Nexus 6

> Why can't smartphone manufacturers understand that a longer battery life is whats lacking in mobile devices?

I think it's quite bold to speak in such factual terms when talking about the "average" consumer or the market. Your opinion does not necessarily apply to everyone, or even the majority of the users. Not that I disagree with you, mind.

It seems to me that these manufacturers are a lot better at knowing what their market wants. I'm saying that because these companies employ a lot of people to figure out what people want to buy. You might be tempted to project your own opinion and common sense onto how the market should behave, but I think these companies are doing a better job at figuring it out. They have to.

I don't think these companies are either stupid or not listening. It really seems to be the case that a large screen increases sales, and longer battery life doesn't. That might seem mystifying to you and me, but that really seems to be the case.

Similarily, you can make phones from plastic, with confusing and slow software on it, sell them for premium price, and own 80% of the Android market in many countries. That is also mystifying to me, but that's what Samsung has accomplished.

EDIT: People are replying to my post as if I said that phones with large screens are a good thing. I didn't.

I need a phone I can use like... a phone.

I've tried the iphone 6 plus in person and it's a monstrosity to use, definitely not a one hand device. And the Nexus 6 is even larger?...

And I'm a man – I have pretty large hands. I can't imagine how it must feel in my wife (or many other women)'s hands.

This needs to stop.

Quite a large portion of the people I know with phablets like the Galaxy Note series are petite women -- people with smaller hands than "the average user". While the line you present is the exact line that Apple kept trotting out while they were in denial about the market demand for large phones, I don't think there is much support for it. Its true that there are usage patterns that work for small phones and not for larger phones, but I don't think the evidence from actual consumer behavior supports the argument that these are as important to what people are looking for in smartphones as the people who keep trotting out the "too big" argument like to believe.

The floating action button in material design places important, frequently used action within thumb's distance.

Android's use of the back button is also beneficial for larger screens, since back is an extremely common action and keeping at the bottom of the screen reduces reach distance.

There will definitely be cases when it will be inconvenient to have a large screen (in fact personally I'm disappointed it's > 5") but the problems can be alleviated by software.

You can see it today by switching back and forth between Android and iOS. iOS design has not yet adapted to the larger size and is more inconvenient to use one handed (for example, the swipe to go back gesture is not universal and exiting dialogs often requires hitting a "Done" button at the top of the screen.) But as the software changes the size will become more acceptable.

This is such a red herring.

I switched from a smallish phone (a Nexus) to a Note 3 (which is just a fraction smaller than this) and it's absolutely amazing how millions of years of evolution equipped us to do things using both hands and how quickly we can accommodate ourselves to doing what nature intended. We even evolved walking upright just so we could accomplish this amazing feat.

I even have smallish hands and have had zero trouble accommodating what apparently is a freakishly large phone so big I could serve dinner for six on it.

Astonishingly it fits just fine in the front and rear pants pockets of all my pants and shorts, in my shirt pocket fine (if I'm wearing a shirt with a pocket), in my suit jacket pockets just fine, my hoodies are great with it.

Bonus, I can actually read what's on the screen without having to hold it up next to my face. In fact it's smaller to carry around than my old moleskine notebooks which I also kept in my pocket until I got this phone, and now thanks to being big enough to keep a sane size pen and provide a reasonable writing surface has completely replaced. From larger touch targets to larger speaker for the speakerphone to more battery, the tremendous effort of just using two hands is far outweighed by all the benefits of having a larger phone.

It's so useful it's even replaced me dragging along my tablet on trips for reading. I just took two trips and my phone was the only device I needed to bring along with me, large enough to comfortably type on, watch some shows on, battery life for all day hassle free use, I can comfortably read books on it in bed!

It's so compelling a size that just on showing it to my friends and letting them handle it half of them went out and bought a phone in that size range. They "got" it only after using it for a bit.

In practice you just use it like a small tablet that also happens to be a great phone.

> If they had put the 3220 mAh battery (or larger) in a 4.7" - 4.9" phone, I would gladly pay for that. Why can't smartphone manufacturers understand that a longer battery life is whats lacking in mobile devices?

