Nexus 6 | Hacker News Reader

Nexus 6

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1,005 pointsmyko684 comments

5.96” - A phone just under 6". This is possibly the biggest disappointment about the phone. Its simply too large for the average user. The nexus 5 was already quite difficult to reach the top corners with one hand in my opinion with its 4.95”.

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. Since this phone is made by Motorola(which I think is a great company that builds good products)there is hope but that screen is going to be a battery drainer. Motorola had their [0] Motorola Droid Maxx which held a 3,500mAh battery and its at least kind of true for that statement above.

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?

All the goodie features like Google Now and other location hungry services completely drain your battery in a short time. All I want is a smartphone that can last for at least one day on one charge.

Lastly the price. The nexus line is known for the competitive price/performance being greatly competitive. If this phone asks for more than £350, does it really have the nexus characteristics anymore?

I hope there will be android phones still produced with 5" or less screen size in the next 4 years. A significant portion of the population don't have unimaginably big hands (or pockets) to carry these so called "mobile" phones.

0. http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/16/motorola-droid-maxx-revie...

> 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?

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

Have a look at the Xperia Z3 Compact. Sony seem to be the only ones that care about battery life at this point.

The nexus 5 will continue to be produced. It was a part of their Nexus 6/9/Player landing page this morning, and it was showing running android L.

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+.

I also think Google's been DYING to release a "Nexus 6" since day one...

Indeed. People need to remember the number refers roughly to the size. It's entirely possible we'll see a Nexus 5 2015 edition with updated specs, once they've milked the Christmas market with the 6.

There is even no need for this. The Device hardware it's still very good for another year imho.

Battery life and camera could stand to be improved. I can't think of anything else the device needs, I'd pay $650 for a nexus 5 with a camera in the class of other phones at that price and a battery that can last all day without fail.

Apps that are running have a significant effect on battery life. One of the big problems with Android (vs iPhones) is that manufacturers and ISPs still have some control over messing with stock Apps. Also people might expect to be able to install any App they want and still get the same battery life.

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.

Have a look at your Battery Usage settings for which apps are prime candidates to remove. But I think you'll also find L does a good enough job at extending battery life for many Android handsets. Don't get me wrong, I still think my iPhone uses less juice, but given the slightly larger battery in the Nexus 5 compared to the iPhone 6, it can hold its own under L.

Re: battery, I have a Note 3 with approximately the same size battery and have no issues with battery life. It easily lasts a full day unless I'm using it very heavily.

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

> Its simply too large for the average user.

> 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.

Considering Apple's main phone is under 5 inches, I think that statement is at least somewhat true. Sure some people will want phablets, but I'm sure Apple at least did their research for making more iPhone 6s than 6 Pluses.

We shouldn't use screen size as our only measure though. The iPhone 6 is a 4.7", but is quite a bit bigger than the 4.7" Moto X 2013, and about equal in size to the 5" Nexus 5 [1].

Apple uses a bit more bezel on their phones, so in physical dimensions they are closer to some of their Android competition than you might think based on screen size.

[1]: http://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Motorola-Moto-X,Apple-...

I've held both and the iPhone 6 is noticeably smaller than the Nexus 5.

I can echo what he says. The iPhone has absolutely enormous bezels, so much so that the iPhone 6 Plus is definitely larger than my Galaxy Note 3 despite its having a 5.7" screen. That was the first thing I noticed when I held them side by side at a store a few weeks ago.

iPhone 6: 138.1 x 67 x 6.9 mm (5.44 x 2.64 x 0.27 in)

Nexus 5: 137.9 x 69.2 x 8.6 mm (5.43 x 2.72 x 0.34 in)

So 63 cm^3 vs 82 cm^3 in volume, and 92.5 cm^2 vs 95.4 cm^2 in front area.

It's the width that's what you feel when you hold it.

... and width is the only dimension where the iPhone 6 is actually bigger than the Nexus 5.

People tend to hold their phones in "portrait" mode, rather than "landscape". So, width would typically refer to the second largest dimension when talking about (most) phones. Additionally, given that phones are 3d objects, interacted with in physical space, the "feeling" of width would also include the phone's thickness, to some extent.

In this context, the iPhone 6 is actually smaller than the Nexus 5, by about 20%.

Not according to morsch two comments up.

I think you're imagining things because they're almost identical and the nexus 5 is actually slightly narrower.

I've held both and they feel identical. Same vertical and horizontal dimensions and same weight. The thickness isn't even noticeable in your hand.

Indeed. Here's a physical comparison: http://www.phonearena.com/phones/size#/phones/size/Apple-iPh...

Using screen-size as a measure of physical size let Apple pull off a pretty epic PR coup. The iPhone 6 is essentially the same size as modern 5" Android phones, but has a significantly smaller screen.

You're talking about a company that bitterly clung to the 3.5 inch screen for years before capitulating to the demand for larger screens.

I'm sure Apple does market research, but they've proven to be very susceptible to their own dogma.

Bitterly clung - quite amusing.

I have a 4S still around as my "iPod touch" and it does fine compared to my 5 in terms of usability for apps and music. Remembering back, I didn't somehow feel when I got the iPhone5 and later my Nexus5 that my 4S was "inadequate". I did feel that it weighed a lot compared the iPhone5 however, and was very glad for that.

When thinking about a smartphone, I care more about it's usability as a phone, then as a music/podcast player, and only finally as a media device. Am I out in left field here?

> Am I out in left field here?

A bit, yes. My phone (n5) is used more as a web browsing device and video consuming device than it is as a music player. It is definitely the screen size. My previous phone (HTC Desire, about the same screen size as an iPhone <6) was pretty much a phone plus ipod.

I think the demand for screen size is also due to the fact that we probably have some ways to go before getting good at designing things for small screened devices.

I am still in 2 minds about my iPhone 6. It is much nicer in most ways than the 5. The extra screen real-estate really helps but at the cost of single-handed operation and comfort when bending at the hips.

Good points, I guess I did make a sweeping generalisation on the "average user" part and I guess this is how the market will always work but it just slows down innovation dramatically for the sake of making that extra penny. Sigh.

Well, again, I get the feeling that you're perhaps unknowingly defining "innovation" to mean "improving the things I like".

For one, I do think that these larger phones bring about new use cases that leave room for innovation. There is much more you can do with a large phone, such as having more immersive games & apps, make a phone viable for note taking and media consumption, use multiple apps at the same time (if you are so inclined), and all sorts of other new things that would be finnicky at best on smaller phones. Not that those are all self-evidently good things, but at least they seem to be innovative.

Whereas a longer battery life doesn't get you anything new. It means you can do the same things, but now you can do the same things for two days instead of one. That's a good thing, sure, but it's not innovative.

As a side note, bigger screened phones really do tend to have much longer battery life. These two things aren't opposed, they seem to go hand in hand.

I disagree with you.

Just because a kid wants more chocolate does not mean you should give it to him. It may make him happy at first but is not good for him in long run.

What are people/me saying here is that, we should/can achieve the same functionality with smaller phones. We should.

In hundred years, people will laugh at these phones!

Too big considering what it does and provides to people.

Most android handsets are sold as candy and not fruit and vegetables. More GHz, more pixels, more mAh, more inches. Why should this be any different?

I want more gee bees!

> In hundred years, people will laugh at these phones!

In one hundred years, people will laugh at all phones.

I don't understand your comment. Are you saying people who prefer thinner/lighter phones over longer-lived phones are misguided? Maybe they have different priorities than you.

I don't see how this relates to regulating a child's junk food intake. Do you think companies should decide what we can buy?

I think the point isn't that companies should decide what you can buy, that makes no sense...

I think the point is more that just because people seem to prefer a product at first glance/first use doesn't mean that that's the product they will prefer in the long run.

Something like the pepsi challenge ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Challenge ), if people are given a sample of pepsi and a sample of coke and not told which is which, they generally prefer pepsi if they just take one sip because of the extra sweetness, but if they drink a whole can of each then coke (the less sweet beverage) is usually preferred.

It won't be a hundred years though, it'll be one or two years and then that new increased battery life will sell another phone. So if screens increase sales now, it might make sense to focus on them with the knowledge that battery life or something else will be the next feature that drives sales.

Your comment is pretentious and assumptive.

Consumers want bigger phones and manufacturers are providing them, it's as simple as that.

I'd say deriving moral superiority from phone form factor is sillier than a 6 inch screen.

I still can not see, much can be achieved with bigger screens. Google glass approach at least sounds better than this, by separating power to smaller devices will let people interact with real world better than trying to hold this phone with 2 hands.

Bigger screen allows me to sketch more easily on my iPhone 6 plus, and use iA Writer in a more satisfying way. Just two examples of what a bigger screen achieves (for me). A smartwatch coupled with this will perhaps fill the one-handed (and voice activated) use case rather well.

Plus, I can remote more comfortably to my office machine, and probably don't need my laptop to see and "feel" big family photos :).

Your comment is aggressive and uninformed.

I have an iPhone 6. So does everyone in my office. All but one of us pine for our 5/5s - they were, in our opinions, far superior in usability for a one-handed device.

The thing is, we could just go back to them, but then the 6s will come out, or the 7, and eventually, you have to either move to a new platform (Android maybe, but the options in high-end devices in smaller screen dimensions are limited if available at all, and we prefer iOS the operating system, so it's impractical) or suck it up and endure the ever-forward march towards bigger screens.

Consumers don't necessarily want bigger screens as an absolute. Having multiple sizes available is great, but the baseline being so big is not necessarily "what consumers want."

When talking about "what consumers want", the opinions of the people in your office really shouldn't indicate that much. Especially not if they just started using their big phones two weeks ago, and still need to get used to different usage patterns after using small iPhones for (I presume) a long time. Nobody disputes that larger phones are used differently than smaller phones (large phones have advantages and disadvantages), but "different" does not necessarily mean "worse". Although that's what people often think.

You can just easily argue the other way - recently I've switched from N5 (5") to Z3C (4.6" hovewer with small bezels) and I couldn't be happier. In fact, I would happily go under 4" if there was a flagship so small.

Again, I didn't say larger phones are better. If you tried a larger phone for a while and didn't like it, good for you. What I'm pointing out is that you cannot honestly say "I don't like large phones" without actually using them for a while. I'm also pointing out that personal anecdotes don't have any value in discussions about what the market really wants.

You voted with your wallet for a large screen phone, as people in the past voted with their wallet for large screen phones. You could have purchased the Z3 compact or some other device targeting the small device niche market, but you voted against it. Good job!

If he wanted an iOS phone, he had little choice, which was the point of his post. The only thing he could've done is forgo buying a new phone altogether; this is what I've chosen to do, I will stick with my iPhone 4S until it dies, then purchase a 5S and do the same.

This reminds me of what a very wise person (a business owner I used to work for) once told me. In an answer to the question "Isn't the customer always right?", he told me "No, not always. And when they are wrong, it is our job to convince them otherwise. If successful you will have a customer for life."

In a hundred years, I had better have my damned brain implant. Forget the phones.

