The Nexus 4: A Great Android Phone with Some Room for Improvement

Google's latest offering, the Nexus 4, has left us impressed with its performance and features. The phone's display is one of its standout features, with a bright and vibrant 1080p resolution that makes watching videos and browsing the web a pleasure. The device also boasts a sleek design, making it easy to slip into your pocket or purse.

One of the most useful features of the Nexus 4 is its ability to use calendar appointments without unlocking the phone. This feature allows you to access your schedule and upcoming events with just a glance at your screen, making it perfect for those who are always on the go. Google Now, another built-in feature, quickly tells us the weather and traffic before we head out for the day, providing valuable information that can help us plan our daily commute.

Google Search is also refined in this device, allowing users to use their voice to look up anything and get accurate results. We found it to be extremely accurate and good at understanding voice inputs too. Additionally, Google added a small icon notification shade that allows you to quickly bring up commonly used settings. This feature can be accessed anytime, giving us complete control over our phone's settings.

Performance is another area where the Nexus 4 excels. The device's quad-core processor, similar to one used in the HTC Droid DNA, provides an incredibly fast and snappy experience. According to our standard Quadrant benchmark test, the Nexus 4 scored a respectable 4775, although it fell short of the score achieved by the Droid DNA.

When it comes to camera capabilities, the Nexus 4 packs some pretty cool features, including an 8 megapixel camera on the backside and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera for taking selfies. However, we found the camera shots to be just okay, with no major standout moments that impressed us more than our iPhone 5 or Lumia 920. The new 360° Panorama feature is an interesting addition, but it can only be viewed on Android 4.2 devices or from Google+, which is a bit frustrating.

On the other hand, the Nexus 4's camera does offer continuous autofocus and can record 1080p video, although the latter was plagued by lag artifacts that made us want to re-render the footage on our computer. Despite this, we were able to enjoy uninterrupted video playback, making it perfect for watching movies or sports events.

When it comes to data call quality and battery life, the Nexus 4 delivers solid results. The phone's speakerphone is loud enough to use during conference calls, and we didn't experience any issues with dropped calls or white noise on either end. However, our download speeds were average, ranging from 1-2 megabits per second on AT&T's 3G network, which pales in comparison to the much faster speeds offered by LTE.

Fortunately, the Nexus 4's battery life is decent, lasting around a full day with moderate usage. However, we found that it drained quickly when shooting pictures or browsing the internet. This means that users should be prepared to top up their charger frequently, especially on long trips.

In conclusion, the Nexus 4 is an excellent Android phone that offers a great user experience and latest features. While it may not have all the bells and whistles, such as LTE connectivity, more storage options, or longer battery life, it is well-suited for those who want the latest Android update without breaking the bank. For now, if you're looking for a device with these features, consider alternatives like the Galaxy S3 or older Galaxy Nexus.

