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Comment by mkozlows | Hacker News Reader

So the thing is, the Nexus 5 was a near-perfect phone (especially considering it was released two years ago), and it's totally reasonable to think it's still doing the job very well -- it is.

But that's a fact about the N5, not the N5X/6P. I mean, what would you want from a new phone that would show up on a spec sheet?

Faster? Check, both of these are. The 808/810 aren't gigantic generational leaps over the 800, but they're significantly faster + 64-bit.

Better screen? They're both bigger; >1080p resolution seems irrelevant on a 5"-ish screen (though obviously welcome on larger screens where 1080p would be under 400 dpi).

More storage? Well, the 6P gives that to you, though the 5X doesn't.

USB Type-C and faster charging? Check.

Better camera? Check.

Bigger battery? Check (2300 mAh for N5, 2700 mAh for 5X).

More RAM? Check on the 6P, the same on the 5X.

Plus the fingerprint thing is probably a bigger deal than you think. Loss of wireless charging is definitely a minus, though.

So that's one downgrade, two specs that haven't changed on the 5X, and six that have; eight of those specs are better on the 6P. That's not a small upgrade, it's just that you have no reason to bother with an upgrade.

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Interestingly my problems with it are exactly three things that aren't addressed in the new models:

1. The wireless charging, while seemingly a small thing, was to me a huge improvement in my experience of using the phone. The fact that I can sit down at my desk, plop the phone down, and it'll just work, and when I get up to leave I can just pull it off my desk. Removing the USB cable interaction made the phone a much more invisible and organic part of my day. Might not be important to others, but I would very much miss it.

2. Lack of removable storage. Small deal but it was a nice quality of life feature.

3. Battery that's hard to replace. My phone upgrade cycle is very long, usually longer than the lifetime of the battery. I'm feeling it in my Nexus 5 right now.

But the main thing that might prompt me to upgrade is just software performance creep. The latest software updates have really turned my phone into a slideshow, and that's getting really frustrating.

But the spec improvements are certainly both appreciated and necessary.

I really like the wireless charging on my Nexus 5 as well. Going back to the cable would be fine with me but I would prefer something that takes a little less effort to insert and I'm always concerned about breaking the connector. I just found a really interesting MagSafe-like connector for the classic micro USB [1], maybe they will make something soon for the new USB3 that the 5X uses.

And before some of you say that MagSafe has patents on this, remember that the magnetic catch for a power cord was used on deep fat fryers YEARS before MagSafe [2].

[1] http://www.dxsoul.com/product/wsken-micro-usb-metal-magnetic...

[2] http://www.cpsc.gov/PageFiles/102855/Fryers-DeepFat.pdf

I backed this kickstarter for a magsafe-like usbc connector: http://www.znaps.net/ We'll see if it follows through.

Smells like a patent lawsuit: http://www.google.com/patents/US7311526

Apple DOES have patents on this. Yes, it was already patented for deep fryers, but Apple got the patent approved for electronics, and no one has yet to challenge them on it.

> 2. Lack of removable storage. Small deal but it was a nice quality of life feature.

Nexus phones never had an SD card unless you count the Nexus One. The Nexus One really needed it though, since it only had 512MB of storage. Every phone since has had enough it isn't a huge deal.

I upgraded from a Galaxy S3 that suddenly died, so I was a bit peeved when I suddenly couldn't just move my SD card over. You're right though, in reality it's not a big deal, but it would've been nice to be able to just slot an extra 32gb into the side. It's not absolutely necessary, but since I upgrade on a long cycle, the extra storage lets me extend my phone's obsolescence cycle a bit more.

It would also mean less money for Google—or any smartphone maker, for that matter. There’s no incentive for them to offer a feature that would only exist to divert cash flow to other sources and, even if they did jump into the removable storage industry, preclude them from charging a premium for extra storage. Only offering internal storage also encourages “preparing for the worst”, i.e., getting more storage than you will most likely need.

Aside from the wireless charging which comes as a surprise since the last few generations all had it, I feel like your points don't constitute much of a disappointment for the 5X. #2 and #3 haven't been a part of the Nexus line since at least the N4, so you're in the realm of wishful thinking. I agree having everything you said would be nice, but it's hardly a surprise.

I'm comparing the 5X and 6P, also my Nexus 5, to other Android phones on the market, not just to previous Nexus phones. My previous phone, the Galaxy S3, had both #2 and #3, so I definitely don't consider the features wishful thinking.

