Broken Nexus 5 Doesn't Help with My Watch Dilemma

Wow, it's been over a month since my last update. I have to pick up the pace again. What comes to the previous one, I'm happy to report that my LG G Watch is still alive but not that happy to report it's getting more and more picky about actually charging when it's placed on the charging cradle, so I'm not completely sure for how long it's still going to serve me.

But now to the actual topic of this post, my Nexus 5. Last week it unfortunately fell display-first on a tile floor from not that high, and now the display is partially shattered. Fortunately the breakage isn't something that downright prevents using the phone, but one approximately 2 cm long crack is rather annoying as it's clearly visible also when the display is active. The longer cracks can be seen when the display is off or when trying to view an active display from an angle.

I'm not sure if the cracks are visible in the picture above, but maybe zooming in helps.

So while the phone can still be used, the cracks are something that I more or less can't tolerate for long on a phone I'm going to use actively, so something needs to be done sooner or later.

Repair prices around here seem to start from 150 € which in itself is quite OK, but when considering that the Nexus 5 itself cost me just 400 €, I'm a little bit reluctant to spend that money on repairing old tech that's still good enough e.g. for testing purposes and has a couple of issues (mediocre camera & lousy battery) affecting the actual use of the phone.

This is where the watch dilemma kicks in. As mentioned earlier, I'm not quite confident about my LG G Watch's longevity and I've been wanting a better smart watch for a while now. However, fancier Android Wears are around 270 € - 350 € depending on the model and now that the rumored iOS support wasn't revealed in I/O, getting a better Android Wear device would mean fixing or upgrading my Android phone as well. Fixing would be cheaper, but when considering how much worse the camera on my Nexus 5 is compared to my iPhone 6, I'm not quite confident I would be happy with the Nexus 5 as my daily driver. However, if the rumored 2015 refresh turns out to be true, then things might naturally change.

But currently it's starting to look like the Apple Watch would actually be the cheapest option in my very specific case (yes, I'm perfectly aware how marginal a scenario this is) to get a good phone + good watch combo up and running as I already have a fully functional iPhone 6 that doesn't have any pending repairs. While there's nothing certain expect for "2015" as the Finnish release date, the Apple Store app was recently introduced also in Finland, so that could be one sign about the Apple Watch release not being too far away. Interesting times.