Hi Folks!! Received my Nexus 6P this week. Here are the impressions of a new owner. (64GB, Aluminum).
First, I am coming from a Moto X 2013. It is funny, I loved that phone but it was clearly out of gas and time to upgrade. I always thought it was plenty big but now that I am on this beast, it feels itty bitty.
Verizon: Bringing it up on Verizon was a snap. I simply swapped the Simm card and turned it on. No issues at all. The 810 SOC is a single antenna system (like all modern chips) so you will have to activate Advanced Calling 1.0 to have concurrent Voice and Data. I did and it works fine. The phone came up as compatible. I only hope this service is as reliable as the old CDMA (which was fantastic!).
Migration: I tried the Android NFC / Android beam migration technique. It failed. I had NFC/AB on for the Moto X and N6P. I even took it to the Verizon store to get their help. No joy. This is a shame for I liked the alarm tone and phone ring tone on the Moto X and I have not been able to replace it (using Zedge).
Build Quality: It is good. Upon opening the box, I immediately pressed it to see if it flexed (bendgate) and it seemed strong. I have accidentally dropped it once and no apparent damage. I have none of the reported “hump” in the back. It is very well made.
Screen Quality: It is beautiful. Big and beautiful.
Speed: Compared to the Moto X, lightning fast. No heat issues.
Battery: Yesterday I got 5.5 hours of SOT. It lasted 11.5 hours in total of very heavy use. Lots of phone calls, set up time, emails (I run 3, one POP, one gmail and one Exchange) and browsing. Most of this was on WIFI, not LTE. I was happy with this. I ran the battery until the phone shut down. I plugged it in for exactly 20 mins and it got up to 30% charge. This lasted the rest of the night, mostly web browsing, with ~12% when I went to bed. I did not try to test/measure the Doze feature.
Usability: The phone is huge. This is not fair to compare, but compared to the Moto X it is difficult in your hand. It is so thin that putting it in your back pocket is not an issue. The front pocket … not so much. With that being said, using the phone is quite nice. Outside I could read the screen well. Inside it was a delight. It renders websites as fast as my desktop. The on screen flow when scrolling is smooth and natural. Touching anything and it “pops” instantly (i.e.. launching a new app). In short, with two hands … this thing is a delight. With one hand … a bit difficult.
Marshmallow (MM): Overall, very nice. Seems stable and follows much of the Lollipop interface so it is instantly usable. I am going to miss the Moto X (Moto Assist) features. Some of these are in MM like “Do Not Disturb”. However, the Moto X really had it right with the “while driving” and “in a meeting” options. The way it read the text to you and then allowed you to reply all without ever taking your eyes off the road was fantastic. I hope Google copies more and more of that into the native OS.
One other nitpick of MM is the new Photos App. It does have some very cool capability like search. It will blow your mind. However, I like Gallery in Lollipop better for one reason. I copy literally thousands of pics onto my phone. (I have an easy way to shrink them. I will put that at the end of this note.). They are all stored in separate directories. For example; Daughter Wedding, 20xx Vacation, Dogs …. Gallery used to view each directory as an album. MM Photos simply mashes them all together.
The rest of MM is very good. The Search feature in the App Drawer is fantastic. MM is more stable than Lollipop (or at least more stable than Lollipop on my Moto X 2013).
Camera: I have only taken ~30ish pics with this thing since I got it. They have all been test pics. The camera does extremely well. I took them in very low light (late dusk), bright light, indoor and outdoor. I played with the Panoramic and Photo Sphere. I had my wife take the exact same pic with her iPhone so we could compare. Overall, it did extremely well … FAR better than the Moto X camera (not saying a ton). I am very happy with all the results. As an FYI: I changed the format from 4:3 to 16:9. This drove down the resolution, but I like the pictures better.
Summary: I am going to keep the phone. It will take some getting used to the size, but I can see that is already happening. The idea phone would be the Nexus 5X size with the 6P screen, processor, battery life, build quality and price. If it were 80% its current size I believe the usability would actually go up. It is a great value and I applaud Google / Huawei for delivering this quality at this price. I hope it is a trend for other manufacturers.
Thanks for reading this far.
Vizsla_Buddy
PS: Quick tip for shrinking a pic so you can put more on your phone: I take my pictures at a pretty high resolution (say 8MP+). I have a nice Cannon SLR that I use a ton. This leads to a fairly large image even after compressed. My picture library is ~30GB on my PC. Often, I would love to have these pics with me for various reason but it really isn’t practical for it chews up a phone pretty fast. Here is a real simple solution IF you are a Microsoft Outlook user. In Windows Explorer highlight the pictures you want to compress (Click at the beginning and then shift click at the end of the list). Right mouse click and select Send To > Mail Recipient. A dialog box will appear asking what size you want to have the pic sent. I select Medium (1024x768) and hit Attach. This then creates a mail message with the newly formatted pics. I click inside the attachment section of that message and do a CNTL-A to highlight all the pictures. I then drag and drop this into a new file folder on my machine and presto …. Exact shrunken copies of my pics that can easily be loaded onto a phone. A 4MB pic becomes ~70k. You would not want to use this for printing or anything, but on a phone screen it looks perfect and takes almost no space. I still have the original if I need a higher resolution.
