6 Things I Love About the Nexus 4
No Carrier Subsidies
Americans have grown to love their phones being subsidized by the
carrier. In return we sign contracts and pay way more for the phone and
service than it’s worth. Then as the phone gets older, we rinse and
repeat without thinking.
The Nexus 4 is free of this foolishness and combined with a pre-paid
plan, I can bounce around to any GSM carrier that I’d like. For now I’m
sticking with
T-Mobile and
will likely continue that for the near future.
Nexus 4 Has Great Battery Life
Moving from the Nexus S 4G on Sprint has really improved my battery life. I typically had to charge my phone at least twice a day when I was using the Nexus S 4G and still had to hope that it wouldn’t go out when I was out at night. I think one of the big factors in this was actually the cell signal strength because in Washington, DC I could never really get a solid signal strength. I would when I was standing the middle of the street and that was about it. I’ve had the Nexus 4 for about 2.5 months and I’ve only charged it up twice in a day a half a dozen times. That’s when I was doing some really heavy duty usage. Now that I have a Nexus 4 I can easily say that about 90% of time the battery power on my phone is rarely a concern in my head anymore and I really appreciate that. In fact I just got back from DrupalCon 2013 in Portland, OR and I was one of the only team members who didn’t worry about battery life all day long!
Overall Cosmetic Design
There are a lot of cheap Android phones floating around with terrible designs, and the Nexus 4 is an exception to that; I think the phone is very well designed. There isn’t really much about it that makes it feel cheap or built cheap. It really feels like a very solid phone particularly when compared to all of the previous Nexus devices. All the previous Nexus devices were very cheap feeling with heavy plastic screens and backs. The Galaxy Nexus was better, but the battery door is still very cheaply designed. So in short the phone is very solid feeling and looking!
International Support
I really like to think of myself as an international traveler that needs a phone that can be used across the world, but the fact is that I don’t actually travel enough to justify the need. If I do travel internationally, I can use it! In the past few years, I’ve gone to Paris a couple times and it would be very nice if I could use Google Maps and Wikipedia while wondering around the streets of Paris. It wouldn’t cost much to get a short pre-paid SIM card (I got one last time and it was about $12) and I really think it would improve the quality of my life while on the trip.
Pure Play Google
Non-Nexus branded Android devices come with a lot of mumbo jumbo shoved on the phone by the carrier. Usually it’s a rather irritating bunch of apps, customization, and battery draining software that does nothing for the end user. The Nexus 4 only comes with a few Google applications and that’s it. That’s how I like my phone. If it’s not a Nexus device, you have to root the phone and rip out this seriously irritating apps or switch to CyanogenMOD. At this moment it’s a pure Jelly Beanexperience, and it’s amazing.
Packaging is Pretty Sexy
Product designers will tell you that’s where the experience of the product begins, and maybe that’s why I’m more inclined to like this phone than the rest of my phones. Normally I don’t pay a ton of attention to the package because it’s standing in the way of me and the device, but I do believe that Google managed to do a very solid job with the packaging on this device. The box is nice and small, it wasn’t frustrating to open, it was well planned but still attractive for being a box.