As with all puchasing decisions, there are tradeoffs, but I definitely don't think it's wishful thinking to want some hardware features common in competitors' phones. Surprising? No, I'm not surprised, but that doesn't stop me from wanting certain features that I liked in other phones I had.

Removable storage is never going to be a thing for a Nexus device so I'm not sure why people bring this up constantly.

Because they want it.

>Plus the fingerprint thing is probably a bigger deal than you think

Am I the only person on the planet who doesn't want a fingerprint reader on my phone? I don't want to secure anything of importance with my fingerprint - fingerprints are usernames, not passwords. This just feels like the equivalent of writing your password on a Post-It and sticking it to your monitor.

Nobody's going to bother to recreate your fingerprint, when it's much easier to beat you with a wrench ( https://xkcd.com/538/ ) until they get access to your phone. It's a huge convenience for you though, to unlock it without doing anything extra, as you're pressing that button anyway to turn the screen on. Much easier than typing passwords.

My worry is that this is a gateway drug to "Fingerprint protect all the things!"

My bank emailed me the other day with an announcement that I could access my account through their app via my fingerprint. WTF? My text messages are one thing by now my money is protected by just my fingerprint? I took my bank to task because they allowed my username to be twice as long as the allowed characters in my password. Someone at the bank said, "Hey, all these new-fangled phones have fingerprint readers, why don't we tap into that and sell it as a feature?" When everyone is doing it, no one is going to stop and ask if they should, it's just a race to incorporate the newest features. Normal people aren't asking if this is secure, they are buying into the marketing copy pushed on them, so they start thinking that it has to be secure, because why would my bank not have my interests in mind?

What can the bank app do? Mine can only deposit and view accounts, not withdraw or transfer. Open access to it would be weird, but not much worse than someone fishing my ATM receipts out of the trash to see my balance.

It's Bank of America, so it's about as feature-filled as a banking app gets. You can do all the normal stuff like check balances and deposit checks, but you can also open new accounts (including credit cards) and transfer money (between other accounts you own or to other people outside the bank). And yes, the app has the ability to add new transfer recipients, which only needs their email address or phone number. There is a protection to guard against unauthorized adding of new recipients, but you guessed it, the protection is in the form of a 2FA code sent via SMS. So if you're already in the phone and in the banking app you can add yourself as a transfer recipient with your email address and verify the recipient addition because you can read the incoming text messages too. And the warning email that comes when you add a new recipient and initiate a new transfer is likely going to come to the same phone you're currently holding. If you get into my banking app through my phone you can send yourself as much of my money as you want and cover your tracks so I wouldn't know until my next statement comes, and to top it all off, it looks like I was the one who sent the money to you, so how am I going to argue that I didn't?

This is scary enough I'm uninstalling my app just incase they add these "features" in an update. Thanks. Oh well, no big loss.

Thank you for validating my decision to not put any BofA online banking apps on my phone.

Yeah, no-one will steal your fingerprint, just like no-one will crack a reasonably strong password. But if every site has a copy ...

It's quite possible that your fingerprint has already been stolen

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/23/us-governm...

The bottomline is that if someone can hack a server to steal your fingerprint, they can just as easily use the same method to steal your method so I don't really see the differen imho.

The bottomline is that someone doesn't need to hack a server to steal your fingerprint, you leave those everywhere you go as virtual gifts to any passers-by. All they need to do is steal your phone, and that's pick-pocketing level easy.

Ummm, if I lose my phone, I'm just going to remotely disable it so there's no way the person who stole my phone can reach my data.

So, you're using full-disk encryption on your phone and the remote kill switch flushes the key?

Otherwise the data is still there in the plain, accessible by anyone who can read the flash.

If you're using a Nexus 5X or 6P on Android 6, then probably yes.

Android 5 has full disk encryption but was disabled by default on the Nexus 5 (and most other phones) due to performance issues.

Do the Nexus 5X or 6P finally have hardware encryption support ?

I didn't notice any mention of those, specially because they failed miserably last year parading full disk encryption on Nexus 6 and got bitten when reviews showed the performance degradation and lack of hardware encryption.

It's a good question, I've looked and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 has the support needed, but I don't know if it'll be enabled by default or not in Android 6.

If it's not, then Google are starting to take the piss..

Except that you can't choose a different fingerprint for each app/site. Lose it once and all your accounts are compromised.

