They’ve done it again.
They, of course, being Google and LG, the relationship that has brought many of us the Nexus 4, and in the very near future as suggested by today’s ‘leak’, the Nexus 5. It might be a bit preemptive to crown the Nexus 5 the “Best Value Smartphone of 2013”; there are still 2 months in the year. But like the Nexus 4 before it, the Nexus 5 stands as a shining beacon of flagship-level performance with none of the monetary commitment, and here’s why.
The rumoured specifications of the Nexus 5 are not pedestrian by any stretch: with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 clock at 2.3 GHz and 2 GB RAM under the hood, the Nexus 5 would easily stay toe-to-toe with the latest and last flagships for this year, the LG G2, Sony Xperia Z1 and Samsung Galaxy Note 3. Add in the 4.95-inch display and a 8MP camera with image stabilizer (which, by the way, has the potential to be a much better camera than even the 20.7 MP beast on the Xperia Z1) and you have one of the most formidable smartphones on the market today.
Of course, there are still disappointing aspects to the Nexus 5’s hardware: the 1.3 MP front facing camera won’t be inspiring to many selfie-prone photogenics, and the 2,300mAh battery appears to be a little inadequate for a phone of this size. That said, there have been rumours that the 16GB version of the phone will have the 2,300 mAh battery and a rumoured 32GB version will instead have a 3,000 mAh battery, which definitely levels the playing field again.
Of course, one of the prime selling points of Nexus devices is the allure of a stock Android operating system and user interface. While there’s certainly a case for manufacturer proprietary optimized-interfaces, we won’t delve into that now. Instead, we’ll just say that the stock Android system is blazingly fast by virtue of its lack of burden from extraneous animations, apps, etc. which is particularly important for those of us who view slow speed as a deal-breaker. Better yet, the Nexus 5 will be coming with the latest version of the Android operating system, Android 4.4 Kit Kat, and will also be updated first with new versions of Android  for the foreseeable future.
And finally, there’s the price. The new flagships like the LG G2 and Xperia Z1 will cost hefty amount if bought outright, and the Galaxy Note 3 towers above all these at its price point. When you consider that the leaked price of the 16GB version of the Nexus 5 was $349, almost half the price of some of the flagship phones, and regardless of whether the phone actually appeals to you or not, it’s incredibly difficult to deny that the Nexus 5 is a fantastic deal.
Somehow Google and LG have done it again: they’ve combined flagship-level performance with the latest Android operating system and packaged it all at a price that is actually viable for most people, making it a dead ringer for the “Best Value Smartphone of 2013”.
Does anybody want to chime in on this discussion? Give us your opinion.
[poll id=”45″]