I moved from a Galaxy Nexus to LG G3, which is smaller than the Nexus 6 and I find it incredibly hard to use. Can barely use it with one hand and it doesnt fit in my shirt pocket, sticks out, cant put it in my pant pockets, because it will break. Its very inconvenient size wise. awesome phone though and excellent battery life.

Galaxy Nexus was so small I could put it anywhere on me and it would be just fine. Awesome to hold in one hand.

Google just excluded itself from a large market and is competing only in phablet space.

I guess with Moto X staying in the more average size space, they want to get in to phablet space, which is fine.

> Can barely use it with one hand and it doesnt fit in my shirt pocket, sticks out, cant put it in my pant pockets, because it will break. Its very inconvenient size wise. awesome phone though and excellent battery life.

I mean this in all seriousness, how small are your pants? When I got my Note, the first thing I checked was to see if it would fit in my pants pockets. No problem with a single pair. I keep seeing this complaint and the only conclusion I can come to is that people who complain about this really buy tight pants with tiny pockets.

If I can't fit my entire hand comfortably into the pocket of whatever pants I'm buying, I'm simply not buying them.

But I'm getting to be an old fart, and maybe the fashion you kids wear these days demands useless pockets you can't carry anything around in. But I've never understood this issue.

Even women, who have next to useless pockets in their pants buy this size phone in huge numbers.

"Even women, who have next to useless pockets in their pants buy this size phone in huge numbers."

because they usually keep them in their handbag/purse?

> I keep seeing this complaint and the only conclusion I can come to is that people who complain about this really buy tight pants with tiny pockets.

Well, yes, lots of guys wear tight pants. It's not really the size of the pockets that's the issue, it's just that the pants follow the curve of your outer thigh, so you can't put a big flat device in there.

I used to have a Note 3, and I found it annoying to carry around. The problem with my pants was not necessarily just how tight they were, but the depth of the pocket. Without really deep pockets the likes of which I don't seem to have on any of my pants, the Note jabbed me in the hip when I tried to sit down or climb stairs.

I swear when I read issues like this I think I must be an absolutely gargantuan man with vast pockets of holding (I'm not and I don't).

I mean really, if I can't fit my own not-very-large hand up to the wrist in pants I'm trying on I consider them defective and don't buy them. Turns out my Note is about the same size as my extended hand w/r to length and width and about 1/3rd as thick, so if I can fit my hand in my pants I can fit my phone. It also means I can fit my hands in my pockets when it's cold and to get stuff in and out of them.

Most of my jeans have pretty small pockets (biggest thing I've noticed with higher end denim is the pockets are much smaller than levis, etc). An iPhone 5 sized device is about the max that will fit in there, a 6 (4.7 inches) borders on too large. But those pockets are plenty large for a phone, keys, wallet in my back pocket, and a few other small items. There's a difference between "useless pockets you can't carry anything around in" and useful pockets you can't carry a tablet-sized device in.

So yeah, it's definitely an issue for both sexes. You may not buy pants that don't have large enough pockets, but I won't base my wardrobe around my phone and won't buy a phone that I can't easily fit in average sized pockets.

I always associated massive phones as being marketed towards women seeing as, at least in western culture, they're generally the demographic that is able to conveniently carry them. Most men don't have the pocket space to carry a 6 inch phone, and I've heard a lot of complaints around the new iPhone screen size (the smaller, not the 6-plus) from both genders as being too large to conveniently carry.

iPhone 6 Plus generally fits in to US size 38 or larger jeans. However the word "fits" here begs a fine print. Once you put that in pocket, you can't put anything else. Also it really "sticks" out and whenever you sit or stand up, you will fill its presence. Even if you solved pocket issue somehow, the fact is that human hands are not made for this kind of size. You really can't type with one hand. On a long phone calls, it's pain to hold on.

The big screen craze is mainly because of people who want to have one device and avoid buying tablets. They are willing to take on pain in exchange of savings for extra money on tablet. However people who can afford having both, iPhone 6 is really the max size where "world in your pocket" ends and "requires a purse or carry bag" starts.

38 or larger? That sounds huge. I don't have any numbers to quote but my guess is that the average for adult men here in scandinavia would be 34. I guess I have to gain some weight so that I can buy new pants for my phone, if it just barely fits in 38 maybe 42 is a good size to aim for.

I wear a 30 waist and fairly tight pants and I have no problem fitting the 6 plus in my front pocket.

According to Google the average men waist size in the us is 38.

I'm also an old fart who wears relaxed fit jeans pretty much all the time, but some of them have much smaller pockets than others. And I'm 6'3", with a 38" waist, so it's not a matter of my tiny pants.

However, it's not just a matter of "will this rectangle fit into this opening". Even my smallest pockets fit the phone. But even with my Nexus 5, if I have headphones plugged into the phone, walking up stairs feels precarious -- like I'm one wrong move away from snapping the headphone jack.

I don't want to just fit my phone in my pocket. I want to be able to, for all intents and purposes, forget it's there if I want to. I don't think I could do that with a Nexus 6.

I moved from a Galaxy Nexus to an iPhone 5s, and was sorely disappointed with the smaller size. I plan on pre-ordering the Nexus 5 and selling my iPhone as soon as it arrives.

As a previous owner of a Galaxy Nexus and owner of a Nexus 5 (for a year). It's like comparing a rotten apple with a big nice Orange. The Galaxy Nexus was nice until it got the 4.2.x release imho, after that was pure trash. The Nexus 5 is an amazing device, the camera is not bad as people say, it's very fast and the screen is nice (GN was better for my eyes). And KitKat was the first release at the same level or better than iOS in terms of usability and quality. You won't be disapointed with the N5. Just make sure you buy a case, the back is very slippery and the device it's big :)

As for iOS devices i had a iPad 3, which was the worse device Apple made due it's slow processor. And also I got it 1 month before the iPad 4 release. So really bad timing.

As the issue with bending phones demonstrates, plastic is hardly a failure of imagination in design and Samsung pretty clearly have that issue well understood.

Or, it's just that battery life is not something you realize when you're in the shop. You see the device, the screen, how responsive it is, but until you've lived a few days with the device you don't really know what the battery life is.

So it's harder to market.

Or most people have their phones charging all day in their office and all night at home so it really doesn't matter that much.

Yes, because most people work in offices.

I don't understand your pointless comment.

I tried to post a point but got deleted by the Apple mafia on HN. The fact is I have seen large number of small handed users (asian females) comfortably carry and use large format phones like Galaxy Notes.

The problem for the male dominated tech media and HN users is that they mostly do not carry a shoulder bag and cannot conceive of a device which does not fit in a pocket being useful.

Add a bejewelled hello kitty pocket book case and carry it in your shoulder bag and a large phone is just fine. It is also great for people who use their phone mainly from their desk and carry a briefcase or backpack. A tradie will not be climbing on roofs with a Nexus 6 in their pocket. But it is a big market and there is room for differentiation.

Funny enough, when I'm in Korea, normal people there have phones that dwarf the Notes of the world (like 7") and being fashion conscious wear fitted trousers yet somehow have managed to figure out how to get along in their day, a seemingly impossible conundrum for the audience here.

How do they carry these bricks? There is a research paper [1] that says 60% of men prefers to carry phone in their pocket and 13% with belt clip. This was old however and may be it's changed now?

[1] http://research.nokia.com/sites/default/files/45590483.pdf

Easy to explain: Users don't really know what they want. Nobody likes the idea of changing their ways before finding a good reason to do so.

Every male that I know that has a Note-sized smartphone said, before having one in their hands, that those things where too big for them. Now, none of them would go back to small screens.

To give a counterpoint, I have been unhappy with each successive size increase of my phone for the reasons listed. I'm sure there are people who are happier with a larger device, but I don't think the issue is so cut and dried.

>That might seem mystifying to you and me, but that really seems to be the case.

It's not mystifying. A larger screen looks cooler in the store, and most people won't realize what a pain in the ass it is until they've already bought it and been using it for a few days. And, few people will ever make the connection that that enormous screen is why their phone is dead before they leave work to go home in the evening.

It just means that increasing sales does not necessarily correlate with increased user satisfaction. Too much of a disparity there, for too long, and the market will eventually just collapse - no one will want to buy new phones anymore.

(FWIW, I might be already there - I love my Nexus 4, was waiting for the Nexus 6, but now it looks like I won't be getting it after all.)

This screen size is so, so disappointing. I'm an iphone 5s user and was eagerly awaiting the new Nexus to make the switch to Android. But 6" is a tablet that can make calls, not a phone. I WANT to switch to Android/Nexus for hundreds of reasons but this screen size is a deal break.

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.

Sony is making a smaller Android device, the "Z3 Compact," exactly for the reasons you list.

Looks like the Xperia Z3 Compact is available for purchase (in the US at least) directly from the Sony website[1] via the "Buy Now" button.

Although, with the recent announcement of Android Lollipop, the inevitable next question will be "when is the update going to be rolled out to phone [X]".

[1] http://www.sonymobile.com/us/products/phones/xperia-z3-compa...

Your comment got me excited -- but I looked up the size of the Z3 "compact" and it is larger in every dimension than my iPhone 5s.

Unfortunately, you're not going to find any modern smartphone, even a "mini", as small as your 5s.

I personally find the 4.3-4.7" range compact enough, especially if the bezel is minimal.

It's ridiculous. I thought I remember someone saying the iPhone 1/3/4 size was designed to be perfect for the human hand and I agree. It's easier to make things larger, it's hard to make them small, how are we regressing?

"The human hand" describes a wide range of shapes and sizes. I have very large hands and find the smaller phones cumbersome and hard to use.

What we should strive for is choice.

Good point and I agree, nothing left for small hands currently!

I can second this recommendation. I recently got one and it's a perfect format for me who thinks pretty much all current phones are too large. I want my phone to fit in a pocket and this one absolutely does. It's supposed to be water protected as well but I haven't dared to try that.

People use their phones for everything but phoning now. Ballooning screen sizes are just a reaction to this.

Exactly. The "telephone" app is just another app on my phone, and far from the most important one.

Weird, I'd actually be fine with having a big phone if I were making calls. It's really easy to hold a large phone against your head with one hand. What's not so easy is to try to text someone with one hand or browse the web with one hand. I suppose browsing the web isn't actually very difficult but it's just much easier to drop the phone when it's hard to hold.

> What's not so easy is to try to text someone with one hand or browse the web with one hand.

I've used phones of all sizes, and I've never found one where it is easy to browse the web or text with one hand. Sure, on a phablet, its too big to hold comfortably and do that, but on a tiny old iPhone, its too small to type accurately one handed, have enough of a viewport to see enough of a webpage to be worth browsing on, or accurately hit links one handed. So, even with a tiny phone, it ends up only really being convenient to do those tasks two-handed, and then what's the benefit of the miniscule screen?

Xperia Z, HTC One, Huawei Ascend P6/P7 and more - all have everything you need in a smartphone (looks, quality, performance, Android :-)

The Nexus 5 is still a really nice phone.

battery.

Take a look at Nexus 5. It's an extremely nice phone and will remain so for a while.

