Google Nexus 5 Review

The Nexus 5 smartphone has had so many leaks that it barely needed an official announcement. Still made by LG, the latest Nexus smartphone brings all of the expected upgrades; a larger display with a higher resolution, a faster processor, etc. The Nexus 5 is also the first device to ship with Android 4.4 KitKat, which brings a lot of important changes, including a more refined UI. While the Nexus 5 doesn't have anything that distinguishes it from other flagships, it's price tag is very appealing as always, and the pure Android experience may be more appealing to some users than competitors' modified software. 

	Google Nexus 5	Apple iPhone 5s	LG G2
Body	138 x 65 x 8.6mm, 130g	124 x 59 x 7.6mm, 112g	138.5 x 71 x 8.9mm, 143g
Display	4.95" True HD-IPS+ 1920 x 1080 (445ppi) w/ Corning Gorilla Glass 3	4" IPS 1136 x 640 (326ppi) w/ Corning Gorilla Glass	5.2" True HD-IPS+ 1920 x 1080 (424ppi) w/ Corning Gorilla Glass 2
Storage	16/32 GB, 2 GB RAM	13/32/64 GB, 1 GB RAM	16/32 GB, 2 GB RAM
Connectivity	Wi-FI, GSM (2G), HSDPA (3G), LTE (4G)	Wi-FI, GSM (2G), HSDPA (3G), LTE (4G)	Wi-FI, GSM (2G), HSDPA (3G), LTE (4G)
Camera (Rear)	8 MP with OIS, LED flash and 1080p@30fps video	8 MP with dual-LED flash, 1/3" sensor size, 1.5µm pixel size, HDR, 1080p@30fps and 480p@120fps video	13 MP with OIS, LED flash, HDR and 1080p@60fps video
Camera (Front)	1.3 MP	1.2 MP and 720p@30fps video	2.1MP and 1080p@30fps video
OS	Android 4.4 KitKat	iOS 7	Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
Processor	Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM 8974 (Quad-core Krait 400 @ 2.3GHz + Adreno 330 GPU)	Apple A7 (Dual-core Cyclone @ 1.3GHz + PowerVR G6430 GPU)	Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM 8974 (Quad-core Krait 400 @ 2.3GHz + Adreno 330 GPU)
Battery	Non-removable 2,300 mAh Talk time: 17hrs Standby time: 300hrs	Non-removable 1,560 mAh Talk time: 10hrs Standby time: 250hrs	Non-removable 3,000 mAh Talk time: 17.5hrs Standby time: 900hrs
Starting Price (Off-contract)	$349 (16 GB)	$649 (16 GB)	$549 (16 GB)

Design

The Nexus 5 may be cheap, but its design doesn't look very cheap at all. While it may not be as premium as the iPhone 5s with its aluminium build, it's still solidly built. The back of the smartphone takes a leaf from the 2013 Nexus 7's design with a matte finish, sold in either black or white. A large Nexus logo is rather awkwardly placed horizontally on the center, accompanied by a small, vertically oriented LG logo on the bottom. An 8 MP camera, which by the way slightly protrudes from the chassis, sits on the top left of the device, accompanied by an LED flash below the camera.

The phone's design isn't very rectangular and consists of slightly curved sides. The front, of course, consists mostly of the 4.95" 1080p display. The display is in line with what is expected from a flagship device nowadays, no more, no less. As the Nexus 5 is based on the LG G2, the bezels on either side of the display are very narrow, while the top and bottom bezels are, well, regular for a smartphone. 

The Nexus 5 isn't exactly the skinniest flagship smartphone available. Measuring 8.6mm thick, it's considerably thicker than the iPhone 5 and 5s, and also thicker than Samsung's Galaxy S4 (7.9mm). It's thinner than the LG G2, though. Nevertheless, while it may not be the thinnest, you can't possibly call the Nexus 5 thick. After all, that extremely attractive price tag requires some minor compromises, and anyway, for a $349 phone, the Nexus 5 is doing very well on the thinness department. 

