We're not sure if this handset is called the Google Nexus 4 because it's the fourth Nexus-branded smartphone, or because it has a 4.7in display, as opposed to the 7in and 10in displays of the Google Nexus 7 and Google Nexus 10 tablets, either way it fits.
It's certainly a match technically for its bigger siblings, with a high-resolution display, quad-core chipset and a brand-spanking new version of Android, version 4.2 (still called Jellybean).
Before getting into the meat of this Nexus 4 review, it's worth pointing out that the Nexus 4 has proved to be very popular. Google and LG have struggled to keep up with demand, with the handset being out of stock almost constantly since its launch - that is buying it direct from Google.
LG and Google have reportedly blamed each other for the poor stock levels, with LG saying that Google under-estimated demand, and Google saying that LG's supply chain is to blame. Whatever the reason, the handset is finally back in stock, although it's impossible to say for sure how long this will last. Traditionally Google introduces a new Nexus every 12 months, so the Nexus 4 should have another 10 months to run before being replaced
The latest Nexus smartphone is actually made by LG
Previous Nexus smartphones were manufactured by HTC and Samsung (twice), but Google likes to share things around and so this handset is made by LG. Now LG's handsets haven't wowed us to the extent of those two brands of late, although the LG Optimus 4X HD provided plenty of bang for the buck.
BUILD AND LOOKS
The Nexus 4 is a pretty bland handset at first glance, with none of the opinion-splitting design cues from the LG's Prada range, which have since spread to some other models. The front is practically featureless, thanks to the use of software buttons on the display itself. The screen has nicely curved edges too, so it fits almost seamlessly into the rest of the body.
Turn it sideways and it's slender, but not stick-thin, at 9.1mm. That said it's very comfortable to hold thanks to its sloped-off edges (they're too curved to be called bevelled), the power button is easy to find with either hand.
It's slender, but far from a record beater
The showpiece is on the rear of the handset, where the backplate is formed of hundreds of little glittery pixels beneath the surface, and beneath the Nexus and LG logos. They catch the light and the pattern changes as you twist the phone. It's a nice effect but can't make up for the fact that this phone is made up from a number of plastic elements rather than having a sleek polycarbonate or metal unibody.
We really liked the glittering tiled effect on the rear
The handset is a single sealed unit, which makes it feel more sturdy than the Samsung Galaxy S3 with its removable backplate. There's no access to the battery and no memory card slot provided. The latter may be an issue for a minority of media hoarders, as only 8GB and 16GB storage options are available.
The multi-purpose USB port didn't impress us
The micro USB port also doubles up as a display output, though surprisingly it doesn't use the MHL standard that we've seen on numerous recent devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy S3. Instead it supports the new SlimPort standard, which is based upon DisplayPort.
AS with MHL, you can use an adaptor to connect the port to a DVI or VGA display. In practice we couldn't find any such adaptors for sale yet in the UK, and the only adaptors in the US are HDMI ones, which cost a whopping $29 (around £18). Like MHL, SlimPort will also charge your phone (depending on the adaptor used). Frankly we can't really see the benefit to consumers of another standard, given that MHL-to-HDMI is fine for the vast majority of people's needs and cables are widely available from around £6.
UNWIRED
Speaking of accessories that aren't yet available to buy, the Wireless Charging Orb looks to be an essential bit of kit for Nexus 4 owners. Built-in magnets hold the handset and orb together, with the soft-touch plastic surface of the orb providing a scratch-free base.
It's gone on sale in the US for $60, but it's not available in the UK. Visiting the official Nexus 4 Wireless Charger page currently displays a message that the "Nexus 4 Wireless Charger is not available in your country".
Given that this accessory was already very delayed in the US and that the phone has suffered from stock shortages, it's looking less and less as though it will make it to these shores. It's a shame, as the convenience of being able to plonk your phone on a charger and leave it on your desk should be underestimated
The wireless charging dock isn't available in the UK, but it is available in the US
Inside the Nexus 4 is a 2,100mAh battery, the same size as that in the Samsung Galaxy S3. This managed a very respectable eight and-a-half hours in our continuous video playback test. It's a better score than most smartphones we've seen, but almost an hour and-a-half short of the Samsung Galaxy S3 - probably due to that handset's power efficient AMOLED display.
The Nexus 4 also supports NFC for easy wireless data transfer. At present that's limited to Android Beam, allowing you to share pictures, apps and contact details by simply tapping two such handsets together. It's the sort of hassle-free technology that will be great once everyone has it in their phones, but it's currently a bit of a gimmick. With NFC comes support for tap-and-pay services, such as Google Wallet, although it's not yet available in the UK.
