My Sprint contract ends next month, so I'm in the market for a new Android phone. It doesn't look like the Nexus 5 is coming anytime soon, so the best options out there right now seem to be the Nexus 4, the HTC One, or the Samsung Galaxy S4.

My gut feeling is that the Nexus 4 is my best bet. I won't have to worry about a contract, it has wireless charging (albeit not as good as what the Palm Pre had four years ago ) and the performance gap compared to the newer phones seems to only be around 10-15% on most benchmarks, which doesn't seem like a difference worth worrying about. Plus, I'll retain the Nexus line's advantages of getting more consistent attention from the ROM community.

The downsides seem pretty minimal to me. The screen isn't as pretty, but since I'm stepping up from a ~3 year old phone, I think I'll be pleased with the upgrade even if it's not 1080p, which on a ~5" screen, seems like overkill. The HTC's camera is getting a lot of nice reviews despite the lower raw pixel count, but I can't imagine it makes up for the extra cost.

The one wildcard seems to be the One's hardware design, which seems to be nicer and sturdier than the Nexus 4's glass. Still, hard to imagine the nicer exterior and better camera are worth hundreds of dollars over the life of a two year contract.

Can anyone think of anything else I'm not considering that would make one of the non-Nexus phones worth the extra cost and hassle of a contract? I've just about talked myself out of them already, but thought there might be some owners of the other phones here who could share their experiences.