I just submitted my pre-order for a Note 4. I loved the Note 2 (I love the size), but I really wanted a Sprint tri-band phone about a year ago, so I sold my Note 2 online and got the Nexus 5. Here is my post mortem after about a year of owning the Nexus 5.
What I really like about the Nexus 5:
• The phone is really zippy. With some of my other phones, I felt like after about 8 months the phone would start to get really laggy. Not the Nexus 5. To this day, it is really fast. Very smooth.
• I of course love the fast Android OS updates.
• I still think the phone has a great physical design. I love the very small bezels on the side of the screen.
• I love the multi-colored LED, when used with Light Flow. I haven’t read anything about the Note 4’s LEDs. I hope it has one. If it doesn't, that might be a dealbreaker. I use those LEDs to help me keep track at a glance of SMSs, work emails, home emails, calendar reminders, and missed phone calls.
• I love the HDR camera. I got some great shots, and got many compliments. I love that the HDR is subtle – the pictures do not look fake.
• I love that it is easy to root. I am never concerned about a locked bootloader or anything like that.
• I like the fast boot up time.
• I love the “OK Google” voice hotword on any screen. I use autovoice and have several custom commands. Can other phones do that? I hope so.
• The screen is awesome. I love the accurate colors. I’m not a fan of the saturated colors on the Samsung. The Note 4 seems to look better than prior Samsung OLED screens.
What I do not like about the Nexus 5:
• I can’t stand that the volume settings are buried in the settings menu. When I want to turn down the media volume BEFORE playing the media, I have to go into the deep volume settings to get to it. I like Samsung’s solution. When I use the volume rocker, I can press the settings button to the side of the volume meter and individually adjust the various volume settings, without having to dive deep into menus. There might be an app that fixes this. I didn't look very hard.
• I hate not having a physical home button. There have been many times when a full-screen app freezes, and I can’t access the home button for 10 seconds or so. Very annoying.
• The GPS is laggy. Sometimes when I launch Waze, it takes like 3 minutes to get a GPS lock. That seems to have gotten better after a recent update. However, I still have problems in Runkeeper. It sometimes takes about a minute to get a lock.
• The low light video recorder autofocus is terrible. This might be the most annoying problem. Most of my recordings are of my kids at home, indoors. The Nexus 5 video recorder autofocus cannot keep up. It got better after an update a few months ago, especially because now I can focus on the subject by tapping the screen before I hit record, but it is still bad. I have so many blurry recordings. I’m really hoping the Note 4 is better. I didn’t seem to notice this problem on my Note 2.
• I am not impressed with battery life. When I am not at my desk at work, and I’m at home or out, my phone goes to about 20% after only 5 or 6 hours of medium to heavy use. I bought an external battery charger and I carry that around in my laptop bag now. Obviously, my Note 4 will be much better with the much bigger battery.
• I hate not having an SD card. I record a lot of video, and like to load a lot of music on my phone. I have to be careful about what I load, and I have to regularly offload my videos to free up space. I don’t understand why Google does not want us to have an SD card.
• I miss a removable battery. With the Note 2, I had one battery always charged at home, and another always charged at the office.
• The HDR photos look great, but require the subject to be still, because it takes so long to get a shot.
• I wish the headphone volume was a little louder. When I am listening while mowing the lawn, I often cannot hear my audio books and podcasts.
Volume Settings
sparhawk6 said:
What I do not like about the Nexus 5:
• I can’t stand that the volume settings are buried in the settings menu. When I want to turn down the media volume BEFORE playing the media, I have to go into the deep volume settings to get to it. I like Samsung’s solution. When I use the volume rocker, I can press the settings button to the side of the volume meter and individually adjust the various volume settings, without having to dive deep into menus. There might be an app that fixes this. I didn't look very hard.
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There's an app that is really good for that: Noyze https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.barrasso.android.volume
Its free, but it also had IAP withe more themes, but I like it as it is. It's also very frequently updated.
Related
For those who doesn't know "My Tracks" allows you to create tracks with the GPS, showing various info - average speed, average moving speed, height differences, etc.
In the last several weeks I found it useful to track my snowboarding sessions - where I am riding, how fast, etc. The problem is that there is some really strange problem - in 8 out of 10 cases after I start recording a new track it turns out I have a top speed of 460km/h. I ride really fast, yeah, but that fast?
I was wondering what could be the case? For obvious reasons I can't observe the program while riding - one fall and the phone is gone
When I am on the lift I can observe it and everything is normal. I had the suspicion that falls could cause this, but today I had several quiet bad falls, during one recording and yet i t was accurate.
Has anyone observed such behavior?
Try CardioTrainer, I like it better then MyTracks
Can anyone help with this. I thought I was doing something wrong but have now tried everything I can and still I am getting poor pictures from the camera. I have all settings set to highest quality and anti-shake on (have also tried it off). Press hold shutter, hear beep and release. The results are always what I would call poor. See the picture below. On these settings I would think I could read the titles of the books on the shelves but even the books themselves look grainy.
Is there a fix for this?
http://www.landrover6pot.org/tmp/shelf.jpg
I usually tap the screen on the area I want in focus and when it turns green tap the shutter key. I tend not to use the anti-shake. Maybe check to make sure your lens is clean?
