MotoX price drop -- Also where is the Nexus5 16 GB?

Last night I received an email from Motorola promoting a $70 discount on the MotoX. Sure enough, you can get the 16 GB version for $329! That's a pretty darn good price. The 32 GB version is still $50 more, so its price is $379.

I went over to the Google Play Store to verify current pricing of the Nexus 5, and the 16 GB version only gives the option to "Add to Wishlist" without providing a price. The 32 GB version is still available for $399. The white and black are both shown as "In stock."

So that's pretty interesting. I have not been reading the news lately, so maybe I'm just out of the loop. If I was to buy a new phone now, I would definitely consider the MotoX simply because of the price. I really like my Nexus 5 though.

Nexus 5 popularity

Maybe "popularity" is the wrong word, but lately I have been seeing several of my Facebook friends mention the Nexus 5, and anyone that owns the thing absolutely loves it. In my case, the only other Android phones I had owned in the past were the Motorola Droid X and Droid Bionic. I've never owned a Samsung, so I don't know how it stacks up. The Droid X was fun because it was my first touch screen smart phone, and then the Droid Bionic was a big step up from there; however, they were both pretty clunky and slow. They would hesitate, freeze, and crash on a regular basis. Having the "pure Android" experience on my Nexus devices has been a great experience. My Droid Bionic had LTE (when it worked) which allowed it to download pretty quickly, especially with Verizon's network. When I switched to the Nexus 4 it was really nice to get rid of Motorola's clunky additions to the OS, including apps that couldn't be removed. Like Blockbuster. They went out of business and I still couldn't uninstall their stupid app! Despite the data connection on the Nexus 4 being limited to HSPA+, the phone was an overall better performer than the Droid Bionic. Now that I have a Nexus 5 and access to LTE once again, it's been even nicer. Plus the CPU in the N5 is even faster than that of N4.
Of course the lighter design of KitKat is probably helping with all of this. I'd be curious to know if running KitKat on a Droid Bionic would have improved it's speed. The Motorola website shows they are not going beyond JellyBean 4.1.2, which is the update I received before I sold mine. Therefore we'll probably never know. It seems like most of the ROM's that can be installed are buggy, so that would make an apples to apples comparison pretty difficult to do.
Another Nexus exclusive is the Photosphere function on the camera. This is supposed to be part of the OS, but apparently other Android phones only include panorama mode. Last spring I went to Europe, right before I bought my Nexus 4. It would have been really fun to take pictures in Amsterdam and Cologne with the Photosphere setting. The panoramas I took were pretty cool, but getting a Photosphere picture from inside of a cathedral would have been amazing!
The biggest advantage of the Nexus phones is the price. Getting a blazing fast phone for $400 without a contract is a phenomenal deal. Google is really doing everyone a solid, especially people who break their phone before the contract is done and don't want to be stuck with it for months (or years).
If you have stumbled onto my blog because you are thinking about a Nexus phone, I say go for it. But if you do order the Nexus 5 specifically, I recommend that you also order a cheap case from eBay because the Nexus 5 is slippery and I dropped mine several times during my first week of ownership. It's only $400, but it's still $400 that I don't want to have to spend twice!

Moto X and Moto G

Motorola is really going after those of us who like to be contract independent, or people who are stuck in the middle of a contract and need (or just want) something new.

The Moto X pricing is getting closer to a Nexus 5, but still $50 more. The unlocked phone starts at $399 now, but that's only for the 16 GB version. Upgrading to 32 GB will cost you an extra $50. One cool thing about the unlocked GSM phone is that it includes a T-Mobile SIM card. If you are planning to switch to T-Mobile from another carrier, as I did when I left Verizon, then it saves that step. A T-Mobile SIM card is only $10, but the convenience factor is worth mentioning here.

