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Google Nexus 4 Review
- cryptoz 14y agoAnd it has a barometer!
- phreeza 14y agoDoes anyone have an idea what the use of this might be? Altimeter? Weather forecasting?
- untog 14y agoThe last Nexus phone had the same- I remember someone on HN showing off a crowd-sourced weather app they'd made. Basically, everyone added their phone to a sensor array that picked up barometric changes across the city and worked out what that meant. Sadly, I didn't have a Nexus so I couldn't try it, but the tech is fascinating.
- nl 14y agoYes - all those things. But the real reason it is there is that it speeds up getting an initial GPS fix. It provides a quick way to guess altitude, which lets it calculate where satellites should be better.
- mjs 14y agoHow does knowing the altitude help figure out which satellite to look for? (Are GPS receivers "directional", anyway??) GPS satellites orbit at ~20,000km; for the initial acquisition I'm surprised that receivers would care if they're 0km or 1.5km from sea level.
- arjunnarayan 14y agoGPS positions you using very accurate clocks. GPS satellites are continuously broadcasting messages, where each message contains: 1) their position when the message was sent 2) the exact time when the message was sent. With enough satellite signals (4, given that you're locating in 4 dimensions --- 3 spacial and 1 time. Note that if the GPS receiver had a very expensive clock you could locate with 3 satellites, or if you knew your exact altitude to a high level of precision as well, you can locate with just 2 satellite signals). Now notice that if you're solving a 4 dimensional equation, you can't have two of the spatial coordinates have precisions of less than 10 meters while one of them is inaccurate to the kilometer! In practice, if you have a "good enough" clock and a "good enough" barometer, you can hone into the approximate city, or 100 meter radius circle much faster --- after picking up just two GPS signals. And for a lot of apps, this lets them begin the initial computations quicker. The one part I'm not sure about is whether the long time is computational, or in actually waiting until you find 4 or more signals. Maybe somebody with more experience with GPS can clarify?
- lukeschlather 14y agoThe time is effectively the time to find 4 signals. > 4, given that you're locating in 4 dimensions --- 3 spacial and 1 time. I think your understanding is a little flawed. The time is necessary to determine the precise distance, since both you and the satellite are in motion. After the correction for that, the problem becomes locating a body in 3 dimensions based on its distance from N points. A single point gives you a sphere, and you may be located anywhere on that sphere. Two points gives you two spheres. You might be located anywhere at the intersection of those spheres (a circle.) Three points gives you three spheres. I haven't studied the geometry extensively, but Wikipedia says three spheres usually narrows it down to two points you might be at. Knowing your altitude allows you to rule out one of those two points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS#Basic_concept_of_GPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS#Basic_concept_of_GPS
- lukeschlather 14y agoMy understanding is that if you know your exact elevation you can determine position with only 3 satellite signals instead of 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS#Basic_concept_of_GPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS#Basic_concept_of_GPS
- antman 14y agoThe GPS location is faster when you have a good initial guess. So in cold boots it should lock into position faster.
- genkaos 14y agohttps://plus.google.com/112413860260589530492/posts/jVJhPyouWDP https://plus.google.com/112413860260589530492/posts/jVJhPyou... "The primary purpose of the barometer is (at least, I've been told) to make GPS lockons faster. Locking on to a GPS involves numerically solving a 4-dimensional set of linear equations -- 3 dimensions in space, and time. ... The barometer gives you a reasonable first-cut estimate for altitude."
- jedbrown 14y agoLocking on to a GPS involves numerically solving a 4-dimensional set of linear equations Hah, hardly.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- cryptoz 14y agoI collect the barometric readings with pressureNET. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbus.barometernetwork https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbu... We have about 11,000 total users (half are active) and are VERY excited that the Nexus 4 and 10 both have barometers. We're looking to improve short-term, local weather prediction asap. The project is open source at http://cumulonimbus.ca http://cumulonimbus.ca
- yock 14y agoVery appreciative of the tip here, it's installing now on my GNex.
- Penmane 14y agoAnand's new battery test suite gives counter-intuitive real world usage suggestions; I don't turn on LTE to extend usage time on any mobile devices.
- martythemaniak 14y agoI'm glad to see Anand focus so much on the price in the conclusion. A lot of the other reviews talked at length about lack of LTE etc, but that misses the point of this phone. While it may disappoint many people who just want the best at any price, you can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its class. The price really is the killer feature of this phone. I suspect there is lots of demand out there for this phone amongst regular folk. No want likes being chained to a carrier and everybody likes getting a great deal. I told my sister (non techie) about it and her eyes popped. She's very very excited about it.
- MojoJolo 14y agoThat's right! I'm buying this phone because of its price. It's cheap compared to other phones with the same specs. The lack of LTE is not really a setback to me (and I think to all others that live in a third world country). LTE is almost "not yet" existing in our region/country.
- dagw 14y agoyou can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its class. I wonder why the phone is so much cheaper (both in absolute and relative terms) in the US than it is here in Sweden. Here it's exactly the same price as the SGS3 and the iPhone 4S and quite a bit more than the HTC One X.
- fierarul 14y agoI think it's actually illegal in the EU to sell products bellow cost. We call it dumping but it seems Amazon and Google are able to do it just fine in the US. So that might be one reason.
- kayoone 14y agoIts 299 (granted € not $) in Germany too, thats more expensive than in the US but still cheap for a phone like that! Cool phone, LTE is a non issue for me since its not widely available here anyway and with the tiny amount of data your get here (i have 300Megs included in my contract after which it gets slowed down to dialup speeds) its kinda useless.
- f1codz 14y agoI have a question here to ask: Why doesn't Google choose Motorola to manufacture its handsets?
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoThe official line is there's no special relationship between Motorola and Android beyond a common owner; thus they have to bid on Nexus devices like everyone else (and so far, there's nothing to suggest otherwise). As well, there's restrictions on how companies in the middle of an acquisition can communicate, which would make a Motorola-produced Nexus this cycle particularly difficult.
- rplnt 14y agoWe can also see that there's no connection in the lack of up-to-date Android on Motorola phones.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoThe carriers get as much blame in Android's update SNAFU as the OEMs (and Google, by inaction[0]); the VZW Galaxy Nexus demonstrates this. [0] While Google could have taken a stronger stance on Android re: updates, I don't think they've ever been in a good position to do so. Early days, carriers would have balked and Android would die; now, they'd just fork and Android becomes the next BREW.
- rplnt 14y agoIn my case the OEM is to blame as it is only company I can associate my phone with (bought it without a contract in a store). So it probably depends from whom you bought the phone and under what conditions.
- wmf 14y agoBesides the silly wall between the divisions, the Nexus 4 was probably designed before Google bought Moto.
- conradfr 14y agoThe phone with more reviews than stock :)
- hadem 14y agoI have wondered about buying unlocked phones in the United States. Does my monthly bill change when bringing an unlocked phone to Verizon or AT&T?
- lawdawg 14y agoThere are both cheaper plans available and you won't be locked in for 2 years. Both, combined, are worth more than the ~$300-$400 phone subsidy over two years that the telco provides.
- Symmetry 14y agoAnd with T-Mobile you can get the same plan for cheaper if you aren't on a contract.
- SwellJoe 14y agoThat's changed, unfortunately. Their "Value Plans" now also require a two year contract. They have no contract plans, but they are pricier than the contracted Value Plans. I was pissed to learn of this change when I wanted to switch to a plan that would allow tethering (I have the old G1 plan, which is unlimited data, but won't allow addition of tethering, and they shut down my ability to tether with the native tethering app or third party apps). Since I paid full price for a Sensation 4G less than a year before, in order to avoid a contract, it's pretty darned frustrating. And, let's be honest, T-Mobile is not a great network.
- dangrossman 14y agoHow did they shut down third party apps? I'm technically not supposed to be able to tether on Sprint, but I can run PDANet or FoxFi to tether over USB or bluetooth anyway, on a non-rooted phone.
- SwellJoe 14y agoThey monitor traffic, I assume. I have historically used both PDAnet and FoxFi among others...all get shut down within a few minutes, and I receive a text telling me to sign up for tethering service. I'll try it again after rooting the phone, to rule out simply detecting all the common tethering apps, but I'm guessing they're detecting NATted traffic or similar. I'm considering picking up a Nexus 4, rather than bothering with rooting and re-imaging the Sensation. I don't really like the Sensation, though all the problems I have with it could be due to software. It's a custom build with Sense, which I really don't like. Anyway, it's a new phenomenon. I was tethering on T-Mobile for years without trouble. About two months ago, they started shutting it down after a few minutes of use, and redirecting all traffic to their T-Mobile site upgrade page.
- k2xl 14y agoSo I've been looking at reviews of Nexus 4 all week. I have had IPhone for the past few years (3g then 4). I want to switch, but I don't know if Nexus 4 is the one to switch to... I don't quite understand the differences between Android versions of S3 and Note 2, but apparently this has a vanilla android version. What is the best choice? S3? Note 2? Nexus 4? What advantages do each one have over the other?
- MojoJolo 14y agoI think you might want to choose Nexus 4 because it's the cheapest. As I read, they have specs as close to each other. But if you think without having an LTE is a deal breaker, Nexus 4 is not a good phone for you.
- k2xl 14y agoquestion: is the lack of LTE really that big of a deal? how much slower is this other thing nexus 4 uses?
