Experience using the LG Nexus 4 (16 Gb) "hot on the heels"

Nexus 4 was purchased as a gift, but I liked it myself. Before that, instead of using a smartphone, I used a bundle: a non-killed phone (Samsung, charging once a month) + iPad3 3G. I never used Android, I just took it to try. I decided to write the article immediately after the purchase, as I realized that over time, the impressions would “wash out” and forget everything - and what infuriated and what pleased me. Here, many people on Habré complain that the reviews are “formal” and that it is their personal impression that is of interest. Hold on! :)



A brief summary by phone: no regrets, Nexus 4 is a great choice for your money.





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So, recently began to think about acquiring a smartphone, because he realized that the tablet is not a mobile solution. I emphasize - this is my personal opinion, yesterday I saw a mother with a daughter (about 9 years old) at the metro, my daughter dragged her own iPad. For me, the tablet is ideal for home surfing - you can carry it around the apartment, “give it a look”, etc. Taking it with you for the whole day is a burden, you need a bag, etc. I think the tablets will either die and be replaced by smartphones, or they will decrease to ease and gradually the line between the smartphone and the tablet will simply be erased (Samsung Note).



At some point, took the Nexus 4 as a gift. While playing - very much. Gave. A few days later I selected and played a little more. More like it. As a result, I took myself the same. I will tell, mixing in a bunch of impressions from the pipe itself and from Android, since I see no reason to share.



The phone did not flash, did not rutile, etc. All the mentioned installed applications are free. Own photos of the phone will not, you can google if desired.

Pleasant impressions

Big screen

In my opinion, 4.7 inches is the perfect size. Prior to that, the store took in the hands of Sony Xperia Z (5 inches) - it already seems "shovel." Nexus 4 does not have this feeling. I put it together and compared the screens of Nexus 4 and Samsung Galaxy 4. Galaxy has a brighter screen, a bit more readable, but the case is fuuuu ... The iPhone screen seems small. Another thought arose that the desire to make smart phones thin and large at the same time is idiotic. The phone should not be heavy - yes, but why make it “cardboard”?

Price

14-15 thousand rubles (Moscow). Bought an iPhone, dropped bye 35 thousand rubles? No thanks. Still, it is a household, everyday device. All attempts by Apple to convince me otherwise of the claim to "ortness" are broken about everyday considerations ...

The default settings are well thought out.

The clave has already enabled the mode of “drawing lines by words”, etc. Almost did not change anything.

Good hint system

Almost everywhere to the place.

Speakers, microphone, voice

At the level, without surprises. The speaker could be a little louder.

Auto-update applications

Conveniently. Almost immediately, the phone itself was updated on Android 4.2.2. By default, this is done via wifi.

Live wallpaper

Liked it. It is a pity that a little. I want an aquarium with fish.

The phone can be useful without a SIM card.

This was some revelation. It was like this: sawed, sawed his sim card, turning it into MicroSIM, but she never got accustomed. I had to go to Beeline's office and change (by the way, Beeline has a free service for transferring contacts between SIM cards). For a while, Nexus 4 was without 3G. Oddly enough, it can be so. In Moscow, a lot of free WiFi. Call - via Skype. Tachemta, the phone can be bought without a SIM card as an entertainment combine for a child, for example.

Keyboard

The mode “drawing by words” (swype) - “these are five”! (C) My main claim to the iPad (and iPhone) is the inability to quickly type words. Just sped up - mistakes! With Nexus 4, the set is several times faster than on the iPad. For me it is very important - I type quickly and don’t want to waste time.

Vibration response

In many places, the phone confirms your actions with vibration and you like it.

Android Beam

This is an opportunity to transfer a link or photo to another phone. Works out of the box. You bring the Nexus "backs" to each other, the phone vibrates, pushes the current window and displays the inscription that "can be transmitted." You poke at the screen, in a second the link is transferred to another phone. No "dating" phones are needed. I liked very much.

Android notification system

Just like it - small icons in the upper left corner of the screen. Well thought out. He pulled the top - saw the list. "Dumped" looking to the right. And what is important - in the presence of unread notifications - the white light in the lower part of the phone blinks! For this idea, engineers want to reward separately.