> I'm an iphone 5s user and was eagerly awaiting the new Nexus to make the switch to Android

I highly recommend that you borrow an Android phone from a friend before making the switch and spending some time with it.

Also, check the permissions on most of the apps on Google Play[1] (scroll down and click view permissions) and ask yourself if they're justified[2].

Once an app is installed there's no controlling of the individual permissions. You do not get prompts asking you to authorize an app to access your contacts, location etc. It's an all or nothing approach.

Some people will tell you to root/flash the phone and install an app to allow you to do what should have been a default OS behavior.

I switched from Android to iOS about 2 years ago, and will never go back until Google fixes up the permissions system.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.k...

[2] http://inc42.com/buzz/facebook-wants-read-confidential-user-...

This has already been added to Lollipop:

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/exclusive-android-l-lo...

Take a look at the Moto X (1st gen) as it has a 4.7" screen and receives very fast Android updates, unlike most other manufacturer's phones.

My wife is very satisfied with the Galaxy S4 Mini. Suggest you check that one out, or import an S5 Mini.

Galaxy S5 Mini, 131.1 x 64.8 x 9.1 ?

My recommendation to you would be to get the Moto X 2nd generation. You'll get the second purest android experience after the Nexus 5 and now the 6. Phone size is almost identical to Nexus 5 or iPhone 6 (just about right in my opinion). OS updates are typically available within a month, and the phone build is very solid.

I had Nexus 5 for a little less than a year, then the iPhone 6 came out with its larger screen so I decided to give it a second chance, and kinda wish I didn't. Once you get used to Android, it becomes very difficult to use (or go back to iOS). I put the iPhone on eBay, and currently waiting for my Moto X to arrive on Friday.

You know, they still sell the Nexus 5. I have it and it's a perfectly fine phone and I feel no need to upgrade.

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

Sony Xperia Z3c is for you.

yep, a 5 inch HD display and 20 real (screen on, 10 apps running + Wifi/3G/GPS) hours of battery life - that would be perfect.

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.

> A phone just under 6". This is possibly the biggest disappointment about the phone. Its simply too large for the average user.

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.

I think it has to do with one-handed use with smaller hands. A phone would have to be really small (i.e. iPhone 3 & under)) to be useful, but you lose screen area.

In contrast, phablets are a convenient mini-mini tablet that can also do calls and 4G data without additional costs of "tablet LTE".

> I think it has to do with one-handed use with smaller hands.

That's definitely the split, even with non-smaller hands.

It does seem to be the majority, from all the anecdotal evidence of that being what people complain about.

Maybe I'm weird. I don't care at all about one-handed use. For me the difference is being able to put it into my pocket without snapping off the headphone jack trying to waddle up a flight of stairs without bending at the hip.

Right, I think the threshold for one handed operation is actually closer to the iPhone 3 and once you go past that threshold you might as well go big or go home. People seem to be missing that. And I agree with the GP, you see a lot of girls with Note 3s because they just stick it in their purse or bag.

Isn't it slower to type or navigate apps one-handed, and isn't it more likely to result in dropping the phone (even one as small as an iphone 3)? How many coffee accidents has one handed phone use (while carrying coffee in the other) caused?

It might feel like using a phone one-handed is productive, but I rather doubt it. I also wonder if larger iphones have higher applecare profit margins (given identical hardware costs) because of a reduction in phone-drop accidents.

Regarding size, keep in mind the changes in Android will make it easier to use the phone with one hand despite the larger size.

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.

The "double soft-tap" on the 6/6p home button will bring those halfway down the screen for you. Not ideal, obviously, but a decent workaround until people get used to the new UI metaphors.

I have literally never heard anyone ever say, "I like this phone I bought, but after using it for a couple of weeks, the screen is just a little too big for my tastes."

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'll say it. Been using the iPhone 6 for several weeks. Love it, but the screen is just a little too big for my tastes. It's awkward and I miss the smaller screen. It's enough of an annoyance I'm looking at other phones for the first time.

I agree. My iPhone 6 is too big. Not an iPhone 6, just a regular iPhone. I've had it since launch day, so I've had plenty of time to get used to it. Whenever I pick up my wife's 5S, it's like a breath of fresh air.

I've heard dozens of people say that about the iPhone 6 -- not necessarily about the 6 Plus though.

I'd say that 5" versus 6" is a qualitative difference. People don't buy a 6" phone thinking, "Eh, whatever". You don't hear a lot of people complaining that 6" phones are too big for the same reason you don't hear a lot of people complaining that Linux is too hard to use -- because you only got there by having already decided the answer to the question.

No, because the complaint you get is "I like this phone I bought, it has a great screen, but I can't reach the top half of it when I hold it, and my hand gets so tired, and I'm ending up with tendonitis or carpal tunnel all the time now."

These are all very real complaints - I've heard them from coworkers (who work at Google, so if they have a bias, it's in the other way) and family members, and I suffered from frequent tendonitis while I had my Galaxy Nexus that went away when I "downgraded" (in screen size, at least) to a Moto X.

Well, no, that's not the complaint either. Because I've never heard anyone say that.

I mean, I believe you when you say you have that complaint and you've heard it, but I've never seen anyone be anything but delighted when they've bought a larger size phone. (I say this as someone who has consciously avoided large phones and carries a 4.3" screen phone).

Anecdata. I've heard plenty of people complain. What does it prove? You and I know different people. That is all.

This is mostly a selection bias. Given the wide variety of choices on the Android side, and the very obvious effect screen size has on using the phone, you have to be reasonably sure you want a big screen phone to actually bite the bullet. (Other factors are less clear cut and can be harder to decide between.) Since there is a good selection of screen sizes to choose from, you can often find something you want.

Contrast that with the two iPhone 6 people already replying to your post saying they think it is too big. As an Apple user, if you want a current year phone, you may have to go bigger than you want.

Android choice, for the win!

(BTW, I want! I'm pretty sure I'm gonna love the Nexus 6.)

I hear it all the time, especially from non technical people.

Actually, I just returned my iPhone 6 last week, and got a cheapo Moto G with LTE. Yes, it was too big for my hands, and I like using phones with one hand.

lots of people carry a bias into their opinion on purchased items. sort of like a buyers' remorse, but with the goal of getting others to make the same mistake in order to achieve some sort of normality with 'the pack'.

I like my Nexus 5, but after using it for many months, it's just a little to big for my tastes. My ideal size would be the 1st gen Moto X.

I do. I have a Nexus 4 and rather small hands and it's really uncomfortable to use with one hand, especially with the bumper on.

"The nexus 5 was already quite difficult to reach the top corners with one hand in my opinion with its 4.95”

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?

I like to know everyone's recommendation for a phone which has high performance-to-size ratio, like Sony Z3 compact etc.

Screen size and battery capacity are not a tradeoff. The bigger the screen the bigger the case and the more room for a battery. From the long-lasting tablet batteries we've learned that battery capacity increases faster per increased quadratic[0] volume than the increased battery drain from the bigger screen area.

[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.

I have an HTC One M8, which is really tall because of the dual speakers. I also have large hands. That said, there are a few things I don't or can't use my phone for because the screen is too small, but there is almost nothing I can't do because the phone is too big. Yes, it's more comfortable in a pocket to have a smaller device, and it's better UX to be able to reach the top corner with your thumb, but I have started thinking that phablets are the future of smartphones, small tablets are going to disappear, and we'll end up with three categories of devices: 1) small screen feature phones (which are actually perfectly competent smartphones, just with reduced hardware specs) like the Moto G), 2) 5.5-6.5" high end smartphones/phablets, and 3) large tablets (9"+). There will be outliers, of course (Sony Z3 Compact anyone?), but it seems apparent that with apps & advertising being the primary revenue stream, the bigger the screen the more money to be made.

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

What are the few things you can't/don't use your M8 for because of its "small" screen? I have the original One, with its 4.7" screen, and have never seen the need for more than that. I only see it as cumbersome. The One is still cumbersome at times as it is, but has its benefits. I think that around 5" is the maximum sweet spot of cost/benefit from a usability standpoint though.

Then again, I have never seen the need for tablets in general. My phone is perfect for everything on the go, and if I want to use a larger device for more complex/power tasks, my ultrabook does a much better job than a tablet/phablet on every front.

I much prefer a big tablet (currently a Nexus 10) to a laptop for several things, most notably reading-heavy tasks (RSS, Magazines). I usually use a Kindle for novels and the like, but I read technical books or illustration-laden books on the tablet as well.

If I were in a position to really have to sweat the $500 or so it takes to buy a good tablet, I doubt I'd say it's worth it just for the extra bit of convenience, but I do like it a lot, and as my Nexus 10 feels pretty ancient now, I'm going to preorder the 9 tomorrow.

Just as one example, Ankidroid is pretty unpleasant on a phone, especially searching for new decks. There are quite a few other apps, too, that are "tablet optimized" for larger screens than phones have, and use internal detection to change the UI/UX you're presented with. Web usage on sites that are menu or image heavy can be problematic, too, as is working with tabular data any time. I don't enjoy watching movies/tv on my phone, either (and the battery life is horrendous).

Why is reaching every corner of the phone such a big deal anyway? Speaking for myself, one of the biggest reasons I like large screens is that reading and viewing content is so much easier - I don't have to squint when I'm watching a video, or deal with awkward reflowing. Interface designers don't have to use the new real estate just because it's there, they can design touch areas that are well within reach, while using the new extra space for other visual elements.

>Why is reaching every corner of the phone such a big deal anyway?

It's a big deal because the upper left corner is where Android places notifications and thus you're likely to perform this operation frequently and in a number of contexts. Whenever you get a notification you're very likely to want to evaluate it (and possibly take action) as quickly and reliably as possible. On my Nexus 5 I can easily unlock, swipe down and swipe left or tap with one hand and very quickly as well. On my OnePlus One unlocking is fine, but getting to the top left corner is tricky, slow and unreliable when I'm using one hand, and two hands is not always desirable or practical depending on the context.

On my Galaxy Nexus you can swipe down on the entire top edge of the phone to bring down notifications. On the home screen you can actually swipe down anywhere to bring it down.

Sadly, even though interface designers don't have to use the new real-estate, they still do. Even Google is guilty of this - Google Maps has interface controls at the top and bottom of the screen. This is aggravated by the fact that Maps is one of those apps people tend to use while walking (or driving), specifically when two-handed use is most inconvenient (and just plain unsafe).Folks don't care as much if Facebook or Mail takes two hands because you're far more likely to be sitting down (or at least standing still) operating them.

>Its simply too large for the average user.

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 will probably sound like a troll as I understand windows phone isn't popular here but my Nokia 630 lasts over 48 hours of medium usage EASILY on a tiny 1830mAh battery, has a perfectly sized 4.5" screen, has navigation that doesn't shit itself in the countryside and costs £99 SIM free off Amazon.

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 people knew that Google finally works under IE mobile in version 8.1, I think they'd re-consider Windows Phone. But that's not necessarily the HN crowd pleaser here ;-)

It has done since WM7.5 for ref.

