Update: We’ve added some details acerca Android 5.1 update, Which adds features and Improves performance. Scroll to the bottom of this page to read more.
The Nexus 6 heralds a new era for Google’s flagship mobile devices. Previously, we’ve ITS phones expected to pack all the hardware in Almost at unreasonably low prices, Perhaps at the expense of slick design. This year, Its New phone goes all out, upping the price, the specifications, the size and the design. Google wants the Nexus 6 to be a no-compromise competitor to the best smartphones on the market. See also:. The best smartphones of 2014
Nexus 6 review: size
Google made a bad start to this brave new world With The Nexus September – its design and build quality Were distinctly underwhelming for a premium device – so we where hoping the Nexus 6 would be an improvement. We were not disappointed. It’s a sumptuous and luxurious piece of technology staff
To be fair, that’s hardly a surprise. The Nexus 6 has-been manufactured in Partnership with Motorola, a company with a good (Recent) record of producing attractively designed Android smartphones. The Motorola Moto X (2nd Gen.) in particular, stands out, and the Nexus 6 is Effectively the same design, just bigger.
And When We say bigger, we really mean it. The Nexus 6′s screen an Enormous Measures 5.96in across the diagonal. That’s 0.5in larger than the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, 0.3in bigger than the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and it gains Nearly an inch On Its cousin, the Moto X (2nd Gen.).
It’s a royal a handful of phone, measuring 83mm across, a huge 159mm tall and 10.1mm thick. And it weighs a not inconsiderable 184g – making it the heaviest phone we’ve laid hands on in quite a while. Overall, it feels larger than all those phones we just Mentioned,, Although the iPhone 6 Plus is slightly workshop.
The Nexus 6 is most definitely a phone for Those Who Favour skinny cargo pants over jeans, and WHO gift ‘t mind texting With Both Hands. . Recent UNLIKE some larger-screened smartphones, there’s no software apps function to shrink down or move them within reach of a single thumb
For us, the size of the Nexus 6 is a step too far, but we reckonise That the scale of your smartphone is a very personal thing. Others might well find it’s the perfect size for them -. The perfect compromise Between compact tablet and smartphone
It’s Also well worth remembering That, if you’re teetering on the edge of whether or not to buy Such a huge phone or not, using Google Now mitigates esta problem somewhat. Since it’s a Nexus device, Google’s voice-monitoring and dictation system can be activated using the key phrase “OK Google” Which Means you do not even Have to tap the microphone icon in the search box to instigate voice control.
Even if one hand is occupied with a shopping bag or suitcase, This Means all you need to do to dial or text a friend, search the web or even find a nearby coffee bar, drag the phone is out of your pocket , unlock it and speak. And the efficacy of the Google Now system and the Nexus 6′s microphones Means That this works with a remarkable degree of accuracy, and in even the noisiest environments.
In fact it’s so good, and the Nexus 6 so big ., That we’ve found ourselves increasingly turning to Google Now Instead of using the onscreen keyboard to enter a simple search phrases, Because It’s less effort and more accurate
Nexus 6 review: design and other key features
Aside from its size there’s a lot to love about the Nexus 6′s design. There are no fancy Customisation options – it’s only available in “midnight blue” or white – but elsewhere the design language is all Moto X (2nd Gen.), and that’s very much a good thing
The phone. is surrounded with a gently curved silver aluminum frame, Which feels great in the hand. The smooth matte-plastic rear is not soft to the touch like the Moto X, but it does not give an inch and feels pleasant under the finger. The Nexus logo is emblazoned in silver lettering across the back, lending the phone a touch of class. . The screen, Which is topped With Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 is slightly curved at the edges, so thumbs and fingers slide on and off it without catching
Above and below That screen sit a pair of stereo speakers That Have to be Among the loudest we ‘ve ever come across on a phone – They really pound out the volume and Showed no sign of distortion, even With The volume turned all the way up. That Makes the Nexus 6 a great phone for listening to podcasts and a radio in the kitchen, Although, as you Might expect, music still sounds rather tinny.