In other news, the Moto G is going to be available for $100 without a contract. The story at the link below pertains to a phone for Verizon. It makes me wonder if I would have left Verizon if such an option existed last spring. Probably. But this would have at least been worth considering. And if you are one of those people with a shattered screen and 1.5 years remaining on your contract, this is probably cheaper than getting your phone repaired.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57616424-94/moto-g-for-verizon-lands-at-best-buy-for-$100-with-no-contract/

Refer-A-Friend $25 promo card - how to use it.

If you happen to refer someone else, and receive a promo card in the mail, this is what you can do with it. Take it to a T-Mobile store, have them sell you a Direct To Account amount of $25, and then pay for it with the promo card. You will be responsible for sales tax, so you still need your own money for that.

Here's part of the receipt. You can see at the bottom where I made two separate payments.

7.125 percent sales tax. Holy Schneikies!

Of course this is only necessary if you want to have the amount added to your account balance. If you prefer to buy an accessory instead, then you don't need to know all of this.

(I tried to remove all confirmation numbers, account numbers, and other personal information from the image. Please let me know if I missed something.)

I have already scratched my screen.

I had my Nexus 4 for only about five months, but I still managed to drop it a few times, and it would occasionally have some company in my pocket. I didn't use a screen protector on it, and still that screen is in perfect condition.

Now as I mentioned in an earlier post, I dropped my Nexus 5 twice on Sunday. Since then I dropped it one more time. Now it has a 1/4 inch scratch on the screen. I'm guessing it's from the last time I dropped it. That was Monday night and it landed on a snowy street with some sand and ice mixed into the snow. I'm a little bit annoyed, but perhaps I will need to get a screen protector for this one after all. The screen is nice and bright so it should still shine through another layer of plastic too.

I'm happy the screen survived the two drops so well. This last drop happened when I was sliding out of my car, and therefore it had some lateral motion too. That's why I'm assuming it's the culprit. 

New Richmond, WI

As I drove around the area of my hometown in western Wisconsin this week, I kept an eye on my phone's cellular data connection. Now that I have an LTE phone once again, I am more interested in where T-Mobile LTE is available. The little 900-person town where I was raised still only supplies me with an abysmal "E" for EDGE network, which I believe is 2G technology. (Most people who live out there would never use T-Mobile for this very reason. They would more likely be on Verizon or US Cellular.)
Like most men, I needed to run to Walmart on Christmas Eve morning, and the nearest one is in New Richmond, WI. When I pulled into town, I learned that not only does New Richmond now have a Walmart store, but also LTE data!
When I was growing up, New Richmond was a town of just a few thousand people, and it is still not a large city, but it is getting to be an interesting place. Several years ago, the state of Wisconsin built a freeway from New Richmond to Houlton, WI, which is across the river from Stillwater, MN. What is significant about that freeway is the new bridge being built over the St Croix river at Stillwater. The new bridge will be completed in about 2 years. At that point New Richmond is going to explode with industry because the new bridge and freeway will offer the St Paul/Minneapolis area quick and easy access to New Richmond's cheap land and wide open space.
To me this is exciting because it is so near where I grew up. The city of Stillwater has been an annoyance for me because it is a bottleneck for any traffic from Minnesota to my home area. It has restricted urban sprawl from covering that area and stifled the local economy. Now that the new bridge is becoming a reality, it will be exciting to see the growth of industry and economy in New Richmond, Somerset, and even Houlton, WI. I believe the area will look a lot like Anoka, MN, where I work. Hopefully without the creepy occult vibe though (Anoka is the "Halloween Capitol of the World," which attracts a lot of weirdos). Obviously bigger companies recognize this potential too. Big companies like Walmart and T-Mobile.
This is not my usual subject matter for this blog, but the presence of LTE in New Richmond piqued my interest and made me want to write about it. I was actually pretty shocked to see "LTE" displayed on my phone. This also shows that T-Mobile is pretty serious about getting their LTE coverage in lots of places.

My first 72 hours with the Nexus 5.

