Why I Love My Nexus 4

Ok, so let’s leave aside the fact that it comes unlocked, thereby allowing me to save close to $1k a year in cell phone service charges. That’s the easy part.

Now, here’s why the Nexus 4 is the best phone I’ve ever owned and why it just may be the best phone on the market.

1. Speed-talk about ludicrous speed. I finally have a phone that is as fast as I am. Switching, responsive. Beautiful.
2. Battery life—I was worried about this coming in, having had a number of devices that give you 6 or 8 hours. Now, I routinely get 13, 14, even 17 hours on one charge. Yep, insane. Sure, I’ll turn off GPS, Bluetooth, etc., and I do switch to wi-fi when I’m in the house instead of cellular data, but whatever…that’s a ton of time.
3. Google Wallet—I actually used my phone to buy a coffee the other day at the train station. Automatically charged my credit card and receipt is stored on the phone. Wicked cool.
4. The camera…you can do all the usual stuff. Panoramas, take snapshots while doing a video, but now they have this 360 degree view (they call it Photo Sphere) and you can take huge vista shots (sample, sort of, below)
5. Voice recognition/search…it just works really well.
6. Google integration…obvious, but critical for Google Docs, Google Voice for me.
7. Facial recognition security. You just look at the camera and it recognizes your face to unlock the phone (ok, so this doesn’t work all the time, but it’s still neat).
8. Data speed—people were complaining about no 4G LTE support. Frankly, I think it’s all marketing hooey. I have an HSPA+ connection and its plenty fast.
9. Oh, and it’s unlocked, so I can make the phone a hot spot for my other devices.
10. Ease of use and intuitive. Just across the board.
11. Top of the line OS—straight from Google with no extra stuff layered on by a cell phone provider or service company.
12. Wireless charging…ok, I haven’t used this, but I’m on the lookout.
13. Integration with, well, everything…including Exchange. Finally, Android is mega-ready for primetime.

Now, I’m no Apple-hater, I have 2 iPads, but the flexibility and horsepower of this device…I’ll take it head to head on an iPhone 5 any day.

I joke with my kids that I can’t decide if I love them or the phone more. (Don’t tell them it’s a joke please).

It took a lot of effort to get this phone, but it was worth it.