All the apps that I use give me the option to not use fingerprint login.

*steal your password

Fair point, it should be used for convenience, not for real security.

.. non-hackers will equate it with security.

Non-hackers aren’t responsible for data security. Well, except for Sony. And every other company that doesn’t deal with data security in particular.

"Nobody's going to bother to recreate your fingerprint, when it's much easier to beat you with a wrench ( https://xkcd.com/538/ ) until they get access to your phone."

I think this misses the point. Accessing a device using a "cloned finger" (not tremendously difficult) can be done without the target ever knowing it has happened.

The wrench technique, less so.

Yes, but is it worth spending the required resources? If the answer is yes, than anyway the 4 digit pin isn't more secure (you can watch people type them and find out the code).

You can change your code. The fingerprint is a bit more difficult. That's my main issue with biometric security, revocation of compromised credentials (e.g. fingerprints) is difficult or impossible.

Not only that. With fingerprints, you are essentially using the same password everywhere. You just need to lose it once and all your accounts would be compromised.

> Nobody's going to bother to recreate your fingerprint,

Whyever not? They might have a copy of it lying around. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/23/us-governm...

> Yes, but is it worth spending the required resources?

When it becomes easy - and it will become easy, there's nothing basically hard about printing out some ridged plastic - it will become commonplace. And unlike stolen passwords, an attacker can be fairly sure that you haven't changed your fingers.

(I'm not a lawyer, I've just read a bunch of blogposts/discussions on the issue)

There's a legal difference in some places between having your phone secured by a fingerprint and a password. If your phone is secured by a password, then in some places you cannot be obliged to provide the password, but a fingerprint you can.

Where are those laws in place?

In the US in particular.

There was a bunch of reporting in the past few days that a Federal District Court in Pennsylvania found that Fifth Amendment rights apply to smartphone passcodes.

Random link: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/why-the-government-cant-...

That same protection doesn't seem to apply to fingerprints. Random link: http://time.com/3558936/fingerprint-password-fifth-amendment...

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but that seems to be how the law falls out on that issue.

Whether that's an issue for you, personally - no idea. It might be a factor for some.

The other thing about the US is that occasionally you'll find a police department that's willing to bend the law. They can make you touch the fingerprint sensor and then claim that they never did and they found your phone unlocked, and it'll be your word against theirs. If the court believes the police, which they are culturally inclined to do, the Fifth Amendment question doesn't even come up.

One of the neat things about encryption, historically, is that the government couldn't force decryption even if it were willing to break the law in doing so. That's why there were export controls and demands for backdoors in the '90s, and that's why there are demands for backdoors today. Fingerprint locks may mathematically involve encryption, but they don't have this property.

I wonder if its possible to counter this through obscurity. Since the sensor is on the back of the phone, you can use your ring finger to unlock it instead. If >3 attempts with any other fingers are made, then the phone will be locked with a password. That way, you still keep your right to protection.

I think the OPM data breach recently put about 10 million fingerprints and a ton of associated personally identifying information into the hands of people who have clear motivation to hack the cell phones of many of the people impacted.

Many countries now take fingerprint scans when you cross the border. Even if they themselves never use it, its easily conceivable that they could be hacked or leaked. Then what? You can't revoke your fingerprint.

Who will bother to recreate the fingerprint, most of us aren't that important? (I'm not) :) Don't get me wrong, I do understand the main problem is that you can't change this "token" and it's something that the people have easy access to. It shouldn't be used to keep data that has a higher value than the effort required.

The real risk is that if it reaches a certain level of ubiquity (which it appears it is), authorities will invest in a) laws and b) technology to break it with almost trivial ease. The US already has my fingerprints on file from crossing the border. Presumably it means that if they wish they could trivially unlock my phone and search its contents. I fully expect that if fingerprint access does become the universal security mechanism used on computing devices we'll soon enough have fully automated solutions where law enforcement can either download your fingerprint from their existing database or scan it from any available surface in real time and apply an image to the sensor to fool it into unlocking. Obviously this will take a while to happen, so for now people are lulled into a rather false sense of security that their fingerprints are a "pretty good" way to secure their phone when they are only "pretty good" because technology will take a few years to automate the breaking of them, at which point they will become "very bad".

Why bother breaking into a phone manually when you already have access to all the data it sends, receives, and contains (especially now that cloud storage solutions are all the rage)? What do passcodes and fingerprint scanners even mean when the target data is already being made accessible to national governments through more convenient channels?

