Google changed the design of the Nexus 5 speakers and buttons, here’s what it looks like

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Published 13 Dec 2013

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If you bought a Nexus 5 the second it was available to order, there’s a high probability you were upset with what the FedEx man dropped off at your door. The camera was bad, the speaker wasn’t very loud, and the buttons rattled. Now we all know the camera was sort of kind of fixed with Android 4.4.1 and 4.4.2, but what about the other problems? According to Engadget, they’ve now been solved. One of their readers even sent them a photo of the new Nexus 5 compared to the old one.

The first thing you’ll obviously notice is that the holes in front of the bottom firing speaker have increased in size significantly. This is basic science. Speakers make sound by moving air. The more air they move, the more noise they make. Giving a speaker a bigger opening to move air thus increases volume.

The second thing you’ll notice is the buttons. While that’s not going to come through in a photo, the Engadget who submitted the photo above says the Nexus 5 buttons “have been made stiffer”, which is always a welcome thing.

Will Google’s next Nexus, let’s call it the Nexus 6, have the same kind of mistakes? Probably. Every Nexus had problems. All of them. It’s clear to me and just about every other tech-head out there that Google’s expertise are in cloud services, not hardware. Each Nexus is indeed better than the previous one, but when you’re working with a target of $350, you have to make compromises.