Deliberating which phone to get Galaxy S4, S4 mini or Nexus 4?

[dmakinde]

Hey all! So I got fed up of iOS and was disappointed by the windows phone, and I finally decided to cave in and get a droid. The thing is I feel a little spoiled for choice as to which one to get. I've done a fair bit of research and seen all the benchmarks, but since I'm not quite what you would consider a power user, a lot of the big numbers don't really mean a lot to me. 

 

I would just like a nice, fast, premium phone that will last me a good few years (and won't crash on me) and I have narrowed my choices down to the LG Nexus 4, Samsung Galaxy S4 and the S4 mini. Ideally I would like something with expandable memory, since my current phone has a micro SD card that I would like to carry on using, putting the two samsung handsets ahead, but I'm not particularly fussed if the phone can't do that, as long as the onboard storage is enough for my music and podcasts. I believe all together I am only using up about 10GB on my current phone anyway.

 

Battery life is quite important because while I'm not a power user, I also plan on getting the sony smart watch and ideally I wouldn't like the pairing to drain my phone's battery dead within an hour or two. 

 

I would actively use my phone to listen to podcasts as well during my commute to work (the ease of which was probably the one thing my iPhone had going for it) so I would like a phone that could handle that well enough, but I suppose that is down to the OS rather than the hardware. I don't really care for mobile gaming, but that was probably because I was put off by the cumbersome windows phone store and as such, I may change my tune once I get an android device, but again, I don't see myself obsessively doing so. I do however see myself extensively using the phone as a sat nav. 

 

The Galaxy S4's air gestures look pretty neat, but I don't see myself using that for more than a day or two to impress my friends, then forgetting the feature is even there. I'm quite a fan of large screens to make use of screen real estate on the UI, but I'm not too bothered about the camera as I never really hopped on the instagram bandwagon (although that could also be because windows phones don't have instagram and as such I never got into it), and while that may change once I get an android device, I don't see myself using all of the S4s camera features, as cool as they are. 

 

Lastly, I like a phone that is up to date. Again, while I'm not much for gimmicks, I like a phone that is as bug free (ergo as updated) as possible. I hear that since the Galaxy S4 is using the touchwiz variant of the droid OS, they receive their updates slower as they have to be adapted for the samsung skin, while the LG will get them as soon as they are available, which could mean that things like bugfixes and software features would hit the LG faster and who knows, among them could be something I like! Also, on that note I have a question about the Android OS in general. Is it like the iOS, in which you can update the OS on an older phone? The same way current phones can hop to iOS 7, can the current generation droids update to kitkat once it comes out?

 

Thanks for reading this wall of text and I hope you all can help me out. While money isn't really a concern for me in this particular venture as all the phones are in my price range, I do acknowledge and appreciate the fact that the nexus is significantly cheaper, but that also worries me a bit as in a lot of (admittedly not all) cases you get what you pay for, and I'm afraid that a few updates down the line the nexus will slow down while the galaxy stays at top speed. So guys, what do you think?

 

[Olivia2590]

Personally I own a LG Nexus 4 and I am copletely satisfied with the device! After reading the first sentence itself I was about to suggest this phone but when I read about you using a memory card I stopped myself. I have used both the brands before and till now I was not satisfied with them. But since LG had the of Google rtag along, I purchased Nexus 4 without having any doubt in my mind. Since I am running the most up-to-date operating system, I do not regret buying this device! I will suggest you to wait for Nexus 5. You won't get everything else in a single device, you will have to compromise at some point. A device with 16GB on-board storage, you get around 12 GB and it is more than enough! Trust me....Nexus is toooo good!

[Linda888999]

Personally, I am for  Galaxy S4, a classical version of Samsung.

[mari]

In my opinion choosing a S4 is a good option. I bought one for myself mainly because of eight-core CPU, good camera (13 Mpx) and great screen resolution.