So Google finally shipped the Nexus 5 last Thursday, and Android 4.4 KitKat along with it, and I spent most of Friday morning refreshing the Play Store page like an idiot trying to actually buy one. If you weren't watching this unfold: the listing kept going in and out of stock, sometimes minute to minute. You'd get to the checkout page, hit confirm, and get bounced back to a "currently unavailable" wall. A friend of mine on Twitter said he tried eleven times before an order actually stuck. Eleven! For a phone that Google was selling directly, from their own store, with presumably some idea of how much demand there'd be.
I got mine on attempt four, so I'm not going to complain too hard. $349 for the 16GB model, no contract, no carrier subsidy nonsense, sold unlocked straight from Google. That price is still the thing that gets me. My last phone was a subsidized "$199" deal that actually cost something like $700 once you did the math on the two-year contract, and I didn't fully appreciate how much of a scam that structure is until I saw a genuinely excellent flagship phone priced like it's an accessory. The 5-inch 1080p screen alone would've been a $600+ phone a year ago. LG built the hardware this time (after the Nexus 4 partnership) and it shows. It feels much less plasticky than the 4 did, though I'll admit the back is still a fingerprint magnet.
KitKat itself is a smaller update than I expected given the hype, honestly. The headline stuff is under the hood: Google's been saying this release is aimed at getting Android running well on cheap, low-RAM phones, which matters more for the next billion Android users in places like India and Indonesia than it does for someone buying a $349 flagship. But there are a few things I like already. The dialer now searches local businesses by name instead of making you know the number, which sounds minor until you actually use it. Full-screen "immersive mode" for apps and books is nice, finally lets content use the whole display instead of leaving the status bar sitting there. And "OK Google" hotword detection works from the home screen now, not just inside the Google Now app, though so far it only works on the Nexus 5 and the Moto X.
The one change I'm genuinely unsure about: KitKat merges SMS into Hangouts. Your text messages and your Hangouts chats now live in the same app, same threads even, depending on settings. I get the logic (nobody wants three separate messaging apps) but I've already had one moment of confusion where I couldn't tell if a message went as SMS or as a Hangouts message to someone who wasn't on Hangouts. Google Voice users are reporting worse problems, from what I've read on the forums, dropped messages and notification weirdness. I'd wait a week or two before switching your default SMS app to Hangouts if that's not already forced on you.
And can we talk about the naming for a second. "KitKat," as in, yes, the candy bar. Nestle and Google apparently spent a chunk of time on this partnership behind the scenes — there are millions of Android-mascot-shaped KitKat bars sitting on store shelves right now with Play Store credit codes hidden inside the wrappers, like some kind of Android-themed Willy Wonka promotion. It's a genuinely weird thing for two companies to agree to do, and I mean that as a compliment. Beats "Key Lime Pie," which was the rumored codename for months and would've been a nightmare to spell-check in every article about it.
T-Mobile's also carrying the Nexus 5 at launch this time, which is new — previous Nexus phones were mostly a Play Store or AT&T thing depending on the model. That plus the price point makes we wonder if Google's actually serious about pushing unlocked, no-contract phones as a real mainstream option here rather than a nerd curiosity. I hope so. The contract model has needed a kick for years.
Anyway. Battery life first impressions: fine, not great, about what you'd expect from a phone this size with a screen this sharp. I'll do a longer writeup once I've lived with it for two weeks instead of four days.