Google partners regularly with various hardware manufacturers in order to create its line of Nexus devices. From such an alliance came to life the Motorola Nexus 6 - a high-end smartphone with a clean and unaltered Android on it. It's a big smartphone with a large 6 inch display, powerful hardware inside and with lots of interesting promises for the end user. We've had the Nexus 6 in our hands for quite a while now and we used it daily as our main communication device. Of course, we also ran lots of tests and benchmarks and we put it to a level of stress that not many people would. If you're an Android fan and you want to experience a clean Android experience, just as it was created and intended by Google, than you should read this review. By the time you will finish reading, you'll know if the Motorola Nexus 6 is the smartphone to buy this holiday season:
Hardware specifications & packaging
The Motorola Nexus 6 comes in a white cardboard box with a simple and minimalist design. On its top side stands engraved a large six figure and nothing else.
The bottom and the sides of the box are held together by a red sticker on which is printed an image of the Nexus 6 smartphone, while on one of the smaller ends of the box you'll find some technical information: the smartphone's name, IMEI, model number and so on.
The first thing you'll see when you open the box is the Motorola Nexus 6 itself.
Underneath the smartphone, there's a small red box in which you'll find a quick start guide, the Safety + Warranty booklet and a small pin for removing the SIM card. Tucked under the small red box sits the charger and its detachable USB cable.
The Motorola Nexus 6 is available in only two color variations: Midnight Blue and Cloud White.
It features an impressive 5.96 inches AMOLED display that offers a QHD resolution of 1440 x 2560 pixels at 493 ppi pixel density. The smartphone is powered by a powerful quad-core Krait processor running at 2.70 GHz and an Adreno 420 graphic processing unit. Motorola has been generous when it comes to memory too: the Nexus 6 offers 3GB of RAM and 32GB or 64GB of internal storage space, depending on the model you buy. You'll have to choose wisely the variant you buy, because the Nexus 6 doesn't have an SD card slot, so you won't be able to expand the storage capacity. The autonomy of the Motorola Nexus 6 is handled by a non-removable lithium-polymer 3220mAh battery.
The rear camera uses a 13 megapixels image sensor from Sony, capable of taking pictures at resolutions of up to 4128 x 3096 pixels, with autofocus and optical image stabilization. The camera is also helped by a dual-LED flash for low light pictures and it can also take pictures with HDR. The main camera can also record videos at 2160p@30fps. The Nexus 6 has a front camera built-in too, but this one has only 2MP and it's obvious that it's destined only for video chat apps and not for high-quality selfies.
In terms of connectivity, the Motorola Nexus 6 uses a nano-SIM and can connect to GSM/GPRS/EDGE, UMTS/HSPA+ and 4G LTE mobile networks. It also offers a microUSB v2.0 port, Bluetooth v4.1 with NFC and dual-band wireless support for the 802.11 a/b/g/n and 802.11ac networking standards. This means that you will be able to connect to both 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless networks and enjoy fast wireless network connections.
The Motorola Nexus 6 is undoubtedly a phablet, with a large 6 inch screen. This also means a big body: the Nexus 6 has a size of 159.3 x 83 x 10.1 mm (6.27 x 3.27 x 0.40 inches) and weight of 184 grams (6.49 oz).
If you'd like to see more details about the features and the detailed hardware specifications of this smartphone, you should browse its official webpage: Motorola Nexus 6 - Specifications.
The Motorola Nexus 6 packs some powerful hardware. There aren't that many smartphones with QHD screens or 3GB of RAM memory. Just by reading its hardware specs, you know that you're looking at a high-end device.
Design & build quality
The first thing that catches your attention at the Motorola Nexus 6 is its size. The details we shared earlier about how large and heavy the Nexus 6 is are useful but you won't really get it until you actually see and hold the device. We feel the need to say this from the start: this is not a smartphone for everyone. If you have small hands or if you're not ready to use your smartphone with two hands, the Nexus 6 is not for you.
For this smartphone, Motorola and Google went for a simple and functional design. The front side of the smartphone is dominated by the large screen. The bezels are narrow and you'll see no hardware buttons here, as the Motorola Nexus 6 chooses to use software buttons that appear on its display. Also talking about the display, we must say that it looks stunning, with vibrant colors, very good contrast and high brightness levels that make it easy to see the screen even in direct sunlight. The very large resolution and high pixel density it offers couldn't have led to any other result. The Nexus 6 does very well at representing colors, but while blacks are true blacks, whites seem to suffer from a slight yellowish tint. However, this is not upsetting in any way.
Other than the display, there is only one other thing that captures your view on the smartphone's front: the two speaker grilles . There's one at the top and one at the bottom of the screen.
