 This is Josh with The Verge and we're taking a look at the Nexus 5, the new flagship Android phone from Google. As with previous Nexus phones, Google says this device will push Android forward and be the best representation of what that mobile OS can do. It comes with the newest version of Android 4.4, better known as KitKat, coupled with by far the most advanced hardware the Nexus lineup has ever seen. The Nexus 5 shares a lot in common with LG's recent flagship G2, though there are notable differences here as well. LG was also Google's partner for last year's Nexus 4, and there are some similarities, though it's a pretty different device. From a hardware perspective, the phone is pretty stacked. It has a 5-inch 1080p display, Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16 or 32GB of storage. The display, first and foremost, is gorgeous. It's big, bright, accurate, and incredibly crisp, although it does appear ever so slightly washed out compared to an AMOLED display or even the iPhone's retina screen. A lot of what Google is doing with KitKat is designed for big displays like this, and the Nexus 5 shows it off perfectly. The body around the display is nice too, but it's not exactly what I'd call eye-catching. It comes in black or white, I prefer the softer, cleaner matte black version, and it's mostly just a rectangle. It's got curved sides and a more angled top and bottom, and fits really nicely in your hand, as long as you have a big hand, but it does feel better than a lot of 5-inch phones, although it is pretty big. Coming from the Moto X or the iPhone, it'll be a noticeable change. The phone is surprisingly light, though, just 130 grams and impressively thin at 8.6mm. It's made of plastic, but it still feels pretty good. I wouldn't say it's machined beautifully like an iPhone 5s or the Lumia 925, but it isn't that cheap plastic of the G2 or the Galaxy S4. Also, thankfully, it doesn't have the problems of the Nexus 4, namely the glass back, which broke really easily, and was extremely slippery on flat surfaces. Google really picked its spots when it came to making design choices that you'd notice, for instance the big ring around the camera lens, and the white speaker grill on the otherwise black front of the white model. Those details, plus the carved Nexus logo on the back, are really the only indications that this is something other than a standard slab smartphone. Personally, I like the clean lines and the simple design, but it would have been nice to see a little more creativity, though maybe the do-it-yourself Moto X colors in Apple's gold iPhone have spoiled me. The design's real purpose, though, is just to get out of the way, to show off KitKat, the latest version of Android. It may just be a point update, but there's actually a lot going on. Some of the aesthetic changes really have to do with Android looking good and working well on big screen, high-res phones. There's also a new condensed version of the Roboto font that's used system-wide, which looks really nice. Icons seem a little bit bigger and cleaner in the new OS, and everything has been tweaked or polished a little bit to get more out of those large displays. Also, nearly all of the Tron influences we first saw on Android 3.0 have been excised, and what remains, and is new, actually seems to have more in common with recent efforts from HTC on the One than it does with previous versions of Android 4.0. Things have been lightened, tightened, and flattened in all the right places, making this latest incarnation of the ever-evolving software feel really fresh. And it's not just cosmetic. Google Search is all over KitKat, more than ever. Google Now is a left swipe away from your home screen as opposed to the gesture that had brought it up before, and all you have to say is OK Google to start doing a search when you're on the home screen. The voice-activated features aren't nearly as powerful or useful as the Moto X, but they're a nice touch here and definitely an improvement to what you could do with Android before this version. You can now search keywords right within the dialer of the phone, which is sort of like having a phonebook in your phonebook. It's pretty handy. There's a new unified file picker, and there's a unified way to print from your phone or even control your TV. Android is tighter, simpler, and more unified everywhere, and though the general UI hasn't changed dramatically, the visual tweaks and functional additions continue Android down a really smart path. The new Hangouts could be viewed as the flagship feature of KitKat. It now integrates SMS, and it's the default messaging app for Android, which means you can send texts, instant messages, voice calls, and video calls all from the same place. It's a great idea, but a really clunky execution. If you're talking to someone via Hangouts and then you text them via SMS, it starts an entirely new separate conversation. I got stopped up a few times when I was testing the phone just trying to figure out what was going on, where my conversations were happening. Coupled with the fact that Google still doesn't group separate accounts into a single stream, it makes things really puzzling at times. Hangout issues aside, KitKat is a really solid improvement, and the Nexus 5 shows it off well. KitKat's also designed to be used on lower memory devices, but that's not exactly a problem here. With the Snapdragon 800 and 2 gigs of RAM, the phone screams. It plays heavy games well, opens and closes, and switches between apps with no lag. And while there are still some minor scrolling issues when you're trying to tear through a long page, particularly in Chrome, that seems more to do with buffering than it does actual graphics performance. In fact, a big deal has been made out of the Android scrolling problem, but nine times out of 10, the Nexus 5 feels considerably faster than most devices I've used, and that includes the iPhone 5s. And while Google still can't match Apple's best-in-class touch response times, the difference, in my opinion, is negligible. All of the software improvements coupled with the strong hardware of the Nexus 5 make it a really fun phone to play with. On brass tack stuff, call quality is solid, though the speaker could be a little bit louder. Even cupping my hand around it didn't produce sounds that were loud enough to hear outdoors. I think it needs to be pointed out that data is massively improved on this phone over the Nexus 4, thanks to the merciful addition of LTE out of the box for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint here in the US. Google wanted to make a phone that shows off Android, and I think it succeeded. But in doing so, it may have overlooked two of the biggest requirements of making a truly great smartphone, namely, a good camera and consistent battery life. During my time testing the Nexus 5, battery life was all over the place. The first couple of days I used it, I only saw eight or nine hours before I had to put it back on a charger. The following days, it got better, 10 and even 16 on one day, but those are pretty inconsistent numbers. And then there's the camera, which was a problem with the Nexus 4 and is a problem again here. Now, it seems to me that the 8 megapixel shooter is capable of taking really beautiful pictures in the perfect setting. But in so many settings, it's a huge step down from something like an iPhone 5s, a Lumia 1020, or even the Moto X. It takes photos and video with too little contrast, too little saturation and too little color when you can get the camera to focus at all. Low light performance isn't exactly poor, but getting it to snap the picture you want at the moment you want will drive you nuts. The camera app can be absurdly slow to focus and even slow to launch in the first place, which makes the Nexus 5 as a camera an exercise in frustration. It instills basically no confidence, so you'll find yourself just expecting to take a bad photo. Side by side with almost any other flagship phone, its camera doesn't hold up. Google says that software, not hardware, is to blame for the weak performance, but that doesn't change the fact that out of the box using the camera on this phone almost guarantees poor shots, which is ironic for a device which Google's marketing as a picture taking, never miss a moment phone. I spoke to reps at Google and they said that fixes are coming and that the focus time and low light performance will improve, but there's no word on how soon that'll happen or how good these tweaks will be. And if you buy this thing right now, the camera performance leaves a lot to be desired. If Google is really serious about the Nexus program, it needs to build more than just a great way to hold the latest version of Android in your hand. It needs to build the best all around smartphone, one that actually competes for the hearts and minds of customers who would otherwise buy an iPhone or a Galaxy S4. Google has gotten really close with the Nexus 5 and if it can fix some of the problems that I've seen with the phone, particularly the camera, it could be there, but it's not there yet.