The Nexus 6 Review
by Brandon Chester on November 12, 2014 1:00 PM ESTVideo Performance
By moving from the 4:3 8MP sensor in the Nexus 5 to a 4:3 13MP sensor, Google has been able to enable UHD (3840x2160) video recording on the Nexus 6. Google can also benefit from improvements in Snapdragon 805 allowing for higher quality video encoding. With Snapdragon 805 only capable of HEVC decode, we're still looking at H.264 encoding on videos for the current generation of devices. Unfortunately, Google does not include a 1080p60 recording mode on the Nexus 6, so both 1080p and UHD recording modes are at 30fps.
For 1080p content the Nexus 6 encodes with an average bitrate of 17Mbps and uses the Baseline H.264 profile. I don't know why Google isn't using the Main or High profile for their video recording, as Baseline is typically used in applications like video chat where quality isn't a big concern. I have no complaints about the quality of the video itself, although the OIS doesn't do as much to reduce the shake in the video as I imagined it would.
UHD video is encoded with an average bitrate of 42Mbps, and is again Baseline H.264. Compared to the 1080p video there's a significant increase in overall detail, particularly with the branches of the trees and smaller objects like leaves on the ground which tend to show up as large blurry areas in the 1080p footage. Something I noticed when testing the UHD recording on the Nexus 6 is that it has a tendency to drop frames, which is demonstrated in the video below.
As you can see, there are a few areas where the video framerate dips below 30fps during a fast movement, and several moments where the video will stop and then skip forward. I haven't been able to determine a cause for this, but Samsung and other OEMs have been able to do UHD recording at 30fps on their devices that use essentially the same hardware as the Nexus 6 which leads me to believe it's an issue that is rooted in software.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
136 Comments
View All Comments
tuxRoller - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Google really screwed up this years nexus devices.They are what I always buy, so now I'm left in a bit of a lurch.
Probably will wait for the 64bit transition next (snapdragon 810, or exynos 7, though I'd prefer to avoid img gpus).
hpglow - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
I'm a little taken back by the poor battery life compared to the note 4. The screen is a little larger but damn.modulusshift - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Hey, can we please get a storage benchmark on this? Ars claims it has big problems, is that a memory supplier issue? Thank you!jaysns - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Apparently there is a huge performance hit when switching on encryption on the Nexus 5 http://www.reddit.com/r/nexus6/comments/2m4jra/une...Can only hope this is a bug as this will pretty dramatically affect how the device performs.
1032724311 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
系统还是原来是原生系统 可终端设备已经不是原来的nexus的味道了spikebike - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
So for twice the money (or so) of the nexus 5 we get a phone that loses many benchmarks (battery life, cpu, brightness, saturation) to the nexus 5. What's worse is that the nexus 5 was already trailing in battery life to begin with.Here's hoping google adopts some of the better phones into the GPE program.
Nevod - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
What seems to be most strange is the really poor battery life. Note 4 has just a bit smaller screen (10% difference only) yet more than 50% longer life. The cause isn't obvious, they both have AMOLED screens of same resolution, exactly same battery capacity and similar performance. The only differences are SoC (I get that it's the most important thing, but modern SoCs aren't that different in efficiency IIRC) and perhaps screen quality. When Galaxy Nexus came out, it had screen ahead of everyone else - but it was immature and extremely power hungry, paired with an already outdated SoC which GPU was overloaded with screen's resolution it had really poor battery life in browsing. Displays advanced and soon even screens with much smaller pitch were more efficient, processes shrank and GPUs consumed modest power on higher resolutions.Here, however, everything is nearly identical to Note 4. What is the cause of such a difference? Is the screen on N6 really is such a power hog (who's the supplier, anyway? Samsung, I suppose?). Though even the screen itself shouldn't be so problematic. Is the Exynos, and Mali in particular so much more efficient? Unlikely. I do think that this is caused by software, as seemingly it was with most Nexus phones - they were never really good at battery life. Even the Lollipop doesn't seem to help that.
darkich - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
Yeah,on top of all that, Lollipop is said to make HUGE power efficiency gains over KitKat.So this story is a major upset to some MYTHS.
What happened with pure, clean Android (supposedly more efficient), and the bloated, messy Samsung ROM (supposedly less efficient)?
If the myths are true, Note 4 with Lollipop should have ridiculously better efficiency than this, on basically equal hardware.
darkich - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
Oh and btw, the Samsung Note 4 ROM is vastly better than this.Besides offering the richest possible multitasking options, and all the S Pen extras, it actually makes one handed use easily possible.
This aspect keeps on getting ignored in the reviews just because reviewers arent even thinking about using it.
I ignored the one handed option too for months on my Note 3, but slowly it sank in, and now I see it as an essential piece of any proper phablet software.
Nevod - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
I've re-read battery and display parts of Nexus 6 and Note 4 reviews and now I think I do get it. Looks like Nexus 6 indeed has a problematic screen, like the Galaxy Nexus had before - it has way too high power consumption and low max brightness. However, that by itself shouldn't cause too much of a problem in real use (unless you are typically browsing in direct sunlight).Battery life test is done at 200 nits, almost the max of 250 nits for Nexus 6. GNex at that brightness level had some serious power consumption from display alone, well over 1 watt, so screen's power consumption dominates the test done like that. IRL, you don't just load the page over and over, with modest CPU and GPU load, you actually scroll a lot, seriously loading GPU - you actually scroll way more than you do anything else, so RL web browsing life is dominated by GPU power consumption, as the screen is usually running at low brightness level and it's contribution to power consumption isn't that big.
So, I suppose, while for sure Nexus 6 will have less battery life than Note 4 due to crappy screen tech, in real life, there shouldn't be too much of a difference, probably around 10%, 15% at most.