Even if the Nexus 6 is one of the largest smartphones we've seen, it still feels good to hold in your hands. A reason for this is the design and the materials used for creating the back side. Motorola used high quality polycarbonate that's nice to touch, smooth and grippy. The back of the smartphone is also slightly curved to the edges, thus giving you the sensation that the Nexus 6 is thinner than it actually is. In terms of branding, the back side of this smartphone is dominated by the nexus name and the M logo from Motorola. On the top side you'll also find the rear camera encircled by its ring dual-LED flash. The picture below cannot tell you how great the feeling you get is when touching the back of this smartphone. It's silky, like a cat's fur... 🙂
Moving on to the edges of the Nexus 6, Motorola used aluminum for creating them. This helps give the smartphone robustness and also helps against unfortunate hits and bumps your smartphone could suffer.
The top rim of the Nexus 6 houses a 3.5mm audio jack and the nano-SIM slot, which can be opened with the pin supplied in the smartphone's package.
The left edge is unused and flows smoothly from one end to the other. On the bottom rim you get only one connector: the micro-USB port used for charging and connecting your smartphone to a computer.
And on the right side of the Nexus 6 you'll find the power button and the volume rocker. The power button is placed above of the volume buttons and, to make it easier for you to find it without looking at it, it has a rough texture, while the volume rocker is smooth and plain.
Its dimensions make the Nexus 6 a good choice only for people with large hands and for those who are prepared to use it two-handedly most of the time. However, after we used the Motorola Nexus 6 for a few weeks, we must say that this is a smartphone you get used to. Its screen is great when it comes to typing, browsing the Web or watching movies.
The smartphone experience on the Motorola Nexus 6
A top tier smartphone like Motorola Nexus 6 couldn't have been other than great when it comes to phone calls. No matter whom we've talked to over the phone, our conversations on the Nexus 6 were always crisp and clear. Even in the most noisiest of environments, we had no problems in understanding or being understood by the people we talked to.
The signal reception is also good. We used the Motorola Nexus 6 in a geographical area where 4G is available, but the network signal isn't stable at all. The reason is most likely the fact that we live in a mountain area and our mobile network operator doesn't have the greatest radio towers. However, the Nexus 6 jumped from 3G to 4G and backwards without any "hiccups".
It's worth noting that the Motorola Nexus 6 uses a nano-SIM card that you can plug in by opening its tray from the top edge of the smartphone. To do that, you'll need to use the pin supplied inside the package. Insert the pin inside the nano-SIM tray pinhole and gently press inwards. This will bring out the SIM tray.
In terms of audio quality when playing music or watching movies, the Motorola Nexus 6 does well too. The smartphone has two loudspeakers built-in that provide you with stereo sound that's clear and loud. We didn't notice any distortions even when using the highest volume setting. We also appreciate the fact that Motorola placed the two loudspeakers on the front of the device, instead of on its rear, as many manufacturers choose. This way, the sound coming out of the loudspeakers is targeted directly at you instead of the surface on which you place your Nexus 6.
However, if you want higher audio fidelity, we recommend that you use a pair of headphones. We found the Nexus 6 to offer a much better sound this way, even if we used a standard aftermarket pair of headphones. Unfortunately, Motorola didn't include any headphones with the Nexus 6.
As for the operating system, the Nexus 6 is a device created by Motorola and Google which means that you get the clean Android experience, as it was meant by Google. There are no added features or apps coming from Motorola - it's just clean Android. The Nexus 6 comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop pre-installed, but you can upgrade it to the latest Android flavor: Android 6 Marshmallow.
The Nexus 6 is powered by a non-removable lithium-polymer 3220mAh battery, which does its job as specified by Motorola. That means it will last you for a day in normal usage. However, if you use your smartphone extensively, it won't last you that long. For the supersized screen, a larger battery might have been better.
The Motorola Nexus 6 offers a good smartphone experience. Regardless of the conditions we were in, our phone conversations were clear and loud, and the mobile network signal was strong enough to not cause any interruptions, even though we live in a mountain area where the 4G connection is quite unstable. The audio quality is also good, the two front facing speakers being quite powerful. However, if you want better sound fidelity, we strongly recommend that you use a pair of headphones.
The camera experience on the Motorola Nexus 6
The rear camera on the Motorola Nexus 6 uses a 13 megapixels image sensor from Sony that can take pictures at a maximum resolution of 4128 x 3096 pixels. However, if you'll want to take pictures using the maximum available resolution, you'll have to cope with a standard 4:3 aspect ratio. If you prefer taking pictures in the more modern wide standard of 16:9, your pictures will be cropped and they will have a resolution of 9.7 megapixels, at 4160 x 2340 pixels.
