On Thursday night my phone, a Nexus 5 that I got about three years ago, finally started playing up.
It would continually boot, with a buzz, and a proclamation on the screen of “Google”! Then repeat. Bzzt… Google! Over and over.
Scouring online, I discovered this is a reasonably rare, but not unique, situation. The power button was jammed down.
The next morning, before work, I went looking for solution. No problem, said people on the forums… there’s a quick and simple fix. And they pointed to a Youtube clip someone had uploaded showing how to do it.
Quick and simple. Get your jewellers screwdrivers (okay, I have a set), take off the cover, then remove the battery, unplug all these ribbon cables, then…
At the point where they said to take out the motherboard, I thought yeah, this isn’t going to be the kind of quick and simple fix done just before going to work.
Then I found another suggestion in the forums:
Give the phone a good whack against the side of a desk. A couple of hits and the power button may go back into place.
I tried it. Bang. Nope. BANG. BANG. There it is! Wow, it worked! All without pulling the phone apart.
Except… no. It couldn’t be that easy, right? It wasn’t. 36 hours later it was playing up again. Bzzzzttt… “Google”!
So I need to buy a new phone.
The Nexus 5 had been excellent. Three years is a long innings for a smartphone, and over that time it hadn’t slowed down markedly, and Google had kept feeding it updates, without them having to be filtered through the phone manufacturer and phone company first. (In fact, they’ve only just announced updates for this model will cease in a few months.)
So I wouldn’t hesitate to get another Nexus.
For now I’m getting by on a borrowed HTC Desire 510. It’s functional, but I’m reminded of how much bloatware HTC and the other manufacturers and the carriers put on Android phones.
The Nexus 5’s replacement, the Nexus 5X (RRP $579), has been getting good reviews, and might be a good option.
And apparently in the next few months a new set of Nexus phones are expected.
No, I wouldn’t go an iPhone (SE from $679 RRP; 6 from $929). I love Apple’s hardware, but I love that I can plug an Android phone into any computer and move files around — I couldn’t stand being locked into iTunes and Apple’s ecosystem.