In my mind, the only reasons tech giants continue to force centralization on their users are PRISM and data mining. Today’s devices have sizable internal drives, so all personal data could realistically be stored and processed locally; and secure, distributed systems have been proven to work for data transfer (BitTorrent), monetary transactions (Bitcoin), message boards (Aether—sort of), and more. Hopefully solutions like Copperhead OS and Blackphone that secure our mobile devices and communication channels, respectively, make it to the mainstream.

Bottomline is that in this day and age, if someone wants to hack a server and steal passwords, they can so it probably doesn't matter.

Not exactly, that's what bcrypt and scrypt are for. Attackers would have to modify the running code to divert raw passwords elsewhere, which would be a lot more noticeable.

No, that's not the bottom line. One fingerprint opens everything and cannot be changed. You can use a different password for each site so when some craptastic one gets compromised, you're not screwed for life.

Wrench, meet plausible deniability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability#Use_in_c...

People who say this never game this out.

1. Attacker sees random data.

2. Attacker knows you might be smart enough to use a plausible deniability file system.

3. Attacker starts beating you with the wrench.

At this point, there are several possibilities that could happen:

1. You give up the secret and give the attacker what he wants. The beating continues after this point, because the attacker really has no idea if you've given up the right secret.

2. You give up a fake secret and give the attacker what he thinks he wants. The beatings continue. See possibility #1.

3. You don't give up the secret and he continues beating you with the wrench anyway to try to get you to reveal the secret.

4. You're not using a plausible deniability encryption at all, and it truly is random data, and he continues to beat you with the wrench to make sure.

As you can see, the wrench doesn't give two shits about your plausible deniability.

…unless drives were encrypted by default, in which case the wrench would have no method to distinguish the two! Any reasonable wrench would not pursue such a doubtful case anyway. And regardless, the goal is not to avoid being beaten by the wrench, but to sustainably deny the existence of the secret. There is no incentive to ever give up the actual secret when the wrench cannot tell the difference and must continue beating (which would only happen at high levels of worth or likelihood); I might as well have continued lying.

NOW GIMME MY SHITS

If your threat model involves wrench, you are OOL. Fortunately, its not true for most of us.

The world is rife with wrenches and people willing to use them. PD is only good against people who don't have legal leverage against you, and those not willing to break the law to get it.

I thought I wouldn't care for it on the iPhone, but it's honestly a nice convenience. It's not for security, it's for simple auth (like when unlocking the phone or authorizing a payment on the app store).

> (like when unlocking the phone or authorizing a payment on the app store)

Aren't these the things where you'd want security?

Unlocking your phone is done so frequently that many people opt not to secure it. The best security is one that you use. It's arguably more secure than a 4 number passcode, which someone can easily watch you enter over your shoulder.

Buying things on the App Store requires you to type in a password for the first purchase every so often. Then you use your finger print.

> It's arguably more secure than a 4 number passcode

My friends often have to share their passcodes with me; at which point it's like, what's this adding?

I don't have a passcode on my phone to protect it from my friends ... similarly I don't have a lock on my front door (that I give spare keys to friends for) to protect me from my friends.

This is a good point.

I guess that I think once you share it a few times and it's used regularly, then it becomes fairly public knowledge. Maybe this is a mis step from password security.

Passwords can always be changed to "reset the access list" if you will, if you're uncomfortable with how widely spread knowledge of the password has become. Biometrics, on the other hand ...

Yes but... passwords are useless.

> Better screen? They're both bigger;

> So that's one downgrade

Two, and one critical. The Nexus 5 was absolutely the biggest phone I would consider, and even that was really too big. Making one phone a dinner plate and one phone a centimeter-larger dinner plate is atrocious.

Apparently only Sony wants my money (and honestly the Z Compact series is still too big).

I'm still using a nexus 4 for this reason, and it's showing it's age.

Kind of a letdown the 5X is so large. It is annoying that all phones coming out are trying to outdo each other on the same form factor that's both too large to fit in a pocket and too thin to have a useful battery.

I'm on the same N4 boat. I can't help but suspect that this push for bigger Android phones is part of a plan to make people use phones as tablets and consume much more web content (thus, revenue for Google). I like my phone to be small and convenient for mobility, not for browsing in my couch :|

The 2015 Moto G might interest you then.

