I'm glad to see Anand focus so much on the price in the conclusion. A lot of the other reviews talked at length about lack of LTE etc, but that misses the point of this phone.
While it may disappoint many people who just want the best at any price, you can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its class. The price really is the killer feature of this phone.
I suspect there is lots of demand out there for this phone amongst regular folk. No want likes being chained to a carrier and everybody likes getting a great deal. I told my sister (non techie) about it and her eyes popped. She's very very excited about it.
I agree completely. With the N4 google is finally making good on their initial mission with the Nexus line, that is, to get rid of the carrier subsidies nonsense. With a phone that is $349 off contract, this can really save people a good deal of money on phone contracts to. As for the lack of LTE, there is a good reason for that as well, as the N4 seems specifically aimed at T-mobile customers. T-mobile offers some of the best cellular deals for off contract phones, and if the other big carriers see customers flocking to T-mobile they will hopefully be pressured to lower their prices as well. I think it's great that Google is putting pressure on the carriers to get rid of the outdated on-contract model.
While it may disappoint many people who just want the best at any price, you can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its class. The price really is the killer feature of this phone.
Ignoring OS, there are other phones that are getting much cheaper. Example is the new Lumia 920 that is $449 on ATT w/o contract. While it is $100 more expensive than the the 16GB Nexus you do get the following in addition:
* 32GB (+16GB)
* LTE
* [Removed]
Is this worth $100? I think probably so, but in any case, I think it shows that phones in this class (flagship like devices) are actually more price competitive than people may think.
Ignoring OS is the only way to make a fair comparison, since OS preference probably trumps the feature and price delta ( whether you prefer WP or Android).
The single most important factor is also the most subjective. I personally dislike Android and wouldn't use this phone if you gave it to me for free, but I can still respect the price for hw. I'm surprised this even needs explaining.
Have you ever used Android 4.2? This phone ships with a new OS version that I don't think is out anywhere else yet. How do you know in advance that you will subjectively not like it? I hate Windows Phone 7, but I wouldn't dare say I hate Windows Phone 8 since I've never seen it IRL. How could I make such a judgement? It's not purely subjective, either. What's the point in having more RAM or a bigger screen if the OS doesn't handle those well? Or, if it handles it exceptionally well, that should be noted as well.
you can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its class.
I wonder why the phone is so much cheaper (both in absolute and relative terms) in the US than it is here in Sweden. Here it's exactly the same price as the SGS3 and the iPhone 4S and quite a bit more than the HTC One X.
I liked the fact they took it into account too. I did find this review of the IPad Mini particularly amusing:
"Lining those pluses and minuses up against those for the Nexus 7 – which garnered four stars – there's no doubt that this is indeed a five-star device. The 70% difference in comparative price is more than made up by the difference in build quality and software selection"
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/31/ipad-mini-r...)
Not arguing one way or the other but this and a few other recent reviews have made me wonder why tech reviewers seem to pay so little attention to price.
I think it's actually illegal in the EU to sell products bellow cost. We call it dumping but it seems Amazon and Google are able to do it just fine in the US. So that might be one reason.
This is not why; the nexus4 is much cheaper than the SGS3 in the UK. (240/280 VS ~400).
Moreover, google and amazon do NOT sell below cost. They are near cost, for the cheapest version, at launch. Go look at how much tablets sell for in China if you think their tablets are below cost. (or miumiu phones).
I do think they might sell bellow cost. Of course, it's illegal to say it so they claim it's at cost. Amazon even brags there is no margin: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/10/12/amazon-ma... but I wonder, if they are so desperate for market share, wouldn't get go a bit further. I think they do.
Its 299 (granted € not $) in Germany too, thats more expensive than in the US but still cheap for a phone like that!
Cool phone, LTE is a non issue for me since its not widely available here anyway and with the tiny amount of data your get here (i have 300Megs included in my contract after which it gets slowed down to dialup speeds) its kinda useless.
The odd thing is the Shenzhen Foxcon factory is closer to Berlin than San Francisco. Somehow, even excluding taxes, it's still more expensive in Germany.
