Re: Mine has just been delivered
OK, after a couple of days use I may as well chip in with my initial thoughts, so here goes (grab a coffee).
1) Packaging: Not a big deal for everyone but I thought it was nicely done. I especially liked the protective sleeve it comes in. Yeah I know that's my OCD kicking in but I thought it was cool compared to the usual protective sleeves that usually adorn phones.
2) Charger: It's still a mystery to me (and others) why the charger plug and lead are in white even though the device colour is carbon. Cost I'm sure but it just seems a little off to me (nit picking). Oh and the lead is
SHORT (1M in length). I purchased the following to remedy my problem:
USB 3.1 Type C to USB 3.1 Type C Cable by MediaDevil: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics and
Cable Matters® USB 2.0 Type C (USB-C) to Type A (USB-A) Cable in Black 2m: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics
3) Look and feel: If you owned an OG Nexus 5 then you most likely won't be disappointed with the 5X. It certainly has retained that overall look, and mostly feel, of the original. That said if you are expecting the
SAME soft feel touch to the rear of the phone then you might be disappointed. It's not as rubbery but it's definitely not cheap, hard plastic like on the Galaxy S3 and some phones of that era. Having said all that it is almost impossible to lay down a fingerprint mark on this thing. Whether it's the material it's made from or the oleophobioc coating I don't know but it just works. For some the feel of the phone may just be a little too slippery but HTC M7/8/9 slippery it is not. I'm staying naked (on the phone, trust me I'm wearing trousers writing this !). Build quality is good in my view. No creaks on the back that I've noticed and the buttons feel a little softer on pressing them (the action not the buttons themselves). Overall size is just under 1/2 an inch taller than the OG Nexus (you get used to it, or at least I have). I had a Nexus 6 and I just couldn't live with that thing hence why I went for the 5X and not the 6P.
4) Screen: Hey, it's fine. I turned off adaptive brightness as I've never found it worked well for me. I've got this thing turned down to almost nothing and it's more than usable. Full brightness is, well
BRIGHT. Colours are clean and bright, good black reproduction, white's could be a little brighter but that's going to be a user defined thing. It's fine for me but if you're expecting the whites to come out like your Sunday laundry then no.
5) Responsiveness: It flies, don't worry. I'm using Nova Launcher prime and everything works just great. Scroll speeds are fluid and fast and apps respond quickly to touch input.
6) Button placement: Meh, it could have been better but it all depends where you usually hold your phone. For some, I'm sure they will say it's just fine. For me, they could have just been a little higher up on the side and I find myself having to slide my hand down to adjust the volume rocker. Not a big deal and I'm sure I'll get used to it, I'm just putting it out there.
7) Fingerprint scanner: It's fast ! No I mean it's fast ! Only the very odd false register which was down to my finger placement rather than the scanner itself. Screen on from lock screen using it is...................... you guessed it, fast. While there is no touch to pay available in the UK just yet (C'mon Google !) there is something very cool about being able to pay for Play Store purchases just by touching your finger to the back of the phone, I just love that !
8) Speaker: It has one. Yeah just one and it's at the bottom. This thing ain't gonna win any awards on sound. I had an HTC M7 and after Boom Sound nothing compares (excuse the Sinead O'Connor reference). It's tinny on music reproduction and you can barely warm that up with the equalizer settings in Google Play music. Volume is also quite low below 75%. Once you get above that the volume is just fine. It's not a sudden change or anything like that it's just relatively low below that level.
9) Notifications: On screen notifications when the screen is locked and you pick it up. I forget the correct terminology but basically what the Motorola devices do, yeah that. LED RGB notifications sit down in the bottom speaker. The type and arrangement are different from the OG Nexus which had a single, round and muted brightness to it. This thing has a 9 mini LED arrangement which should not be viewed without wearing Raybans ! Seriously it's bright. So much so that I have to turn the phone face down in a darkened bedroom, just bear that in mind. As I said in another post somewhere on here I was using LED Blinker Pro on the OG Nexus without issue. On the 5X I found that it would not trigger all notifications for me. I tried to fix it but couldn't but it may work for you. I switched to LED Flow and have had no issues since. Your mileage may vary. Here's a quick and dirty short video of the LED on the 5X,
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=TUFidzM4WHFHbGI3bFl0UktqdlhzWERWV245MF9n It does not do the brightness justice !
10) Camera: Honestly I'm hardly going to bother too much here. There are so many reference points out there for you to check out how this thing performs you are better served there. It seems just fine to me in the limited testing I've done. It's a phone guys not a DSLR. If you want to take photo's you can enlarge to the size of a house then this (or pretty much any other phone aren't going to suit your needs). No seriously come on, most people use phone photos for social media these days and pretty much any phone is going to do a good enough job for that. If you are one of these people that makes comments like, "oooh the colour / color (our USA friends) depth is lacking" or similar then I give up. The spec's of this phone have been out in the wild a little while now so you know what you are getting in terms of features etc. If the lack of OIS is an issue for you then best you move on and buy something else right now. For those of us that just want to take a quick snap of us with our friends on a drunken night out to show what idiots we can make of ourselves on Facebook then this is going to get the job done. The
ONE thing I was disappointed in with the new camera app refresh is the loss (has anyone found different?) of manual camera settings. I've tried 3rd party camera apps but it seems, from my experience (and from other posts I've read) that the camera UI of those apps appears upside down? Perhaps it is something to do with the developers API not being updated for 6.0 (how should I know, I'm not a developer). If you have found manual settings in the stock camera on the 5X then
PLEASE let me know where and how to enable it. Slow motion video does slow motion video, the end.
11) Overall: I'm liking this phone. I appreciate the extra screen real estate compared to the Nexus 5 without it being a behemoth like the Nexus 6. It's well built and feels good in the hand (you may feel differently). I appreciate there will be some people out there that will say, "Yeah but for pretty much the same money I can get phone X (no pun intended) and it does this which the Nexus doesn't", etc etc and that is always going to happen. We are individuals with differing needs / wants and that's just fine. There is no phone available today (someone will tell me I'm wrong) that has every feature you want and does all the things you want it to do and the price point you want to pay <waits for deluge of comments to the contrary>. It's all good, the Nexus 5X may not be for you but for those who want one I don't think you'll be majorly disappointed. One last thing for those of you in the UK. Carphone warehouse are selling the 32Gb version for £10 more than the Google store wants for the 16Gb version, it's a no brainer! I cancelled my order through Google and got refunded and CPW delivered a day early than the promised 19th of this month *Yayyyyyyy embargo busters*. While this post will not answer every question / query you might have about the 5X I just wanted to give you my overall impressions so far.
Enjoy.
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