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A couple days ago I pulled the trigger on the Nexus 5. After buying my wife an iPhone 5c the day before, I decided to wait until the next day when t mobile would have the Nexus 5 in stock.

I'm glad I waited.

If your reaction to 1080p on a 5" touchscreen was as conflicted as mine, you'd want to check this phone out. The IPS display is brilliant. I'm really glad I upgraded from my LG Optimus L9.

I find it remarkable that I now prefer watching movies on my phone than on my PC. I never thought I'd say that.

How does it feel in the hand? My HTC Sensation is getting a little long in the tooth and I'm looking to replace it. Will be headed to T-mo soon to see it in person but what's your take on it?

I find it extremely comfortable to use:



For the lulz, I included my first smartphone, which was the Sony Xperia Ray:



The way I hold each phone I'd compare to mice grip positions: palm grip for the Nexus 5 and a claw grip for the Xperia.

Mine will be delivered today.
Teaming with Consumer Cellular; Goodbye Verizon.
Verizon service is top notch for coverage, in my area anyway.
They are slow on the economic uptake of coverage as a commodity.
My goodness, ATT even has changed policy.
Tired of waiting for Verizon to change; so I did.
Going back to ma bell or at least their towers.
My last Android was a LG Optimus [[LGMS690] running Froyo on MetroPCS.
Loved the OS and phone size but people said the sound was tinny.
All reports are sound is great with the N5.
We shall see.

I got it last Thursday. I love it.

This thing is FAST and the display is really nice.

I've heard complaints about battery life but I have to try to drain the battery with games and HD video if I want to charge it every night.

Under moderate use I'm able to do a charge every 2 days.

I got the 4.4.2 update last night and the camera is definitely improved. It's faster and captures the moment better.

The rubberized exterior feels great in the hand and the sound output is really great for a phone. The sound output from the headphone jack is very good with average earbuds taken from a Galaxy S4 and sounds really nice wit ha pair of Sennheiser HD202 that I got on Amazon for $25 a while back.

The only thing I will say is a negative (but not a big deal to me at all) is the speakerphone sounds pretty lousy, especially with certain types of music (screaming vocals especially).

A++ would buy again

It would be a no-brainer for me IFF it had an sd slot. Until unlimited data is ubiquitous I feel this is a necessity. I currently have a Motorola Droid Razr M with a 64 GB sd card. I no longer need to carry around an Ipod - it's all in the phone. You might say just use wifi, however I frequently take long road trips and my workplace does not allow streaming of music through its internet. Google music just updated the google play app for sd card compatibility. Why didn't they talk to the Nexus 5 team?

I have one. It's great. No complaints, huge upgrade over the rezound.

Perhaps I should have said: Phone call sound quality is great.
That is my main concern.
Anand tech article states that speaker/sound quality is lacking.
mostly regarding tone if I read it correctly.
Doesn't matter to me I'm just about deaf anyway.
With snow in the NE US hope it gets here today.

Got the 32Gb version so it would hold quite a bit of music if that's your gig.
Like the idea of owning the phone and utilizing month to month rate shopping.
think it will help keep corps behaving.
Got my bright yellow bumper yesterday.

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

I got it last Thursday. I love it.

This thing is FAST and the display is really nice.

I've heard complaints about battery life but I have to try to drain the battery with games and HD video if I want to charge it every night.

Under moderate use I'm able to do a charge every 2 days.

I got the 4.4.2 update last night and the camera is definitely improved. It's faster and captures the moment better.

The rubberized exterior feels great in the hand and the sound output is really great for a phone. The sound output from the headphone jack is very good with average earbuds taken from a Galaxy S4 and sounds really nice wit ha pair of Sennheiser HD202 that I got on Amazon for $25 a while back.

The only thing I will say is a negative (but not a big deal to me at all) is the speakerphone sounds pretty lousy, especially with certain types of music (screaming vocals especially).

A++ would buy again

Got mine the day it came out. Upgraded from my Nexus 4 and the difference is very noticeable. The screen is much better as the OP says and it is a lot faster. Not too fussed about KitKat and can't see what the whole commotion is about.

An absolutely excellent phone that I would be happy to recommend to all. I'll definitely be skipping next gen as this phone has more than enough grunt for a couple of years at least. Personally I think smartphones are hitting the preverbal wall in terms of specs. Can't much see the point of 64 bit cpu yet and the latest snapdragon 800's are plenty in terms of cpu.

Lordhawkwind wrote:

Got mine the day it came out. Upgraded from my Nexus 4 and the difference is very noticeable. The screen is much better as the OP says and it is a lot faster. Not too fussed about KitKat and can't see what the whole commotion is about.

What do you mean commotion about KitKat?