And a difference of 7% is substantial for a product with no margins.
In Spain Google is advertising the Nexus 4 for 299€ / 349€. So I don't really know what is going on in Sweden. Maybe is because they don't use the euro as its currency?
That's right! I'm buying this phone because of its price. It's cheap compared to other phones with the same specs. The lack of LTE is not really a setback to me (and I think to all others that live in a third world country). LTE is almost "not yet" existing in our region/country.
I am curious, in US, most carriers don't offer any discount for bringing your own device. So, how does spending $349 on Nexus vs buying a subsidized iPhone for $200 going to save anyone money or makes Nexus a better deal?
T-Mobile in the US used to discount their post-paid plans when you brought your own phone. They stopped doing that but started offering some pretty great prepaid plans:
I'm on the $30/mo "walmart" prepaid plan, but I'm considering switching back to post paid because you can't use any data roaming at all on T-Mobile prepaid.
If you want to upgrade before the end of your term you typically pay back a prorated amount of your subsidy. So your free $600 iPhone costs $400 after one year, or $200 after two years. For a user who upgrades every 18-24 months, this device is almost cheaper than that fee by itself.
At least here in Canada, we also have a few niche players (WIND, Mobilicity) who differentiate themselves with slightly lower costs than the big three, but no subsidy on phones. In this case, I can buy a $300 Nexus 4 and switch, saving about ~$35 a month on my bill. My prorated subsidy from Telus is $14 a month, so I still save $21 a month over buying a subsidized phone. Even the iPhone, which is very heavily subsidized, doesn't cover the price differential between these carriers and the big three.
In conclusion: find a small, regional carrier that doesn't offer subsidies, save big money.
> you can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its class.
You also can't ignore the fact that in the US other phones in it's class are subsidized by $400 or more, upending this comparison greatly. Yes you're locked into a contract but it's not like Nexus 4 users get some special monthly rate. For some use cases being off contract is a god send, for most though, a subsidized iphone 5 or galaxy s3 is a better option at $100 cheaper (and a higher resale in case you want to break that contract).
Yes all 3 people note that you can get a cheaper contract on T-Mobile. However the 500 lb gorilla none of them mention is that T-Mobile's network really sucks:
> for most though, a subsidized iphone 5 or galaxy s3 is a better option at $100 cheaper
Is it really, though? As an example, T-Mobile prepaid offers $30/month for unlimited data (5gb @4g) & SMS, plus 100min voice. Poking at ATT's site the most comparable contract plan I see for iphone 5 is about $90/month. That's over $700 more out of pocket in a year if you go with the subsidized phone.
> That's over $700 more out of pocket in a year if you go with the subsidized phone.
That's the same savings you get with an iphone on Virgin Mobile/Cricket though [1]. Very few people do this though because Sprint's network sucks and the upfront cost is a turn off. In addition many people do not pay the full plan rate. My monthly AT&T bill is around $59 including fees.
I was actually surprised I didn't see more of Anand's jabs at Android or maybe too many comparisons with his conclusions with devices from other companies...and then I saw the article was actually written by Brian Klug. So good job Brian on this one.
Is anyone else slightly concerned about the glass back? Several reviews including The Verge had their back crack while testing it.
For me that is the biggest concern. The nice thing about plastic is that it absorbs some of the energy from a drop or shock. Glass gets cracks and then shatters.
I would have liked to have seen the same "rubber" back the Nexus 7 (by Asus) has. I would have alternatively taken Samsung's "cheap" feeling plastic backs.
The Play Store is selling a Nexus 4 Bumper - it's like the iPhone 4 all over again. Why do designers always pick form over function? What's the point in having a great looking phone that needs to be bubble-wrapped?
Still, the good thing about Android is you can choose from many manufacturers. This new Sony phone is waterproof:
I've already decided I'm buying this phone, but I have to ask:
Why should I care about wireless charging? I can't see this feature enriching my life in the slightest. Ok, it looks cool sitting there. But docks look cool too. Is it more convenient? I would argue no (saves maybe two seconds of effort per charge). Is it more portable? Definitely not.
