Nexus 5 - Getting Better and Better

The Nexus 5 is seriously growing on me all the time.  In the last post I complained about the Bluetooth issue being the most annoying,  and while I cannot say for sure yet,  it looks like I've found a solution which has improved the reliability quite a lot. Or then I've just been extra lucky throughout the day.

What I did was to disable phone audio from my Bluetooth receiver and left only media audio selected there. Losing the phone audio is not a big deal as the device is positioned so that it doesn't pick up my speech that well,  and I bought it for media use anyway.

So now this 5" beast is not only incredible value for money but my daily driver as well! The next big test is the autumn when iPhone 6 is released,  but if I've really got the Bluetooth audio issue solved,  the iPhone 6 really needs to deliver for me to spend the money on it.

Oh,  I also wrote this post completely on the Nexus. SwiftKey makes it a breeze with swype.

Nexus 5 - One Month In

I've had my Nexus 5 for about a month now and this looks like a good time for a quick recap.

At first I was naturally excited. For after all, I got new hardware and kind of new OS (I had a Nexus 7 a while back, but I sold it before KitKat was released) and the phone was pleasant and fast to use. In general I was pretty satisfied. However, then the "ooh shiny!" effect wore out maybe surprisingly quickly and I felt even somewhat disappointed.

However, within the last week I've found myself constantly picking up my Nexus 5 even for tasks where I usually pick up my T100 or sit in front of my Mac mini (IRC, answering e-mails etc). With some customization/configuration I've made the Nexus a nice IRC machine as well as a nice all-around pocket computer. I've also switched my podcast listening back to the Nexus 5 and the old iPhone 4 I got from my wife when I gave her my iPhone 5. I use that old iPhone because that's the device where Bluetooth audio works like it should. When I get into my car and switch on my Avantree Cara, the iPhone starts playing my podcasts wherever I left off previously as soon as I press the multifunction button on my Cara, but the Nexus 5 fails to react all too often (sometimes it does, though). I can usually get my Nexus back in shape by toggling Bluetooth on and off (an NFC tag helps quite a bit here), but I shouldn't have to jump through those hurdles. If this issue didn't exist, I'd be singing the praises of Android, but currently the iPhone is so far ahead in the Bluetooth reliability that getting an iPhone 6 is rather likely when it's released. However, as my current iPhone is the iPhone 4, it's really too slow for anything else than listening to podcasts, so it's just riding along in my laptop bag for scenarios where I want the Bluetooth to Just. Work. Typically I'm using my Nexus and resolving the Bluetooth issues with a quick Bluetooth on/off cycle helped by an NFC tag I've placed in my car. For the actual podcast listening I'm currently using Pocket Casts which is available for both iOS and Android and does cross-platform sync, so bouncing between the devices is not that much of a problem.

Well how about Windows Phone then? Yes, I still carry also the Lumia 925 with me, but it's been relegated to a secondary device. It's still running my financial apps, but out of convenience I might switch them to my Nexus at some point. I must admit it's more often than not when I'm concerned about Google's lack of respect for my privacy and whether I should migrate away from Android just because of that, but despite its downsides Android seems to cover my use cases better than Windows Phone with its current offering. Of course both platforms are developing constantly and Windows Phone might get there some day, but it's still not daily driver grade for me despite having some advantages over Android.

So it looks like the Nexus 5 will be my go-to device at least until the iPhone 6 is released. iOS 8 looks promising, but as the iPhone 6 hardware specs and pricing is not yet available, I can't say for sure whether I'm getting one even though currently the odds are pretty much in favor of me making a purchase. But the iPhone 6 is still at least a couple of months away, so the Nexus 5 now has its chance of making a permanent impression. We'll see how it turns out. But first I do need to get a new case for my Nexus. The yellow bumper case I ordered together with the phone itself is already all black at the corners as it's been sitting in my jeans pockets and the current combination is rather ugly to look at.

Whoa!

If you hear a screeching sound, it's just me hitting the brakes hard on the migration away from iOS I had been doing in the last few months. I had rather mild expectations about yesterday's WWDC keynote and I thought it would more or less reassure me that getting that Nexus 5 was a good idea.

Well, the reality turned out to be something completely different. While I had expected only Healthbook (the app itself turned out to be called Health) and some minor additions that might not be that relevant to me, I was suddenly watching Craig Federighi nail my iOS frustrations one after another. When they got to developer part and introduced Swift - the new programming language for iOS - I was more or less picking my jaw up from the floor. At least to me Swift came totally out of the blue and it eliminates most of the annoyances with Objective-C. My gut says that this will be a huge change.

So, the probability of me getting an iPhone 6 once it becomes available jumped from around 50% to well beyond 90%. Apple will really have to disappoint with the hardware for me not to want one together with iOS 8.