Well, almost 72 hours. Close enough. I ordered the phone on Wednesday morning, it shipped Wednesday night. It was being stored in the UPS warehouse in Kentucky, so it arrived quickly. The package was waiting at my front door in Minneapolis when I arrived home after work on Friday.
The phone feels lighter than the Nexus 4, and it has a nice fit in my hand. I chose the white one and it looks really sharp. It still has a black bezel, just the back cover is white. The contrast of the black and white looks classy to me.
I put the phone on the charger immediately. It was almost at full when I received it, so it was ready to go by the time I finished showering and getting ready to go out. I put my SIM card in and I didn't even have to re-register with T-Mobile. It was simply ready to use after I restarted the phone.
That night I used Google Maps to navigate, and I could immediately see the difference in the data rate. With the LTE connection, the map is able to reroute almost instantaneously. It probably helps to have such a fast processor, but the Nexus 4 had a pretty good processor too. So I think the HSPA+ data connection was the limiting factor.
On Saturday I took the time to install SwiftKey Keyboard. I might not keep it. The higher resolution screen caused it to resize and now the keyboard is too large. It takes up more than half of the screen. Maybe I just need to play with the settings, but I'm not happy with it at the moment.
An interesting change is the reduced number of panels on the home screen. The Nexus 4 had 5 panels. The Nexus 5 has only 3 panels, and one of them is filled with Google Now. I haven't decided if I like it or not. I was actually thinking that I had way too many shortcuts on my N4 and a lot of times it was just as easy to open the app menu and find the app I wanted alphabetically. The main panel was the one I used the vast majority of the time. So I was irritated by the change for a moment, but in actuality I don't really notice the change. I was able to set up the main panel exactly like I had it on my N4. Now it actually feels pretty much the same. I am considering taking that second panel and removing any shortcuts I have there, and dedicating it to widgets only.
Speaking of widgets, they no longer appear next to the apps in the app menu. Now they are set up by long-pressing the home screen and then choosing "WIDGETS" at the bottom of the screen. At first I was afraid there were no more widgets, but I found something online that showed me how to find them. Without my calendar widget I would have been pretty upset!
Overall it feels the same to use this phone as it did to use the N4. It's almost the same size and the buttons are all in the same place. For some reason the USB port is flipped upside down, but that only trips me up when I'm plugging in the charger. Otherwise everything feels the same. It just looks more vivid and bold because of the brighter, higher-resolution screen.
Even though it's plastic, the phone seems to be pretty tough. Yesterday I was volunteering at my church. We had our Christmas services, and last night was the one time each year when I help with parking. Because I was working outside, I was not wearing my normal pants. I was wearing some bright red warm up pants (over a couple other layers) and their pockets were not a good place for a phone. The Nexus 5 has nothing grippy on it whatsoever. Because of this, the phone fell out of my pocket twice. It landed on a concrete floor both times. It must be pretty tough. It survived both drops without a scratch... on the screen anyway. We went inside to warm up between services, and it fell out as I sat down. It only fell about a foot or so. This first drop made the cover loosen slightly. I had to press the cover down and then it snapped back into place. The second drop was higher because I was standing. I was in my garage and while I was removing my boots it popped out of my pocket again. Nothing came loose but I see there is a slight ding in the plastic bezel. It's more like a tiny scratch.  I am impressed with how tough this phone appears to be, but I'm also glad that I found a rubber case for it on eBay last week. It was only $4, and it should arrive in a couple of weeks. Until then I will continue to be more careful with my new phone.
There seem to be a pretty good number of LTE towers around here. Unfortunately that does not include the outer suburb where I work. Hopefully that will change some time this year. I still have the "H" on my screen so I am getting the HSPA+ version of 4G here at work.
Overall I am pleased with this phone, but the two reasons I wanted a different phone were the slippery glass back on the N4, and the lack of LTE support. Now I have a phone with a plastic back, but overall the phone is even more slippery than the old one. And I don't have LTE at work yet. The rubber case will fix the slipperiness, and hopefully I will see LTE in the future. Yes I could have bought a case for the N4, but this is my Christmas present to myself!
I'm driving home to the Wisconsin backwoods for Christmas. I'm not expecting to have LTE coverage out there, but I will keep an eye on it to find out for sure.