Is this only hyped up because of the "coolness" factor?
I have HP Touchpad tablet with Touchstone wireless dock - and I can't stress how awesome it is to be able to just put it down on a stand near my bed and not have to look for one of the two USB cables (because tablet requires more power than my phone, I need to pick the right one), just plop it down and it charges.
And same thing in the morning - I don't have to carefully pick it up, trying not to yank cord from charger, disconnect charging cable - just grab it, and go to bathroom.
And when I'm out of home, I can charge it with regular microUSB plug, but believe me, I curse it every single time.
I think the manufacturers are trying to make restaurants, public transport and maybe even office furniture companies to add those charging surfaces everywhere. That way your phone would pick up some power here and there.
I have a Samsung Galaxy 1 at the moment and after 2 and 1/2 years of poking usb thingy into the receiving port it came undone. Not completely, but it takes a fair amount of jiggling and negotiations to get the juice flowing.
Wireless charging makes a lot of sense, I am going to buy one as soon as it becomes available
Here's a quick example. last night I docked my galaxy nexus poorly not pressing it down into the dock all the way. Over night it ran out of power and shut down leaving me with no morning alarm. My nexus one had this issue too especially after the charging pins wore down a bit.
Theoretically wireless charging could've saved me some trouble. Not a huge feature perhaps but nice.
You don't realize how nice it is to save those 5 seconds, plus the mental effort of grabing the cable, finding the port, and plugging it in the right orientation until you get wireless charging.
For me, I'd love to be able to snap my phone in to a mount/charger in my car. My original Motorola Droid became useless to me when the micro USB connection started falling out unless I physically held it in place. Otherwise I'd still be using it.
It's the difference between using a wifi weight scale and using a normal weight scale and recording the value in an app. That removal of friction will make you weigh yourself more.
Wireless charging 5-30 second operation into a 2 second operation
So I've been looking at reviews of Nexus 4 all week. I have had IPhone for the past few years (3g then 4).
I want to switch, but I don't know if Nexus 4 is the one to switch to... I don't quite understand the differences between Android versions of S3 and Note 2, but apparently this has a vanilla android version.
What is the best choice? S3? Note 2? Nexus 4? What advantages do each one have over the other?
Your best bet, in general, is to get a Nexus-branded device. Those are straight from Google, run vanilla Android, and tend to get updates more quickly. Additionally, they are frequently among the most hacker-friendly Android devices, so custom firmwares and the like from the modding community tend to spring up quickly, so you tend to have lots of options about the software your phone runs as it gets older.
Often times, phones from Samsung or HTC or whatnot come with a customized version of Android, which has been made to look visually distinct, has some additional value-add packages, and whatnot. Most power users will tell you that they prefer vanilla Android. That said, most all the popular devices have aftermarket builds based on vanilla Android (AOSP), or a juiced-up fork of vanilla Android (CyanogenMod, my personal preference), and it's not that difficult to replace your factor-installed firmware with one of these packages if desired.
The S3 is a great device, though, and I don't think you'd regret it if you got it, but if you're looking to get an opinion of Android, a Nexus device is the way to go.
I have a Galaxy Nexus, last year's version of the Nexus 4. One thing I value about it is the Google/non-carrier-controlled experience, which I expect is similar to what you've had with an iPhone. There's not vendor crap on it and it gets updated by Google when there's a new release; apparently Android 4.2 is on the way. Non-Nexus devices have had some difficulty getting updates due to carriers or phone manufacturers.
Updates are nice because they extend the useful life of the phone.
I've never had an Android phone, but from what I understand, the Nexus line are the phones that gets the OS updates when they are released. The other guys have to go through either the carrier or the manufacturer or, sometimes, both before an OS update reaches the phone.
If I were looking to make the switch, it would be this phone.
The S3 and Note 2 have a Samsung-tweaked version of Android. These amount to some different apps, slightly altered UI and in the case of the Note 2 some tweaks to accommodate the stylus.
