Nexus 5
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,681 words · ~13 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and review of the Nexus 5 it's my actual first pure
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Android experience and after 3 weeks I
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guess it's pretty nice but I don't really see what all the fuss is about
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per se I don't mind sense and Touchwiz with the battery issues aside really
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isn't that bad especially for non-power users so I'm going to kick this off in
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my usual way with the stuff that other people already told you so first of all
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there's no SD expansion the phone's available in 16 or 32 gig configurations
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and that's it but other than that the hardware is absolutely exceptional for
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$350 it's got a 2.3 GHz quadcore Snapdragon 800 processor and very
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capable adreno 330 GPU the 5-in 1080p
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screen is beautiful with good but not amazing viewing angles and and it has
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all the best wireless functionality including AC Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.0 and Chi
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wireless charging which works well with the official pad yay and even works well
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with a cheap one that Brandon got on eBay so that's great the physical
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overview of the device is pretty simple it's extremely light for its size which
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I quite liked once I got used to it but I did find it a shade too big for me the
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Moto X is about perfect for my small hands but people with mediumsized hands
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will be very comfortable with this my device is a white one which with it it's
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glossy Edge that I found slippery and smoother non soft touch rear finish is
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in my mind inferior to the black one just don't tell that to the U extremists
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the top has a 3 and 12 mm Jack tasteful joke done now uh the bottom has a
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speaker grill for the one speaker and a dummy one that actually has a microphone
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behind it and the side has a volume rocker and a stealthy SIM tray and lock
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button on the left and right sides respectively I like this positioning but
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I'd like it more if the buttons were a little harder to press accidentally the
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volume buttons are easy to mash during video playback and I would often find
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myself accidentally adjusting volume when going for the lock button and vice
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versa on the back we find the much maligned camera as well as a Flash and
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both LG and Nexus branding and on the front we find the screen it's very very
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good maybe subjectively not quite my favorite but it's extremely good it's
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1080p which is a stunning 445 pixels per
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inch at this screen size and the viewing angles are solid with vibrant but not
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oversaturated colors white whites and black blacks there was one thing that
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irked me a little bit and whether it's motion blur sort of a smoothing effect
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kind of thing or just a phenomenally slow panel I did find that when objects
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were moving across it there was a bit of a distracting motion blur however if I
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had to choose between good viewing angles and good color or good speed I
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will take the former every time so it's one of my favorite screens so far I had
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no issues with touchscreen accuracy and the touchscreen interface was not very
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visible even on extremely uniform backgrounds uh haptic feedback feels a
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little bit loose and is definitely below average tough to come from the Experia
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Z1 but your mileage may vary with that one and the last thing about the screen
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is I think the auto brightness was a bit of a missed opportunity it just doesn't
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go down low enough in complete darkness I can manually override it but it seems
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like this should be a relatively simple fix in software boot up time on the
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device is slow but if that's to make it
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faster during actual use then I'm for it I rarely reboot my phone anyway normally
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um although my experience may be a bit unusual but I've actually had the Nexus
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5 crash about half a dozen times on me in the last three weeks so Kit Kat
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definitely feels a bit rough around the edges for me but I'm sure that'll change in time but I I'll take that trade off
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for slower boot time for faster performance for sure now there's lots of
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discussion online about the camera for my use it's okay I guess it's definitely
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better with the 4.4.2 update but there's still no 4K or slow-mo or anything the
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reality it is I'm not a power photographer though so since no one complained my cheesy Instagram pictures
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were worse than usual I'm good the UI of the app really does need some work
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though I appreciate simple design and swiping to the right to access the
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gallery instead of having a dedicated button is natural and looks very clean
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but I found it cumbersome to have to switch modes to record video or take
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pictures rather than just having two dedicated buttons Optical image
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stabilization worked very well and was very noticeable and the autofocus is
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vastly improved in the 4.4.2 update but I still wish that clicking anywhere on
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the screen while taking video would manually focus on that particular object
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rather than just snapping a picture of it once more UI complaint about the
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camera few buttons is not always better so let's talk about battery life now as
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far as that's concerned I think some people were expecting more than a $350
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device can deliver the Nexus 5 has a pretty mediocre 2300 milliamp battery
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but it's also got some clever background power saving and Resource Management
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features enabled by Android 4 .4 that really help it deliver solid performance
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in everyday scenarios I thought the reality of it is if you Hammer the phone
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with heavy use like gaming then its battery will drain like any other phone
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with the same hardware and the one with the most milliamp hours wins in my real
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world use I sometimes had 30 to 40% at the end of the day and as a somewhat
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heavy non-gaming user I'm quite happy with that enabling art or Android
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runtime which increases the storage space taken by your apps but makes them
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faster to launch and easier to run has also been reported to improve battery
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life significantly the only caveat here is that it also reduces app
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compatibility including breaking WhatsApp with that said edzel one of my
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staff was able to find a recompiling workaround that got WhatsApp working and
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loves art but your mileage may vary the
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phone never got uncomfortably warm for me except on my initial boot when it
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installed a bajillion apps um so that was that was great speaking of all the
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apps though iOS has had this functionality for years so I don't
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understand why I can't fully uninstall apps directly from the home screens if
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you're going to have a terrible app tray with no support for folders search or
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other sorting methods please don't make me navigate through it to manage my apps
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I have a lot of apps on my phone Sony's and HTC's app trays are much better I
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guess you just really want people to stop using the app tray and start using
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home screens the way that you intended for them to touche Google and no support
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for basic toggles like portable hotspot flashlight or auto rotate what the
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Google this is supposed to be the future even iOS has swiping up to turn the
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flashlight on okay well fine thank goodness it's