Right. If you like looking at the ugliness that is pre-iPhone Google search for mobile: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/google-search/5b...

Even in their own app!

We did not get proper, modern-looking iPhone-style touch-optimized mobile search results from Google for well over 20 months while Windows Phone 8 was fully capable (thanks to not using IE6) of displaying such touch-optimized CSS. I know, Googling or using Google services was IMPOSSIBLE on my incredibly modern Lumia 920 in January 2013. They just never bothered to optimize for any touch whatsoever and treated the platform as many companies did, like Windows Phone 7, and not something modern and new.

It wasn't until Windows Phone 8.1 that IE11 began pretending to be an iPhone -- and oh look, search finally works (design-wise) if you use other providers than Bing! I re-tested before performing the 8.1 upgrade -- to this day, they still think Windows Phone 8 has not evolved from Windows Mobile days.

If I only wanted to use the core functions of the phone (browsing, calls, etc.), I would definitely buy a Windows Phone. It's just lacking a lot of fun, useful apps.

To be honest I only use Here Drive, ebay, weather and the built in apps (which are fantastically good) so you may be right however all the major names are there now. The mail client and search destroys all other devices if you ask me.

Love the keyboard too, and there's a really good Soundcloud client. Yep Windows Phone 8.1 is pretty kick-ass

Yep. I miss key a lot less than my old android. Plus I just found out you can download mp3s straight to storage and play them in xbox music.

I'm selling the kids' iPhones and getting them winphones so I don't have to deal with itunes.

Super happy.

I'm sure your kids will be thrilled.

Is that sarcastic? Can't tell on here ;-)

Very.

Their friends all have them after they broke their iPhones so they're happy :)

I considered the Nokia 630, but only having 3G is a deal breaker for me.

I just got the Sony Z3 compact, which is smaller than the 630, has LTE, and a bunch of other advantages (better specs all round, front-facing camera, etc.).

They do a 635 with LTE as well.

I've owned a Sony android device (Xperia SP) Never again. Total bag of crap. Sold it and got a Moto G which was crap too. Neither devices could handle more than three tabs open without losing one and refreshing. The 630 can with half the RAM. I think NT scales down better than Android on handsets.

I'd have got the 830 if I wanted a camera phone but I lug a Nikon D3100 around.

> I think NT scales down better than Android on handsets.

Any idea why? My only guess is because so much of Android is built on a garbage-collected, JIT-compiled environment (Dalvik), whereas much more of the Windows Phone stack relies on manual memory management and reference counting, and even .NET apps are AOT-compiled on Windows Phone. In that case, the new Android Runtime (ART) might address half the problem.

These reasons stick out for me:

1. NT is very small. A 66MHz / 24Mb system can still throw up a desktop.

2. The UI is entirely hardware accelerated WPF.

3. You're right about the AOT which is done off the device. It still does GC on the device for most apps which are CLR based but core WinRT stuff is manual management. NT doesn't do overcommit or mmap stuff either. Also the CLR GC runs concurrently.

4. The ecosystem isn't fragmented making centralised compilation and optimisation a reality. There are very few hardware combinations to support.

5. Better native type support in CLR. There are better unsigned and binary types in the CLR making micro-optimizations possible.

Comparing to android, Dalvik is damn slow. It seems to defer all GC until an inconvenient time and suck up lots of RAM in the process. If they get that ART compiler in there then it might be getting somewhere but I suspect from my experiments with my Moto G that the compiler has a different set of performance penalties.

> 1. NT is very small. A 66MHz / 24Mb system can still throw up a desktop.

On what version of Windows? NT 4?

i get 1.5 to 2 days sometimes on my 5s...

"was already quite difficult to reach the top corners with one hand"

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.

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

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

Not everyone wants to use both hands.

Some of us would like to be able to respond to a text message while carrying something, for example.

Yeah sure, I understand that use case. I personally wish Apple had kept the 6 at the original form factor and made the larger phone as-is to give real choice. The way they did it was "go bigger" or "go biggerer" and I get that there are people who really do just want the smaller form factor for whatever reason.

Okay, so I did have a moment the other day where I wanted to text somebody but one of my hands was full and so I made the extremely difficult decision to wait 5 minutes until I was in a better place to do what I wanted. There was another case a couple weeks ago that was similar, but I just used the speech recognition to type the texts out for me (a pattern I'm getting more and more into even when I can comfortably type anyways).

You can't use speech recognition on public transport.

And this line "so I made the extremely difficult decision to wait 5 minutes until I was in a better place to do what I wanted" sounds a lot like "you're holding the phone wrong".

I think there are software improvements that you can make though. Apple's Reachability feature is a step in the right direction. But not enough.

> You can't use speech recognition on public transport.

Sure, that's why I just waited the 5 minutes instead. It wasn't all that long ago that people waited weeks or months for responses to a correspondence, waiting a few minutes isn't the end of the world, somehow humanity got along just fine waiting a little. I already don't answer my phone if it's not convenient (it's why they invented voice mail).

There's some keyboards I suppose I could hunt around and install if I really need to text that very second.

While I'm at it I suppose I could just get a subvocal mic so I can talk to my texting app while on a bus.

https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/c8e1/

Don't buy a Nexus 6, then? That doesn't take away from bane's point.

I use speech recognition far more than typing on my Note 2 which is about the same size as a nexus 6.

I agree that I think I would prefer a 5" phone to a 6" phone. That said, there's no law requiring the keyboard to scale with phone size. For example, this[0] iOS (software) keyboard only fills the screen where it is easily accessible by your right or left thumb. Now if you're stochastically ambidextrous, well... I don't know what to tell you!

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/14/iphone-6-plus-one-handed-ke...

If the phone is in "letter" orientation the keyboard would be entirely reachable... Do some of us want to respond to a text message with the phone/keyboard in landscape mode with one hand? That would seem a bit tough with any recent smart phone.

All I want is a smartphone that can last for at least one day on one charge.

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)

About battery, I get one full day of charge on my Nexus 5 (unless I'm travelling using the GPS navigation and play music along, it finishes in half a day). With the Nexus 6 having AMOLED screen and not LCD, it's supposed to save more battery (with dark pixels not lit at all), plus Android L which is supposed to save up to 36% more battery just by the software (compared to Kitkat), plus the bigger physical battery itself - all three things might save you much more than the Nexus 5.

I agree on the price point though.

>I get one full day of charge

> unless I'm travelling using the GPS navigation and play music along ...

Then you don't get one full day charge.

Also, I had an AMOLED screen in my S2 and the battery life wasn't fantastic.

Long travel in a car using GPS navigation (including playing music) is not exactly a daily-life scenario for me.

Plus you have trivial access to charging in a car.

Apple messed this up as well, not releasing a new 4" version of their device. So the people who want a new 4" have to get a year old device without all the new features like Apple pay?

"Its simply too large for the average user". That's what iPhone users told. "Anything over 4-inch is too big". Now every one is happy with 5-inch and more. People just adapt given a choice. I know people with small hands just fine with 5.5 screens. I agree the price is a too much though.

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

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.

I've had the Droid Maxx for about a year now. I watch documentaries on YouTube, stream music over LTE and WiFi, and use Facebook/Quora/Imgur/Hacker News throughout the day and never think about the battery. I charge it maybe every other day.

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

On devices like the Samsung Galaxy series where you can swap the battery quickly, battery life ceases to be a concern.

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

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...

"Don't use the phone so much" is good advice.

I have an active social life and my Nexus 4 still lasts a day and a half when I don't plug it in. The people having trouble must be texting all day long. When I chat I use social media or chat programs, both of which are available on my computer. I would assume many users of HN use computers so I don't fully understand where the complaint is coming from.

I, too wish that batteries were better than they are. But currently you just can't expect to use a device which has power unthinkable 50 years ago. The size of 10mm x 6inches, to run all day from off of an internal battery. It's unreasonable.

There's a phone for you already released - Sony Xperia Z3 compact.

Google and Apple both see the writing on the wall. We (affluent technophiles) will be using our watches as a primary interface and the "phone" category will evolve into mini-tablets for composing longer messages and web browsing.

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

I don't want some honking monstrosity on my wrist pretending to be a watch. I want my Nexus One back with expandable storage and more than 200 Megs space for apps and a camera as good as in my 5. You know...a phone, smart, one each.

This is just your personal opinion.

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.

> A phone just under 6"

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

as an owner of the original galaxy note, I welcome our new phablet overlords

The phone you are looking for is the Sony Z3 Compact

Agreed. WTB a Nexus 4 with smaller screen size, and double thickness all taken up with extra battery. WTB 24 hours of heavy constant use, not just "use" aka 99% standby.

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.

Can anyone explain to me what the fetish is with pushing the same amount of pixels as a freaking 27 inch display (which, by the way, I've always considered gorgeous)?

I mean, does anyone actually notice the difference? Because if that difference means I'm paying $100-200 extra for a better screen, a better graphics chip etc, and it means my battery life is reduced, I really just don't get it.

I elaborated a bit on this question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459761

Anyway... my biggest gripe is really price point. The Nexus 4, 5, 7 weren't any more interesting than devices coming out from Samsung or HTC. What made them unique was a sick performance/price ratio, the best mid-level entry device range for people who aren't interested in $500 a year fees for their phone+plan, yet like running the latest android on a nice device.

Now we seem to get another high-range flagship-type phone and tablet. I kinda get it, you want a benchmark device and you've got moto filling the lower-mid range quite nicely, but I really wish they'd have kept the Nexus series below the $500 range.

Love the thickness by the way. 10mm or so is great. Not a thick slab, but it's got some real grip to it. iPhone 6's thickness really sucks for me. (although it's a slightly different story when you add a case, I did like the thickness of the iphone 6 with a case when I tried it)

> does anyone actually notice the difference

Yes.

You notice pixel density between 400 and 450, or 450 and 500 when holding the phone normally (at say a bit less than an arm's length usually)

I mean, I notice FPS changes from 60 to 90, but I wouldn't pay even a dollar extra for it.

I'm not actually wondering if you can notice, I'm wondering if it makes an actual impact on your viewing experience.

And if so, if that impact (however big or small, feel free to elaborate) is worth the extra money we can all assume it costs to buy hardware capable of pushing a lot of extra pixels smoothly.

And lastly, if that different not only is worth the price, but also the hit to battery life we can all assume exists.

That, to me, just seems like a really tall order. (if anyone has some insights as to how big the impact is on viewing experience, cost and battery, feel free to add! I've got no real clue).

I'm far sighted anyways, so I do appreciate the bigger screen... though I'd be happy with 720p at the 6" size, because without my reading glasses on, I won't notice the difference, and tend to set my phones to larger fonts mode.

I don't have any studies or stats to back me up, am just going by personal experience here.

I'd rather spend a few dollars more for a higher-res screen than for a few hours of battery. The impact on my quality of life (less eyestrain, less migraines) has been really noticeable since I managed to get "retina-like" resolutions on all my devices, and since then I've been a true believer in the benefits of the race for pixel density. I just wish they'd blast a little less light at me (e-ink is still in another league), but I guess one can't have it all (yet).

