Gadgetory

for the last couple of years the Nexus has established itself as the place where you can get the essential Android experience but it fell short of actually taking on all of the established flagships of those particular years is this the year that the Nexus finally puts the pieces together well we're about to find out because it is Josh of agar from Android Authority and here it is the Nexus 6p design takes on a whole new outlook as Huawei is now at the helm of creating the premium of the two Nexus devices we start off with the metal body which already makes this phone feel sturdier and has a higher build quality than plenty of other phones out there and over on the sides they are flat which makes this one pretty easy to grip over on the right side are all of the buttons including a textured power button that makes it pretty easy to find and up top is a headphone jack that is opposite the USB type-c port now this port is still taking some getting used to for us here at Android authority because when you're trying to charge this phone whether at home or on the go you just have to make sure that you actually have the correct cord moving to the front we have the 5.7 inch AMOLED display that is flanked by dual front-facing speakers which also perform really well and give the phone a bit of symmetry for the front but now we can finally get to the back where some of the new additions are truly found first off though we have the Nexus logo which is dead center in landscape and it has been painted right into the body and we still love it above that is the fingerprint reader that is lined with a shiny circle and then finally this black bar up top now in the actual product renders of this device it might not look at that great but when you get it in the flesh it actually kind of grows on you this bar is where the camera the laser autofocus and the flash can be found and the best part about it is that it doesn't really protrude out that much so it really isn't that much of an eyesore one-handed usage will take a bit of a hit because of how large the screen is and that's the body but the sides are flat which means you'll be able to keep a pretty good grip on this phone and also the metal body allows for this to have a sturdiness to it that is definitely felt and it just screams high build quality previous Nexus devices have taken cues from that manufacturers past offerings but Huawei has managed to not only create a phone that is uniquely exquisite but they also benefit from a lesser-known identity here in the state so not too many people know what Huawei is capable of and the Nexus 6p is a wonderful showcase for them quality continues to reign as the Nexus 6p brings a very great display at 5.7 inches in the size you also get quad HD resolution that's 2560 by 1440 now the AMOLED display also brings higher saturation in the colors along with better black levels so the contrast is very good as well in practice we don't have any problems no matter what we're doing on this display the text is definitely very sharp whether you're doing work or play and the colors really benefit especially when you're using media the only real problem we had here was with the ambient display now there is a feature where a small but very effective window will show up showing you your current notifications and with an AMOLED display it is quite power saving but it's kind of hard to actually trigger it you can pretty much just pick up the phone and it will turn on but there are no other ways to turn it on and it doesn't stay on for very long once we get underneath that surface however we get the processing package we've kind of come to know really well this year this time dragon 810 with three gigabytes of RAM now three gigabytes of RAM is the main thing here as you'll be able to load a lot of applications many at the same time but ultimately we give a lot of credit to the stock and thus not so feature-rich version of Android you're getting here in marshmallow going through all the home screens and all the applications and even incessant switching through the recent apps screen really went through just swimmingly and gaming has been really fun on here as well for everything from sprite based gaming to 3d gaming we have really no problems on here and has been a treat so once again the nexus proves that it isn't just sheer power that allows for great performance but a marriage of that power with the optimizations in the software that are needed to properly take advantage of it Hardware additions are big focus for the Nexus this year and it all starts with Nexus imprint that rear-mounted fingerprint reader works really well on here and if you have any memory of good Huawei fingerprint readers it shows once again here in the Nexus 6p setting up a fingerprint is really easy and it's even easier to just unlock and wake the device by using usually your index finger the best part about it is that you're going to just get straight into the home screen you're not going to get a lock screen and then the animation to get into the home screens you just put your finger on the back and you're ready to go now we return to the front-facing speakers which have been really great for everything from media to gaming now what's great about them is that they provide a little bit of body while having very loud sound but the best part is that you can just use these for mostly gaming which was our experience and you don't really have to have headphones on all the time anymore speaking of sound call quality was really good on the Nexus 6p about as good as it should be and we tested it on the t-mobile and project find networks there were really any dropped calls and there were no complaints on either end of the call also when speaking of those networks this phone will work on all of the major carriers in the US so that kind of takes the guesswork out of making sure you have the right version for your particular cellular network unfortunately storage options don't include expandability which can be a bummer for a lot of people but at least the 32 gigabyte base model is up to today's standards if you are able to shell out a little bit more for the 64 gigabytes however we would definitely recommend you do that and finally in battery we get a huge boost not just in the capacity of the unit inside of this phone but also because of a new feature in Android marshmallow called doze now dough is pretty much requires you to have the phone on a flat surface it's not going to work in your pocket because the sensors are still being triggered when all the sensors are left untrue then apps are put into a deep sleep mode where the only notifications you'll get is based upon higher priority apps and as you can see in this graph right here I have some flatter lines in the graph which was basically Windows was working it basically means that the standby time is going to be really high because the battery won't be draining a whole lot due to these deep sleep modes at the apps are going through there's kind of a lesson here for all phone users if you want good battery life out of your phone then pretty much the main thing you have to do is well not use it but thankfully doze is able to leverage those times when you're not using it and make it so that this phone can definitely go the distance even considering my music and podcast listening I was able to get about four and a half hours on average of screen on time which I still think is pretty great