Mike Adams Live: Nexus 5: Past, present and future

Friday, December 12, 2014

Nexus 5: Past, present and future

A year on — and with an all-new version of Android — how does Google's 5-inch handset measure up?

I've used the Nexus 5 — Google and LG's last Nexus collaboration — on and off for the past year. The phone never quite managed to become my daily driver, mainly due to underwhelming battery life and the arrival of newer, shinier things in the earlier part of the year. Regardless, the N5 has never been too far from my side. This summer it was the first phone to get a sneak peek at Lollipop through the "Android L" preview, and it was among the first to get Android 5.0 proper last month.

Unlike previous years, Google's keeping the older Nexus handset around for the time being, selling it alongside the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 at the same price point it launched at in November 2013. (Though Play Store availability remains sporadic.) So the Nexus 5 isn't quite dead yet. But how does it compare to other handsets running Android 5.0? Is it still worth the money twelve months on? And might we see another smaller Nexus handset in 2015? Read on for our take on the Nexus 5, twelve months on.