My month with Android and Nexus 4

[DeadpoolJunior]

What Apple does is focus on the pure, out of the box experience for users. The phone you get is what you get. Therefore, everything in the stock OS is meticulously crafted because that out of the box experience, the current OS its running, the look of the stock apps, the smoothness, all of that stuff is what users will judge and remember the phone by. Apple doesn't half ass some aspects of the stock OS with the mindset that users will be able to seek out and replace the app. This is what Android has been doing up until Android 4.0. Gingerbread was rock solid, but ugly as hell. All the stock apps sucked. Barebones. Thats why I always used the Galaxy phones which put more effort into their stock Touchwiz than Stock Android at that point. But now, thankfully, Google seems to care about the out of box experience. The avg user cares about what their phone does NOW, not what it can do in the future. Samsung realized this and polished the crap out of Touchwiz and added a ton of features baked in to the OS, instead of expecting users to seek out the apps themselves. Google is still growing in this area. The stock apps now are MILES ahead of what they were back in the day, both in looks and functionality. I haven't replaced any of the stock apps myself, they all work fine now. Back in the day I would've installed Handscent, Go Dialer, Launcer, Opera, etc etc. I haven't even rooted my N4 because i'm satisfied with it out of the box. Couldn't say that a couple years ago.

 

[m3lover1]

This is the beauty of android. No two phones are alike with the vast amount of options and customizations.

 

[Citizen Coyote]

The camera is disappointing and I am not sure how to resolve this. The wife and I went on a vacation to Italy in September I took at least 500 photos with my iPhone and for the most part they look great. All photos on the N4 are washed out and grainy. I know that with software this can be helped but I do not have the desire to fiddle with each photo after taking it or batch editing a slew of photos after the fact.

Check out Camera Zoom FX on the Play Store as a camera replacement. Some people like it better than the stock camera app on the Nexus 4. I've used it before on other phones and it is generally an improvement over stock apps.

 

[minnemike]

Also it is tied to your Google+ Account, which you should sign up for because it links a bunch of Google functionality together...as a social network it is a wasteland IMO.

As google describes it... do not try to compare it to facebook.... think of it as a simple enhancement of the google world in general. I've dilly dallied with it a little and like it for what it is. I don't have many friends on there at all compared to FB, but what is in fact cool is getting into a circle and sharing things with random people from around the world that might share my same interests within a specific topic/area. Sure, it's less social... but it is infinitely more cerebral and progressive for your own state of being - haha - can't really describe it any other way.

 

[Chingyul]

Just use your Google Drive or get a Dropbox account and set it to sync your photos via wifi. Super handy. You can just drag them over from your Dropbox folder to your computer when you need to.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

Is there an automated way to sync with Google drive?
I don't want to use Dropbox as it sync's with my computer as well (plus I have more space on Google drive).

 

[minnemike]

Is there an automated way to sync with Google drive?
I don't want to use Dropbox as it sync's with my computer as well (plus I have more space on Google drive).

Yes, with google+.

Edit: whoops - I guess auto-uploaded google+ photos are independent of your google drive folder. But they share the same 5GB space according to some rules. Photos under a certain size are unlimited!

Unlimited photo and video uploads
As a Google+ user, you get the following:

Unlimited photo uploads. Photos larger than 2,048 by 2,048 pixels will automatically be resized when uploading in Google+.
Unlimited video uploads (up to 15 minutes per video, up to 1080p)

 

[6tr6tr]

Check out Camera Zoom FX on the Play Store as a camera replacement. Some people like it better than the stock camera app on the Nexus 4. I've used it before on other phones and it is generally an improvement over stock apps.

It helps a little but whatever software is controlling the autofocus (this is proprietary, undocumented google code) is not very good. And all camera apps are dependent on it.

 

[Chingyul]

Thanks.
Tried it out and looks like it syncs all photos including some app ones (ie: Zooper).
Found an app called FolderSync that does what I want. Point it towards the DCIM folder and one for Instagram and sync with Box/GDrive.

 

[geeber98]

What Apple does is focus on the pure, out of the box experience for users. The phone you get is what you get. Therefore, everything in the stock OS is meticulously crafted because that out of the box experience, the current OS its running, the look of the stock apps, the smoothness, all of that stuff is what users will judge and remember the phone by. Apple doesn't half ass some aspects of the stock OS with the mindset that users will be able to seek out and replace the app. This is what Android has been doing up until Android 4.0. Gingerbread was rock solid, but ugly as hell. All the stock apps sucked. Barebones. Thats why I always used the Galaxy phones which put more effort into their stock Touchwiz than Stock Android at that point. But now, thankfully, Google seems to care about the out of box experience. The avg user cares about what their phone does NOW, not what it can do in the future. Samsung realized this and polished the crap out of Touchwiz and added a ton of features baked in to the OS, instead of expecting users to seek out the apps themselves. Google is still growing in this area. .

Appreciate both you and Mike B's post. I was a happy iPhone user who went to the SG3 to evaluate, primarily for the development potential for an app we are designing for multiple platforms. While I liked the flexibility and do see potential, I have decided to return to the iPhone 4S for personal use, because many of the out of the box functionality issues Mike alluded. plus some of the more publicized problems - battery life, crashes, etc.Plus I the the screen size - don't need it and I keep losing it because it doesn't fit well in my pocket! Also can't text pics from the phone. BUT having said that, if you want a device you can use for developing proprietary productivity tools, this has real possibilities and I am glad to hear what DP Junior says Google is doing. So I will keep the phone on standby and see what happens in the near future. Just hope they don't go the road of apple on app development.

 

[DeadpoolJunior]

Plus I the the screen size - don't need it and I keep losing it because it doesn't fit well in my pocket!

You're more than welcome. I love the screen size for this phone and hope it doesn't get any bigger than this. I have huge hands but don't want the phablet to become the norm moving forward. Fits perfect in my pockets as well. This is probably the only thing that would keep me from moving back to iOS. Having held my friends 4S and 5, its just waaaay too small. Too hard to text and read anything. Thats just my opinion.

Also can't text pics from the phone

Care to elaborate on this? You can't send MMS messages or what?

 

[badbrad17]

Appreciate both you and Mike B's post. I was a happy iPhone user who went to the SG3 to evaluate, primarily for the development potential for an app we are designing for multiple platforms. While I liked the flexibility and do see potential, I have decided to return to the iPhone 4S for personal use, because many of the out of the box functionality issues Mike alluded. plus some of the more publicized problems - battery life, crashes, etc.Plus I the the screen size - don't need it and I keep losing it because it doesn't fit well in my pocket! Also can't text pics from the phone. BUT having said that, if you want a device you can use for developing proprietary productivity tools, this has real possibilities and I am glad to hear what DP Junior says Google is doing. So I will keep the phone on standby and see what happens in the near future. Just hope they don't go the road of apple on app development.

Why couldn't you text photos from the phone? I do it all the time to BlackBerry and iPhones.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums