More Nexus 5 Impression and Camera Comparison #nexus5

The boot animation.

I have been taking the Nexus 5 with me for the last couple of days, and here are my impression so far.

1. Build

Unlike the Nexus 4, the black Nexus 5 has a soft touch plastic on its back. This makes it feel less slippery than the Nexus 4 (the Nexus 4 can slide down from a desk on its own, that’s how slippery it is). People are saying the white one is more “plasticky” though. I like the soft touch back. It makes the phone feel more durable than the glass Nexus 4. Alas, the material that Google uses actually attracts dust fairly easily. The Nexus 4 does still feel a bit more premium thanks to the glass back. It has the iPhone 4 feel, while the Nexus 5 feels more like a Lumia, well built but not as premium.

Swiping my finger on the Nexus 4 is a joy thanks to its curved glass at the edge. Alas, the Nexus 5 has a sharper edge, making it feel less “luxurious” when swiping my finger over the edge. The buttons have been changed too. It feels more solid than the Nexus 4, but the sharp edges on the buttons, especially the power button, can be jarring on the fingers compared to the Nexus 4.

The Nexus 5 is as big as the HTC One, but it has a bigger screen (4.95″ vs 4.7″ on the HTC One). It is much lighter, even lighter than the Nexus 4. The soft touch back actually makes it feel smaller than the HTC One. It feels nice on the hand, while sometimes I feel the HTC One is too big.

One huge annoyance for me? The SIM slot. The Nexus 4 uses a non-standard pin hole for its SIM slot, requiring a tinier pin to open (vs the bigger hole on the iPhone and HTC One). Well, the Nexus 5 uses yet another different pin hole. The pin included with the Nexus 4 does not work anymore, as the Nexus 5 requires a longer pin. WTF LG? WTF Google? Seriously?

2. Screen

The Nexus 4 has a pretty conservative auto-brightness. The after effect is that people has poor impression of the screen. Coupled with the prevalence of AMOLED screens, the Nexus 4’s screen looks washed out. Google for some reason is aggressively pushing the brightness on the Nexus 5 to combat this first impression. However, we know that more brightness equals less battery life. The Nexus 5 screen is great. It’s sharp thanks to the 1080p resolution. I do still think the HTC One to be better, mainly due to more saturation in color that make images pop.

3. KitKat

The Nexus 5 is running the latest Android, version 4.4, dubbed KitKat. Main thing I notice is that the wallpaper takes over the whole screen, meaning that there is no more black bars on the status and navigation bars. The icons on the status bar are now white in color. In the past, the wifi and signal bar icon are grey in color when connected wirelessly, and blue when the phone is connected to Google services. A small indicator would also pop up whenever there are data transmissions occurring. Those are all gone in KitKat. The icons will be just white, and there are no indicators of data transmissions. You have to go to the control center (2 finger swipe down) to see those indicators (the wireless icons will be orange if the phone is connected wirelessly but not to Google, and there are small triangles indicating data transmissions). This makes it less intuitive to troubleshoot connectivity problems.

The home screens have been rearranged. The main home screen is not the “middle” screen anymore. It is the first screen instead. Swiping to the right will actually reveal Google Now screen on the left. It is similar to iOS 6 when swiping to the right will reveal spotlight search. By default, there are only two home screens. I don’t see a direct way to add more home screens, other than dragging a widget passing the last screen on the right, then KitKat will create a new home screen.

Google Now will now respond once you unlock your phone, meaning that you don’t have to have Google Now running. Unlock the phone, and you can say “Ok Google” right away. It is similar to Motorola’s touchless control, but with the Moto X, it can respond even when it’s locked. So the implementation on the Nexus 5 feels half-baked. Even Siri can be initiated right from the lock screen without unlocking the iPhone.

