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Review: Google Nexus 4 Android Smartphone by LG
- mmanfrin 14y agoWasn't this on here a couple days ago?
- greenmountin 14y agoYep. URL differs by the ending / http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4733264 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4733264
- tjdetwiler 14y agoAfter being on a $75/month Sprint plan that delivers overwhelmingly mediocre service, this is the device that will get me to jump from contract to prepaid devices.
- donniezazen 14y agoI am also thinking about going over to Prepaid T Mobile Monthly4G plan which costs $50 bucks. I am not just sure what's the catch.
- jkap 14y agoI'm currently on a $30 T-Mobile Mothly4G plan on a Galaxy Nexus. The catch is that, in my area, T-Mobile's service isn't quite as good as Verizon's, who I was previously with. And that's it. That is literally the only complaint I've had and, for $30 a month, I'm willing to live with that.
- thematt 14y agoI've heard it repeated that the Nexus 4 can be used with T-Mobile prepaid, but can it be used with Virgin Mobile USA? VM looks to be $35/month rather than the $50/month that T-Mobile costs.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoVirgin (Sprint) is CDMA; impossible.
- akurilin 14y agoAlso as far as I know VM doesn't let you "bring your own phone". You can supposedly fake a serial number (or whatever identifier they use) of another phone that you purchased, but that's unadvisable. I hear that Simple Mobile and Straight Talk are valid options.
- endemic 14y agoVirgin Mobile's rates are attractive, but unfortunately they're a Sprint subsidiary, and as such use CDMA. Nexus 4 is GSM, so your best bet is StraightTalk, T-Mobile, or other inexpensive prepaid GSM carriers. As others have said, check out T-Mobile's web-only $30/month option. It's about as close as you can get to what we've all been wanting: a data-only plan.
- notJim 14y agoFYI, there's a T-Mobile plan for $30/mo with 5GB of data if you don't talk on the phone that much--it only offers 100 minutes of talk time.
- tjdetwiler 14y agoThis is the one I'm looking at. I make most of my calls via my PC using Google Voice anyways. Also they only throttle you when you go over (as opposed to charging you big overages).
- jvm 14y agoI'm on the TMo $30 prepaid. It is awesome. HSPA+ is very fast and responsive. I'm in NYC though where I know they are particularly good.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- glennos 14y agoOnly thing which holds me back from grabbing one of these is the 4.7" screen. It strikes me that it would be a sacrifice of comfort for screen real estate (and space for high-end components). That said, I've never held one for more than a minute. Anyone have a 4.7"+ (S3, One X, Optimus G, etc) who can share their assessment of Size vs Usability?
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoI had the 4.65" Galaxy Nexus; it was still usable but just barely. I'd have a hard time being convinced to go any bigger (I'm now on a 4.3" Razr M; no fault of the SGN, I switched networks and can't stand TouchWiz)
- benmccann 14y agoI didn't think I would like the big screen on my Galaxy Nexus, but now I don't think I could go back to a smaller screen.
- incision 14y agoI have the 4.65" GN and have no problems one-handing it. Of course, I'm tall with big mitts - I wear XXL or XXXL in gloves, but my 5'4" wife has one as well and has no complaints. With all that said, I will say that I have to imagine the size would make things less than optimal for some folks, but I don't think it's a matter of device size so much as the way most software behaves. I'd like to see more apps consider a bit more than simply extending their basic portrait / landscape layouts. I'm disappointed I haven't seen more things along the lines of the old Xoom radial menu [1] or the split and / or off-center controls you can find in some third-party keyboards. 1: http://cdn3.jeftek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Xoom-Browser-Radial-Menu.png http://cdn3.jeftek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Xoom-Brows... (Couldn't find a more recent picture, the more recent version has several layers of buttons.)
- Mythbusters 14y ago9/10 really? Is this phone really better than GS III or Nokia 920? Doesn't look like.
- unavoidable 14y agoAt half the price?
- Mythbusters 14y agoWho cares? With most of the phones being sold with contract, this is just a gimmick. What does it have going for it other than a cheap price anyways? Poor camera? no expandable memory? No LTE? Poor speakers? Manufacturer with questionable quality record?
- Jare 14y ago"Value" is an aggregate of features, service and price among other data points. And contract subsidies are slowly falling out of fashion as phone tech stabilizes, more people are interested in prepaid, and operators realize that the subsidy game is making them all collectively lose money to manufacturers.
- unavoidable 14y agoI'm not on contract so I don't get my phones subsidized (for this exact reason - I want more choice). I don't need LTE and in any case the carriers in my area charge more for LTE than HSPA+. The value proposition seems very attractive to consumers like me. And I'm sure there are many more out there who find this phone in the "sweet spot" of price vs. features. Price is no gimmick in the free market.
- nsm 14y agoUrm, pretty much all of the rest of the world. The contract system is big only in the US and EU, and it is a somewhat broken system. It doesn't have a poor camera, it has a very good camera, only not as good as the GS3 or iphone The GS3 is the only other high end smartphone that has expandable memory, and you don't see that selling at $350. LTE - well i'm not even going to go into this one
- bmasci 14y agoI think this device is solid. I'll probably end up waiting until some consumer reviews are out, but I can't see why this isn't a perfect albeit perhaps niche device for me. I don't want a contract phone, I could care less about LTE and pure Android seems like a solid OS. I'll probably give this guy a go on either Straight Talk or Solavei. Worst case scenario is that I end up not liking it and using an upgrade on an iPhone.
