Just slightly over a week ago on the 28th of February 2015, the Nexus 6 was officially available for sale in Singapore. I got my hands on one, and would like to share some of my personal thoughts on the device.
The design of the phone follows closely the design of the Moto X series of devices. Understandably so since Motorola was the company responsible for it this time round. The biggest difference? Size. The Nexus 6 as the name suggests, is a phone with a 6” display (or a 5.96" AMOLED display with a resolution of 2560 x1440, with 493ppi to be precise).
The version that I have is the Cloud White version, with the other being the Midnight Blue. The sides of the devices are surrounded by a metal band, with the back being plastic. The front is a plain slab of Gorilla Glass 3, with 2 slits on the top and bottom as its speakers. It is not the most exciting design, but I think it looks nice and simple.
This is a large phone, so large, that it is an inch away from being called a tablet. One handed use is going to be a bit tricky for anyone with normal sized hands. The fact that the materials used for the device is not particularly grippy does not help any too. You could put a case on it that gives it a better grip, but that would make the phone even bigger and wider than it is, which brings you back to square one. When using it one handed, it always feel like I am about to drop the phone.
Personally, I prefer a smaller, and easier to handle phone, but I can certainly understand the love for a large screen device. Games, videos, photos, browsing the web, reading, editing documents, so on and so forth. Every thing looks better. Everything is more enjoyable. Not to mention with the dual front-facing speakers on the top and bottom of the device providing stereo sound for your aural pleasure. While the speakers are not as good as HTC’s BoomSound speakers, they are still pretty darn good. Certainly better than only having a single speaker on the side or rear of the device.
The AMOLED screen is pretty good looking indoors. Colours looks saturated as per AMOLED screens, but not overly so. My favourite part of the display is probably how low the brightness level can go. Despite taking on a pinkish hue at its lowest setting, it is extremely comfortable to look at in dark environments. My not so favourite part of the display though, is the brightness level too, in particular how high it can go. Visibility in sunlight is simply not as good as other AMOLED panels I have seen, and it pales in comparison to the display on the Galaxy Note 4 albeit both being QHD AMOLED panels.
Helping to push the pixels around the QHD display, and powering complex games and apps, the phone packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor with 2.7GHz quad-core CPU, accompanied by an Adreno 420 GPU. While not the latest offerings from Qualcomm like the 64bit Snapdragon 810, it is still no slouch by today's standard. It blazes through most games and apps with ease.
Though sadly, some parts of the phone seems to be let down by a slightly buggy OS which is Android 5.0 Lollipop (5.0.1). Apps force closing, some minor stuttering and pauses every now and then. Nothing major, but still weird to see happen on a hardware as powerful as this. With 5.1 being rolled out to some other Nexus devices already, hopefully we will see it for the Nexus 6 soon, and hopefully it will fix some of the major bugs.
(Pressing the volume button while in the app tray reveals this 1 px misalignment on the left side)
The phone has a 3220mAh battery capacity, which sounds like a lot, but is more or less the norm for phones this size. In my time with the device, the battery life is actually not that great for a phone this size. The Galaxy Note 4 with similar specifications, and the same 3220mAh battery capacity, lasted noticeably longer when I tested it a couple of months ago.
It still lasts me a day of use with ease, but not much remaining to push it past another. Which means the need to charge the phone daily. Thankfully with Turbo Charging (Quick Charge), you do not have to spend that much time at all tethered to a cable. Just earlier, I plugged in the Nexus 6 at around 60%, and it took slightly over half an hour to get it fully charged. Not to mention the support for Qi wireless charging too, making it convenient to top up juice on the device.
Which brings me to the camera next, another Achilles' heel of Nexus devices of the past. This time round, I am happy to say that the 13MP rear-facing camera with optical image stabilisation (OIS), and a f/2.0 aperture, is able to capture some pretty good looking shots (by Nexus standard). It also has a dual LED ring flash which should be familiar to Moto X 2nd generation users.
That is not to say the camera is great though, because it is not. The shots when viewed at 100% shows loss of details likely due to slightly over aggressive noise-reduction. That, combined with what looks like a bit of over sharpening, makes effect looks unnatural. But it is not often people actually zoom in their photos that much, so it is not really a huge deal if you ask me, just a little annoying to me.
(100% crop)
Low light shots are not too bad, the image taken with flash with the object pretty near to the phone turned out a lot better than expected. Wartortle looks evenly lit without looking overexposed like normal flash tend to do. Night shots while decent too, still doesn’t look as good as something taken on a Lumia 1520.
In short, most people would probably be extremely satisfied with the camera on the Nexus 6. It IS good, but it is just not that great. At least not when comparing it to the best of what other manufacturers can offer. The 2MP front-facing camera on the front of the phone is as average as it gets with no worthy points to mention at all.
Overall the Nexus 6 is nice device that showcases what Android Lollipop has to offer. But unlike its predecessors from LG, Google is asking a flagship price for the Nexus 6. Which means that the excuse of it being a bang for the buck device is no longer applicable. Which means that there are plenty that I can nitpick about the device, though none of them deal breakers. But one of the biggest issue I can think of, is the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
With similar specifications, and at a similar price point, the Note 4 beats the Nexus 6 in so many ways. Crucially, the Note 4 has a much better camera, a better screen, better feel in hand, more features (S-Pen), better network connectivity (support Cat.6/CA LTE in Singapore), and better battery life. The Note 4 is the better device from a hardware standpoint in my opinion.
(Speedtest, Left: Nexus 6, Right: Samsung Galaxy Note 4)
If you can tolerate Samsung's take on Android, and do not mind not being able to tinker with the device, the Note 4 is the better choice. But if you like tinkering with your Android device, prefer stock Android, or cannot tolerate Samsung's take on Android, then you should look elsewhere. Which is the Nexus 6's other biggest issue. The rest of the Android devices.
Take the Oneplus One for example. You can tinker with it to your liking like a Nexus device, but it still does not cost as much as a Nexus 6. It also has a good camera, great battery life, and great developer support.
In the end, despite being a huge Motorola fan, and a fan of Nexus devices in general... I find it hard to "love" the Nexus 6. I find it hard to justify the cost of it. It is a good phone, and undoubtedly the best Nexus smartphone yet, but at that price, I am not sure it is entirely worth it.
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