Gadgetory

the Nexus 5 looks to sit among the best smartphones in the market today however how does it really fare against one of the top dogs in the game age Josh regard from Android 30 what's going on everybody and this is a look at the Nexus 5 versus the Samsung Galaxy s4 as we start off with design you can pretty much guess where the beginning of this battle will go yes it is a battle of material choices the Samsung Galaxy s4 actually sits in what can be considered a bygone era it was back in a time when glossy plastic was pretty much what we expected from Samsung no matter what device they put out however the material does make the phone very fingerprint prone and it could slip about pretty easily in your hand as the s4 did come out within the craze of the 5-inch screen it is nice to see that it was one of the easiest to handle especially at the time of its release fast-forward some time and we get the Nexus 5 sporting a four point nine five inch screen this phone is just about as big as the footprint of the s4 however it is actually just as light despite having a different material choice in the black version of the Nexus 5 it employs soft touch plastic which gives it a very nice feel and a little bit more grip when you use in your hand the Nexus 5 takes some cues from the Nexus 7 tablet of 2013 making some pretty minimalistic design choices on its back once you get the phone's in your hand you find that the handling is pretty much the same either way as far as looks go it is a very subjective matter however I will say this I don't find that many people who argue for glossy plastic these days anymore the Samsung Galaxy s4 comes with a 5-inch screen at 1080p resolution and 441 pixels per inch now being a Super AMOLED display it is pretty much expected that the colors will be pretty highly saturated but the good thing about the Galaxy s4 is that you can customize the color motif so you can tone that down if you really need to it was one of the best 5 inch screens available in the beginning and until now it is still one of the better performing however LG is no stranger when it comes to good display quality especially after the great display found in the LG g2 this four point nine five inch screen is also capable of 1080p resolution and comes in at 445 pixels per inch now it is an IPS screen which means it does get pretty typically high brightness the Nexus 5 screen however we will say is a little bit less in terms of its performance when compared to the LG g2 which is the phone supposedly it is based off of it is still really great and definitely holds up against the galaxy s4 pretty much you can have your pic here as either display will give you great performance especially if you enjoy the higher saturation of Super AMOLED and that's great the Nexus 5 on the other hand will give you reliable performance no matter what you throw on that screen the Samsung Galaxy s4 is the older device so as is pretty typical it does lose the edge in the performance aspect however the s4 comes with the Snapdragon 600 which at the time of its release was one of the fastest processors available it is clocked in at 1.9 gigahertz and is backed by the e3 no 320 now this is not a bad performance package by any means and is still actually one of the most reliable you can get on a smartphone today I still found very minimal lag in the TouchWiz of the Samsung Galaxy s4 and to be fair even if that lag was there it didn't hinder from my overall experience nonetheless the Samsung Galaxy s4 even all the way to today is still a pretty reliable phone and provides a good experience of course with the newer Nexus 5 we get the updated Snapdragon 800 clocked in at 2.3 gigahertz and backed by the aged arena 330 now this is the fastest processing package available on a smartphone today and it definitely powers the minimalistic Android 4.4 KitKat beautifully yes Android KitKat will blaze through all of its elements and there's no doubt that the Nexus 5 is one of the fastest and smoothest experiences available on a smartphone currently while empirically the Nexus 5 will be faster because of its higher processing power I will say that the Samsung Galaxy s4 still remains a very reliable competitor and with that in mind despite the Nexus 5's Android 4.4 KitKat providing a very seamless Android experience that doesn't mean that you won't be able to get the same tasks done in a good time with the s4 it is in the hardware department that we might start to see some disparity the Nexus line is not necessarily known for having a lot of bells and whistles in its smartphones and it's tablets and the Nexus 5 is pretty much no different the 16 or 32 gigabytes of on-board storage is not expandable for example and after that we have the usual bevy of connections however what the Nexus 5 does boast at least compared to which predecessor is full LTE support also there is qi wireless charging available on the Nexus 5 out of the box which is a really nice feature to have however when it comes to the battery it is a 2,300 milliamp hour unit that was supposed to power a minimalistic Android 4.4 KitKat unfortunately the battery life is probably the weakest point when it comes to the Nexus 5 anything more than average usage will get you results that you probably won't be very happy with compare that to the Galaxy s4 which does come with a larger 2600 milliamp hour unit but has one very