It's a nice looking phone but the excitement about the Nexus range seems disproportionate with the sales figures for them. The total sales figures for the Nexus 4 were on a par with the monthly figures for the Galaxy S4.
Does anyone know if this is down to a lack of demand or is the supply constrained in some way? Curious as to the desire for vanilla Android that's often talked about but doesn't seem to be a big thing for the average consumer.
The Nexus 4 was massively supply constrained, not available in most countries (either for a long time after launch or at all depending on country), didn't do LTE, and wasn't marketed heavily. If you're comparing it to the S4, which is the most marketed consumer tech product on the market and is available everywhere, it's not surprising it didn't sell.
It was never available in the areas that people wanted them most. Hobbling sales was more of a decision by Google than a lack of demand. I suppose Google just wanted to show that a device could be built at this cost and prove a point. Here in India the demand for the Nexus 4 is HUGE however, after taxes, import duties and markups, it retails for around the same price as a iPhone 4s which a lot of people prefer as a status symbol, never mind capability. Most discerning techies however, carry a nexus.
I've never really seen it advertised. They definitely don't spend the kind of money Samsung do advertising the S3/4. Also, the hardware isn't all that nice looking when compared with the S3/4 or iPhone. It's very bulky in my opinion and looks are important to the average consumer.
I got one a few months ago (my first Android device) and I'm pretty happy with it but: the camera sucks, the screen is weak (I'm not sure the issue, it just looks a lot worse than the S3/4 and iPhone) and it's bulky. If I didn't need it for development purposes I wouldn't keep it for those three reasons. I'd probably go with an S3 if I were going to use Android everyday (although Touchwiz puts me off).
I've had a Nexus 4 for over a year and it's been passed around quite a bit between friends and coworkers who all either have iPhones or S3s and I've never heard a disparaging remark about the screen, quite the contrary actually.
The number one thing iPhone users lament about when they hold my phone is how bright and spacious the screen.
I've never once felt the camera sucked, in fact on a trip to Scotland with family I ditched my Canon PowerShot because the Nexus 4 was producing better results. The group consensus was that it took the best pictures on the trip beating out an iPhone 4S, Galaxy S3, two different Canon PowerShots and (shocker) an iPad.
I used the S3 quite a bit and I always come away feeling like it's a toy or one of those phones with giant numbers for the elderly. Samsung's UI tweaks feel like a throwback to UI design in Windows 95 or XP and the font sizes feel like they're geared towards old ladies. I always feel despite the screen size that things are cramped.
Physically speaking the iPhone windows out hands down by a large margin. The S3 just feels plastic, it's not really cheap but it's not nice either, the Nexus 4 feels much more solid in your hand and the choice of matte plastic appeals to me much more than the glossy of the S3. That being said it's build quality is dwarfed by the iPhone 4 and 5. It's sad that the beauty of those devices are hidden by the garish cases people always put them in because holding one naked is an experience.
It's interesting to hear your opinion. I exaggerated a bit regarding the camera - however my iPhone 5 camera is noticeably better.
My iPhone 5 screen is much better than the Nexus 4. It's much brighter. I find it hard to believe that iPhone users found the Nexus screen better. They might have appreciated the extra screen real estate but the brightness on mine is quite awful.
I would agree with you that the iPhone 5 has a better camera than the Nexus 4 but we're talking about camera phones, not a DSLR vs a Point-n-Shoot. It's better but it's not that much better. I'm sure my knowledge of exposure settings and basic rules of photography helped with my photos but they wouldn't have overcome the failings of a dramatically inferior camera.
Regarding the screen, Android's dynamic brightness adjustment setting is much dimmer than iOS's. In iOS you can define it to be brighter or dimmer while still keeping the dynamic adjustment, with Android the dynamic setting is either on or off. If you turn it off on both devices and set brightness to full, they're pretty on par. Colors looked warmer on the Nexus 4 when my gf and I compared the other night but neither screen was noticeably brighter.
