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  • Refuge - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Thank you! Finally! :D

    Much appreciated.
  • Der2 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I cry everytiem when I can't get first.
  • nico_mach - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Did anyone else find the stock Android complaints puzzling? I switched straight from a tiny iphone 5 to a Nexus 6 and no problems, I think stock Android is a revelation, bright, responsive and with Marshmallow very smooth. I don't use a brightness slider - seems kind of picky. And the back button is, well, fine. It's not like IOS's 'back' button in the upper left is more accessible, right?

    Finally, there should be gripes about out-of-the-box battery life. Ambient display, Google Now and Location services are too costly in battery to have on by default. Apple ruined music and Google search ruin Android. Irony. At least those can be turned off. Why I have to be prompted about location services when I ask for directions is beyond me - YES turn it back on, I asked for directions!

    I can't understand why Google is so keen on defaults that drive people away from Android. It's really very good otherwise. And hopefully they'll fix tablets the way they improved Nexus phones this year.
  • sleepycujo - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    In fact this is a point most people avoid discussing. I feel it was time somebody brought this up. The stock android feel is exactly what its called. Plain vanilla. Doesnt feel premium and looks just like a 100$ motog(may be lesser). Moreover the simple things you can get used to using OEM skins like swipe to call, message or numerous other features are simply missing unless you root your phone and put in an AOSP Rom with the same look but additional features which is fine on a lower end phone, but shouldnt be necessary on a flagship. I personally think the OEM versions are all upto individual tastes and needs but necessary anyway. LG, Samsung, Huawei and even Mi flavors are what makes Android so loved(and hated!).
  • grayson_carr - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Lol, swipe to call. I owned a Galaxy S6 earlier this year and hated that feature. I would accidentally activate it when trying to swipe between different tabs (a standard Android interaction) in the dialer app. Not to mention, in the stock Android dialer you just tap to call, which is easier than a swipe. And if you want to message someone, what are you doing in the dialer app? Funny you used that feature as an example because that is exactly the type of feature that annoys me about skins and makes me long for stock Android.
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    ExDialer. Never looked back.
  • skavi - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    I do that all the time on my S6. God, I hate TouchWiz. Why ruin such an amazing phone with shitty software? Why include 3 fucking gigs of RAM if you don't allow the phone to use it? Just take the good parts (camera app/split screen) and put them on stock Android. Sometimes I feel like they change shit just to change it, even though Google's implementation is clearly better.
  • gochichi - Saturday, February 27, 2016 - link

    TouchWiz is clearly a disaster. Until it disappears, I cannot buy another Samsung. Keeping my Note 4 as a little tablet, but I'm just saying no to skins from here forward. Nexus, or iPhone for my phone going forward. It's a real shame. And the lag in updates is plain absurd. No android 6 on S5, S6, Note 4, Note 5... To get android 6 (which is damn old news at this point) get the S7??? Ummm, hell no... Show me some support first. Nexus 5 is smoother phone than Note 4 and when you look at the specs, the only possible explanation is the software is junked up and not even optimized.
  • ACE76 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Your implying that there's better availablke in terms of UI from other OEMS? Apple's interface is as boring and "stock" as it gets and doesn't even have a app drawer. Touchwiz is about as ugly and "in your face" as it gets.
  • Devo2007 - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link

    You mean Apple doesn't have a desktop. It's all just an app drawer.....
  • gochichi - Saturday, February 27, 2016 - link

    Amen. Pure android is the best mobile os out. The only thing about Apple is that they do a great job integrating their different devices.
  • CJ_Jacobs - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link

    There's not a single "Stock Android" device being sold to consumers. Even Google has made the distinction, during its own keynotes, that AOSP is the only true form of "Stock Android" and its Nexus devices are its vision of Android just as the versions of Android from Samsung, LG, etc. are those manufacturers vision of Android.

    http://www.androidcentral.com/what-stock-android

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-difference...
  • eallan - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I find the back button on the left easier to reach as I don't have to bend my thumb severely, merely rotate it. Stock android is excellent. Benchmarks can show so interesting data, but using my 6p vs my Note5 it's insane how much smoother the performance is on the 6p.
  • James5mith - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I too found that odd. Especially since my Nexus 7 with Marshmallow on it has a brightness slider in the notification area.
  • whiteiphoneproblems - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    iOS's main "back" action is a simple right-swipe from left edge, which is the best implementation of all. I know you're referring to the recently added "Back to previous app" button, which it's true is in the upper corner (not sure where else they would put it); but I reckon this is used much less frequently than the "back-swipe" action within an app. (On the new 6s phones, you can also go back to previous app via 3D touch -- a hard press on right edge.)
  • whiteiphoneproblems - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    (Sorry, I meant "left edge")
  • ChronoReverse - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Nice thing about Android is I can add that to any phone even without root (it's just an app).

    Still, I'd wager that the majority of iPhone users aren't even aware of these because they're not discoverable. Many people have gone whoaa~ when I use the multi-finger gestures on an iPad.
  • whiteiphoneproblems - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    You can add "back-swipe" to Android with just an app? That's interesting, what is it?
  • ChronoReverse - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    All in One Gestures allows you to set the various "zones" on your screen edge to be swipeable in order to execute a command. I have the right edge set to be equivalent to "back". It's useful for fullscreen applications, saving an extra swipe to bring up the on-screen keys.
  • doggface - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Downloaded and thankyou. This is a great little app.
  • Speedfriend - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    "iOS's main "back" action is a simple right-swipe from left edge, which is the best implementation of all."
    It is crap. It doesn't work in all apps. The one app where I need it most (a trading app when the charting hangs) it simply doesn't work and which is why I have an Android phone as well
  • star-affinity - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    I think that's pretty much the fault of the developer of that app, and mot the functionality of the feature.
  • star-affinity - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    Not* (not "mot").
  • theduckofdeath - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link

    If it's a poorly implemented system feature it's surely a fault on Apple's side.
  • tipoo - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    It's inconsistent within iOS itself though. Go through a few settings pages and you'll find some support back swipe, some don't.
  • Jason Dick - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    This has long been a complaint with Android, but I haven't had any issues with Google Now or Location services on my Nexus 6p. The new "deep sleep" mode with Marshmallow seems to prevent these from causing problems. I ran a little test for myself last week to see if I could go a full 48 hours without recharging the device. I used the phone for some light web browsing and navigation to/from work (total driving time ~1 hour).

    Using these services really shouldn't be a problem any longer.
  • eric3448 - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link

    I just don't know what the problem is.Surely its easy to just download an app if you want something the phone hasn't got
  • ACE76 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    It's so sad to see Anandtech fall so far from grace since Mr. Shimpi jumped ship for Apple...I still don't understand why Anandtech doesn't at the vbery least point out the architectural differences when comparing smartphones....Android was built to be a true multi-tasking OS...Apple was not...anyone who knows hardware knows single threaded architectures will score higher...honestly, apple's A9 SOCs are nowhere near as powerful as Qualcom's 810 and newer SOCs...maybe if someone could get iOS to run on a Snapdragon SOC, we'd see the truth...kind of like when apple first jumped to Intel CPUs and saw increases of over 600% in performance.
  • tuxRoller - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    While I've issues with this review (mostly tone related) I can't say that I've noticed a drop in quality from AT.
    Also, both ios and Android are "multitasking" but Android gives developers a bit more rope than ios does... sometimes to the detriment of the app.
    The A9 is simply the best soc for a phone around. No serious person is questioning this.
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    @tuxRo
    it is best but in draining battery in half day.. they didn't set any power saving modes so their soc ALWAYS runs at max. performance so that is why everybody thinks is best .. but it is all useless,everybody wants lasting long battery life
  • tuxRoller - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link

    Do you have a reference for saying that they don't make use of idle loops and dvfs?
    If that's the case, and I don't think it is, then what apple has done is even more amazing: the highest performing soc available is capable of being run FLATOUT for half a day on their tiny batteries. If they made use of even minimal power saving a9 devices would last for DAYS.
  • tipoo - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    I think they probably meant the GFXbench battery run test and final run FPS test, every other SoC throttles down by the last one, where A9 keeps a high speed but kills the battery sooner.

