Google Nexus 4 Review - Google's new Flagship
by Brian Klug on November 13, 2012 8:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- LG
- Android
- Mobile
- APQ8064
- Nexus 4
- Android 4.2
- MDM9215
The display on the Nexus 4 is another shared component between the Optimus G, and is a 4.7-inch IPS WXGA (1280x768) LCD, which is of course home to an RGB stripe and in-cell touch, or as LG calls it, "zerogap" touch. LG Display unsurprisingly knows how to make LCD displays, and the Nexus 4 display looks subjectively very good. At 320 PPI I can’t see any pixels, and don’t think we need to get into the whole visual acuity discussion again, it’s very good on the Nexus 4. The added width over straight 720p is something I noted was actually very refreshing on the Optimus G when playing with that device in Korea. Most apps scale appropriately and take advantage of it without any issue, and the extra width definitely is noticeable in Chrome, Plume, and all my daily drivers.
The Nexus 4 display goes very bright, at 466 nits, and achieves a contrast ratio of 1352:1 at that maximum brightness setting. This is a huge step over the barely 200 nits that the Galaxy Nexus could eek out.
| CalMAN Display Comparison | |||||||||
| Metric | iPhone 5 | iPhone 4S | HTC One X | Samsung Galaxy S 3 | Samsung Galaxy Note 2 | Google Nexus 4 | |||
| Grayscale 200nits Avg dE2000 | 3.564 | 6.162 | 6.609 | 4.578 | 5.867 | 7.686 | |||
| CCT Avg (K) | 6925 | 7171 | 5944 | 6809 | 7109 | 8506 | |||
| Saturation Sweep Avg dE2000 | 3.591 | 8.787 | 5.066 | 5.460 | 7.986 | 8.517 | |||
| GMB ColorChecker Avg dE2000 | 4.747 | 6.328 | 6.963 | 7.322 | 8.185 | 7.531 | |||
I’ve mentioned that Google continues to struggle at calibrating their displays. The truth is that everyone except for Apple, HTC, and occasionally Samsung, struggle at calibrating mobile displays. This continues to be the case with the Nexus 4, and the result is that accuracy could be better. I’m convinced the results that we’re getting out of the Nexus 4 basically represent no attempt at calibrating the display, and as a result the numbers suffer.
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hulabaloo - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
"We now have a form factor of device for every two inches of diagonal difference. "Should be three inches?
kyuu - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Thanks for the in-depth review, Mr. Klug. Greatly appreciated.Question: Is there a review for the Lumia 920 in the works? I'd really love to see a thorough review on it like this one from yourself or Anand.
aryonoco - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Thanks Brian, you've outdone yourself yet again. There is literally no reason to read any other Nexus 4 review.And also, a huge hats off to Anand for employing the very talented Brian and giving him a platform to show of his talents. You guys rock!
tuxRoller - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
I suppose the end result explains how thry achieved the price of $300.About the SoC, is there anyway AT could do a more detailed review of the s4 pro? Perhaps something like what you did for Swift?
There is something seriously wrong with the s4 pro. Singke threaded performance shouod be really similar to the s4 but it is always as good bit slower. The memory performance has likewise regressed.
Has there been actual architectural changes made that causes this or is it something software releated (perhaps core affinity is nonexistent causing processes to keep moving between cores thus harming single thread performance).
Slaps - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
""First, audioflinger is set to 48 kHz which results in software resampling causing artifacts for 41.1 kHz source material.""I think you mean 44.1 kHz not 41.1 kHz :)
Conficio - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Hi Brian,thanks for all the hard work that flowed into this review. Your drive to put out the best reviews is evident and you are succeeding when measured in the amount of data and information.
However, I'm considering this phone for my wife, and wanted to send it to her for a read. That is until I realized the enormous amount of comparisons to other phones, to other chips, etc. make it a really hard read. Somehow the text is a review and a history lesson mixed in one. I'd wished there would be a structure like the following:
* Introduction
* Form factor, feel, usability
* The phone's innards and benchmarks
* Comparison to phone X
* Comparison to phone Y
...
* The good, the bad, the ugly and conclusion
Funny that I'm as ambivalent about the phone. On the one side it looks great on price and basic features and independence of carriers and phone companies and their skin shenanigans (Why don't they compete on useful social or productivity software or at least make the skin removable). And I don't even need LTE, and can live w/o more memory. But then there is the thermal throttling going on and that just makes me uneasy. While it may not mean that much in today's real world applications, it is unnerving, that performance is something not reliable. It is there, but when you really use it it disappears. Reminds me of the unlimited ISP plans with speeds depending on your neighbor's usage and caps set so that they'll hurt in three years. I hope for really useful apps in three years to actually catch up to four cores.
What also bother's me is the camera. The low light performance is xoxo. But this horrible yellow tint is not something I'd appreciate. Can anybody recommend PC/ Mac OS X software to correct this? Can one set up something like a monitor calibration profile?
Conficio - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
For a few years now we had the death grip test in every phone test. Has this problem disappeared altogether? How do we know? Due to tests or any other characteristic?staticx57 - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Not a problem with the review itself, but chrome is so far behind on Android that it absolutely kills the experience. If you compare AOSP browser vs chrome, not only does the AOSP browser faster in feel but kills chrome in benchmarks. It is pathetic that the Nexus 4 with krait scores 1800 ms sunspider but the Gnex on AOSP scores much better says something about the software Google chose to ship with.Impulses - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Google really needs to address this... Whether they need to start optimizing for the most popular SoC or simply update faster, it should not be that hard for them to improve on it.thesavvymage - Wednesday, November 14, 2012 - link
is there a way to just install the AOSP browser on the nexus? mine should be arriving friday if they ship on time and on my dad's gs3 i wasnt too impressed with chrome either