Nexus 6P Review: Going Out With A BANG!

Google’s Nexus brand is DEAD.

Usually this would be a sad, sad day in the mobile space. Sad because Google’s Nexus brand has been a solid, mainstay of the Android space since, well…. forever.

Nexus was initially aimed at developers as phone to develop on but the brand quickly caught the attention of consumers. The Nexus 4 blew the brand up in the hearts and minds of consumers all over the world with its great specs, excellent performance and low, low price.

The Nexus 5 – arguably Google’s finest moment – sold exceptionally well, following the formula established by the Nexus 4. The Nexus 6 was something of a departure from Google’s two-year formula of selling its handsets WELL below the competition.

The Nexus 6 wasn’t received well; many sources claim it was a rushed job, hurried to market. It wasn’t a bad handset, but after the Nexus 5 it left a bitter aftertaste in the mouths of many Android fans.

Still, if it wasn’t for the Nexus 6, what with its dramatic change to how Nexus handsets are priced, we wouldn’t have had the Nexus 6P – and that would have been a travesty.

You can still buy the Nexus 6P – and I would still strongly recommend it. Check out the deals at the end of this review for the best prices on the web.

Right. Let's get stuck into this review, shall we?

Nexus 6P Review: Design

If you make a premium handset these days it NEEDS to be constructed from metal or aluminium. I don’t know who created this rule or when it was implemented, but it is one nearly all manufacturers follow right now and the result is, well, a lot of metallic handsets doing the rounds.

The Nexus 6P is no exception to this rule and is, as you’d expect, constructed out of only the finest build materials Huawei could lay its hands on. It is not a particularly eye-catching device from the front, looking like a long, black slab, but it does feature a very tight unibody design with excellent button placement (volume/power right hand side; screen unlock/fingerprint scanner on the back) that feels exceptionally premium in the hand.

At the bottom you have a USB Type-C port, the new standard for charging and data transfer on phones, tablets and laptops which you’ll be seeing A LOT more of in 2016, and a slight protrusion on the back at the top where the camera is housed. At first this protrusion is a problem — I couldn’t stand the way it looked or why it had to be encapsulated inside what looks like a mini version of the pavilion from Lords Cricket Ground.

NEXUS is daubed along the back of the handset and about an inch above this is where you’ll find the Nexus 6P’s rather excellent fingerprint scanner. The protrusion and finger print scanner, as well as the NEXUS logo, are the most eye-catching elements of the Nexus 6P’s overall design and finish. On the whole I find the handset rather conservative, if I’m honest. It’s not “in your face”, it’s not too showy and it’s not too thin, either.

One area of concern, however, is to do with the build materials: the Nexus 6P’s exterior chassis material is metallic to the touch and scratches-up VERY easily. An errant lighter or coin in your pocket can put a permanent scratch in the back of the Nexus, and when you’ve dropped £350+ on a handset this is not something you want to happen. For this reason, and a bunch more, GET A CASE! Do not learn the hard way as I did.

Nexus 6P Review: Display

The Nexus 6P has an AWESOME display. The giant 5.7in QHD AMOLED panel clocks in with a ridiculous 518ppi pixel density and some of the truest, brightest colours I’ve ever seen on a mobile phone. Colours really do pop off the screen and the contrast, thanks to the AMOLED panel, is stunning.

And if that wasn’t enough, the Nexus 6P supports ambient display mode as well which basically means you can view notifications and updates on a blank lockscreen without using any power. Not a new feature by any stretch, the original Moto X had it years ago, but a great addition to an already excellent Nexus handset.

Nexus 6P Review: Specs & Hardware

Operating System: Android 6.0 Marshmallow
Display: 5.7 inches; WQHD (2560 x 1440) AMOLED display at 518 ppi; 16:9 aspect ratio; Corning® Gorilla® Glass 4; Fingerprint and smudge-resistant oleophobic coating
Rear Camera: 12.3 MP¹; 1.55 µm pixels; f/2.0 aperture; IR Laser assisted autofocus; 4K (30 fps) video capture; Broad-spectrum CRI-90 dual flash
Front Camera: 8MP camera; 1.4 µm pixels; f/2.4 aperture; HD video capture (30 fps)
Processors: Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 810 v2.1, 2.0 GHz Octa-core 64-bit; Adreno 430 GPU
Memory & Storage: RAM: 3 GB LPDDR4; Internal storage: 32 GB, 64 GB, or 128 GB
Dimensions: 159.3 X 77.8 X 7.3 mm
Weight: 178 g
Color: Aluminium; Graphite; Frost
Media: Dual front-facing stereo speakers; 3 microphones (2 front, 1 rear) with noise cancellation
Battery: 3,450 mAh battery; Fast charging: up to 7 hours of use from only 10 minutes of charging
Wireless & Location: LTE cat. 6; Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2x2 MIMO, dual-band (2.4 GHz, 5.0 GHz); Bluetooth 4.2; NFC; GPS, GLONASS; Digital compass; Wi-Fi use requires 802.11a/b/g/n/ac access point (router). Syncing services, such as backup, require a Google Account.
Ports: USB Type-C; Single Nano SIM slot: 3.5 mm audio jack
Material: Anodized aluminum

To say the Nexus 6P has good specs and hardware would be an understatement. This thing is so jam-packed with the latest bells and whistles it makes the iPhone 6s look like a handset from 2010. The Nexus 6P has all the grunt and firepower you will ever need from a handset, but importantly — and this isn’t always the case inside Android — it ACTUALLY feels that way too.

