[csomar]

I had a terrible experience with the Nexus S. I bought it a couple years ago (which seems to be a vety long time in Google terms) and right now it's totally unusable. It's very slow, the battery is sucked up in less than an hour when on wifi, some apps can't work, the play store is a mess and I can go on and on.

I experienced the nexus 4 a little bit and though it's a great phone I'm afraid the next OS updates are going to ruin it just like it happened to the poor Nexus S.

My next phone is going to be an iPhone as I had a rather pleasant experience on the iPad.

[MAGZine]

I had (have) a Nexus S. The hardware at this point is coming up on it's third birthday... yes, it is ridiculously, unapologetically slow... but if you look at the iPhone 4, it's not fairing so well either.

Yes, old hardware will always fare poorly when running operating systems that are generations ahead. Try running Windows 7 on a 286... Nexus 4 and I'm loving it. I anticipate no issues moving between 4.3 and 4.4.

Oh, and I suspect your battery is torched. my wi-fi only nexus s reports on average a solid day of battery with moderate/heavy use.

[bowmanb]

I love my Nexus S, but I'm running CyanogenMod. I highly recommend trying it, especially if you aren't happy.

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Crespo_Info

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Crespo4g_Info (4G)

[keeperofdakeys]

My Nexus S runs 4.3 happily, although a little laggy in some places, and not much multitasking. It would be more than usable though.

[vdaniuk]

Just to counter your anecdote, my HTC Desire D which is the same hardware as Nexus S was one of the best phones I had with great battery life, durability and it works well even after I dropped it on the concrete and in the water on several occasions.

[vdaniuk]

*Desire S

[taurath]

Same on the Galaxy Nexus. Less than 2 hours of idle time if I'm going through an area with poor service - less than 2 hours of battery life when browsing on wifi.

[corresation]

>which seems to be a very long time in Google terms

To be fair, that was during the iPhone 4 period.

The iPhone has since gone to the iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, and then iPhone 5s. Many users report an absolutely miserable experience with iOS 7 (and even 6) on the iPhone 4.

The mobile industry has moved very, very quickly, and devices are a magnitude more powerful+ than just a couple of years ago. As a developer with an interest in mobile, I've gone through literally seven different smartphone devices in the past three years.

[X-Istence]

My colleague has an iPhone 4, iOS 7 works on it beautifully for him. My iPhone 4S has also not had any issues with iOS 7...

[matwood]

Interesting since my iPhone 4 has slowed the a crawl with iOS7. Nearly unusable now.

[rsynnott]

Have you upgraded to 7.0.3? This seems to help a lot. Also, you may want to try enabling reduced motion in the accessibility settings.

[psbp]

iOS 6.0 was fine, but iOS 7.0 introduced a whole bunch of bugs and inconsistent lag.

[bobbles]

Anyone running iOS version 7.0.3 on the iPhone 4 should definitely enable 'Reduce Motion' in the accessibility settings.

It removes the 'fly in' 'fly out' animations for opening folders or apps, and greatly improves performance.

Same for the iPad mini.