A Few Days with Nexus 5X

Things have been tight lately for reasons, so I’ll keep this short and to the point about the Nexus 5X.

I bought this thing to use as a mobile 4G backup phone. My previous backup was the Meizu Meilan Note. I had nothing against the phone itself — it’s just that Meizu’s Flyme OS really doesn’t suit me. I’m not saying Flyme OS is bad, only that it doesn’t suit a heavy Google user like me. Flyme OS, in its fight against Chinese junk apps, kills processes with such abandon that VPNs and the whole Google suite get slaughtered. After thinking it over, the only option was to swap the backup phone, and if the OS is the deciding factor, the choices narrow to the Nexus line. I ended up buying a Nexus 5X 32GB Hong Kong version in blue on eBay.

Only the Hong Kong version is full-network. The Google Play version only works on China Unicom and China Telecom, plus one China Mobile band — otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered with eBay. No choice in the matter.

I’ve been using it for almost a week now, so here are some quick impressions.

1. Battery life is acceptable, but you’ll want Greenify. No root needed — just turn on the latest Greenify’s “Aggressive Doze” mode and force Doze when you’re not using the phone to squeeze out a good chunk of extra standby time. It might put your VPN to sleep too, though; you can whitelist it the way Greenify’s whitelist works.

2. Since it’s a backup phone, I don’t need Google Location Reporting, so I haven’t rooted or unlocked the bootloader. Some people on Gfan suggest you should “unlock it anyway” — if you don’t and an OTA goes wrong, the phone just bricks, whereas with an unlocked bootloader you can at least get into Fastboot and rescue it. I figured my OTA updates won’t brick it, so I skipped it.

3. Build quality is okay. Very plasticky, but not that bad — roughly Nexus 5 level. The rear camera does stick out quite a bit, but it isn’t too much in the way. The fingerprint sensor, which is a headline feature, isn’t as nice as the Nexus 6P. The reason is simple, and might just be my big hands: I keep hitting the camera instead of the sensor when unlocking. Also, the 5X’s fingerprint reader doesn’t feel as accurate as the 6P’s — sometimes it takes a few tries, whereas the 6P needs one light touch. Then again, maybe I’m just doing it wrong.

4. The thing the 5X gets the most flak for is the screen. The internet says it’s too yellow. As soon as I got it I compared it with the Nexus 6P and found it isn’t really yellow at all — it just isn’t as vivid as the 6P’s screen (which is AMOLED, obviously). The only other screens I had on hand to compare were the Pixel C, the Meilan Note, and a decrepit Xperia Z1. The Z1’s screen is old and yellow to begin with, the Pixel C’s is excellent and kills the 5X outright, and the Meilan Note is washed out but not bright enough. By comparison, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the Nexus 5X’s screen. That said, people on Reddit say different batches have different screen issues, so maybe I got lucky — or maybe the Hong Kong full-network version shipped later and no longer has the yellowing problem.

5. The 5X’s other black mark is only 2GB of RAM. But in a week of use — running Discord, WeChat, G+, Firefox browsing, and Google Maps or Amap navigation — I never once hit a slowdown from memory pressure. If anything it’s smoother than the Nexus 6P, which probably throttles hard thanks to the 810. Checking memory each time, I never saw the maxed-out screenshots people post online; the most I hit was 1.3GB. Maybe I just install few Chinese apps. Also, 32GB should be plenty — if you keep things lean, 16GB is workable too.

6. The 5X supports fast charging over USB Type-C, official spec 5V 3A. Looks like a little over an hour to full, so battery life isn’t a big worry. Buy a decent USB Type-C cable, plug in whenever you get a chance, and you shouldn’t have to fret about running out.

7. The one real problem with the 5X right now: while it’s charging, the touchscreen goes haywire. Plenty of people report this, so it’s probably a hardware issue. The Nexus 6P doesn’t have it. It doesn’t affect me much, since I at least never use the phone while it’s plugged in.

8. Another 5X quirk: when it’s sitting idle in your pocket, it stays warm. The Nexus 6P — the “hot pot” 810 phone — never did that. I still can’t fully pin down why the 808 runs warm for no reason. Recently I turned off Bluetooth and location on the 5X, and the warmth basically went away, with battery life improving too. I figure Google Now was trying to use GPS to pin down my location.

Overall the Nexus 5X is fine to use, and I’m fairly happy with it. Battery is probably the weak point, but I think fast charging makes up for it. The phone is light and compact, the camera looks decent from a quick look, and the screen is a bit of a lottery — unlucky buyers get a yellow one (if those really exist) and are out of luck. Personally, I’d still recommend people go for the Nexus 6P if they can. It’s better in basically every way. The 5X suits people on a budget, or those who want a backup or dev phone.