[Nexus 5X General] arnold.nyhm:
My preliminary opinion to the LG/Google Nexus 4

Hi mobile geeks & nerds,

first, yes i do understand this probably is a leak of a prototype (LG-E960, Android name "Mako") and there will be most likely changes and bugfixes made for a possible final release in 29th of October. But I couldnt resist to already express my opinion about some estimates below:

Design: looks very solid (drop test resistant?), elegant, valuable (gorilla front/back?) and eye pleasing. Hopefully that much glass will be not too fragile in most use cases and not attract too many fingerprints. But fortunately glass is mostly transparent to the used rf frequencies (opposed to conducting metal which would be shielding and reflecting).

Screen: 1280x768, 4.7" full stripe RGB LCD again, finally durable and energy efficient, no burnins of softbuttons and status bar anymore. Hopefully employs LGs recently introduced TrueHD IPS+ with "zero gap" in-cell G2-Touch-Hybrid technology to reduce reflections, increase brightness (hopefully 500-700 nits) and make touching the displayed image feeling more directly at the fingertips as well as reducing large viewing angle (color,brightness)-deteriorations.

CPU: Qualcomm S4 APQ8064 Krait Pro 1.5 GHz, seems pretty fast and power efficient, async smp / powergating per core, no integrated baseband.

GPU: Adreno 320 (Anagram of Radeon/Imageon) fast, innovative and futureproof (OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenCL 1.2, RenderScript, Direct3D 11 feature level 9_3). Amazing for games and HTML5 aswell as image/video postprocessing.

Memory: 2 GB of RAM will be awesome but hopefully not too power hungry. Internal soldered in eMMC memory in one block/partition essentially sharing restorable apps (via play store) and non-restorable precious personal data (messages, photos, videos, addresses, etc.) will trash the later with a possible brick of the device (as opposed to the possibility to be able to easily restore it from a removeable SD-Card). If employing SD-Cards is too power hungry why not disable/powergate them when not in use? If stealing data is too easy with SD-Cards why not encrypt them with a user supplied password (device independant of course)? Anyways 8 GB of eMMC will be too few by far and limit the possibilities of using the multimedia capabilities of this device seriously (no large games/profits from playstore, no large video-(captures), not many pictures, etc. pp.). Even 16 GB seems to limit most people (regarding to the feedback on the Galaxy Nexus), therefore I think 32 GB should be the absolute minimum without SD-Card. Maybe one of the few decisions the bitten fruit company made right is to let their customers decide how many memory they need by releasing different memory options from the beginning (like 32, 64 and 128 GB). And dont tell me they are saving money on prototype, this makes no sense at all.

Battery/Charging: LGChem's BL-T5 non-removable? Dealbreaker in durability, also makes people hate Google while having to wait for charge instead of just replacing with a full one. 1400 mAh will be too few on this platform (I bet this wouldnt last a average day of usage), hope at least the 2100 mAh one from Optimus G will be employed. Google's own Motorola brand did understood the needs of their customers and uses up to 3300 mAh which should be the new benchmark and leading example. Wireless charging (with LGs PSTA-D0WT/MCS-01WR/WCA-D01W ac adapter and WCP-700 inductive charger) will be a pretty nice gimmick (hopefully with the "Qi" wireless charging standard and not too much em-emissions into the device interior and the environment, maybe cutoff the juice when device is not present using NFC?), but charging via USB still will maximize chances of getting it recharged when not at home.

Audio: No info available, but im not such a fan of speakers in the back (like most androids have), why not move them to the top/bottom sides, users could hear stereo sound when holding device in landscape with both hands reflecting the sound to each ear. Anyways hopefully loud enough and better audio quality than Optimus 4X HD. Also support for USB audio DAC and ADC would be a pretty nice standard (full usb audio in the linux kernel/android apis). More than 44.1 kHz (say 96 kHz) and low latencies (together with project butter) would be appreciated by many hobby musicians and open an new branch of apps in playstore.

Connectivity: WLAN 802.11abgn 2.4/5.0 GHz; BT 4.0 LE; NFC: nice but standard nowerdays BUT TriBand (possibly PentaBand like Galaxy Nexus) GSM (GMSK

, GPRS, EGPRS) and WCDMA/UTMS (HSPA [HSDPA & HSUPA]) only: I am assuming the Qualcomm MDM9615A is employed since baseband version M9615A-CEFWMAZM-2.0.1700.07 can be read on some pictures, maybe someone could confirm?: Should be capable of LTE worldmode which is becoming the standard in mobile networks, so damn WHY NO LTE??? If the chipset is capable of handling the protocols in use all around the globe, why would Google not release models with localized frequency bands like Nexus 4 <TLD>? According to FCC it has folowing radio modes: GSM850: 824 - 849 MHz, GSM1900: 1850 - 1910 MHz, W-CDMA Band V: 824 - 849 MHz, W-CDMA Band IV: 1710 - 1755 MHz, W-CDMA Band II: 1850 - 1910 MHz, 802.11ab/g/n: 2412 - 2462 MHz, b / g / HT20, 5150 - 5250 MHz, a / HT20, 5250 - 5350 MHz, a / HT20, 5500 - 5700 MHz, a / HT20, 5725 - 5850 MHz, a / HT20, Bluetooth: 2402 - 2480 MHz (Ver. 4.0 LE).

