Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Nexus 5: Revisited! (What’s on my Phone)”.
Hey what is up guys, mkbhd here so ever since that top five phones of 2013 video i’ve gotten a lot of questions about this. This is the 32 gigabyte white nexus 5, which i called the closest thing to my daily driver, and a lot has actually changed about this phone since it first came out around two months ago. Some software has changed and actually some hardware too believe it or not. So this is the nexus 5 revisited now i’ll. Have my original nexus 5 review linked right below that like button for anyone who missed it or just wants to see it again? But if you remember that video, i was actually a pretty big fan of the hardware and the choice i made of the stormtrooper white or panda design over the all matte black nexus 5., and i’m so glad i made this decision uh. My biggest concern with it was not the glossy sides, but actually, whether or not it would get dirty and so far it really hasn’t. It’S the same bright white as the day i took it out the box. It’S only been two months, but you know it’s good to know that it’s not discoloring and i obviously take really good care of my phones, but this phone goes in and out of my pocket all the time and still looks fresh. I also thought that maybe the white earpiece would become a focal point if it ever got dirty, but again it’s just as clean and subtle. As ever and more and more. I’Ve noticed that the white and black two-tone design, actually kind of makes the phone appear a little bit thinner, uh overall, maybe i’m just imagining things, but essentially i’m really happy with the design and the hardware, nearly two months after taking out the box. But a few things have also changed about the nexus 5 since that day, first of all, it’s launched with android 4.4. Now it has gotten two software updates to bring it to android 4.4.2 kitkat. So there’s a new software here it basically makes the biggest change to the camera. So now, while the image quality is just a slightly better with a little bit better colors and contrast and a bit more saturation, it’s mostly about the shooting speed here. So if you remember the old camera, the old camera took several seconds to switch to hdr plus mode and take an hdr shot and even the regular shots you took were a pain.
It took a couple of seconds and it was really difficult to get a confident shot now. Opening the camera software and taking a regular shot is much faster with the new software, with the in-between shot time, basically shrinking to almost zero again in hdr, plus mode is about as fast as taking regular photos was before on the old software. Plus you get this sweet animation to let you know that you’re actually doing work when you’re taking an hdr shot.
So basically it really does make sense now to leave hdr mode on all the time to take better shots. But if you ever just really need to fire off some quick snaps, the nexus 5 is finally ready to do that at a reasonably fast speed. So now, while the nexus 5 might not be the best camera in any smartphone, i mean it’s still. Definitely not the best, at least it’s not a pain to shoot with anymore, and that’s a big complaint that a lot of people, including me, had when we first got it now. Another extremely specific thing that has changed about the nexus 5 is the speaker. Now it turns out there’s a new hardware vision of the nexus 5 in the google play store that has slightly bigger speaker, grille holes and the only way to tell if you have the new one or not, is actually to look at a picture of the old Versus the new one and see which one looks more like yours, but i mean, if you’ve had yours for more than a week, you probably have the old one, but unfortunately from experience it doesn’t really matter from hearing the old and the new. The speakers on this 350 smartphone just are not good, that hasn’t changed, you’d be better off with headphones anyway, but other than that the rest of android 4.4.2 that whole kitkat experience is basically, as you would expect clean, smooth and polished as ever now, since this nexus 5 is the phone i keep coming back to after testing and using other phones at least for the past two months.
I figured i’d, show you guys, basically my default standard home screens and you can judge them all. You want, but it’s basically a pretty simple setup that i have and i like it a lot. I only have three home screens other than the google now page and two of them are completely widgets, so the first one is dash clock. Widget is my default. I have a couple of plugins in here actually to give me some glassable information and i’ll have links to all of these things.
The important ones below, but yeah dash clock is basically the best. Besides dash clock, i have on the second home screen the today agenda. Widget my life kind of relies on google tasks and google calendar, so that’s where my pretty calendar is always at for me and to the right of that is my little grid of my most used apps like daily used apps, so feel free to judge all you Want i pretty much open all these apps on every phone i test every day, but yeah, that’s the setup uh. Of course i have a ton more apps in here. If you look in my app drawer, you know that’s if you want to pause on any of these screens to get some ideas for yourself feel free.
Those are all the apps i have installed, which isn’t actually a whole ton, but it’s what i feel is necessary and also for those of you who care. Yes, i have turned on the art, android runtime and i’m loving it and something else that’s nice is i’ve. Seen battery life get better on the nexus 5 since day, one again back in my initial review, i couldn’t get the nexus 5 to last me a full day with the typical heavy use that i have, but strangely the battery life has consistently gotten better and better And now it lasts me, through the day, almost like i had to like break in the battery or let it figure itself out or something plus. I picked up the wireless charger so now i’m pretty much set not to worry about this battery anymore. So that’s the nexus 5.
A few months later, even though i carry it, i do still recommend the moto x to a lot of android switchers, just because it fits in people’s hands better, usually, but just because of all the fixes to some of the biggest software flaws on the nexus 5. Mainly the camera and actually the battery, this is solidifying itself as one of the best smartphone options out there, especially because of the super low price which you just can’t forget about. I carry it often with the sony rx100 in the other pocket. When i want to take some actually good photos, or sometimes even with the iphone or whatever other phone, i am testing and a lot of the other phones and stuff that i immediately get are just compared to the nexus 5..
It’S the benchmark, so there you have it thanks for watching and i’ll talk to you guys very soon in the next one peace you .