Google Nexus 5X review: Google’s 2015 phone will NOT get Android P or any more major updates

The Nexus 5X is no longer the hardware champion it once was, considering it’s been three years since its release, but it did come with the added benefit of getting access to the latest Android software each time a new operating system rolled around. 

Sadly, that ship has now sailed. The first developer preview of Android P has revealed that Google is dropping support for some of its older models, including the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P and the Pixel C tablet. The phones will still receive security updates each month, until November, but Google has confirmed that Android 8.1 was the last major Android release being rolled out to its LG phones.  

Nexus 5X review: In full

The Google Nexus 5X might well prove to be the last of its breed: quality phones from Google that don’t go for flagship prices. Along with the Nexus 6P, Google no longer makes its 2015 beauties, instead putting all its eggs in the Pixel basket. Now the Pixel and Pixel XL phones are both brilliant handsets, but affordable they are not. Retailing at £599 for the Pixel and £719 for Pixel XL, there are not directly comparable with the Nexuses of old. 

this new breed sits neatly between the low-cost Moto Gs and the flagship iPhones of this world in an attempt to offer the best of both – a smartphone that aims to have everything you need, but none of what you don’t.

That, in short, is precisely what the Google Nexus 5X delivers, and it represents a welcome return to form for Google, after the Motorola-manufactured Nexus 6 last year. That was a phone that, while far from a disaster, failed to recapture the success of its predecessor, mainly because it was too big, too flashy and too unwieldy to appeal to fans of the stripped-back, basic Nexus 5. The £287 on Amazon UK (or $320 on Amazon US) inc VAT 16GB Nexus 5X (manufactured by LG) goes back to basics, and fans of the Nexus everywhere will rejoice at the new no-nonsense approach.

Google Nexus 5X review: Design

Given the price, it shouldn’t surprise you to discover that the Nexus 5X is no supermodel. Available in black, white and light blue, it has a smooth, eggshell finish to its coloured plastic back. Although this feels pleasant in the hand, it makes an ugly contrast with the phone’s all-black frontage.

In terms of its shape, the 5X moves away from the Nexus 6’s extensively curved rear and chiselled edges, instead preferring a flat rear panel with only short radius curves at the sides. It’s a more practical design than the Nexus 6 – you can place the phone on a table and tap away without it wobbling annoyingly – but it’s far less pretty. The autofocus sensor and flash are above the camera, while the LG and Nexus logos alongside each other look as if they’ve been thrown on randomly rather than thoughtfully placed.

More seriously, perhaps, the cheap feel also extends to the mechanical aspects of the design. The power and volume rocker on the right edge feel plasticky and insubstantial. The nano-SIM drawer doesn’t close with a positive click. Tap the rear panel and the whole thing feels somewhat hollow. Overall, it’s a far cry from the Motorola-built Nexus 6. The only advantages that the Nexus 5X holds from a physical point of view is that, for a phone of its size, it’s astonishingly light, weighing a mere 136g, and is very comfortable to hold and slide into a pocket.

The front is less of a design disaster, mainly because – as with most smartphones – it’s reasonably featureless. Importantly, the speaker is on the front, a design choice I thoroughly approve of. I’m sick and tired of having to be careful how I hold a phone like the Apple iPhone 6s for fear of blocking the grille and muting the audio. However, although it looks like there are two speakers here – one above and one below the display – only the one at the bottom actually works, and sound quality isn’t great. 

Google Nexus 5X review: USB Type-C and fingerprint reader

You can probably tell that the Nexus 5X is not for the fashion-conscious user – it’s a jeans and T-shirt smartphone to the Samsung Galaxy S6’s white Armani suit. One thing it does deliver, however, is all the latest in smartphone technologies.

There are two aspects of this you’ll notice right away. First, the Nexus 5X has a USB Type-C socket, a new type of charging and data transfer port, located on the bottom edge of the phone. Second, it has a fingerprint reader, which sits on the rear of the phone, just below the slightly-protruding camera housing.

From a design perspective, the decision on Google’s part to implement both technologies is to be applauded. I much prefer Type-C’s physical design to the ubiquitous micro-USB. It’s reversible so can’t be forced in the wrong way, and it engages with a more positive click than most micro-USB ports do. You’ll need to budget for spare cables, though, and purchase an adapter straight away if you want to plug it into a laptop or your car charger. Bizarrely, the cable in the box is a double-ended Type-C cable, which can’t be connected to most modern chargers and computers.

The fingerprint reader (dubbed Nexus Imprint) works beautifully. It allows you to purchase Google Play content quickly and simply, without having to type in a password. Its position on the rear means it falls naturally under your index finger as you pick up the phone, but it doesn’t work as well when your phone’s resting on a surface. I found it more than a little annoying having to pick up the phone to unlock it, then put it back down again. 