It's not bad, but most prefer stock Android for the crispness of the UI, lack of bloat and fastest OS upgrades (they come direct from Google without delay while Samsung/another third party adapts their stuff).
I had the Note 2 briefly - it's a powerhouse but ultimately decided it was too big for my taste (5.5" screen vs 4.7" on the S3/Nexus 4). It needs two hands to operate most of the time and the screen is the same resolution as the S3 so you're only gaining in size, not detail. In the end I was happy to come back to my Galaxy Nexus.
The Nexus 4 runs stock Android and is the same size as the S3. It's also cheaper and faster. I'd say it's the clear choice right now.
This is a tough one, and it really depends on what YOU want.
What exactly did you like/hate about your iphone? That will help people respond to your question.
I'll tell you what I tell everyone looking for a new phone. Go play with them. Honestly, that is the best way to find the phone that you want considering most of the specs are similar unless you are a power user (ie, flashing new roms, rooting etc). Put the phone in your pocket, sit down, walk around with it etc and make sure it fits your daily life. This is specfically true for the Note 2 which is f'in huge. For me, it's size wasn't a huge deal and I returned my s3 for a note 2 last night. The note 2 is f'in awesome, but it may not be useful to you.
In response:
S3: awesome phone, nice features, a few apps you can't delete (I had the AT&T version, YMMV) but overall a very nice feel. I really liked that phone and although it was large (4.7" screen), it was light and easy to use.
Note 2: LARGE. 5.5" screen..which is too big for most people. It also has a stylus (pen) that you can use to write on it and I really like that feature. however, if you have no use for that feature, don't bother.
Nexus 4: I haven't used this yet so I can't say much. what I can say is that it looks pretty bad ass and I'd highly consider it IF it had LTE connectivity.
I live in NYC so LTE is all over the place and the difference between that and 3g is pretty significant. This, however, only matters if you have access to LTE networks.
Overall, I think you can't go wrong with any of the choices you are going to make.
If you live in the states, and you are on contract, the S3 is going on sale at BestBuy for $50 on Black friday (2 yr contract required). If money is an issue, I'd almost think that is a no brainer.
To be short, just go play with the phone and see which one you like best. Everyone has an opinion, everyone has their own interests in mind, so the only way to really make the right decision is to just interact with the phone yourself. You aren't going to pick the wrong phone, all 3 of the phones you are interested in are pretty damn awesome:)
Oh and lastly, Youtube! Go search on youtube for the 3 phones and watch reviews.
The size really is a big thing. This phone feels like it's the right size. The iPhone just feels...small.
And then the OS. I didn't like the built-in keyboard, so I downloaded and installed another one. Now "keyboard" is just a preference in the settings menu, and I choose which one I want.
But it's a whole lot of small things like that. Android just feels grown up, to me. iOS feels like a sandbox, like something you'd find in a school or something, or "baby's first telephone".
I think you might want to choose Nexus 4 because it's the cheapest. As I read, they have specs as close to each other. But if you think without having an LTE is a deal breaker, Nexus 4 is not a good phone for you.
If you will ask me, my answer is no. I'm living in a region / country wherein LTE is still "not there yet". I'm buying this phone because it's cheap. I don't mind the lack of LTE because it's still somewhat useless in my country.
I've found that in areas that have LTE it is a big deal. HSDPA 3G can theoretically get you 21Mbps but I've found this to hardly ever be the case. I have friends that regularly post speedtest screenshots at >35Mbps.
Also the lag on 3G is atrocious. When I'm streaming iTunes Match it's click, wait, start, pause, wait, and then start again. Apparently the ping times are much lower on LTE and this is a bigger deal (for me) than the bandwidth.
I regularly get between 16Mbps and 21Mbps on HSPA+ in my area and the latency doesn't feel particularly different between my LTE devices and my HSPA+ devices. YM, of course, MV.
In the US, what's the best kind of cellular service plans to get if you come in with an unlocked phone? I would love to get out of the 2-year contract thing.
But I have this vague understanding that a lot of the prepay, mvno, or non-contract plans don't give access to parts of the big guys networks (like roaming relationships).
