Alright, I'll be blunt about this. I love this phone. Even with its 720p display and S4 Pro processor, I found day to day performance to be spot on. Tasks such as watching video streaming, gaming, music streaming, and phone calls were excellent. However, the difference with the Nexus 4 is the Nexus 4 is powered by the Adreno 320 GPU vs the Adreno 220 GPU found in the HTC One X and LTE Samsung Galaxy S3. But what does that mean? Well, over the years Android has grown up to use hardware acceleration and using the GPU for more tasks. So having a powerful mobile GPU is starting to pay off with this phone. Don't believe me? Download your choice of custom ROM on either of the devices I've mentioned and compare them to a Nexus 4 (Or device with S4 Pro chipset) and set the Nexus 4 to use only two of its cores. Notice the difference yet? See, the animations in 5.x.x Lollipop feel a bit heavier than 4.4. Thus, a faster GPU being needed to render these animations. But enough about the GPU. Let's get on to why I still use this phone.
With this being 2015, cellular networks have changed quite a bit. The Nexus 4 has support for GSM/WCDMA and LTE unofficially. While this maybe appealing, let's actually get into why this phone may not work for you. I've been using this phone in the United States on T-Mobile, while I found no connectivity problems, your usage may actually vary. For LTE the Nexus 4 only offers unofficial connectivity on AWS (Band 4), while this maybe a limitation for AT&T customers outside of AWS who want a slice of LTE pie, it will be more than enough for a T-Mobile user who lives in a AWS LTE covered area. But why didn't I mention UMTS/HSPA? For the most part, UMTS/HSPA seems to be congested in most of the areas I've tested and it isn't better on PCS either. But don't let my mileage stop you! Since I'm using T-Mobile in Columbus, Ohio the spectrum offerings are PCS EDGE 5 Mhz, PCS HSPA 10 Mhz (DC-HSPA), AWS HSPA 5 Mhz (21.1 Megabit downlink), and AWS 15 Mhz of LTE. While 15 Mhz is being used for HSPA, it is still less spectrum efficient than LTE. Enough of this LTE talk. For anyone who wants to use this device on AT&T, you will most likely be restricted to HSPA+, which is enough for most users. Wi-Fi however is a different situation. The Nexus 4 supports A/B/G/N. However, the Nexus 4 only has support for 20 Mhz wide channels. But what does that mean? Simply put the Nexus 4's maximum link speed is limited to 72 Mbps. Let me remind you how different this is to other devices. The HTC One X can have a maximum link speed of 150 Mbps. But to sum of connectivity, I'd personally recommend using T-Mobile if you need LTE. However, this isn't to discount AT&T and their unparalleled coverage to T-Mobile. Also, The Nexus 4 will not be able to have LTE in some areas where T-Mobile is going from 2G-LTE. Quite a few sources say this upgrade entirely skips HSPA+ and uses Band 2 for LTE, which the Nexus 4 does not have.
For ROM and kernel I've decided to use Franco Kernel and Chroma ROM. With this being a Nexus device, the developer support for it is almost unimaginable. So I needed something to put on it and those were the two I've seen first. Performance is no lose for the Nexus 4. No sort of slow downs ever on this device. Also, given that in Android 5.1 ART has also seen a significant improvement in application launch speeds and performance means this device won't skip a beat. But, this isn't to discredit any other devices, it is with its flaws. For example, navigating in applications mean in settings can be a little irritating dealing with some unsmooth scrolling and long loading times. However, if you previously used a device with a faster chipset, the performance gap will be noticeable. Another thing to consider is the phones LPDRR2 RAM, which is slower than newer devices and consumes more power. But that didn't stop my Nexus 4 from leaping through task switching. So how can it do it? One of the biggest key factors why the Nexus 4 can still be usable in 2015 is the Quad Core processor and 2 GB of RAM. Even if the device isn't using that RAM, it still makes task switching and multitasking possible. Processor wise the Nexus 4's 4 Krait 200 cores seem a bit puny to today's standards in benchmarks. But this is why benchmarks only show how future proof a device is to an extent. See, my philosophy on benchmarks is that they show how long the device can be operable with the latest OS until the performance is unbearable. With that being said, the Nexus 4 is not the strongest in benchmarks, which is fine.
As a general synopsis, I love this phone. However, some things I did not mention were the camera and battery life. Both are equally poor. Also, the testing on this device was done with a Nexus 4 Rev 11 model in black. So will I recommend you pick this device up? Maybe, but as a device to give to your kids or to someone who is entering the world of smart phones? Yes. The Nexus 4 3 years later is still an excellent performer and I see that continuing through 2016.
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