AMOLED helps a lot with the "blast a little less light" aspect. It's not a significant difference in a bright room, but the difference is huge in a dim or dark one.

It doesn't say whether the Nexus 6 is AMOLED or LCD. I'm hoping for AMOLED, but I suspect it's LCD.

> I mean, does anyone actually notice the difference?

Absolutely.

Really? Your eye can resolve the difference between 300 ppi and 500 ppi at arm's length?

Also, don't be a stranger.

You use your phone at arms length? I am usually holding mine at like 6 inches to 1 foot from my face. I could very much tell the difference between the 318 ppi of the nexus 4 vs the 445 ppi of the nexus 5 with my usage patterns. I am skeptical that I would notice further improvements though.

Huh. Yeah, I usually have it about two feet away. Not arm outstretched, like my dad, but only slightly bent.

> Not arm outstretched, like my dad

LOL, didn't know my brother was on hackernews, too. What's up man!

> I am usually holding mine at like 6 inches to 1 foot from my face

Question: how do you type / swype with your device so close? I've just tried and my focus kept shifting from the back of my typing hand to the screen and back, very tiring.

I scroll/swipe left or right with my thumb, most of my use is reading comics or watching videos, video being where the resolution most matters doesn't really require much interaction at all.

As far as typing I hardly look at the screen then and ppi don't really matter then. If I am just checking my notifications it barely comes out of my pocket. But when we are in a discussion of ppi being useful, I assume we are talking about the uses where you are actually looking at the screen.

Edit: Just realized that when I type longer messages or emails I tend to hold it 2 handed landscape and hold it pretty close(around 1 foot away) and tap it out with my thumbs because I find it more accurate. So I guess that is how one would type with it that close.

6 inches is extremely close - even uncomfortable for me with a 3.5" iPhone 4S. Are you sure your distance is accurate?

Perhaps screen brightness also impacts this - do you run f.lux?

I do not run flux, 6 inches seems accurate as if i stick out my thumbs they touch my glasses. Basically when I watch a video I want the screen to take up my entire field of view.

Is it even physically possible to notice the difference in that ppi at that range? I thought human eyes didn't have the capability.

I think everyone saying "yes I see a difference" should be doing some double blind validation. I've had people tell me they could tell the difference between 720p and 1080p at 20 feet. That is physically impossible for the human eye.

Most people don't watch their set from 20 feet away. And position is seldom static -- I tend to stand during football games, for instance, and move closer during intense plays or close-call replays. The same thing happens with smartphones, where people pull it in tight to look at fine detail, and a very high DPI allows you to do that with endless zooming/unzooming.

Screen size!!! TVs are getting bigger. The factors involved are:

- PPI/resolution

- Media quality/resolution

- Distance

- Panel quality/size

The human eye does not have a simple resolution like that, and yes it's VERY possible to notice PPI differences in the 300-600 dpi range, especially for certain forms of content.

See: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7743/the-pixel-density-race-an...

At what distance though, without that your statement isn't helpful. We all know the human doesn't have resolution like a screen but if we ignore the optics of our eyes I think thats pointless. There are people saying they use their phones 6" away from their face. Ok, but that is not at all how anyone I know uses their phones at least distance wise.

My example of tv screen and resolution is geared more to this: http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/

Take an 80" 4k tv, you need to sit about 5 feet for an average human to see the difference.

I'd like to see equivalents for phones and dpi/screen size and distance.

Read the link I posted, it explains it all.

Also 20/20 is not only not perfect vision, it's not even average [1]. So using that as the baseline is stupid, it's the low end not the high end.

Second the human eye does not have a fixed arc resolution, different specific detail scenarios have different degrees of accuracy. But if you're going to use this shortcut, you better go with a number on the upper end of things instead of the lower end, so more like .4 arcminute.

The net result is there is real, technical merit in going all the way up to 600 PPI assuming it's held 12 inches away. There's still arguably value to be had beyond that, but it starts getting more into just being a pointless spec war. Right now, though, we are very firmly well inside technical worth.

1: http://precision-vision.com/Introduction-to-Visual-Acuity-Me...

I guess thats the key, I never really have my phone closer than 12 inches from my face. I still think we'd be better off with better batteries than trying to pack more pixels into a window.

> I've had people tell me they could tell the difference between 720p and 1080p at 20 feet. That is physically impossible for the human eye.

Well that would depend on the device. If it's a 5" phone, then yes, obviously. If it's a 21" display, also, yes. If it's a 75" TV, probably not.

At arm's length, no. I don't know many people who stretch out their arms completely to use a cellphone or a tablet.

Usually people that I see (myself included, I have a Nexus 5 and a Nexus 7), hold our devices at about half an arm's length. At that distance, the pixels are discernible, especially if one has better than 20/20 vision.

At 4 inches, the maximum the human eye needs is 2190 ppi/dpi.

http://wolfcrow.com/blog/notes-by-dr-optoglass-the-resolutio...

Thanks, that link says 300 ppi (magazines) and 720 ppi (fine arts prints). Very informative!

The link seems to confirm the 400+ range is getting useless fast for anyone who isn't a baby holding the screen to their face.

The link provided by avree says, "...But the legally accepted norm of 20/20 vision only asks for 876 ppi/dpi at 4 inches!"

A baby's vision is around 20/800 [1] (extremely poor).

[1] http://optometry.osu.edu/research/VisualPerceptionLaboratory...

It is easy for me to see jaggies on a 300 dpi device (the N7 and N10 are both in that ballpark, as was my old 720p phone). You can too -- go to a browser, and type "www" and then look at those letters. The jaggies are just what you'd expect from 300 dpi.

On the Nexus 5 (440 dpi), I can't see them anymore.

Resolutions above this seem unnecessary to me -- but for the N6, 1080p would mean 360 dpi, so that might be sub-perfect. 1440p will be perfect for sure.

Hmm, weird. I was going by my HTC One M7, which has a 1080p screen, but its ppi is 460ish, and the Nexus 6 is 493. I didn't realize an extra inch would require 1440p to have roughly the same resolution. I can't see jaggies anywhere at this resolution, though.

> On the Nexus 5 (440 dpi), I can't see them anymore.

I can't see jaggedness on my iphone 4 at 'www' in the browser either, and that's at 326 PPI.

But fair enough. The low 400s range seems like a solid enough improvement. I just don't get the upper 400s like the Nexus 6's 493, and perhaps the 500 range next year. Obviously there's a bit of extra battery and a bit of extra processing hardware required for that, however small, I'd want to hang on to it beyond the low 400s PPI range.

Human visual acuity of 20/20 is being able to discern 1 arcmin in bright light. With trig, you get that, if you're holding the screen a foot away, that amounts to 0.000349 inches, which is 1432 dpi. If you're holding the device 2 ft away, it's 716 dpi. And against your face at 6 inches, you get 2865 dpi.

The average human has better than 20/20 vision. The average is actually closer to 20/16 to 20/12, and doesn't drop to 20/20 until 60 years of age.

And glasses/contacts bring the humans with below average vision into the above average / perfect range.

Could I impose for a citation for this? A quick check indicates that in the industrialized world, between 50% and 70% of individuals require corrective lenses.[1][2] That seems to indicate that the _average_ human does NOT have 20/20. It's possible in developing countries less than half the population does not need vision correction, but I'm not terribly convinced.

[1] National Centre for Social Research and University College London. Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Health Survey for England, 2001. 2nd Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive, June 2004. SN: 4628.

[2] Global Eyeglasses Market (2005). Eyeglasses MCP-2532: A global strategic business report. Global Industry Analyst, April 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity#Normal_vision

The average humans vision is just fine st distances under a foot. Vision defects do not scale linearly with distance.

> “Normal” visual acuity for healthy eyes is one or two lines better than 20/20. In population samples the average acuity does not drop to the 20/20 level until age 60 or 70.

http://precision-vision.com/Introduction-to-Visual-Acuity-Me...

Thank you. I think I see where you're coming from.

That article has some interesting phrasing which I think is causing confusion. (For me at least.) It looks like they're using 'normal' to mean 'average in the range' some of the time and 'mean population visual acuity' other times. Mostly they're using the former. So 'normal vision' or 'average eyesight' refers to the range of 20/20 eyesight and not 'mean eyesight'. That doesn't explain that second sentence, though, which seems to go back to 'mean human visual acuity'.

At the very least, they could stand to revise the writing in that sentence. If they did mean to imply that the average person has 20/20 vision, I think they're going to have to provide a source. I did slightly more digging and I couldn't find any journal publications that list less than 60% of adults as having corrected vision. Either the remaining 40 have strongly superhuman vision or the number is off. I think there is at least one blind person (legally worse than 20/200) for every person with super human (20/10, the physical limit for humans) vision.

A simple numerical test based on that last point seems to illustrate the unlikeliness of a 20/20 average. To state again, 20/10 is the physical limit for human vision. Any higher and it's not physically possible to pack more photoreceptors into the retina or focus the pupil tighter. Bad (legally blind) vision is in the realm of 20/200. The National Federation for the Blind[1] shows there are roughly 6,700,000 blind Americans of all age groups. We will assume that they're exactly at the legal bound for blindness and not worse. To find how many superhumans we need to make the average 20/20, I think we can use (6700000200 + x10)/2 < 20 We need x to be less then -133999996. So it's simply impossible for the average vision to be 20/20.

It's still possible that number is correct and that the average American has 20/20, but at this point the majority of the scientific publications and formal surveys do not support the idea. If you can find additional sources (I'm so sorry to keep asking), please let me know.

[1]https://nfb.org/blindness-statistics

No, the thing you are missing is that corrective lenses are a thing that exists. We're really quite good at taking someone with 20/100 vision and turning that into 20/20 or better.

Oh! Oooh! I see what you're saying. I thought you were asserting the mean _UNCORRECTED_ vision of an American Adult was 20/20. It's certainly much more plausible that the corrected vision is beyond 20/20.

I would recommend, for the sake of clarity, adding '20/20 corrected' or '20/20 rectified' to your original post. If I hear someone say, "I have 20/20 vision," my first thought is, "this person has perfect vision", not, "this person wears glasses."

I'll go back and add that clarification on my replies.

EDIT: It's too late to go back and edit my topmost comment. :(

Most of those people (IME) need the lenses to correct for short-sightedness, which if anything would make them better rather than worse at discerning phone pixels.

The pixels become obvious under the magnification of Cardboard.

"Noticing" is one thing and being proportionally useful is quite another. After 350dpi, the marginal utility of further increase has diminishing returns. Very likely apps you are using isn't even taking advantage of that resolution. Even if it does, you are very likely not going to notice the difference when lighting and your environment itself produces so much noise.

Did your gorgeous 27" display cost more than $500? I'm not quite clear why you think $500 for a very decent computer that fits into a (big) pocket is unreasonable.

He's asking why not just keep the same screen, which looks perfect anyway, and make it cheaper/last longer.

I have exactly the same question, that's why I ordered a Sony Z3.

OP has a reasonable point, not sure what yours is.

