But what I am going to tell you in this piece is that the Nexus 5 running Android Lollipop is the best smartphone you can buy in the market right now. It is better than any other Android phone. And when you take into account its price, it is a better buy then even the iPhone 6.
Yes, it is a surprising statement to make nearly a year after the Nexus 5 was launched. But I have my reasons. Most of these reasons have to do with the fact that people buy phones to use them and not to admire their hardware or stare at their design.
The Nexus 5 was always a good phone. It has solid fundamentals. This means you get a 5-inch fullHD (1080P) screen that shows accurate colours. This screen has great viewing angles, is sharp enough and is bright enough to make the phone usable outdoors. The phone has a fairly fast Snapdragon 800 processor and 2GB RAM. It has a decent camera and all the bells and whistles you expect in a high-end phone, packed into a plastic body that is durable, smart-looking and compact enough to fit well in hands.
But that is not special. There are many other Android phones that boast of the same hardware and physical characteristics.
The secret sauce in the Nexus 5 is the software inside it and how well that complements the hardware. Theoretically, in benchmarks, there are phones faster than the Nexus 5. But no other Android phone feels as fast as the Nexus 5 in day-to-day use. It is because the phone runs the 'pure' Android, which is well optimised by Google for the Nexus hardware. Irrespective of what you are doing it is rare to see even little bit of lag on the Nexus 5. It is fast, fast, fast. It feels fast on the day you buy it and it remains fast a year after you have used it.
We can't say the same for any other Android phone, not even for flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One M8.
The interesting bit is that a year after Nexus 5 was launched, it has become better because now it runs Android Lollipop. If you are following technology news you must be aware that Android Lollipop is a big change from the earlier versions of Android. Every aspect of the OS has been given a fresh lick of paint and internally there are changes that are supposed to make the Nexus 5 more efficient and faster.
Android Lollipop is a thing of beauty. You may have seen the screenshots but they don't do justice to it. Earlier people would call iOS beautiful. Or they would call Windows Phone beautiful. But Android, even at its best, was barely passable. With the Lollipop update, the stock aka pure version of Android looks as good as iOS, if not better.
When used on the Nexus 5, the Lollipop turns the phone into a different kind of Android device -- one which is not only multi-functional but also runs slick and modern looking software. With its unique, smooth and subtle animations, the Lollipop is a joy to use. On the Nexus 5, it also flies. It is very fast. Combined with Android's inherent open nature -- by open I don't mean open source but the way things are done in the OS -- it turns the Nexus 5 into a phone that you can use in a way you can't use iPhone or any other phone. You can copy stuff between your phone and computer by drag-and-drop method, something you cannot do on iPhone. Apps can talk to each other, just like the way they do in any other Android phone. You can set default apps. You can access file system and do things in a way that is more comfortable.
Yes, you can do many of these things on any other Android phone. But the Nexus 5 running the Lollipop looks better while doing these.
The another appealing bit about the Nexus 5 is software updates. Whenever there are Android updates the Nexus 5 is among the first to get them.
The core functionality offered by the Nexus 5 is as good as you get in any other phone. The voice quality during calls is excellent, games run smoothly and without unnecessarily heating up the device and the audio quality when a headphone is plugged into it is very good. Camera (supposedly), battery life and speaker are not as good as what you get in some other phones but they are definitely not shabby when you use them.
For example, on paper the 8MP camera may not look all that good. It has also been given a bad reputation, unfairly if you ask me. But actually the Nexus 5 packs in a very capable camera. For example, take a look at the first shot above. It was clicked when the sun was setting, and hence in somewhat low light. Yet, it is a sharp and detailed photo that captures accurate colours. The other photo was clicked in very low light in a lawn party. In fact it was virtually dark, with some light coming on the flowers from a florescent bulb around 10 meters away. Yet, it is a photo that is usable and better than what 95 per cent other Android phones can manage.
The battery life is the only major downer. The Nexus 5 lasts around 9 to 10 hours of heavy use with Android Lollipop. Just to give you the context in the PC Mark battery test (see screenshot below), the Galaxy Note 6 offers 50 per cent more battery life! The Nexus 5 battery life is definitely below average but considering how fast the phone feels and how much extra it offers over other Android phones in terms of overall user experience, we can forgive it for the poor battery life.
The best bit about the Nexus 5 is that it costs around Rs.28,000. This is almost half of what Apple charges for the iPhone 6. In fact, you can buy the Nexus 5 32GB for around Rs.32,000 and can have a solid and remarkably good Android phone experience. It may lack some of the fancy features or a metal body but then it doesn't have to rely on them. Instead, its combination of hardware and clean usable software is so good, especially after the Lollipop update, that it can sell itself without any gimmicks.
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