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Videos are shot in full HD by default – that is 1080p, but you can also switch to 720p or even 480p if you're really feeling cheap.
Full HD files are large, obviously, which can be a pain if you're running low on storage space, but they do look beautiful on that screen and also when played back on a bigger device.
Accessing the video camera is not so much a convoluted affair, but Google has streamlined it so that you have to go in through the camera app and then change the input method which takes an extra second or two.
There's no Video Recorder app in the app drawer that takes you straight in which you get with some other handsets. It's not a massive issue but it may slow you down if you're trying to shoot a movie in a hurry.
When taking a movie, tap the screen and it'll snap a photo too. We thought this was an ace feature when it was first unveiled on the HTC One X earlier this year, but now, every man and his dog seems to have copied.
And since you can't access the camera menu unless you touch the screen, that means that you can't do anything apart from snap a photo when shooting a video.
So, if you suddenly plunge into darkness, you can't turn your light on during the film. You have to stop and create a new clip. This is one of our pet hates – and yet it's something that none of the OEMs seem to want to fix.
Options are a little more limited than they are with the standard camera – but you can still amend things like the automatic white balance.
There is one fun tweak which allows you to shoot videos in time lapse. Though it obviously takes forever to shoot because of the nature of what it's doing. We stood out there in the freezing, Baltic cold with no gloves shooting for about 60 seconds to get a two second clip.
Where the Nexus 4 excels is moving between extreme light situations. We did the standard test where we went from pitch black to really bright light, courtesy of our nuclear strength spotlights in our very own kitchen. The Nexus 4 was one of the fastest devices we've seen when it came to adjusting and put in a textbook performance.