> Did your gorgeous 27" display cost more than $500?

Actually, they're going for about $300 on NewEgg, and are currently on sale for $200 at Best Buy.

> Actually, they're going for about $300 on NewEgg, and are currently on sale for $200 at Best Buy.

Are you sure those are 2560 x 1440 res?

Usually those prices are for 1080p screens at 27"

The NewEgg one, at least, is 2560 x 1440.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4JH1NB18...

Interesting. Looks like it's a VA panel, which is better perf than TN, but less than IPS. Which would explain the low price, yet high res.

And I'm sure there are plenty of ~6" Android smartphones available for less than $500.

My point was for a device that will be used "every 19 minutes" for years, and it's network access will cost several times the price of the hardware, I don't see why $500 vs. $400 so important. Especially if it means lower quality hardware in a computer that gets a LOT of abuse (compared to a laptop or desktop).

If you want a Nexus 6, you need to buy a Nexus 6.

IkmoIkmo didn't say $500 was unreasonable, but that (s)he preferred it was cheaper (supposedly by using cheaper components).

Correction: a piss poor 27 inch display. "Quad HD" is way too little for that size; you need to at least quadruple the amount of pixels to get anything resembling print quality.

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.

Defect rates are per unit area, aren't they?

If you're trying to make a 6" screen and a 27" screen at the same dpi and aspect ratio, and the 6" have unacceptable defects 1% of the time, the 27" screens will be defective at 4.5^2 times that rate, or about 20%.

I am not sure if I would notice if a pixel count changed by a factor of 1.2, but when you double the resolution (4x the pixels) the difference is dramatic. The screens on my iPad2 and iPad4 are very different, and while I didn't mind it when it was new, the iPad2 now has painfully low resolution.

> he screens on my iPad2 and iPad4 are very different, and while I didn't mind it when it was new, the iPad2 now has painfully low resolution.

Absolutely! But that's going from 132 PPI to 264 PPI.

Obviously there's diminishing returns at play here. The difference between 1000 million PPI and 2000 PPI, I'd wager, isn't going to make an actual impact on someone's viewing experience.

And I really wonder if a change from 350 up to near 500 would. Surely there's a change, but I'd say a minor one, and given you're pushing way more pixels, the cost to battery / hardware might not be so trivial.

If anyone can substantiate this last point with some numbers, I'd be very curious to hear.

To some degree it depends on your vision. The 264 PPI is about my resolution limit. My boss probably couldn't tell the difference with more than 100PPI.

I should be able to tell you the theoretical diffraction limit based on a 5mm pupil at 18", but unfortunately...

I'm all for pushing as many pixels as we can, but not at the expense of battery life. I'll happily take a 720p screen if it buys me even a mediocre improvement in battery life.

Brightness and total screen size matter more for battery life than resolution...

Whatever the hell the technical issue is -- more battery life is far more preferable to better displays.

Dumbphones had great battery life.

Yet we use smartphones...

Anyhow, my Nexus 5 lasts the day, I plug it in at night. That's good enough. And I like the screen.

Battery life only matters to a point - after that features and niceties matter more...

Agreed, but what "feature" does a 1080p display provide over a 720p one? The smartphone/dumbphone comparison doesn't really work - there are no new features here.

For one, reading text is much more pleasant.

For me, slightly more pleasant text reading is not worth battery life. Reading text on 720p is absolutely fine.

First of all, the battery life improvement with 720p vs 1080p is negligeable. Screen size and brightness matters more.

Second, there is such thing as a 'good enough' battery. For most people, this has been achieved with the current crop of big screen, high res phones.

Not sure why you think people would accept lower resolution for an extra half hour of battery life...

What's the point in having more hours of battery life than your own number of waking hours? No one has ever adequately explained this to me.

Say I forget to charge my phone during 20% of the nights. A battery that lasts a single day will fail me very often compared to a two-day battery. Not to mention that unlike "dumb" phones, the iPhone won't turn itself on automatically to wake me up in the morning. Also, battery life is measured for "normal use". If you are draining your phone eg. by using it for directions in a friend's car without a charger, then it's suddenly more like 4 hours of battery life.

Yes but all else equal, lower resolution screens will have better battery life. They require dimmer backlights to achieve the same brightness level, and the graphics hardware doesn't have to work as hard (or be as powerful). For phones, resolution starts running into diminishing returns around 300ppi. The Nexus 6's 493ppi sacrifices significant battery life for practically unnoticeable resolution improvements.

Phones with larger screen's generally have better battery life than phones with smaller screens. Look at the iphone 6 vs 6+ for instance. Increasing the screen size leads to disproportionately more room for battery since most of the other components dont get bigger as the screen size does.

I agree that we are at a time when battery life should be prioritized, but I would prefer that to come from thickness. Increasing the thickness by just 25% or so would allow a much larger battery.

We're not necessarily arguing against screen size, but pixel density. That is, instead of scaling the resolution linearly with the screen size, they did that and some. So now instead of a low 400s pixel density range like the Nexus 5, the Nexus 6 sits at a de facto PPI of roughly 500.

Obviously there's a cost to this, both in battery and hardware requirements to push those extra pixels. Meanwhile nobody can detect pixels on a Nexus 5, but apparently it wasn't good enough.

And next year we'll see PPI at 500-600. I just don't get it.

As for thickness, I think the Nexus does quite well. It's about 50% thicker than the iPhone 6 which is a great number (~10mm) to be at in my opinion.

additionally, no one can seem to detect the difference in battery life between 1080p and 1440p. Without having stronger data I have to lean towards the backlight taking up enough power that the difference in cpu/gpu work makes little to no difference.

The Huawei Mate 2 has a 6" screen, 720p, and gets about 2 days (almost 40 hours) of battery. Unfortunately, they have a screwed up copy of 4.3, and it is really terrible and Huawei doesn't release enough info to make Cyanogen work on it.

gotta love the china tech ecosystem...

Is there any evidence that lower resolution screens imply an increase in battery life?

You'll find people saying this all the time, but you'll also find that it's mostly based on armchair reasoning. I'm willing to accept that higher resolution => higher GPU usage => battery usage increase, but I'm not willing to accept that this has a significant impact, not on face value. Not considering that the GPU is only heavily used in short bursts for all tasks that are not gaming, and considering that its power drain is likely still insignificant when compared to the power usage of the backlight.

A year or two ago you could compare the HTC One M7 and the Nexus 4. Two phones with very similar internals and screen size, but the HTC has a 1080p screen and was usually reviewed to have a slightly longer battery life.

I think it's more screen size, not screen resolution. It's just that the two usually go hand in hand.

Bigger screen means more power needed to light it up, but more pixels takes more computation to push the data. It probably varies how much of a factor each component is, but it's definitely both.

For two displays of different size with equal brightness showing the same image, the larger one will consume more power (at the very least (100% efficiency), the display will consume the amount of energy contained in the photons that are radiated out from each pixel).

But a larger screen won't necessarily require much more computation. Imagine showing photos, for example. The increased size of the memory copy (from disk to RAM to GPU), won't consume much more power, I would think.

And if it does, it will only be when loading the image to show it on the screen. After this is over, it will sit idle until loading the next image (consuming no additional power from use of CPU/GPU/storage).

For games, though, you're right. A higher resolution display will make a larger difference in CPU/GPU/storage power use, especially if the CPU is used, since the GPU is probably designed for a higher resolution display.

A single data point, but I get a noticeable bump in battery life when I run my QHD+ laptop display at half resolution.

I can tell you that the LG G3 required a high frequency on the ddr and bus whenever the screen is up compared to the LG G2 using the same snapdragon 800 (yea i know it's 801, not that big of a difference for this discussion).

so everything else equal you already have a higher idle current drain from the SOC side whenever screen is powered up.

Luxury technology shares a lot of characteristics with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest

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.

Thin about printers. Even the cheap ones print at 600dpi. The good ones go 2400dpi, 4800dpi.

Resolution does make a difference.

Density isn't everything. A good 4800dpi printer probably prints at 300 or 600dpi most of the time, unless specifically tell it to do a high quality print. In any case, it's not often that one digs through their printouts with a magnifying glass to be able to tell the difference.

For a phone or tablet, I would trade pixel density above 300ppi for a higher framerate or better battery life. My Nexus 4 has choppy animations, and that is much more annoying than being able to see pixels.

> Resolution does make a difference.

I'm not arguing that resolution inherently makes absolutely no difference. Yes, 100 PPI is markedly different from 400 PPI.

As for your comment on printers, it's apples and oranges. For example, you can print a 150 PPI image at 600 DPI, and each pixel will be 16 dots.

Secondly, dots aren't a uniform unit, you can have many different type of dots for different printers.

Lastly, it really, really depends what you're printing. Newspapers go below 90 DPI and billboards even below 45 DPI. In short, any number is extremely dependent on context. Your numbers are kind of meaningless.

But as for my actual question, it's not whether resolution matters. Of course it does. Battery life matters, too, but having 1 century of battery life on your phone that you replace every few years, or 2 centuries, doesn't really matter, you'll agree. There's diminishing returns. And there's a cost factor.

So what I'm wondering: does the difference between 400 to 450 to 500 PPI create such an improvement to viewing experience, that it's worth the hit to battery life and the more expensive hardware you inevitably end up with when trying to push almost a million extra pixels. I'm not so sure, I'd much rather get a 720p display that's cheaper and lasts longer.

The main difference is graphics vs text. While bitmaps won't profit from a better resolution, text will. Sharper letters, no more blurring around the edges. It's a big difference in readability.

No, there NOT an appreciable difference in readability of Latin alphabet above 400 DPI, and 300 when a subpixel rendering technology is used. Unless they're doing careful side-by-side comparisons, test subjects need better than 20/20 vision to notice any major improvement over 300 DPI.

The truth is battery life and game performance take a huge hit, so the manufactures can put a bigger number on their spec sheet. The consumer is the loser of this idiotic DPI race.

> The consumer is the loser of this idiotic DPI race.

Not to mention the app developer, who suddenly has to get designers re-working all the artwork for their app catalog.

You should be dividing those numbers by some number, because those dots are equivalent to subpixels. You could say a 300dpi is like 900 printer dpi.

It's a real drag on both battery life and performance. Maybe not at first, but benchmarks showing "performance degradation" can show how quickly the 1440p phones get a penalty in performance.

Basically you can see more pixels because you hold it closer to your face than a monitor typically. That said they may be getting beyond the point of visual perception for most reasonable distances now.

Didn’t Apple claim they had already hit that limit at 326ppi with iPhone 4? Seems we’re enter ludicrous ranges now…

I do really have trouble making out pixels on my old iPhone 4. My gf's nexus 5 is really nice (although it probably has more to do with non-resolution aspects of the screen) but that's lower 400s range. The nexus 6 is basically 500 PPI, I just don't get that range or beyond which we'll surely see next year.

My guess is that the industry is in a rush to get some where in regards to screen size, who ever gets their first can then work on battery life. Its still all about spec wars.

Honestly, for a lower price point, you're better off looking into a Moto e/g/x which seem to be the better options for the lower price points.

