Why I'll probably never buy a Nexus phone ever again

Reason: Because I'm fairly sure Google will never ever *ever* put the home button back now that they've put soft home button into the OS core. The ergonomics of this is related to the position of the front facing camera and thus, super dumb IMHO.

Photo by AnandTech

The Good Bits

Apart from the software and lack of home button this phone was one of the best phones I've ever owned in terms of hardware: beautiful camera and 3D image stitching software, the way it felt in your hand (except lack of home button), stunning cameras with bright LEDs, glorious screen, 768p videos (checkout The Triptonites preview of our first single not all shot on this, some was iPod Touch 4G and/or S3 Mini I forget), 2 GB RAM and of course the main thing I was after - the Quad-core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU!!

The Fucked If I Know How I Feel About It Bits

It had the smoothest surface not just of any phone ever but of anything I've ever touched ever!! It was totally amazing! Everyone who ever held it was struck by this especially once I started demonstrating it. Like I could put it on my leather couch with a rounded top in such a way - slightly off a perfect flat balance - that I knew it would fall off from sliding due to gravity about 2 minutes later. I should have made a video before it got all smashed up to prove this. In fact I notice this guy already has made a video.

Sounds like I can root the phone blind (with no screen - its cracked): http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1r2zha/how_i_managed_to_use_my_android_device_with_a

Shout outs to my mate at Google for scoring me a Cardboard - thanks Matt!

Google Cardboard

I say I don't know how I feel because I accidentally smashed the entire screen one morning on my concrete floor. Hmmmmm.....

The Bad Bits

• No Home Button
  • Essential for ergonomics
  • Helps to orient the phone/tablet without vision using tactile feedback
  • Would have been nice especially since once my volume buttons stopped working I could not answer the phone, nor get to home screen during calls
  • Can't wake on flat surface if you only have one finger unlike device with home button
    • Ok So I'm not mono-fingered but you get the idea!
• No "Restart" in power menu like S3 Mini
  • Needs it the amount of times I rebooted!!
  • Yes I've since rooted the phone you get the idea
  • I recently learnt I can reboot without root using adb - cool would have been nice to know 3 months ago!
• Volume Up/Downs stopped working one day after a software upgrade
  • I thought this was due to me smashing the phone around
  • Until I saw these 2,660 pages with the make/model and bug in title of page!
  • That's totally un-acceptable due to the next points:
• Unable to disable speakerphone during call due to "Power button ends call" setting + no volume butts working anymore + screen locks
  • Only option is to hang up or muffle the call under a pillow (Seriously!? Fuck you telephone! This was the 2nd worst thing!)
• Often unable to answer call due to phantom touch screen blindness
  • Usually the phantom isn't an issue - just use power on/off
  • Can't do that when its ringing tho can you?
  • This is seriously the worst thing about the phone
  • If you can call it that anymore
  • Skype would probably be more reliable for answering due to this
• Finally I smashed the screen making the touchscreen part not work anymore
  • That's when I wrote this post since I doubt I'll be using it again 🙂
• Some other small points:
  • I found Snapchat was able to reboot the phone - handy!!! Just start snapchat when I need to reboot good feature!! 🙂
  • Shit mic sound for high dB SPL gigs as always (Apple and Sony have best phone mics)

Nexus 4 Sliding Off A Completely Flat Surface

Youtube Video