Nexus 6P

History

The Nexus 6P is the first Nexus phone that Google has chosen to co-develop with a Chinese company, Huawei. Images of the device first leaked in September 2015, showing an aluminum design with a raised bar on the top of the device containing a camera.

After the Nexus 6P was formally unveiled on 29 September 2015 at a press event at Left Space Studios in San Francisco by Android Engineering VP Dave Burke, It was made available with the 32 GB model starting at a price of $499.

Significant effort went into improving the design of the Nexus 6P compared to its predecessor, with Google exercising a considerable amount of design influence. Google engineers mention that an effort was made to improve the ergonomics of one-handed use of the phone by shrinking the screen to 5.7 inches, and a singular bump on the Nexus 6 was changed to a horizontal strip in order to avoid the potential of the phone spinning when lying on a flat surface. There was push back on certain design elements, notably the centering of the Single Reversible USB Type-C charging port. Huawei VP of R&D described the Nexus 6P as a dream project, despite the challenges including the short development cycle, technological complexities in introducing a phone with the LTE bands to target the global market, and the design difficulties in an all-aluminum phone.

In October 2016 Google removed the Nexus 6P from it's online store .

Software

The phone arrives running Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Compared to its predecessor Android 5.x Lollipop, the most significant changes include a new permissions architecture that allows for fine-grained control of app permissions instead of bulk permission granting during app install, and Google Now on Tap, an ability to perform a Google search based on the information currently displayed by holding down on the home button.

Due to the popularity of fingerprint based authentication, there is now support for an official fingerprint API that allows users to unlock their phones and perform app purchases in Google Play. Android 6.0 Marshmallow also allows website owners to set a preferred app to open their links in, and allows users greater control over this behavior. Sharing has been improved with a feature called "Direct Share", which allows information to be sent to a contact directly, rather than to a third party app first. On screen volume controls have also been simplified, with more extensive control exposed via a tap. Text selection has been redesigned to show a floating toolbar next to the highlighted text, replacing the actionbar which existed on the top of the screen in previous versions of Android.

Android 6.0 Marshmallow includes a battery life enhancing feature called "Doze Mode" that suspends network access, disables sync and scheduled jobs for suspended apps during periods when the phone is inactive.

In December 2015, Google released Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow for the Nexus 6P, among other devices.

Google released Android 7.0 Nougat for the Nexus 6P, as well as several other devices, on August 22, 2016.

Hardware

The Nexus 6P features an octa-core Snapdragon 810 v2.1 system-on-chip (SoC) with four ARM Cortex-A57 cores at 1.95 GHz and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores at 1.55 GHz in a big.LITTLE architecture. The SoC includes an Adreno 430 GPU including support up to OpenGL ES 3.1.

The Nexus 6P has 3 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, which has lower energy consumption compared to the LPDDR3 utilized in the Nexus 6. Available storage sizes include options of 32, 64, or 128 GB of internal storage. The storage used is Samsung manufactured eMMC 5.0 multi-level cell NAND flash fabricated at 10 nm.

Similar to the previous Nexus 6, the Nexus 6P also uses an AMOLED display manufactured by Samsung. The screen has a WQHD (2560 by 1440 pixels) resolution at 518 ppi. It has a reduced size of 5.7 inches which contributes to improved accessibility. The AMOLED screen used is the same generation but lower binned compared to those used in the Samsung Note 5, the latest available as of the time of release. Benchmarks conducted by AnandTech indicates that this results in a screen power efficiency that is in-between that of the Note 5 and Note 4. It was found that the phone contains a sRGB mode in "Developer Options" that increased color accuracy by lowering saturation.

The battery has a 3450 mAh capacity and uses a USB Type-C connector for charging.

Sensors

The Nexus 6P has a rear facing Sony Exmor IMX377 sensor with f/2.0 aperture, that can take 12.3-megapixel (4032 by 3024 pixels) photos. Its large pixel size of 1.55 micron assists photography in low light conditions. It is capable of recording video at 4K resolution, as well as slow-motion 720p video capture at 240 fps. The front facing camera has a Sony Exmor IMX179 8.08 megapixel sensor with a f/2.4 aperture lens. The IMX179 was previously used in the rear camera of the Nexus 5

The back of the phone includes a round fingerprint recognition sensor branded Nexus Imprint below the camera. It is based on the low power FPC1025 sensor developed by Fingerprint Cards AB that can read dry or wet fingerprints in 360-degrees, with a resolution of 508 dots per inch.