It drives me nuts as well that the two key features I think of when I think of a phone -- long battery life and HAND HELD (singular) -- seem to be incompatible with anything like stock android. The original Moto X was pretty close, but it just feels like we're going backwards now. I do not understand what market pressure is causing this.

It's me. I fucking love my iPhone 6s test device form factor and a bigger, 64-bit Nexus is exactly what I was hoping for.

I used to be the same guy complaining about all of the phones being too small. I like the big phones of today, but I understand the complaints some people have.

Think of the difference between a basketball player and say a short woman and it is easy to see we need both. They couldn't wear the same gloves.

I know that. Actually it was the basketball players and other pro athletes that I always thought looked so ridiculous using iPhones before the 6. That being said, my wife is quite small and she had a Note2 and now a Note4 and she loves them that size because it keeps her from needing a computer for most of her stuff.

Hm...?

It's higher resolution, but the 6P is physically slightly smaller; 5.7" vs 6"; (77.8 x 159.3 x 7.3mm vs 82.9 x 159.2 x 10.0mm).

The comparison was to the 5.

Occasionally, my Nexus 5 is dead in the morning because the phone was not perfectly placed on the wireless charger. Until Google expands the charging area on the phone to eliminate this problem, I don't mind going back to wired charging.

Get a better wireless charger with multiple coils.

I purchased Google's officially sanctioned charger, figuring the Nexus 5 would be optimized for it. Looks like it has been discontinued:

https://store.google.com/product/nexus_wireless_charger

Are there better ones out there that don't have as much of an issue with placement? My blind assumption was the problem lies with the phone's limited charging area, not the charger (which I presumed was nearly the whole surface).

I have the Tylt http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Charger-Galaxy-Nexus-Phones/d... but it is far from the only device in that form factor. Strongly recommend.

OK that looks much better designed. Definitely would recommend that over a flat charger, based on my experience.

I have a cheap Qi charger (aren't they all cheap these days?) and this only happened to me once or twice in the two years with the N5.

Also, the improved 808 SoC at 20nm manufacturing process should offer better battery life over the 800 in the N5, even if they had the same battery capacity (which they don't, so it's a double-whammy there).

The 808 is also a big little architecture, with two A57 cores and four A53 cores. The A53 cores will likely carry the vast majority of every day use, and redouble the battery savings.

As a Nexus 5 user I'm pleased with most of the changes and non-changes. 2GB is fine for a smartphone, and an image sensor with more than double the light capture area per pixel is brilliant, and if it delivers the better photographs will be worth it right there. Losing OIS...I don't think that's a downgrade as OIS was always suspect to begin with (not least because OIS only helps for lateral movements. It does nothing for rotational movements, and of course make subjects stand still. It yielded a tonne of unusable photos).

The only thing I'm really displeased about is the removal of wireless charging. That was a really nice feature.

Between the Snapdragon 810 and 808, the only real items of concern is that the 808 does not have h265 hardware encoding (the 810 does), and its image processing DSP is 12-bit per pixel rather than the 14-bpp of the 810.

"The A53 cores will likely carry the vast majority of every day use, and redouble the battery savings."

non-ARM-manufacturer citation needed :). My experience as a compiler guy (that makes the toolchains for these kinds of phones) has been that big little brings improvements to what these guys can shove on a chip and advertise, but so far not real improvements to battery life or real numbers.

There reason why is pretty simple.

In an ideal world, you don't want anything running at all. You don't want A53's "handling the majority of the workload". What you want is to wake up, do whatever work is needed as fast as possible, and go back to sleep. Period. Sleeping chips are lower power, by far, than idling chips.

If it's faster to do that work with an A57, it'll generally give you better battery life to do that. Again, this is right now, based on perf per watt/blah blah blah. Maybe someday, in the future, a53's will be so low power vs a57 that doing something else makes sense. But it's not true now, AFAIK.

Instead, they make big-little because they can't really increase the speed of the higher end cores more without increasing power usage too much.

You don't want A53's "handling the majority of the workload".

Yes. You do. If I'm casually browsing non-intensive web pages, e-reading, or watching a Netflix movie, or even encoding a video, the background is doing IO rate limited system updates and basic data logging, etc, the vast majority of the time the CPU demands are very low, but frequent enough that putting a CPU to sleep is completely out of the question.

An A53 has a much lower ceiling, but a much better middle tier power usage level, than the A57. Yes, if you want to run a benchmark the A53 is not a good bet (and is generally worse in a workload power usage), but it is a very good bet for most real world usage.

