Hello everyone. OK so it's been one month
really since the Nexus 5 was first released.
I did my initial review, did a follow up and now
people have asked me, well, how am I getting on after a month and
to a certain extent it's a slightly mixed bag. Whilst I absolutely
love the Nexus 5 hardware, I mean the whole package is just fantastic for
the price, there are some rough edges
and they seem to really be laid at Google's door as far as
software is concerned which is not something we're particularly used to
having to say about Google. So one of the things that
has most disappointed me really is the camera and it's not the actual camera itself
it's not the physical camera hardware
but the really lackluster software that Google provided with their
camera app, and there's also the issue that so far at least
the third-party camera app developers just really haven't got the Nexus 5 working
well.
So the camera, generally speaking, is a bit of a let down
but only because of software. And we're kind of a month in now
and personally I would have expected Google to have, you know, released a few updates for this.
It's a bit of a shame. And then there's the whole battery life issue.
For my mind the battery life is not actually that bad
when you don't have a background app
chewing up all of your resources. And again,
this problem, as it were, can be laid at Google's door.
Pretty much every single day I wake up in the morning and my battery's dead.
The device has run completely down and time and time again
I'm finding it's Google+ that's doing it. There you go look,
CPU total 2hrs 46min keep awake, 4hrs 45min.
I only used the app yesterday for all of maybe
two or three minutes and this is what I'm finding time and time again
that Google+ just sits there in the background chewing resources for
no particular reason and obviously this is a Google related problem.
This isn't a unique problem to the Nexus 5, we keep seeing it happening time
and time again on lots of
different devices. Google kind of need to get themselves in line here and
fix this kind of problem. If you actually force stop the app
every time you use Google Plus then this problem goes away
and it doesn't seem to affect your background updates particularly so it
becomes even more bizarre
that, you know, background updates continue to work, you still get your
notifications.
Why can't Google do that force stop the app after I don't know,
maybe 30 seconds or so, or you know,
2-3 minutes after the app has been closed down. As it stands at the moment
all it is doing is making the Nexus 5 look like a massive battery hog.
It''s a real pity. Everything else with the device I'm finding fantastic, you know. I
love
the size of the screen, I love the colour reproduction, watching YouTube and
listening to music is great.
Playing games fantastic.It's everything I could be hoping for from a device
but there does seem to be too many little software glitches
going on which are marring an otherwise fantastic experience here.
There's nothing like having great hardware let down by just a
bit of bad programming. It is a real pity and I really hope Google do
hurry up and get some updates out the door for the Nexus 5
Kit Kat Android 4.4 rom because
as it stands at the moment it's not a very good Christmas present to give somebody.
Here, have a great piece of hardware with bought software, doesn't give a great impression.
That said, nothing that's here is a
deal breaker on its own. It just depends whether you're
the kind of person who gets a bit frustrated after a while. Like I say,
the camera as it stands today still not good enough. One month in
we still do not have any reasonable fixes from Google directly
that don't require us having to root and patch the system
using third-party developed work fixes and work arounds.
It's really unacceptable. You know, if you were buying this on the strength of this
camera, bearing in mind Google is out there running adverts saying
how brilliant the camera is, actually you'd probably be in a
trading standards situation because what Google is saying their camera is capable of
frankly it falls way short and it's all down to software, it's not
hardware that's causing this, it's software
and it's just a real pity really because, you know, an otherwise fantastic device has just
been let down by
one extra bit of programming. If you're buying one of these devices, if you already
have one,
then that's cool. You know, Google will get these things sorted out
eventually I'm absolutely sure. But just bear in mind if you're buying this as a gift for
somebody else that maybe you want to either warn them in advance about these issues
or maybe you want to skip on to another device. It may not be the perfect gift to
give Granny for Christmas.