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Day 4 of living with the Nexus 4
A few days ago I became the proud (and lucky), owner of a Nexus 4. My order had luckily gone through and the phone arrived at my door last Friday.
Like with any new piece of technology I opened it immediately, bypassing all the included literature that was included.
Setup was quick and I immediately noticed the difference between the 4.7-inch IPS + display on the Nexus 4 and the 4.65-inch Super AMOLED display on my soon to be retired Galaxy Nexus. Clarity and colour reproduction was far better on the N4 than the Gnex.
After comparing both screens side by side I then paid attention to how the N4 felt in the hand. Straight away I could feel that this phone felt thicker than the Gnex but it didn’t feel uncomfortable to use. Like with most phones with this or similar display size, it can be a stretch to reach the top of the screen and requires you to adjust your grip slightly but it’s something you quickly get used to.
Data speeds have far exceeded what I was seeing on the Gnex. When using SpeedTest the highest download speed I achieved using Three UK network was 8Mbps, but using the same network on the N4 from the same locations I’ve already reached download speeds of 18Mbps.
Battery life, it hasn’t been great. I took the N4 off the charger fully charged at 7am and with a couple of phone calls, checking Twitter, messaging, listening to music and streaming High-Quality YouTube videos I managed to get to 6pm before my phone warned me that I was at 15 battery life. Don’t get me wrong, that’s pretty good, I’ve made it through the day but I feel like I’ve had to ration my usage just to avoid plugging it into a charger during the day and from what I’m seeing so far with the battery life it seems no better than my Gnex and that only had a 1850mAh battery, the N4 has a 2100mAh battery so I was expecting better.
I’ve made the move and brought a Galaxy Nexus
I’ve been using the Samsung Galaxy Note for most of the year and I’ve been happy to use it as my main device up until now.
When Google announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, I knew I had to have it. Using an Android phone that isn’t a Nexus, I knew I’d have to wait months to get the latest and greatest mobile OS from Google and the only way to get it instantly would be to buy a Nexus phone.
I’ve taken delivery of my Galaxy Nexus today and can’t wait to see the improvements that stock Jelly Bean holds compared to ICS with TouchWiz. Even more intriguing to me is how Google Now will integrate with my day to day life.
Over the coming days I’ll will be posting articles about what its like living with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean, stay tuned.
Taking advantage of my unlimited data plan
Last month I wanted to see how much data I could use on my phone and as you can see the number is pretty high, especially compared to having no data . I used nearly 30GB of data, granted that wasn’t an average month but a regularly month for me would exceed most people’s data caps that they have that usually range from 2-5GB.As you can see from the picture I managed to use 25GB mainly by streaming. I’d say at least three times a week I would stream live tv or a film through the Sky Go application on my Xbox 360. The rest of my data usage came from Google Music and just the normal use of apps such as Chrome and Twitter etc.
Cut off from the world
Today I set off on a journey to Birmingham with a phone without a data connection, well actually it was the sim card without data.
For reasons too long to explain I was using a T-Mobile sim without data, so I only had calls and text messages at my disposal.
iPhone vs Android vs Android
The Dilemma
As lover of mobile phones im constantly on the look out for the next best thing. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the newest phone on the market, i just have to like it. Every few months I get a craving to buy a new phone and at this moment the craving is becoming unbearable.
I’ve got three phones in mind.
Here are the contenders
I dont want Siri on my iPad 2, but Apple should still give me it
By now we’ve all heard of Siri. Its your personal assistant. It launched with the iPhone 4S with mixed reviews, some say they use it daily and see it as a welcome addition and others say its a bit of a gimmick, they used it for the first couple of days and haven’t used it since.
My BlackBerry story
Since 2009 I’ve been a BlackBerry user. I’ve owned other phones while using a BlackBerry but for some reason I’ve always stuck with RIM’s phones.
A lot of current iPhone users lost their patients with owning a BlackBerry and migrated, but I did it the other way round. I had an iPhone before I had a bb and decided to make the move for one reason and one reason only…….. The KEYBOARD!
Here’s how it began
My most recent app: Play Music
Being from the UK we usually get the short end of the straw and the latest example of this is Play Music from Google.
Not being on a Three All-you-can-eat data plan is a no brainer
This is a simple one to call. We all have smartphones, they keep us connected when we can’t be there in person, a multitude of apps keep us up to date with friends, family, work, news and everything inbetween.
We’ve all got enough to worry about without having to worry about how much data we’ve used and what its gonna cost us. All these apps that we use daily like Facebook, Twitter, news apps etc take our precious data. Typically data limits start from around 250Mb and go up to 2GB. For me and I suspect many other people even the 2GB package wouldn’t be enough, I tethered my phone to my iPad and streamed about 20-25 minutes of video and that used 249Mb of data. For most people that would of being their monthly allowance used in 20 minutes, but I wasn’t worried because I’m on one of Three’s All-you-can-eat data plans.
Three have a selection of data plans suitable for all budgets, so price is not an issue. As the name of the plans suggest, its all you can eat (all you can use) so you won’t have to worry about data limits because it is truly unlimited.
If your a heavy user of social websites or you spend your time watching YouTube videos then a All-you-can-eat data plan from is the way forward.
Why an iPad Mini makes perfect sense
As a consumer of mobile products we want the best performance from our devices matched with the most portability.
In the tablet market, the iPad as an overall experience can’t be beat. The hardware is top notch but probably more important is the software. Yes we would all like our processors to have multiple cores but an iOS product just doesn’t need that.
