The Google Nexus 6P Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on December 16, 2015 8:00 AM ESTSystem & CPU Performance
The Nexus 6P comes with a Snapdragon 810 designed by Qualcomm. This is a big.LITTLE 4x A53 @ 1.55GHz + 4x A57 @ 1.95GHz SoC. As we’ve hopefully come to be very familiar with the chipset over the last couple of months, the key characteristics with which the 6P can differentiate itself from other Snapdragon 810 devices is through software optimizations. In particular the fact that the Nexus 6P comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow should allow it to be able to showcase some improvements which we’ll dive into a bit later.
First we start by comparing performance of some of our browser-based benchmarks. These are predominantly Javascript tests which require large single-core performance out of the device’s SoCs.
In Kraken the Nexus 6P is able to showcase a very good score that’s only beat by, oddly enough, the LG G4. As we’ve come to discover over the past year OEM browser libraries play a large role in device performance, even though we’re using the same Chrome build across different devices we see large differences in performance even within devices who employ the same SoC. It’s relatively unnerving to see this fragmentation in the ecosystem and in particular Chrome performing so differently across devices.
In Octane the Nexus 6P again performs very well, this time again beating our other devices such as the HTC One M9 or the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro. Among Android devices, only the Galaxy Note 5 - which on Octane is able to show equal performance as it does in its optimized stock browser - is able to beat it.
On WebXPRT again we see the 6P performs extremely well among Android devices, only being able to be beat by Samsung’s Exynos 7420 devices in the stock browser.
Continuing onto our system benchmarks, we start with Basemark OS II 2.0 from Basemark (formerly Rightware).
In the web test the Nexus 6P is yet again found at the high-end of the charts as it is able to provide good numbers. As we’ve seen in reviews such as on the Mate S it’s not necessarily raw performance that is demanded in these tests but also performance latency which plays a big role.
The graphics sub-test of Basemark has always been kind to the Adreno GPU so here again we see the Nexus 6P perform well, although not quite up to par with the other Snapdragon 810 devices we’ve tested in the past.
The Nexus 6P comes in a surprising first place on Basemark OS’s memory test. Again this is a mainly NAND-limited test but in contrast to our other synthetic test, performance and access patterns try to simulate more real-world applications.
While the other tests try to test more realistic workloads, the system benchmark is all about measuring peak performance in a given set of scenarios. Here the Nexus 6P fares similarly to the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro but falls behind Exynos 7420 devices such as the Note 5.
While I’m not a great fan of overall aggregate benchmark scores, we still see the Nexus 6P among the top of today’s currently available Android devices.
Moving on to PCMark from Futuremark, we’ll use a suite of tests that not only try to mimic real-world usage patterns, but actually make use of APIs that we currently find in use by many day-to-day applications.
Starting with the web browsing test we find the application use Android’s built-in WebView container which relies on OS-dependent components.
Here we see the Nexus 6P lead performance, slightly beating the Note 5. We’re also likely seeing advantages due to Android 6.0 as the Mi Note Pro, our other device with the Snapdragon 810 lags over a thousand points behind.
On the video playback score the Nexus 6P comes in towards the middle of the pack. The video test is a benchmark of both the video decoding hardware and software layers of the device, as well as the NAND speed, as fast seeking through the video is performed to test out how rapidly the device can resume playback.
Now onto the writing test we come to one of the larger mysteries of the new Nexus 6’s performance. Both the Nexus 5X and the 6P seem to have large issues with PCMark’s writing test. The test itself consist of text manipulation and some file I/O, but most importantly it’s that this is purely a Java based test. Due to the way Android is architected, this means the code is handled and executed by the Android RunTime (ART). Futuremark have done a fantastic job in creating a test-case which is very sensitive to performance differences in the runtime.
At first when seeing these scores I thought that this was a side-effect of Android 6.0’s new big.LITTLE optimizations (which we’ll get back to in a later section), but even after turning those settings off the scores remained the same. After testing some other Java-based benchmarks I came to the conclusion that this has to be a software issue.