No, you don't.

Encoding a video should not be CPU, so let's get that out of there. Most of the rest is more GPU dependent than CPU dependent. The amount of CPU time you should be spending on these tasks is really low.

For example, web browsing and reading, the CPU should be asleep most of the time.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of very silly little tasks for A53's to do, but what you listed are not those tasks.

It's more things like "syncing" or something that is a poll loop and event bound, not something that is in any way CPU bound. Period. CPU bound stuff is not something for the A53's in this to tackle. It makes battery life worse. That is what the actual, in-the-field data says.

" a much better middle tier power usage level, than the A57"

Truthfully, for most A53 cores, this is true only in the dreams of the chip designers.

"but it is a very good bet for most real world usage."

Then what, pray tell, do you expect the A57's to be doing in this world?

And why, in practice, has big.little and other things not shown any better battery life at all if it's really a better way of doing things.

I have no doubt it may be a better way of doing things in the future, but it ain't right now ;)

CPUs enter and exit sleep on Android devices constantly. Back in 2007 on the MSM7201A we'd go to power-down sleep for any idle times of >50mS (nothing to schedule for the next 50mS). Run fast and go to sleep has always been the primary power policy.

That said there's plenty of lightweight threads and processes that are mostly IO or event bound, do very little compute, and will run in roughly the same time on a small core as a large core, but the small cores have a lower static power footprint (base cost to have them powered up at all), so big.little works out well there.

Run fast and go to sleep has always been the primary power policy.

A sleeping core is obviously the most efficient core, however you have said nothing to discount what I said. Putting a core to sleep is a very costly activity, which is exactly why it happens at the millisecond scale.

Before that happens, the core will likely have been frequency scaled to more appropriately fit the window's loading. I mean, we know this is the case right now, and that "run fast and go to sleep" is not the primary policy. It's "run as fast as appropriate for the workload to fill a quantum, and sleep when there is no workload". There are many if not most workloads that are externally bound, or event triggered enough that sleep is completely out of the question and running faster does nothing.

Your words have been used (out of context and inappropriately) to bolster DannyBee when they represent, literally, all that is wrong with Hacker News.

"frequent enough that putting a CPU to sleep is completely out of the question"

Modern CPUs have many different levels of "going to sleep" and many of them can be switched in and out of very quickly.

Agree with you. Another thing I would stress on is the price constraint. Don't forget that Nexus 5 was said to be a high-end phone but 200$ cheaper.

Given a price to stick to, it is very difficult to improve the specs substantially to wow the existing customers. Look at Oneplus one- the flagship killer and its successor- two not considered to be killer at all. I don't think existing customers would want to upgrade to the newer version.

Speaking as someone who does not own a Nexus 5, I would say I am very impressed by the specs and am waiting to purchase it. There aren't many phones better than this (keeping in mind the price).

A lot of Nexus 5 owners have pointed that the newer one does not have wireless charging and OIS. I feel that improving the overall experience matters more. Even though both are nice-to-have features it still does not help the crappy battery and low-quality camera that much. The 5x solves the existential funks first by adding those improvements. And due to the price limitation the nice-to-have features had to be dropped.

I love wireless charging, but my Nexus 6 has such horrible battery life, and charges so much faster wired, that I end up using a cable a few times a day. Especially in my car. I can pretty much only get away with using a Qi charger at bedtime. So to me the USB C is a big win.

Yeah, I suspect that was a big part of their thought here -- USB-C charging is very fast, and whatever marginal convenience win you get from wireless charging would almost certainly be overshadowed by the speed of wired charging.

I'm not ready to consider the wireless charging just a marginal convenience. Once I started using it I could not tolerate not having it. The only place I use the cable is in the car, where I'm not supposed to be holding the phone anyway.

How do you use your phone, that you get less than a single day's battery life from the current Nexus 6? I can easily get 1-2 days use out of mine.

Think of how much you use your phone. GP uses phone twice as much. b^)

I honestly wouldn't have minded if they kept the same form-factor and aesthetic with the original N5 (the one I use and love right now), and just did an internal overhaul...similar to how Apple does minor cosmetic changes, but a whole world of upgrades internally.

Nope. All those 6P 'checks' on a 5ish inch screen - that's what we needed. Oh, and OIS. HTC tried and failed at all this "bigger pixels" thing.

Any 'better' camera sucks without optical image stabilization which neither phone has.

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