This or the Droid 4?

[kross]

Greetings. I am considering jumping on the Nexus ship, but I am currently undecided between this and the Droid 4. The main reason I am looking at the 4 is because of the awesome keyboard, but I'm not sure if that's worth giving up the awesome screen of the Nexus for.

So basically, I had a few questions before I go ahead with the Nexus.

1. For starters, how decent is the battery life on the Nexus? I've seen so many different opinions on this subject. I'd consider myself a moderate user, and I don't really have 4G where I live (although my area is getting it by summer). I'm coming from a Droid X btw.

2. One of my other concerns is lag on this phone. When I used it at Verizon, the keyboard seemed extremely laggy when using it in landscape mode. I was wondering if there are any permanent fixes for this? I also noticed that whenever the screen was turned in landscape mode it took a solid 1-3 seconds for the phone to even recognize the rotation. Is this something that will be fixed/can be fixed?

3. What's your honest opinion on the phone's camera?

Also, just FYI I have some experience with rooting/roms (my Droid X is rooted, and running a rom) in case that matters.

Thanks for the responses.

 

[dguy]

Battery life is decent. It all depends on how you configure it with things like how bright you leave the screen, how many and which radios you have running, and how much you actually use the device. With the way I have mine set up I can do 8 hours of mp3 playback at work and about 1 hour of web browsing time with a total unplugged time of about 11 hours and use half of the official extended(2100mah) battery.

The landscape keyboard lag and the rotation lag is something that is going to be fixed in a software update.

The camera on the phone is decent. It's not great but it is better than the camera on any of the recent Motorola phones(Razr, Razr Maxx, Droid 4, Bionic). The Rezound has the best camera of any Verizon phone in terms of pure image quality if that is key for you. The main thing that stands out about the Nexus camera is it is exceptionally fast; almost completely unheard of for an Android device how fast it takes pictures.

 

[quiklives]

Greetings. I am considering jumping on the Nexus ship, but I am currently undecided between this and the Droid 4. The main reason I am looking at the 4 is because of the awesome keyboard, but I'm not sure if that's worth giving up the awesome screen of the Nexus for.

So basically, I had a few questions before I go ahead with the Nexus.

1. For starters, how decent is the battery life on the Nexus? I've seen so many different opinions on this subject. I'd consider myself a moderate user, and I don't really have 4G where I live (although my area is getting it by summer). I'm coming from a Droid X btw.

You're going to keep finding different opinions about this because it seems to vary wildly. Since you mention rooting/ROMs below, I would suggest that you choose a custom ROM and kernel, or install the stock rooted 4.0.4 update, to improve your battery life dramatically. In my case, I think I had a bad standard battery because when I bought the extended, it improved far more than the different in capacity can account for. (The extended is 13% bigger, but my battery life nearly doubled)

2. One of my other concerns is lag on this phone. When I used it at Verizon, the keyboard seemed extremely laggy when using it in landscape mode. I was wondering if there are any permanent fixes for this? I also noticed that whenever the screen was turned in landscape mode it took a solid 1-3 seconds for the phone to even recognize the rotation. Is this something that will be fixed/can be fixed?

I've definitely seen some suggestions for fixing the keyboard lag, I think it has something to do with turning off autocorrect somewhere (Because somehow there are two instances of autocorrect running), but I've been using the hacked version of Swype pretty much since I got the phone.

Even on stock, I didn't have the same trouble with rotation delay, but running the AOKP ROM I can set a custom delay. So yes, all of these issues are software, and can be fixed either by custom ROMs or future updates.

3. What's your honest opinion on the phone's camera?

Also, just FYI I have some experience with rooting/roms (my Droid X is rooted, and running a rom) in case that matters.

Thanks for the responses.

I haven't had any trouble with the camera at all. I came from a Droid X as well, and I don't think this camera is any worse than that one was. I think a lot of the problems people are having with this one are user error...

dguy is right, it's crazy fast, but when you use that feature, you sacrifice quality a bit. You can tap on the screen to choose your focus point, and those pictures turn out better.

Hope all this helps!

 

[kross]

Thanks for the replies! I'm thinking I am just going to go ahead and take the plunge, and hope that the major issue I have with it (the keyboard lag/screen rotation lag) will be fixable through roms/updates.

 

[nackles]

I have used the Swype keyboard from
Evo => Epic => Nexus S 4g => Galaxy Nexus
I feel like I can't go back to a stock setup.