Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

The Nexus 5 was the best Nexus phone. Its 5-inch screen was big but not too big. Its battery life and camera were mediocre but livable rather than being simply mediocre as they were in the Nexus 4. It used a then top-end Snapdragon 800 SoC with LTE that still feels plenty fast today. And it was $350 at a time when decent $350 phones were essentially nonexistent. The Nexus 6 was a totally different phone, a much larger and more expensive one that wasn’t always a slam-dunk upgrade over its predecessor.

The new Nexus 5X is a more logical sequel to the Nexus 5, and it will probably entice more than a few current Nexus 5 users to replace their two-year-old phones. We already ran a review of the Nexus 5X, but as a Nexus 5 user, I wanted to write something aimed more specifically at people already using a Nexus 5. Here’s the most important stuff you’ll need to know if you decide to upgrade.

Hardware: A spiritual sequel

Let’s skip the obviously new stuff like the fingerprint reader and the camera (items we covered pretty extensively in our review) and get down to the nitpicky comparisons.

The Nexus 5X’s 5.2-inch, 1080p screen is subtly larger than in the original, but in both size and density it’s going to look identical to most people unless you have your old phone right new to the new one. On the two units I had the white balance was a bit different—just a shade greener on the 5X, subtly purple-ish on the 5—but colors and brightness look basically the same.

It’s a taller phone because of its larger bezels, but its power and volume rockers are located a bit closer to the middle of the phone to offset this. The phone is just tall enough that it’s harder for me to pull down the notification shade, but otherwise it’s easy to get used to the physical changes. What will be more difficult is the transition to USB Type-C, which despite being the port of the future does nothing to ease the awkwardness of replacing all your current chargers and cables with new ones.

While both phones are made entirely of plastic, the Nexus 5X’s plastic does feel a bit sturdier and less creaky than the 5’s. Its corners and edges are all more gently rounded, too, and I didn’t notice it digging into my hand quite as much as the old Nexus 5 does.

The vibration motor in the 5X is a nice improvement, too. The ones that LG used in the Nexus 4 and 5 were always sort of weak and floppy-feeling, and could be easy to miss even if you had the phone in your pocket. The 5X’s vibrations are tighter and firmer and more noticeable.

One step back if you ever use your phone while it’s resting flat on a table is its larger, center-aligned camera bump. The old Nexus 5 has a bump too, but it just introduces a bit of wobble on one side when the phone is laying flat. Touch the Nexus 5X and it wobbles all over the place.

The SIM tray's fit and finish still isn’t fantastic, either—LG just doesn’t seem capable of assembling one that sits perfectly flush with the rest of the phone. And the micro SIM card slot on the Nexus 5 has been traded out for the (now) more common, smaller nano SIM card. You’ll either need to cut your current SIM down or get a new one unless you were already using a nano SIM in a micro SIM adapter or something.

The last thing is pretty subjective, but: the blah-blue version of the Nexus 5X can’t stand up to the blinding red version of the Nexus 5. If you like black or white phones, you’ll be fine.

Software: Making the most of the screen (and resetting the Nexus countdown clock)

A lot of Nexus buyers, myself included, prefer these phones despite their shortcomings because they get new Android versions straight from Google. It’s the closest an Android user can get to an iOS-like update experience.

Because of that, the software experience on the Nexus 5 and 5X is mostly the same. Both are running Android 6.0, and while the 5X adds on-by-default encryption and a fancy fingerprint reader, you’re otherwise getting the same OS.

The one nice thing about the 5X is that Google is fitting a bit more on the new screen than on the old one. The app grid on the Home screen is a roomy five-by-five icons rather than the Nexus 5’s four-by-four, and throughout the OS, apps fit just a bit more information on the screen than they did before. They’re also a bit smaller than they are on the original Nexus 5, but a 1080p screen at this size is sharp enough that you won’t encounter problems with detail or readability.

And then there’s the update thing. Google’s update policy for Nexus devices promises major version updates for two years after a device appears in the Play Store. The Nexus 5 came out in October of 2013, so we’re at that line right now—future version updates aren’t impossible (the just-updated 2013 Nexus 7 came out in July of that year), but at this point you’re relying on Google’s largesse.

The security update policy is more generous, covering Nexus devices until three years after their introduction or 18 months after their delisting from the Play Store. In both cases, the math works out to October of 2016, a year or so from now.

Assuming Google’s policy doesn’t change, the Nexus 5X will get major updates until October 2017 and security updates until October 2018. Keep your Nexus 5 and you’ll get another year or so of security patches, maybe an incremental Android 6.1 release in a few months if we get one. Get a Nexus 5X and you reset the clock.

Better insides and carrier compatibility

Again, we’ll point you to the full review for a comparison between the Nexus 5’s Snapdragon 800 to the 5X’s Snapdragon 808—the difference isn’t huge, on the order of 20 to 30 percent in most of our CPU and GPU benchmarks. Chalk it up to the Snapdragon 808 being the second-best chip in an underwhelming product cycle for Qualcomm.

There are some other internal upgrades that might make a difference to you, particularly when it comes to connectivity. The maximum theoretical Wi-Fi speed climbs from 433Mbps to 867Mbps thanks to the addition of MIMO antennas for the 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

The LTE modem, transceiver, and associated hardware all get a bump, too. Theoretical download speeds climb from 150Mbps to 450Mbps, though your real-world speeds will depend on reception in your area (using an AT&T SIM near New York City at 4pm, I was able to pull down about 25Mbps in Speedtest.net runs on the Nexus 5, and a little over 50Mbps on the 5X).

Moving beyond speed, the list of wireless bands supported by the 5X includes Verizon, the largest carrier in the US and one of the worst when it comes to approving Android updates in a timely way. The 5X is an unlocked, not-too-huge phone you can use on Verizon without having to deal with the carrier's typical update interference.

Conclusions: Yes, it’s worth the upgrade

Google doesn't quite position the Nexus family as mass-market mobile devices. In reality they're somewhere between standard phones, development devices, shining examples of where the Android ecosystem ought to be headed, and phones aimed straight at tech enthusiasts and the security conscious.

But like the old Nexus 5, the Nexus 5X does a particularly admirable job of packaging the Nexus lineup’s strengths in a phone that has a lot of what consumers want. Build quality is decent and the camera and battery life are uncommonly good (for a Nexus phone). Most importantly for the people reading this article, the 5X is a logical replacement for all of the slowly aging Nexus 5 handsets out there. It’s an improvement across the board, and the size and materials are all similar enough to the original model that Nexus 5 owners will quickly feel at home. You don’t have to play the ever-increasing-screen-size game if you don’t want to.

Get another year out of your Nexus 5 if it’s still in good physical shape and you don’t have any particular problems with it—as mentioned, you’ll be covered by security updates for at least another year, and I think there’s a good chance that there’s still another minor Android update or two in your future. But if you’re ready to move on, the Nexus 5X is the phone to do it with.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham