Android isn’t an elitist system. But it still has a pure-breed strain. We’re talking about the Nexus family, the official ambassadors of Google’s mobile republic. Phones like the Nexus 6P aren’t made in Google labs by Google robots, though.
The Nexus 6P is made by Huawei, which has clawed its way up from making budget phones, often for other companies, to produce this. And it is one of the lead Android phones, regardless of brand.
After the Nexus 6, which not everyone loves, the Nexus 6P sees the series get back on track. Starting at £449 it’s a bit cheaper than the ‘intended’ prices of the other flagships, and really aces a lot of phone side attractions as well as the main events, like the speakers, battery, fingerprint scanner and selfie camera.
It’s one of the best all-round phones money can buy.\
Huawei used to make pretty awkward-looking phones. Like a teenage boy trying to grow out his hair, there were some questionable moments in its design history. Before it starting coming up with stunners like the Mate S. The Nexus 6P is perhaps not quite as much a beauty as that phone, but it’s certainly smart-looking.
The Nexus 6P has a slim aluminium body and ours features a dark grey finish that takes the edge off the often-sparkly look of anodised aluminium. There’s a little raised lip at the top, a phone-wide bar covered by glass that makes the 6P appear a bit less of a stunner than something like the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. However, we’ll take it. It lets the rest of the body stay a trim 7.3mm thick.
Phones don’t get points just for being slim, but a giant-screen phone like this needs to lose bulk wherever it can. One of the big problems with the original Nexus 6 is that the thing just feels huge.
By slimming down the frame and reducing the screen size a bit, the Nexus 6P is far more manageable. I found its size makes both hands gravitate towards the screen rather than just the one, but it’s not the thumb workout the Nexus 6 is. It’s more a Samsung Galaxy Note 5-a-like. You’ll need to treat it pretty nice, though. After accidentally keeping it in a pocket with my keys for about 45 seconds, it had already scraped off some of the outer dark finish. Oops.
This is just the nature of dark-coloured aluminium devices, though. So if you don’t fancy treating your Nexus 6P like a newborn you might want to consider the lighter silver and Frost white versions. All three look great.
Back to the good stuff: Huawei has handily bunged all the on-body buttons on the side, right where your thumb lands naturally, and the rear fingerprint scanner gives plenty of room for the front-facing stereo speakers. It’s a pretty successful case of phone Tetris.
While the finger scanner is part of the new Nexus Imprint team, it actually feels just like the one on the Huawei Mate S. It’s fast, it’s accurate and it works even when the phone screen is off.
Good fingerprint scanners have gone from being a rarity to the norm among top-end phones, but this is among the best. It seems to be able to deal with wet fingers far better than most too. Being on the back, the Nexus 6P wants you to use your index finger rather than your thumb. But you can train the little guy to recognise up to five fingers. Just like other finger scanner phones, then.
The speakers are just as worth noticing. The Nexus 6P has two front-facing speakers for a proper stereo effect while you play a game or watch a bit of Netflix. It’s a decent-sounding duo.
I put the Nexus 6P next to the BoomSound speakers of the HTC M8S and found the 6P is just as loud, just lacking a bit of the mid-range padding that makes HTC’s phone speakers so special. Google says the ‘P’ in the name stands for premium, and it’s pretty clear there are no half measures in this phone. This stands with the screen too.
The Nexus 6P has a Samsung-made Super AMOLED screen of 2,560 x 1440 pixels. It’s probably a very similar panel to what we saw in the Galaxy Note 5. Very big, very sharp, bright and with immense contrast, it’s a terrific screen.
Colour fidelity has been improved a smidge since the oversaturated Nexus 6, however to my eyes it still looks like the screen is a touch hot. It’s similar to what you get in the LG G4 and the ‘adaptive display’ mode of Samsung’s phones. It’s out to show off what OLEDs can do.
You don’t get the option of extreme accuracy that Samsung provides in the Note 5. Some of Huawei’s IPS LCD screens have a slightly more natural tone too.
Still, this is generally a great screen. It makes the phone a great little media and gaming machine. But no, there’s no Force Touch pressure sensitive nonsense going on here. With no support for it baked into Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Apple has a clear lead on innovating the way we prod our phones. There’s no Galaxy Note-style stylus either.
Media hoarders also need to note that the Nexus 6P memory is non-expandable just like every other Nexus device. However, sensible pricing makes even the 128GB version pretty attractive. You’ll pay £449 for the 32GB version I’m using here, £499 for the 64GB and £579 for the 128GB. That makes it the most affordable 128GB phone to date. Nice.
It’s quality memory too, with read speeds of 170MB/s and writes of 107MB/s making it way faster than most memory cards.
Those on a budget should look at the Nexus 5X too, but the 6P is still a bit of a bargain compared to the iPhone 6s Plus. Apple’s big boy starts at £599 for the paltry 16GB version and rockets up to £789. There’s a refreshing fairness to Google’s prices, don’t you think?
You also need to consider that the Nexus 5X is actually well under £100 cheaper. The 32GB Nexus 5X costs £379, the 32GB Nexus 6P £70 extra at £449. The lower-end model only seems dramatically cheaper because it comes in a 16GB flavour. Both are good deals.
Type-C for me
Tasty Android sweets
The other bit you have to love about a Nexus phone is its use of totally bloat-free software. The Nexus 6P is here to show off Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and there’s zero Huawei influence in the software. That’s a good job when a lot of people really don’t like Huawei’s Emotion UI software.
Marshmallow looks a fair bit like good old Lollipop, but messes with the apps menu so that it’s a single vertical scroll rather than a series of pages. You can actually get this look without a Marshmallow device, as the Google Now look is actually separate from the core software these days and has already been injected with Marshmallow goo.
The bits exclusive to Marshmallow phones like the Nexus 6P include things like Google Now on Tap, a turbo-charging of the Android digital assistant that lets it scan whatever’s on the phone screen and fling related info cards your way as part of a display overlay. You can do it at any time, while you’re using any old app.
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