I know i said how much i loved the "real android" three days ago when i finally got a nexus 4 after much hesitation. But it looks to me that combined with the hardware limitations (coming up below), i am again getting the same feeling with stock android as i did when i flashed slimbean on my old S3....
In short, i am not liking the nexus 4, and apart from the lockscreen widgets, the nexus 4 and 4.2.2 do not feel anything great against my now sold S3 running touchwizzed 4.0 or 4.1.
WHAT DID YOU SAY?
Yeah you guys heard it right, i feel samsung does something right in touchwiz. May be it is because it is so similar to iOS in some respects, but that cannot be all because i ran ICS for 4 months on a captivate as my sole daily driver so that must be a long enough time to kill that familiarness.
So what are the hardware limitations?
Well i am not talking about the not so important CPUs, RAMs etc which are fine even on an old galaxy nexus. I am talking about sound quality, which is a joy on both the iPhone 5 and S3, i would even give the stock S3 music player an edge because for some reason it sounded quite rich, the N4 is meh. I do listen to music a lot.
Speaker in the S3 beats the N4 easily too. I missed alarms twice so far on the N4, while on S3 there was no way i would miss one.
Next is camera. Again, the S3 wins by a handy margin and has been a tie with IP5 IMO, may be needs a bit love in extremely low light but the N4 is no hope.
I honestly thought running stock android is more valuable than the above, but no, i was wrong. I would rather have the camera and decent sound quality which are my everyday needs, stock android is not.
On the software side, i cannot imagine that i am saying this, but for some reason the colorful touchwiz styled apps seem to look easier on my eyes than the consistent white/black/white/black theme in all nexus apps. Sure one can spend a lot of time trying to theme it all, but 1) i wanted to run a non-rooted nexus and 2) the time spent didn't look favorable.
And then it is the small things again. The google music app on the nexus doesn't recognize downloaded media off the internet, while the GS3 actually did. The clock app in 4.2.2 is still the same as 4.1 or 4.0, showing a huge clock as the front page (really?) with smallish icons hidden. I stared at the app for a minute and then realized "oh, the alarms are there". The clock app on S3 is nicely laid out. You have the world clocks ticking instead of the redundant huge clock face, tabs showing alarms, timers etc. Interestingly this is how the iOS clock app is also laid out, but i found it ends up being more "useful".
I also quite like the way samsung tucks those scrolling toggles in the notification shade instead of a separate page. Feels more "built in" and has more toggle options than the ones offered in stock nexus. The notification shade is also a bit more "lively" than the simple black and white everything which quickly became annoying to ME (YMMV).
Also while the build quality of the nexus 4 is phenomenal, i don't know why sites do not list it at the top when recommending phones with good build, it really is solid, the looks are hideous. I cannot help looking at the handset and going, "eww, such a ugly handset". This seems to be the trend since the nexus S. Don't know why nexus has to be so ugly.
And dare i say it, yup you heard it right, the S3 "looked" much nicer to me, especially in white (which masked the strange contrast of lit capacitive buttons against the frame). I put my N4 next to a buddy's S3, and the S3 actually started to look better to me.
And, finally, i would say that the N4 was every bit as smooth as my iP5, however, i felt the same way on my old S3 running 4.0 (only spent 2 days with 4.1 on S3 so don't know if i am qualified to comment). It was also snappy, the so called "stutter here and there" was never an issue.
And strangely, i don't even find using 4.2.2 to be so mind blowing better than even 4.0 on the S3 was. I think post ICS and now Jellybean, as the S3s now have that, the difference between a S3 and N4 is not the same as say, a galaxy nexus and S2.
So yeah, that was my rant, wonder if anyone else felt the same. Hah.
In short, i am not liking the nexus 4, and apart from the lockscreen widgets, the nexus 4 and 4.2.2 do not feel anything great against my now sold S3 running touchwizzed 4.0 or 4.1.
WHAT DID YOU SAY?
Yeah you guys heard it right, i feel samsung does something right in touchwiz. May be it is because it is so similar to iOS in some respects, but that cannot be all because i ran ICS for 4 months on a captivate as my sole daily driver so that must be a long enough time to kill that familiarness.
So what are the hardware limitations?
Well i am not talking about the not so important CPUs, RAMs etc which are fine even on an old galaxy nexus. I am talking about sound quality, which is a joy on both the iPhone 5 and S3, i would even give the stock S3 music player an edge because for some reason it sounded quite rich, the N4 is meh. I do listen to music a lot.
Speaker in the S3 beats the N4 easily too. I missed alarms twice so far on the N4, while on S3 there was no way i would miss one.
Next is camera. Again, the S3 wins by a handy margin and has been a tie with IP5 IMO, may be needs a bit love in extremely low light but the N4 is no hope.
I honestly thought running stock android is more valuable than the above, but no, i was wrong. I would rather have the camera and decent sound quality which are my everyday needs, stock android is not.
On the software side, i cannot imagine that i am saying this, but for some reason the colorful touchwiz styled apps seem to look easier on my eyes than the consistent white/black/white/black theme in all nexus apps. Sure one can spend a lot of time trying to theme it all, but 1) i wanted to run a non-rooted nexus and 2) the time spent didn't look favorable.
And then it is the small things again. The google music app on the nexus doesn't recognize downloaded media off the internet, while the GS3 actually did. The clock app in 4.2.2 is still the same as 4.1 or 4.0, showing a huge clock as the front page (really?) with smallish icons hidden. I stared at the app for a minute and then realized "oh, the alarms are there". The clock app on S3 is nicely laid out. You have the world clocks ticking instead of the redundant huge clock face, tabs showing alarms, timers etc. Interestingly this is how the iOS clock app is also laid out, but i found it ends up being more "useful".
I also quite like the way samsung tucks those scrolling toggles in the notification shade instead of a separate page. Feels more "built in" and has more toggle options than the ones offered in stock nexus. The notification shade is also a bit more "lively" than the simple black and white everything which quickly became annoying to ME (YMMV).
Also while the build quality of the nexus 4 is phenomenal, i don't know why sites do not list it at the top when recommending phones with good build, it really is solid, the looks are hideous. I cannot help looking at the handset and going, "eww, such a ugly handset". This seems to be the trend since the nexus S. Don't know why nexus has to be so ugly.
And dare i say it, yup you heard it right, the S3 "looked" much nicer to me, especially in white (which masked the strange contrast of lit capacitive buttons against the frame). I put my N4 next to a buddy's S3, and the S3 actually started to look better to me.
And, finally, i would say that the N4 was every bit as smooth as my iP5, however, i felt the same way on my old S3 running 4.0 (only spent 2 days with 4.1 on S3 so don't know if i am qualified to comment). It was also snappy, the so called "stutter here and there" was never an issue.
And strangely, i don't even find using 4.2.2 to be so mind blowing better than even 4.0 on the S3 was. I think post ICS and now Jellybean, as the S3s now have that, the difference between a S3 and N4 is not the same as say, a galaxy nexus and S2.
So yeah, that was my rant, wonder if anyone else felt the same. Hah.