- yardie 14y agoI've found that in areas that have LTE it is a big deal. HSDPA 3G can theoretically get you 21Mbps but I've found this to hardly ever be the case. I have friends that regularly post speedtest screenshots at >35Mbps. Also the lag on 3G is atrocious. When I'm streaming iTunes Match it's click, wait, start, pause, wait, and then start again. Apparently the ping times are much lower on LTE and this is a bigger deal (for me) than the bandwidth.
- peeters 14y agoI've already decided I'm buying this phone, but I have to ask: Why should I care about wireless charging? I can't see this feature enriching my life in the slightest. Ok, it looks cool sitting there. But docks look cool too. Is it more convenient? I would argue no (saves maybe two seconds of effort per charge). Is it more portable? Definitely not. Is this only hyped up because of the "coolness" factor?
- Maakuth 14y agoI think the manufacturers are trying to make restaurants, public transport and maybe even office furniture companies to add those charging surfaces everywhere. That way your phone would pick up some power here and there.
- ygra 14y agoI wonder how much that would increase lost phones on public transport ;-)
- Peaker 14y agoMy micro-usb cables are dying at about 1 per month. Getting high-quality cables around here is pretty difficult. I'd really love to toss away the cables (maybe keep 1 emergency one in my portable bag).
- shardling 14y agoI recently discovered you can buy those cables for a buck each in dollar stores.
- phishphood 14y agoI have a Samsung Galaxy 1 at the moment and after 2 and 1/2 years of poking usb thingy into the receiving port it came undone. Not completely, but it takes a fair amount of jiggling and negotiations to get the juice flowing. Wireless charging makes a lot of sense, I am going to buy one as soon as it becomes available
- 14y ago
- MojoJolo 14y agoAre there other ways of buying Nexus 4 rather than online in Google Play Store?
- apendleton 14y agoYes; TMobile will sell them. The pricing will be much worse than the Play Store pricing, though (I think around $200 on contract and $600 off), so probably not actually a good idea.
- MojoJolo 14y agoSo the "no contract" or "no carrier" version is only available in the Google Play?
- dangrossman 14y agoIt's the same unlocked "no carrier" phone, just at a higher price in-store, or so I've read.
- nilsbunger 14y agoIn the US, what's the best kind of cellular service plans to get if you come in with an unlocked phone? I would love to get out of the 2-year contract thing. But I have this vague understanding that a lot of the prepay, mvno, or non-contract plans don't give access to parts of the big guys networks (like roaming relationships).
- Kerrick 14y agoStraight Talk and Net 10 Sim are both great. You buy a SIM card, and then every month pay $45-50 for unlimited service. I think they use AT&T's network.
- tupuli 14y agoI've been using Straight Talk for a few months now with no regrets. The Nexus 4 is a good match for Straight Talk since LTE isn't available on the network (ST only provides HSPA+). Note, the data plan isn't truly unlimited. AFAICT the company will simply terminate your account if you regularly exceed 2GB/month.
- Nursie 14y agoWow that's pricy! Over here in the soviet UK you can get a £10-15 pcm contract that gives you unlimited (not tethered) data and a reasonable about of other stuff, so long as you bring your own phone.
- shrikant 14y agoAmen. I brought my own smartphone to a Talkmobile (which uses the Vodafone network) £8/month plan [1], which gives me fairly good limits on calling, texting and data. [1] http://www.talkmobile.co.uk/simple.html http://www.talkmobile.co.uk/simple.html
- rogerbinns 14y agoThere are some subtle differences between the US (actually North America) and the rest of the world. You have probably heard how people in the US pay for incoming calls, which is true. In the North American Numbering Plan there are no area codes for cell phones as there are in the rest of the world. Consequently a caller doesn't know if they are calling a cell phone. In almost every country in the world, calls to cell phones cost more. In the US the recipient pays the difference. Elsewhere the caller pays the difference. In the US the recipient has bulk bargaining power so those calls are cheaper than elsewhere. So if you really wanted to compare like with like, you should compare the cost of the US contract to the cost of what callers pay plus what you pay elsewhere. Note that callers can pay a lot more elsewhere - often 10 times as much as a call to a landline. See international phone cards to get an idea. There are two other factors. One is psychological in that US consumers are very averse to variable billed amounts, and are prepared to pay more in order to have a fixed known bill. (I once read a paper I've never been able to find about this, showing it dated back to the earliest days of phone service in the US.) You may recall hearing how local phone calls are free. They aren't - you pay a higher base price. When I moved from the UK to the US my baseline phone service price quintupled. The difference is the local calls were "free" in the US while it was a few pence a minute in the UK. The other factor is that there was no regulation requiring certain radio technology or interoperability. While the original GSM was good, it wasn't very future proof. It divided up frequency usage into time slots which meant you had a fixed number of possible calls. It also meant neighbouring towers couldn't use the same frequency. Qualcomm came up with CDMA which was very future proof - a phone talking to a tower sees all other phones (when they transmit) as background noise. Consequently it doesn't matter how the others talked to the tower so they could advance specifications. You could also put CDMA towers further