The Nexus 6 Review
by Brandon Chester on November 12, 2014 1:00 PM ESTCPU Performance
Much like other recent Android flagship devices, the Nexus 6 uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 805 APQ8084. It's built on TSMC's 28nm HPm process, and it will be Qualcomm's final chip based on their Krait architecture. Although the use of a Krait CPU unfortunately means we don't get to take advantage of the 64-bit support built into Android Lollipop, it's still one of the fastest chips you'll find in an Android device today and will remain so until the first half of 2015. In order to measure CPU performance with some degree of comparability between different platforms, we turn to our typical suite of browser benchmarks, along with BaseMark OS II.
As you can see, the Nexus 6 performs how you would expect a Snapdragon 805 device to perform. All of its scores are similar to the Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy S5 LTE-A, with the exception of the extremely high BaseMark OS II Graphics score which I believe is some sort of error relating to the compatibility of the benchmark with Android Lollipop.
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Chaser - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
If battery life matters there are better choices besides both those phones.Shftup - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Hi, can you validate the build, etc:Android Version: 5.0
Build Number: LRX21I
Kernel Version: 3.10.40-gb2ab3cc
Thanks
Kensei - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Is the Nexus 6 meant to be the next version of the Nexus 5.... or will there be an update to the Nexus 5 down the road?meowmanjack - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Were you able to test wireless charging at all? I'm curious if Motorola included an alignment magnet near the coil so it plays nice with the Nexus 5's wireless charging pad.mpokwsths - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
I don't see NAND benchmarks. In all previous reviews they were present. Could it be because of the performance doubling that Lollipop brought (in all the Nexus devices) using the same Androbench app? When, in a previous review, I mentioned that, the answer I got was "it is probably a dev preview incompatibility". Now we have the final Lollipop release...mpokwsths - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Or maybe that performance if only under Lollipop accurate???To the readers that haven't heard anything about that:
http://www.anandtech.com/comments/8613/the-samsung...
Brandon Chester - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
If you read the Misc section you'll see that the results were inaccurate when I tried to test, as in they were insanely slow, not fast.p-zilla - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Brandon, this is almost definitely due to having disk encryption on. Can you encrypt a Nexus 5 and do a comparison?tipoo - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Look at the Ars Technica review. Storage performance isn't looking that hot, slower sequential reads probably are responsible for some of the slowness opening apps.Chaser - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Imagine all the people that pre-ordered this phone. I recently bought the Sony Xperia Z3. Amazing phone with unprecedented battery life. Mostly because Sony's designers made a smart move and didn't fall for the Quad HD hype bandwagon. It has a brilliantly bright and vivid display and in the tradition of Sony, absolutely outstanding audio quality that I can take in the shower with me if I choose :)