Everyone remembers the Nexus 4 as the bargain flagship that blew up Android pricing. The contradiction is that it only gets there by making some pretty serious compromises.
Hardware and Design: Glass, Curves, and Practical Concerns
The Nexus 4 is built around LG’s Optimus G chassis, and the dimensions show it: 133.9 x 68.7 x 9.1 mm and 139 g, essentially matching both the Optimus G and the older Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The design is a crossover – Galaxy Nexus vibes up front, Optimus G styling on the back.
Both front and rear are covered in Gorilla Glass 2, with a curved front edge that makes edge-swipe gestures more comfortable. The back glass hides a polarized 3D-like pattern that shifts with light, similar to LG’s own flagship. It looks more premium than its $300 tag suggests, but the glass back also raises obvious durability questions if you drop it.
Around the sides there’s a plastic and metal double frame – the metal strip is visible even from the front and acts as one of the few visual accents. The phone is relatively narrow thanks to thin side bezels and a 15:9 panel, and it feels solid in hand, though the flat glass slabs and limited tapering don’t do much for ergonomics compared to some curved designs.
You get a standard layout: microSIM tray and volume rocker on the left, power key on the right, 3.5mm jack and secondary mic on top, and a SlimPort-capable microUSB and primary mic on the bottom (with two screws holding the back). The 8MP camera, LED flash, Nexus and LG logos, and loudspeaker sit on the back.
Under that non-removable rear glass is a 2100mAh Li‑Po battery rated for about 390 hours of 3G standby and 15 hours of 3G talk. It’s not designed to be user-replaceable, and there’s no microSD slot. Wireless charging is supported via the Qi standard, so any Qi pad (including Nokia’s Lumia chargers) should work.
Display: Bright IPS, Weak Outdoors
The Nexus 4 uses a 4.7″ True HD‑IPS+ LCD at 768 x 1280 (15:9), just under 320ppi. Compared to the Galaxy Nexus’ PenTile Super AMOLED, the Nexus 4’s RGB matrix gives crisper text and finer detail at similar density.
LG’s Zerogap Touch tech laminates the layers, eliminating the air gap and pairing it with in‑cell touch. Peak brightness hits 608 nits, which is higher than the Galaxy Nexus and even the Galaxy S III, though still shy of the HTC One X.
Black levels aren’t as deep as AMOLED and worsen at angles, and the panel is highly reflective. That combination leads to only mediocre sunlight legibility, slightly better than LG’s older Optimus 4X HD but not close to the best outdoor performers.
Viewing angles are generally good thanks to IPS+, with some contrast and color shift off-axis. Interestingly, compared to the Optimus G, images on the Nexus 4 look less saturated and less sharpened. The Optimus G’s software processing actually makes photos appear more detailed and better balanced in color, suggesting Nexus 4 calibration is more conservative and arguably less flattering.
Performance and Thermals: S4 Pro Power with Odd Benchmarks
Hardware is where the Nexus 4 looks like a classic flagship: Qualcomm’s quad‑core Snapdragon S4 Pro (APQ8064), four Krait cores at 1.5GHz, Adreno 320 GPU, and 2GB of RAM. On paper, in late-2012 Android terms, this is top-tier.
Benchmarks, though, are all over the place. In CPU tests like BenchmarkPi and Linpack, the Nexus 4 trails not just the Optimus G but also the Galaxy Note II, hinting at software discrepancies with Android 4.2 or benchmark incompatibilities. AnTuTu is the exception, where the Nexus 4 tops the charts – notably, it’s also the only one updated post‑4.2.
Quadrant scores are unexpectedly low at around 4,000 points. GPU-focused GLBenchmark Egypt off-screen tests are more in line with expectations: roughly 26fps from the Adreno 320, slightly ahead of Mali-equipped Galaxy S III and Note II, though still a notch under the Optimus G. Some of that gap is attributed to Android 4.2’s Project Butter workload being heavier than ICS.
Browser benchmarks (SunSpider, BrowserMark, Vellamo) again show the Nexus 4 lagging on paper behind the Optimus G, even landing last in some tests. In actual Chrome usage, however, the browser feels quick and not obviously slower than rivals, which strengthens the theory that benchmarking tools hadn’t caught up with 4.2.