apart than GSM towers. ("3G" etc are an evolution of CDMA all over the world.) CDMA was adopted by two of the major carriers, but because almost no one else used CDMA that meant they had to source their own phones. That lead to a model where consumers got used to getting their phones from the carrier with no alternative. New phones were really cheap or free in return for a contract of a fixed monthly amount, which included around $20 per month just to pay the remainder of the cost of the phone. Consumers are loathe to pay the real price of phones because they have never done so before. And carriers are loathe to have bring your own phone plans because the way their financial performance is measured is by ARPU - average revenue per user. Additionally because the carrier is bulk buying phones they can squeeze the suppliers, and they can "cripple" the phones to further their own interests. Verizon has been a master at the latter - for example they disabled bluetooth phonebook syncing several years back on a phone so they could push their own over the air backup service, they pull stunts with mapping (they have their own service) and even prevented Google's Wallet from working on the Galaxy Nexus (yup, they have their own too). So like many things American we have this unwholly complicated mess where no one is paying the real price of anything, and what is actually going on is hidden behind other things. If you are interested in how GSM and CDMA evolved, this is an excellent article http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/10/GSM3G.shtml http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/10/GSM3G.shtml
- antman 14y agoIt does not have a removable battery? I consider this as an important feature me that I spend lots of hours outside the office. Also ejecting some mass when the phone drops is always a good thing. Two broken Iphones on my drawer say so.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoIt's not a "removable" batter, but it is easy to replace with the correct Torx screwdriver. That doesn't help in your two scenarios, but it will be useful if you want to keep your phone significantly longer than the 3 year half-life of lithium batteries.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y agoIs anyone else slightly concerned about the glass back? Several reviews including The Verge had their back crack while testing it. For me that is the biggest concern. The nice thing about plastic is that it absorbs some of the energy from a drop or shock. Glass gets cracks and then shatters. I would have liked to have seen the same "rubber" back the Nexus 7 (by Asus) has. I would have alternatively taken Samsung's "cheap" feeling plastic backs.
- bitcartel 14y agoThe Play Store is selling a Nexus 4 Bumper - it's like the iPhone 4 all over again. Why do designers always pick form over function? What's the point in having a great looking phone that needs to be bubble-wrapped? Still, the good thing about Android is you can choose from many manufacturers. This new Sony phone is waterproof: http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/phones/xperia-go/ http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/phones/xperia-g...
- habosa 14y agoI don't get it, so I need someone to explain something to me. How can the iPhone consistently blow everything else away in performance AND battery life, despite having a smaller battery and seemingly lesser processor. I understand that Apple had a time advantage by getting into the touchscreen smartphone game first but how has nobody caught up yet? I am a huge Nexus fanboy but it seems that the IPhone is objectively faster and more efficient, even with googles full efforts to keep up.
- socialist_coder 14y agoI am wondering the same thing. How is the iPhone 5 battery smaller and yet still gets almost double the battery life?
- mahyarm 14y agoYou'll notice they are very strict about background processing in applications and the usage of battery draining things such as GPS or cellular data. This helps battery life significantly. Google didn't start prioritizing view smoothness and efficiency until android 3 or 4. The OS & apps are pretty much pure C from the ground up, with an objective-c application layer. The entire view system (Core Animation) is GPU accelerated with OpenGL from day one. Objective-C on iOS does not have a GC, so apps are generally faster and more responsive with manual memory management. Many apps can drop into pure C or C++ to improve performance easily. All of these performance choices give you a faster phone for less processor. A slower processor also tends to use less energy too. Battery size is a pure weight/size vs capacity tradeoff.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoThe larger screen accounts for most of the difference. A 4.7 inch screen is 40% larger than a 4 inch screen and 80% larger than a 3.5 inch screen.
- grecy 14y agoIt's also worth noting that Apple have been refining their power management code/chips for many, many years, so it's likely better than anything Google have come up with in the last couple of years.
- socialist_coder 14y agoWow, it has about a 50% bigger battery than the iPhone 5 but has considerably worse battery life. 2100 mAH battery vs iPhone 5's 1440 mAH, but iPhone 5 can browse the web for almost twice as long. How is there such a big difference? Or are these stats not 100% accurate?
- Synaesthesia 14y agoYes it is impressive. The iPhone engineers critically have done great work with the performance/power consumption of their CPU and their power management in the OS. They're also using a fantastic baseband which is extremely lower efficient on LTE it seems. Lastly the screen area of the iPhone is quite a lot smaller which does account for some of the iPhones lower power usage.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]