    I think that speaks more to the throttling issues of other SoCs, even if it accidentally raises gaming battery life.
  • tipoo - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    "anyone who knows hardware knows single threaded architectures will score higher"

    So explain, please. And neither iOS nor A9 are single threaded, all SoCs since the A5 with the exception of the A8X are dual cores, A8X being tri-core. iOS scales to threads just fine as shown with the third core being used just fine in the A8X. Apple just chose higher per-core performance, since it's more usable than the same performance spread across 8 cores.
  • NEDM64 - Monday, December 28, 2015 - link

    "Android was built to be a true multi-tasking OS...Apple was not..."

    Fanboy tears?

    "Apple" OS's, based on their open-source project, Darwin, are microkernel-based, non-peremptitive multitasking operating systems.

    Just like OS X, iOS is a truly multitasking OS.

    And if you want to cry even more, then explain why the Pixel C doesn't offer side-by-side multitasking and iPads with iOS 9 do?
  • usman_raza - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Finally,
    2nd Comment :)
  • Anustart - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Loser
  • AL KASR - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    thanks, but what about random read and random write for the nand, which is the most important!
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I had to leave them out due to an issue with the 3.6 version of the benchmark not being able to complete those sub tests, we'll be investigating the matter and in the future we'll also migrate to AndroBench 4.0.

    Here's the 4.0 scores for the device:

    Encrypted: 75.7MB/s seq read, 40.6MB/s seq write, 7.4MB/s rand read, 1.0MB/s rand write.
    Unencrypted: 179.7MB/s seq read, 52MB/s seq write, 14.73MB/s rand read, 6.3MB/s rand write.
  • Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Why do the random scores take such a hit from encryption? The SoC should be fast enough to encrypt 6.3MB/s so I can't think of a reason for rand write to drop to 1.0MB/s..
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    The random test uses 4KB segments and it's likely that due to that there's a lot of system overhead when making such short I/O operations.
  • Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    What kind of system overhead? Do you know the details or are we just speculating?
  • hfm - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    If like to see a deeper explanation as well. I think maybe just a larger percentage of the total is overhead, but I'm not sure.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    Filesystem overhead and crypto layer overhead. While not really related to the 6P, switching from ext4 to F2FS on the S6 will for example give massive boosts to random IO results.
  • zeeBomb - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Andrei, any word or news on a Meizu Pro 5 review? I know you kinda lost contact with them this year, but I mean...there has to be some type of workaround right?
  • twizzlebizzle22 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Using androbench 4.0.

    256kb buffer with 4kb random.

    I get 107MB/s seq read, 45MB/s seq write, 20MB/s rand read, 12MB/s rand write.

    This is unencrypted, I ran this a few times. Any idea why there would be such a difference between your device and mind?
  • ChronoReverse - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    What is your storage size and how full is it? I tried on my unencrypted 128GB 6P, running a custom ROM, with 30.6GB of data, using 64MB file size, 256kb seq buffer and 4kb rand buffer:

    210 MB/s seq read, 47 MB/s seq write, 21MB/s rand read, 13 MB/s rand write

    Looks similar to yours except my read is much faster.
  • twizzlebizzle22 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I have 32GB model with about 40GB free.

    I'm completely stock though and encrypted. I don't know why I wrote unencrypted in my other post. I meant encrypted.
  • twizzlebizzle22 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Damn! 20GB free. Not my day.

    So to clarify, the results I posted are completely stock, encrypted. If I leave it at default I get a MUCH higher read.
  • Lothsahn - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Same here... the numbers are puzzling. I have a 32 GB Nexus 6 (not 6P), and my numbers exceed that.

    With AndroBench 4, I clicked start to run all tests after my phone had been fully charged and off for >1 hour. My speeds are:
    17.5 MB/s Sequential Read
    ??.? MB/s Sequential Write (don't see a 256K WS)
    6.7MB/s 4KB RR
    6.8 MB/s 4KB RW

    Completely stock, encrypted. 8.83 GB Free. Haven't wiped or reloaded the device since I purchased it when it was first released.
  • tuxRoller - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    NM:)
  • tuxRoller - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    .... so you have more free space than your storage has?
    I know there's a typo but I can figure out what you were trying to say:)
  • hfm - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    "I have 32GB model with about 40GB free."
    Unpossible!
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    ''unpossible :DDD WTF .. IMPOSSIBLE :)
  • RogerPodacter - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I think there's a flaw with this review display brightness readings. When I turn off adaptive brightness, then max out my brightness slider, I get 515 nits on an all white screen (in a dark room). But with adaptive brightness ON, and at maximum, it only reads 300 something nits.

    Do you guys always DISABLE adaptive brightness for these tests? Just curious.
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    of course it is on purpose to bias on the phone .. it is command from aple as they owns this site as well
  • grayson_carr - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Ha! After a bunch of 6P owners were making fun of the 5X nand performance a couple weeks ago, turns out the 6P is just as bad (worse actually).
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    u ar an idiot , keep believe the liars .. pathetic naive person..
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    what u all sudden brought up some another new thing ''encrypted'' or un ? wtf ? have u mentioned this with an apple product ?? or when a normal user will be using that your ''encrypted or unencrypted thing ?? so typycal normal user who will buy nexus 6P perfectly knows what it means right ?? OOmmgh.. seriously??
  • GlennHowes - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I think you mean design cues, not design queues.
  • tipoo - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Maybe different designs are lined up ready to go :P
  • Mstrsirus - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Great Review!!! Although I love Nexus devices, you confirmed that I made the right choice with the Note 5.
  • greyhulk - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Uhhh...yeah, sure, if you like broken memory management.
  • Djdjndjddjs - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Read the other reviews. The Note 5 is definitely not worth the price.
  • amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    When Galaxy S7 comes around, Samsung will very likely forget that they've ever made a phone call Note 5.
    My Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 2013 are still getting 6.0.1 just like my new Nexus 6P does :)
    I guess to most consumers, they don't care about updates at all.
  • Nexus6P - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Thank you! I've been waiting for this!
  • mpalczew - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    no mention of the 240fps slo mo?
  • Speedfriend - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Damn, I was hoping to replace my Galaxy S6 with this, but even worse battery life for the 6P. Come on, this is 2015, can't Android make a phone with decent battery life. I have even started wondering if it is time for my personal phone to go back to Apple and get a 6S (there are some great deals around, it obviously isn't selling very well). But then I use apps on my work iPhone that are crying out for the Android back button and I carry on hoping for a decent Android phone that doesn't have mysterious battery eaters...
  • mm46 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I have both and S6 doesn't come close to 6P battery life, atleast with my usage. I get around 3.5h SOT on S6 vs 5h on 6P.
  • grayson_carr - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Same here. I owned both an S6 and a 6P and the 6P had much better battery life. This is one of those times with benchmarks don't translate well to real world use.
  • hfm - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Agreed, I'm consistently getting 5+ hrs (sometimes over 6, even 7) screen on time on my 6p. Fully stock not rooted, all location services on, google now on, default auto brightness.
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    it is done on purpose to slag on the phone unfortunately ..
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6GBNdSrv2I
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    https://www.google.co.uk/#q=galaxy+s6+edge+battery...
  • ACE76 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    The S6 is honestly a bad phone...Samsung is certainly getting better but their software implementation is still horrible...HTC is by far the best at doing a custom Android setup while Motorola and Sony are best at keeping things close to stock Android....Samsung, for some odd reason, still thinks it has a better grasp at how to customize Android when it's clear customers want a closer to stock experience...they've also chose not to be developer friendly at all, which is terrible.
  • R. Hunt - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Lol, the S6 a bad phone...