That being said, Apple has the highest standards of quality in the industry so it's entirely possible that the quality of the Nexus 4's components varies wildly and I just happened to get a good one.
The Nexus 4 was out of stock within half an hour, and didn't come back in stock for 3 months or something. That probably killed it in it's infancy. By the time it was available again, the S4 was "in sight", etc.
Most phones are sold thru wireless carriers. Since the Nexus phones can't be loaded up with carrier bloatware, they have little to no motivation to sell it.
Especially with the strange way they sell it at the moment. In vodafone you cannot get 4G without going for the highest price plan for example. (or at least that was the case 2 months ago) Which may make sense to them, but for the customer that's a bit silly. They will actually use different software in samsung phones, so that if you buy a S4 on a lower plan, it's not capable of connecting to a 4G network.
The Nexus devices aren't attractively priced in many places outside of the US. Eg my most recent device, the Nexus 7 (v1) was $199 minus $25 rebate on launch in the US, and ~ $270 ($345 with VAT) in the Eurozone, no rebate.
Apple products for example are less than 10% more expensive in the eurozone, which is reasonabe given the mandatory 2 year warranty here.
I'm not sure it makes sense to market these phones too awfully much: my guess is that they're either subsidized or sold at cost, so why hand that benefit out to those who aren't "in the know" to some degree?
Google simply has no idea how to launch advertising campaigns. It's been their weak point with all of their products and it's rather pathetic; the general public just doesn't know what the Nexus product line is.
I see Chrome ads on TV all the time. They know how to do it but it seems for the Nexus 4 they just didn't bother. Maybe because it was out of stock for so long after launch.
Nexus 4 was available for like a few hours at launch, and then it was out of stock for literally 3 months after that, putting a significant damp on its total demand, I think.
Google botched the launch big time last year. Hopefully they won't repeat the same mistake this year. Even if all of their stock sells within a day, they should at least be ready to satisfy 2-3x that within another 2 weeks. Waiting another 3 months is just ridiculous.
i'm not a fan of rounded edges like that. "Straight edges" usually make a phone look more modern( like the htc one ).
Also black plastic is ugly. Aluminium makes a phone more elegant in real(and more robust). That's why i'm not a big fan of Samsung phones neither, they are overrated.
To be fair, the excitement is in tech circles which is a relatively small portion of the market.
Generally, the overwhelming majority of handsets in at least North America are procured through one's carrier. If I'm getting a device through the carrier, not only do they not even offer Nexus devices, if they did it would seldom make economic sense: Get a subsidized $700 iPhone for $199 (so $500 of subsidy), or a subsidized Nexus for perhaps $0 (so $349 of subsidy?).
Speaking of carriers, this is why the overwhelming majority of smartphone ads for Apple are actually carried by carriers.
Curiously in the UK carrier subsidies seem to have dried up totally for the iPhone 5S at least.
To buy a 64Gb 5S from Apple for cash is £709.
To buy it on finance over two years from Apple (which is a commercial rate loan) costs around £820 in total.
To buy it from 3 is £99 plus £51 a month for 2 years. The same tariff as SIM only is £15 a month giving a total handset cost of over £960.
Essentially carriers are not just no longer subsidising the iPhone here, they're charging a greater than commercial loan rate for people buying it as part of a contract.
Except with ATT it doesn't matter if you bought your phone for 600$ or 199$ with the contract: you pay same rates. So, if you don't mind being on contract for 1.5-2 years until next upgrade, just do it. Because if you won't upgrade after 2 years you still pay same rate. If you bring in your 700 dollars phone you still pay same rate, so why pay more then? ATT and Verizon match each others prices and have no problem with monopolizing market and charging 3000% profit on SMS service
Does anyone know if this is down to a lack of demand or is the supply constrained in some way? Curious as to the desire for vanilla Android that's often talked about but doesn't seem to be a big thing for the average consumer.