You good gerbils may have shown me the light. So if I were to purchase a Nexus 5 I could use it on any network off contract (Cricket, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc...) on a month-to-month basis? I'm in Boston and Sprint looks to have good coverage and a $50 /mo unlimited data plan. I've been using Verizon which I've had 0 problems with as far as coverage goes. Still despise the company. Point here is I could shop around for a service that gives me good coverage and unlimited data. Please tell me this is true!

What really gets me these days is how everyone is pushing so hard on cloud services YET these lousy internet/wireless providers like Verizon think the consumer doesn't need more than 2GB of data or more than 50 mbps internet speeds. Yet here I am praying for google fiber to show up with everybody else and not paying for cable services because everything is available through the internet. /rant

HallofFamer wrote:

It would be a no-brainer for me IFF it had an sd slot.

I do wonder how many of us out there need reasonable storage options and don't want to pay $200 for 48 GB of NAND. This is the only thing keeping me from the Nexus phones. Storage is the only aspect of phones that almost doesn't improve at all from year to year, despite NAND prices falling over time. Somehow, this is the only aspect of mobile devices that's commercially viable to cripple the capabilities/pricing of. Looks like a 1080p 5" screen makes more difference on a phone than being able to take your music library and videos/photos with you. Cloud music on mobile is a joke until high speed data coverage is ubiquitous, data caps gone, and when streaming music from the web doesn't eat up several times the battery life compared to local playback. The only advantage right now is that you have a much larger selection than any local library.

As an addendum to my previous post, I would also like to chip in on lack of SD card storage. It would be great to be able to pop in a microSD card for my music and free up the rest of the phone. I can't fit my music library into the ~27-28 gb of storage space that is free out of the box and might have to be more aggressive with my bitrates to squeeze more on there in the future.

DancinJack wrote:

Lordhawkwind wrote:

Got mine the day it came out. Upgraded from my Nexus 4 and the difference is very noticeable. The screen is much better as the OP says and it is a lot faster. Not too fussed about KitKat and can't see what the whole commotion is about.

What do you mean commotion about KitKat?

I am not sure. Usually there is some noise about a new version of Android. The main highlight for KitKat is the supposed ability to run on 512MB devices, so this one does not apply to the Nexus 5.

HallofFamer wrote:

You good gerbils may have shown me the light. So if I were to purchase a Nexus 5 I could use it on any network off contract (Cricket, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc...) on a month-to-month basis? I'm in Boston and Sprint looks to have good coverage and a $50 /mo unlimited data plan. I've been using Verizon which I've had 0 problems with as far as coverage goes. Still despise the company. Point here is I could shop around for a service that gives me good coverage and unlimited data. Please tell me this is true!

Cricket and Sprint may be iffy since the Nexus is primarily a GSM based device. So for Sprint, you will need mostly LTE coverage for the Nexus 5 to work. I am not sure about the 2G or 3G/HSPA situation. So you should double check whether a Nexus 5 will work with enough coverage if you are looking at Sprint. Verizon is out frequency bands wise I believe.

C-A_99 wrote:

I do wonder how many of us out there need reasonable storage options and don't want to pay $200 for 48 GB of NAND. This is the only thing keeping me from the Nexus phones. Storage is the only aspect of phones that almost doesn't improve at all from year to year, despite NAND prices falling over time. Somehow, this is the only aspect of mobile devices that's commercially viable to cripple the capabilities/pricing of. Looks like a 1080p 5" screen makes more difference on a phone than being able to take your music library and videos/photos with you. Cloud music on mobile is a joke until high speed data coverage is ubiquitous, data caps gone, and when streaming music from the web doesn't eat up several times the battery life compared to local playback. The only advantage right now is that you have a much larger selection than any local library.

Well, the idea is that with say 16-20 gigs of "cache space" in the phone's onboard storage, it should be enough for day-to-day listening for a while. Google's big dream is that you throw everything (including your own music files) up on Google Music, and then you download back to the phone's "cache" when you need to play. The assumption is that you switch every few weeks? The problem is some people's home internet connection may be slow and capped as well, and we are also seeing the trend where people just use their cell phone's connection as the only internet connection. I am in the pro-microSD camp too. Anybody knows if the devs get USB OTG working yet?

Post purchase I did a bit of research. [ha, of course]
Many of the reviews say the Motorola Moto X is a great phone with lesser specs', smaller size, minimal invasive apps.

Read it was on sale for the same price as the N5 for one day only [Dec-2, I think].
Don't understand the concept of a lesser spec'd phone for more money.
Motorola is Google ... right?

Quote: "Anybody knows if the devs get USB OTG working yet?"

? Can't access storage through USB connection? That would be a pain.

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

As an addendum to my previous post, I would also like to chip in on lack of SD card storage. It would be great to be able to pop in a microSD card for my music and free up the rest of the phone. I can't fit my music library into the ~27-28 gb of storage space that is free out of the box and might have to be more aggressive with my bitrates to squeeze more on there in the future.