    Also, speak for yourself. I don't want the stock experience at all.
  • Anustart - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Lol @ 6s not selling well. Don't be a dummy.
  • Speedfriend - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Kantar Worldpanel reporting that sales volumes for the three onths ending October were down 25% on last year in the US. And not only that, the 6s was 24% of slaes, whereas the 6 was 33% of sales for the same period last year.

    So yes, the 6s is not selling as well as the 6 did and well below expectations. Dummy
  • V900 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    We have no reason to believe that Anustart is a dummy.

    You however, display the intellectual capacity and reasoning of a full blown idiot.

    You use Kantar Worldpanel figures August-October to claim that The iPhone 6s doesnt sell well?

    Hate to crush your hopes, but the 6s was released on the 25th of September, which means that it was only for sale around a third of that entire quarter. The iPhone 6 however, came out on the 19th of September, and therefore had almost a week more to sell in, which makes your assertion very dubious.

    Especially since the 6s beat the iPhone 6 sales figures on the 1st weekend of availability.
  • Speedfriend - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Both the 6 and 6s were available to pre-order from the 12th of September, hence were on sale for the same amount of time. In fact if you look at the Kantar data, it is clear that the slowdown has happened in October and not September anyway.

    The 6s beat the 6 on the first weekend of availbilty becuase it was launched in China unlike the 6 which had only been luanched in China on 17 October 2014.

    You may notice as well I was referring to US data.

    Who is the full blown idiot now. Maybe learn to read and do some research.
  • fanofanand - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    V900 got SERVED. Sorry just watched a marathon of South Park episodes.....but seriously folks should be a little slower to insult others, all too often you look the fool.
  • joos2000 - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Well, at least he didn't choose the username Anus-Tart. Buuuuurn! ;-)
  • Drumsticks - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    As somebody who traded his S6 for a 6P, I concur about what mm46 says. In my town, I couldn't hit 3hrs on the S6, consistently for five months. With the 6P, I can make four if I use it that much.
  • twizzlebizzle22 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    The battery results don't match up with my experience. I upgraded a S6 to a 6P and the battery life is much better.
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    The battery tests don't take standby time into consideration, nor "real" reception quality. The 6P's standby battery life benefits from both a larger battery and Android 6.0. It might also have a better antenna.
  • phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Oukitel K10000 phone includes a 10,000 mAh battery. Would that last long enough for you? ;)
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    it is gonna be a BEAST phone :)
  • nico_mach - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I was unhappy with my nexus 6 out of the box, but turn off location services, google now, widgets and ambient display. Now it's 2 days easy. Of course some apps always ruin things, but you can see that in the battery life settings now. Facebook has battery drain even if you haven't used it in a week, btw. THAT I don't understand. Same with some other apps.
  • ACE76 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Buy a One Plus Two or the awesome Sony Z5 Premium...I have both and the 6P but use the OP2 the most...it really is that good...and the camera is surprisingly great....the Sony is best overall in pretty much every category but it's very expensive and not available through the carriers.
  • amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Get the 6S+ if you're going back to iOS, got friends who complains big time about 6S battery life, can't make it through the day with normal/minimum usage.
    Maybe that's why Apple came out with those big battery case for 6S.
  • tipoo - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    YMMV. I use mine for both work and play, and I've always had 30-50% to spare by the time I plug in at 11PM. With the exception of when Facebook had that battery bug but I deleted that stupid app.
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    are u so stupid and believe this site lies that crappy iphone has better battery ??? ar you so stupid or u just joking ?? I HOPE u joking..
  • tipoo - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Not a horrible showing for the 810, but as Googles selected partner-in-flagship one may have hoped they did a little more.

    The more interesting phones in the 810 space will be the 950 XL and the Xperia Xperia Z5, which both came to the solution of slapping heat pipes onto the 810, I think simultanously both for the first time in phones. I'm surprised it took so long really. Curious about the throttling of those, or at least the Z5 if WP makes the former harder to compare.
  • twizzlebizzle22 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I'm sure I remember reading previous sony phones, Z2/Z3/Z4 has heatpipe designs.
  • Impulses - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    It's definitely not the first time heat pipes show up in a phone, I remember being surprised over seeing them in one at least a year ago... May have been Sony's own line, but it's not a new thing conceived exclusively because of 810..
  • tipoo - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Ah, ok, right you both are. First to try one on the 810 then?
  • Tech_guy - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Embarrassing throttling yet again. Qualcomm has really hurt Android flagships this year. Also using 1440p is stupid when the 810 was already known for heating issues.
  • syxbit - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Yep. Qualcomm is single handedly responsibly for the terrible performance of almost all flagship Android devices shipped in 2015.
    What a terrible year. If only another SoC vendor could have capitalized on this. Nexus has used Qualcomm in all their phones for the 4th year running now. This would have been the year to dump Qualcomm for someone else!
    (note, I have a 6P. Despite the diversity of Android, there isn't much choice if you want high end stock)
  • Impulses - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Then if you want a flagship phone that isn't a phablet your choices grow even slimmer... N5X is still bigger than my N5, so that leaves the Z5c, meh... Might just do the unthinkable and hang unto the N5 for more than 2 years.
  • anandreader106 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    @Impulses There are many of us that have made the same exact conclusion. I'll continue using my N5 for the next 1-2 years as well.
  • Anustart - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Bought the 6p after having my iPhone for 2 months. Returned the 6p. Lack of 1080p 60fps , ois and not as smooth as everyone is saying are the main reasons. Maybe I'll try android again when note 6 comes out. Right now iPhone is best phone right now and that's coming from someone who had at least 25 phones in the past 2 years. Only thing I miss from android atm is customization and xposed for YouTube ad block.
  • Djdjndjddjs - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    "not as smooth as everyone is saying are the main reasons." It is evident that you are making this up as the 6P is very smooth and the iPhone just doesn't meet its specs. The fact you say the iPhone is the best phone right now says you're full of it and are pretty uninformed on this subject. The iPhone was the best when it first came out but this is definitely no longer the case.
  • MykeM - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    If you haven't already I suggest reading these articles:

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9662/iphone-6s-and-i...

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple-iphon...

    Anandtech handed the iPhone 6s, the Editors's Choice Gold Award. The only other phone in the past 5 years to receive an award (the HTC One being the other phone). And to quote from the review:

    "I believe that the criteria for this award is such that a product is not only one of the best in its category and an extremely good product in a vacuum, but pushes the smartphone user experience forward in significant ways. The iPhone 6s isn't a perfect phone, but to receive the second highest award I don't believe it's necessary to make a "perfect" phone. There are areas that could be improved, but nothing that I believe is a significant detriment to the phone."