Absolutely agree. In fact I'm almost thinking of getting this

http://www.amazon.com/Hyperion-Extended-Compatible-Internati...

Because consumers reliably shell out more for larger screens and thinner phones than they do for bigger batteries?

I agree on the price point though.

They're introducing this to appeal to a broader market. Also, Nexus phones more recently track "value" rather than "price". That is to say that they always deliver solid value, and probably will still continue to in relation to the much more expensive Galaxy Note and iPhone 6+.

The camera is shit but I tend to lug around a DSLR anyway if there's anything worth taking a photo of, so the phone is used for taking photos of where I parked so I can appeal tickets. Less pixels (480x854) means less power usage and I can't say I notice the difference that much compared to the wife's Moto G.

But everyone goes "fuck windows phone" and walks away from such things...

If I had a 6" phone I'd get rid of my 7" tablet. With a 5" phone I can't say that.

[0] Battery volume increases only quadratically because the manufactures insist on maintaining thinness. It would be interesting to understand how thickness could affect battery capacity.

You cannot discount the fact that so many customers want buy phablets these days, that even Apple thought it makes sense to deliver a phablet iPhone for these customers.

I had the same beliefs up until I bought the Note 2 a few years ago. Since then every single phone I bought for private use has been a phablet, and now I'm using an iPhone 6 Plus.

And yes, it's not only 24 hours you get, I get 2 days out of phablets, but I'm rarely playing video games.

But here's the good news for you: smaller phones aren't disappearing. If you don't like phablets, there are powerful high end phones with 4.5-5 inches from every manufacturer. So there's really nothing to complain about.

Many of these Apps require ridiculous permissions and are obviously collecting information about you and your usage. As if that isn't bad enough it is obviously horrible for your battery life! My recommendation would be to only install necessary Apps (uninstall the ones you tried out but are not interested in) and try disabling unnecessary stock Apps/services (browse to the App in your settings and click "Disable"). The latter might have a negative effect on your user experience, but might also reduce power consumption; or it might have no noticeable effect whatsoever. Worth a shot though.

I have Google Now notifications enabled and I also use Google's stock home screen/launcher with the Google Now integration.

Very true. These companies create some of the most complex products on the planet, and yet can't figure out that it's completely fucking brain-dead dumb that the device can't last through a day of normal usage. These are critical devices in our lives now, and Google et al could probably save millions in health care costs from stress-related problems caused by dead phones.

Some people have more than just one hand. And maybe you don't need to touch everywhere. If you read an article or watch a movie, there is no need to touch everywhere.

"you get over 24 hours of use from a full charge. - too many times I have heard this phrase from other smartphone manufacturers and its never true"

I'll wait for reviews of the actual device. What is the point of this kind of speculation?

Like, NEVER. In all the complaints I've heard about people's phones, over the seven years that we've had smartphones so far.

What I have heard is a lot of people pooh-poohing 4.7" screens, 4.9" screens, 5.2" screens, etc., and those screen sizes going on to utterly dominate smaller phones.

I've never had a phone that actually delivered on its promised battery, but this one comes quite close.

The largest technical leap in battery life will come from looking at your watch 100+ times per day rather than your phone.

Having held an Xperia Z Ultra in my hand, I'm pretty sure I'll never want more than 5 inches of screen space, and double mega quad resolutions are useless at that size IMO.

I can tell you haven't been using the Android L Preview. I have, and the battery life extension is fantastic. Easily the equal to Nokia's. Basically, when it gets down to low power, it can shift into a mode where only foreground apps and activities are in use, and the battery can last all day easily. iOS, of course, prevents background activities overall and so uses less power continuously to achieve a similar battery life on newer phones. That said, the best way to get all-day battery life continues to be "don't use the phone so much" or the no-compromises "plug it in when you can" which I'm sure we're all familiar with. Phones recharge faster these days too...

