Why I Ditched the Nexus 5

I wanted the Nexus 5. I wanted it so badly. I had finally paid off my Samsung S3 and decided to go for it. Over the years I've learned a little something about being a consumer though so I did my due diligence before dropping $350 plus shipping and some accessories on Google Play. There were a few things that gave me pause about the device.

• 16GB internal storage with no microSD slot. (I know I could buy the 32GB version, but still)
• Non-replaceable battery
• Reportedly inferior camera/video, especially the front-facing camera (although I typically don't even use the front-facing camera, so...)
• Reports of low volume on playback

Despite these concerns I was really drawn by the prospect of having a vanilla Android install to do with as I please, so I went for it. I ordered it and waited for its arrival eagerly. Of course, a day after ordering it I checked on its status and realized I had mistakenly ordered the white version instead of the black one. Whoops. No worries; a case would cover that up anyway. 

I got the device and it was as glorious as I'd anticipated. It felt light and thin in my hands, despite being taller than my S3. Startup was a cinch. My apps downloaded from the Play store, I used a 3rd party app to pull over some other apps and files from old phone, and enjoyed exploring the new version of Android. I really dug the ability to say "Okay Google" and have it ready to do my bidding. "Okay, Google, make me dinner!" That didn't work obviously, but it was still a lot of fun to play with. I never use Siri on my iPad but I could see myself using this feature a lot. 

I was about 3 days in to my exploration when the bottom dropped out. Lying in bed, I decided to set up Spotify and give it a listen. I played a song that's been on repeat for me for a few days now, "Sweet Nothing" by Calvin Harris feat. Florence Welch.  It was, without question, awful. The high end was incredibly present, the sound overall tinny and weak. I played with the equalizer in Spotify and set it to exactly the same as my S3 and was blown away by the difference in sound quality. That alone was a deal breaker for me. I'm sure I could have looked around online for some software to tweak the sound, but that was more trouble than I wanted to go through for something that I think should have been better out of the box. I even had Wifey listen to it—she's not known for having a particularly discriminating ear—and even she was shocked by how bad it was. I made the decision then and there to box it up and go get an S5. 

Overall I'm happy enough with the S5, but setting it up made me miss the simplicity of the Nexus 5. The most stand-out differences:

• The S5 is huge in comparison. Hell, it's huge compared to the S3. I actually struggle a little to get my thumb across the width of it.
• The EULAs. So many legal agreements about the software. I felt like I was selling my soul off with the agreements to not alter my phone, and to let Samsung or T-Mobile collect data for "performance purposes". Sure. 
• So much included software that I neither want nor care about, and no way to uninstall it. At best I can disable the stuff. That's better than before I suppose, but I can't remove/disable all of it, so there're still background processes running that I don't need or want. That's as frustrating as it ever was. 

If Google could throw a better audio processor in there, I'd have been happy as shit. As it is, I use my phone for listening to music a lot, so there was no compromising on this front.