Still, it’s quick and easy to register your fingerprints, and – so Google claims – will also learn and become more accurate as you use it. Frankly, I’m not sure it needs to. The only time the Nexus 5X failed to recognise my fingerprint was when I placed my finger half-on and half-off the sensor, and even then it worked most of the time anyway. On every other occasion, it worked flawlessly and quickly. For reference, it’s roughly on a par with the iPhone 6s’ Touch ID sensor in terms of how quickly you can unlock the phone with it. It’s that rapid.

Given all this cutting-edge technology, it’s a touch disappointing that Google continues to omit one of the more humdrum elements – expandable storage – from its Nexus handsets. Once you’ve bought your 16GB or 32GB Nexus 5X, you’ll be stuck with it, so choose carefully when you buy or you’ll find yourself running out of space in no time flat.

Google Nexus 5X review: Performance and battery life

Despite that, there’s plenty else to like about the Nexus 5X’s specification, and, on this front, it follows the template set by the original Nexus 5. Functional though the design of that handset was, it packed one heck of a punch, including the leading smartphone processor of the time.

The Nexus 5X dials that ambition back a little. Instead of going all-out for the most powerful mobile chip on the market – that’s left for the flagship Nexus 6P – it has a six-core 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor inside it, the same as you’ll find within the LG G4, and accompanies it with 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 418 GPU.

The performance figures, if you’re interested in that kind of thing, show that the Nexus 5X doesn’t hit the heights of the most expensive phones on the market (see table below). But in real terms it’ll be fast enough for most people. The only complaint I have is that the camera app is occasionally a little sluggish to launch, and stutters when you swipe from stills to video mode and back again.

One bonus of the slightly lower-spec processor is that the 5X avoids the overheating issues that has afflicted some phones featuring the faster Snapdragon 810 CPU. Sure, it gets a bit warm when you fire up a demanding game such as Dustoff Heli Rescue, but it never gets uncomfortable to hold.

There’s no payback in battery life, however. With moderate use – that is to say, not pounding the battery constantly with games and streaming over 4G – you’ll get a day out of it, and nothing more. This is a phone you’ll need to charge every day.

That isn’t all that surprising given the comparatively middling 2,700mAh battery capacity, but to discover that it performed less well than the OnePlus 2 is more than a touch disappointing.

The positive news is that those moving up from a Nexus 5 will experience significantly better battery life, and it’s also worth noting that the 5X charges supremely quickly. In my tests, it hit 20% charge in the first ten minutes, which is seriously impressive. After half an hour, the level of charge rose to 48%, an hour saw it reach 84% and the phone was fully topped up in 1hr 40mins.

Google Nexus 5X review: Cameras

The one area that let down the last two Nexus smartphones was the quality of its camera, so it’s good to see a bit more attention lavished on that this time around. In fact, that’s underselling it – the new camera is an absolute beast.

It matches the iPhone 6s for resolution, and its sensor beats it for size. Each of the Nexus 5X’s pixels are 1.55μm (microns) in size (the iPhone 6s’ pixels are 1.22μm), and this allows them to capture more light at a given shutter speed.

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The aperture is a wide f/2, matching the iPhone 6s, it can shoot 4K video and slow motion 720p footage at 120fps, and it’s equipped with “laser detect” autofocus. It doesn’t have optical image stabilisation (OIS), but in every other respect it’s equipped to compete on an equal footing with the best smartphone cameras in the business.

The hardware, however, is only part of the story. If the software isn’t good enough to set the focus, exposure, white balance and ISO sensitivity at the correct level, you’ll get horrible pictures, no matter how potent the optics and sensor.

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The good news is that the software and hardware on the Nexus 5X work perfectly in tandem and the result is amazing photographs. The laser autofocus system locks onto subjects quickly and securely, with very little of the annoying hunting back and forth that so plagued the Nexus 6. And the camera proved incredibly reliable in all conditions. In good light, low light and under the steely grey sky of a rainy London day, the Nexus 5X was able to produce photographs bursting with detail, realism and colour.

And, while the camera app isn’t the most most comprehensive, its simplicity does at least allow you to focus on capturing the best image possible. Even video capture is top drawer, although I found that, perhaps due to the lack of OIS, handshake is all-too-readily transferred to footage. You’ll need to ensure you stand still and brace your arms while recording home movies.

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At the front, meanwhile, is a more run-of-the-mill 5-megapixel snapper for your selfies, which is equipped with an f/2.2 aperture, but slightly smaller 1.4μm pixels. Despite the lesser specifications, don’t underestimate this camera. It captures selfies with a scary amount of detail, and its wide-angle lens makes snapping group shots an absolute doddle.

Google Nexus 5X review: Android 6 Marshmallow

At launch, the Nexus 5X came with Android 6, or Android Marshmallow, out of the box and Google promised at the time it would be guaranteed – at least for three years or so – to get the next version of Android before any other phone, which is partly why Google’s Nexus handsets are so popular.

True to its word, Google recently put the Nexus 5X on the list of phones getting Android Oreo, which comes with two major improvement in what Google calls “Fluid Experiences” and “Vitals”. You read more about Android Oreo features here.

If you buy it running Android 6. You should still be be pretty pleased. Marshmallow on a Nexus 6 is excellent and builds on the visual overhaul introduced last year with a host of subtle improvements.