    You don't have to like Apple or iPhone but to say that it doesn't meet the specs of the Nexus 6P shows a clear misunderstanding of technology.
  • amdwilliam1985 - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Depends on your personal usage, I got a friend who recently switched from LG G2 to iPhone 6S(pink color of course, for those guys, it's the gold color ;), and her first comment was that iOS is "slow"/annoying. fast in terms of UI, but slow if you want to do anything, like calendar app doesn't support her attachments, customization. Fast camera and good quality pictures, but can't easily share them to others. Apple Music app is great, but she doesn't want to pay, so she needs a different solution after the 3 months free trial, she misses the "easy" folder management that Android offers. iTunes, please don't start on how great it is. Constantly updates from iOS 9.0 to iOS 9.1 to iOS 9.2 and god knows how many more mini versions in between, she's not a power user, to her, NOTHING changes, just annoying bugging update messages, lol. She traded prettiness for convenient, so far she's not sure if it's a good trade.
  • whiteiphoneproblems - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    How is it difficult to "share photos with others" in iOS?
  • tuxRoller - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Do you test phones for a living?
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    u are just been purchased by apple or u trolling
  • johnnycanadian - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Bloody hell. Is there EVER going to be an Android device that can even match the current Apple offering (never mind surpass it)? I'm growing more disenfranchised with iOS but the advantages of Android aren't enough to put up with sub-par hardware.
  • 5th element - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Tegra x1 phone? Seriously I don't know though. Apple has the distinct advantage that it only has design a very small number of high performance premium SoCs and can ignore everything else. The other manufactures not so much and as there is strong competition between SoC suppliers products get released with problems in the rush to get a product to market.

    On the whole I agree with you though the other SoC manufacturers need to up their ante!
  • V900 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    There used to be some real competition in the Android SOC space, but unfortunately, both Texas Instruments and ST Ericsson (both of whom made some great SOCs) threw in the towel. And now it looks like Nvidia is giving up too.

    A real shame. Back when OMAP and NovaThor were still around, Android CPUs were still roughly on par with Apples Ax chips.

    But now no one even comes close to Apple SOCs in terms of performance, and brand new phones Android phones perform worse than iPhones that are six months or a year old.

    The 820 doesn't look like it'll do anything to change that either.

    We prob need some real competition in the SOC space, to see a real competitor to Apples Ax CPUs.

    (And yes, I am aware of Mediatek/Allwinner et. al. But they make cheap SOCs to stuff in $80 tablets. Qualcomm has the premium/performance market mostly to itself.)
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    lol, you guys seriously need to lose your tin foils.
  • tipoo - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    What was tin hat about that?
  • 3DoubleD - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    The problem of competing against the 6S is that Apple was the first to produce a custom 64-bit SoC design on 16 nm FF. Samsung released the first 16 nm FF design, but did so nearly a year ago with a stock BIG.little configuration. They saw massive gains in efficiency purely from the impressive operating voltage and leakage improvements that FF transistors provide. No one else has had access to 16 nm FF until Apple released their 16 nm FF custom SoC. It completely dominates the stock ARM non-16 nm FF SoCs due to design and process advantage and handily beats Samsung's 16 nm FF stock ARM SoC on better design alone.

    No manufacturer outside of Samsung has the ability to compete with Apple on this level (bleeding edge manufacturing and SoC design), but I can't say Samsung really dropped the ball either. This year's Exynos was plenty fast and efficient to sell premium devices and it performed well against the iPhone 6, which it was in competition with. If only they didn't drop the ball with the small battery capacity they could have had a killer phone.

    Next year Samsung won't have the luxury of being the only player with 16 nm FF on Android, so they'll need to step up their game with SoC design, but I don't actually think beating Apple's SoC performance is very important for selling phones. The S6 had great SoC performance and it wasn't an astounding sales success. Thankfully, with 16 nm FF going mainstream next year the rest of us will have access to much more efficient SoCs, even if SoC design continues to stagnate, without the premium price gouging from Apple or Samsung.
  • grayson_carr - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Does the benchmark performance of A9 really translate to an improved real world experience though? I still notice that a lot of animations, like the 3D touch menu popping up on the home screen and the app switcher, run at a low framerate on the iPhone 6S Plus (the 6S is much smoother, but it also has a pretty low res screen for 2015). And to me browsing and switching between apps on an iPhone 6S Plus doesn't feel any faster than it does on a Nexus 6P.
  • amdwilliam1985 - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Got a friend who traded in 6+ to 6S+ because he can't handled the lag of iOS9.x, lol, he must be mad...
  • Lavkesh - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    The lag has been taken care in the latest release iOS 9.2
  • Djdjndjddjs - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Subpar hardware? Android has double the screen resolution and a pixel density over 100 pixels better. Then there's the fact they offer more memory at a better price and have better cameras. Saying that the iPhone is better when it still only has a 1080p LCD screen is just ignorant.
  • johnnycanadian - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Heh. Screen resolution? Certainly. More memory? Sure, Android still isn't optimized to the level that iOS is, so it needs it. 2GB is an absolute minimum for 5.x, IMHO. Cameras? Not so much; at best it's a toss-up. And SoC? There's virtually no comparison (the Note5 is the only one that comes close). So yeah, sub-par hardware. I suppose I should have written "Sub-par operating environment" so the OS issues (bloated, unoptimized code) and the less-than-stellar SoC performance would both be taken into account.

    I'd LOVE to go Android, but until the operating environment can match iOS' I'm stuck with Apple.
  • grayson_carr - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    "2GB is an absolute minimum for 5.x"

    Is it? My grandmother's Moto G 2015 with only 1 GB of RAM runs great and it's on Android 5.1.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link

    sending texts and calling her grandchildren are not very demanding. try to browse big websites or play games and that phone will slow to a crawl.
  • tipoo - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    Does your grandmother multitask as much as younger smartphone users? Genuine question. I had a first gen Moto G, I liked it, but the 1GB RAM really started bothering me with every app flip taking time. The third gen one can come with 2GB on the 16GB model, thankfully.

    On my 6S now, I can't complain about it's 2GB RAM much at all, the only things that reload are usually hours stale anyways.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link

    Because, as we all know, a 1440p or 4k screen is required to make aphone usable. there is NO WAY a 1080p screen will be enough for a 5.5" device. Also, I can see atoms at the molecular level.

    even the 6s at 768p or whatever it is looks just fine. the colors look great, the screen is bright, and a higher rez screen would have destroyed battery life.
  • tacomonstrous - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Regarding ergonomics, it is disingenuous for the reviewer to assume that an arrangement he personally finds inconvenient is so for everybody. I have small hands and for me it's much easier to reach the back button on the left than the recents on the right. Most of the time my thumb is hovering right above the back button, while I have to shift my grip to reach the recents button. And I'm right handed in my phone use.
  • zeeBomb - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Damn it. It always have to be when anandtech have to drop a surprise review like that...
  • aijazz - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    same here, i was about to order my nexus 6p the same day this review came ! and now am scratching my head !!
  • maskofwraith - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    i like how they exclude iphone from camera comparisons.
  • V900 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Sorry to burst your bubble there, but the exclusion isn't because the iPhone has a worse camera, but for readability's sake.

    Besides, everybody already knows that the camera in the iPhone 6/6s is among the best on the market.

    Look up the iPhone 6s review, where Anandtech point out how all the flagship phones have amazing cameras these days.

    Samsung Galaxy 6/iPhone 6s/LG4 and now Nexus 5X/6P are roughly speaking equal in terms of quality. The Android phones occasionally have a small edge in certain situations like low light shots, and the iPhone takes the lead in terms of speed and post-processing.
  • twizzlebizzle22 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    My androbench scores are pulled in much higher results.

    Fancy telling me some of the settings to replicate the result?
  • SirCanealot - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Another fantastic review, Andrei! As usual, you made reading technical details fun, informative and easy. Thanks for your hard work! :)
  • SHartman1976 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I generally enjoyed the review, but there were a couple of really odd parts. First off, claiming that the position of the volume and power buttons was "unusual" is odd, since it was used on the Nexus 6 and the entire Moto X family, so it's hardly unusual at this point for Nexus and Nexus-like phones. The lowered position on the side is also similar to last years Nexus 6, and is intended to facilitate reaching them on such a large phone. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it's hardly surprising at this point.