important trait the fact that it is removable yes you can have spare batteries so that power is never far away when you need it however when you go deeper into the galaxy s4 we find even more that it is capable of that's because a myriad of sensors provides the galaxy s4 with a bunch of extra functions aside from the general smartphone experience that includes air views air gestures smart scroll even an IR blaster for controlling your TV it's just a matter of whether or not those extras are for you if you don't need all of that other stuff perhaps the Nexus 5 is a much better value because it gets back to the essentials and it does them all very well and in the camera Department will probably see even more disparity pretty simply put the Nexus line has quite a ways to go when it comes to its camera optics this a megapixel shooter does come with optical image stabilization which allows it to flood even more light in for low-light shots however when it comes to most other shots we see that the colour production does leave quite a bit to be desired this can be remedied by having hdr+ on and a lot of users might just end up having hdr+ on all the time to compensate for this its pictures are just vastly better when it comes to OIS however it does provide a very good performing low-light shooter it will allow you to get a shot even in pretty dark conditions however the picture that comes out the other side may still lack some of the quality like we were saying before it's no secret that Samsung threw in so many new options in their camera for the s4 that you pretty much have nothing but choices when it comes to your smartphone photography it is in the picture quality that the s4 truly does excel as it does provide very good color production in plenty of its pictures without the OIS however it's low-light performance does leave a little bit to be desired so that's where the Nexus 5 can definitely have a point in its column it's pretty hard not to give the s4 the edge here but it does make us think what would a camera with the s4 performance look like with optical image stabilization perhaps no word was used more for the Samsung Galaxy s4 UI then practicality yes practicality is the question when it comes to this version of TouchWiz which provides a lot of new navigation features in its general UI however it is pretty much agreed that TouchWiz is in need of a pretty big refresh not only has the pretty bloated UI been used in a bunch of different devices it could use a pretty different look at this point however Samsung focused on functionality when it came to its newer versions of its operating system and in that regard it does somewhat succeed however is it all useful that's the question that we still sort of asked even to today when it comes to the Nexus Google frequently goes back to its roots and that's search when it comes to its newest iterations of Android and for Google now it took center stage when it came to Android 4.4 KitKat the highly contextual and also very good performing Google now has been given much more integration in the newest version of Android 4.4 KitKat and in this case it means it is a second homescreen found now all the way on the left and with all of the other optimizations put into Android 4.4 KitKat the performance and experience of Android has been taken to 11 all in all the Samsung Galaxy s4 packs a lot more features on top of an already pretty good smartphone experience however when it comes to those features it may not be a master of any one of those things meanwhile the stock Android experience continues to get better and Google focuses on particular and specific skill sets when it comes to its Nexus smartphone line and in that regard it arguably does so a great success the Samsung Galaxy s4 after some time has a price that has come down to around $500 or more which is actually not a bad price considering all that it is capable of and that it is still a pretty reliable smartphone to have on the other hand the Nexus 4 comes in at the base price of 349 dollars and considering everything that it is capable of I do think that that is quite this deal however in this comparison we might see that it is another situation of you pay for what you get and in the case of the Samsung Galaxy s4 it does provide some features that the Nexus 5 simply cannot that includes a removable battery that also lasts longer a much better camera and expandable storage but it pretty much comes down to this whether or not all of those extras in the galaxy s4 whether useful or not are enough to sway you from what could be one of the best Android experiences available today in the end that's a call that you will have to make as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this comparison of the Nexus 5 and the galaxy s4 keep it tuned to Android authority for all of the best coverage you can follow us on social media all of our Google+ links are found in the description below and if you want to see what I'm up to from time to time you can follow me on social media as well usually under the name Josh salutes if you want to see the full reviews for either of these devices they are found in links right over on the side drop us some likes on our videos and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already don't forget to share our videos from time to time as well because Android authority is your source for all things Android