The photo editing uses RenderScript kernels to apply image processing on a set of pictures. With help of a powerful GPU the Nexus 6P performs top of the class
Due to the disappointing writing sub-score the Nexus 6P ends up third in the overall PCMark work performance score. Nevertheless, this is a good showing for the Snapdragon 810 device as it manages to slightly beat the Mi Note Pro and the HTC One M9.
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TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
Because, as we all know, a 1440p or 4k screen is required to make aphone usable. there is NO WAY a 1080p screen will be enough for a 5.5" device. Also, I can see atoms at the molecular level.even the 6s at 768p or whatever it is looks just fine. the colors look great, the screen is bright, and a higher rez screen would have destroyed battery life.
tacomonstrous - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
Regarding ergonomics, it is disingenuous for the reviewer to assume that an arrangement he personally finds inconvenient is so for everybody. I have small hands and for me it's much easier to reach the back button on the left than the recents on the right. Most of the time my thumb is hovering right above the back button, while I have to shift my grip to reach the recents button. And I'm right handed in my phone use.zeeBomb - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
Damn it. It always have to be when anandtech have to drop a surprise review like that...aijazz - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link
same here, i was about to order my nexus 6p the same day this review came ! and now am scratching my head !!maskofwraith - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
i like how they exclude iphone from camera comparisons.V900 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
Sorry to burst your bubble there, but the exclusion isn't because the iPhone has a worse camera, but for readability's sake.Besides, everybody already knows that the camera in the iPhone 6/6s is among the best on the market.
Look up the iPhone 6s review, where Anandtech point out how all the flagship phones have amazing cameras these days.
Samsung Galaxy 6/iPhone 6s/LG4 and now Nexus 5X/6P are roughly speaking equal in terms of quality. The Android phones occasionally have a small edge in certain situations like low light shots, and the iPhone takes the lead in terms of speed and post-processing.
twizzlebizzle22 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
My androbench scores are pulled in much higher results.Fancy telling me some of the settings to replicate the result?
SirCanealot - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
Another fantastic review, Andrei! As usual, you made reading technical details fun, informative and easy. Thanks for your hard work! :)SHartman1976 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
I generally enjoyed the review, but there were a couple of really odd parts. First off, claiming that the position of the volume and power buttons was "unusual" is odd, since it was used on the Nexus 6 and the entire Moto X family, so it's hardly unusual at this point for Nexus and Nexus-like phones. The lowered position on the side is also similar to last years Nexus 6, and is intended to facilitate reaching them on such a large phone. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it's hardly surprising at this point.I was also surprised by his critique of the stock Android navigation buttons as it read to me like something more than personal preference. In particular referencing thumb-length makes it read as if this is an objective problem, when it simply reflects preferences in device handling. I'm a right-handed user with average length thumbs, and when using the larger Nexus 6 I either hold the phone in my left hand while interacting with the right (2 handed use) and have no issue reaching anywhere on the screen, or I use it one-handed in my left hand, putting the phone in the crux of my fingers and operating it with my left thumb, which puts the back button in the best possible location (right next to my thumb!). Of course personal grip and use preferences vary, but the review reads as if this is an actual flaw, rather than a capricious bit of personal use habit.
Finally, in the photo section it's unclear to me whether the reviewer realized that exposure is set by tapping on the part of the image you want to expose for (e.g. a house or grass rather than the sky). Since this is also how focus is set it's almost unavoidable indoors, but if you don't bother in an outdoor shot because focus is effectively infinite then you are not telling the phone what to expose for, which naturally can result in an exposure different than intended. Was that done and the phone still was unable to properly expose the scene? That would truly be a problem, but it's not clear from the review whether that was done, and as a prospective buyer I'd really want to know (I'd also want to know so as to reconcile this report with other reviews of the camera, which don't describe this issue).
Don't get me wrong, there were many edifying parts in the review, in particular the excellent work on screen efficiency. But a couple portions left me wanting either more data, or a better separation between opinion and objective critique.
nico_mach - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
Yes, I agree. I switched from iphone and I thought the buttons while different were completely intuitive, very little adjustment time. But I've never used a Samsung and the reviewer is clearly using that as a reference point, which is reasonable I guess.