The Googlephone

It's hard to remember when my old
phone looked this new.

Thanks to our old cell phone carrier leaving the greater St. Louis area. My wife and I were soon going to be without working cell phones. We finally selected a carrier and were all set to go and get Galaxy S-3's to be our next phones, because our S-1's* that we had had for a year and a half, had been pretty reliable and good for a first smartphone.

We never got the S-3's. Why? Because of the Nexus 4.

One of our up coming posters, said I should do a review about my new phone now, and then follow up in a few months when the shininess has worn off. So here are my (mostly) positives and (some) negatives about the Nexus 4.

The Galaxy S-3 the phone I
thought I wanted.

The Good:
- Amazing screen and resolution
- Bigger screen, yet still fits in my pants pocket comfortably.
- Cheaper then the Samsung Galaxy S-3.
- Supposedly will get update to Android as they come out.
- Super fast
- Almost no bloatware.
- Amazing 8MP camera (with built in panoramic mode).

The Bad:
- No slot for micro SD card.
- Battery is built in. (This has always been a sticking point with me and the iPhones)
- Vibrate function is weak (as in I don't always feel it buzz).
- Word online is that this phone maybe fragile, even for a smartphone.

A new challenger has appeared!

The Ugly The Weird:
- Seems to be no option to turn up Vibration strength.
- Seems to be more finicky about transferring files via USB (I transferred over my photos from my old phone,    and they aren't showing up in my gallery.)
- Had to download some apps just to get the option of opening files that my old phone had no problem with.
- I seriously doubt it has an 18 hour battery life (that the salesmen promised) just based on my first week of usage.
- Almost everything that comes pre-loaded is a Google app. If your not a Google fan this is not the phone for you.

All in all though, this is how I feel about it.

Now I would suggest you take this review with a grain (...or more) of salt. Statements like super fast should be tempered with the fact that I was using a hobbled phone for the last 3-6 months while I waited to replace my old one.

Also comments on screen resolution and amazing camera, keep in mind my previous phone came out in October of 2010. So I have a feeling anything we would have bought would have been breathtaking.

Not to mention how many of The Weird section will disappear if I suddenly find the way to fix these problems.

All in all I feel like I got a good phone for a great price, but isn't every piece of tech new and exciting for the first couple of months? Or will I still be happy after the honeymoon? Keep your eyes peeled for part 2 of the Nexus review.

*The S-1 came out in Oct 2010. So you can tell how cutting edge we are, we bought phones which were around 2 years old.