Phone recognizes Russian speech

an adult (me :) in 99% of cases. Pressed the microphone, said "photos of deer" and after a couple of seconds you see photos of deer. That's cool. IMHO, before our eyes there was a revolution - speech recognition from a comedy (see the voice control in MS Office) turned into a “workhorse”. How do they do it? The voice of the little daughter does not recognize.

Gmail app

I am a fan of GMail and am glad that the native application of GMail is “ironed to shine”. On the iPad, the GMail application is (as it turned out) a wrapper over the HTML version. The slightest scrolling occurs "with jerking." This is incredibly annoying, especially given the smoothness of the work of the “native” mail application on iOS. On the Nexus 4, while the mail likes how it works

Free file sharing with computer

As with a flash drive. Do not need iTunes.

Visible file system

I do not even know - plus or minus. In my opinion, it was necessary to do wrong. It was necessary to make clearly two types of access to the file system: "only documents" and "you can see everything." And by default, give access to "documents only". That is, the only folder within which there are directories: Download, Music, Video, etc. This is how you see when you connect to the computer. Top - in the system sections - only on a separate special request! Because the “guts” of Android are not at all interested, why show them by default? File manager set separately, out of the box was not.

Widgets

After iOS it is unusual, there are no analogues there. After painful deliberation, he set up the only widget that shows the weather. No other needs yet.

Watching HD movies

After installing the Dice Player video player, the phone shows HD movies that are downloaded from torrents. Without any recoding. I download from the “movies for iPad” section :) I suspect that you can watch 1080p, pull ... But does it make sense if the screen is smaller? ..

You can download torrents

After installing TTorrent, the phone itself can download torrents. The free version limits the download speed to 256 KB / s and shows ads. But it works. You download a .torrent file, then in TTorrent you take it from the Downloads folder. The phone downloads the movie to the torrent folder and somehow it is registered in the media collection, so the movie becomes visible on Google Play, “personal movies.” It did not work with uTorrent - it does not take the downloaded .torrent file, but asks for its URL. Well, why does he need the URL on rutracker, if uTorrent is not logged in there and, of course, does not receive this .torrent?

Quick shop

Google Play is much faster than the AppStore. Previously, the AppStore worked quickly, but after the next iOS update, it began to slow down and it was never fixed ...

Car navigation

After installing Yandex.Navigator, the phone turned into quite a decent car navigator with current traffic jams. I traveled around Moscow - there are no special complaints, it works.

Cards

Google maps delight. True POI Google search is trying hard to make it social, it's a little annoying.

mobile connection

A few words about the mobile Internet. Not advertising, just in fact. Of course, with such a smartphone you need unlimited - otherwise stupid. Moved to Beeline's “Go” tariff. 2 Gb per month, upon reaching - the speed is limited to 8 KBytes / s (but they don’t take money from above). 7 rubles a day, you can disable, turn back - you can not. In the center of Moscow, the mobile indicator has the letter H (“HSPA”?), Tried to measure the speed - it turned out about 400 KBytes / second download. Meryl application SpeedTest.net, maybe lying? Is this 4G or is it 3G +? In short, shakes quickly. I did not expect such speed from the mobile Internet, progress, damn ...

Games

I tried to put a 3D game on the film "Despicable Me." I do not play on the phone in such, just wondering. Cute Although there is no aliasing, the lines are “rung”. But the game does not slow down the character animation itself. The fact of a 3D game in a smartphone is impressive.

Graphic unlock password

Who does not know: a line is drawn through a grid of 9 points and the phone remembers the order of points. It works faster than typing a password of 4 digits (iOS).

Three Android system buttons

“Back”, “Home”, “Application List”. More convenient than the hardware button "home" iOS. All the same. Well, very often there is a desire to go back one screen and here this is a systemic action. I also liked the list of active applications and their “swipe right” for closing.

Notes out of the box

Put Google.Keep (analogue of Evernote) - sculpt voice, text and photo notes. Not bad.

There is a TeamViewer client

Someone he is very necessary ...

You can put a widget on the lock screen.

