The year has almost come to a close and while there might not be much on the horizon before 2014, two of the most exciting handsets of the year only recently launched. We’re talking, of course, about the Apple iPhone 5S and the Google Nexus 5, the flagship Apple and Android handsets respectively. They both have a lot going for them but which one is the best?
The Google Nexus 5 has a polycarbonate back, which is disappointing given that the Nexus 4 had an eye catching glass back. It’s not all bad news though as the Nexus 5 is soft and comfortable in the hand and it has ceramic buttons which go some way to making it feel like a premium device.
Its dimensions of 137.9 x 69.2 x 8.6mm mean that it has a fairly average sized body for a 5 inch phone, though it’s not as slim as some of the competition. At 130g it’s slightly lighter than the Nexus 4, despite being bigger. That’s presumably down to the plastic build, but it’s a good thing in any case.
The iPhone 5S (above) easily trumps the Nexus 5 for build quality. It’s clad in metal and at 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6mm it’s impressively slim too. Despite the metal build it’s also quite light at just 112g.
The Google Nexus 5 has a 4.95 inch 1080 x 1920 True HD IPS+ display with a pixel density of 445 pixels per inch. It’s certainly very high resolution then but it’s not quite as vibrant or bright as some other phone displays, such as the one on the iPhone 5S.
Beyond being bright and vibrant, the iPhone 5S display is 4 inches and has a resolution of 640 x 1136, for a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch. It’s both smaller and lower resolution than the Nexus 5 display, but overall we’d say it’s slightly higher quality.
The Google Nexus 5 has a 2.3 GHz 32 bit quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor and 2GB of RAM, plus it runs the latest version of Android (Android 4.4 KitKat) and will be first in line for future updates. It’s very powerful; in fact it’s probably the most powerful Android phone this side of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.
The Apple iPhone 5S has a 1.3 GHz 64 bit dual-core Apple A7 processor and 1GB of RAM. That might sound a lot worse but being 64 bit can make all the difference, plus iOS 7 runs better on low end hardware than Android does, so in practice the performance of these two phones should be fairly similar. Both are very powerful and you’re not likely to notice any real world difference.
The Google Nexus 5 (above) has an 8 megapixel main camera with optical image stabilisation. It also has a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera and can shoot 1080p video at 30fps. While those are some reasonable specs for a mid range device they’re starting to look a bit lacking for a flagship phone, particularly considering that last year’s Nexus 4 also had an 8 megapixel camera.
Megapixels aren’t everything of course, but in practice the Nexus 5 doesn’t impress. It can take photos of reasonable quality if the lighting conditions are good, but they’re not going to blow you away.
The iPhone 5S also has an 8 megapixel camera and serves as proof that there’s more to life than megapixels because it’s actually capable of capturing some impressively detailed and blur free images. Rounding out the camera specs it has a dual-LED True Tone flash, a 1.2 megapixel front facing camera and can shoot 1080p video at 30fps.
Neither phone exactly showcases the full potential of smartphone cameras, but of the two the iPhone 5S is by far the best for photography.
The Google Nexus 5 has a 2300 mAh battery with a promised life of up to 300 hours in standby or 17 hours of calls. The Apple iPhone 5S has a 1560 mAh battery which can manage up to 250 hours of standby or 10 hours of calls, so the Nexus 5 wins this category.
The Google Nexus 5 comes with a choice of 16 or 32GB of internal storage and as is standard with Nexus devices there’s no micro SD card slot. The iPhone 5S doesn’t have a micro SD card slot either but it has a slightly wider selection of storage options, giving you a choice of 16, 32 or 64GB of onboard memory.
The Nexus 5 supports Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC, while the iPhone 5S supports all of the same connectivity options except for NFC.
While both of these handsets are superb a winner has emerged and it’s the iPhone 5S. It has a better build quality than the Google Nexus 5, a higher quality display, a better camera and more potential storage.
It’s not a total victory as the Nexus 5 has a bigger screen, roughly matches it for power, has a bigger battery and NFC support, but the iPhone 5S comes out on top in more areas.
So the iPhone 5S is a better phone. But it’s not as simple as that, because one runs Android 4.4 and the other runs iOS 7- two very different operating systems which make more difference than specs alone ever could.
Then there’s the fact that the Nexus 5 is substantially cheaper, starting at £299, compared to a bank breaking £549 for the iPhone 5S. With that in mind the Nexus 5 is far better value, so if cost is an issue it’s the phone to go for.
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