The rear camera on the Nexus 6 has autofocus and a dual-LED flash that encircles the lenses. As for the default options and features, we must note that the Nexus 6 can shoot photos using HDR and it also has a few special modes for Photo Sphere (similar to a panorama but lets you capture a wider image, both horizontally and vertically), Panorama and Lens Blur (useful especially for close-ups - it blurs the surroundings of your subject).
The rear camera can also record videos in UHD 4K, HD 1080p and HD 720p resolutions. The videos recorded in UHD 4K are captured at 30fps, a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels and a data rate of 41Mbps, and with mono sound at a bitrate of 96kbps.
If you're also curious about the selfie powers of the Nexus 6, you should know that the 2 megapixels front camera is not extraordinary and you will probably use it only for video chat apps like Skype.
Overall, we found the main camera from the Motorola Nexus 6 to be quite good. It manages to capture good-looking photos, it does it very fast and delivers good results even in low light environments. The HDR option also works pretty well and manages to capture way more natural images when you're shooting landscapes with great luminosity differences.
In the gallery below you can see a couple of pictures we've taken with the Motorola Nexus 6. We included photos we shot outdoors as well as indoors, photos taken in natural light and photos taken in the dark (with and without flash) and also a few close-ups.
If you'd like to see how good the Motorola Nexus 6 is at recording dynamic videos when movement is involved, here's a sample:
We also used the Nexus 6 to record a panorama in order to show you a sample of how good is this smartphone at recording static videos, with little or no movement involved.
Even if we used the highest video resolution possible - the UHD 4K - the Nexus 6 was very fast at starting and saving videos. We've seen other smartphones that, when recording videos at their maximum resolution, struggled to save them when we were pressing the stop button. This is not the case for the Nexus 6.
We like the rear camera offered by the Motorola Nexus 6. It takes great pictures, both outdoors and indoors, both in natural light and in low light environments. Another reason for us to be happy about it is how fast the Nexus 6 captures panoramas and special pictures you can shoot with the Photo Sphere mode. Finally, we are also very happy with the UHD 4K videos it can record. The camera is fast and does a good job at stabilizing images and videos.
Android 6 Marshmallow & Default apps
The Motorola Nexus 6 is sold with Google's Android 5.0 Lollipop pre-installed. However, at the time of our review, Android 6.0 Marshmallow has been launched and is available for you to download and install on the Nexus 6. This is exactly what we did and we are now enjoying the latest operating system from Google. 🙂
If you just bought a Motorola Nexus 6 and it came with Android 5.0 Lollipop, be prepared to spend some time to make all the updates necessary until you get the final Android 6.0 Marshmallow on your device. For us, this meant we had to upgrade our Nexus 6 to Android 5.1, then update to Android 5.1.1, then we made two additional Android system updates and finally, we were able to upgrade to Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
The Android 6.0 Marshmallow running on our Nexus 6 proved to be as solid as the Android 5.0 Lollipop was. It looks great and it works great. We had no performance issues, we saw no bugs and no glitches and we found all the features we needed.
One of the main reasons someone would buy a Nexus device is the fact that these devices are built exactly as Google intended its Android operating system to be. There are no additional "features", there are no "improved user interfaces" and there are no manufacturer "bundled apps". You get the clean Android experience. That is also true about Motorola's Nexus 6. You get the clean Android 6.0 Marshmallow and with Google's apps only.
There are 30 apps pre-installed: Calculator, Calendar, Camera, Chrome, Clock, Contacts, Docs, Downloads, Drive, Fit, Gmail, Google, Google+, Hangouts, Keep, Maps, Messenger, News & Weather, Phone, Photos, Play Books, Play Games, Play Music, Play Newsstand, Play Store, Settings, Sheets, SIM Toolkit, Slides and YouTube.
If you'd like to know more about the features found in Google's latest mobile operating system, check their official webpage: Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
When buying the Motorola Nexus 6 you get the official, unaltered version of Android which comes pre-installed only with the standard Google apps. If you want a clean Android device, this is one of the best you can get. We like the clean Android operating system and we honestly wouldn't trade it for any other "improved" flavor, made by another manufacturer.
Performance in benchmarks
What's the point of knowing the hardware specs or how good a device looks if you don't also know how it will fare in actual use? To find out, you'd have to run some benchmarks and test how fast a device is. That's why we ran more than a few tests on our Motorola Nexus 6.
We started by testing the processing performance offered by the quad-core 2.7GHz Krait 450 processor found inside the Motorola Nexus 6. To perform these measurements, we used the popular Android benchmarking app Vellamo.
The first test is Vellamo Multicore, a benchmark that measures how fast a CPU is when you run multiple tasks simultaneously. The Motorola Nexus 6 got 1818 points, ranking it the same as HTC One M8, but lower than LG G4 and higher than the ASUS ZenFone 2.