Thermally, extended use can heat the device noticeably. There are widespread reports of thermal throttling when a certain temperature threshold is hit, cutting performance under sustained load. That’s not uncommon with dense quad‑core designs, but it undercuts the S4 Pro’s headline numbers.
In real-world navigation, animations, and multitasking, the phone feels “blazing fast” – no major UI stutters and no obvious slowdowns in daily use.
Android 4.2 Experience: Clean, Fast, but Missing Extras
As a Nexus, this phone launches with stock Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and sits first in line for future updates. This is a lean build with no heavy vendor skin, and Project Butter keeps the UI targeting 60fps with triple buffering across CPU, GPU and display.
The lockscreen gains widget support: full-screen tiles for Messages, Calendar, Gmail, Digital Clock, and a camera shortcut accessible by swiping. Widgets are resizable and reorderable, and you can discard them with a drag.
The homescreen sticks to the ICS layout: five fixed pages, on-screen navigation keys, and a dock with two customizable shortcuts flanking the app drawer. Widgets are resizable in all directions, folders are circular stacks, and the recent apps list is essentially unchanged aside from speed and animation polish.
Notifications get more capable: a two-finger swipe expands them, and a second shade exposes quick access tiles for brightness, Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, and battery. These are shortcuts to settings, not true toggles, with only brightness adjustable in-place. A two-finger pull-down opens quick settings immediately.
Daydream acts as a simple screensaver for when the device is docked or idle, showing photos or Google Currents content. It’s a minor touch, but it shows Google slowly filling gaps that skins like Sense or Nature UX have addressed for a while.
The flip side is that stock Android lacks many small conveniences OEM skins already offer: no smart dial in the phone app, no social network-level integration or motion gestures like Smart Stay or LG’s Wise Screen, and no USB OTG support at all (this time a hardware omission, not just software).
Google Now, Input, and Core Apps
Google Now, introduced in 4.1 and expanded in 4.2, remains one of the more ambitious features. It learns from search history and location to surface cards like traffic on your commute, sports scores for teams you follow, flight and delivery tracking from your email, reservations, birthdays, and even how far you’ve walked in a month. Much of this can be toggled off for privacy.
Voice Actions integrate tightly with Now, handling calls, messages, notes, navigation, app launches and nearby places. Voice typing can work fully offline as long as you pre-download a 20–25MB language pack, and the shift to offline processing doesn’t visibly compromise accuracy while making response times faster.
The stock keyboard benefits from the 4.7″ canvas and gains Gesture Typing, a Swype-like glide input system backed by Android’s prediction engine. There’s also offline voice typing and more intuitive text selection via draggable handles, plus inline spell check with suggestions.
Messaging is still threaded SMS/MMS with the option to mass-delete threads and basic search. The text input box only grows to three lines even on this large display, making long messages less comfortable. Gmail gains bottom-row shortcuts and swipe navigation between emails, while the generic email app brings a unified inbox and support for multiple POP/IMAP accounts.
The phonebook is largely unchanged from ICS: three tabs for Contacts, Groups, and Favorites; alphabet scrollbar; quick contacts popup; contact linking; and service/group filters. The dialer keeps the neon Holo theme but still lacks smart dialing and doesn’t allow deleting individual call log entries.
Audio output is technically clean with excellent lab-measured figures and average loudness via headphones, but the loudspeaker volume is only rated “Good,” so vibration alerts are advisable in noisy conditions.
Camera and Media: Features Rich, Quality Average
On paper, the 8MP rear camera (3264 x 2448) with LED flash sounds standard flagship. In practice, image quality is underwhelming. Stills are noisy, fine detail is lacking, and contrast can be inconsistent, though colors are generally accurate. Compared against Galaxy S III samples, the Nexus 4 falls behind.
The camera UI is heavily reworked. A long press anywhere on the viewfinder pops up a radial menu for controls like resolution, ISO, white balance, focus mode, and HDR. It’s efficient once you adapt, echoing the old Android browser’s quick-controls concept.
Android 4.2 debuts Photo Sphere, essentially panoramic capture in full 360 degrees. The interface walks you through a grid of dots in multiple directions (up, down, left, right), building a Street View-style spherical image saved as JPEG with embedded XML metadata. These can be browsed interactively on the device, shared on Google+, or contributed to Google Maps.
The filmstrip view replaces the old gallery shortcut inside the camera: swipe right to see recent shots and flick up or down to discard. It’s fast for triaging photos directly after capture.