DISPLAY
With its resolution of 1,280x768 the Google Nexus 4 has a detailed display, with almost a million pixels. When we originally reviewed the phone, there was only one other handset that could match it - the Nokia Lumia 920. The 4.7in display gives a PPI figure of 320, just shy of the 326PPI on the iPhone 5 and its 'Retina Display', although that smaller display has 'only' 727,040 pixels.
Pixels aren't everything and the iPhone 5 isn't the Nexus 4's most obvious competitor. Comparing it to the current reigning Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S3, we found that the Nexus 4's screen was sharper when it came to text and fine detail, but the Samsung's AMOLED panel was far more vibrant and had better contrast, though whites always looks a little off-colour with a slight yellow-grey colour cast. This is pretty typical of IPS vs AMOLED comparisons, but even when compared to the likes of the HTC One X, also an IPS smartphone, the Nexus 4's display still looked a touch drab.
Opinion here is still divided over whether onscreen buttons are a good thing
Since the phone was launched, the next generation of Android phones have been released or announced, all with Full HD 1,920x1,080 resolutions, giving them much sharper displays and higher pixel densities. These include the Samsung Galaxy S4, the HTC One and the Sony Xperia Z. That said, there's nothing wrong with Nexus 4's display and there's still plenty of resolution for web browsing.
Although the 4.7in display only sounds marginally smaller than the S3's 4.8in display, the Nexus 4 has the three usual Android buttons positioned onscreen, rather than below it. Google seems to prefer such virtual buttons, with all its own-brand devices using them. It's nice to have buttons that switch into landscape when desired, but they do take up part of the screen when browsing the net.
On the plus side the Nexus 4 is slightly shorter and thinner than the S3, as it doesn't have to accommodate any buttons below the screen after all. However, it's fractionally thicker at 9.1mm to 8.6mm. None of these differences make much odds in the hand or the pocket, and every button and port on the edges of the phones is positioned practically identically.
PERFORMANCE
In day-to-day use the Google Nexus 4 is screamingly fast. Apps snap open and shut, the home screen and Google Maps glide along under your finger like they've been Teflon-coated. The only minor complaint is that pinching-to-zoom on the browser seems to have small delay before the phone starts to respond. Now, some of this is due to Android 4.2 (more on that below) but having seen that OS running on the Nexus 7 as well, a lot of the credit has to be laid at the feet of the Nexus 4 itself.
Inside is a Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon chipset, with 2GB of RAM and four Krait cores running at 1.5GHz. These cores are similar in design to ARM's A15 core, and more advanced in a number of ways than say the A9 cores used in Tegra 3 or in the Samsung Galaxy S3's Exynos chipset.
Even Qualcomm's own benchmark rates the Nexus 4 below the S3 in HTML5
Given our user experience, and the hardware specifications, we were surprised to find that many of the popular benchmarks didn't back up our own impressions. A SunSpider Javascript score of 1,878ms in the provided Chrome browser, is surprisingly slow considering the modern chipset in use; while a Qudrant score of 4,815 is respectable, it's not an S3 beater. It was only in graphics department it really shone, powering through the GLBench Egypt HD benchmark with 39fps.
All of this really goes to show that benchmarks can't always be trusted. The browsing experience isn't the fastest we've seen admittedly, but for the vast majority of tasks, and for switching between tasks, the Nexus 4 flies.
CAMERA
The camera on the Google Nexus 4 takes eight-megapixel images, like most top-end smartphones. We compared its image quality against the S3, and found both took similar-looking pictures when resized to a large PC monitor. Zooming into the finer detail, we preferred the Nexus over the S3, things are just a little crisper.
Here's a picture from the Nexus 4 - click to enlarge
And here's a comparative one from the S3 - click to enlarge
Image quality is important but we were put off the Nexus 4 somewhat by the camera's controls. These strive to be ultra-minimal, but we'd rather just have more obvious menus, and some more options. Burst mode is conspicuous by its absence, you can take photos pretty quick by tapping the screen repeatedly, but there's nothing to match the hold and fire 3.3fps mode of the S3.
We weren't overly keen on the minimal interface and controls
One new trick here is the Photo Sphere mode, which lets you stitch numerous photos together into panoramas or even full 360 degree views. It uses the handset's gyroscope and onscreen prompts to help you line up all the photos correctly, and it works pretty well as long as your subject is at a distance and doesn't contain numerous strong vertical and horizontal lines. It's great fun and the first time we've seen something like this on an Android phone, being very similar to Microsoft's Photosynth for Windows Phone and iOS.