    I was also surprised by his critique of the stock Android navigation buttons as it read to me like something more than personal preference. In particular referencing thumb-length makes it read as if this is an objective problem, when it simply reflects preferences in device handling. I'm a right-handed user with average length thumbs, and when using the larger Nexus 6 I either hold the phone in my left hand while interacting with the right (2 handed use) and have no issue reaching anywhere on the screen, or I use it one-handed in my left hand, putting the phone in the crux of my fingers and operating it with my left thumb, which puts the back button in the best possible location (right next to my thumb!). Of course personal grip and use preferences vary, but the review reads as if this is an actual flaw, rather than a capricious bit of personal use habit.

    Finally, in the photo section it's unclear to me whether the reviewer realized that exposure is set by tapping on the part of the image you want to expose for (e.g. a house or grass rather than the sky). Since this is also how focus is set it's almost unavoidable indoors, but if you don't bother in an outdoor shot because focus is effectively infinite then you are not telling the phone what to expose for, which naturally can result in an exposure different than intended. Was that done and the phone still was unable to properly expose the scene? That would truly be a problem, but it's not clear from the review whether that was done, and as a prospective buyer I'd really want to know (I'd also want to know so as to reconcile this report with other reviews of the camera, which don't describe this issue).

    Don't get me wrong, there were many edifying parts in the review, in particular the excellent work on screen efficiency. But a couple portions left me wanting either more data, or a better separation between opinion and objective critique.
  • nico_mach - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Yes, I agree. I switched from iphone and I thought the buttons while different were completely intuitive, very little adjustment time. But I've never used a Samsung and the reviewer is clearly using that as a reference point, which is reasonable I guess.
  • hfm - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Muscle memory is easily learned in short order. Took me a week or two switching from two years of an N5 to get used to the differences. I always ignore those parts of reviews unless it's an obvious exceptionally bad UX choice. These weren't.
  • Nightfall983 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I don't understand your need about stock Android not having brightness slider in the notification shade. Swipe the shade down with 2 fingers (or pull down twice), and is right there.
  • hfm - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Not to mention turning off adaptive brightness will get the phone to 500 nits. I leave it on though.. But for this review where numbers are thrown around it should have been done.
  • ChronoReverse - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Hi Andrei, nice review. You may want to explore /system/etc/thermal-engine.conf to see how the software level thermal throttling is configured. It's pretty interesting how core shutdown and frequency limiting is configured with respect to the temperature. Interestingly enough, GPU throttling is tied to the main temperature sensor as well.

    You can even remove the file so that the phone relies solely on the fail-safe thermal throttling.
  • Jeff7181 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Would have been nice to see the OnePlus phones in these benchmarks... especially battery life.
  • GPz1100 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    How about the review including some details on phone call quality, signal reception, etc...?
  • QinX - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Why? Who uses a phone to call someone and expect a clear reception these days?
  • mystilleef - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I have both the Note 5 and the 6P and there is no way in hell I'd recommend the Note 5 over the 6P on any universe. The 6P has better battery life, better speakers (yes, contrary, to the reviewer, front facing speakers make a huge difference), better camera (especially low light indoor shots), better MEMORY MANAGEMENT, a better OS, and just a far better user experience.

    Anyone telling me TouchWiz is better than Stock Android is just delusional. I can't take that person seriously, and I don't think anyone should. TouchWiz has horrible, horrible, horrible memory management especially on the S6 and Note 5. If you enjoy your browser tabs and apps reloading every time you blink, or you fancy random crashes due to memory mismanagement, get the Note 5.

    Yes, I own the Note 5, and used it exclusively before I got the 6P.

    The ONLY thing great about the Note 5 are the camera and display. That's it. TouchWiz is a curse to Android so much so that there are rumors that Samsung is in talks with Google to help them fix, or optimize, TouchWiz.

    I choked on my food when Andrei recommended the Note 5 over the 6p for non-US users. Are you serious, Andrei? Did you use the Note 5 for any extended period of time? The only way I can recommend the Note 5 is if you're willing to flash CM on it.

    The Note 5 has been one of the most unstable and unreliable Android devices I've ever used. I regretted selling my Nexus 6 for it. I read all the hype here and on the Internet about the Note 5 and fell for it. As a matter of fact, I plan on getting a Nexus 6 as a backup device and using it instead of the Note 5. Heck even the Nexus 6 performs better than the Note 5, and no one can convince me that TouchWiz is not the culprit.

    In what universe is TouchWiz a better user experience than stock Android? Slide down the notification drawer on your 6p and do the same on your Note 5, that's all you need to know about the user experience of either devices. And I'm not even going to talk about the stutter and lag that begins to creep in after a few days of using any TouchWiz device.

    I enjoyed the review, but sheesh, it's hard for me to trust the taste or opinion of anyone recommending TouchWiz over stock Android. That, unfortunately, tainted the review for me. A review I'd have otherwise held in high regard.
  • VnnAmed - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    And if you need to flash CM on Note 5 remember that you will trip KNOX. Or just staywith N6P and flash away since their warranty is not bootloader state dependent. @Andrei Frumusanu One thing that this review didn't mention is that Nexus devices are flash friendly. Why would I buy one of those if not for long-term support and ability to change ROMs? And I understand that these articles are for normal people, but are they now? I'm classified as a nerd by fellow humans and even I don't understand every aspect of this review. Especially the screen part gets me confused BTW but back to the point, you said that you don't like where the back button is. Well most ROMs will have an option to change that, heck even a ROM for my M7 has it. Buying a Nexus phone is entering into the world of customization especially because these phones are semi-development devices. So while this is a review I've been waiting for and it's actually more beefy than I expected (good, I like them beefy reviews) especially in the hardware department, it falls short when explaining why would one pick Nexus over some other device. And my answer to that is it's because of freedom to change most of the settings just by typing few lines of code. And even if like me someone is not very good at that there are thousands of devs that do it everyday and allow us puny humans to download their work for free. So in the end just a short comparison from the other side of the fence. I live in Europe too. And it's not the nice and rich western Europe either. I'm poor and poor tech enthusiasts can't allow themselves to throw money around. So if I am faced with a choice between S6 and N6P I will with certainty choose the latter. Why you may ask? Because I will happily use Android 8 or whatever while Samsung will say something like "you want new Android on S6? We're sorry, we can't pull miracles with these puny 3 gigs of RAM". And when S6 will be stuck on some buggy release of Android 7.1.2 I will be flashing Official Exodus ROM Android 9 for Angler. Because even if google falls short, devs rarely do, and that's the true power of a Nexus device. P.S. Remember N4? It has fully working AOSP marshmallow.
  • phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Just curious why you specify the wireless as being dual-band, when it's more than implied by the standards supported.

    802.11b and 802.11g are 2.4 GHz only. 802.11a and 802.11ac are 5 GHz only.

    Thus, listing 802.11a/b/g/n/ac support means it's dual-band, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. It can't be anything else.

    If it only supports 802.11n (or 802.11b/g/n), then it makes sense to specify whether it's 2.4 GHz only, or 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, as n works in both bands.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    You're right, it's just something that I got used to saying after several reviews of Huawei devices lacking the 5GHz band.
  • xenol - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I'm still not getting why the phone only implements USB 2.0. The only thing I can think of is to save pins and traces from implementing 3.0/3.1 but that just seems silly.
  • twizzlebizzle22 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I read a write up on the samsung USB 3.0 implementations. The controller generates a fair amount of heat and could only be used for short periods of time. I'm not sure how far that silicon has come but i'd imagine it's not worth it for most people.