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.

Moto G is not sold directly through Motorola here in Canada, which means dealing with the terrible support provided by phone companies if you want an unlocked handset.

I would happily by a 2014 Moto G direct from Motorola if they would let me. I would not go through buying one from Koodo and dealing with their weaker warranty.

You can't get one direct from Google's play store, or via Amazon there? I'm slightly, but not completely surprised about that.

Nope. Play Store in Canada still only lists the 5, 7, and 10(‽) as available Android devices. Obviously the 10 is out of stock, as it has been for about a year.

Amazon.ca only offers the 2013 device, although Staples Office Depot is promising to sell the 2014 device for $250 this month.

> Can anyone explain to me what the fetish is with pushing the same amount of pixels as a freaking 27 inch display (which, by the way, I've always considered gorgeous)? I mean, does anyone actually notice the difference? Because if that difference means I'm paying $100-200 extra for a better screen, a better graphics chip etc, and it means my battery life is reduced, I really just don't get it.

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.

When considering displays, it would be best to figure out the pixel density per angle of view, which depends on the expected distance between your eyes and the screen. So if a screen is 1800px wide and you position it such that it takes up 90 degrees of view, then it is 20px per degree, or 0.05 degrees per pixel.

So a phone may end up needing a higher resolution than a larger monitor because you hold it closer. Although I haven't run the actual numbers.

Not to mention that red lining (aligning to pixel boundaries to eliminate anti-aliasing artifacts) becomes less of an issue the more pixels you have, which makes it easier for developers to build decent looking apps.

>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.

I agree with you if the comparison is between 500ppi and 300ppi, but anything higher than 400ppi seems like a waste. I could easily distinguish pixels at 300ppi if I looked close enough, but I cannot distinguish individual pixels on an iPhone 6+ screen no matter how hard I try.

Being able to distinguish when you go close enough to your phone doesn't mean you do this everyday.

Personally I cannot really see the difference between my 1080p 15in laptop screen and the 15in retina macbook screen during normal usage.

Do you actually own and use a retina MacBook pro? It's weid that you see no difference, I can totally see the pixels in any text about 10 pt...the difference is pretty dramatic, and my eye sight isn't even very good.

Users are increasingly using their phones for looking at photos (which are themselves being taken at increasing resolution). Bumping the display resolution makes those photos seems sharper, richer, and more "there", which is a huge part of the user experience. It really does matter.

And yet, a photo is more "there" on a working 720p screen than it is on a 1080p screen with a dead battery...

Everywhere I go I see people charging their phones: at work, at the airport, in coffee shops, in the subway station..

Modern consumers seem to be perfectly fine with trading all-day battery life for better display, and manufacturers are perfectly fine with the higher margins that come with better displays.

"Modern consumers seem to be perfectly fine with trading all-day battery life for better display"

No, they're not. Plenty of people bitch about how frequently they need to charge their phone, and only tech-savvy people realise how large of a factor screen choice is on this battery drain.

you've got that backwards, bigger phones with bigger screens also have longer battery life. The increase in battery capacity by using a larger case is more than the decrease due to the extra screen space which needs to be lit up.

Not true though is it. Let's use the Nexus line as a case in point. Galaxy Nexus, great phone, terrible battery life. Nexus 4, another solid phone, bigger screen, bad battery life. Nexus 5, the pattern repeats again. Thankfully Motorola tend to understand battery life better than most and have bumped the mAh specs up nicely on the Nexus 6.

Or put a different way, default Nexus 4 battery was 2100mAh, default Nexus 5 battery was 2300mAh. People were already complaining about battery life on the Nexus 4, so why did they only bump up the battery capacity by so little for the Nexus 5? For comparison, note that a phone known for great battery life, Motorola Droid Razr Maxx, came with a 3300mAh battery and was still a slim phone.

My point is, just because it's the right thing to do to bump up battery life when using a bigger screen, doesn't mean that the manufacturers will go far enough when doing so.

As a tech-savvy person I'm not so certain about that. For example I see processors simultaneously get faster and more efficient year after year.

Do we have any hard data on this? What is the power draw of a 720p display vs a 1080p or 1440p display? A cursory google search doesn't bring up much.

Do you have an Android phone? If you go to the settings you can look up battery usage. As a general rule of thumb, battery usage is the top consumer of battery capacity. For example, on my GNex I've just checked the battery usage, screen is at 52% (and that's on a very low brightness setting, low enough that I don't bother using it outside).

As I understand it, the proof is how tightly they pack the pixels. If you need a stronger backlight to illuminate the screen, and more power to push all the pixels, it stands to reason that a more detailed screen e.g. 1080p instead of 720p, in the same form factor, is going to use considerably more battery. It's part of the reason why the iPhone 6 does better in battery life tests without gimmicks to extend the battery life as the phone hits Low Battery warnings, the screen's resolution is just over 720p instead of the Nexus 5's comparable 1080p screen. This difference is highlighted by how the Nexus 5 had a 2300 mAh battery while the iPhone 6 has merely 1810 mAh, 20% smaller. In battery tests for the 1080p Nexus 5, under L, it lasts roughly 8 hours. The iPhone 6 gets about the same playing movies, maybe two hours longer otherwise. I'd argue the screen plays a huge role in this.

A trade implies choice. What are the phones with amazing battery life? There are some DROID phones (MAXX, etc.), but is that it?

Old Blackberry phones are renowned for their battery life. If that's truly your chief concern then I would look into buying one.

From reading reviews of the BB Passport it sounds like new Blackberries are too - just be sure to avoid the middle ground, the last few years they haven't been good at all.

The newest Blackberry phones (Passport, Z30) have excellent battery life as well, far surpassing a full day's use, under heavy usage.

Passport display is 4.5" w/ 453 PPI

Actually, photos are taken at increasingly smaller resolutions, or rather the market is consolidating away from the megapixel craze.

For good reason, because most photos don't actually deserve their resolution..

I don't know if I agree with you on photos. I can't really see a difference in photos displayed on an iPhone 6 and 6+. Definitely not in general use, they might as well be the same display to me for viewing photos.

I can notice a difference on the thin 1-pixel line around the battery indicator. That's the most obvious thing.

> Can anyone explain to me what the fetish is with pushing the same amount of pixels as a freaking 27 inch display.

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.

Two words: "print resolution". 300dpi is common, but for line art you want 600dpi (like laser printers).

You can't directly compare dots per inch on a printer to pixels per inch on a screen.

I bought the Nexus 5 as soon as it was released and have really liked it, however, I'm not sure I'll be buying this one. The biggest issue I have is the screen size. I just think 6" is over my threshold. At $649 I can basically buy any other phone off contract. One of the original appeals of the Nexus 5 was the low price.

No wireless charging either? Not a dealbreaker, but I did use it on my 5.

I'm feeling exactly the same, but since they appear to be keeping around the N5 I have my hopes up that next year there will be a new similarly sized Nexus.

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.

I'd like to see them keep the 7" tablet size also. I bought my wife a 7 and it is a great size to pack away for flights and traveling. Just generally a lot easier to pack around.

http://www.motorola.com/us/Nexus-6/nexus-6-motorola-us.html

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

Good catch.

OT: I hope wireless charging is there to stay. Being in robotics this is one technology that would benefit robots tremendously when it becomes more mainstream.

My mistake, glad to see it has that still

I've been planning to ditch my aging Galaxy Nexus in the coming months, hoping that the Nexus 6 would be a great option. But the size and the price really are deal breakers.

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

I had that phone before my Nexus 5. The 5 is still a great phone a year later and will feel like a big improvement still over your Galaxy Nexus. Even better if the price drops on it.

Hope we'll see a price drop on the N5 since it looks like they'll be continuing to sell it in this new generation of devices.

Size really gets to me. Don't get me wrong, I really like the Nexus 5, but I'm sick of phones that are borderline tablets.

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.

I'm thinking of getting one too but it's still too expensive compared to the price of last year's Nexus 5.

Get a Moto G. You can get them unlocked for ~£150, or locked for ~£130 and then get an unlock code off eBay for £1.

Plus, the Moto G LTE has a 4.5" screen, has the same CPU and RAM as the 2014 version, and will get all the L goodness.

I have a G as a backup phone, and it is a great small phone. If I wasn't used to the performance of my X, I could definitely live with the G. Great screen, fast enough, takes an SD card, near-stock Android.

I'm one of those people that questioned the need for having something called a "tablet" from the day the iPad came out. I'm certainly not wealthy though so I don't have money to throw away, but if I'm browsing the net around the house, a laptop is perfectly fine for me still. I prefer having a comfortable keyboard and trackpad.

I suppose there is still a market for people like me to have a single touchscreen device and not worrying about it being redundant to some other device category that I haven't even acknowledged.

> a laptop is perfectly fine for me still.

Tablets are fantastic, so much more useful. So much easier to carry around. Sure, a laptop is perfectly fine, so is a desktop in one room. But if you travel a lot, then they are so much better.

And since you could get a reasonable tablet for $99, you don't have to be too wealthy to appreciate it.

I'm in the same boat. On one hand, I have no need to upgrade my Nexus 5 yet because it still runs everything without any issues and will be getting the latest version of the OS. It's more about having an "upgrade path" in the event that I break my phone or it gets stolen. I also bought mine for $350 at launch and at that price, I wouldn't feel terrible if I had to buy a similarly priced (but modestly updated) device after a year or two if I had to replace it.

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.

It's more about having an "upgrade path" in the event that I break my phone

They still sell the N5. If you like the one you have, you could just buy another one.

It is so frustrating to see all this "oh no, it's too big, what will I do" when the Nexus 5 is still in stock and shipping.

I wanted an iPhone, and bought a 5s shortly after they announced the 6 and 6+. I am sure I am not alone in wanting a smaller phone. Just because the newest one has a big screen doesn't mean you have to buy a phone with a big screen. I will be interested to hear how the iPhone 5s/c and the Nexus 5 sell now that their larger replacements are out.

Very nice that all the physical buttons are on one side and also in the middle of the phone. The biggest gripe I have with the iPhone 6 Plus is that every time I try to lock it, I turn up the volume, and vice versa. The buttons are also way too high on the device.

Not that it's particularly important, but the Nexus 6 was the model of the androids in Blade Runner, but I'm not sure if this phone is "more human than human." :)

I've just switched cases on my Nexus 4 and I am having the exact same problem with the button positions. Very annoying.

I actually dislike that feature on my Lumia 920. It's hard to get it in a holder tight enough to hold it and not mash the power or camera button.

Interesting! I assume that this problem would exist no matter where the keys are placed, assuming the holder doesn't handle the keys gracefully :)

Yeah I always thought that's why they jumped over 6 to name the tablets. Nexus 6 is a bit of a burn to the legacy it tips its hat to.

One upvote for the Bladerunner mention. That would really be the only reason for me to upgrade from my Nexus 5 to a Nexus 6 :-)

I've bought every nexus phone when they were released, but I'm not sure about this one. The nexus 5 is already a bit oversized IMO. This thing is ridiculous.

