Review: Google Nexus 5

It's become almost cliche to say that smartphones are boring now, but it's true. The sleek pieces of hardware that once captured our imaginations have become more like traffic signals or televisions. Sure, they can still exhibit an abundance of technical sophistication, yet due to their pervasiveness and consistent iteration, you really only notice them when they break.

After spending a week with the Nexus 5, and getting to know it all over, it's clear this isn't just another boring smartphone. It may be the most boring phone of the year. It's the vanilla soy milk latte of handsets.

Yet this bland anonymity is actually quite nice. The physical phone just goes away, and that seems to be the point of the design. It's not about the handset itself. It's about what's inside it. For Google, the Nexus line is a chance to go deep and show off what's possible. Slap the label on a smartphone, and suddenly it's not just a flagship phone anymore; it's true north. This is where Android is headed – deeper integration with Google's location and behavior-based algorithms in an effort to serve you data without your having to ask for it.

Nexus 5 looks like a big old slab of glass. There are virtually no distinguishing characteristics. Viewed from the front, the speaker grill is its only visible cue. The power and volume buttons are ceramic, and so subtle that you can overlook them. It feels like it should be called the SLABFON. The backside is the same deal – a slick plastic that comes in black or white. It can be hard to hold onto. I dropped one of our test units pulling it out of my pocket, and it fell onto the sidewalk, cracking the glass. One of our other testers reported he had dropped it in similar fashion several times as well. So yeah, you may want to invest in a case.

But at least it puts that big five-inch screen to good use. HD video and photos look amazing on it. Text is sharp and crisp and delightfully readable. It’s clearly designed to show off a key new KitKat feature that lets apps for reading, videos, and games take over the full screen. There's no visible iconography, just information display. The end result is that this is a really, really nice device to watch video on. I don't think I've ever had such an immersive experience on a handset before. Reading is similarly a joy.

Oh, hey, and speaking of pictures, do you use your phone to take pictures? Well, that's a real mixed bag on this handset.

The camera fires up really quickly, and the swipe from lockscreen feature is a super fast way to start shooting. Meanwhile, the Google+ integration is amazing. You can set it to automatically upload your pictures to Google+, where it will organize them, automatically enhance them, and even pick out your best shots.

You may have previously used to the Auto-awesome photos feature in Google+ to turn boring old still images into LOL-tastic GIFs. The new Auto-awesome videos feature, which runs in the Photos app but also has Google+ integration, goes even further. It’s completely transcendent. It works largely the same way in that you don't have to do a thing to make a fantastic video out of a bunch of banal little snapshots. (See below.) Google literally does all the work, from image selection, to editing, to adding the music and Instagram-ish filters (you can override its choices). It's straight up rad. You're going to love it.

And then there's the camera itself. On paper, it looks great. It has an 8-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization – which works pretty well, though we found the iPhone 5s a bit steadier. It’s loaded with software designed to make your pictures pop, like an HDR+ mode. And the ones that are in focus can look fantastic.

But overall it was a letdown, maybe the biggest disappointment of the phone. We found our action photos were often blurry, the shutter seemed slow to fire, and night-time shots were usually just a mess. Google tells us that a software fix meant to improve the camera is imminent. We hope so, because it's a bringdown.

Google's also changed phone call and text messaging experience a bit. The old, ugly Android dialer has a clean new interface, your most frequently-accessed contacts show up when you launch the app (it basically automatically selects your favorites), and searching for a local business in the dialer will bring up its number. Tap it, and you call.

Text messaging and chat have been moved to the Hangouts app. Now you can use Hangouts not just to chat or make video calls, but also to send and receive text messages. One intriguing feature lets you send your location with just two clicks, right from the Hangouts text entry box. Recipients get a map image with a link to Google Maps. It's an extremely convenient way to share location.

Missing from Hangouts, however, is Google Voice support (that is, unless you are on Sprint). Google does note that Voice support in Hangouts is coming universally at some point in the future though.

There are also some significant changes to Google Now and Search. Enable the former, and it lives to the left of your homescreen. You just swipe from the left-hand side and it pops up, always smarter than it was before. The Nexus 5 also gets some hot, hotword action, just like the Moto X or Google Glass. When it's unlocked and on the homescreen, just say "OK Google" to take all sorts of actions, from searching to sending a message. Right now, you can use it to do things like call people, launch music (in your music playing app of choice, too, which is nice), and even launch apps. It's really smart.

But the stuff Google says is coming November 13 is the real gravy, and it's a shame it isn't already ladled on. One one those things is the ability to ask you questions – so you might say "text Jennifer" and it will reply "which Jennifer," and then ask you to dictate the message. It's also going to get the ability to search inside applications, and launch them to complete tasks for you. So, you might search for a restaurant, and an option in the results shows up for OpenTable, which you'll be able to fire up and make a reservation. It's also going to use location cues to drop cards into Google Now, even more so than it does currently. At Yellowstone it will show you geyser times, for example. Sadly, none of this stuff was lit up yet, so I wasn't able to test it. I'm not dinging the phone for that (and it's not getting any extra credit), but given how interesting these features are, it's kind of crazy the phone launched without them.

The bottom line on this phone is that it's very nice, very fast, has a very sensitive touchscreen, and pretty great battery life (we repeatedly clocked more than 9 hours with moderate to heavy use, and more than 12 when using it casually). It's also a pretty great deal for an unlocked phone at $349 for the 16 GB, and $399 for the 32 GB. The screen is gorgeous. The camera is flawed. The photo processing is fantastic. It's loaded up with Google brains. And mostly, it does a great job of just disappearing like a good phone should.