    I'll try dig the article up.
  • dcdttu - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    A more opinionated review than I usually expect from Anand, and it seemed to go against most other blog's praise of the device as possibly being the best Android device ever made. Maybe it's the author's dislike of stock Android, also going against the current trend in reviews. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I expect such open bias in reviews from the likes of The Verge (who loved it, actually), not Anand.

    Additionally, the lack of things such as a brightness slider in the notification window is likely for two reasons. One, it's not a notification. Two, it takes valuable real estate away from actual notifications. Samsung's overly-crowded notification center is a perfect example of how not to do it. It's bloated and full of things that aren't notifications at all. Stock Android's implementation is more elegant in my opinion.
  • mystilleef - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I'm one of those dudes who call The Verge's review a joke and tell people to wait for the Anandtech reviews, but this one thoroughly left me scratching my head.
  • amdwilliam1985 - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    same here, I'm so glad I've bought my Nexus 6P before reading this reviews.
    BTW, loving my 6P, practically doubled my battery life(coming from Nexus 5). My SoT can easily reach 4 hours(sometimes only 3+ hours), depending on how much of Clash of Clan I play throughout the day :)
  • tuxRoller - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Your first paragraph excellently summarizes my concerns with this review.
  • hfm - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Wait.. There IS a brightness slider in notification shade, pull it down twice.
  • R. Hunt - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    So don't think about it as a notification window. Stock is cleaner, I agree. Samsung is simply way more convenient and useful for me.
  • Breezer23 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Man! I see these pictures of the aluminum in the real world and I'm bummed I got graphite.

    Regardless, good review overall. As the reviewer stated, the location of the [over sensitive] volume rocker and power button is strange. It is my only real compliant with this device.

    Coming from the iPhone 6+, the only real things I miss is iMessage features with fellow iPhone owners and battery life. I found the battery life on the iPhone 6+, especially when using it for heavy graphics, to be far superior. I would suspect this is not a problem specific to this phone though.

    Speaking of iMessage. Apple really should bring this over to Android with the iPhone specific features and make it ad supported. They'd make a killing!
  • Breezer23 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I should also add that Ambient Display is no bueno. Try running with your phone in your hand (yes I realize this is stupid) but the screen is constantly going on and off.
  • SydneyBlue120d - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I ask this with every review but I never get a reply:
    Does the Snapdragon 810 really support HEVC encoding? As anyone been able to shoot HEVC with any Snapdragon 810 device? Thanks a lot.
  • grayson_carr - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    This review outlines what angers me about people's perception of AMOLED displays. The LCD display in the Nexus 5X is better than the AMOLED display in the Nexus 6P in literally every way (brightness, gamma, grayscale accuracy, white point, saturation accuracy, GMB accuracy, efficiency, lack of burn-in) except one (black levels). Yet somehow 99% of reviewers still claim the Nexus 6P has the better display and the Nexus 5X display is meh! Ahhh, why do oversaturated colors and perfect blacks make people completely disregard all of the other mediocre characteristics of AMOLED displays?!? I actually bought a Nexus 6P when it first came out, but after a few weeks I just wasn't very happy with the display, so I exchanged it for a Nexus 5X when it went on sale and I think the 5X display looks a lot better! This review confirms why I think the 5X display looks better. I mean, the one thing the 6P display did better (blacks) isn't even noticeable in all but the darkest environments. I feel like I'm enjoying a perfectly roasted gourmet coffee that tastes great by itself while everyone else raves about their mediocre over-roasted coffee that they only like because it's loaded with sugar. Le sigh. I give up.
  • VnnAmed - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Eee... xD but actually same here. People were like that since extremely ugly s2 display. It's also the same with TV's. Human beings somehow tend to like oversaturation. Even i like it but only to a very non intrusive extent. Like u know... A bit more of a punch but nothing extreme. Carrera s not the turbo one.
  • danbob999 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    It's not only blacks. Contrast ratio is better (because of good blacks, but still).
    DisplayMate also consider AMOLED to be superior (as in high end Samsungs).
  • Djdjndjddjs - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    "LCD display in the Nexus 5X is better than the AMOLED display in the Nexus 6P in literally every way" you seriously do not know what you're talking about. The display on the 6P is superior to every LCD display available right. If you've actually seen both instead of making stuff up you would see the 6P does have a better display than the 5X. Like seriously?
  • grayson_carr - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Durr.... like, did you, like, read my comment? I owned both, at the same time, so I have seen both side by side. And just look at the display measurements for both in this review! the numbers don't lie kiddo.
  • grayson_carr - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Dat 6P receipt... http://i.imgur.com/KeqNP4Z.png
  • tuxRoller - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Contrast is the main thing people with normal eyesight notice. That's why luminosity is given the largest amount of bitrate.
    Also keep in mind the srgb mode of the 6p is excellent.
  • ScrappyMan - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Could the mandatory software encryption and extra CPU cycles be part of the extra power consumption?
  • Djdjndjddjs - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    "even last year’s Snapdragon 801/805 phones" this here just made this review a whole lot less credible.
  • grayson_carr - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    How so? He was referring to sustained performance (after throttling) and the Nexus 6P does indeed have a lower framerate than the One M8 (Snapdragon 801) in the GFXBench Sustained Performance test.
  • tuxRoller - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    So, the 6p does a better job than the note 5 at maintaining long-term graphics perf.
  • grayson_carr - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Looks like it. Weird that the Galaxy S6 did a better job than both though. You would think the Note 5 would do better than the S6... same SOC, but seemingly more room to dissipate heat.
  • Sahrin - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Really important to see the carrier aggregation information for the radio as well, not just the band supported.
  • bmullan - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    The article was TLDR ... but in case the article didn't mention it.... These are the 2 Phones that Google has approved for its Project FI (https://fi.google.com/about/).

    The Nexus 6P is the one to get if you want to have the transparent auto-switching between 2 different Mobile Providers and also auto-switching with wifi. The Nexus 6 only gets you transparent auto-switching between 1 mobile provider & wifi.
  • rstuart - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I bought a 6P a while ago, so I read the article more to get a feel for how well it matches my own thoughts about the phone.

    Overall, it does. Even it's comments on price are pretty well spot on - I live outside of the US, and if I had to pay for it there is no way I could justify it, even though I happen to prefer stock Android.

    I was particularly pleased to see how Qualcomm's clusterfuck, the 810 was presented. There is simply no excuse for producing a SoC that is worse than the previous generation in terms of performance/watt, and yet that is what Quallcomm did. Yet amazingly, Huawei (mostly through the large battery) and Google (using software tricks to keep the thing switched off) managed to mitigate that and produce a device that has a very usable battery life.

    Subjectively in everyday use the 6P is very fast, just as the review says. And yes the screen is excellent, although it would be just as good if they dropped the resolution by 1/3 to retina levels and reduced the load off the GPU. The form fact is perfect for a phablet - the screen is large but you can still comfortably operate it with one hand. (Hint Andrei: that is why the buttons are in the middle. You could not reach them if they were on the top. And yes, making them reachable when you pick it up with one hand also means you bump them occasionally.)

    It's a pity Andrei didn't comment on USB-C. I make a point of handing the phone plus USB-C cable over to people and you can hear an audible sigh of joy from some as they realise the mental effort of orientating the connect has gone. The connector with its definite click as you push it home is a delight to use. And he neither does he mention the down side - USB-C to traditional USB adaptors is a mess, and as a result you can forget getting those excellent charging results from any of your non USB-C chargers. Instead you get the base rate of 0.5A 5V charging regardless of what your charger is capable of, which means when I'm using the phone for navigation in the car the battery discharges even though plugged in. And there is no wireless charging.