The lock screen has been redesigned too. In 4.2, there is no indication that you can swipe the lock screen to the left to run the camera app, other than a brief flash of outlines on the sides of the screen when you wake up the phone. In KitKat, Google followed iOS, by providing a camera icon on the lower right corner. Following the bottom of the screen, there is an arrow pointing up in the middle, This replaces the dotted circle on 4.2 to access Google Now. Thing is, at first that up arrow makes me think that I can swipe the lock screen up to start the camera, just like the iPhone. Well, to start the camera, you have to actually swipe to the left instead. I can see new users being confused at first.

Another change in KitKat UI is the icons. They are overly large. The App drawer now only contains 4 x 5 grid instead of 5 x 5 on the Nexus 4. The icon size is so large that it feels downright silly. This also makes folders in the home screen to cover up more space that it did before. Aesthetically annoying as it makes the screen feels cramped.

The regular messaging app is gone. Everything is handled under Hangouts. Like it or not, Google wants you to use Hangouts and join Google Plus. This consolidation of messaging apps is welcomed, but Google created another confusion. This is not exclusive to KitKat, but with the new push of Google Plus, now there are two apps to access your photos. The classic Gallery app, and the new Photos app that integrates the camera roll with Google Plus. Confusing? Yeah. I can see the classic Gallery app going away, although I really like it.

In terms of responsiveness, the Nexus 5 is fast. It is so fast that it actually make the Nexus 4 feels slow. Side by side, when opening apps and menus, there is a noticeable delay on the Nexus 4 compared to the Nexus 5. Now the Nexus 4 is by no means slow/laggy, but there is this noticeable hesitations on every screen transitions compared to the Nexus 5. Not sure if this is due to KitKat or just because of the beefier hardware of the Nexus 5, but hopefully KitKat can bring some smoothness to all Android devices.

4. Battery Life

Non-scientifically, it’s a meh. I took the Nexus 5 along with my iPhone 5 for a stroll. Both have everything on (wifi, cellular radio, GPS, etc), and same email accounts configured. I used both to take similar number of pictures. After a few hours, both are showing around 75% of battery life left. Thing is, I had the iPhone also running a location tracking app, while the Nexus 5 did not have this app running. Considering how the iPhone 5 battery is a lot smaller, this tells me that the Nexus 5 and/or Android is less efficient than the iPhone/iOS. Seems like Android does not behave well, especially when cellular signal is weak. I notice this also on the HTC One as the battery drains pretty quick when it is in low signal area. Heavy users might want to have an external battery pack handy just in case.

5. Camera

I did a comparison of the Nexus 5 camera with some other devices on the previous post. Here are some more pictures to enjoy. 🙂

Nexus 5

iPhone 5

HTC One

Nexus 5

iPhone 5

HTC One

The HTC One is showing a weakness here. The Nexus 5 fares okay, while the iPhone 5 continues to provide the best balance. Throughout this post, you will see inconsistent white balance from all devices. It is also interesting to see the different FOV of each devices (the HTC One having the widest FOV).

Nexus 5

iPhone 5

HTC One

Getting this image was an interesting experience. I actually had a hard time making the leaf in focus with the iPhone 5. I had to go very close before it focused properly. I’m guessing the iPhone has a minimum range where it initiates its macro mode focusing. The HTC One took the picture without much fuss. The Nexus 5 had trouble in its metering, resulting in a dark image although the leaf was in focus properly.

Nexus 5

Nexus 4

iPhone 5

HTC One

Wow, white balance all over the place. 😀 The HTC One doesn’t look good here. It seems that it had trouble in determining the white balance and overblowing the highlights. The Nexus 5 did an okay job though. I kinda like the warmer tones in this context. The Nexus 4 trailed behind, but you can probably do some post processing to make it look decent. The iPhone, again, gave the most balanced picture.