I rather take the approach of leaving a portion of my collection off the device, as opposed to living with lower bitrates to fit the entire library. I also recommend making use of the free features Google offers through their Play Music service. You can upload 25K to their servers and then stream/download songs to your device over WiFi. This makes it very easy to rotate albums out of my device's local library. You just "pin" the album in the app and when you don't want it on your phone any longer just unpin it.

I decided to upgrade to the $10 a month service this month (I used the free service for months prior). Well worth it in my opinion. It's already helped me find some albums I had missed by artists I don't follow as closely as others.

Flying Fox wrote:

.......... Anybody knows if the devs get USB OTG working yet?

Doesn't work out of the box.
the link does show a hardware work around.

The more I learn about Android the more I know I don't know.


http://forums.androidcentral.com/google ... b-otg.html
Ha, found this article which says it does support USB OTG out of the box:

http://www.androidbeat.com/2013/11/nexu ... b-otg-box/

HallofFamer wrote:

You good gerbils may have shown me the light. So if I were to purchase a Nexus 5 I could use it on any network off contract (Cricket, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc...) on a month-to-month basis? I'm in Boston and Sprint looks to have good coverage and a $50 /mo unlimited data plan. I've been using Verizon which I've had 0 problems with as far as coverage goes. Still despise the company. Point here is I could shop around for a service that gives me good coverage and unlimited data. Please tell me this is true!

What really gets me these days is how everyone is pushing so hard on cloud services YET these lousy internet/wireless providers like Verizon think the consumer doesn't need more than 2GB of data or more than 50 mbps internet speeds. Yet here I am praying for google fiber to show up with everybody else and not paying for cable services because everything is available through the internet. /rant

I'm in Boston too (Cambridge). As long as you're in the city most the time, just get T-Mobile.

And don't expect Google Fiber in Boston.

slowriot wrote:

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

As an addendum to my previous post, I would also like to chip in on lack of SD card storage. It would be great to be able to pop in a microSD card for my music and free up the rest of the phone. I can't fit my music library into the ~27-28 gb of storage space that is free out of the box and might have to be more aggressive with my bitrates to squeeze more on there in the future.

I rather take the approach of leaving a portion of my collection off the device, as opposed to living with lower bitrates to fit the entire library. .

I'm inclined to agree, but I do think I have some storage-hogging FLAC that can be replaced by some 320k MP3s.

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

I'm inclined to agree, but I do think I have some storage-hogging FLAC that can be replaced by some 320k MP3s.

Whereas the first mfg to put 128 Gb in a phone with sound that doesn't distort like Ars' N5 did would have me in a heartbeat as the traveling collection can fit in that size in either FLAC or lossless WMA (I'm still in the Zune ecosystem).

Phone delivered today.
No sim chip from CC yet
After Wi-Fi setup it updated to 4.4.2
Holding pattern until chip arrives, hopefully tomorrow.
putting off playing with it until the chip is installed.
Little that I used it, seemed fine.
Snappy performance numerous apps pre-installed.
Put a couple of email accounts on it.
Will put it through typical usage when it's capable of it.
Porting my phone number over is strange.
Been with Bell Atlantic/Verizon since the breakup.
Feel like a traitor.

EDIT: Version 4.4.2, First shipped chip was last logged in/out Anchorage, AK (?) on 12/13; replacement listed for delivery Today [12/14]

DancinJack wrote:

HallofFamer wrote:

You good gerbils may have shown me the light. So if I were to purchase a Nexus 5 I could use it on any network off contract (Cricket, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc...) on a month-to-month basis? I'm in Boston and Sprint looks to have good coverage and a $50 /mo unlimited data plan. I've been using Verizon which I've had 0 problems with as far as coverage goes. Still despise the company. Point here is I could shop around for a service that gives me good coverage and unlimited data. Please tell me this is true!

What really gets me these days is how everyone is pushing so hard on cloud services YET these lousy internet/wireless providers like Verizon think the consumer doesn't need more than 2GB of data or more than 50 mbps internet speeds. Yet here I am praying for google fiber to show up with everybody else and not paying for cable services because everything is available through the internet. /rant

I'm in Boston too (Cambridge). As long as you're in the city most the time, just get T-Mobile.

And don't expect Google Fiber in Boston.

I recall reading an article saying that Boston was on a short list for google fiber back before it was released. Most certainly just a hype article to get views, but one can always hope.

As far as T-Mobile and Sprint go I'm impressed by the research claimed to be done by a group called 'root metrics'. They released a report for Boston coverage in September of this year (link).