I used to use the T-Mobile $30/month Monthly4G plan. You get only 100 minutes but 5gigs of HSPA+ unthrottled data. If you use the GrooveIP app or set up another SIP client, you can make calls without a problem. Latency for those calls depends on the signal strength in your area.
In my experience, GrooveIP call quality is atrocious. I tried it for a while, but at this point I just wait 'till I get to a place where I can SkypeOut or just suck it up and pay the $0.10/minute if I go over (which has only happened twice).
Straight Talk and Net 10 Sim are both great. You buy a SIM card, and then every month pay $45-50 for unlimited service. I think they use AT&T's network.
I've been using Straight Talk for a few months now with no regrets. The Nexus 4 is a good match for Straight Talk since LTE isn't available on the network (ST only provides HSPA+).
Note, the data plan isn't truly unlimited. AFAICT the company will simply terminate your account if you regularly exceed 2GB/month.
Over here in the soviet UK you can get a £10-15 pcm contract that gives you unlimited (not tethered) data and a reasonable about of other stuff, so long as you bring your own phone.
There are some subtle differences between the US (actually North America) and the rest of the world. You have probably heard how people in the US pay for incoming calls, which is true.
In the North American Numbering Plan there are no area codes for cell phones as there are in the rest of the world. Consequently a caller doesn't know if they are calling a cell phone. In almost every country in the world, calls to cell phones cost more. In the US the recipient pays the difference. Elsewhere the caller pays the difference. In the US the recipient has bulk bargaining power so those calls are cheaper than elsewhere.
So if you really wanted to compare like with like, you should compare the cost of the US contract to the cost of what callers pay plus what you pay elsewhere. Note that callers can pay a lot more elsewhere - often 10 times as much as a call to a landline. See international phone cards to get an idea.
There are two other factors. One is psychological in that US consumers are very averse to variable billed amounts, and are prepared to pay more in order to have a fixed known bill. (I once read a paper I've never been able to find about this, showing it dated back to the earliest days of phone service in the US.) You may recall hearing how local phone calls are free. They aren't - you pay a higher base price. When I moved from the UK to the US my baseline phone service price quintupled. The difference is the local calls were "free" in the US while it was a few pence a minute in the UK.
The other factor is that there was no regulation requiring certain radio technology or interoperability. While the original GSM was good, it wasn't very future proof. It divided up frequency usage into time slots which meant you had a fixed number of possible calls. It also meant neighbouring towers couldn't use the same frequency. Qualcomm came up with CDMA which was very future proof - a phone talking to a tower sees all other phones (when they transmit) as background noise. Consequently it doesn't matter how the others talked to the tower so they could advance specifications. You could also put CDMA towers further apart than GSM towers. ("3G" etc are an evolution of CDMA all over the world.)
CDMA was adopted by two of the major carriers, but because almost no one else used CDMA that meant they had to source their own phones. That lead to a model where consumers got used to getting their phones from the carrier with no alternative. New phones were really cheap or free in return for a contract of a fixed monthly amount, which included around $20 per month just to pay the remainder of the cost of the phone.
Consumers are loathe to pay the real price of phones because they have never done so before. And carriers are loathe to have bring your own phone plans because the way their financial performance is measured is by ARPU - average revenue per user. Additionally because the carrier is bulk buying phones they can squeeze the suppliers, and they can "cripple" the phones to further their own interests. Verizon has been a master at the latter - for example they disabled bluetooth phonebook syncing several years back on a phone so they could push their own over the air backup service, they pull stunts with mapping (they have their own service) and even prevented Google's Wallet from working on the Galaxy Nexus (yup, they have their own too).
So like many things American we have this unwholly complicated mess where no one is paying the real price of anything, and what is actually going on is hidden behind other things.
Amen. I brought my own smartphone to a Talkmobile (which uses the Vodafone network) £8/month plan [1], which gives me fairly good limits on calling, texting and data.