Localisation: GPS/GLONASS: pretty nice but also standard today (since russia will not import without GLONASS). Make sure the system is really employing the GLONASS sats besides the GPS ones as well.

Camera: 8 MPix/1.3 MPix, great nobody needs more, but how about light sensitivity, noise and focus of the BSI CCD? Im not really impressed by the soapy pictures in sunlight, how about the (yet missing) but for many people valuable night live ones?

Notification LED: Very nicely placed in the center of the bottom bezel of the phone front, hopefully full RGB with transitions ;). Hope this will get the standard on other androids.

To whom it may concern and is responsible for that design:

You should rethink your design because what you are doing here is building a leading example for other android phone manufacturers (not only a dev phone), so effectively shaping the limits of the android ecosystem:

Do you really want your users to feel as locked in as those of the bitten fruit company?

Do you really want to limit your customers in using the playstore because they dont have enough memory?

Do you really want that people will curse you because their phone battery will die on them in the evening before they made that important call to their party people and have to go home for recharging their non-removable battery or use? Look at your own phone company, they already understood that battery life is essential and release devices with 3300 mAh, which should be the standard for android phones.

Please dont make the mistakes that LG already made in not unlocking the full potential of the employed hardware chips, make the baseband/modem support LTE and the position system use GLONASS as well. Also make sure the GPU's potential will be fully useable in games and browsers (HTML5 etc). Make sure the Krait CPU will use the full potential of power-saving features it incorporates.

Please make sure the community has the abilities to improve on possible bugs and missing features by releasing it with unlocked bootloader and drivers/apis necessary for custom rom development and you will get very valuable feedback and beta-testing (like on Galaxy Nexus) saving you money and raising sales because the geeks, nerds and freaks opinions matter to more customers than most people think they do.

Also if you are promoting the idea of software based buttons on the screen (at least on LCDs there isnt the problem with them burning in), why dont you make most use of the expensive front area and get rid of the function-free bezels on the top and bottom of your nexus devices? If not make them being touch sensitive to make an optional autohiding status-bar and soft-buttons bar at top and bottom reappear to maximize screen content? If you would not waste that space, your design approach would promote software buttons to third party manufacturers even more.

Keep in mind that the camera of your phone is the only one people most likely will employ to get hold of unplaned yet valuable moments in their lives (otherwise they would carry a DLSR-Cam with them), would you really want those valuable moments (not unlikely to happen in dark environments/evenings) to be captured with that much noise and digital soap effects that they look crappy and cheap because of your device being able to get marketed cost effective? Limit shrinking of the pixel size and light absorption of the employed camera to a reasonable level and think about focusing issues more than fancy funny faces effects. Then promote the achieved low light capabilities to enlighten those mega-pixel-dummies what really influences their picture quality.

Finally it would be very nice if more manufacturers understood that their customers will carry their phones with them all day with possible exposure to moisture (rain, puddle, beer, washbasins, even toilets, really!) and also accidental drops on hard stone floor, which should not ruin their devices (Sony and Samsung made some really nice waterproof designs, Motorola some pretty toughened ones), incorporate those great ideas in your nexus reference designs as well.

References (just replace "%2E" WITH "." ie sed sed ''s/%2E/\./g''):

Qualcomm APQ8064 and MDM9615A:

APQ8064 (Krait Snapdragon S4 Pro):

www%2Equalcomm%2Ecom/chipsets/snapdragon

www%2Equalcomm%2Ecom/sites/default/files/common/snapdragon-specs-06%2E07%2E12%2Epdf

MDM9615A (Gobi worldmode 4G)

www%2Equalcomm%2Ecom/chipsets/gobi

www%2Equalcomm%2Ecom/media/documents/gobi-product-specs

www%2Equalcomm%2Ecom/media/documents/files/gobi-product-specs%2Epdf

PCC ID: ZNF E960 (LG-E960, Android name "Mako")

transition%2Efcc%2Egov/oet/ea/fccid/

apps%2Efcc%2Egov/oetcf/eas/reports/ViewExhibitReport%2Ecfm?mode=Exhibits&RequestTim eout=500&calledFromFrame=N&application_id=278241&fcc_id='ZNFE960'

apps%2Efcc%2Egov/oetcf/eas/reports/ViewExhibitReport%2Ecfm?mode=Exhibits&RequestTim eout=500&calledFromFrame=N&application_id=876809&fcc_id='ZNFE960'

Just my 2 cents, really could not resist,

keep up the awesome evolvement of the android, cheers!