- phyalow 14y agoWhat a poor review, I personally dont get the hype surrounding LTE (sure it's a great protocol but hardly widely adopted), or understand the need to spend the 1st 2 paragraphs bleeting on about it. HSPA+ does everything I need (and probably more). This and the accompanying video are a much more informative and entertaining read. http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3570034/inside-android-building-the-nexus-4-nexus-10-android-4-2 http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3570034/inside-android-bu... Regardless I will be picking one up! Cracked my Galaxy Nexus's screen this morning. (NB: In New Zealand things might be different elsewhere).
- CrazedGeek 14y agoI'm in the US and I share your thoughts. Having seen LTE (on an AT&T phone), it's quite nice, but not noticeably faster than HSPA+ (T-Mo US) for general usage. I have no issue waiting until the various LTE networks are more fleshed out and the LTE chips are a bit better battery-wise.
- MBCook 14y agoI was perfectly happy with the 3G service on my iPhone 4, and the HSPA+ service on family members' 4Ses was nice, but I didn't expect to care much about the LTE service on my iPhone 5. I've gotta tell you, it's very nice, and pulling up pages feels like you're on WiFi. But the first time I really noticed it was when I was sitting in a parking lot and asked my phone to pull down a 1/2 hour podcast. I pressed the little download button and watched in amazement as it downloaded in a couple of seconds. I pulled down the Speedtest.net app (also quick) and was stunned to see that I was getting 20 Mb/s down, nearly double the speed of my home connection. It's a bit like the retina display. No one actually needs one, but it's just so much nicer than what you had before that you can't help but love it. Given that the power draw on the newer chipsets means battery life isn't gone, it's turned out to be a surprise great feature.
- CrazedGeek 14y agoThe thing is, I get about that speed on T-Mo's HSPA+. Sitting in my apartment, also running the Speedtest.net app, I'm getting 16 Mb/s down. The tiny extra oomph isn't worth worrying about for me.
- h4pless 14y agoThese specs seem almost unbelievable for the price but there is one glaring draw back for me which is the lack of removable storage. I understand the inherent risks of storing anything you want to remain private on a smart phone but without a microSD card, it feels like the when I inevitably brick my phone somehow, there's no easy way to get the files I want to keep private off the phone. What would be the options to ensure that either 1) the shop/company that does a warranty repair doesn't just data mine the phone once they fix it or 2) that the memory is properly destroyed if the phone cannot be fixed? It also feels like if there was an issue, like an update of Android going awry somehow, that you would lose all your data if you just needed to do a factory reset. I understand that it's all about the cloud now but even then it seems like there would be some corner cases where it would be invaluable to have a removable piece of storage in there even without considering privacy an issue.
- sjs382 14y agoI've thought about this recently. I have a HP Touchpad with personal data on it that's stopped turning on. I'm not interested in fixing it, but I'm also unsure of how to dispose of it and keep my data safe. Drilling a bunch of holes in a device that doesn't have a removable battery isn't something I can do. So for now, the device just sits at the bottom of a drawer.
- MBCook 14y agoIs there a common way of keeping a backup of Android phones? I've been an iPhone user since the 3G came out. I don't really worry about this kind of thing because I know that iTunes makes backups when I sync. Now that iCloud is integrated, it's supposed to keep backups too (although I don't trust it as much as iTunes). Those backups have meant that upgrading to a newer model has been basically seamless. I know that Android doesn't have a centralized piece of software like iTunes (which is arguably a good thing), but how are backups handled? Are they left to the end user, or is the fact that your account is syncing with Google supposed to take care of your important data (Gmail, Google Calendar, etc)?
- blinkingled 14y ago
- GR8K 14y agoThe article suggests because Nexus 4 doesn't have LTE, it costs so little. Is that true? Why does the unlocked Samsung SIII run $800?
- angusgr 14y agoI thought the suggestion was more that by producing just one variant for all markets/regions/carriers, Google/LG can leverage economies of scale to bring the overall price down. I haven't looked at the S3, but past Samsung models have had a bunch of variants marketed under the one model name. (How much this really factors into the pricing, I doubt if we or Wired can really know.)
- redthrowaway 14y agoIn addition, no LTE allows them to run a smaller battery, which also holds costs down.
- redthrowaway 14y agoIn addition, no LTE allows them to run a smaller battery, which also holds costs down.
- jug6ernaut 14y agoSimple, Samsung has to sell there product in an attempt to make a profit on them, Google on the other hand is selling theirs at or near cost as a "Content delivery system". They don't need to make money up front for the device.
- general_failure 14y agoThat doesn't explain the 500 USD markup per _device_
- jug6ernaut 14y agoWell lets assume they want a markup of 40% for profit, that would bring the cost to 420. The price I am seeing is $550 on amazon. This brings the cost difference at $110, and IMO this could easily be chocked up to R&D and other misc costs.
- jacek 14y agoWhat is the point of adding gadget reviews to HN? Anyone interested can find them easily.
- lobo_tuerto 14y agoI like to find gadget reviews on HN. I think only the really outstanding ones reach and stay on the front page. And that is a good thing for someone like me that loves gadgets but don't visit gadget review sites anymore. Check this out about background noise: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4737550 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4737550 HN's front page is like a curated page of interesting stuff about anything. The important word here is _curated_.
- anonymous 14y agoParagraph #3: major omission: It’s not compatible with any LTE networks Paragraph #4(paraphrased): Nobody outside the USA has plans to roll out LTE any time soon and even in the USA there's very limited coverage by only two carriers. And that's where I stopped reading. I give this article 1½/10, it's the best I can do.