρ, τοῦ πατρὸς κελεύσαντος προσκυνῆσαι τὴν θεόν. τότε δὲ Χαιρέας ἀπὸ τῶν γυμνασίων ἐβάδιζεν οἴκαδε στίλβων ὥσπερ ἀστήρ· ἐπήνθει γὰρ αὐτοῦ τῷ λαμπρῷ τοῦ προσώπου τὸ ἐρύθημα τῆς παλαίστρας ὥσπερ ἀργύρῳ χρυσός. (1,1,6) ἐκ τύχης οὖν περί τινα καμπὴν στενοτέραν συναντῶντες περιέπεσον ἀλλήλοις, τοῦ θεοῦ πολιτευσαμένου τήνδε τὴν συνοδίαν ἵνα ἑκάτερος τῷ ἑτέρῳ ὀφθῇ. ταχέως οὖν πάθος ἐρωτικὸν ἀντέδωκαν ἀλλήλοις ....... τοῦ κάλλους τῇ εὐγενείᾳ συνελθόντος. (1,1,7) ῾Ο μὲν οὖν Χαιρέας οἴκαδε μετὰ τοῦ τραύματος μόλις ἀπῄει, καὶ ὥςπερ τις ἀριςτεὺς ἐν πολέμῳ τρωθεὶς καιρίαν, καὶ καταπεσεῖν μὲν αἰδούμενος, στῆναι δὲ μὴ δυνάμενος. ἡ δὲ παρθένος τῆς Ἀφροδίτης τοῖς ποσὶ προσέπεσε καὶ καταφιλοῦσα, »σύ μοι, δέσποινα« εἶπε, »δὸς ἄνδρα τοῦτον ὃν ἔδειξας.«chapo - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
Why the absence of love for the Sony devices ?They never appear in the benchmark tables.
I feel like they have made a good job on their Xperia line and would like to see them included.
synaesthetic - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
Hangouts is terrible, Google, stop forcing it on us. :|Thank goodness for CyanogenMod.
ErickTapion - Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - link
I want to ask what percentage of brightness to 200 nits is necessary?skz - Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - link
Um, could someone tell me how well the phone . . . makes calls? This seems to have been omitted from the review. It is important for some.ErickTapion - Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - link
in general (others review) it's very clear but they say it's like a "robotic" sound, but i think its very goodcb474 - Thursday, December 12, 2013 - link
Thanks for another great, super thorough, review. I'm always especially interested to see the noise suppression test. It's intriguing that Fluence seems to have improved, but I'm still disappointed in any phone that doesn't use Audience's noise suppression chip.cb474 - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link
I went back and listened to the noise cancellation test in Brian's Nexus 4 review. He says here's that he's impressed with the Nexus 5, even though it's using Qualcomm's Fluence chip. But to me it sounds like the Nexus 4 was better, at least in the test. And my personal experience of the Nexus 4 is that it's nowhre close to as good as the Audience chip in the Nexus One.Also, if you look at Brian's reviews the the iPhone 5, where he compares the noise cancellation in the iPhone 4 (Audience chip) to the iPhone 5 (Apple in house noise cancelling), you can see what Audience is like and how much better it is. The iPhone 5 is more like what you get from Qualcomm's Fluence.
pierrot - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link
Anyone have speaker sound quality problems? Sounds worse than my Galaxy S1! Its static-y and fuzzy sounding on 4.4.2.blzd - Sunday, December 15, 2013 - link
Not here. They were quiet before now they're quite loud (after 4.4.2). The quality was always above average for me and even the highest volumes have minimal distortion.Anandtech showed the top 2 or 3 volumes with headphones is more or less broken and should not be used though.
