There is a special bunch of Android devices that stand head and shoulders above the rest. The Nexus devices are phones designed with the express purpose of showing off Android as
Google intends it: uncluttered and pure. The Nexus 6P is brought to us by a rising star in the category, Huawei. Does their iteration of the Nexus do the program justice, or will it be lost in the faceless horde of devices that are already out?
Design: 4/5
Huawei’s imagining of the Nexus device is done in metal, to better stand up to both the rigors of daily use, and the options offered by the competition. They hit the nail squarely on the head here. It’s a gorgeous smartphone. The gold version is particularly fetching, with a quiet shade that is wonderfully subtle, and not garish in the least. It also lets the chamfered edges really stand out. This design also gives the phone a good bit of heft that we’d not really seen in the previous Nexus phones.
The front of the phone is home to the massive 5.7-inch screen, the front-facing camera, and front-facing speakers above and below the screen. It’s wonderfully bare, with just the textured power button above the smooth volume rocker on the phone’s left edge. The back is home to the fingerprint scanner, right where your index finger would fall, above which is the oft-maligned, but actually quite subtle camera hump, encased in glass.
Hardware: 4/5
This phone is a monster of a device. It runs the beastly Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset, with a quad-core 1.55 GHz processor, and a quad-core 2.0 GHz processor, for a total of eight cores of raw processing power. This, paired with 3 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal, non-expandable storage, all combine to form a device that’s as formidable as it is gorgeous.
The beautiful 5.7-inch screen is protected by Gorilla Glass 4, and has a resolution of 1440 x 2560 pixels, for a pixel density of about 518 ppi. It’s one of the best screens available now, and a real pleasure to look at.
Image and video capture are made possible via a 12.3 MP main camera with HDR, and 4K recording, for one of the best smartphone imaging options here today.
Making the whole thing run is a large 3450 mAh non-removable battery that’s charged via the USB C port at the bottom of the phone.
What’s Hot:
- Gorgeous screen
- Gorgeous build
- First in line for updates
What’s Not:
- Large
- Camera app is very basic
Bottomline:
I bought my review unit. I can give no better endorsement than that.
Specifications:
- Network connectivity: GSM / CDMA / HSPA / LTE
- Dimensions 159.3 x 77.8 x 7.3 mm (6.27 x 3.06 x 0.29 in)
- Weight: 178 g
- SIM: Nano-SIM
- DISPLAY: AMOLED, 5.7 inches, 1440 x 2560 pixels (~518 ppi pixel density), Corning Gorilla Glass 4,
- OS: Android OS, v6.0 (Marshmallow)
- Chipset: Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810, CPU: Quad-core 1.55 GHz Cortex-A53 & Quad-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A571
- GPU:Adreno 430
- Storage: 64 GB
- Camera: Primary 12.3 MP, f/2.0, laser autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash, 1/2.3’ sensor size, 1.55µm pixel size, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, panorama
- Video: 2160p @ 30fps, 720p @ 240fps
- Secondary: 8 MP, f/2.4, 1080p @ 30fps
- 3.5mm jack: Yes
- Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, hotspot
- Bluetooth: v4.2, A2DP, LE
- GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS
- NFC: Yes
- USB: v2.0, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector
- Features: Sensors Fingerprint, accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer
- Battery: Non-removable Li-po 3450 mAh battery
Also published in GADGETS MAGAZINE March 2016 Issue.
Words by Ren Alcantara