Google took the wraps off its latest flagship Nexus 5 smartphone this week, hoping that its high-end specifications and mid-range price will make it competitive against the Samsung Galaxy S4.

The firm is looking to attract geek fans of the Android platform too, as the Nexus 5 is the first device to run the Android 4.4 Kitkat version, and will also be among the first to receive future iterations of Android. Unlike the Samsung Galaxy S4, it also features a non-customised user interface, which can complicate future upgrades.

Overall

Although the Google Nexus 5 doesn’t quite match the Galaxy S4 for its cameras and storage, it matches the flagship Samsung handset in nearly every other category, be it size, display or battery life. It also has a faster processor, and gets one up on the rival handset as it’s the first smartphone to ship with the Android 4.4 Kitkat mobile operating system.

Since Google’s Nexus 5 smartphone is over £200 less expensive than the Galaxy S4, it looks like Samsung should start worrying.

No more than three years ago, Samsung was considered a minor player in the handset industry, lagging in sales and stature behind companies such as Nokia and Motorola.
When Apple entered the fray with the introduction of the iPhone, eventually taking over as the leader in smartphone sales, many industry insiders felt that Samsung would never be able to make up the ground to be considered influential to the market.

Samsung itself understood the uphill climb that it was facing. Instead of waving the white flag and exiting the market, Samsung chose to jettison its approach to design and immediately ceased being complacent with its R&D model. Samsung reinvested heavily into creating a new line of handsets that were not only aesthetically pleasing, but would feature higher-end technology and features not found in its competition.

Did you see Samsung’s theater of the absurd yesterday? No? Good for you. It unleashed a pale imitation of a Broadway show to roll out its amazing new flagship, the Galaxy S4. There’s a reason Samsung felt the need to put on one hell of a show for one hell of a phone — because, much like the Apple iPhone5, the S4 is in just about every way delightful but ultimately not that intriguing.

The Galaxy S IV may well be the greatest phone in the world right now.

And yet so completely boring.

Does that sound familiar? It should. We said it about the iPhone, too. And it is pretty much true of all high-end phones — at those least running Android or iOS. The wow factor of a few years ago is gone. And counterintuitively, that’s great.

Think about it. These are the requirements for entry for any high-end handset now: a great interface, a gorgeous pixel-dense display, great cameras front and back, a super-fast processor, 4G LTE, multi-carrier availability, a robust app store and superb industrial design. We’ve got the form factors pretty well dialed in, even if we’re still experimenting with sizes. Externally, the materials will change, and continue getting better and better. Software will continue to improve. And there will always be surprising new features, like Siri or S-Translate.

All of which means the bottom line is almost any flagship phone you buy today is going to be great, because it’s going to be an iterative device built on the shoulders of giants. No, it’s not going to blow anyone’s mind, or even raise a lot of questions from strangers. But that’s OK. In fact, you may not even want a super-interesting phone.

As we said in September, “revolution becomes evolution.”