Next, we ran the Vellamo Metal tests, which aim to measure the performance of the processor when running only one task, on a single CPU core. This is a very important test, as there are many apps in the Play Store that don't know how to use more than one CPU core. The Nexus 6 managed to obtain 1617 points. This score places it close to Samsung's Galaxy Note 4, but a lot lower than the LG G4 or the Samsung Galaxy S6. On the other hand, the Nexus 6 fares much better than the HTC One M8 or the ASUS ZenFone 2.
Another very important aspect in terms of performance is how good a smartphone is at gaming. To assess our Motorola Nexus 6 in this regard, we went to GFXBench GL Benchmark. The tests we consider relevant for "real world" gaming are the 1080p Car Chase Offscreen, the 1080p Manhattan Offscreen, and the 1080p T-Rex Offscreen benchmarks. You might have noticed that we only choose the standardized 1080p Full HD tests. We do that because we consider the results more relevant if all the devices tested are running the benchmarks using the same resolution. If we were to use the native resolution of our Motorola Nexus 6, which is a QHD 1440 x 2560 pixels, it wouldn't be fair to compare our results with those from other smartphones that have lower resolutions.
The Nexus 6 managed to render 495.6 frames in the 1080p Car Chase Offscreen test, which is a great result, but it still lower than that achieved by Samsung Galaxy S6.
In the 1080p Manhattan Offscreen test, the Nexus 6 rendered 836.3 frames, which is again a great result. It's better than an ASUS ZenFone 2 but still under the Samsung Galaxy S6, which rendered 61 frames more.
In our final gaming benchmark, we ran the 1080p T-Rex Offscreen test. The Nexus 6 rendered 2367 frames, which is very close to what an iPhone 6 is capable of. It's also a lot better than what an ASUS ZenFone 2 would give you. For instance, ASUS ZenFone 2 renders 1691 frames in this test.
Now that we know how the Motorola Nexus 6 does in terms of raw processing power and gaming possibilities, let's see how it does in more mundane activities, like browsing the Web. To measure its performance in this area, we returned to Vellamo and ran its Browser tests. The Nexus 6 comes with the default web browser from Google: Chrome. Vellamo measured a score of 3034 points on our smartphone, which is once again a great result. It's better than what you'd get from an OnePlus One or an LG Nexus 5, but it's still lower than what you'll get from an HTC One M8, a Samsung Galaxy S6 or an LG G4. It's even a lower result than that of ASUS ZenFone 2. Don't worry though, the Nexus 6 still had a great result considering that it displays websites on a huge QHD display.
The final benchmark we ran on the Motorola Nexus 6 is intended to measure the battery life it offers. We previously mentioned that the Nexus 6 has a non-removable lithium-polymer 3220mAh battery. In our personal experience, the battery offers the autonomy marketed by Motorola in the smartphone's technical specs: up to a day. If you often run power-hungry apps like games or browse the Web nonstop for half a day, the battery will go empty in no time. However, to give you more accurate results, we also ran the Work battery life tests from PCMark. The Motorola Nexus 6 managed to stay On for 7 hours and 15 minutes. It's not the greatest result ever, but considering its 6-inch display and all the power-hungry, high-end hardware components, this is a good result.
All the benchmarks we ran prove that Motorola Nexus 6 is a high-end device that can compete with any other top-tier smartphones.
Verdict
Motorola Nexus 6 is one of the best Android smartphones on the market. Its QHD 6-inch screen is big, but for a reason: everything looks beautiful on it, from web pages to pictures, to movies, to games. It's stunning!
When Google associates with hardware manufacturers in order to produce a Nexus device, you'll get a clean Android operating system without additional "bundled features or apps". You can't but love the official, unaltered Android experience. Another big positive is the fact that you'll always have one of the first devices to receive the latest Android update. At the time of this review, our Nexus 6 is running the latest Android flavor: version 6.0 Marshmallow. And boy, it's nice! It's beautiful, it's stylish and it's fast. To make sure it's fast, Motorola packed powerful hardware inside the Nexus 6. The quad-core 2.7GHz processor and the 3GB of RAM memory are more than enough to handle any kind of activity: browsing the web, gaming, media playing and so on. A whole year after it was first released, the Motorola Nexus 6 is still one of the most powerful smartphones on the market. The only reason why some people might avoid the Motorola Nexus 6 is its size. This smartphone is big and bulky. But it's also well designed and the materials used for manufacturing it fall into the premium category.
All in all, the Motorola Nexus 6 is a great smartphone but we can't recommend it to all our readers because of its large screen. If you have moderately large hands and you're prepared to use them both, then buy the Nexus 6 and you won't regret it. If you have small hands, you should probably go out and test the Motorola Nexus 6 in a shop, before considering a purchase.
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