[Nexus 5 General] alan-31:
I just got the phone today. Its my 3rd Android phone and my previous one was a budget phone, Pantech burst. From that obviously its a big improvement.

Still checking it out, Its nice but I'm not too sure about it. I might tolerate some of these problems because of the nice price point, screen, CPU and the fact its a Google phone.

Button rattling

is a minor problem for me. Not really important for me. When is the button going to rattle during normal use? Maybe once and you wont hear it unless you're on the quietest place on Earth. But yes, we like a button to feel solid as well. Annoying to have that loose button but its ok. I can live with it. Seeing the volume rocker is fine, they definitely messed up in the design of the power button. But that mostly makes me wonder what else they messed up on or didnt care about.

This is mostly about the

speaker:

I was expecting more. I think the speaker sucks. First of all they're being deceptive. People see the pictures and think there are two speakers but when you get it, you discover the other identical grille is actually a microphone. I googled the problem and found the hardware diagram linked on a Support thread. Why is it like this? This is equivalent to lying. I didnt expect this from LG.

So there's only one speaker. The speaker is easy to cover and the sound goes down completely if you cover that by mistake which is easy to do specially if you're holding it portrait.

All these problems are there because everyone wants a "thin" phone. The manufacturers comply and compromise on more important things like battery life, an extra speaker and so on.

Please, take two more millimeters (it wont kill me) and do it right. And they dont care about what people would really think of their products. They just want to do good enough to make some decent sales, thats all.

So I feel the speaker has low volume, there's only one of it and its easy to cover it and drown the sound completely. Maybe the case will fix the drowning problem, not sure. It might.

Other than that, the CPU looks fine. That has to be a really good CPU (quad core, 2.3ghz) and 2GB ram. I was using a 4" pantech burst which had an Antutu score of 8500 and this one has 26000. So for me its a big improvement. Reddit app works so fast. Images download right away. I never had that with the pantech burst and I thought it was a Wifi problem.

I may have been mistaken in my good expectations of LG. I'm tentatively thinking of returning it but I might wait to see how it works with a case. So I'm keeping it at home for now and not taking it outside.

How about an HTC One? Is that a better phone? I like the front facing speakers in the pictures. I wonder if they sound really good. Its a 4.7 inch screen though as compared to 5 for this one. I see they're about 350-400 used on Swappa.

I agree the

button edges

are too sharp. They didn't need to do that. That is lazy design. I cant believe they dont give test phones to people and think about things like this enough, knowing that millions of them will be sold. But ok. Thats also not that very serious. I will get a case of course so if a case fixes that thats good.

Yes

vibration

is not too strong, maybe thats fine. I like that to be a little muffled anyway. I hate it if its too strong/jarring. This does mean if you really need the vibration (on the highway, noisy environment), you may not notice it as much. They dont have ways to change that but they should (vary the motor RPM, I dont know).

Antutu 4 scores:

Benchmark (custom test): 26682. Its slightly below Samsung GS4 but I've heard how Samsung fools benchmarks so the speed is really fine.

The Graphics test was good, around 40 FPS during the 3d test.

Stability test ran for 5-15 minutes. The top green Stability line started at around 105 and then went down to around 80 with some dips here and there to around 60 but came back up to around 80 most of the time. The bottom Yellow/temperature line was stable at around 38. I dont know what this test means. I guess its fine if the total scores were good for the standard test.

Autobrightness:

I also saw that it did not return to minimum for me. I tested the Lux numbers and they seemed ok (went up and down) so a new rom or update may fix it. I did think that the Lux should not vary that much with angle of the light source so it should have a wider view.

This is my first phone with a light meter though (3rd android phone). I like fixed levels that I set using apps. But the Screen Filter app isnt working as well. I need a brightness app that works with the hardware levels instead of putting a software screen filter on it. When the filter is active, the screen then becomes grey and not black as I would like.

One thing I've noticed is that the CPU is near the top. So if you've been using the phone for CPU stuff and then use it to talk, you'll feel it a little warm on your ears. Or it may not be a problem because I was using the CPU intensive Antutu right before checking this. Its not a big problem but again if they had made the CPU in the center or at the bottom, this would be ok. Case might improve that by providing some insulation.

I used

Dead pixel test

apps, saw no problems.

If I keep it, I will use Cygenmod. A good phone for $430? I mean, what other choices do we have? I dont like Samsung and I dont want to spend $650-700.

And I know I can sell it back for about the same price or not too much loss at any time, now or even after a year becuase its a value phone to start with.

So I think the real quality of this phone is "eh" but we were expecting it to be premium quality. I guess that cant be if the price is 400 instead of 650.

I'll keep checking.

So once again, I think for me the biggest disappointment was the speaker and for me a speaker is important (its not like the button issue). I have heard the iPhone speaker and I was really impressed. Those people really made sure it was something impressive. Here its "Eh, just put a speaker in it."

But again the price is low too.

I think Apple has an advantage in some things because they have one phone or two models and they really work hard to examine and adjust the design and small aspects of it. For most Android phones, they're not shooting for 30% market share for one model and they cant. So they dont care about a specific phone model as much. Even then right now we like our bigger screens and of course I'm a fan of Android, always have been from the start. I never had an iPhone and I've installed Cygenmod on the 4 devices I have owned and this will be my 5th if I keep it. Maybe I should have been patient a bit and waited for people's comments and to research it more before buying it.

But really, I'm sad about there not being two speakers and the 2nd grille being a microphone, and it being easy to cover if I'm holding it upright/portrait. But maybe I could work with it and tolerate it and get used to it. Again no other choices at this price point right? The screen is great.

Some have said the Camera isnt that good, but I almost never use the camera. Preview looks fine to me. I've heard the iPhone has a nice camera.

What else... anyone have any thoughts to share specifically about - is there a better phone that this, for the same price range or maybe even a little higher? I could buy used, its not a problem.

But quad core 2.3 Ghz with a 5 inch screen, I think that might be hard to find. No doubt HTC and others will match this in their next iterations. The other advantage was having KitKat directly from Google.

Any reports on

Battery life?

I wonder how it does for video.

Power connector seems upside down as compared to other devices I have but that's not a problem. I can get used to it. I would also have liked it to be on the right side of the phone as I'm used to that and cables are almost never coming from the bottom but the top, left or right.

So I think bottomline I think,

nothing as good at this price point, or is there?

Looking around. Battery is just 2300, I think thats unacceptable for a phone like this. It should have been 3000. Tentatively thinking of returning and getting a used LG G2 later on or something like that.