From SGS3 to Nexus 4 to SGS3

Posted by Plectrum78 on January 5, 2013 09:19 pm 37

So here's my story.... This is a warning to anyone thinking of making a similar switch.

I bought an S3 a day or two after launch. I absolutely loved it - TWUX was miles better than TW4, I liked the screen, the camera was awesome and I loved having all my media sitting on an external SD. It was also the first phone where I didn't feel like I needed to flash CM on.

Then the Nexus 4 got announced, and I got caught up in the hype....

I pretty much sold the S3 on ebay for the N4 release, and eventually got one a week or so ago.

and now I've just bought another S3 and sold the N4.

This is what I didn't like about the Nexus 4:

  • The camera. I don't care what anyone says but it all out sucks. It's not even close to good. If you've used an iPhone 4S/5 or S3, prepare to be hugely underwhelmed. I understand that it can't have all the best parts due to it's low price. I took side by side pics with an S3 and I honestly thought the Nexus was faulty. However, I checked out the 'post your N4 pics here' thread on XDA and realised that it wasn't broken. This seems to be a software balls up to me.... the Nexus was picking ridiculous ISOs and Shutter speeds resulting in mush.
  • Battery life. Put bluntly, it stinks. After much tweaking and flashing a custom kernel, I managed to get it to idle nicely. However start using it, do anything remotely demanding and watching the battery life plummet. I don't feel I should have to flash a custom kernel to get reasonable battery life. I also had to disable Google Now and location history, which sucked.
  • Storage. I was well aware that I was buying a phone with 16GB of non expandable memory. My main beef with this was how I was going to handle music. I decided to use Google Music and it seemed like the best way, however it has some huge problems when pinning music - it 1) takes forever 2)downloads at the highest bitrate - why do this on a phone which such limited storage? I have to pin music as most of my listening time is in areas with unstable or no cellular signal.
What did I like about the Nexus?
  • Build quality/appearance. This phone is sexy as hell and feels super high end in your hands. I put it on par with iPhones, no joke.
  • The screen. It is REALLY nice.
  • Speed. It's stupid fast, I could play vice city, nova etc all maxed out and it flew. The OS is as fluid as can be. Lag is totally non existent.
What bought me back to the S3:
  • The camera (I also miss features like burst mode)
  • Solid 24 hour battery run with everything on and syncing.
  • I can stick my 20GB of music on an external card.
  • Awesome sound quality. The wolfson DACs are top notch.
So if anyone is thinking of switching, have a good think about it.......