The Nexus 5, weighing 130g, isn't lighter than the iPhone 5 and 5s (of course, it has a much larger display and battery), but is one of the lightest 5" flagships, as it's considerably lighter than the LG G2 (143g) and has the same weight as the Galaxy S4. Not bad for a phone with such a low price. 

Performance

The Nexus 5 is but another phone that enjoys the extreme power offered by the Snapdragon 800 processor. Powered by four Krait 400 cores clocked at 2.3GHz and the monstrous Adreno 330 GPU, you're pretty much dealing with one of the absolute fastest smartphones available. That, combined with the trimmed down Android 4.4 KitKat OS and the absolute lack of any OEM customizations and bloatware, gives the Nexus 5 impeccable fluidity and performance. 

Conclusion

The Nexus 5 isn't an attempt to revolutionize the smartphone market through fingerprint sensors and weird hand and eye gesture controls and whatnot. Quite the contrary, it's supposed to be a basic smartphone with flagship qualities, achieving success through the simplicity of its hardware and user interface. The exclusion of all those bells and whistles is what allows for its very low price, and for some people, that may be just about perfect.

Some people don't need, or don't want, a bunch of extra hardware and software features they'll barely ever use on their phones, in other words, some people just need a powerful yet easy to use phone, and that is the space the Nexus 5 intends to fill in. And it does so very well. This phone has the basics a flagship requires nowadays, a 5" display of 1080p resolution and a Snapdragon 800 processor, and also has a basic, unmodified OS, and that's pretty much it. 

If all you want from a phone is for it to provide a fast, fluid experience for all use cases, from texting to gaming and watching videos, I would strongly recommend the Nexus 5. I would only recommend you to get another phone if basic isn't your kind of thing, that is, if you like the complexity of OEM-modified UIs and nifty hardware extras like fingerprint sensors. But the Nexus 5 is, with no doubt, the best basic smartphone flagship this year.

Possible Google Nexus 5 Benchmarks Leak

As the original LG Nexus 4 is growing long in the tooth, a refresh to the Google smartphone is imminent, and GFXBench's database seems to have just confirmed the existence of the Nexus 5 smartphone. The upcoming smartphone has already had a couple of minor leaks: one is about an FCC document referring to an LG smartphone that could be the Nexus 5. The other leak was pretty intentional; the smartphone appeared during a Google promo video introducing Android 4.4 KitKat. Here's what the GFXBench leak reveals:

The device, as expected, is named Google Nexus 5. I find it very strange that the Android version is apparently named Key Lime Pie, even though Google announced officially that the next Android version was to be named KitKat. Also, the SDK version is number 18, but I'd expect it to be 19, since the version 18 refers to Android 4.3. These are reasons to take this leak with a large grain of salt. 

The device runs on a strange screen resolution of 1800 x 1080, which could either indicate Google is going for an unusual aspect ratio, or the different resolution is due to the presence of a navigation bar, which has been present in all Nexus smartphones instead of physical buttons. 

The device runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC, which features an Adreno 330 GPU  and four Krait 400 cores @ up to 2.3GHz. 

The leak consists of only two benchmarks results. One of them is the rather old GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt HD Offscreen test, which, as the Adreno 330 implies, yields some very impressive results, although it's not exactly ahead of other Snapdragon 800-bearing devices, but rather on par with them. The other result, the T-Rex HD Offscreen test, also shows some impressive scores, again, on par with most Snapdragon 800-based devices, but slightly behind the Snapdragon 800 Galaxy S4 variant (GT-i9506) and the Nvidia Shield.

While the benchmark results aren't outstanding for a Snapdragon 800 device (this means they are outstanding compared to the rest), it does add to the slowly turning rumor mill about an upcoming LG Nexus 5 smartphone. Like I said though, the Key Lime Pie nomenclature and the odd SDK version number, as well as the strange display resolution doesn't help me gain confidence on this leak, but a 1080p, Snapdragon 800 5-inch Nexus smartphone is almost predictable, so the leak could be legitimate.