The Nexus 5 is amazingly thin and rigid, the engineers did a great job with it, but I'd be completely happy if it were twice as thick with all the additional room filled with battery only.

Agreed. iPhone 6 Plus is too big for me at 5.5" and I have big hands. These "phones" are getting out of control in terms of size. The sweet spot seems to be between 4.7" and 5". Apparently usability engineers aren't being utilized very much these days.

This is the only reason why I am not buying this shovel of a phone.

My Moto G manages a full 36 hours with light use.

(Many people say "Such and such a phone lasts me a full day!", but that often means 16 hours)

Sony Xperia Z3c is for you.

There are several reasons:

1. Display quality is very important to (high end) phone users. People use these things for a lot of text-heavy, image-heavy and video-heavy stuff. And the higher resolution makes a lot of difference, particularly for text. I'm not saying resolution and display quality are the same thing, but resolution is definitely a contributing factor.

2. Because they can. Display manufacturing price scales with surface area, but much less so with resolution. Although higher res phone screens are more expensive, they are not that much more expensive. You don't pay $100-200 extra for a better screen, the manufacturer pays maybe $30-50 more when compared to a 1080p screen.

3. Because people can still see the difference. People still claim Apple made the end-all solution when with the retina displays "you couldn't see the pixels". As it turns out, not being able to make out individual pixels does not mean higher PPI stops adding value. Returns are diminishing, sure, but I sure as hell prefer my text rendered on 500ppi devices compared to 300ppi devices.

4. There is in fact a resolution arms race going on mobile phones. That much is true. I don't think it will continue much longer, though.

Absolutely.

I'm a little shocked that they're breaking the $400 mark at the lower end, which seemed to be where the past few phones started... and that the n9 will be more than a bit pricier than the n7 was. I may actually be considering just getting nVidia's tablet this generation.

My last n7 was stolen, as was the one before it... So paying so much more than the $200 price really isn't something that appeals to me.

Resolution does make a difference.

Yes.

It's easier to see how you compare to other people with a quantitative measurement. All you can do with a qualitative measurement is try to relate it to the mean MSRP of devices that share that quality, which is a bit too much math for conspicuous consumption. It also sounds like an app dev opportunity.

I agree. I can barely discern pixels on my rMBP (227 dpi) and find little difference between that and the iPhone (~300 dpi), or even the Nexus 5 (445 dpi) and I am quite sensitive to fuzzy text.

400 dpi looks better on the spec sheet but I believe it is just wasteful and puts unnecessary (or, at least, with marginal returns) strain on the hardware to push all those pixels to screen.

And I don't understand why we shouldn't strive for that. After all, (for me at least), much what I do on a computer is reading, and that benefits from a higher-resolution display up to a point much more than images.

Also, while Google's specs don't list wireless charging Motorola does: https://www.motorola.com/us/Nexus-6/nexus-6-motorola-us.html...

Haven't been able to find info on whether the Nexus 9 supports Qi as well - but again I'm disappointed with the increased size over the Nexus 7 there.

The other thing that disappoints me is that it does away with one of the (arguably) biggest benefits of the more affordable models: a highly-specced (if perhaps missing a few unnecessary bells and whistles) device that's priced low enough to offer some real incentive to people who might consider leaving the subsidy/contract model behind. At least in the US, there isn't much challenge to this model because most people will pick a contract over no contract if it means paying $100-200 up front instead of the cost of a new laptop. As a result, carriers have less incentive to compete on price and terms because most everyone is either stuck in a contract or assumes they might as well sign one because the alternative is shelling out a lot of money up front.

I had kicked around ditching contracts for a while but usually ended up in the same boat. My options were a flagship phone for $200 up front on a contract, the same phone for $700 without a contract, or some crap phone for who knows how much on prepaid. Getting a flagship-level device for $350 up front gave me the push I needed to move to prepaid and it's been great. If they ever piss me off I can just go get a SIM from somewhere else. No carrier BS and no $700+ device costs.