Nexus 5

Nexus 4

iPhone 5

HTC One

This was a tough picture to take. I wanted to focus on the lower right fruit. After numerous tries, I just couldn’t do it with the Nexus 5 and the stock camera app. Same thing with the Nexus 4, it was impossible. The iPhone also had a difficult time, but I finally got a focus, albeit resulting a dark picture due to the phone trying to compensate for the sky. The HTC One? Well, at first, I had trouble with it too. But a simple flip to macro mode, bam! It took the picture like a champ. 🙂

On the Nexus 5 and Nexus 4, I tried using a camera app called Camera360. This app has multiple options, including macro mode. Although it was still a difficult process with multiple tries, I finally got something. Not great, but it’s something. The HTC One definitely took the cake this round.

Nexus 5

Nexus 4

Nexus 5

Nexus 4

iPhone 5

HTC One

Nexus 5

Nexus 4

iPhone 5

HTC One

These were another difficult shot, with dark and bright areas. The Nexus 5 did okay. It dropped down its shutter speed to 1/9 to help with light while keeping the ISO low. Problem is, it is susceptible to blurring due to shake (despite having optical image stabilization). Not bad, but not as sharp as the iPhone 5. The Nexus 4 had to resort to high ISO, giving noisy picture. The HTC One suffered overblown highlights, its achilles heel.

Throughout this experiment, I was really annoyed with Android stock camera app. The camera start-up on the Nexus 5 is slow. When switching from portrait to landscape or vice versa, there is a significant lag. Yes, lag, on a  quad-core snapdragon 800 phone. There is really no excuse there. The focusing system is slow, and it wanted to keep focusing at the center. I observed it changing the focus to the center even while it was taking a picture, which can sometimes create out-of-focus picture. It’s ridiculous. The camera itself is capable on producing decent images. Google needs to really work on the software side.

The HTC One continues to be a joy to use. Startup is fast, focusing is fast, and it is the only one having a specific macro mode. Sometimes relying on auto everything is not necessarily the best way (e.g. the iPhone having issues with the leaf). Even better, its gorgeous screen makes you enjoy the pictures right away. Its weaknesses at this point are well known though, especially the overblown highlights.

In the end, the iPhone takes the best balanced pictures in most situations. Apple just know their stuff. Start up is fast, focusing is fast, and other than some issues in specific instances, it just works. However, during this experiment, I wish it had a larger screen. 😉

If you are going to take a lot of pictures, get the iPhone. You have to have a lot of patience with the Nexus 5.

6. Conclusion

Well, there you go. My quick impression of the Nexus 5. It is Google’s latest, and the only way to enjoy KitKat out of the box right now. It feels great on the hand, but I would still invest in a case. It has top notch spec, yet Google is still skimping on certain things, like the stock camera app. Despite all the drawbacks, one has to remember that this is a $350-$400 phone. It’s cheaper than even the iPhone 4S! 😀 It’s an excellent phone for the money. Hopefully my impression can help your decision, or at least make you feel better about your purchase. 😀

 

HTC One Photo Comparisons #HTCOne

Yes, I obtained myself the HTC One. It is my second HTC phone, the first being the Nexus One. I don’t usually like HTC as in the US, they don’t sell their phones unlocked (Nexus One being the exception, sold by Google). However, looks like HTC is changing their ways, by offering their latest flagship, the HTC One, unlocked, straight from their own website. And unlike Apple that delayed their unlocked iPhone availability in the US to push people buying from the carriers, HTC is making the One available pretty much at the same time as the carriers. This is quite unprecedented, as most phone OEMs are only selling their handsets locked with the carriers in the US. HTC finally joins Apple, Sony, and Google, in selling unlocked handsets.

Aside from being unlocked, one of the most talked about feature of the HTC One is its camera, namely that it’s just a paltry 4MP. Considering how other phones are pushing 8 to 13MP cameras, it’s actually refreshing seeing HTC taking a different path. Despite being 4MP, the One’s camera has a much larger sensor than most phones, 1/3″. That is nothing in the world of digital camera, but in phones, it’s quite “big.” Having a bigger sensor means more light exposure on each pixel, thus better low light sensitivity. Of course, lay consumers will balk at four megapixel, so HTC is branding it as “UltraPixel.” In most HTC One’s marketing material, you won’t see 4MP being mentioned anywhere.