One feature has the Nexus 6 That the Moto X (2nd Gen .) can not boast of just yet is Android 5 (Lollipop), to revamp That dealer to the biggest leap forward for Google’s mobile OS we’ve yet seen. Its colorful flat icons, updated core apps, notifications and lockscreen all hang together just as well as They Did on the Nexus 9 and the whole shebang feels superbly responsive.
In terms of UI design, Lollipop is Google’s . finest hour, and it really puts other manufacturers’ custom Efforts in the shade
Nexus 6 review: display
Fundamentally, the Nexus 6 is really all about the screen. Why else would someone put up With Such a giant smartphone if not for all that additional space? So it’s Important to nail esta critical element, and the Nexus 6 gets off on the right foot. Motorola has employed an AMOLED panel behind the Gorilla Glass frontage, so the black level is deep and contrast superb.
Using AMOLED technology Should allow the phone to keep power Demands to a minimum When using Android Lollipop’s “Ambient display “mode – Where notifications Appear When the phone is in standby. This is a great feature, but you Might want to think acerca switching it off. Google quotes up to 250 hours of battery life with it on, to figure That leaps to 330 hours With It off -. A significant 32% longer
As has Become the norm for larger flagship smartphones of late (the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and LG G3 come to mind), the resolution of esta Enormous screen is Quad HD -. that’s 1,440 pixels across and 2,560 down
This Gives a faintly ridiculous pixel density of 493ppi, and though we . That REMAIN unconvinced even display needs to 6in That many pixels, there’s no denying the screen is sharp, with crisp text and sharp images all round
In terms of color and brightness performance, we’re less impressed. The main problem Is That the Nexus 6 employs content-based dynamic contrast That can not be disabled. Even with “adaptive brightness” switched off in the settings (this adjusts brightness Depending on the ambient lighting conditions), the Nexus 6 Constantly adjusts the brightness según what’s displayed onscreen.
THUS, while white text on a gleamingly dark background looks brilliant, the white background of a web page will look slightly dim. In fact, brightness can swing by as much as 70cd / m 2 , an adjustment that’s particularly noticeable when opening up the Settings menu (Which has a white background), from a homescreen with a dark background.
That Makes any definitive judgment over color accuracy impossible, since it’s in constant flux Effectively. Even by eye, however we, the colors on the screen look slightly off, and in many cases a little overenthusiastic, even lurid. One thing is clear: this screen is not a patch on the Samsung Galaxy Note the iPhone 4′s or 6 Plus’
Nexus 6 review. Core hardware and performance
Nexus products are usually we cutting-edge when it comes to core performance, and the Nexus 6 is no different. Inside is one of the fastest mobile Qualcomm SoCs That produces – a quad-core Snapdragon 805, running at 2.7GHz With 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 420 GPU -. Which is the same getup as found in the Samsung Galaxy Note 4
As expected, the Nexus 6 swatted aside all the benchmarks we Threw at it, matching the blow Note 4 -for-blow. It’s reasonably competitive With The iPhone 6 Plus, as well, until, you get to the GFXBench gaming tests -. That’s Because, with a 1080p screen, the 6 Plus has a far lighter workload than the Nexus 6
Still , 27fps in the Latter test is perfectly respectable, and in real-world gaming the Nexus 6 put in a decent showing. It’s amazingly slick and responsive in every other situation, too, heavy Whether browsing web pages or Googe Maps, and asking it to multitask does not faze it either.
It does, however it, get rather hot When used intensively. The top portion of the screen hit 41 degrees Celsius at times and the rear 39 degrees, Which Becomes uncomfortable after a while.
iPhone 6 | Samsung Galaxy | Nexus 6 | |
| SunSpider (ms) | 349 (Safari) | 745 (Chrome) | 806 (Chrome) |
| Peacekeeper | 2606 | 1310 | 1025 |
| Geekbench 3 sc | 1,628 | 1095 | 1,054 |
| Geekbench 3 mc | 2,922 | 3,268 | 3,279 |
| GFXBench T-Rex onscreen (fps) | 52 | 27 | 27 |
| GFXBench Manhattan onscreen (fps) | 31 | 11 | 12 |
Nexus 6 review: battery life
Battery life is a more mixed picture. For light- and moderate-use scenarios, it’s excellent. In our 720p video playback test, Reviews where we put the phone into flight mode and in September the screen as close to 120cd / m 2 as possible, the capacity of the Nexus 6′s 3,220mAh battery fell at a rate of 6.8% per hour.