Why is this? Simple: Huawei — through some kind of voodoo — has apparently tamed Qualcomm’s squiffy but incredibly powerful Snapdragon 810 CPU. How do I know this? Again, simple: the handset does not overheat, like at all, and in the two months I’ve been using it hasn’t once crashed, stumbled or glitched-out. Android Marshmallow runs buttery smooth and everything, from video editing to high-end gaming titles, sprint along at a very impressive rate.

I don’t know what Huawei did with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 but it WORKED. The Nexus 6P is the fastest, most reliable and non-glitchy Android phone I have tested all year. Nothing else, save for Samsung’s Galaxy S6, S6 EDGE and Note 5, even come close to what Huawei and Google have achieved here. Hell, I even dumped my beloved iPhone 6 Plus for the Nexus 6P. It really is THAT good.

Nexus 6P Review: Android Marshmallow

Android Marshmallow is a HUGE update that adds in a bunch of new and very useful features. And thanks to Google’s Material Design initiative it is also the best looking mobile platform on the planet, surpassing Apple’s iOS in almost every regard when it comes to features, aesthetics and overall usability. Google has made huge steps with its Android platform in recent years, but the last two builds — Lollipop and Marshmallow — were very significant, adding in new, innovative features and plenty of background updates so as to ensure smoother, more power efficient performance.

For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to go into detail about Android Marshmallow here. It’d take way too long and detract from the hardware, which, of course, is the main event in this review. You can find out ALL about Android Marshmallow and its best new features inside our Android Marshmallow Review.

As of March 2016, the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X have both received an update intended to boost overall device performance. The update, tagged as the MHC19I build, is being pushed over-the-air, so you should receive a prompt, but if not, you can head to Settings>About Phone>Updates to check manually and it should register that the new patch is waiting to go. Here's a shortlist of quoted features:

General device performance
DND next alarm disappearing issue
Carrier-specific bug fixes
Connectivity improvements

Nexus 6P Review: Camera

For the longest time Nexus cameras sucked. But this was OK, most of the time the devices themselves were so affordable you could forgive them this one lacking aspect. All this changed in 2014, though, with the launch of the Nexus 6, a big budget Nexus handset tasked with going head to head with Android’s top players in terms of specs, hardware, performance and price.

I didn’t much care for the Nexus 6. It felt like a rushed job, something Google kicked out at the 11th hour simply because it had no other choice. The Nexus 6 wasn’t awful all round. It was just about adequate for the most part. But one area that really was pants was its camera, which blew harder than Hurricane Frank.

The Nexus 6P is an expensive handset (for a Nexus handset) but unlike the Nexus 6 it has the Nexus 5x, a cheaper, more traditional Nexus handset to back it up, meaning you have a choice now of either a classic, affordable Nexus handset and all that comes with it ,or a next-generation Nexus handset with all the blingy bits for a higher cost, including EASILY the best imaging technology ever packed into a Nexus phone.

The Nexus 6P rocks a 12.3MP camera on the back and, once you’ve fired off an image, you’ll notice right away that this is a significant cut above what came before. It doesn’t have OIS, which is a shame, but it does let a TON of light in thanks to its 1.5 microns sensor, meaning better general performance and a HUGE boost to low-light performance.

The front facing setup is decent too, and I have A LOT of love for Android’s simple and easy to use Camera App. I also like the fact you can access the camera by clicking the power/unlock button twice in quick succession. Granted, this isn’t a huge new feature but it is one you will use over and over again, once it is committed to your muscle memory

Nexus 6P Review: Battery Performance

I love the Nexus 6P. I really, really do. But one of my favourite things is something I hadn’t even dreamed was possible — great battery life. And not just GREAT battery life, but battery life you simply do not have to worry about anymore.

The Nexus 6P features a HUGE 3450mAh battery, large even by today’s standards, and normally this would deliver excellent results. Combine it with Android Marshmallow’s Doze mode and other built-in power-saving features, though, and it goes above and beyond expectation.

One of the main reason I used the iPhone 6 Plus has my daily driver for so long was because of its battery life — it was insanely good. Nothing else ever came close until I used the Nexus 6P, which does just about the same as my iPhone 6 Plus, meaning it’ll do a solid two days with minimal usage and a full day with hardcore usage.

Nexus 6P Review: Verdict

The Nexus 6P is EASILY my favourite handset of 2015 — bar none! It looks great, feels great, performs great and has the best software currently available inside the mobile space. Battery performance is exceptional, the camera is decent and overall performance — I’ve had this phone for months now — is solid, reliable and consistent.

I LOVE this phone. Kudos, Huawei!