The Nexus 6. We review the Nexus 6 after 3 months of extensive use as Marco's daily driver. Find out all the good, bad, and what needs improving in the full review of the Motorola made Nexus 6.
The Nexus 6 is the flagship Nexus device. Featuring a 5.96-inch QuadHD AMOLED Display, a 2.7GHz Quad-Core SnapDragon 805 CPU, 3GB of RAM, and the latest version of Android, Lollipop, it's one monster device.
Design
There’s really not too much to talk about. It’s a Nexus 6 built on top of the Moto X (2014). It’s extremely rugged, rigid, super well-built and a large phone with 5.96-inch display. The device is a little over 6.2 inches tall, in terms of full length, making it a large device. The phone is curved just like the Moto X and it fits rather nicely on the hands. It also comes with well-weighted, even though it’s a little top heavy than normal so if you likely hold your device on the bottom, it could likely fall out of your hands. Other than that, it’s an extremely normal design that was copied off from the Motorola Moto X released in September 2014.
There’s really not too much to talk about. You can buy this phone in the Midnight Blue, White, or Silver. I honestly prefer the white and silver because it has a little different texture and it doesn’t show nearly as many fingerprints as the Midnight Blue version does.
Hardware
The hardware packed inside the brand new Google Nexus 6 is state of the art, considering the best specs were available in 2014. The phone comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chip clocked in at 2.7GHz with 3GB of RAM, 32/64GB built-in memory and 13MP camera with OIS. The phone has some really good hardware and you couldn’t really ask for better specs because this was the best that was available back in November.
Software
The biggest feature of the Google Nexus 6 is obviously the software that it’s running: Android 5.0 Lollipop. Basically, it’s the best version of Android currently available. But despite this, it did come with a few faults—especially when it launched wherein it had tons of bugs. It was really buggy throughout the whole operating system, tons of applications and Google searches weren’t working properly. It was not the smoothest Google rollout, in terms of Lollipop. It almost felt like everything this year was kind of rushed. It didn’t work very well on the Nexus 9, Nexus 6, and on other OEM devices like Moto G and Moto X.
There was definitely a lot of faults that started out with the Android 5.0 Lollipop update. So far, a lot of these were already worked out while some things still don’t work the right way right now. It’s just a couple of applications that Google has built and a lot of third party application developers haven’t optimized for the new operating system so they don’t run 100% smoothly. But the overall software itself is pretty darn good. It still the best looking version of Android we’ve seen and probably the best mobile software version so far. It just looks really good and interacts very well. I love the new notification system, new UI interfaces, and color schemes given by Android Lollipop. Additionally, the Lollipop game in the software is a huge plus.
Apart from those minor issues, it’s been a good experience so far. I definitely have enjoyed using 5.0 Lollipop and wouldn’t want to go back to using KitKat devices or anything running 5.0 Lollipop in a stock Android form.
Battery
With its great hardware, you’d think the Nexus 6 would have a great battery life as well. This is where my biggest and chief issue with the Motorola Nexus 6 is. The phone comes with a 3220 mAh battery, the same size with the Galaxy Note 4, along with a 5.96-inch QuadHD display. The Galaxy Note 4 has 5.7-inch QuadHD display, basically the same display technology Super AMOLED and AMOLED displays. Yet the battery life on the Nexus 6 has been absolutely terrible. The best battery life I’ve seen would just probably be under 3 or 4 hours of on-screen time. It has been so bad that the phone completely died on me around 2 hours and 40 minutes of on-screen time during CES 2015. Considering it was a very hectic day, I really needed my phone to work. So I had a useless phone in my pocket along with a useless watch (since my phone wasn’t working). Basically, it wasn’t a good day.
My big question is, why is there such a big battery and a Stock form of Android with such terrible battery life? It honestly does not make any sense
Conclusion
Is it really worth buying $649 off-contract? You can buy it subsidized with contracts such as AT&T Next, T-Mobile or Sprint. A Verizon model is also rumored to be in the works. But is it a worth it flagship device? My answer is absolutely not because it’s super expensive it costs just as much as other flagship devices. And even though the hardware sounds amazing on paper along with Android 5.0 Lollipop, it just doesn’t stack up in terms of endurance. Something like the HTC One (M8) gets even battery life and I still love that phone. You can buy the OnePlus One for half price off-contract and it comes with great specs. There’s also the Galaxy Note 4, which comes with great display and basically the same hardware, but it still gives you 5 hours of on-screen time. While you have to live with Touch Wiz, it’s missing the point.
On paper, the Nexus 6 should be one of the best smartphones available but it’s just not true. Honestly, I think one of the best Motorola phones currently available is the Droid Turbo for Verizon Wireless because it has a QuadHD display and has a larger battery with 3900 mAh. While it may be running Android KitKat, it’s still a great and amazing phone. The only unfortunate thing about the Droid Turbo is that it’s only available on Verizon Wireless.
While this review may seem like a rant, I can still appreciate how good of a phone the Nexus 6 is. I just wish it had better battery life since it already comes with great specs and display. I hope some miracle software update comes to give it 7 hours of on-screen time so it would easily be the best phone on the planet but right now, it doesn’t do that and it’s not just my favorite phone.
While people say it’s the best phone of 2014, I’m sorry for me it’s not although I wish it would be. It just isn’t. Leave your comment below for your reaction.
