Nexus 4, six month later
Yeah, I know, it was about time. It's been six month that it's mine, it's quite heavy, black, astonishingly beautifull and it does shine. I'm of course talking about my Google Nexu 4. It's a smartphone produced by LG over the E960 reference and sold by Google under the name of Nexus 4. This article is not a test but an evaluation after a few month of services.
With this device Google strike the mobile phone market pretty hard with a realy powerfull phone that has a low price. The 8Go version of it is availlable for 299€, and count 50€ more for the 16Go version, plus shipping. As an indication, it's main concurents the IPhone and the Samsung Galaxy SIII currently have a price over 679€ and 365€.
the packaging
When i order it six month ago, I had a few troubles with delivery delays caused by a shortage of any stock, anyway as soon the smart phone was availlable the packet came pretty fast home. In the box I found a micro-USB cable to plug the mobile onto your computer or to recharge the battery, a sector - usb adapatator to reload it if you do not have a computer, one hand free kit, some papers on how to huse the phone and of course the phone itself.
the performance
The processing unit that equip the Nexus 4 is a quad core SnapDragon from Qualcomm clocked at 1.5 Ghz and supported with 2GB of RAM, making it a realy powerfull and fast phone. About the internal memory, the 8Go version is quite light according that the standard is today at 16Go. And the maximum capacity of 16Go for this phone is quite sad compared to the other that goes to 32Go or even 64Go. The communication are standard WI-FI, GPS, 3G. Sadly the phone does not support the LTE standard (4G). The phone also has a NC controller and an wireless induction charging system. At the screen, you can enjoy beautiful 4.7 inch with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels and a density of 318 ppi. It is in the high end.
the dimensions
If 4.7 inches mentioned earlier frightened you then you should not complete this section. The phone is very big with 13.39 cm heigth, 6.87 cm wide and 0.91 cm deep. This is bigger than an iPhone but smaller than a Galaxy SIII. In weight the phone weighs 139g.
The operating system
The phone comes with version 4.2 of Android. The phone will benefit from regular updates from Google. If you're adventurous you can easily change the operating system to pass under Ubuntu-Phone or Firefox-OS.
Development
And so we could not miss this step. I recently started working with the Android NDK which allows working in C + + on an Android phone ("I fed a deep passion for Java" - an ironic person). Any developer understand my distress about the Android emulator and how it can make you very mad, very quickly. I now use my Nexus to test and debugged my application, the advantage being that I can test everything without saying "damn, it's going to be slow."
My opinion
I'm not disappointed with this phone, it is very powerful and goes beyond what I could ask of a phone. The only downside is the battery, two days max with a light use. In terms of memory, I have the 16GB version which is already 80% full but this is depending on how you plan to use it.