    My overall feeling is it is a wonderful phone, the occasional wart doesn't harm the experience. Amazing, given given the clusterfuck of a SoC Huawei and Google had to work with. Still, if I was in a position to wait 12 months I'd be waiting. The 820 is not only back on trend in the performance/watt stakes, it also has a much better LTE modem and it looks like those extra LTE bands international version has is what took the price from "reasonable" to "badly overpriced".
  • silverblue - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    My upgrade is due next Wednesday, and I've been looking at this phone with more than a passing interest, however one or two sites out of the (very happy, I might add) maddening crowd don't appear to be too complimentary about it. We've got a 950 XL here for testing so I'm waiting for more news on that despite the slagging off it's been getting from the press, and I suppose I don't have to upgrade on the deadline day, however there is the small matter of a free £50 Google Play voucher until the 24th which makes it all the more tempting. Additionally, whereas the Note 5 would seem like a good alternative, I'm hearing a lot made about its availability and price, plus Samsung's incessant desire to tell you that their vision of Android is the correct one, and the aforementioned memory management issue, so I'm not considering the Note 5 at this time. Had this review been more positive, I think my mind would've been made up.

    I could always just wait another month. January sales, and all that.
  • silverblue - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Of course, the voucher is applicable to the 6P. :) There's also the small matter of the non-availability of the free dock on the 950 series, but then again, it's not as if I'm going to use a phone to do all my work on.
  • grayson_carr - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Your point about only getting the base rate of 0.5A from non USB-C chargers is not correct. Using an Anker charger in my care with the USB A to C cable from the Google Store gets me near 2A, which isn't as fast as the 3A provided by the USB C charger included in the box, but is still fairly fast.
  • grayson_carr - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    *car, not care
  • rstuart - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Then you have a non-standard compliant USB-C to USB-A cable. A USB-C charging device must indicate the maximum charging rate it supports using a resistor across the CC pins (A5 & B5). The values are 10K for 3A, 22K for 1.5A and 56K for legacy (0.5A). (This can be found in the USB specs, which are free to download from usb.org.)

    The issue is a passive USB-A to USB-C cable can't know what charging rate the device it connects will support, so the spec only allows on value for such adaptors - 56K, which means legacy (0.5A).

    Your cable probably claims to support 3A. If it is connected to a cheap charger that is also non-standards compliant, your at risk of causing a fire.

    Right now the USB-C market is a mess. I wanted to verify the USB-C to USB Micro A adaptor I purchased had the right resistor, and since the pins on USB-C are about as wide as a bees dick I purchased a USB-C breakout PCB (like this https://www.saikosystems.com/Web/images/Product/ic... ). It had no resistor at all, so I purchased a different brand. It was the same. I am pretty persistent, so I own 15 of them now. Not one is standards compliant.
  • grayson_carr - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    I have the USB-A to USB-C cable from the Google Store... and Benson Leung, the Google employee who has been testing them, says it is spec compliant. Having a compliant cable does not mean you can only charge at 0.5A. It just means you can't charge at 3A like you can with a USB-C to USB-C cable.
  • grayson_carr - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    Also, your view of how USB cables work is too simplistic and wrong. If a USB-A to USB-C cable has a 56K pull-up resistor (as it should), it doesn't just automatically default to the base rate of 0.5A. It will defer to the USB BC 1.2 protocol to negotiate an appropriate current that both the charger and device can handle.
  • SanX - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    One thing bothered me in previous models inluding Nexus 6 was permanent focus "hoping" during video recording when you turn the camera like all cheapo camcorders do. That was present in all modes, the 1080 or 2160. This defect literally trash all your movies specifically visible and annoying in 2160. Must be a second camera module (they are cheap novadays, just a few dollars) which has to do hoping while the main one just do the final focusing if needed.
  • JMC2000 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I find the issue with the orientation of the back button a bit funny; personally, I despise having back on the right side of the navbar, and I'm right-handed. I can't stand the location of the back button on my Note 4, yet using on-screen buttons on it drives me insane.

    Whenever I run Cyanogen/ASOP roms, I always use this navbar layout (left to right):
    Menu, Back, Home, Recents, Search
  • bogda - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    I am really dissaponted with direction Nexus devices took. Back in a days when I bought my Nexus 7 it was a very good device for a money. Now Google is dropping all reasons to buy Android vs iOS device. If I want iOS device I will buy one not, Android device with all annoying features of iOS devices and higher resolution display.
    And price in Europe that is 40% higher than in US is a cherry on the top.
  • oRAirwolf - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Would you guys be so kind as to provide us with your testing methodology for determining NAND speeds? I know you have used Androbench in the past, but you mentioned that you used some custom settings. What settings are you using? I'd like to be able to compare the performance of some other of my devices that haven't been benched to get an idea how they compare.

    Thanks for your great review. I hope to see a Pixel C review soon :)
  • hfm - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    You guys seriously need editorial review. I got hung up on poor grammar and sentence structure a couple times in the review.
  • Larry Endomorph - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Agreed. More than "a couple times". Many more. And spelling errors.
  • cicatriz63 - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    How is there still not a Moto X Pure review here? I would think that would be a pretty good comparison against the 6P/5X, no?
  • noone2 - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    This review confirms my suspicions that the HDR implementation is in fact poorly done.
  • gfieldew - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Andrei, the brightness slider in the notification pull down works perfectly on my Nexus 6P. What on earth are you talking about?
  • gfieldew - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Ignore this, I misread.
  • JBVertexx - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Bad year for Android phones. I'm still sporting a HTC One M7 - really tried to buy a new phone this year. This Nexus 6p was the closed I came to buying, but it's just too big for my taste. If the 5x had a premium version, I'd probably buy that. I just picked up one for my son, but I need something more high-end for my use.

    Let's hope the 820 makes it a better Android year next year. I came close to switching over to iPhone this year. If the Android ecosystem can't produce a viable phone next year, I'm probably going to throw in the towel on Android.
  • blzd - Friday, December 25, 2015 - link

    You're using a One M7, any phone now can be considered high end compared to that.

    Real world performance on the 5x and 6p is stellar. Only synthetic benchmarks show any problems.

    Luckily most of use our phones like phones and not as synthetic benchmark tools.
  • aryonoco - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    Thank you for finally putting LTE band support of different models in the spec sheet.

    This information is sometimes very hard to find for some Android phones and is vital for those of us who want to take maximum advantage of all the bands that our carrier offers. Excellent idea to put them right there. Thank you.
  • aijazz - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    Couldn't find anything about the nexus 6p imprint ? or have i missed it completely
  • JimFoster - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    Dunno, but in real life it works flawlessly. And it's very fast. A split second.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    It works very well! There's not much else to say about it.
  • Powerlurker - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    My Nexus 5X has a brightness slider in the notification shade. Just swipe down a second time (or swipe down once with two fingers). It also has a flashlight button, airplane mode, and WiFi setting there too.
  • JimFoster - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    Excellent excellent review. I can always trust AT and GSMarena. You guys usually give us the definitive review. And thank God I paid the extra and bought the Nexus 6P and not the OnePlus 2.
  • gg555 - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    GSMArena provides a lot of detail. But I think they go easy on the phones quite a bit and gloss over problems. They are a bit of an advetorial site, that's there more to promote phones, than really analyze them. This is especially seen in their "news" section, that is basically just reguritating press releases.

    What's great about AnandTech is that they really analyze things in detail and don't hesitate to point out problems or limitations. They provide much more of an actual independent point of view.
  • gg555 - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    I really appreciate AnandTech's super detailed, thoughtful reviews.

    But what about call quality? In call noise cancellation? Reception? It is a phone still, isn't it, or have they permanently dropped that feature?

