GOOGLE HAS AGAIN PROVED THAT you don’t need flashy
launches or celebrity endorsements to sell a phone. If you build it well – with
help, this time, from LG – and slap a head-turningly low price tag on it, they
will come. The Nexus 5 has already sold out, with delivery estimates for
latecomers hovering around the Christmas-week period.
It’s the uniquely Nexus combination of affordability
– just £299 SIM-free – and a no compromise approach to specs that’s sparked this
buying frenzy. The only other company we can think of who could do something similar
is Amazon, and it doesn’t make smart phones… yet.
At 8.6mm deep the 5 is also thinner than an
iPhone 5C. Gracing the front there’s a 4.95-inch, 920x1080p screen whose
445 pixels per inch easily trumps the Retina Display found on iPhones 5S and
5C.
The overall look remains the same as the Google
Nexus 4: utilitarian, with an ultrathin bezel surrounding the screen and no buttons.
The result is quite dull but it’s also well constructed, and refreshingly free of
distractions and gimmickry.
The top-drawer spec continues with a 2.26GHz
quadcore Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM and a choice of 16GB
or 32GB storage.
On the back there’s an eight-meg camera with the
ability to shoot 1080p video – it’s good, but Google has admitted it needs
improving via a software update. There’s also a 1.3-meg front-facing camera for
Skype chats and Google+ Hangouts.