Right now I'm just glad to be getting 5.0 on my N5. It's been a great device and while a spec bump may have convinced me to spend another $350 this year, at least I'll get that new-phone feel from the new OS.

very bottom: Battery 3220 mAh Mixed usage up to 24 hours* Qi Wireless charging support

I ended up buying a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact (amami). It's damn near the same specs of a Nexus 5 except it actually fits in my hand (5.0"x2.56"x0.37"). Works flawlessly with Cyanogenmod. Best purchase I ever made. I bought two of them I liked it so much. Good on Sony for making an excellent smartphone.

If I have to use two hands to handle it, it's not a phone, it's a tablet.

Guess I'll just have to look and see which current phones are well supported by Cyanogen.

Anything larger than my (already too large) Nexus 5 is a complete non-starter for me. I can see a place for these models in a lineup that includes smaller models, but the Nexus series does not seem to operate that way. This will be the first Nexus phone I will never own.

It feels big sometimes, but I really didn't mind it. There is small dent on the back of Nexus 6 which helps you hold it with one hand. The screen is fantastic and doing anything on this phone is such a pleasure. I type a lot, and I found it much easier to type on larger screen. Sometimes I had to use my Nexus 5, and I really struggled and thought it's too small!

Bigger != Better

Really? The physical size is barely bigger than an iPhone 5.

As for the 6, looks a little chunky in photos, but if it's slim with a small enough bezel it could be manageable...

Size matters

The ability to increase the font size and still see the screen at arms length is really nice

I think this point is backed up by the fact that the rendered text size has not changed in any appreciable way.

Are the actual dimensions of the phone known?

This matters a lot because screen size is only an approximate indicator of device size. For instance, the iPhone 6 Plus has a 5.5" screen and yet is very noticeably larger than the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which has a larger 5.7" screen.

For me a phablet makes much more sense. I just want a powerful smartphone, for everything else there is my laptop.

When I bought my gf a Nexus 7 and she still had her iphone 4 (3.5 inch), the Nexus made a lot of sense. But now that she has a Nexus 5, she doesn't use it nearly as often, and if she had a nexus 6 that effect would be even greater.

Xperia Z3 has 1080P screen, 3Gb ram, 5.2" screen.

Xperia Z3 Compact has 720P screen, 2GB ram, 4.6" screen.

Both have microSD expansion, both have very solid processors and battery life, and sony's android is a very lightweight add-on to stock android.

Maybe a slight compromise in either direction will get you close to what you need?

However the $649 price tag (and possibly higher outside the U.S.) will deter a lot of people who otherwise would have almost automatically upgraded to the next Nexus. I'm such a person. The $349 Nexus 5 is suddenly very attractive, it's big enough and fast enough.

I wish Google would provide memory expansion but for $349 I'm willing to live without it. For $649 I'm not willing to live without microSD, however.

The smartwatch + phablet combo is not something I had thought about. Which watch are you using?

People browse. View media. Post pictures. Read Facebook posts. They do things where the attributes that make a small smartphone good for one handed use conspire against usability with two hands (browsing Reddit on a 4" screen iPhone, for instance, is an exercise in precision. Many downvotes were accidentally dished out on HN courtesy of small screens). If 95% of your use is as a landscape portable computer, that 5% use of "one handed through a parking lot" should rightly suffer.

Of course some people really do prefer smaller devices, and those options need to stay around (the Nexus 5, for instance, is still a premiere Nexus device). But a lot of people really do like "phablets".

- few people yell loudly about wanting a big phone - manufacturer makes a big phone which can have better hardware due to easier heating and larger battery - the big phone sells well because it's the only decent phone manufacturer made that quarter - manufacturer builds a bigger phone ;)

Maybe that's just me though.

A lot of people use them as portable web and game devices first, phones second - the big screen is more of an advantage when you think about it that way around as it saves people carrying around both a phone and a tablet. Many people (like myself and presumably you) don't think that way around, and want a smartphone in a smaller form, but I think we are less likely than that other market segment to buy a new phone every year which is skewing the market away from our preferred direction.