Based on the analysis of data speeds for the 4 major carriers (Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, ATT) some carriers are clearly superior to others. I just did a speed test on my phone (Verizon) and I was getting 16UP/5DOWN which is way outside the supposed error bars but still close to the data. Coincidentally I just got a text saying I passed the 75% mark for my allotted 2 GB of data during that test (no seriously). How perfect Verizon, thank you. Your super-fast speeds get me to my limit quicker than anybody else. T-Mobile looks like the winner here. And if I want to see if Sprint's service suits my needs? Why, I could switch for a month!

My work used to use Sprint for service (we don't actually have service through Sprint, but through a Japanese provider.) In my traveling, I found that I more often than not, could not use my Sprint due to crappy or nonexistent service. My personal service has been T-Mobile since it was VoiceStream and honestly I cannot complain - it works most places in the US just fine. We now use an AT&T backed network for work and it's similarly fine, though I haven't used it in Boston yet.

Interesting about the speeds. I left Verizon. I was using a heavily modified ROM so maybe that had an effect but on 4gLTE I was getting a little over 10Mbps most days. With Nexus 5 on T-mobile I get 15+ during peak hours. Haven't tested off hours yet.

Flying Fox wrote:

DancinJack wrote:

Lordhawkwind wrote:

Got mine the day it came out. Upgraded from my Nexus 4 and the difference is very noticeable. The screen is much better as the OP says and it is a lot faster. Not too fussed about KitKat and can't see what the whole commotion is about.

What do you mean commotion about KitKat?

I am not sure. Usually there is some noise about a new version of Android. The main highlight for KitKat is the supposed ability to run on 512MB devices, so this one does not apply to the Nexus 5.

I think you'll find that Android RT will wind up being the "big deal" about KitKat. I've swapped back and forth between ART and Dalvik a lot since KK launched for the 2013 Nexus 7, and while I'm open to the idea that it's a placebo, I'm pretty sure it's making a big difference in jitters. Like they took Dalvik JIT compiling as far as they could and got rid of 80% of the stutter, and this has gotten them that next 15% or whatever. I made up the numbers, but as someone who uses iOS quite a bit, I feel like my Nexus 7 has caught up to the corporate iPad I was issued in terms of smoothness.

Sure it takes longer to install an app but once it's installed it's been processed in its entirety rather than piecemeal as you need it. It's experimental and you have to enable it through the developer tools, but I'm pretty sure anyone who does will find it worthwhile. I've only had one app that refuses to run with it, and I just don't need that specific app right now. Titanium Backup; I just back up user data to my PC using a batch file that executes an ADB command instead - TiBackup require root, so most likely if you use TiBackup, you can use the batch file, or the backup in your custom recovery. A regular user isn't going to need that.

A number of the Android default apps and Google apps have services and things like that are not compatible with ART, hence why it cannot be used just yet.

That's weird; I haven't run into anything else. Although, it's disabled for a reason, I suppose. Seriously, would be very happy to see it become default enabled.

Having played a bit with N5: size might be a concern, but maybe not.
My son likes it more than his iPhone 5, go figure.
His phone seems small, more pocket friendly.
I have found myself researching "lesser" phones with a smaller handprint.
Pricewise the lesser phones are at least the same price....
Of course all this could change when I utilize it as my main driver.
enjoying The Hunt, so to speak.
The problem is: with a waylaid sim my two week grace period with Google is mostly up.
Many say size grows on you; We shall see.

derFunkenstein wrote:

That's weird; I haven't run into anything else. Although, it's disabled for a reason, I suppose. Seriously, would be very happy to see it become default enabled.

I also haven't experienced this at all. I don't use TiBU either, so I haven't run into any app that doesn't like ART. I can confirm, at least subjectively, that ART is quite a bit smoother than Dalvik. I suspect the next major version of Android will be defaulted to ART.

Had mine since November 5 (ordered 6 minutes after launch) and am using T Mobile. Only issues with it are the uninspiring camera, and ... hmm.... I'm sure there are a couple of other little annoyances but I can't think of any. I got the 16 GB; storage isn't an issue for me, although having a card slot wouldn't exactly hurt my feelings. Battery time has been good to great for me - no complaints at all. If I were stranded somewhere perhaps I'd have a different opinion. As I've seen several people say, it's fast as heck, the screen is fantastic, the speakers are lame, the soft touch back is nice but mine's in a case so doesn't matter, call quality is very good. However, I bet that I'd prefer the buttons on the back like the LG G2 since I frequently hit the volume buttons unintentionally. Wi-Fi performance is great - I came from a Nexus S which was really no faster than the Nexus One, and it not only had terrible Wi-Fi performance, but just displaying a web page was quite a strenuous task for that thing.

Regarding Android 4.4: I do think the integration of SMS and Hangouts is annoying. Also, the Google Now cards have a long way to go to get from occasionally useful to frequently useful. Regardless, I strongly prefer Android to iOS and strongly prefer stock Android to any modified version.