Nexus 5 review

Update: We’re sad to report Google has withdrawn the Nexus 5 from sale in favour of the Nexus 6.

If the Nexus 4 was a breakthrough for Google’s smartphone brand, the Nexus 5 could well be the model that sees it stride ahead of the rest of the market. Why? Because it takes a successful formula and adds improvements all round, yet retains the big draw of the original – a very reasonable price. See also: the 15 best smartphones of 2014.

The 16GB version of the Nexus 5 costs only £299, undercutting the SIM-free price of all its near rivals – the Samsung Galaxy S4, the HTC One, the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c – even though some have been on the market for more than six months.

However, there’s nothing cut-price about the design or specifications. The Nexus 5 is not as glamorous as its predecessor, but it can certainly hold up its head. In fact, the design of the Nexus 5 is similar to the recent Nexus 7 tablet, with a matte-black, soft-touch plastic rear, the Nexus branding emblazoned in large letters and a camera lens housing that protrudes ever so slightly. Visit: the best Android phones of 2014 too.

It doesn’t have the premium feel of the HTC One or the iPhone 5s – and it isn’t the slimmest around, at 8.9mm – but there’s nothing cheap or nasty about this phone. There’s Gorilla Glass 3 protecting the LCD on the front, which means it should resist scratches and drops better than most, too.

Display

The Nexus 5 has a 4.95in IPS display with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 and a pixel density of 445ppi. Yet, despite the large screen, LG – the device’s manufacturer – has managed to limit the size of the phone to the extent that it doesn’t feel bulky in the hand at all.

In terms of quality, the screen is excellent. It isn’t as richly saturated as the AMOLED panel on the Galaxy S4, but its top brightness – 508cd/m[sup]2[/sup] – is far better, which leads to better readability in bright sunlight, and the contrast ratio of 888:1 ensures images, video content and graphics all look their best.

The HTC One has a higher maximum brightness and a slightly better pixel density, but to all intents and purposes, the phones are neck and neck.

Internals, performance and battery life

However, the Nexus 5 motors ahead of its two big rivals when it comes to hardware grunt. Inside the Nexus 5 is a quad-core, 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 CPU – the same processor found in the lightning-fast Samsung Galaxy Note 3 – and it’s coupled with an Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB of RAM. With the new Android KitKat OS on board, navigating the operating system and browsing the web feels super-slick.

It’s a combination that delivers superb performance in benchmark tests, too. You can see a quick comparison in the table below, but to summarise, it’s faster than both the Galaxy S4 and the HTC One in most areas, and it shines when tasked with demanding gaming titles such as Asphalt 8: Airborne.

Battery capacity isn’t as high as that of the Galaxy S4 – 2,300mAh compared to 2,600mAh – and it showed in our test. We carry out a series of typical smartphone tasks over 3G in one 24-hour period and note the capacity remaining at the end of that time, and the Nexus 5 lagged behind its rivals, with 50% remaining on the gauge compared with 60% for the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4.

That means, as with most modern smartphones, you’ll need to charge the Nexus 5 every day. However, you may need to plug it into the mains at the beginning of the evening; the Samsung and HTC might make it to bedtime.

Cameras

Oddly, the Nexus’ turn of speed doesn’t translate to the device’s 8-megapixel camera. It’s reasonably quick to fire up – and you can launch it from the lock screen with a quick left-swipe of the camera icon – but it can take up to three seconds from pressing the onscreen shutter button to image capture, which is a pain.

Image quality is so-so. We often found that it missed focus entirely, resulting in soft, blurry photos, even though it takes an age to lock-on. Metering is an issue as well: with areas of light and dark within a frame, such as a bright sky and a shadowy city street, the camera struggled to balance the two, either overexposing the former or underexposing the latter.

This is a shame, because the sensor and optical image stabilisation system are capable of producing detail-packed snaps. The camera is effective in low light, too, and can shoot steady, handheld video at 1080p. Also, if you switch on the new HDR+ feature, it largely sorts out the metering issues, lightening foreground areas and keeping bright skies in check. However, this slows shot-to-shot times further, and doesn’t work well with action photographs.

Software

One of the principal attractions of investing in any Nexus handset is the fact you always get the latest Android updates as and when they’re released; owners of HTC or Samsung handsets have to wait. The Nexus 5 is running Android KitKat, the successor to Jelly Bean.

KitKat isn’t a step-change for Android, but it brings with it a number of significant refinements and small new features. The first is a slightly cleaner, simpler design. What were clearly delineated bars at the top and bottom of the screen are now transparent, which makes the homescreen feel more spacious and less hemmed-in, and the Widgets tab on the app drawer has been done away with. (To add a widget in KitKat, you hold a finger on the homescreen background for a second or two.)

Google Now has been given more prominence, too, with a swipe from the left of the main homescreen – in addition to the familiar drag-up from the home button – now launching the search/personal assistant. The Nexus 5 comes with the Quickoffice office suite preinstalled, complete with word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software, integration with Google Drive and 25GB of Google Drive space.

Google’s new Caller ID service makes an appearance: this attempts to match business names with incoming numbers for callers not in your address book. You also get extended voice-control features, and, in a strangely counterintuitive move, Google Hangouts now handles text messages.

Connectivity and audio

Finally, as you’d expect from a top-end smartphone, the Nexus 5 leaves no stone unturned when it comes to connectivity: you get dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 4, GPS and 4G support. Audio quality is fine, too, both in-call and from the speaker at the bottom edge of the phone.

The one black mark against the Nexus 5 is the absence of a user-replaceable battery or a microSD slot. However, as reported on teardown site iFixit, the rear panel can be removed far more easily than most.

Verdict

The Nexus 5 is a superb smartphone: we like the design; it’s as powerful as they come; the screen is great; it runs the latest version of Android; and the camera – although a weak point – is capable of producing good snaps and video if you’re patient.

It’s the price, however, that really swings things in favour of this top-notch Android handset. At £299 for the 16GB version, and £339 for the 32GB one, it undercuts its rivals significantly. That, coupled with its all-round capabilities, pushes it to the top of the PC Pro A-List.

Details
Cheapest price on contract	Free
Contract monthly charge	£22.00
Contract period	24 months
Contract provider	mobilphonesdirect.co.uk
Battery Life
Talk time, quoted	17hrs
Standby, quoted	12 days 12hrs
Physical
Dimensions	69 x 8.9 x 138mm (WDH)
Weight	136g
Touchscreen	yes
Core Specifications
RAM capacity	2.00GB
Camera megapixel rating	8.0mp
Front-facing camera?	yes
Video capture?	yes
Display
Screen size	4.95in
Resolution	1080 x 1920
Landscape mode?	yes
Other wireless standards
Bluetooth support	yes
Integrated GPS	yes
Software
OS family	Android