Here is a picture I took with the camera
Perhaps I am just expecting too much of a 5mp cam.
I think the Nexus 4 is an awesome device, but I have a few issues with it that I haven't seen mentioned.
Screen artefacts: On a grey background if I turn the brightness up to maximum I have two strips running vertically down the screen. They are barely visible unless at full brightness, even then you can hardly see them. The best place to see them is in the notification area, I can see them best in a dark room.
Audio (this one is by far the most annoying): If I plug in head phones and listen to music there is a very slight hiss sound, when the music is quiet or at a silent interval. What's strange is if I pause the music the hiss sound is there for like 5 seconds then disappears. It happens with every track, including YouTube and it happens on different pairs of headphones. The hiss sound only appears if I play music, and as I said it's still there when I stop the track for a few seconds.
Image retention: If I'm on Chrome browsing the web, after about 5 minutes, if I swipe the tab away revealing the grey page with the Chrome logo, and then turn the brightness up fully the URL bar and the URL itself are often visible and even readable. It goes away after like 2 minutes but I'm worried it will eventually remain.
Could anyone try out those steps and see if they also have any similar issues? I don't think I would mind if everyone else had them, but I would be disappointed if mine was a lemon.
Thanks for the help!
EDIT: Sorry I should have made the poll multiple choice lol, I voted for the headphone hiss since it was the most annoying.
Concerning "screen artefacts": I got these, but I'm afraid they're worse, because I can barely see them at the minimum brightness when in a dark room (my thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2052338).
Audio: don't worry about that because I've heard that on many devices (like mp3's or my previous LG Swift); the hiss just stops after few seconds from stopping playback. Maybe it's worse than I imagine that...
To respond to the Chrome issue (ghosting): I haven't seen anything like this so far... maybe my eyes are just not as sensitive as yours
rabbit140 said:
Concerning "screen artefacts": I got these, but I'm afraid they're worse, because I can barely see them at the minimum brightness when in a dark room (my thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2052338).
Audio: don't worry about that because I've heard that on many devices (like mp3's or my previous LG Swift); the hiss just stops after few seconds form stopping playback. Maybe it's worse than I imagine that...
To respond to the Chrome issue (ghosting): I haven't seen anything like this so far... maybe my eyes are just not as sensitive as yours
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Thanks very much for your reply!
I looked at the picture you posted, and yeah that's exactly like mine I double checked and if I look really carefully I actually can see them at minima brightness, though it's definitely more visible at higher brightness.
Do you have the hiss on your device?
Have the lines, so faint I couldn't careless about them. No hiss or ghosting on mine. I think this is a case of if you want a problem with the device you will find one. Everyone has such high standards lol.
lordblah said:
Have the lines, so faint I couldn't careless about them. No hiss or ghosting on mine. I think this is a case of if you want a problem with the device you will find one. Everyone has such high standards lol.
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I know, I don't really mind about the lines that much (it's not that bad compared to the artefacts on an AMOLED), the image retention is a little worrying though, but the headphone hiss is just plain annoying.
I see a few people have the hiss, how bad is it? Did your other devices have it?
I have the hiss and lines.
NICEGYPT said:
I have the hiss and lines.
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Are you going to RMA it? Or does it not bother you that much? This is the first device I've owned that has the hiss. The sound quality is better than my S2, but that fuzzy hiss sound is annoying.
Well I have been playing around with a TON of apps on the watch over the last few days and have stumbled across what looks like a security feature when trying to shoot video, look below:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lr31l5gyod7r05p/VID_20131019_192758_237[1].mp4
Something else strange is that with every app the camera makes the same shutter sound, even with the sound mode off on the app.
I know there is a way now to turn the shutter sound completely off, I just found it very odd that the sound would continue to play even in 3rd party apps with the noise turned off.
Anyone find a good camera to use with the watch that will get around the 15sec file limit? Not looking to max the memory out with a single recording, but something in the 20-30sec range would be nice.
Haven't bought a Phillips hue yet, but planning on changing my whole lighting system with Phillips hue. Now I own a Google Home mini, and a Lenovo Smart Display with Google Assistant. Both are connected, but will I be able to turn on the lights with both assistant? I use the Lenovo Smart Display as like a main console in my living room, because the screen just gives so much more features than the home I have. The camera shutter feature is also life-changing. Makes me feel more safe and less paranoid lol. Both are connected, I was wondering if it can connect with both assistant? Has anyone tried?
both are using google assistant which is mainly web based so both should work with your hue lights once they have been paired i have hue with my google home mini and they work like a charm
I'd actually recommend against doing whole house with Hue bulbs. I have them, and after doing a whole house conversion I think that getting smart switches is a much better way to go.
edembowski said:
I'd actually recommend against doing whole house with Hue bulbs. I have them, and after doing a whole house conversion I think that getting smart switches is a much better way to go.
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I see applications for both and I do have both. I splurged on a Leviton Z-wave dimmer switch for a couple of lights cause the Hue bulb price for that type of light was a little too rich for my blood. However, the individual bulbs do give me more granular control. For instance, I got a Hue motion sensor and hooked it up to two different lights in two different rooms so they act as night lights. There are uses for both, think it just depends on what you want and where the lights are imo.