We have about 11,000 total users (half are active) and are VERY excited that the Nexus 4 and 10 both have barometers. We're looking to improve short-term, local weather prediction asap. The project is open source at http://cumulonimbus.ca
But the real reason it is there is that it speeds up getting an initial GPS fix. It provides a quick way to guess altitude, which lets it calculate where satellites should be better.
How does knowing the altitude help figure out which satellite to look for? (Are GPS receivers "directional", anyway??) GPS satellites orbit at ~20,000km; for the initial acquisition I'm surprised that receivers would care if they're 0km or 1.5km from sea level.
GPS positions you using very accurate clocks. GPS satellites are continuously broadcasting messages, where each message contains:
1) their position when the message was sent
2) the exact time when the message was sent.
With enough satellite signals (4, given that you're locating in 4 dimensions --- 3 spacial and 1 time. Note that if the GPS receiver had a very expensive clock you could locate with 3 satellites, or if you knew your exact altitude to a high level of precision as well, you can locate with just 2 satellite signals).
Now notice that if you're solving a 4 dimensional equation, you can't have two of the spatial coordinates have precisions of less than 10 meters while one of them is inaccurate to the kilometer!
In practice, if you have a "good enough" clock and a "good enough" barometer, you can hone into the approximate city, or 100 meter radius circle much faster --- after picking up just two GPS signals. And for a lot of apps, this lets them begin the initial computations quicker.
The one part I'm not sure about is whether the long time is computational, or in actually waiting until you find 4 or more signals. Maybe somebody with more experience with GPS can clarify?
The time is effectively the time to find 4 signals.
> 4, given that you're locating in 4 dimensions --- 3 spacial and 1 time.
I think your understanding is a little flawed. The time is necessary to determine the precise distance, since both you and the satellite are in motion. After the correction for that, the problem becomes locating a body in 3 dimensions based on its distance from N points. A single point gives you a sphere, and you may be located anywhere on that sphere. Two points gives you two spheres. You might be located anywhere at the intersection of those spheres (a circle.) Three points gives you three spheres. I haven't studied the geometry extensively, but Wikipedia says three spheres usually narrows it down to two points you might be at. Knowing your altitude allows you to rule out one of those two points.
"The primary purpose of the barometer is (at least, I've been told) to make GPS lockons faster. Locking on to a GPS involves numerically solving a 4-dimensional set of linear equations -- 3 dimensions in space, and time. ...
The barometer gives you a reasonable first-cut estimate for altitude."
The last Nexus phone had the same- I remember someone on HN showing off a crowd-sourced weather app they'd made. Basically, everyone added their phone to a sensor array that picked up barometric changes across the city and worked out what that meant.
Sadly, I didn't have a Nexus so I couldn't try it, but the tech is fascinating.
Yes; TMobile will sell them. The pricing will be much worse than the Play Store pricing, though (I think around $200 on contract and $600 off), so probably not actually a good idea.
The official line is there's no special relationship between Motorola and Android beyond a common owner; thus they have to bid on Nexus devices like everyone else (and so far, there's nothing to suggest otherwise). As well, there's restrictions on how companies in the middle of an acquisition can communicate, which would make a Motorola-produced Nexus this cycle particularly difficult.
The carriers get as much blame in Android's update SNAFU as the OEMs (and Google, by inaction[0]); the VZW Galaxy Nexus demonstrates this.
[0] While Google could have taken a stronger stance on Android re: updates, I don't think they've ever been in a good position to do so. Early days, carriers would have balked and Android would die; now, they'd just fork and Android becomes the next BREW.
In my case the OEM is to blame as it is only company I can associate my phone with (bought it without a contract in a store). So it probably depends from whom you bought the phone and under what conditions.
It does not have a removable battery? I consider this as an important feature me that I spend lots of hours outside the office. Also ejecting some mass when the phone drops is always a good thing. Two broken Iphones on my drawer say so.
It's not a "removable" batter, but it is easy to replace with the correct Torx screwdriver. That doesn't help in your two scenarios, but it will be useful if you want to keep your phone significantly longer than the 3 year half-life of lithium batteries.