If you put, for example, GMail, then you can see - what letters arrived without unlocking the phone (swipe to the left on the locked screen). Well, not bad, although not friendly with security ...

Cons or unusual

The back surface is slippery (glass)

The phone slides around like skates on ice. The cover solved the problem.

Camera

Image quality is average. Suitable to take a picture of the work schedule. Taking pictures of children - garbage comes out, the pictures look “dirty”. Even the iPhone 4 still looks better.

The phone is warming

It just surprised unusual. You can buy two and warm the nose with a cold.

Need to charge every day

No comments. Let me remind you that before that the phone was charging once a month. True, there is a wireless charging. I think, I will buy in time in office. Will lie on it and there is no need to put on the charge "for the night." It seems to be from Nokia.

No memory cards

From 16 Gb remains somewhere 12. I, in general, have enough, the media library is stored in another place.

Diverse application design

I do not even know what to add here. Each application is organized according to the principle - “what I want, I turn back and forth”. IOS applications have more common solutions.

You can not put your MP3-ringtone on the bell

Only a selection of built-in tunes.

UPD: Prompted what can be in the comments.

"Gray" phones go without the "right" plug in the domestic outlet

Good shops give free adapter.

Books to read hard

In my opinion. Still, on the tablet you need to do this or on a specialized device.

In the browser Chrome there is no "smoothness"

Which is in Safari on iOS. It is difficult to explain, it is necessary to try. Chrome works quickly, there are no problems. But the smoothness of such a firm, Apple - no. In general, this is the main claim to Android - there is not enough smoothness.

Smileys in SMS chat are represented by emotions of the android symbol: green robot

A little scary. I want the usual yellow faces.

Very unusual or "annoying doctor!" (C)

Contacts

As I understand it, the idea of ​​the corporation dough is to “suck in” contacts from everywhere into a single list. “Such garbage turns out!” (C) Firstly, contacts have doubled up, locked in, and so forth. Secondly, some contacts are read-only, for example, Skype. And what to do with them - even if the name can not change? Also I ran into some glitches - one of the contacts “doubled” the name and stubbornly displayed as, conditionally, “Ivan Vasya Vasya”. All attempts to fix did not help. In short, he gave up, deleted everything and re-dialed the contacts again (for the benefit of them a little) and combined them with contacts from Skype. Phew!

Google’s desire to “tie to account” and store in the cloud

The same contacts, for example. I could not find a way to store contacts just on the phone and not give them to the side.

Google’s desire to bind and hog all the information about me according to incomprehensible rules for me

"Google can store anonymous information about the movement and transfer it to other applications to improve the service, and if you refuse (scumbag), then nothing will work normally and the fool himself . " This includes a strong desire to impose a registration on Google+.

Photo management (“Gallery”)

Did not like. In iOS, very thought out. Here, for example, for some reason shows me all the graphic files that I found in the documents. For example, screenshots (cover) of films. What for? Maybe you can somehow disable and see only the camera shots? Another strange idea - the camera is shown as a “live” picture next to others and it remains as a screenshot. For example, you took a couple of shots, watch them, the phone is aimed at something else - at your credit card, which lies on the table. "Out" of the camera. However, by opening the list of applications, you are surprised to see the number of your credit card, which you didn’t even think to take pictures of - the phone just took a look at the last thing the camera pointed to. This is not an idea, but complete garbage, forgive me.

Summary

Nexus 4 with Android 4.2.2 for its price pleasantly surprises with the quality of the handset itself, the well thought out decisions and the speed of work.



If you compare iOS and Android.



On the iOS side, system stability, smooth animation, responsiveness of interfaces (which is important for music, drawing and other applications), design unification, device quality (although the iPhone 5 “lowered the bar” - the case is unsuccessful).



On the Android side - active development, effective solutions (notifications, the “Back” button, a swipe keyboard, widgets, etc.), openness, a rich selection of handsets.



If Googlers add "smoothness" to the animation of applications, they will more strictly relate to the unification of the design and stop forcing everyone to join the Komsomol on Google+, then they will "take the trump cards" from iOS.



Well, very soon, the "rainbow" iOS 7 will take the fight from Android 5, let's see who…