Why the gear switch from the megapixel war? Consider the most common usage of smartphone cameras. Most of the time, they are used in low-light situations (indoor social events, parties, etc), the worst situation for a camera with such tiny sensor and cheap optics. Also, most of the pictures are posted online, in social networks, where they are resized to less than 4MP at best, with most are around or less than XGA resolution. Not many people are going to print the picture taken by their 13MP smartphone camera into a poster. HTC recognize this, thus the focus on low-light capability by sacrificing the resolution.

I’m going to do a completely unscientific comparison between the HTC One camera and carious other devices.

First contender is the iPhone 4. People now talk about 8 to 13MP camera and laugh at HTC One’s 4MP, yet just a few years back, everybody was praising Apple iPhone 4’s 5MP camera. The iPhone 4 is still available for sale from Apple. Second is the Nexus 4, the reference Android handset from Google. It didn’t receive good reviews for its 8MP camera, but for $349, you get a 16GB unlocked stock Android phone running the latest OS. Not too shabby for the price. I also include a cheap Samsung flip-style camcorder that I bought from Costco a while back for $100, the Samsung HMX-W200. It is designed to be a flip-style camcorder, but has picture taking mode at 5.5MP. And finally, I also use the Canon S90, a compact camera that propelled the enthusiast high-end compact category. It’s old, uses an old CCD sensor compared the latest CMOS ones in the S100/S110, but it’s still a good size sensor for a compact, 1/1.7″ at 10MP.

First test is indoor, with some natural light going in. All pictures are straight JPEG from the devices, resized with iPhoto. No other post processing done. Now, count up your sins! 😀

The iPhone 4 picture is not bad, but it’s fairly noisy as the camera is trying to compensate the low light condition.

The Nexus 4 picture is darker. Noise is okay, better than the iPhone 4.

The HTC One did pretty good. Noise is well controlled and the picture is pretty bright.

The cheap Samsung camcorder just cannot match the rest of the candidates.

The Canon S90 came out on top, as expected, although the picture is a bit soft.

Well, we can already see the advantage of the HTC One,

 

More Apple rumors

There have been quite a bunch of Apple rumors lately for unknown reason. I mean usually you would expect rumors when there is an upcoming Apple event (WWDC, etc), but there is really no hints of one coming up soon.

First, there is that article from WSJ about Apple cutting back on orders for iPhone 5 parts. Of course, the analysts came out from the woodwork, talking crap about weak demand. Who knows the real intention, or whether it is true or not, but one can simply go to Apple.com and see that Apple now has enough stock for the iPhone 5 to ship. I mean the phone has been on the market for almost 5 months already, and looks like Apple caught up with the demand, so obviously orders would be pared down as to not create overstock. We are talking about Tim Cook here, he knows what he is doing, better than those analysts.

Second is the revival of a cheaper iPhone rumor. Anybody that knows Apple would know that Apple is not interested in race-to-the-bottom. They skipped the netbook craze, went with the iPad and Macbook Air, and they are raking in the dough while other PC OEMs are now struggling.

Having said that, I have also been ranting about the unlocked prices of iPhones. I am not saying that Apple need to make some cheap bottom barrel iPhone, but some price cuts would be great. The cheapest iPhone right now is the 8GB iPhone 4, which sells for $450 unlocked. Compare that to the latest Nexus 4, 16GB for $349. Now, knowing what Apple has been doing in the past, and the fact that the iPhone 4 is still performing adequately under iOS6, we can see the usual shift of models when a new iPhone is announced. Ie, price drop by $100 across the board. This means the iPhone 4 will be $350. If Apple could push that down a bit more to $300, now we have the so-called “low cost” iPhone. Other than the Nexus 4, most Android phones in this price range has poorer user experience (slow hardware, old outdated OS, cheap material, etc). The iPhone 4’s industrial design alone is superior, despite the outdated internal (A4 chip). This move makes more sense, and it is what Apple has been doing in the past. To be more radical, I can see Apple updating all lineup with lightning connector.

