Google Nexus is a phone co-manufactured by Google and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and was the first phone to introduce Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The device has some great hardware and design but is it great in terms of software? Lets check it out.
The Google Nexus 4 which comes with 4.2.2 Android version has satisfied its customers with a promising screen quality, sound quality etc. But it has disappointed its users with the quality of the camera and the battery and has no SD card slot. It has Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor.
The Google Nexus 5 comes with Android version v4.4 (KitKat) and it is upgradable to 4.4.2. It has satisfied its customers with a great performance and display, but it has again failed to satisfy its customers for the camera quality and life of the battery. The 4.4.2 update should solve that as it is giving a better white balance and ISO option. It has Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor.
Although being one of the top selling phones in the smartphone market, the device is suspected of having vulnerability to SMS attacks. It is said that the Google nexus phones are forced to reboot or lose their network connectivity when around 30 flash messages are sent continuously. Flash messages are a type of SMS and consider of messages which appear on the screen(this happens without user interaction and is used in cases of emergency) and can be dismissed easily. But, the nexus users do not have a special setup for the flash SMS and hence users are unable to properly dismiss these messages. If not properly dismissed it can cause a clog resulting in device reboot.
So it very easy for the attackers to send lot of messages before even the user notices it. On phone reboot, the SIM card can be found locked and a PIN might be set up by the hacker! PC world adds that the messaging application crashes but the system doesn’t immediately restart. The problems are found to be preset in Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 as well.
On the Nexus 5, the messaging app is considered to connect its chat and messaging app into one app as seen below.
The issue has been reported to Google and the users are awaiting to know the company’s ideas and replies to address this issue. Does your Nexus also have a similar issue? Let me know in the comments section below.
