Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P hands-on: First look

Nexus 6P hands-on

P is for phablet, and it's Google's second one. The company stepped back from the massive 6" screen and repositioned the Nexus 6P closer to the Galaxy Note5 and iPhone 6 Plus competition with a 5.7" screen. It's an AMOLED with QHD resolution, putting it even closer to the Note5 (and pleasing AMOLED aficionados everywhere).

The Nexus 6P features a metal unibody (a first for a Nexus), which contributes to its premium looks. It's thin too, 7.3mm, noticeably thinner than the Moto Nexus. It's slightly taller than an iPhone 6 Plus (5.5" screen), which is quite impressive when you remember the two front-facing speakers flanking the screen.

What's best about it however is how amazingly light it feels for such a big phone.

Nexus 6P • Nexus 6P and 5X side by side

A new addition is the fingerprint reader. It's on the back, which many will find more comfortable to use - reaching it with your index finger feels very natural. Using other fingers is quite awkward, but you probably won't need to do it anyway.

The new fingerprint sensor support is baked into Android Marshmallow and it can be used for authentication by all apps, should their developers decide to enable it. As for unlocking the phone, the fingerprint sensor does its job brilliantly and it's instantaneous even of the screen is off in standby.

The Nexus 6P had many worried that the camera hump was excessively big, but it looks very minimal in person. The phone is fairly thin and the hump doesn't add much to that.

The camera itself is a more serious effort with special attention to low-light shooting. The 12.3MP sensor bets on large pixels, 1.55µm, wide aperture, f/2.0, and Laser autofocus. Optical image stabilization has been cut. It does have a dual-LED flash (but none of Motorola's ring flash gimmick). The camera also records 2160p 4K video.

The front-facing camera on the bigger Nexus phone is a 8MP unit with 1.4µm pixels and an f/2.2 lens and it also records 1080p video.

The all-metal back of the Nexus 6P

The new phablet has a very good battery capacity for its size. It packs a bit more juice than its predecessor and a 450mAh more than the Note5. The phone supports Quick charging and it's supposed to last some good 8 hours extra after as little as a 10-minute top up.

Google has done more to improve the battery life too. The new Doze feature is aptly named - the longer the phone is inactive, the less often it allows apps to do background updates. That means that at night there will be little power draw (you won't notice the updates anyway). The feature is called "doze" rather than "sleep" since the phone is quick to come out of Doze mode and reach full performance.

Around the sides of the Nexus 6P

Check out some camera samples from the new Nexus 6P camera.

Nexus 6P camera samples

The comparison to Motorola's Nexus 6 is unavoidable, especially since the price for that one was cut to $500. The fingerprint functionality is great as consumers become more and more concerned about privacy protection and people who have been clamoring for a premium Nexus will enjoy the metal unibody. The new GPU will have a positive effect on gaming too.

Here's a quick list of wins the Nexus 6P scores over its predecessor, keep in mind the Moto can be had for $350 (and that we may see further price drops for the old model when the new one hits the shelves).

Nexus 6P vs. Nexus 6:

• More compact
• Metal unibody vs. metal frame + polycarbonate back
• Fingerprint sensor
• 12.3 MP camera with 1.55 μm pixels vs. 13 MP camera with 1.12 μm pixels
• Laser autofocus
• More powerful GPU, better suited to QHD graphics
• 64-bit processor
• LPDDR4 RAM
• USB Type-C port with faster USB 3.0 speeds
• 3,450mAh battery vs. 3,220mAh
• 128GB storage option
• No OIS for the camera
• Not water-resistant
• No wireless charging

The formerly Google-owned Motorola recently launched the Moto X Pure Edition, one of the best "value for money" phones thanks to its $400 price point and advanced features (it's essentially the US name for the Moto X Style).

Nexus 6P vs. Moto X Pure Edition

• 5.7" QHD AMOLED vs. 5.7" QHD IPS LCD
• Metal unibody vs. metal frame + polycarbonate back (optional leather or wood)
• Faster chipset: Snapdragon 810 vs. Snapdragon 808
• 12.3MP/2160p camera vs. 21MP/2160p camera
• Fingerprint reader
• USB Type-C
• Bigger battery: 3,450mAh vs. 3,000mAh battery
• 128GB storage option, 32GB base version
• Not water-resistant