Nexus 5 Review: The Best Android Can Offer Especially For the Price

Less successful was the feature that allows you to search by name for "nearby places." For example, when I was searching for Ralph's (a grocery chain), I was given options for three of them that were between two and four miles away, while it completely ignored the one that was half a mile over. I was also directed toward Connecticut for waffles, so, there's that.

The messaging app got a major overhaul, too. In fact, it's been eaten by Hangouts, Google's chat app. Now SMSing and IMing are done from within the same app. You add one of your contacts to a conversation (a Hangout), and the app tells you if they're just on SMS or if they're on chat, or both (it also tells you if they're online or not). It's also now really easy to share your current location from within the app. That said, this puppy still has a lot of growing to do. For starters, there's no integration with Google Voice, which is madness, considering it's Google Voice. Worse, though, the whole UI for the app is a bit confusing. Things look cluttered, it's too easy to accidentally archive a conversation, and it's not very clear who's really online and up for a chat, or who's asleep because it's 4am their time but their phone is turned on.

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Google Now (which we very much like) is now baked deeper into the OS. For starters, it has its own panel on the desktop, so you can just slide over to it. It's not really much simpler than sliding up from the app drawer, but we suspect a lot of people didn't know it was there before. This should make it more obvious to more people, which is a good thing. You can also now activate voice search / voice command from anywhere on the desktop (or within the Search app) by simply saying "Okay Google," then saying what you want. It's nice, but not nearly as helpful as it is on the Moto X, where you can say, "Okay Google Now" from virtually any app, or even when the screen is off.

Quickoffice is kind of a nebulous app. You can use it to "open and save files on Google Drive" or other cloud storage services. Great! It's handy for Word docs and PDFs you uploaded to Drive, but less useful if most of the stuff in your Drive was made with Google products.
Cubot DT99 Phone IP67 Walkie Talkie Bluetooth FM Dual SIM Card Camera 2.2 Inch Dark Green
Google finally stopped waiting for mobile carriers to acquiesce and just went ahead and baked Wallet more deeply into the OS. The process has become a bit more streamlined, too. As long as you have a credit card associated with your Google account you're pretty much good to go. Tap-to-pay registers are becoming increasingly common and if you ever forget your wallet (or just don't feel like digging it out), this is an extremely painless way to pay.
Cubot A6589S SmartPhone Android 4.2 MTK6589 Quad Core 5.8 Inch HD Grey
There are other improvements, too, like faster multitasking and better memory usage. There's a new, very sweet "immersive mode" which gets rid of the onscreen controls when you're reading a book or watching a video so you can maximize that screen. There's built-in support for using your phone as a pedometer (while using less power to do so) and for cloud printing, and of course the OS is less resource-hungry, so it will run on lower-end phones. For all that, though, it's still a bit rough around the edges.
Cubot P9 Smart phone MTK6572W Dual Core 5.0 Inch QHD Android 4.2 3G GPS Black
Nexus 5 Review: The Best Android Can Offer (Especially For the Price)Expand
Camera

As good as the Nexus program has been, it's always had a photographic Achilles Heel. Or, to put it more bluntly, the cameras on the Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus were awful. We are happy to say that that's no longer the case here. We were disappointed that it was just an 8MP camera when LG put a 13MP shooter into its G2 flagship, but luckily the Nexus 5 has some software help to make up the difference.

In the normal shooting mode the camera is fast, but the photos are decidedly lackluster. However, when you use KitKat's new HDR+ mode, that all changes. Not only is the dynamic range boosted (so highlights don't blow out and shadows don't get lost), but colors are enhanced and you get a lot more detail. That last note is somewhat surprising as HDR photos are typically associated with blurriness—since they're actually an amalgam of several images— but the proof is in the pudding.
Cubot A6589S SmartPhone Android 4.2 MTK6589 Quad Core 5.8 Inch HD Grey
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HDR+ images were better almost across the board, regardless of lighting or distance. We did some head-to-head comparisons with the stock version of the Galaxy S4 (running Android 4.3) and the Nexus a lot closer in quality than we would have expected. Even without HDR, the Nexus faired pretty well, despite the Galaxy S4 having a five megapixel advantage. You can see our full photo test here.

The other much-touted camera feature on the Nexus 5 is its optical image stabilization (OIS). Again, we're happy to report that it makes a significant difference, which you can see especially in the video below. I held both phones in exactly the same way for all three of those shots. In the first clip with the ants, the Nexus 5 looks like it's on a tripod by comparison.

As you can see, the video quality is excellent. So, while this camera may not measure up to the Nokia Lumia 1020 or perhaps the iPhone 5S (to be determined), it should be more than good enough by most camera-phone metrics.

The one place it falls a bit short is in low-light. It isn't awful, but it isn't great either, and it really struggled to find focus. Also, the camera app itself has gotten slower from the version in 4.3 (slower to find focus and/or bring up the menu), which definitely shouldn't be the case, given the superhero processor inside. Also, it seems extremely limited given the phone's power. Why not the option to shoot 1080p at 60fps or 720p at 120fps for buttery super slow motion?
Like

The screen is plenty bright even in direct sun light, and pretty, too. The phone is fast. Its software is the latest and greatest from Google (and it should get fast updates in the future). We like the increased Google Now integration, easily mobile payments, and the much-improved dialer. The camera is capable of some terrific shots (still and video), and for an unlocked phone, the price is very, very right.

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No Like

There's really only one thing about the Nexus 5 that we absolutely hate: the speaker. From the image above you'd think it's stereo, but nope, the grill on the left is the speaker and the grill on the right is the mic. While the clarity isn't awful, the speaker is way, way too quiet. I missed several calls and texts when the phone was within a few feet or in my pocket. Its location also makes it all but impossible to muffle it completely when you're playing a game (like Dead Trigger 2). Same goes for watching a video in landscape. And when you muffle it, you muffle it completely.

Other than it's just a series of smaller gripes, most of which have more to do with KitKat than the phone itself. Google Voice integration with Hangouts is a must and feel very late at this point. Why is there a Gallery app and a Photos app? Who knows. Why does Google Now try to send me somewhere far away instead of down the street? Again, who knows.

As for the hardware, it's a bummer Verizon customers can't get it. We would have liked to see a bigger battery to help fill out that hollow back.