[primo44]

No Android 7 on my Nexus 5 might just be what pushes me to iOS. I've gone from being an Android evangelist to being an Android apologist ("Yeah, battery life sucks. Google has failed to fix it after X years") to now being, frankly, pissed off that my expensive phone is going to be left behind.

[luma]

> my expensive phone is going to be left behind.

You bought a $350 phone and received updates for 3 years. I think you're in for a surprise when you price out a new iPhone.

[bicx]

This. Battery life on my Nexus 6P is just fine, at least equal to my friends with their iPhone 6 Pluses. My Note 4 also had solid battery life before that. For the most part, modern Android phones are much better than their predecessors in terms of battery. The UX is also quite nice as well.

[adamors]

The iPhone SE is similarly priced and iOS devices receive updates for more than 3 years. iPhone 5 for instance got and runs fine iOS 9, 4 years after release.

[andrewblossom]

The Nexus 5 (16gb - $349, 32gb - $399) was released nearly three years ago for a fraction of the price of the comparable iPhone at the time (iPhone 5s: 16gb - $649, 32gb - $749). I think you got a hell of a deal. Upgrade to the 5x for another $350 be happy with another few years of support. Or wait for the new Nexus phones to come out this fall...

[mscrivo]

The only thing I'd add here is that unfortunately the Nexus 5x is not an upgrade over the 5 in terms of performance. It might even be a downgrade (I own both). Because the 5x uses a 64-bit arch, it uses more RAM than the 5x (and both only have 2GB). Also, the SD808 (2GHz) cores in the 5x are hardly a step up from the SD800 (2.2GHz) cores. The only real upgrade the 5x gives you is the camera.

[blisterpeanuts]

The Nexus 5X has no wireless inductive charging. My nice little Yootech charger sitting on my desk is useless with my wife's 5X. Those cool "charging tables" at Starbucks and other such places are suddenly useless, as well.

Also, 5X uses the USB-C connector, so you have to update all your cables and adapters on your desk and in your car. A real pain. When you're out in the world and need a charge-up, you'd better be carrying a USB-C cable, because no one else will have one.

I consider the 5X a side-grade and not of any particular value if you already have a 5. The 6P is at least a larger handset with a larger battery so it's got that going for it.

[pavanky]

> Nexus 5

> Expensive phone

Really ? That phone costed less than half of what an iphone costs and you can easily get a well supported ROM if you wish to.

Granted the situation sucks, but Google has been upfront about their support timeline.

[benzor]

FWIW, I've deliberately kept my Nexus 5 on Android 4.4.4 and it runs as well as the first day I bought it 2.5 years ago. Multi-day battery life, no compatibility issues (because no OS updates), all the latest apps still run on it, etc. Not to mention it was an affordable phone even when it was brand new. Very happy with it overall; I can easily see it lasting me another few years.

[Maultasche]

There has to be some nasty security vulnerabilities lurking on that phone. There have been a lot of security patches to Android over the past 2.5 years to fix various exploits. I'm sure it does run great, but I would personally be uncomfortable missing out on so many security fixes.

I don't pay a lot of attention to the Android OS, but I do recall there was a nasty exploit discovered about a year ago (called Stagefright) where a specially-crafted text message with a picture or image can cause malicious code to be run on the phone the moment the phone receives the message.

[david-given]

I have an Android ADP1 --- one of the original development phones, the HTC Dream with the custom paint job. It's got 192MB of RAM and a single-core 528MB ARM11. It ran Cupcake, aka Android 1.5 (although I've since upgraded it to,

If you ignore the hilarious security bugs --- like the fact that, as shipped, they forgot to disconnect the keyboard from a root shell, so that if you typed 'reboot' into an email hilarious things happened --- it actually runs rather well; it's smooth and perfectly satisfactory to use.

...holy crap Cupcake would run well on a modern phone.

[tdkl]

Classic "don't fix it if it ain't broken". How have you manage to disable the System update annoyance ?

Shitty Lollipop made me sell the Nexus 5 last year with its bad battery life and memory leak (and they still didn't fix the mobile radio wakelock), but when downgrading to 4.4 it was next to impossible to block the notification. I remember methods used at time just caused the Google Play Services to hold the wakelock, since the update checker became a part of it.