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Android so it's at least flexible I can install power toggles on iOS 7 no matter
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what I do I still can't change the layout of my quick toggles or even lock
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the device in landscape mode on iPhones or iPods so I guess at least Google's
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flavor of intentionally bad design is superior here speaking of bad design
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another thing I didn't like multitasking is such a simple thing to do right and
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yet no one does it yes 3 and 2/3 is technically multi but
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nine is definitely better this scrolling through everything nonsense didn't work
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well for Windows Vista and it's really not any better here I like both OS 10's
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expose a and ironically Chrome for Android's implementations of
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multitasking better one positive here
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though is that at least switching between running apps even games and videos is really Snappy like super
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awesome let's move on to Hangouts as your SMS application which wasn't super
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awesome um I don't like it Windows Phone 8 did the whole integrating all your
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accounts thing much better with the people Hub it integrated more services
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such as LinkedIn and pulled all the messages together for easy reference
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Google for some phenomenally like I
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can't can't figure out why they did this some reason ties all your SMS messages
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into one of your Google accounts and you need to manually switch between them to
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see message histories across services with the same people one person can have
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multiple Google accounts Google please
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stop treating Google accounts like everyone has just one and we should all
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use our real names and we should all be on Google Plus
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and the day Google lets us have a master Google account that can admin the others
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is an extremely happy day for me on top of the inconvenience of not being able
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to search for things it's just not ergonomic the switcher is in the top
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left corner I don't care how big your hands are that's really hard to reach if
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you're operating the device one-handed another small complaint is that clicking
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the new message icon in the top right doesn't fire up the keyboard right away
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to search for my contacts Google I clicked this because I wanted to message
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someone who I didn't just message who was in the most frequently accessed
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contacts the recent contacts on the very last page the whole thing just feels
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very first attemp which I guess is natural enough since it is um there's
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even stupid stuff like not being able to copy part of a message like an address
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to paste into Google Maps with all of that aside it's just software I'm sure
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they're going to get it sorted out but for now I'd rather use anything else and
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once again thank goodness I'm on Android because I can my last major complaint
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about the phone is that whether it's a software or Hardware thing the GPS takes
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longer than my old iPhone 4 to lock in my position and if I deviate from the
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path set out for me compared to my HTC1 it'll take over 10 seconds longer to
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figure that out and calculate A New Path for me so that was a little bit frustrating let's move back to the
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things I like the multicolored notification LED with light flow being
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able to color change and you know change the pattern for different stuff is great
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and swiping down from the top for notifications now works without pausing
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media playback which is absolutely incredible it's so convenient to change
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brightness or see incoming messages while keeping my YouTube video running
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in the background love it swiping up from the bottom for Google Now working
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all over the phone is great as well I mostly use Google Now to set my alarm
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for the next day and navigate with GPS but when Google now supports more voice
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commands I will definitely be ready to do lots more other stuff as a swift key
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lover the stock Android keyboard did bother me a little bit at first but it
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learned really fast and I love how natural it feels to click on my
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misspelled words and how many options it gives me to correct them that's really
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cool it took about a week and a half but now I really like it I'm still going
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back to swift key but it's definitely my second favorite the thing I find it
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lacks compared to swift key is the prediction of your next word doesn't
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seem to learn from your frequent phrases in the same way every time I've typed
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Nexus on this device since I got it I've followed with a five but it still
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suggests one to me the phone part of this phone also needs some love now
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because it's really really good I love the sticky preferred primary contacts
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numbers and the option to be able to change it and lock it in rather than
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just having it guess all the time I Love Dialing by name it prevents me from
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having to dig through my contact list and most importantly Google caller ID is
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awesome like awesome it picks up on numbers from VoIP lines that my normal
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caller ID just calls unknown numbers allowing me to avoid spam calls and
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calls from my in-laws who have boip much more easily it also populates pictures
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and info for people and businesses so privacy concerns aside I absolutely love
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it and I think it's great call Quality is also great aside from the audibility
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of the speaker phone for me but the speaker is just quiet in general for
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calls and for media playback so if I had to complain about something here I I
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guess it would be that face rejection might need a little bit of tweaking I
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hung up on people a few times but I'm sure that's a quick fix all that's left
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now are final thoughts if you want the latest vanilla Android experience with
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stunning performance housed in a device that delivers amazing specs for the
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price then go buy one it's good build quality too the constant updates are
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great I mean in fact it's gotten a 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 update already and this is the
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perfect product for tinkerers and enthusiasts with that in mind I still
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think I'd recommend something with like touch whz to a less techsavvy friend or
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family member because with bleeding edge software comes bleeding edge workarounds
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and tweaks and all that kind of stuff speaking of techsavvy workarounds
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audible.com head over to audible.com Linus to workaround not having the time
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to sit down and read Game of Thrones to find out what's going to happen next on
12:03
the show you can sign up for their monthly audiobook service and listen to
12:07
it in the car or on your phone while rep performing repetitive tasks at work and
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the best thing about it is that the first month is absolutely free so visit
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audible.com Linus to get started now
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it's the end of the video time guys so the usual thing like it if you liked it
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dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment and let me know from everything
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you've read or if you have an exus 5 already tell me your feelings what is
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your most favorite and what is your least favorite thing about the Nexus 5
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I'm actually very curious to see how your opinions align with what I said in
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the last 15 minutes or however long this video went on for and I will definitely
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be reading them so thank you and also don't forget to subscribe I think we're
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done here