When the analysts are talking about “low-cost” iPhone, they are talking about $200 phone unsubsidized. The Android experience at this price range is just bad, mostly phones with really really old hardware (~2008 era, first gen snapdragon). There is a new contender though, Nokia’s Lumia 620. It is not sold in the US, but it is available from import stores for less than $300. Counting how much import stores jack up the original MSRP, one can think the actual price would probably be closer to the $200 range. What’s special about the Lumia 620? Well, it runs the latest Windows Phone 8 (compared to the competing Android phones where some are still running Gingerbread in this price range), and it has dual-core Krait, the latest chipset. It may not have super duper 1080p screen, but its WVGA 3.8″ screen with Nokia’s “ClearBlack” is decent, considering the price range. So now the rumors are running wild about a plastic iPhone. Many refers back to the 3G/3GS style.

Although personally I still believe Apple would not do this (probably just do a price cut on the iPhone 4), it is more fun to speculate, no? 😀

To see how a “low-cost” iPhone would be, easiest way is to see the iPod Touch lineup, as Apple does have a $200 iPod Touch. Currently though, that iPod Touch runs the A4 chip with paltry 256MB RAM and poorer quality retina screen. However, clearly Apple can afford to sell an A5 equipped new iPod Touch, complete with a same screen as the iPhone 5, for $299. That would be a good starting point to speculate.

First, internal hardware. Although A4 is probably cheaper, and as shown with the iPhone 4, with enough RAM, it can still perform well, I would go with the A5. Apple loves the A5, putting it in the new iPod Touch and the iPad mini. Plus they can probably make those for cheap now. With the A5, comes the benefit of Siri, which imo what Apple would/should want to push at this point. The iPhone 4 doesn’t have Siri.

Screen wise, it would be the same as iPhone 4/4S retina screen. For body, although it’s tempting to bring back the 3G/3GS plastic, we know Jony Ive won’t like that. I’m guessing it would have the new design similar to the iPad mini/new iPod Touch. Apple doesn’t seem to have a problem putting LTE radio on the iPad mini using the design.

So, it’s pretty much a smaller screen iPod Touch with a phone in it. But then what about the 4S? What I can see Apple do is pretty much getting rid both the 4 and 4S (both still sporting the old 30-pin dock connector) with the new model with lightning connector. A complete makeover so all the lineup uses the lightning connector. Price? Again, Apple is about healthy profit margin. I doubt they would ever do a $200 unsubsidized iPhone unless the margin is good. Heck, they are still selling the old A4-based iPod Touch because they can’t price the newer one to $199. So this “cheaper” iPhone will be at the current iPhone 4 price point, with the iPhone 5 taking over the 4S slot and the next iPhone as the new top of the line (A7 powered, same design as the current iPhone 5 with improved materials so it won’t self-scuff inside its box).

So let’s recap. My speculation would be no more iPhone 4 nor 4S. The low end will be the iPhone using the latest iPad mini/iPod Touch design cues with 3.5″ retina screen (same screen as the 4/4S), A5 powered, 512MB RAM, same cameras as the current iPod Touch, lightning connector, starting with 8GB at $399 ($400 with a marketing spin) unsubsidized, and 16GB at $450. Next up will be the the current iPhone 5 at 16GB for $550, then the new iPhone at 16GB for $650, and so on. If Apple want to be a bit more aggressive, they can start the new iPhone at 32GB for $650.

But, I think Apple will stick to the usual pattern like I mentioned at first, iPhone 4 dropping down in price to $350, 16GB iPhone 4S taking over the $450 spot, current 16GB iPhone 5 at the $550 spot, and the new iPhone at $650 and up.

See, I can be an analyst too. 😛 The difference is I don’t get paid making ridiculous speculations.