    AnandTech used to do great reviews on call quality, especially with its noise cancellation test. Now there is not a single word on anything having to do with simply placing a call.
  • UtilityMax - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    A will take a closely AOSP-based firmware over highly "customized" any day of week. The problem with the highly customized ROMS is not their customization but the fact that those ROMS come with buttload of bloatware. Something like at least a couple of dozen apps that will nag you with registration, noticed and functionality you don't need. They will wake your devices unnecessarily and deplete your battery. Unlike in Windows, you can't uninstall this bloatware without rooting the device. I much prefer the experience of something like Cyanogenmod or Cyanogen OS (as shipped on Oneplus One). Simple, tidy, efficient.
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    OMG again this apples BITCH website sold themselves to them on 1000% :DD every their charts those crappy iphone on top.. anandatech u are making IDIOTS from yourself .. TOTALLY :DDD
    and despite everybody knows iphones as the worst battery (that is why crapple made official battery case and you STILL claiming that it has best battery life iphones??
    YOU BIGGEST LIARS on the Internet !! jeesus are there so stupid ppl who believe this biggest pathetic bitch apples site ??
    RIDICULOUS
  • Lavkesh - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    Yeah breathe please
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 27, 2015 - link

    Am sorry, but this site choking me...
  • amdwilliam1985 - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    Nexus 6P has the second best battery life(after Moto Droid Maxx) in "real life use cases". This is from someone(MKBHD) who uses a lot of smart phones, hopefully all under same/similar use cases, so I think his option is pretty valuable, might be more so than the "random" reviewers(with a very subjective opinion) from this site lately. lol.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBuVR8_Mybw

    Don't worry, I'm still reading this site, because even with all the BS, it is still one of the best. Well, I'm waiting for an alternative ;) Then I can stop coming back...
  • amdwilliam1985 - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    so I think his opinion* is pretty valuable
  • N8SLC - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link

    The brightness slider is available immediately with a two finger pull down of the notification bar. Please update article accordingly.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link

    Still waiting for a nexus phone with a removable battery to replace my note 4.
  • blzd - Friday, December 25, 2015 - link

    That might be a wait your children's children might have to take up for you.
  • vacaloca - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    Thanks for the review. I was thinking about getting the 6P, but this review is actually making me think the 5X is the better option in terms of the screen (even though it defies all the other commentary I've seen on this)

    I do have one suggestion for future reviews. The charge time graphs, while okay on their own, do not take into account that these devices have bigger/smaller capacity batteries. Perhaps the better idea is to normalize this graph by battery capacity... in that case it would show the phones that charge the fastest, which perhaps would be useful to compare, especially now that a lot of devices come without removable batteries.
  • erple2 - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    I like the idea of normalized battery charging. However, I'd take it another step further, adding something like a "charge time to use time" graph. Phones are now touting things like "15 minutes of charge for 4 hours of usage". Why not go the extra bit and add a "charge time vs. Benchmarked on screen time" kind of graph.
  • aggiechase37 - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    Count me in for a call for Anandtech to start including call quality reviews in here. It's a phone for goodness sake. For people who actually use their phone, especially for business, having the other person be able to clearly hear you is an important consideration.
  • p51d007 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link

    Once the price drops CLOSER to 400 dollars, for the 64gb version, I might get one.
    Phones today, are OVERPOWERED, unless you are heavy into games for my use, and I'm not paying 500,600 or more for a phone. My 300 dollar Mate2, has snappy performance, GREAT battery life, excellent camera (using the camera FV-5 software that is).
  • Zarsus - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    This phone is as fragile as a glass doll, the screen cracked when I dropped my two-day old phone on ceramic tile from a height of 15 cm, yes, 15 cm, as in 0.15 meter.
    Maybe it's a super unlucky drop or perhaps this particular phone is defective to begin with, but all of my other phones have survived much, much, much worse drops than this and they all survived. I cannot properly express my disappointment with this phone.
  • Badelhas - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    Why is Europe price so much higher, can anyone explain?!
  • jujufreeze - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link

    And why was the 6p not given an editor's gold choice award like the iphone 6s(+)? Perhaps Anandtech authors are hoping to get Apple jobs like Anand Shimpi?

    *Price. It's time to stop ignoring price. A $499 unlocked 6p is a significantly better value than an unlocked 6s with a better battery, a higher res. screen, and an extremely comparable camera. Kudos to the Nexus for ridding the ridiculous 16 Gigabyte option and starting at 32 Gigabytes. Apple is getting away with highway robbery for still offering an absurdly overpriced 16 gigabyte option.

    More on the specifics...

    *Battery life: iphone 6 battery is 2,750 mAh vs Nexus 6p 3,450 mAh battery. Nexus 6p is considerably faster at charging.

    *Display: 2,560 x 1440 AMOLED vs. 1080p LCD. You simply can't ignore the fact the 6p is sporting more impressive technology on its screen and though it's not the best AMOLED screen, the blacks are significantly deeper. Slight edge goes to the 6p.

    *Conclusion. I could go on and though the iphone 6 has a superior A9 processor and 3d Touch you can't ignore the fact that the Nexus offers in some cases better, in many cases equivalent features to the iphone 6 for a fraction of the cost.
  • isoftpreeti - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    Display: 5.7 inches; WQHD (2560 x 1440) AMOLED display at 518 ppi
    Dimensions: 159.3 X 77.8 X 7.3 mm
    Weight: 178 grams
    Storage: 32GB, 64 GB, or 128GB
    Memory: 3GB LPDDR4
    Processors: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, 2.0 GHz Octa-core 64-bit; Adreno 430 GPU
    Front camera: 8MP camera; 1.4 µm pixels; f/2.4 aperture
    Rear camera: 12.3 MP; 1.55 µm pixels; f/2.0 aperture, 4K video
    Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2x2 MIMO, dual-band (2.4 GHz, 5.0 GHz); Bluetooth 4.2; NFC; GPS, GLONASS
    Colors: Aluminium, Graphite, Frost, and Gold (Japan only)

    This is one of the best mobile phone from google Nexus. Mobile application development company in India like I-SOFTINC TECHNOLOGIES always help to improve the mobile application development and its features by adding new features and technologies.
  • Gard Vikingstad - Friday, January 15, 2016 - link

    AndroBench 4 results running on my 128GB Nexus 6P (encrypted):
    Seq read: 272.4 MB/s Seq write: 95.2 MB/s Rand read: 19.7 MB/s Rand write: 9.3 MB/s
  • Louismiami04 - Sunday, February 7, 2016 - link

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  • evozero - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link

    Request: Can Anandtech bring back the Camera Focus Latency [AF speed] and Camera Shot Latency [shutter lag] charts? This is one of the rare places where camera af speed and shutter lag can be compared.
  • jimmyblake - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link

    I've recent purchased a 6P after using a iPhone 6S for the past several months and with the same apps and use profile I'm getting around a third/quarter of battery life I was getting on the iPhone - those comments around the AMOLED screen and Snapdragon 810 processor seem to be the case.

    Love the phone/OS, hate the battery life.
  • jimmyblake - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link

    recently^ - never post at 06:50 AM
  • strikerrocket - Sunday, April 3, 2016 - link

    I'm French, the Nexus 6P is listed at $649 in the US, and this translate as €799 in France, WTF? Maths telle me that at the current rate it shoudl be €569. I will NEVER buy this! It's a complete RIP OFF and absolutely impossible to justify! This is sick, that's $910 in US DOLLARS! Unbelievable!
  • Joshua tree - Sunday, June 12, 2016 - link

    Seems strange i just purchased the 6p in Australia coming in from Hong Kong.The price was $713.00AU for the 64GB model and included a 3 year warranty. US comparison allowing for the exchange rate would be $499.00 US

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