Overall, we give the Nexus 4 high marks for its performance, camera capabilities, and design. However, some users may be disappointed by the lack of LTE connectivity and limited storage options compared to other Android devices on the market.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up everyone John Brer from techno Buffalo here at a full review of the latest Google Nexus phone this is the LG built Nexus 4 it's rocking a quad core glass back all kinds of other goodness and its teeny tiny package let's put it through its paces and let's see if it should be the phone you pick up and hold with you for the next couple years so let's start the Nexus 4 review with Hardware so I was pretty underwhelmed when I first picked up the the Nexus 4 not because it design isn't solid because it already sort of been treated to a look at it with the Optimus G which is pretty similar in design the front is dominated by an incredible 4.7 in display that went off appears to switch from edge to edge I love the bevel top which slopes down to the slick and sparkly backside it feels super solid it's easy to hold it isn't too heavy I really do like the sparkle effect reminds me a bit of the texture Samsung used to put on its Omni align way back in the day I don't really like the plastic border running around the phone I think it takes away from the otherwise pretty premium look there's a volume rocker it's easy to reach the left hand hand a 3.5mm headphone jack up top and a very easy to reach power button on the right hand side and of course a micro USB charging port on the bottom all right so let's go ahead and jump right into the specs the Nexus 4 packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor which is arguably one of the more powerful chips in the market right now multiple reports have confirmed LTE support is actually on board but the phone itself don't use it instead you are stuck with HSPA on AT&T or HSPA plus on T-Mobile which isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world other hardware specs include 2 gigs of RAM slim port HDMI it uses a micro USB port and 2100 milliamp hour battery to keep that gy powered on and working my biggest gripe with the hardware is that you're locked into either eight or 16 gigs of storage it's not enough for all my music videos photos and the rest of the goodness I like to put on my phone but clearly it's a bit from Google to get you rine more on cloud and streaming Based Services so I'd be pretty remiss if I didn't talk about the chi wireless charging support built into Nexus 4 that's Chi Qi not qu or Qui it's pronounced Chi we got to look it up to make sure uh it's actually the same system that used in the Lumia 920 so if you've got one of those Lumia 920 charging ports lying around you can actually pop the nex4 right on it or use one of the Energizer pads throw it on and get your charge on so next let's talk about software the big standout feature of the Nexus 4 is its OS it's the first phone on the market to launch with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean that's right point2 is also jables and it's the best version of Android I've really ever used despite having a really odd bug that won't let use December as a month for an event inside the People app but that'll get fixed everything is super smooth and feels natural and there aren't any weird software Hang-Ups that I've experienced on any other devices although I bet the quad core processor 2 gigs of RAM certainly help make up for any sort of bugs that might be in this code so there's a few enhancements over Android 4.1 Jelly beam but nothing super major which is probably why Google stuck with the Jelly Bean name notable enhancements include better camera controls a pretty cool 360° Panorama option better notification management and a decent amount more although out of all the new features my favorite option is the new keyboard which allows you to s swipe from letter to letter and create a word just like swipe third party app my find it's actually much smoother deep down though I'm still a tap tap tap tap it it tap it it tap it a rer I'm just get this out of the way I totally love the new lock screen it can now be customized with widgets yay I can for example quickly see my Gmail inbox or my calendar appointments without unlocking the phone this is so useful I'm actually curious why it hasn't been included on earlier releases of Android Google Now and Google search have also gotten refined though I couldn't notice a huge difference to what was offered on Android 4.1 Google Now quickly tell tells me the weather and the traffic before I head out for the day and there's support for identifying flight times other notifications in your email Google search let you use your voice to look up anything and actually prefer it to Siri I found it to be extremely accurate and really good at understanding voice inputs too I also love that Google added a small icon notification shade for quickly bringing up commonly Ed settings I can tap it anytime I want to view my own Google profile change the brightness access more settings turn Wi-Fi on or off check battery level percentage and turn airplane mode and control the Bluetooth all right so next let's talk about performance of of that beastly quadcore Nexus Forge I mentioned has a Snapdragon S4 Pro chip similar to one used in the HTC Droid DNA I ran our standard quadrant benchmarker received a pretty wiing score of 4,775 which is actually below the score the Droid DNA received of 7,461 from overall user perspective though don't get too caught up in the scores the phone is extremely fast and feels really Snappy but for those of you folks that want to know the numbers there you have it all right let's talk about the