Monday, January 7, 2013

The Good

Previous posts here have discussed some of the deficiencies of the Google Nexus 4 phone: broken WiFi, broken bluetooth, confused guidance from the Google Nexus Device support team.

For something different, this post describes a few of the good features of the phone. The first is HSPA+ bandwidth.  I was down in Santa Fe, NM yesterday where T-Mobile has good 4G coverage, and discovered that I could regularly get 11+ Mbps download speeds, and 1 Mbps uploads. Not too shabby, and every bit as good as I could sometimes get on the old phone with Verizon's 4G LTE.

The reason that I ditched my old HTC/Verizon phone was that I could get a $39/month 2GB high-speed data plan from T-Mobile and use GrooveIP and my Google Voice phone number to do all my calls using voip on the Nexus 4.  I was paying $120/month for my Verizon plan.  With the $81/month savings from dumping Verizon, the $349 price for the Nexus 4 will be paid back in about 5 months, with $81 per month extra beer money in my pocket every month afterwards!

In case you're wondering, the call quality with GrooveIP are generally excellent, depending on network quality of service, of course.

Other good things about the Nexus 4 have been covered in numerous reviews elsewhere (Gizmodo, ZDNet), so I won't repeat them here, except to say that aside from the bugs mentioned earlier, Android 4.2.1 on the phone is fast, clean, and nice to use.  But, since lots of folks, including those at Google  are now aware of the WiFi and bluetooth bugs in 4.2.1, they'll probably get fixed soon, making the Nexus 4 a completely satisfying experience.

--Doug
doug@parrot-farm.net

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