I have a Galaxy Nexus, and I find I don't miss the SD card at all - if I want the data off of it I use a cable, and photos automatically sync over Dropbox.

If you _need_ more space than it comes with, then you'll want something with an SD card, but otherwise I wouldn't worry about it.

Frankly, at this point I wouldn't have any Android phone that wasn't a Nexus. So when I replace my Galaxy Nexus (another year or so) then I'll be looking to see what the successor to the Nexus 4 is. If I was buying next week I'd definitely get a Nexus 4.

The only reason I like to have a huge capacity is to carry a whole bunch of music (~40GB) and/or some movies to watch on the plane.

Spotify is replacing the former use case for me (Google Music is currently not available where I am), but the second stands.

--edit-- Also I'm loving the phablet form factor, which is keeping me on non-nexus at the moment.

How often do you fly? You should be able to hook up a USB key to the Nexus 4 with a USB OTG adapter. Not pretty or horribly convenient, but a it works for occasional use.

If you fly often enough that the second is an issue, couldn't you just get a small tablet for that purpose?

Once you're carrying a small tablet that can make phone calls, why bother with a separate phone?

There is that, yes!

OTOH the use-case was pretty plane-specific, and you don't often need a phone on a plane. Perhaps a 7 inch tablet (to replace the kindle) would suffice. Though then we run into the same problem, the Nexus 7 has no SD slot either!

FWIW I've given up on a dedicated device for that use case; my 11" ultrabook-like (Samsung NP900X1B) can play a much wider range of videos (and also games, coding etc.) and is small enough to be comfortable on a plane. There's a very small space where I'd want a 7-inch-type device (on my way to/from a club is pretty much the only use case I can think of), but I'm not sure there are 7-inch screens much better than a big phone screen.

(personal experience, probably different for other people)

I've no idea what the bandwidth caps are like on t-mobile, but the google music streaming service is pretty nice on android, so it's not like you have to fill up the phone SD card with every song you've ever owned.

If you love watching films on your phone (something i never do), I can see the 16GB limit getting annoying though.

Bandwidth caps on T-Mobile vary from plan to plan. The $30/month prepaid option that many people are going with for the N4 offers 100 minutes of voice coverage each month, unlimited text messages, and unlimited data, but only the first 5GB of data is available at HSPA+ 42Mbps speeds. After you exceed 5GB your bandwidth is throttled down to "3G" speeds (but you're not actually cut off).

I think you actually get throttled down to EDGE/2G speeds. I've had this plan for a while and never hit the limit, but I'm pretty sure the limited speeds are slower than 3G.

That's pretty great for streaming music since music can easily be streamed over 3G level speeds. Of course, video is a completely different ball game.

Speaking as a Nexus 7 user (16GB version): I would say that this is the absolute minimum I would have on any device for that matter. 32GB would be some breathing space - for storing films and larger games for example - and would be what I'd go for in any future purchase.

I also have a 50GB Box account on the Nexus 7 which I use (mainly) for pdf storage which helps out a bit.

I'm in your exact position. Aging Nexus One that I plan on replacing, using t-mobile. LTE isn't an issue for me for a while, as I don't plan on giving my money to either Verizon or AT&T in the near future. My storage concerns were cleared up when I realized I have ~5gb free on my current 16gb sd card. Would both of those things be nice? Sure, but I doubt I will actually miss them.

Thanks for the input! After reading here and some other reviews, I think I'm going to pull the trigger on it. Although, I'm sure a 32gb version will probably be available at $350 in 6 months :P

Just adding to what others said, you won't miss your music collection if you use Google Music and have good enough internet. In my use case, I have found that although I have GBs of music collected over years, at any particular movement, I am listening to only very small subset of it. So what I have uploaded all my music to Google Music, and then made offline all the music I frequently listen; essentially the new albums I purchase and the older, favorite songs.

It works well because T-mobile data speeds are fast enough, and only time I remember missing my music was when I was on a long 12 hour flight, and really wanted to listen to that one song, and taking out my laptop wasn't worth the effort.

What does LTE actually offer? Just more speed?