I don't get it, so I need someone to explain something to me. How can the iPhone consistently blow everything else away in performance AND battery life, despite having a smaller battery and seemingly lesser processor. I understand that Apple had a time advantage by getting into the touchscreen smartphone game first but how has nobody caught up yet? I am a huge Nexus fanboy but it seems that the IPhone is objectively faster and more efficient, even with googles full efforts to keep up.
You'll notice they are very strict about background processing in applications and the usage of battery draining things such as GPS or cellular data. This helps battery life significantly. Google didn't start prioritizing view smoothness and efficiency until android 3 or 4.
The OS & apps are pretty much pure C from the ground up, with an objective-c application layer. The entire view system (Core Animation) is GPU accelerated with OpenGL from day one.
Objective-C on iOS does not have a GC, so apps are generally faster and more responsive with manual memory management. Many apps can drop into pure C or C++ to improve performance easily.
All of these performance choices give you a faster phone for less processor.
A slower processor also tends to use less energy too. Battery size is a pure weight/size vs capacity tradeoff.
It's also worth noting that Apple have been refining their power management code/chips for many, many years, so it's likely better than anything Google have come up with in the last couple of years.
Yes it is impressive. The iPhone engineers critically have done great work with the performance/power consumption of their CPU and their power management in the OS. They're also using a fantastic baseband which is extremely lower efficient on LTE it seems. Lastly the screen area of the iPhone is quite a lot smaller which does account for some of the iPhones lower power usage.
Month to month plans are not nearly as good or cheap in the US as they are in Europe. I've been doing a lot of investigation about this and it's frustrating because I want to buy a new unlocked phone here in the US but it's almost not worth it here because you still have to buy some absurdly expensive plan.
In Germany I was able to buy a 20 euro a month data only plan for my iPhone and I was perfectly happy.
I ended up ordering the iPhone 5 on Verizon at the subsidized rate ($300) and stuck it on my dad's Verizon account for $30 a month (cheapest data plan only) and then when I go back to Germany later next year I'll just cancel it and try to get out of paying the early termination fee. Even if I have to pay the fee it's only $350 which, added with the initial price of the phone, is the same price as out-of-contract iPhone 5.
There are both cheaper plans available and you won't be locked in for 2 years. Both, combined, are worth more than the ~$300-$400 phone subsidy over two years that the telco provides.
That's changed, unfortunately. Their "Value Plans" now also require a two year contract. They have no contract plans, but they are pricier than the contracted Value Plans. I was pissed to learn of this change when I wanted to switch to a plan that would allow tethering (I have the old G1 plan, which is unlimited data, but won't allow addition of tethering, and they shut down my ability to tether with the native tethering app or third party apps). Since I paid full price for a Sensation 4G less than a year before, in order to avoid a contract, it's pretty darned frustrating. And, let's be honest, T-Mobile is not a great network.
How did they shut down third party apps? I'm technically not supposed to be able to tether on Sprint, but I can run PDANet or FoxFi to tether over USB or bluetooth anyway, on a non-rooted phone.
They monitor traffic, I assume. I have historically used both PDAnet and FoxFi among others...all get shut down within a few minutes, and I receive a text telling me to sign up for tethering service. I'll try it again after rooting the phone, to rule out simply detecting all the common tethering apps, but I'm guessing they're detecting NATted traffic or similar.
I'm considering picking up a Nexus 4, rather than bothering with rooting and re-imaging the Sensation. I don't really like the Sensation, though all the problems I have with it could be due to software. It's a custom build with Sense, which I really don't like.
Anyway, it's a new phenomenon. I was tethering on T-Mobile for years without trouble. About two months ago, they started shutting it down after a few minutes of use, and redirecting all traffic to their T-Mobile site upgrade page.
While it may disappoint many people who just want the best at any price, you can't ignore the fact that the N4 is half the price of other phones in its class. The price really is the killer feature of this phone.
I suspect there is lots of demand out there for this phone amongst regular folk. No want likes being chained to a carrier and everybody likes getting a great deal. I told my sister (non techie) about it and her eyes popped. She's very very excited about it.