camera this guy's packing some pretty cool camera tricks Nexus 4 is equipped with an 8 megapix camera on the backside and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera on the front for taking all your duck lip photos that I know you're taking photos aren't amazing and I saw better shots from my iPhone 5 and Lumia 920 they're just okay the new 360° Panorama feature is pretty neat but others can only view those shots with the Android 4.2 device or from Google+ it's kind of frustrating to use I just SN five different panoramas to get the picture most accurately represented and one time it said I was moving too fast even when I follow the guidelines the 8 megapixel camera can record 1080p video but turned out to be loaded with art back so I play the clip back on my computer also from what I could distinguish it lasts continuous autofocus which is a pretty big staple on most smartphones now all right so next let's talk about data call Quality and battery life call quality Nexus 4 was on par with pretty much every other high-end smartphone up tested recently there aren't any really standout features here I was easily able to heal the other caller didn't have any drop calls no white noise on either ends I thought the speaker phone was loud enough to use during a conference call again 4glt isn't active on xs4 even if it's been laying dormant so when we ran our test I received a pretty average download speed and about 1 megabit on AT&T's 3G network which is pretty terrible compared to LTE speeds I test with the T-Mobile SIM and we see the download speed in Department of 1.3 about an average upload speed of 1.18 again this T-Mobile's HSPA network not the Curious faster 4G HSPA plus 42 megabits per second Network however those are just my speeds anywhere you go you might be able to get much faster on something to keep in mind though if you want to pick up an EXs 4 it's best to test and unlock device to see if you're going to get decent speeds 2100 Mah hour battery was able to get me through a full day of usage but I found it drained really fast now shooting pictures went outside with 8% left and after about 15 minutes the phone turned completely off I generally idled pretty well too so I wasn't able to pick it up in the morning with a bit of charge left overall though even though it doesn't run on a 4G LT Network it does have a power hungry quad core processor so you're going to want to keep your charger bu on long trips so what's the final verdict on the Nexus 4 it's a great phone missing some things we'd love it to have if you're looking for a device that's going to get the latest Android update for the next few years and look no further than the Nexus 4 but if you want LTE you want more storage you might want to look at the Droid DNA the 1X the 1X Plus or a B of other Android options out there Galaxy S3 or even the little bit older Galaxy Nexus for right now I'm John render from techno Buffalo check us out for latest and greatest Tech news I'll see you the next video bye-byewhat's up everyone John Brer from techno Buffalo here at a full review of the latest Google Nexus phone this is the LG built Nexus 4 it's rocking a quad core glass back all kinds of other goodness and its teeny tiny package let's put it through its paces and let's see if it should be the phone you pick up and hold with you for the next couple years so let's start the Nexus 4 review with Hardware so I was pretty underwhelmed when I first picked up the the Nexus 4 not because it design isn't solid because it already sort of been treated to a look at it with the Optimus G which is pretty similar in design the front is dominated by an incredible 4.7 in display that went off appears to switch from edge to edge I love the bevel top which slopes down to the slick and sparkly backside it feels super solid it's easy to hold it isn't too heavy I really do like the sparkle effect reminds me a bit of the texture Samsung used to put on its Omni align way back in the day I don't really like the plastic border running around the phone I think it takes away from the otherwise pretty premium look there's a volume rocker it's easy to reach the left hand hand a 3.5mm headphone jack up top and a very easy to reach power button on the right hand side and of course a micro USB charging port on the bottom all right so let's go ahead and jump right into the specs the Nexus 4 packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor which is arguably one of the more powerful chips in the market right now multiple reports have confirmed LTE support is actually on board but the phone itself don't use it instead you are stuck with HSPA on AT&T or HSPA plus on T-Mobile which isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world other hardware specs include 2 gigs of RAM slim port HDMI it uses a micro USB port and 2100 milliamp hour battery to keep that gy powered on and working my biggest gripe with the hardware is that you're locked into either eight or 16 gigs of storage it's not enough for all my music videos photos and the rest of the goodness I like to put on my phone but clearly it's a bit from Google to get you rine more on cloud and streaming Based Services so I'd be pretty remiss if I didn't talk about the chi wireless charging support built into Nexus 4 that's Chi Qi not qu or Qui it's pronounced Chi we got to look it up to make sure uh it's actually the same system that used in the Lumia 920 so if you've got one of those Lumia 920 charging ports lying around you can actually pop the nex4 right on it or use one of the Energizer pads throw it on and get your charge on so next let's talk about software the big standout feature of the Nexus 4 is its OS it's the first phone on the market to launch