Nexus 5 : Wouldn't be as sweet without KitKat

As someone who’s toted an iPhone 5 around for the past year, I have to say that using the Nexus 5 was a breath of fresh air. The Nexus 5’s 4.95-inch 1920-by-1080-pixel display looks crystal clear and puts the 4-inch display on the iPhone to shame. Text is clear, colors pop, and the screen is readable even in bright sunlight.
There’s one caveat, though: The screen isn’t very bright. On anything other than the highest brightness settings, the Nexus 5’s display looks dark and unimpressive. Though turning on auto-brightness will save some battery life, it’ll also make the screen appear dull and ordinary. If you pick up a Nexus 5, I recommend cranking the screen brightness up to max and disabling the auto-brightness to get the most from the phone’s high-resolution display.
The rest of the phone’s hardware isn’t especially noteworthy. It feels solid enough to survive a few falls out of your pocket, but the design doesn’t stand out compared to that of the HTC One or the iPhone. Even Nokia’s colorful Lumias have more personality, as the Nexus 5’s plain black (or white) color scheme makes it as faceless as countless other Android phones. In many ways, LG could have taken the chassis it used for the G2, shaved off a few bits here and there, and carved “NEXUS” into the back to produce this model.

The Nexus 5 bears a strong resemblance to the LG G2.

As one my colleagues noted when I was writing my first impressions of the device, the Nexus 5 is “plastic, yet not unapologetically plastic like the iPhone 5c.” Though the phone doesn’t feel cheap, neither does it feel high-end. The ceramic volume and power buttons rattle when you shake the phone, and the giant “NEXUS” logo emblazoned on the back looks tacky. The Nexus 5 doesn’t get greasy the way the iPhone 5c and the Samsung Galaxy S4 do, but the soft rubber-like finish does attract lint and crumbs, so you’ll have to be careful where you set the phone down. You’ll also need to be wary of the Nexus 5’s protruding camera lens, which sticks out slightly from the rest of the phone and prevents it from laying completely flat. The lens cover is completely exposed and I worry that it’ll be the first thing damaged should the phone decide to take a quick trip from your pocket to the sidewalk. Google sells bumper cases that help the lens sit more nearly flush with the rest of the phone, but this shortcoming could have been solved at the design stage.

IMAGE: Michael Homnick

The camera on the Nexus 5's back prevents the phone from lying flat.

The phone’s slim profile does make it easier to pocket and hold in one hand, but I had trouble reaching the power button without adjusting my grip. If the power button were just a millimeter or two lower, I wouldn’t have had to strain my hand every time I wanted to wake the phone or put it to sleep—and I don’t have small mitts. Using the Nexus 5 one-handed proved somewhat difficult, as I couldn’t quickly reach the notification shade; and typing with one hand made the phone feel unbalanced. I faced a similar problem when I evaluated the Galaxy S4 for a hands-on review: The Galaxy S4’s razor-thin bezels prevented me from getting a solid grip on the phone without inadvertently hitting the edges of the screen.

Fast, with solid battery life

IMAGE: Michael Homnick

Although the Nexus 5’s design is unassuming, the hardware inside the phone is on a par with what other flagship Android phones offer. The 2.26GHz Snapdragon 800 processor absolutely screams, and it handled everything I threw its way. It had no trouble pushing all those pixels on the big, beautiful display, even as I watched HD movies and played games like Dead Trigger 2. Last year’s Nexus 4 was a capable device, but it overheated if you so much as looked at it funny. On the Nexus 5, I played Dead Trigger 2 for more than an hour—and watched the first half of Pacific Rim—and the phone got only slightly warm. And most of that heat was from my holding onto it for so long. 
Source : TechHive