The Google Nexus 9 Review
by Joshua Ho & Ryan Smith on February 4, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- HTC
- Project Denver
- Android
- Mobile
- NVIDIA
- Nexus 9
- Lollipop
- Android 5.0
WiFi Performance
On most tablets, WiFi performance is perhaps one of the most crucial parts of the experience as WiFi is often the primary method of connectivity. Without working WiFi, a tablet is basically useless as the only alternative is either cellular (which is quite rare on most tablets) or Ethernet over USB-OTG, which destroys most of the value of a mobile device.
In the case of the Nexus 9, we see that HTC has fitted this device with a BCM4354 WiFi module to enable two spatial stream 802.11ac. Interestingly, there is some evidence to suggest that HTC has also adopted Cypress Semiconductor’s CapSense controller to enable antenna tuning for the WiFi antennas. However, it’s probable that this solution is only for HTC devices without a Qualcomm Gobi modem as we’ve seen the use of the QFE15xx antenna tuner in previous HTC products. In order to test how the Nexus 9’s WiFi solution performs, we turn to iperf on Android to test throughput across the network, and utilize Asus’ RT-AC68U router to ensure that the device under test will be able to reach maximum performance.
The Nexus 9's WiFi solution performs about as well as one might expect from a BCM4354 solution. For the most part I haven't noticed any reception issues, even when touching/detuning the WiFi antennas.
GNSS
While most of the GNSS solutions that we’ve looked at this year use Qualcomm’s GPSOne/IZat due to the presence of a Qualcomm Gobi Modem, the same isn’t true for the Nexus 9. Instead, Broadcom’s BCM4752 is used here. While this shouldn’t have a massive impact on the speed with which first lock is acquired, in practice Qualcomm’s solution is noticeably faster here as the modem can often provide data to make for a hot fix. At any rate, the Nexus 9 does perform acceptably in this regard. I don’t see any major issues with location performance, although it does seem that the GPS tends to report lower accuracy levels than the Qualcomm solutions that I'm used to. Other than this, the GNSS solution is quite usable.
Misc
While we don't have a proper audio quality test yet, it's clear that the audio codec used is the same Realtek RT5677 codec that we saw in the SHIELD Tablet. Outside of the code, we also see an RT5506 2.55V amp on the 3.5mm jack, along with two NXP TFA9895 amps on the speakers, which are quite good due to their front-facing placement. In practice I don't really see much issue with loudness or quality here, as the speakers can get even louder than the M8 in some situations. We also see a Broadcom BCM2079x NFC chip, which means HCE is fully supported out of the box. Interestingly, the VCM controller is exposed to the OS and is said to be a Texas Instruments DRV201 chip.
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MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Maybe I missed it, but can you comment on browser performance in terms of tabs staying in memory? I had a Note 10.1 2014 for a brief time, and I found that tabs had to reload/refresh constantly, despite the 3GB of RAM. Has this gotten any better with the Nexus and Lollipop? Through research, I got the impression it was a design choice in Chrome, but I wondered if you could figure out any better. Say what you want about Windows RT, but my old Surface 2 did a good job of holding more tabs in RAM on IE.blzd - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Lollipop has memory management issues right now, as was mentioned in this very article. Apps are cleared from memory frequently after certain amount of up time and reboots are required.mukiex - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Hey Josh,Awesome review. As I'm sure others have noted, the Denver part alone was awesome to read about! =D
gixxer - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
There have been reports of a hardware refresh to address the buttons, light bleed, and flexing of the back cover. There was no mention of this in this article. What was the build date on the model that was used for this review? Is there any truth to the hardware refresh?Also, Lollipop is supposed to be getting a big update to 5.1 very soon. Will this article be updated with the new Lollipop build results? Will FDE have the option to be turned off in 5.1?
blzd - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Rumors. Unfounded rumors with zero evidence besides a Reddit post comparing an RMA device. All that proved was RMA worked as intended.The likelyhood of a hardware revision after 1 month on the market is basically 0%. The same goes for the N5 "revision" after 1 month which was widely reported and 100% proven to be false.
konondrum - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
My take from this article is that the Shield Tablet is probably the best value in the tablet market at the moment. I was really shocked to see the battery life go down significantly with Lollipop in your benchmarks, because in my experience battery life has been noticeably better than it was at launch.OrphanageExplosion - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
I seem to post this on every major mobile review you do, but can you please get it right with regards to 3DMark Physics? It's a pure CPU test (so maybe it should be in the CPU benches) and these custom dual-core efforts, whether it's Denver or Cyclone, always seem to perform poorly.There is a reason for that, and it's not about core count. Futuremark has even gone into depth in explaining it. In short, there's a particular type of CPU workload test where these architectures *don't* perform well - and it's worth exploring it because it could affect gaming applications.
http://www.futuremark.com/pressreleases/understand...
When I couldn't understand the results I was getting from my iPad Air, I mailed Futuremark for an explanation and I got one. Maybe you could do the same rather than just write off a poor result?
hlovatt - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Really liked the Denver deep dive and we got a bonus in-depth tablet review. Thanks for a great article.behrangsa - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Wow! Even iPad 4 is faster than K1? I remember nVidia displaying some benchmarks putting Tegra K1 far ahead of Apple's A8X.behrangsa - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Anyway to edit comments? Looks like the K1 benchmark was against the predecessor to A8X, the A7.