with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean that's right point2 is also jables and it's the best version of Android I've really ever used despite having a really odd bug that won't let use December as a month for an event inside the People app but that'll get fixed everything is super smooth and feels natural and there aren't any weird software Hang-Ups that I've experienced on any other devices although I bet the quad core processor 2 gigs of RAM certainly help make up for any sort of bugs that might be in this code so there's a few enhancements over Android 4.1 Jelly beam but nothing super major which is probably why Google stuck with the Jelly Bean name notable enhancements include better camera controls a pretty cool 360° Panorama option better notification management and a decent amount more although out of all the new features my favorite option is the new keyboard which allows you to s swipe from letter to letter and create a word just like swipe third party app my find it's actually much smoother deep down though I'm still a tap tap tap tap it it tap it it tap it a rer I'm just get this out of the way I totally love the new lock screen it can now be customized with widgets yay I can for example quickly see my Gmail inbox or my calendar appointments without unlocking the phone this is so useful I'm actually curious why it hasn't been included on earlier releases of Android Google Now and Google search have also gotten refined though I couldn't notice a huge difference to what was offered on Android 4.1 Google Now quickly tell tells me the weather and the traffic before I head out for the day and there's support for identifying flight times other notifications in your email Google search let you use your voice to look up anything and actually prefer it to Siri I found it to be extremely accurate and really good at understanding voice inputs too I also love that Google added a small icon notification shade for quickly bringing up commonly Ed settings I can tap it anytime I want to view my own Google profile change the brightness access more settings turn Wi-Fi on or off check battery level percentage and turn airplane mode and control the Bluetooth all right so next let's talk about performance of of that beastly quadcore Nexus Forge I mentioned has a Snapdragon S4 Pro chip similar to one used in the HTC Droid DNA I ran our standard quadrant benchmarker received a pretty wiing score of 4,775 which is actually below the score the Droid DNA received of 7,461 from overall user perspective though don't get too caught up in the scores the phone is extremely fast and feels really Snappy but for those of you folks that want to know the numbers there you have it all right let's talk about the camera this guy's packing some pretty cool camera tricks Nexus 4 is equipped with an 8 megapix camera on the backside and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera on the front for taking all your duck lip photos that I know you're taking photos aren't amazing and I saw better shots from my iPhone 5 and Lumia 920 they're just okay the new 360° Panorama feature is pretty neat but others can only view those shots with the Android 4.2 device or from Google+ it's kind of frustrating to use I just SN five different panoramas to get the picture most accurately represented and one time it said I was moving too fast even when I follow the guidelines the 8 megapixel camera can record 1080p video but turned out to be loaded with art back so I play the clip back on my computer also from what I could distinguish it lasts continuous autofocus which is a pretty big staple on most smartphones now all right so next let's talk about data call Quality and battery life call quality Nexus 4 was on par with pretty much every other high-end smartphone up tested recently there aren't any really standout features here I was easily able to heal the other caller didn't have any drop calls no white noise on either ends I thought the speaker phone was loud enough to use during a conference call again 4glt isn't active on xs4 even if it's been laying dormant so when we ran our test I received a pretty average download speed and about 1 megabit on AT&T's 3G network which is pretty terrible compared to LTE speeds I test with the T-Mobile SIM and we see the download speed in Department of 1.3 about an average upload speed of 1.18 again this T-Mobile's HSPA network not the Curious faster 4G HSPA plus 42 megabits per second Network however those are just my speeds anywhere you go you might be able to get much faster on something to keep in mind though if you want to pick up an EXs 4 it's best to test and unlock device to see if you're going to get decent speeds 2100 Mah hour battery was able to get me through a full day of usage but I found it drained really fast now shooting pictures went outside with 8% left and after about 15 minutes the phone turned completely off I generally idled pretty well too so I wasn't able to pick it up in the morning with a bit of charge left overall though even though it doesn't run on a 4G LT Network it does have a power hungry quad core processor so you're going to want to keep your charger bu on long trips so what's the final verdict on the Nexus 4 it's a great phone missing some things we'd love it to have if you're looking for a device that's going to get the latest Android update for the next few years and look no further than the Nexus 4 but if you want LTE you want more storage you might want to look at the Droid DNA the 1X the 1X Plus or a B of other Android options out there Galaxy S3 or even the little bit older Galaxy Nexus for right now I'm John render from techno Buffalo check us out for latest and greatest Tech news I'll see you the next video bye-bye\n"