The Android Dairies, Part 2: The Nexus 5

(Author’s Note: This is the second part of a series of posts looking at Android from an iOS product person’s point of view)

What you’re getting

The Nexus 5 is a decent (not amazing) phone that is ideal for taking a look at the Android experience Google wants you to have. The price is definitely right (you can buy two 32GB Nexus 5’s for the price of one iPhone 5s).

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The hardware is nice enough, the screen is decent, but colours aren’t quite as vibrant as the iPhone display. The internals are fast enough to get a good idea of what a modern Android phone is capable of.

What you’re not getting

It’s worth bearing in mind that most Android users will have much slower devices running a significantly different operating system. The Nexus 5 offers Google’s ideal version of Android — your users will most likely be running a slightly older version of Android with heavily customized UIs. A typical Samsung Galaxy has a different app launcher, different multitasking shortcut and comes with an entirely different range of default apps. It’s easy to make assumptions about your user’s devices in an iOS app, but you need to be much more cautious on Android.

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Minor issues

The camera is mediocre and battery life so far hasn’t been that great.

So that’s the Nexus 5 – a pretty affordable device to get if you want to seriously explore what Android has to offer in 2013. If you’re looking for something more low-end, the new Moto G is also worth checking out.