The most obvious change from a visual perspective is the redesigned app drawer. This changes from horizontal sliding pages to a vertically scrolling list of apps sorted by initial letter, and introduces a search box and a quick list of shortcuts to your most recently used apps at the top.

The next big upgrade is Google’s new Now on Tap feature, which offers contextual search and suggestions based on what’s displayed on-screen. It works anywhere, whether you’re in an app, browsing a website or conversing with a mate over SMS or Whatsapp. All you do is hold the home button down for a second or two, the software grabs what’s on screen, sends it up to the servers and Google returns a few seconds later with a panel of results on a pop-up layer at the bottom of the screen.

It’s clever stuff: a text conversation with Alphr’s Sasha Muller about craft beer generated a useful link to the Beavertown Brewery website, as well as a map, phone number and street view images. I’m just not convinced how much difference it will make to my life in the long run.

The new Doze mode is of more obvious benefit. This is designed to help extend battery life by putting the phone into sleep mode when you leave it on a surface for an extended period of time – on your bedside table, for instance.

And there’s a handful of other nice touches, too. I particularly like the indicator on the lockscreen that shows whether you’re in quick charge mode or not, and Google has also streamlined the number of preinstalled apps.

Google Nexus 5X review: Display quality

As with the design, the screen on the Nexus 5X won’t blow you away, but it won’t leave you crying into your cornflakes. Despite the general move towards qHD resolution displays of late, the 1,080 x 1,920 (424ppi) screen looks perfectly sharp at normal viewing distances, and the quality isn’t bad at all.

It doesn’t quite have the livid, neon strip-light look of one of Samsung’s Super AMOLED handsets, but it more than holds its own against its IPS-based rivals, reaching a decent maximum brightness of 415cd/m2 and an impressive contrast ratio of 1,310:1.

The only time you may find the Nexus 5X wanting is in really bright sunlight – it falls someway short of the best smartphones in the business, which reach above 500cd/m2 when maxed out. However, the rest of the time it’s a cracker of a display, with good all-round colour accuracy and a 94.8% coverage of the sRGB colour space.

Nexus 5X review: Verdict

It goes without saying that, if the way your phone looks matters to you, the Google Nexus 5X is not the smartphone for you. It’s awkward and ugly to look at, especially in the powder blue pictured here, and feels rather cheap.

If you don’t give a hoot about that, however – and, hey, you can always pop it in a case – the Nexus 5X is hugely appealing. The camera is fantastic, the performance is fast and it doesn’t overheat and throttle. The software is also clean and simple, and Google and LG have squeezed in most of the components a modern smartphone needs, the one exception being that microSD slot.

Only the OnePlus 2 offers more bang for your buck in today’s smartphone market. Now on open sale (although still not available on contract), this has a nicer design, even faster performance and fractionally better battery life, and although only the 64GB version is available now, it’s still only £289. The only niggle is that the camera isn’t nearly as good as the Nexus’.

In short, unless you’re the shallow type with more money to throw around than I have, I’d advise you consider the Nexus 5X as a serious option for your next smartphone. It’s no beauty, but the reasonable cost and all-round competence is a massive plus.

Google Nexus 5X vs Google Nexus 6P

We’ve already written an in-depth comparison of the Nexus 5X and 6P, but I thought it would be useful to add a quick precis here so you have the key facts to hand.

The first thing to know about the difference between the two handsets is that they’re vastly different in size and appearance. Where the Nexus 5X has only a 5.2in IPS display and feels rather cheaply made, the Nexus 6P has a 5.7in AMOLED screen, and is clad in far more attractive aluminium.

The Nexus 6P is faster by a hair, featuring the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 processor. It’s the more expensive handset, costing £449 for the base 32GB model. And the Nexus 6P also has a sharper front-facing camera at 8-megapixels. The rear camera is exactly the same as the 5X’s, however.

In short, I prefer the Nexus 6P – it’s the better all-round smartphone. However, the 5X is perfect for its target market, and still represents a fantastic bargain for anyone who doesn’t mind what their smartphone looks like, but who cares deeply about what it can do.

Read our Nexus 6P review here

Check out the full Nexus 5X vs Nexus 6P comparison here

	Google Nexus 5X specifications
Processor	Hexacore (dual 1.8GHz and quad 1.4GHz), Qualcomm Snapdragon 808
RAM	2GB LPDDR4
Screen size	5.2in
Screen resolution	1,080 x 1,920, 424ppi (Gorilla Glass 4)
Screen type	IPS
Front camera	5MP
Rear camera	12.3MP (f/2, laser autofocus)
Flash	Dual LED
GPS	Yes
Compass	Yes
Storage	16/32GB
Memory card slot (supplied)	No
Wi-Fi	802.11ac
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.2
NFC	Yes
Wireless data	4G
Size (WDH)	73 x 7.9 x 147mm
Weight	136g
Operating system	Android 6.0 Marshmallow
Battery size	2,700mAh