Video recording tops out at 1080p, 30fps, 12Mbps bit rate with stereo audio at 48kHz. Frame rates are stable, but the low bitrate leads to compression artifacts and limited resolved detail, especially in textures like grass. Colors look a bit muted. In direct comparisons the Nexus 4 improves on the Galaxy Nexus but still trails the Galaxy S III.
On the media side, the Gallery app organizes content by Albums, Locations, Times, People and Tags, and supports Picasa sync with optional Wi‑Fi-only downloading and an easy “Make available offline” toggle for online albums. The built-in photo editor is fairly capable with light, color, effects and sharpening controls.
Movie Studio allows multi-clip timelines, trimming, titles, effects, transitions and configurable export resolution/quality. For many users it can replace basic desktop editing.
The default video player is barebones and only accessible through Gallery. There’s no dedicated app, no subtitle support, and no .MKV playback. DivX/Xvid support seen on the Galaxy Nexus is gone, though 720p and 1080p MP4 playback is flawless. Realistically, most users will grab a third-party player from Play Store.
The music app keeps the side-scrollable Recent, Artists, Albums, Songs, Playlists and Genres tabs. There’s a system equalizer with presets, a user curve, Bass Boost and 3D effect (with headphones). Playback controls show on the lockscreen with artwork and in an expandable notification.
Connectivity and the LTE Gap
Radio support covers quad-band GSM and penta-band 3G with HSPA at 42Mbps down and 5.76Mbps up. There’s no LTE at all. At launch time, that’s a glaring omission for US power users but arguably less critical in regions where LTE rollouts were still early.
Wi‑Fi a/b/g/n on 2.4GHz and 5GHz is present, along with Wi‑Fi Direct and DLNA. Miracast support allows wireless display mirroring to compatible TVs, while SlimPort over microUSB handles wired video output via an adapter (and is not compatible with existing MHL gear).
NFC with Android Beam enables quick sharing of contacts, URLs, notes, messages, events and more between NFC-enabled devices. Location is handled by A‑GPS with GLONASS, a digital compass and a barometer to speed up locks.
A major limitation is the absence of USB On‑The‑Go hardware support. No matter what you do in software, you can’t mount USB drives or plug in wired keyboards/mice. Bluetooth peripherals are your only option beyond the internal storage.
Chrome is the default browser instead of the old Android Browser. It brings tab sync, bookmark sync, omnibar, incognito tabs and granular content controls. The interface is minimal and tabs are managed with smooth card-like animations. The big downside: no Adobe Flash support at all, so Flash-heavy sites simply won’t work.
Storage, Price, and the Nexus Trade
The defining Nexus 4 story is its price. At $300/€300 for 8GB and $350/€350 for 16GB, SIM‑free, it undercuts typical flagships that cost more than that even on contract. You’re effectively paying Galaxy S II money for hardware that’s newer and faster than most of the 2012 Android field.
That pricing is only possible because Google is clearly sacrificing hardware margin and betting on ecosystem lock-in: Play Store sales of apps, music, movies, TV, books, magazines, cloud storage, and even Google Wallet usage. The device is a delivery mechanism for Google services first, a profit center second.
The catch is storage. With no microSD slot and only 8GB or 16GB internal, you are pushed toward cloud options like Google Music and Drive. For a lot of users 16GB is acceptable, but competitors at similar or slightly higher price points offer 32GB, 64GB, or microSD expansion that can quadruple local capacity.
This isn’t the only compromise. You also lose LTE, USB OTG, many OEM software niceties, and you get average camera and merely solid – not class-leading – display performance. On the other hand, you gain first-class update priority, clean Android, S4 Pro performance and Qi charging.
Compared to the Galaxy S III, you trade AMOLED’s deep blacks and software extras (Multi‑View, Direct Call, Smart Stay) and a better camera and battery life for a sharper RGB LCD, cleaner software, faster SoC, and much lower price. Against the Optimus G, you give up better-calibrated display and more storage for newer Android and lower cost. HTC’s One X and One X+ offer better screens and more internal storage but can’t match the Nexus 4’s price/performance mix.
The Nexus 4 ends up as a very calculated package: flagship silicon and acceptable compromises at a midrange price, tightly coupled to Google’s cloud vision.
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