I need to replace my Lumia 920 (after many drops I've finally manage to crack part of the screen, and the flash stopped working a short while ago) and the size thing is annoying. The 920 itself is already bigger than I'd prefer and all the current models with the really good camera are even bigger (you can still get the 925, I might have to go with that unless someone can recommend a ~4.5"-or-smaller device, Android or Windows, with camera capabilities similar or better?).

Problem is that most consumers who would buy those monitors would expect every application to run on it without problem, that includes games and for that you need to spend a lot of money on GPUs.

This was the most disappointing thing for me. While it might be a fantastic device, and I might still choose it, at that price I'll be more carefully considering the alternatives. The Nexus 5, with its specifications and price point, was a no-brainer. This one doesn't make that decision quite to simple.

They'd be so close together that it's hard to imagine there's much of an actual, perceptible stereo field.

It'd be interesting to be able to A/B a phone with one nice speaker and a phone with two nice speakers.

Granted, the Nexus 6 has a larger and higher resolution screen. But it also runs a cleaner version of Android which I expect would be less power hungry.

People keep saying that and time and time again it's proven wrong. It has been wrong for years, and it will keep being wrong. If large phones were impossible, impractical, and undesirable, people would stop buying them. But they're not. They're demanding them in such large numbers that even Apple has put out a massive, massive phone. Even Nokia put out a massive phone. Samsung started matching the size of their flagship to the size of their largest phone years ago.

Every manufacturer has a huge phone, because the majority of the buying public wants a huge phone. But still I hear people say "big phones will never catch on". Guess what? They did catch on, and they're not big phones anymore. After several years of being big phones, they're just called phones now.

The strap idea is interesting.

I have a hard time imagining a phone that gets people who aren't already carrying purses to start doing so. In addition to the social awkwardness (man purse?) it's just so much harder to lose something that you keep directly on your person.

There's your startup idea: pants and shirts with large pockets.

They can't innovate, so they take the lazy route of packing more of the same old battery tech, display tech, and CPU tech in a container that simply holds more stuff.

You should use a VPN anyway :)

This is the only one I disagree with you one. If I can get more battery life I would GLADLY give up several mm. Battery life is practically the most important thing for my phone and the race to be thinnest is counter to what I desire. It wouldn't kill me if the iPhone 6 was 10mm if that extra 3mm was filled with battery goodness.

> started running out of 64 GB long time ago.

I started running out of 140 characters a long time ago, twitter isn't the place for a novel.

>Plus it lacks motion processor that monitors my movements

You're selling this as positive for the iPhone?

Hopefully there'll be some refresh on hardware for the 5" phone

Edit: Google search on the topic: http://mostly-tech.com/2013/11/08/debunking-the-retina-displ...

All the snapdragon 801 and 805 are "minor" upgrades to the snapdragon 800 shipped by the N5.

I recently got a 128 GB SD card for my phone and it's great to finally have as much storage for music as I used to have on my iPod Classic (I use Google Play Music All Access, which allows saving as much as you want to local storage).

When was the last time you pulled a battery on an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch. I think calling a phone 'shitty for development' just because you can't pull a battery is a bit over the top given the current landscape.

Must be a typo (also in the German Translation)

I am nowhere near Portland. I suspect you just got lucky. :)

With 1GB of RAM, I've noticed the Moto G can multi-task between low-RAM apps (Chrome, SMS, Drive, Dropbox, Twitter, GMail, etc) just as well as a Note III (3GB RAM). The only time I've noticed a difference is context switching with a high-RAM app, like sending messages while gaming. This is actually an excruciating experience on a 1GB phone, because the game needs to reload every time one switches back to it.

>>Is RAM not a worthy technical specification to list? I'd say yes, but it is a grossly overvalued spec. With modern RAM compression and multitasking, I suspect very few people will notice the difference between 1GB and 3.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P9vDAY0U0A

If it was < $400, I might have sold my 5 and given it a go. At $650, I have no incentive to go for this vs. any other device (or to upgrade at all for that matter).

Google needs to do better on this front. Apple introduced selective permissions at least, but Google is way behind.