Google has taken the covers off the Nexus 5, its latest Nexus smartphone and the successor to the popular Nexus 4. This time around it’s not an “a n other” smartphone however, but something a lot more powerful.
The handset features a 5-inch 1920 × 1080 display (445 ppi), 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, 8-megapixel rear-facing OIS camera, and 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor.
It will come with either 16GB or 32GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, Wi-Fi (2.4G/5G) 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, NFC (Android Beam), and Bluetooth 4.0.
It also runs the latest version of Android, Android 4.4, which has also been dubbed KitKat; Google have a fascination with calling its operating system versions after sweets or deserts. The previous iteration was called Jelly Bean.
Android 4.4 in itself brings a number of new enhanced features including a slightly tweaked design, better voice search and new enhancements to multitasking.
Five stand out features
It’s powerful
The Nexus 5 features the top of the range Snapdragon processor that’s also found in the likes of the Sony Xperia Z Ultra. That means in theory it can process 4K video, let you listen in Dobly 7.1 surround sound and is faster than virtually every other phone on the market.
The display
The Nexus 5 screen comes in at 5-inches with an IPS LCD display and a resolution of 1920 x 1080, giving it a pixel density of 445ppi. It’s bright, it’s colourful and very sharp.
4G
It has a 4G chip that will work most places in the world where you can get 4G and on all the UK and US networks except Verizon. That’s handy for surfing all those webpages you plan on no doubt looking at.
Android KitKat
It features the latest operating system from Google allowing you to gloat at all your other Android mates phones as they won’t have it for a while if ever. The new software brings with it a host of features including more attention to the camera, native printing from Android and options to control your call plan straight from the operating system.
Better camera than the Nexus 4
The Nexus 5 comes with the same sensor, but adds optical image stabilisation. It is now equipped with Photo Sphere for knitted 360-degree shots, HDR+ which takes burst shots and automatically chooses the best, and Auto Awesome which appears to improve photos in your library to share – much like Google+ does.
Quick Verdict
Overall, this is arguably the best Android handset on the market – and we think it should see Google making inroads into the high-end smartphone market, where it has traditionally struggled against Apple.
KitKat also raises the possibility of Google finally addressing the fragmentation issues that had plagued app developers, and Google promises it will run on every Android handset, high or low end, released in 2014.
While it’s unlikely to persuade iPhone owners to switch, the Nexus 5 is a much needed handset, showing that Google really does understand that quality hardware and attention to detail is as important as having good software.
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