mike8675309 - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
I just picked up a Nexus 5 and it prompted for the 4.4.2 update so I can't say before the update. But currently my only issue with sound is that it can't seem to go low enough. On the volume scale when turning down the notification and other sounds it is like I want to go one step quieter but that next step is vibrate. Seems that there isn't enough range.mateor - Sunday, December 15, 2013 - link
I learned a bunch about all aspects of hardware from this review. Excellent.NexusJohn - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
Brian, first of all thank you for the awesome, complete review! But I have one lingering question I can't seem to find an answer to: if the snapdragon 800 has a low power core that can be used for "always on" listening (hardware), why can't someone create an app (software) that takes advantage of it like in the moto x?omaudio - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
Hello,What I would really love to see added to phone reviews on AT is whether or not the GPS will function without cellular connection. In other words if you are without service or in airplane mode, will the GPS functions of the phone still operate? I find more often they do not which is why I still own the HTC Amaze 4g. It is one of the only phones I can rely on the gps along with offline mapping. Important and I hope to see it added to future reviews. Thanks
shanturoy - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
At nearly same price point (in India), Nexus has the edge with the Camera (OSS) and processor. But the others have removable battery, SD card slot, larger battery (for G pro).So, if price is not the differentiating factor, which want would be most desirable among LG Optimus G Pro, Sony Xperia ZL, HTC Butterfly and Nexus?
blzd - Saturday, December 21, 2013 - link
Those phones are barely even in the same league as the Nexus 5. Do you want last years phone or today's phone at last years price?eturk - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link
how about updating the article to reflect the updated hardware and kitkat 4.4.2? Seems Google may have addresses the low speaker volume and camera.anirudhs - Saturday, December 21, 2013 - link
After using the HTC Aria for 3 years, I upgraded to the Nexus 5. I had it for a weekend, but felt that it didn't live up to its potential. The screen was gorgeous and the phone was free of bloatware. However, the phone was unwieldy due to the large screen, and the battery life was inconsistent. I am now on the iPhone and am very happy with my purchase. At least as far as the internals go, I will be able to run demanding apps for a long time.The trend towards larger screens on cellphones in the Android space is disturbing. 4.5-4.7 inches would be nice, but any bigger and I would find it hard to hold. The likes of Galaxy Note are best replaced by a combination of a smaller smartphone and a tablet - it is just too big.
blzd - Friday, December 27, 2013 - link
You will find most people disagree with you. Even Apple phones will be getting similar screen sizes soon and rightly so at those prices.It's not like there is lack of options in the 4.5" android department. Check out Moto G for $200.
anirudhs - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
I got my 32 GB iPhone 5S for $224.99 with a 2 year contract. Also, Moto G doesn't have 4G LTE, which explains the low price. It may be a good phone for someone in a country like India though.sweendiggler - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
For what it’s worth, I switched from an iPhone 5 to a Nexus 5 and my battery life is SIGNIFICANTLY better on the Nexus. If I took my iPhone 5 ff the charger at 7AM, it would be down to ~45% battery when I left work at 5:30PM. When I do the same with my Nexus 5 my battery is at 75-80%.I’m sure that others may have legit issues, but this phone has demonstrated AMAZING battery life for me thus far.
anirudhs - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
May the Force Close be with you, always, O Android User!Wall-Swe - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
And the iPhone doesn't force close? Tell that to the 100s of error&crash reports on my iPhone 4. Silly fanboy.anirudhs - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
I am a fan-boy because your iPhone is conking out and mine isn't? Logic R.I.P.Wall-Swe - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
Its the same argument you make about his Android phone. But I actually own the device I claim is bad.jeffkro - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
I've had my nexus 5 for a few days and its a fantastic phone for $350. My issue is the LCD display, I came from a galaxy nexus and going from an OLED display to an LCD display is a huge downgrade. I was shocked at the color and contrast difference when I put the two side by side.Davidjan - Sunday, January 19, 2014 - link
Nexus 5 is better that Nexus 4. At least, it supports OTG to add storage with Meenova MicroSD reader: http://goo.gl/2iJ6gfhisham - Tuesday, March 4, 2014 - link
If i need to buy one with 350$ from where i can get it , through amazon more that 400 $ , i am out side UDAmjgraves - Monday, March 31, 2014 - link
I just loaded the example audio file into Adobe Audition for evaluation. It's not a wideband audio stream, so the Nexus 5 is NOT making HDVoice calls using AMR-WB. The review should be updated to reflect this fact.