frankly I wasn't sure where to begin with the Google Nexus 6 so I decided to
shake things up and start at the end when I'm reviewing a phone I put my
personal SIM card the only one I have in and I leave it there for at least a
couple weeks while I get a feel for what it's really like to use the device as a
daily driver I believe this gives every phone a chance to win me over and become
my new dayto day and the conclusion for me on this one is that it squandered
that chance on the subject of driving
though by the time you guys see this my team and I will already be at CES 2015
so don't miss any of the awesome content that's coming your
way as far as hardware specs are concerned the Nexus 6 is a worthy
followup to the Nexus 5 improving on it in almost every conceivable way the
quadcore Snapdragon processor is now an 805 and clocked 15% faster with three
gigs of RAM and 32 or 64 gigs of non-
upgradable storage to go with it the adreno 420 GPU is in the neighborhood of
40% faster and good thing because the AMOLED screen has 76% more pixels with a
massive 2560 x440 resolution the battery
gets bumped to 3220 milliamps the rear camera weighs in at a respectable 13
megapixels for Stills with up to 4K 30fps video recording support and you
get a Fancy Pants ring flash for more even Shadows for close-ups oh yeah you
also get a schmeck Nano coating for the body that Harris from it techworld
docomo the body then I guess the solid
and very premium feeling aluminum body of mine is wrapped front and back in a
dbrand vinyl skin that gives the back a pleasing leather look and feel and makes
the front look an awful lot like a white note too although many other finishes
are available at the back of the phone is the main camera with its ring flash
moving down we find a little dimple that would have a Motorola logo a cut out in
my skin for the Nexus logo and a noise cancellation microphone it should be
noted though that the Nexus 6 does not feature the same quad micay as the Moto
X 2014 unfortunately around the edges of
the phone we find Micro USB nothing on the left a nano SIM tray and headphone
jack in my preferred position on the top and on the right the lock button and
volume rocker and these are awful I think I'm batting about 500 for hitting
whichever button I'm aiming for thanks to them being extremely close together
and way too easy to press with goa's I'm
not really sure who to blame here so I'll go with both genius idea to help
you differentiate between them being a subtle texture to the lock button I know
I harp on this a lot but for crying out loud manufacturers the volume and lock
are often the only physical buttons you're giving us on a phone surely that
means you understand that they're important and we might want to use them
which brings us around to the front the Nexus 6's Gorilla Glass 3 covered 5.96
in display feature phenomenally fine image quality vibrant colors and wicked
contrast making Android L's new visual design and really anything else look
absolutely gorgeous my only complaint about the screen is that just like the
Droid Turbo it has a noticeable green Shimmer at some mostly very extreme
angles but it doesn't bother me dayto day the size of the screen lands this
phone solidly in fablet territory and while as someone with small hands my
feelings about these devices that they're ridiculous large and difficult
to handle shouldn't be a surprise but I have to give Google credit for being
clever enough to at least give it a curved shape you know like a hand so in
spite of its significantly larger screen size I actually find it much easier to
hold on to than the iPhone 6 plus I also
have to give them credit for front-facing speakers you could have the
best speakers in the world but if they're playing in the house next to you
they're still going to sound like muffled farts while the Nexus 6 is both
loud and clear enough for content in enjoyment in a moving car which is my
standard Benchmark and it actually sounds overall pretty freaking good for
a phone battery life was also pretty freaking good and I regularly had 40 to
50% left at the end of the day the large
high resolution display will negatively impact battery life but Android lollipop
comes with some efficiency improvements and AMOLED screens can be much more
efficient than LCDs when a lot of the screen is black lighting only the pixels
that are needed so you can use the handy motion activated ambient display feature
that displays notifications when they come in or if you move the device
basically guilt free and very heavy users can Rejoice because the battery
charges both quickly with qualcom Quick Charge 2.0 and conveniently with Chi
wireless charging in theory I found
correctly aligning the phone for wireless charging was actually pretty
hit or miss on my car dock but your mileage may vary camera time I have very
mixed impressions of the camera on the Nexus 6 the hardware seems great with
dynamic range right up there with the iPhone 6 with shockingly little detail
lost in the branches of the trees and in the sunny houses in the background here
but our flower subject is not as well exposed under Studio lighting it takes
awesome sharp images of my subject albeit without a very pleasing outof
Focus effect in the background and auto white balance was handled better than
any of the other Android phones that I checked out in my test Suite you can
actually download these test shots in the link in the video description but on
