Google Nexus 6P review: Not worth tracking down in 2018

Google Nexus 6P review: Screen

Still, that’s probably only one of two missteps Huawei has made with the Nexus 6P, because the rest of it is fabulous. The screen, for starters, is great. It’s of the AMOLED type, meaning contrast is excellent and the colours are fabulously vibrant. What’s great here, though, is how balanced the colours look. AMOLED displays have a tendency to look oversaturated – much more so than IPS screens, the likes of which you’ll find on Apple’s iPhone 6s. Not so with the Nexus 6P.

The screen’s one weakness is that it doesn’t go particularly bright. A rare sunny November morning in London robbed the Nexus 6P’s display of much of its visual impact, washing out colours and making the screen trickier to read.

But it’s sharp. It has a resolution of 1,440 x 2,560, delivers a super-high pixel density of 518ppi, and is a match for every big-screen smartphone on the market currently when it comes to pixel count. The only phone better than it is the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium, with its ludicrous (and rather pointless) 5.5in 4K display.

Google Nexus 6P review: Performance, battery life and core specs

Neither is the Nexus 6P found wanting when it comes to raw performance and core specifications. Inside, it has a 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 octa-core processor, 3GB RAM and a big 3,450mAh battery to keep the show on the road.

It’s fully stacked, in other words, and there’s very little you’ll be able to throw at it that will slow it down. It’s responsive and smooth, and doesn’t even get particularly hot when you throw a heavy workload at it.

In the benchmarks, the Snapdragon processor delivered the sort of results I’d expect it to – a touch behind the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+, which has a Samsung Exynos 7420 chip inside, and ahead of the Nexus 5X, which has the six-core Snapdragon 808.

That much I was expecting. What I wasn’t counting on was such excellent battery life. Although in testing the Nexus 6P achieved a result of 11hrs 58mins (718 minutes) in our video rundown test, which lags behind the best phones we’ve tested, it performed far better out in the wild, reliably lasting through a long, heavy day, even with some gaming and a spot of turn-by-turn navigation thrown in.

In fact, I’d rank the Nexus 6P among the best smartphones I’ve used in the last couple of years when it comes to moderate to heavy use, and that’s doubly impressive given how powerful the thing is. It’s a big thumbs up from me, then, and it’s good to see quick charging in place as well. Although not quite as rapid as the Nexus 5X, the 6P was able to completely charge from 0% in around an hour and a half using the charger supplied in the box.

The only negative, in terms of the core specifications, is that the 6P has no microSD expansion slot, so make sure you choose wisely from the 32GB, 64GB and 128GB flavours on offer when you buy, because there will no going back once you’ve taken the plunge.

 

	Google Nexus 6P specifications
Processor	Octa-core (quad 2GHz and quad 1.5GHz), Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1
RAM	3GB LPDDR4
Screen size	5.7in
Screen resolution	1,440 x 2560, 518ppi (Gorilla Glass 4)
Screen type	AMOLED
Front camera	8MP
Rear camera	12.3MP (f/1.9, phase detect autofocus, OIS)
Flash	Dual LED
GPS	Yes
Compass	Yes
Storage	32/64/128GB
Memory card slot (supplied)	No
Wi-Fi	802.11ac (2x2 MIMO)
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.2 LE
NFC	Yes
Wireless data	4G
Size (WDH)	78 x 7.3 x 159mm
Weight	178g
Operating system	Android 6.0 Marshmallow
Battery size	3,450mAh