Google Nexus 5 was unveiled more than two years ago, coming in as the second Nexus device made by LG.
Being a 2013 make, the device packs a 5.0-inch IPS LCD screen with 1080p resolution. Further, under the hood, the phone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC and a decent RAM of 2GB. While you will still find a decent storage space of 32GB on one variant of the Nexus 5, the base model only offers 16GB, which is quite insignificant in today’s environment.
You will still find some of the latest standards on the phone, among them wireless charging as well as a rear camera that features optical image stabilization. The Google Nexus 5 was actually the first device to come out running on the most popular Android OS – Android 4.4 KitKat. Even though the hardware available on this device is not the best out there, the price tag of this device is compelling. In addition, the device has received the new Android 6.0 Marshmallow update, which means it currently runs on the latest software.
The low price tag of the Google Nexus 5 base model attracted many buyers. However, little did they know that apps will be growing in size as years pass by. In two years’ time, application sizes have grown immensely. In addition, the fact that the Nexus 5 can record quality videos as well as capture high-memory photos means that the phone’s local storage is quickly depleted. It gets worse for users of this device as just like other Nexus phones, apart from the original Nexus One, there is no support for microSD card.
The 16GB of storage that the Google Nexus 5 offers is just not enough for some users, for instance, XDA forum’s KApetz2. The Nexus 5 user has gone further to modify his smartphone to accommodate more onboard storage by replacing the 16GB eMMC chip with a higher performance and larger 64GB eMMC chip. What this means is that the modified Google Nexus 5 now has more storage space that any of the current offerings of the phone. Furthermore, the fact that the new chip is a higher performer than the previous one means the new phone will be a better performer than the stock Nexus 5.
Of course, the process involves opening up your Google Nexus 5, locating the old chip and replacing it with a new one. However, this is not all. Users will have to amend the partition tables in order to allow the new 64GB chip to work on the phone. As a result, this is a process that is only reserved for the tech savvy users, just to be safe. Opening and replacing parts of a phone can lead to destroying or damaging it, so be very careful if at all this option is viable for your need for more storage space on your Google Nexus 5.