the other hand the scenario where I use my phone most close and medium range
shots without ideal lighting had the Nexus 6's camera performing about as
well as the potato camera on my iPhone 4
with autofocus completely crapping the bed in some cases I know that some
people are wetting themselves over the new camera API that should allow raw
shooting and lots of other goodies with alternate camera apps but I don't give a
toss about raw and frankly providing better tools to thirdparty developers
while admirable is not an excuse for the abysmal included camera app it's slow to
launch slow to take pictures infuriating to navigate I mean why does the settings
Cog only appear when I swipe from the left why are there four menu items here
when none of them contain anything and all the good stuff is in one of the
menus anyway just put them all in the same place and why do the photo and
video modes both of which should just be accessible at the same time like Sony
does it remember which camera they were using last time rather than
changing modes and changing cameras independently I've never seen this
before and it's really unintuitive and it completely lacks features that are
taken for granted in high-end phones these days there's no burst Picture Mode
no time lapse no slow mode not even 60 FPS I mean okay it's got 4K video
capture but it drops frames all over the place anyway and I mean I know I'm
ragging on the camera a lot here but this is a $600 plus Flagship grade
device we always gave phones a free pass
to have sucky cameras because we were still getting a great deal but this one
has the hardware so it appears that Google is just sitting on ass waiting
for someone else to fix it for them so I got to call them out on it and the
ranting actually doesn't end here under the hood Android 5.0 seems awesome the
NFC based Setup Wizard and quick logging into accounts was great it's got more
robust notification management including separate rules for high priority
applications that can be toggled in seconds the more efficient are runtime
is now mandatory user and limited access
accounts are Now supported and security has been beefed up for business users
but I have never been so excited for the
handset vendors to put their own finishing touches on a Google OS I tend
to give software bugs a bit of a pass in my reviews because I'm usually reviewing
the device very close to launch and in good faith I believe that by the time
many people watch my video the little glitches will have been sorted out
anyway so I don't want to waste time on them but for crying out loud Google this
is the launch device for lollipop and you still can't get Wi-Fi working
reliably are you serious I mean iOS 8 is still bugged on a couple of the apps
that I like to use but I can forgive that stuff Wi-Fi just cutting out and
requiring a device reboot to fix it every time seriously and my frustrations
with the Nexus 6 don't end here I mean here are some more in no particular
order the multitasking Rolodex interface is much more natural to use than kit
Kat's default design but the icon for it is atrocious I mean good luck explaining
this one to your mother the lock screen displays only a few more recent
notifications and to access the rest you have to swipe down rather than up what
the old Google Calendar's month view sucked but instead of improving it
they've removed it entirely on phones now thanks for nothing and the haptic
feedback is among the worst I've ever encountered makes it feel like the
device is falling apart the stock keyboard took a sharp turn at artsy
fartsy Junction presumably for the sake of making its design more material and
now has no dividing lines between characters and I mean where the heck is
the restart button some Android devices
have it but for some reason it's become unpopular with the cool kids I mean I
guess I probably have apple to thank for this rubbish but at least in their
defense in my four plus years of using various iPhones I've needed to do fewer
restarts to fix Wi-Fi connectivity than I have in two weeks with the Nexus 6 so
it feels like the least Google could have done was make it a bit more convenient for me
so since I did the conclusion at the beginning of this video I don't really
have much to say other than I don't think the Nexus 6 is worth your $650 I
think there are better options out there and other than that well thank you to
dbrand for providing me with the Nexus 6 that I used to make this video and
asking in return only that we point out that they carry an incredibly wide
variety of precision Cut vinyl skins for tablets phones game consoles and other
electronics to give them a unique look and feel at a reasonable price also have
noticed that dbrand now carries Gilla glass screen protectors that are only
marginally thicker than their vinyl wraps making for a smoother transition
when swiping your finger over your phone than ever before and keeping pretty much
your whole device protected from incidental scuffs and scratches so
thanks again to dbrand and thanks to you guys for watching like this video if you
liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment if you completely disagree with my assessment of the Nexus
6 and if you think I'm just biased against big phones because I have small
hands which has no implications for other parts of my body um also check out
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