It's easy to create panoramic pictures with the new Photo Sphere mode
And here's the finished result
Whether you're taking quick snapshots or stitching complex panoramas, the Nexus 4 will upload your pictures to Google+ via the app's Instant Upload feature. All your photos are stored there, and also accessible via Picasa Web Albums. There's no storage limit for this service, however photos are resized to 2,048 pixels along their longest edge (down from 3,264 pixels on the Nexus 4).
It's not new, but Google+ Instant Upload is the only free photo syncing and backup service here
This service is available on practically any Android smartphone, but we mention it here to contrast it with competing offerings. The Samsung Galaxy S3 and HTC One offer 50GB and 25GB of free Dropbox storage respectively. Using this you can sync pics at the full resolution, and anything else you want from other devices. This offer only lasts for two years, then you'll have to start paying to continue using the service or buy another device with a similar offer.
ANDROID
One of the big draws of the Google Nexus 4 is that it comes with Android 4.2 (technically it comes with 4.1 but it updates immediately out of the box). There's a lot of stuff to cover in the update, so it's best to head over to our full Android 4.2 review for the all the details.
In short, though, there are some highlights including a new notification bar. This is still accessed by swiping down from the top of the screen, only now notifications also have buttons, so you can take direct actions. For example, a missed call notification now lets you call the person back directly.
A new settings screen is accessible by swiping down from the top-left of the screen. It lets you access common settings, such as the Wi-Fi network you're connected to and screen brightness, as well as to toggle Bluetooth, and Aeroplane mode.
Lock screen widgets are another useful addition, as you can add useful widgets to your phone's screen, so you don't have to unlock your phone to get snippets of information. Both the calendar and mail apps have lockscreen widgets. For security, tapping an item in a widget requires you to unlock the phone.
The one feature that phones don't get is multiple users. On a tablet it lets you create different user accounts, so that you can share one device with your entire family and let each member have their own settings and apps. We can understand why this isn't available here, as a smartphone is intrinsically a personal device used by a single person.
We like being able to respond directly to notifications in Android 4.2
PRICING AND CONCLUSION
O2 is the only network officially selling the Google Nexus 4 on contract (though you can get it on other networks through third-party providers). You get a 16GB handset for free, with a £36 per month contract over two years, which provides unlimited minutes, texts and 1GB of data. It's not a bad deal but the Galaxy S3 has benefitted from intense competition between vendors, which has pushed prices lower and so similar deals cost around £30 per month.
For those happy to stump up the cash, the handset is (currently) available in both 8GB and 16GB flavours directly from Google for £239 and £279 respectively. Given what you get, it's quite a bargain at this price compared to the usual sky-high fees that flagship smartphones command SIM-free. It's worth noting though that it's not 4G-ready and so won't work on EE's network or any of the competitors expected next year.
There's little wrong with LG's take on the Nexus brand, in fact it's a great smartphone and one we'd be happy to own. Android 4.2 is a big plus point, there are some neat new features, and you don't have to fight with a manufacturer's take on Android. Despite this we still narrowly prefer the Samsung Galaxy S3 for its more-vibrant screen and longer battery life. If you want a newer phone, the HTC One is currently our pick of the bunch, although that may change once we've reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S4. Still, if you're looking to stand out from the crowd, or can't stand Samsung's take on Android, then the Nexus 4 is a great choice.
Details |
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|---|---|
| Part Code | E960 |
| Review Date | 4 Apr 2013 |
| Price | £0 |
| Rating |
|
| Award | N/A |
Hardware |
|
|---|---|
| Main display size | 4.7in |
| Native resolution | 768x1,280 |
| CCD effective megapixels | 8-megapixel |
| GPS | 
|
| Internal memory | 8096MB |
| Memory card support | none |
| Memory card included | N/A |
| Operating frequencies | GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G 850/900/1700/1900/2100 |
| Wireless data | GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA |
| Size | 134x69x9.1mm |
| Weight | 139g |
Features |
|
|---|---|
| Operating system | Android 4.2 |
| Microsoft Office compatibility | N/A |
| FM Radio |
|
| Accessories | USB Charger, headphones |
| Talk time | 15 hours |
| Standby time | 16 days |
Buying Information |
|
|---|---|
| SIM-free price | £239 |
| Price on contract | £36 per month, 24-month contract |
| Prepay price | £299 |
| SIM-free supplier | www.google.com/nexus |
| Contract/prepay supplier | www.o2.co.uk |
| Details | www.google.co.uk |
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