Sometimes I wonder why stuff suddenly stops working as it should... oh, wait. I know. It's because it's all connected to the internet and in the all-mighty cloud now.
For some time, I cannot search for names in the dialer/phone app on my Nexus 4. So, the screen is defective in the top part where the search bar is. Uh... no. Other applications that have a search bar or a menu in that spot work just fine. So... the search bar of the dialer got broken in an update? No. When turning the phone sideways, the dialer just searches. It's ONLY the dialer, and ONLY when it's the right side up that has this problem.
Somewhere, someone at Google messed up with the latest version of this program, or the Google services it uses, and they probably won't fix it, or it'll take a very long time, because the Nexus 4 is old.
It runs stock android 5.1.1. (In 2014, when it was two years old, Google decided to scrap it from the update list, while the Nexus 5, and 5P, released in 2013, are STILL receiving updates to this date, including Android 8.1.)
On the other hand, the Nexus 4 was a very powerful device in 2012, and it is _still_ powerful enough to hold its own against current-day €200 phones such the Samsung J5, although it's smaller, but for me, that's a good thing. I don't _want_ a phone as large as a tablet.
Having a 1.5 GHz quadcore CPU and 2GB of RAM, it's more than powerful enough to do what I want.
Therefore I refuse to just throw the phone away. Doing so would equate to throwing away a €200 smartphone, and I think that's ridiculous. Therefore I have been experimenting with newer Android versions: Unlegacy Android (stock android recompiled for the Nexus 4) and LineageOS (successor to Cyanogenmod). Both Android 6.0.1 and 7.1.2 work beautifully. This thing feels like a new phone. But...
Battery life is very, very poor. It drains 1% per hour without doing anything. (There aren't even any apps installed except the ones that come with stock android.) I've not noticed poor battery life under Android 5.1.1. Battery-optimized kernels such as Hellspawn Kernel or Quanta are a bit better, but not by much... and I don't feel like running a 1 to 1,5 year old kernel in an OS compiled basically yesterday. It defeats the purpose of security updates, at the least.
The phone still gives me 4 hours of screen on time when setting a very low brightness. (Planning Christmas across families, with my GF, having old people all over the country that need to be visited in a three day time span takes a LOT of time....) It _could_ be that after 5 years, the battery just decided to start giving out.
Thus, before I start looking at another phone and probably/possibly end up with a hated Samsung* I'm going to give the old Nexus 4 one more shot and give it a new battery as a Christmas present. Then I'll see how newer versions of Android will run. If either Unlegacy 6.0.1 or 7.1.2, or Lineage 14.1 (7.1.2) runs well, I'm keeping this phone until someone at my carrier kicks me off the network for being the last person in the country to still use 3G.
(*)
Spoiler:
I detest Samsung almost as much as Apple and Leica. The latter two because, IMHO, they're WAY overpriced compared to others and think they're the only ones worth buying, and Samsung because they put out 50 trillion phones a year as if they're shooting phones using a spray gun in the hopes of somebody, somewhere, buying something. To me, they still just feel like the cheap B-brand they were in the past. If any electronics manufacturer, anywhere, had something, somewhere, Samsung had it too... but cheaper and worse.)