It’s in good company here, Nearly matching the Note 4′s result of 5.9%, Although it falls some way behind the iPhone 6 Plus’ 4.9%.
The audio-streaming test, Which Gives an indication of a phone’s standby performance, Resulted in a depletion rate of 2.3% per hour, slightly better than the Note 4 and on a par With The 6 Plus.
In other good news, the Nexus 6 have wireless charging built in, and comes with a “Turbo” AC charger supplied in the box, Which we found was capable of ramping up the charge very Quickly indeed 17% in 15 minutes is enough of an emergency boost to be really useful. And the Improvements wrought-through Android 5′s “Project Volta” mean That standby stamina is exceptional: we left the Nexus 6 on a bedside table overnight at 3% capacity, forgetting to plug it in, and it still HAD 1% remaining eight hours later.
Push the CPU, however it, and stamina Takes a dramatic turn for the worse. In the GFXBench battery test, Despite The fact That the frame rate is capped at 22.4fps (lower than the maximum the phone is capable of), a result of 144mins is pretty poor, and well short of the iPhone 6 Plus’ time of 206mins , Which is rendering more than twice the number of frames
In all, though, it’s a thumbs-up for the battery life. – just do not expect it to last long when you ‘re gaming hard.
| iPhone 6 Plus | Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | Nexus 6 | |
| 720p video playback | – 4.9% / hr | – 6.2% / hr | -6.8% / hr |
| Audio streaming | – 2.2% / hr | – 2.9% / hr | -2.3% / hr |
| GFXBench battery test (Projected runtime) | 206mins (52fps) | 206mins (12.3fps) | 144mins (22.4fps) |
Nexus 6 review: camera
On paper, the Nexus 6′s cameras look decent, too. The rear camera has a resolution of 13 megapixels top, an f / 2 lens, 4K video recording, optical image stabilization (OIS), and a dual-LED ring flash. The front-facing camera can capture 2-megapixel stills and 1080p video. It can not quite match the Samsung Galaxy Note 4′s 16-megapixel snapper, but beats the 8 megapixels of the iPhone 6 Plus
In testing it Performed much better than expected (Given how disappointing the Moto X’s camera was 2nd Gen), capturing images and video Largely clean in good light, and well-exposed and-focused photographs and video in low light, . without recourse to the dual-LED flash
If there is a weakness, it’s the speed of autofocus system. It is not anywhere near as fast as Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or iPhone 6 Plus, Both of Which employ phase-detect autofocus like a DSLR or compact system camera. The Nexus 6 That’s does not have any, Instead Relying on contrast detect, and esta Takes quite a while to lock focus. . In video, it’s more of a problem, as the focus jumps backwards and forwards distractingly as you pan the camera around
In general though, we’re pleased with the results from the Nexus 6′s camera, and it’s nice to see That Google has refrained from acerca messing too much with the camera software. It’s a simple, effective, and not overladen With features, yet it puts most of it what you need to tap and swipe or two away. . The only major thing it is full Lacks Control over ISO and shutter speed, but as compensation, it is possible to tweak the exposure up and down
Nexus 6 review: connectivity, storage, price and call quality
As you’d expect of a high-end handset, connectivity is cutting-edge. The Nexus 6 Cat 6 has support for 4G download speeds of up to 300Mbits / sec and uploads of 50Mbits / sec. There’s 2×2 MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Which we saw hit speeds Between 8MB / sec and 9MB / sec When reading a large movie file at close range from a network share. . NFC is covered, too, as is Bluetooth 4.1, and you get SlimPort Also for HDMI output via the phone’s USB port
As far as storage is concern concerned, there are two different configurations of the Nexus 6 to choose between: a 32GB and 64GB model. Both Represent good (if not exceptional) value, at £ 499 and £ 549 SIM-free respectively. To put it into context, the iPhone 6 Plus (16GB) is much more expensive, the 16GB version costing £ 619 and the 64GB version £ 699, while the 32GB Samsung Galaxy Note 4 goes for £ 599.