A TMD27723 digital ambient light and proximity sensor from ams AG is present on the front of the device. Internally, there is a Bosch Sensortec BMI160 inertial measurement unit with an accelerometer and gyroscope, a Bosch BMM150 geomagnetic sensor, and a Bosch BMP280 barometric pressure sensor.

In order to save power, Google has introduced what it calls an 'Android Sensor Hub'. It is a low-power secondary processor and its purpose is to monitor the device's movement by connecting directly to the accelerometer, gyroscope, fingerprint reader, and camera's sensors. This chip runs advanced activity-recognition algorithms that allows it to interpret activities and gestures independently of the main processor. The main CPU needs to only be engaged when something happens that requires more attention. The Sensor Hub recognizes when the device has been picked up and will automatically display notifications in a low-power white-on-black text until the screen has been properly activated. Additionally, the Sensor Hub stack also supports hardware sensor batching, a feature introduced in KitKat that permits sensors for a short period of time to delay handing off non-critical data to the operating system – as opposed to sending a constant stream of data to the CPU that results in the use of more power. Sensor batching has been used in step counters and therefore does not require the main processor to constantly remain awake as each step is measured.

Design

The phone is the first in the Nexus lineup with an "all-metal body" (still contains some plastic parts). Color choices include aluminium, graphite, frost, and gold (available in Japan, India and the US).

It is 159.3 millimetres (6.27 in) high, 77.8 millimetres (3.06 in) wide, and 7.3 millimetres (0.29 in) deep, compared to the Nexus 6, which is 159.3 millimetres (6.27 in) high, 82.9 millimetres (3.27 in) wide, and 10.1 millimetres (0.40 in) deep; making the Nexus 6P both thinner and less wide than the Nexus 6. Weight wise, it is 6 grams lighter (178g compared to 184g) than the Nexus 6.

The screen is protected by a panel of Gorilla Glass 4, while the back and sides are aeronautical-grade anodized aluminum. There is a rear bump that spans the width of the phone that houses the camera sensor, LED flash, laser auto focus, NFC coil, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular antennas. Internally this bump was called a "visor".

Reception

The Nexus 6P received generally positive reviews. Ars Technica termed the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P "the true flagships of the Android ecosystem" and noted the "few to no compromises"; with further praise for the 6P for being only slightly more expensive than the 5X while having a more premium metal body and higher specs. The Verge considers the Nexus 6P as "the best" Android phone with "beautiful hardware and a camera that can finally compete". Anandtech praised the camera as a "high-end performer", but was critical of the price outside North America and Europe. Wired called the Nexus 6P "the best hardware Google (and its partner Huawei) can make, and the best software, all in a single slick package", applauded the "ridiculously fast" fingerprint recognition, the "ultra-fast charging", and called it the "best smartphone camera".

iFixit gave the phone a 2 out of 10 in terms of repairability, praising the solid construction which improved durability, but mentions that it is "very difficult" to open the device without damaging the glass camera cover due to the unibody design, and panned the difficulty in replacing the screen and the adhesive holding the rear cover panels and battery in place.

Criticism

There have been anecdotal claims of the rear glass cover of the visor cracking. The cause of this is issue is suspected to be the lack of expansion joints, which makes the glass susceptible to thermal shock when there is a sudden temperature change, like entering a warm room from cold outside. This issue may affect just a particular batch of handsets and thus only a portion of consumers.

Shortly after the device was launched, it was reported that the device chassis was susceptible to bending under pressure. While bending under pressure is not unique to the Nexus 6P, it was reportedly easier to bend than the iPhone 6 Plus.

Some users have reported Bluetooth issues, manifesting as stuttering music when playing to Bluetooth speakers. Google said it is already working on them.

There have been reports of microphone issues that result in weak and spotty voice quality. Google is investigating the issue, and it is suspected that the issue is partially caused by noise cancelation.

Connectivity issues were reported after the launch in Australia by users of the Telstra 4GX (LTE Band 28) network. Issues included occasional drops out from the 4G/4GX network, such as when switching from Wifi to 4G/4GX.

The phone sometimes switches to landscape mode without a clear reason, and it does not go back to portrait.

When receiving a call in a three-way call, the user cannot send messages.

The initial rollout of the Android 7.0 Nougat software update in September 2016 was temporarily halted after reports of battery drain among early updaters. The issue was not fixed and the rollout continued.