[jdc0589]

That phone was eons better than my 5x, and cheaper. Only got rid of it due to physical damage.

I'm really not impressed with the Nexus 5x at all compared to every other Nexus phone Ive had (2 others), both from a price and general performance perspective.

[plttn]

The alternative is the iOS update process, which has the result of non-techies complaining that their iPhone 4 is now slow after the update, and the techies they know pleading with them not to update even though the number gets bigger.

[xorcist]

Another alternative would be to keep releasing security updates. If open source projects can manage more than three years support, it's not out of the question for Google to do it, at least for the major versions.

[saint_fiasco]

Do old versions of iOS receive security updates?

[telesilla]

Unfortunately this also forces me away from the Nexus family. I just can't handle the size of the Nexus 6 - being a fairly petite female a large phone is just unwieldy. I'm not sure the phone developers ever take physical size into consideration. If anyone can recommend a small replacement phone that supports running the original Android OS instead of a OEMified mess?

[codedinosaur]

The Nexus 5x should be great for you. It's a 5-inch screen and may have a couple more years of new Android versions left in it. Or better yet, wait for the new Nexus phones set to be released this year. Should add another year of Android support from Google.

[ewoodrich]

The Nexus 6(p) is the phablet line. The Nexus 5(x) is a normal form factor.

I've owned both the 5 and 6, it's definitely a matter of preference. The Nexus 5x would probably be closer to what you are looking for.

[stormbeta]

Between the volatile battery life and Android OEMs almost entirely abandoning the non-phablet market, I'm about ready to move to iOS as well.

I still think Android's UX blows iOS out of the water these days, but the best UX in the world doesn't help me if the phone is dead, or too big to use one-handed on the go.

[iwintermute]

khm, expensive? IIRC nexus 5 had great hardware for it's price.

[Grazester]

Indeed. The Nexus 5 was not expensive relative to the iOS devices he is consider getting. 3 years worth of updates was just about worth the device's price.

On another note I hated the Nexus 5 and that LCD screen always felt washed out!

[Shorel]

Heh, I just upgraded my Nexus 5 to Android 6 this week.

Been in 4.4 for ages, after testing the awful battery life of Android 5 and going back.

I find the battery life in 6 be about the same as 4.4, after installing xposed framework and Amplify & Greenify modules.

Besides a change in colors from dark to white, and the new lock screen notifications that I'm still thinking about disabling, I don't see a lot in actual improvements using Android 6.

[PascLeRasc]

There will definitely be some XDA fix for that. The Nexus 5 has by far the largest developer community. I agree about how it's become much harder to promote Android these days and I can't see myself getting another device after my G4.

[dingo_bat]

You really need to buy a flagship to compare with iPhone.

[microtonal]

But the update experience on flagships (except if you count the Nexus 6P) is absolutely terrible. I had an Android excursion: Nexus 4 -> Moto X 2013 -> Moto X 2014. Motorola was known at the time for quick updates. This meant in practice that they pushed out an extremely buggy Android 5.0 quickly, and then waited half a year to push out a release with fixes. On the Moto X 2013 I had to wait more than a year (!) for Lollipop, although at the time of release the phone was only released a year ago.

tl;dr Android updates on non-Nexus flagships are terrible. Updates are typically months late and stop after 12 or 18 months.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Battery life sucks on Android flagship phones because they are running so many peripherals and the devs don't bother with aggressive power management. That is not Android's fault.

Witness the $200 phones that get spectacular battery life on stock Android primarily because they aren't running hardware that mostly goes unused and are unburdened by poorly designed launchers written by enterprisey Java devs.

[philsnow]

> Battery life sucks on Android flagship phones

> $200 phones that get spectacular battery life on stock Android because they ... are unburdened by poorly designed launchers written by enterprisey Java devs.

Are you saying that there are launchers / home screens that are _better_ than stock android in some dimension? I'm interested to hear more.

[hobarrera]

Much as I like iOS (as a normal user, not a dev nor power-user), you'll be surprised how poor battery life is.

Coming from Jolla, with a huge battery life, I was really disappointed that iOS can't make it an entire day without recharging. Even with bluetooth and gps mostly off.

[akhilcacharya]

I saw this coming and the rumors of the headphone-less iPhone 7 so I took the plunge on the 6S. I miss quite a few Android features but the experience is still pretty darn good.