Finally, call quality is perfectly respectable. The Nexus 6 goes loud enough that you ‘can hear your caller in even the noisiest environments. Just be careful not to put the phone to your ear in speakerphone mode: you’ll come away with your ears ringing
Nexus 6 review: verdict
The Nexus 6 has taken us by surprise in the short time we’ve had it. Once you sidle past the unavoidable fact of Its gargantuan size, there’s an awful lot it does right. Battery life is good, the camera is excellent, and the build quality and design are second to none. And, Although STI hold an edge over rivals it in many areas, the expats are not huge.
For us, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Remains top dog in the big-stakes phone thanks con sus slightly more manageable size and stylus input, better camera and upper screen, but if you’re in the market for a big phone (and make no mistake, this is real bruiser of a handset) you’d be doing yourself a disfavour by not putting the . Nexus 6 on your shortlist
Nexus 6 review: Android 5.1 update
We’ve been using a Nexus 6 as our main phone for some time now, and Largely, we’ve Been pretty happy with it. Android 5 is responsive and zippy in the main, Especially Compared to the Touchwiz-burdened software on the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge.
However, it would Appear That Have Been some users complaining acerca slowing down performance over time. The Android 5.1 update, Which is Currently rolling out to Nexus devices worldwide, looks to Have sorted out Those problems.
Among a handful of improvements the update Brings encryption is a boost to performance, plus a change to the way the CPU runs. The Nexus 6 now runs in quad-core mode permanently, Instead of shutting down two of STI cores When the screen is on but the phone is idle.
In actual terms, it does not feel as if thismakes much difference. We’ve always found the Nexus 6 to be nippy and responsive, and it will not do anything for your gaming performance. . Before and after tests run on GFXBench revealed no change
In CPU benchmarks, however we, the 5.1 update Significantly improved performance. On our test we saw performance Nexus 6 Increase by 19% and 57% in the single-core and multi-core Geekbench three tests, and by 7% in SunSpider. Previously, we’d NOTED That the performance HAD Deteriorated since we first tested the phone, but esta update Brings it back to factory-fresh speeds.
Elsewhere, the 5.1 update Brings a handful of small interface Changes With it. There are now shown under the dropdown arrows Wi-Fi and Bluetooth icons in the Notifications pulldown menu, Which alternative networks and display devices, and an alarm volume. You can now tap an icon to adjust the alarm volume level while music is playing.
Other small touches include animations icon in the Clock app and on the rotation lock icon in the notifications menu, plus the new On-body unlock feature . Turn esta feature on (it’s found in the Settings under Security & gt; Smart Lock) and the Nexus 6 Will Remain unlocked as long as it Detects it’s in your pocket, by monitoring the accelerometer for movement. We like this idea and it works pretty well for the MOST part, but if you sit still at your desk it will lock itself if you sit still for longer than around 20 seconds.
There Have Been reports of bugs and crashes, but the big ones so far Appear to be restricted to other Nexus devices. For some Nexus 7 owners the update bricked Completely Their tablets and, more Recently, Nexus 5 owners reporting problems Have Been With The camera app force closes Which When Launched from a third-party app: such as Facebook and Twitter.
On our review Nexus 6 We have not experienced anything quite so serious, but neither have our time with it Been Completely bug-free. The Gmail app crashes Whenever we try to attach a file from local storage (though you can get around esta issue by attaching from Google Drive), and we’ve experienced a few infuriating Also spontaneous resets while playing the top-down shooter, Sky Force . Other than esta, though, It’s Been smooth driving so far; Android 5.1 looks as if it’s well worth installing an update.
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