First, I am coming from a Moto X 2013. It is funny, I loved that phone but it was clearly out of gas and time to upgrade. I always thought it was plenty big but now that I am on this beast, it feels itty bitty.
Verizon: Bringing it up on Verizon was a snap. I simply swapped the Simm card and turned it on. No issues at all. The 810 SOC is a single antenna system (like all modern chips) so you will have to activate Advanced Calling 1.0 to have concurrent Voice and Data. I did and it works fine. The phone came up as compatible. I only hope this service is as reliable as the old CDMA (which was fantastic!).
Migration: I tried the Android NFC / Android beam migration technique. It failed. I had NFC/AB on for the Moto X and N6P. I even took it to the Verizon store to get their help. No joy. This is a shame for I liked the alarm tone and phone ring tone on the Moto X and I have not been able to replace it (using Zedge).
Build Quality: It is good. Upon opening the box, I immediately pressed it to see if it flexed (bendgate) and it seemed strong. I have accidentally dropped it once and no apparent damage. I have none of the reported “hump” in the back. It is very well made.
Screen Quality: It is beautiful. Big and beautiful.
Speed: Compared to the Moto X, lightning fast. No heat issues.
Battery: Yesterday I got 5.5 hours of SOT. It lasted 11.5 hours in total of very heavy use. Lots of phone calls, set up time, emails (I run 3, one POP, one gmail and one Exchange) and browsing. Most of this was on WIFI, not LTE. I was happy with this. I ran the battery until the phone shut down. I plugged it in for exactly 20 mins and it got up to 30% charge. This lasted the rest of the night, mostly web browsing, with ~12% when I went to bed. I did not try to test/measure the Doze feature.
Usability: The phone is huge. This is not fair to compare, but compared to the Moto X it is difficult in your hand. It is so thin that putting it in your back pocket is not an issue. The front pocket … not so much. With that being said, using the phone is quite nice. Outside I could read the screen well. Inside it was a delight. It renders websites as fast as my desktop. The on screen flow when scrolling is smooth and natural. Touching anything and it “pops” instantly (i.e.. launching a new app). In short, with two hands … this thing is a delight. With one hand … a bit difficult.
Marshmallow (MM): Overall, very nice. Seems stable and follows much of the Lollipop interface so it is instantly usable. I am going to miss the Moto X (Moto Assist) features. Some of these are in MM like “Do Not Disturb”. However, the Moto X really had it right with the “while driving” and “in a meeting” options. The way it read the text to you and then allowed you to reply all without ever taking your eyes off the road was fantastic. I hope Google copies more and more of that into the native OS.
One other nitpick of MM is the new Photos App. It does have some very cool capability like search. It will blow your mind. However, I like Gallery in Lollipop better for one reason. I copy literally thousands of pics onto my phone. (I have an easy way to shrink them. I will put that at the end of this note.). They are all stored in separate directories. For example; Daughter Wedding, 20xx Vacation, Dogs …. Gallery used to view each directory as an album. MM Photos simply mashes them all together.
The rest of MM is very good. The Search feature in the App Drawer is fantastic. MM is more stable than Lollipop (or at least more stable than Lollipop on my Moto X 2013).
Camera: I have only taken ~30ish pics with this thing since I got it. They have all been test pics. The camera does extremely well. I took them in very low light (late dusk), bright light, indoor and outdoor. I played with the Panoramic and Photo Sphere. I had my wife take the exact same pic with her iPhone so we could compare. Overall, it did extremely well … FAR better than the Moto X camera (not saying a ton). I am very happy with all the results. As an FYI: I changed the format from 4:3 to 16:9. This drove down the resolution, but I like the pictures better.
Summary: I am going to keep the phone. It will take some getting used to the size, but I can see that is already happening. The idea phone would be the Nexus 5X size with the 6P screen, processor, battery life, build quality and price. If it were 80% its current size I believe the usability would actually go up. It is a great value and I applaud Google / Huawei for delivering this quality at this price. I hope it is a trend for other manufacturers.
Thanks for reading this far.
Vizsla_Buddy
PS: Quick tip for shrinking a pic so you can put more on your phone: I take my pictures at a pretty high resolution (say 8MP+). I have a nice Cannon SLR that I use a ton. This leads to a fairly large image even after compressed. My picture library is ~30GB on my PC. Often, I would love to have these pics with me for various reason but it really isn’t practical for it chews up a phone pretty fast. Here is a real simple solution IF you are a Microsoft Outlook user. In Windows Explorer highlight the pictures you want to compress (Click at the beginning and then shift click at the end of the list). Right mouse click and select Send To > Mail Recipient. A dialog box will appear asking what size you want to have the pic sent. I select Medium (1024x768) and hit Attach. This then creates a mail message with the newly formatted pics. I click inside the attachment section of that message and do a CNTL-A to highlight all the pictures. I then drag and drop this into a new file folder on my machine and presto …. Exact shrunken copies of my pics that can easily be loaded onto a phone. A 4MB pic becomes ~70k. You would not want to use this for printing or anything, but on a phone screen it looks perfect and takes almost no space. I still have the original if I need a higher resolution.
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