considering my usage but the best part about this is that the battery is really easy to charge up but there's one problem with it you're not going to use Qualcomm quick charging on here anymore so if you happen to have any batteries external batteries or chargers that are supposed to use that you're not going to be able to use it with the Nexus 6p by using the included USB type-c cord and the plug adapter that leverages the higher our current that USB type-c supports you will be able to charge this from zero to a hundred in under 90 minutes now if you have like 10 or 15 minutes in the middle of your day to just plug this thing in you'll get just enough battery to get through the bigger portion of the rest of your day so really there's no problem when it comes to power on here especially when the battery already goes for a long time now if there's one place where the Nexus devices tended to kind of fall short it was in the camera but this year the Nexus has to contend with what has been a pretty incredible year for smartphone cameras and this year they have risen to the challenge a 12 point three megapixel shooter on the back there also comes in at one point five microns now that sounds a little bit miniscule but what that basically means is that the sensor on this phone is bigger than most of the ones found out there and unfortunately that means there is no optical image stabilization on here but that's something you'll mostly see in videos with jittery footage then you'll see in photos that said the app doesn't really provide too many options unfortunately it's a pretty good auto app but you don't get a whole lot of manual controls and as far as modes go for photo you can get hdr+ on auto and then you have panorama Lens Blur and photosphere and not a whole lot else after that in video you do get 4k video recording but we had more fun with the slow-motion recording at 120 or 240 frames per second at 720 reason now image quality was actually pretty great what details captured quite well despite there being a noticeable but very small amounts of noise reduction still at play low-light situations to require at least a little bit of light so you can differentiate the subject from the rest of the surroundings but at least here in the Nexus 6p they don't just show up as a big ball of fuzz over all photos benefit from a noticeable but somewhat subtle amount of saturation so the colors are punched out a little bit but the Nexus 6p does cheat a little bit because it has that AMOLED display that provides even more saturation to the eye basically the results are just that little bit different when you get them on a computer screen panoramas were stitched together without too many problems and HDR plus was a mode that we were pretty happy to use most of the time but we did find it to be a little bit moody in some pictures it would raise the shadows and in other pictures it would lower the highlights and we could never really tell when we were shooting it what was going to happen but there's one thing for sure hdr+ definitely punches the colors even more overall we're really happy with the Nexus cameras mostly because now you don't have to feel like you're settling for these cameras when you compare them to the other flagships available in android today and finally we have Android marshmallow which brings the crux of the nexus experience the latest and greatest of Android with updates for the foreseeable future for what it is right now Android is essentially everything that you know right now about Android has the home screens Google now is over on the side and of course you have the app drawer which is the first place you see a change it's now of a vertical scroll but it also has a line up top for your four most used applications we would have liked an extra line up there but that one line is still pretty useful now this new version of Android doesn't bring that many super flashy new features but there is one that is kind of flashing and that is Google now on tap now on tap doesn't really replace Google now but it does allow you to search for anything that is currently displayed on the screen by just holding the home button and what you're searching for should be in text and very plainly seen on the screen now it is kind of Moody also because now on tap might not pull the information that you're expecting it to pull but at the same time it's just sort of a feature that works really well when it does the rest of the features are less flashy but are just as important we already featured doze earlier in the battery section and then after that you have app permissions now app permissions can be found in the settings area where all of the different features of the phone that applications my access are listed and you can change whether you want any apps to do so or not but when you first fire up an app and the first time it tries to access a feature of the phone the app permissions will ask you if you do actually want it to do so if there's anybody out there who really wants some extra security when it comes to Android all of the app permissions in the new version of Android should be able to bring that little bit of peace of mind for you of course the main reason to get the Nexus in software is to get the latest and most optimised version of Android and it really shows here small tweaks of the animations make Android feel that much smoother but overall the experience is still incredibly snappy and users will be able to enjoy the best that Android has to offer as it is being released the Nexus 6p starts at $499 which is less than typical flagships but is definitely a premium price for a nexus phone it might be a pretty penny but at least you're getting a pretty great experience in a properly premium pretty body now some people might scoff at the price saying that the Nexus was supposed to be an affordable flagship device but that was kind of broken last year when we had the Nexus 6 which brought a really high price despite not necessarily meeting that level of value but this year the 6p is like finding a middle ground a phone that truly looks and feels high-end but has enough to boast about underneath that shell including a camera that finally does justice to the word flagship if you want Android at its absolute purest state either of these Nexus phones will give you what you want but when you're thinking of a truly high-end flagship your Android phone then the Nexus 6p is the one that takes that crown and thus our accolades when it's as good at running a marathon as it is at running a sprint we pay attention and as an Android phone fully capable of satisfying just about anyone this one is definitely worthy of your consideration as always thank you guys very much for watching and hope you enjoyed this full review of the Nexus 6p it is a Nexus device through and through but it also manages to be a flagship a true flagship through and through and that might be what we love most about it keep it tuned here for more about the Nexus 6p and the 5x of which LAN has already done his review and you can see that over on the side along with more from my colleagues in Android you can stick around by subscribing to our Channel and dropping likes on our videos because we'd love to see those thumbs up and of course we have the Android thority podcast discussing topics in Android every single week the app is available up there as well and it is your gateway to all 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