The Nexus 6 Review
by Brandon Chester on November 12, 2014 1:00 PM ESTWiFi
With the Nexus 6 we see a WiFi solution that hasn't been seen before in a mobile device, Broadcom's BCM4356. Announced at CES earlier this year, BCM4356 is a 2x2 802.11ac part with Bluetooth 4.1 support allowing for improved co-existence between Bluetooth and LTE. For reference, the Nexus 5 shipped with BCM4339 which is a 1x1 802.11ac part. To test WiFi performance on the Nexus 6 we used Iperf and Apple's AirPort Extreme router to try and achieve maximum performance.
The WiFi performance in the Nexus 6 falls into line for what we expect from a 2x2 802.11ac device. While it's slightly slower than Samsung's Galaxy Note 4, it's still much faster than many other devices that are on the market today, and over 3x faster than the WiFi performance of the Nexus 5.
GNSS
Most devices now use the GNSS solution built into Qualcomm's modem. I was someone who suffered the broken GNSS on the original Galaxy S, and I'm thankful that we've come to a point where every smartphone is now able to competently achieve a quick and accurate GNSS lock. In Airplane mode with no assistance information the Nexus 6 was able to achieve a lock in just under 35 seconds with an additional 5 seconds to bring the accuracy to within 10 feet, although both these times will vary greatly depending on the surrounding environment and weather conditions. With assistance info locks take only a matter of seconds.
Misc
To test NAND performance on the Nexus 6 we attempted to use Androbench and Andebench, but both gave results that could not have been accurate and so we are unfortunately unable to test this aspect of the Nexus 6 at this time. Like the new Moto X, the Nexus 6 has Cypress Semiconductor’s CapSense controller. Given that the Nexus 6 has no capacitive buttons, this is likely performing the same impedance-matching antenna tuning as on the Moto X which uses the same type of antenna design. It also has two TFA9890 speaker amplifiers which allows both speakers to be driven at the same time as stereo speakers.
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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.