Not too many faults can be found on the hugely popular Nexus 5 but one glaring miss by Google that is reflected by the KitKat-powered device is its allegedly mediocre rear cam shooter.

In a review, BGR called the LG-built Nexus 5 as "a fantastic option for anyone looking for a powerful smartphone at an affordable price without a service contract." The sleek build, the power it packs - thanks to the mix of a quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU - and the solid price, starting at $350, easily makes the device an irresistible holiday buy.

"The Nexus 5 is the only smartphone Android fans should care about this holiday season," declared BGR's Zach Epstein.

However, the Google flagship smartphone, even when boasting of a near 5-inch screen display with 1080p resolution, is far from being perfects, Mr Epstein said.

He pointed out two major disappointments - battery life and the camera. Fortunately the former can be addressed by a few practical measures - turning down the screen brightness, less gaming on the road and maybe bringing along an extra charger then rush to the nearest power outlet once the power metre starts blinking.

But a camera that fails to deliver could be a lasting annoyance for the life of the gadget. Salvation would only come via a hardware upgrade or perhaps a firmware update coming from Google and LG.

According to Mr Epstein, much of the camera issues he encountered with the Nexus 5 is software related. The application is just 'terrible', he added.

"Seriously, it's awful. It's slow and clunky, the menus are unnecessarily difficult to access and navigate, options are few and far between, and I found that it often has trouble locking focus," the reviewer wrote.

For such debacle, the best answer would be a software upgrade.

And Nexus 5 owners are in luck because they don't have to wait for Google engineers to cook up the next KitKat patch. A MOD from XDA Developers is now ready for download, CNET said in a report, which is coded to improve the camera performance of the mobile phone.

The hack, authored by Indian developer Jishnu Sur, is designed to improve the quality of clips and images that the Nexus 5 camera produces. Part of the enhancements is tweaking the sound that is captured when camera recording is in video mode, CNET said.

The Nexus 5 MOD also fixes the camera focus issue and a lot more of key features that the phone in its present state will not be able to deliver.

As to why Nexus 5 owners would want to test drive the MOD that Mr Sur offers for free? They have nothing to lose but the limited gadget warranty that LG has stuffed with the smartphone.

Or they can simply wait out for the KitKat update, which likely will not arrive until early 2014 with no assurance of a camera fix.