For me it was pretty disappointing that iPhone jumped the size bandwagon with their latest phone as well.

Bigger != Better

I'm glad they released a 4.7" phone, but the plus is just ridiculous.

4.7" should be the plus, if you ask me. I'm dreading the day my 3.5" phone dies and has no reasonable modern replacement.

EDIT: I'm open to switching to Android for my next phone if anyone can point my to a small one. Priorities are good camera, ok battery life, and not awful build quality. And maybe good support from Cyanogen? I'm out of the loop on Android and don't have a sense of how important that is these days. But IIRC Cyanogen comes with real permissions control and some other things I'd like, coming from iOS. Halp!

Why do you like the small screen so much?

I can hold it normally and comfortably reach the entire screen with my thumb. I can also hold it in strange ways like with my 4th finger on the top edge and my thumb on the bottom, and still reach the entire screen with my index finger. I'm sure that last one sounds weird, but I do it surprisingly often (mostly while laying down).

The gigantic phones remind me of 17" laptops. I can see it making sense if you don't have another computer, but hell if I want to carry one around. For phones, it's just a big thing in my pocket that's trying to be redundant with my surface. All I need is phone calls, texting, GPS/maps, snapcat, music, and (usually reading only) email and OneNote.

A 6" screen doesn't make any of those things easier or more convenient.

It's true that you use a 5" phone differently than a 3.5" phone. But a 5" phone comes with a lot of advantages of its own, which you might find hard to recognize if that's not what you're using.

> All I need is phone calls, texting, GPS/maps, snapcat, music, and (usually reading only) email and OneNote.

Well that's probably just because you use your current phone for these things. Who's to say that the bigger screen won't make you do more or other things with it?

I'm not trying to pick on your taste, or say that your taste is wrong. This is just a reply to the general sentiment that you express which I see expressed many times in these discussions. I'm saying that many people complaining about these large sizes are just complaining that they can't use their new phone in exactly the same way as their old one. As if that is some self-evident bad thing. But it comes down purely to taste and - as with anything that depends on taste - it doesn't hurt to try something new sometimes.

> Well that's probably just because you use your current phone for these things. Who's to say that the bigger screen won't make you do more or other things with it?

You may be right. But even so, I spend enough time on my phone even with the limited uses. If I had a bigger screen, maybe I'd use it for reading and writing emails. But I don't know that I want to.

If I could get a 6" phone that was as comfortable to read on as my Nook, I'd be all over it. The e-ink versions, not the Nook HD. Reading books is a great use case for a screen bigger than 3.5".

Addendum - Fundamentally, I see my phone as a minor utility/convenience item. I use it for occasional tasks like making dinner reservations, finding cheap gas, ordering takeout, finding ATMs, tracking runs, checking weather forecasts. None of those things need a 6" screen.

I'm sure Safari would be better on one, but I don't want to make it easier to sit around and browse the internet. As it stands, viewing photos is the best justification that I can come up with. I think these phones are just designed for a different sort of user. But people like me can't be that uncommon, can we?

"If I could get a 6" phone that was as comfortable to read on as my Nook, I'd be all over it. The e-ink versions, not the Nook HD. Reading books is a great use case for a screen bigger than 3.5"."

My next phone is very likely to be a YotaPhone, which includes an e-ink screen. The first model was terrible but the second model is shaping up very nicely. Perhaps you might be interested too... http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/mobile-phone/3504276/yota...

YES I WANT THAT. I'm not sure I want it to the tune of $800-$960 though.

I'd be super paranoid about scratching it, since there's no really a safe side to set down. What sort of cases work for that?

Glad I could help you find something you like, I think it's awesome too. :-) I seriously doubt it'll be $960 at launch, even if that's what the data we have now suggests. I have no idea about cases, perhaps you could drop Yota Devices a line... http://yotaphone.com/ru-en/feedback/

> Addendum - Fundamentally, I see my phone as a minor utility/convenience item. I use it for occasional tasks like making dinner reservations, finding cheap gas, ordering takeout, finding ATMs, tracking runs, checking weather forecasts.

Again, that is probably only because you view your current phone as such. Who's to say that you won't see a larger phone an even more useful tool? I'm not saying that you will, I'm saying you haven't tried and therefore don't know.

> None of those things need a 6" screen.

It's not really a question of necessity. I agree. My contention is that you should not be dismissive of 6" (or 4.5" , or 5") devices a priori because "you don't need it" - because there is a chance you'll enjoy it more. If user experience matters to you, then it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. If it doesn't, there are some small sub $150 Windows Phones that fit those needs marvelously. And that's fine too.

I do intend to do T-Mobile's 7-day network "Test Drive" once they switch it from the 5S to the 6, so I'll find out for sure then.

Maybe an extra 1.2" of screen is just the thing for comfortably finding gas stations. But does it make up for having to carry it around all the time?

For reference, http://i.imgur.com/ZbodDFx.png and my 4S are the entire contents of my pockets on a typical day. No car clicker, no trifold wallet, small phone.

> many people complaining about these large sizes are just complaining that they can't use their new phone in exactly the same way as their old one.

I don't care what i can and can't use the phone for (to reasonable extents), i care about the constraints it adds to the rest of my life. If it can't fit in my pocket everything else i do that does not involve the phone just suffers (yes, some things in life actually still happen outside the phone).

Unfortunately it's hard for me to find a phone that fits my taste.

I want a tiny phone with the best battery life and camera available. I don't care much about anything else.

I'm not OP, but I went back to a apple phone (5s) from a galaxy 3 in part because texting with one hand was a pain.

It's so easy to use. Sure I can reach any point on a 5 inch screen, but I'm reaching to touch half of the screen. The 3.5 inch screens everything is just their under your finger. It's fantastic.

ive got a droid maxx with a 5 inch screen, and it's a bitch to fish it out of my pocket when its got its silicone protector on.

also i miss being able to share my phone pocket with my wallet

A phone with a small screen is usable with one hand. It also fits inside pockets easily.

For me it's a combination of ease of use and ease of carrying.

The iPhone 5 fit comfortably in one hand and was small enough for easy one-handed use. It was also big enough (for me) to read text without much effort (I have, once corrected with contacts, fantastically good vision though).

For carrying, I normally wear cargo pants so this isn't a huge issue. But when I go out or get dressed up for something the iPhone 5 fit comfortably into slack front pockets for me. The iPhone 6 is big enough that it makes a noticeable bulge when I sit down. It's also causes my pants to feel uncomfortably tight around my thigh. This leaves me the option of either pulling it out and setting it on the table (rude on a date, seems like I'm setting up to receive a call or texts) or leaving it in the car (an option, but not when I'm trying to meet up with people and someone gets lost (every time) and calls me for directions).

If I buy a larger phone, I'm giving up ergonomics in exchange for something I personally don't need or want.

I have the HTC One Mini[1]. It is small with a nice screen, camera and battery life. It isn't going to impress anyone but I can use it comfortably and keep it in my pocket.

[1] http://www.htc.com/us/smartphones/htc-one-mini/

Honestly I'm hoping for a 4" screen or smaller. Maybe it doesn't exist. And though the screen is 0.3" smaller than the Z3 Compact that ZenoArrow mentioned, the One Mini is taller and thicker, and only slightly narrower.

In the same ballpack though, so I'll need to do some digging and find out how the cameras and all that stack up.

The Sony Z3 Compact is the most balanced Android phone in the market (IMO), but it's very new so don't know if CM supports it yet... http://gizmodo.com/the-sony-z3-compact-is-androids-best-kept...

Only marginally smaller than an iPhone 6, sadly. 4.6" vs 4.7" screen, though the smaller top/bottom bezel helps with pocket size, if not screen reaching.

Still more reasonable than the new Moto G/X and all their 5+ inch ilk. I'll keep it in mind!

Anyone have a comparison with the Z1 Compact? Trying to decide whether I should regret recently buying the Z1C, despite knowing the Z3C was days away from launch. :P At least it was cheaper, and already supports CyanogenMod. Though I could have had fun helping port CM to the Z3C, too.

Guessing you don't speak Italian, but this video should give you some idea of the visual differences at least... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZoneBqMvD0

Also, don't know how accurate this site is, but perhaps this will be of some use... http://versus.com/en/sony-xperia-z1-compact-vs-sony-xperia-z...

Once your phone dies, go to the apple store and they will replace your broken phone with a new one (identical model) for $150 or $200.

Out-of-warranty cost:

iPhone 6 Plus: $329

iPhone 6: $299

iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5: $269

iPhone 4s: $199

iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, Original iPhone: $149

I could, but app developers are already ignoring the 3.5" screen devices to the point where it's getting unusable. Not interested in tying myself into several more years of it.

Case in point, Google Voice: http://imgur.com/Bsq4gYT

One of the things I've always respected about Apple (even though I loathe the company) is how they have fought hard against the size thing. Apple's largest laptops are the same size as many company's smallest devices. I love me a little 11" laptop device but so few companies make good ones.

I hope Google will resurrect the Nexus 4 brand as a budget device and release a non-phone wifi-only device for kids at some point.

Man, I don't even want a budget phone, I want a full on high-end phone with a reasonably-sized screen. My Moto X is 4.7 inches and I think it's a tad too large. I'm willing to pay for great hardware, a big battery, and lots of storage, but I need it to fit in my hand.

Not to sound cliche but it sounds like you want the Z3 compact :P. I do agree with you that the size war is becoming ridiculous.

Funnily enough, Apple lost me when they discontinued the 17" MBP. Granted though, I'm probably far from the average consumer.

It seemed like very many years ago there were no big phones around. When the Note (1) launched it was revolutionary for its size (in 2011). If you compare the Note (1) to phones around today it is "average" at 5.3 inches.

I think the pendulum has swung too far in the stupid direction now. I purchased a Note (1) in 2011 because at that time bigger was better, but even for me now phones are getting too large. That's partly why I skipped the LG G3 (5.5 inch), why I'll skip the Nexus 6, and why I no longer buy the Note range (now up to 5.7 inch).

My sweet spot is 5-5.2 inches, no bigger. Anything larger and when you sit you notice it in your pocket (and I have decently large pockets).

What's funny is the 3 people I know who switched to the 6 from the 4S, they all wanted a bigger phone and are all complaining that the 6 is too big as well as too thin.

Do you mean 5S? Because I also got an iPhone 6 and returned it in a day to get a 5S instead. But a 4S would be a bit much...

Fortunately the Moto X 2 looks like basically a Nexus.

Yes, Nexus 5 is great except for the battery life. I hate that this is so huge, and that it has a physical home button. The larger battery (thanks to larger screen) will be an improvement to battery issues, though.

That isn't a physical button, it's a speaker. Dual front facing speakers.

The present obsession with "bigger is better" is perplexing to me. I know some use cases are facilitated by larger displays, and they are valuable to people with poor eyesight, but I've never once in my life thought "boy, I wish my phone was even larger." A phone I cannot fit in my pocket is virtually useless to me.

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's the exact same width as my Galaxy Note GT-N7000, which fits nicely in my back pocket. I love the large screen, and a slightly larger screen would be awesome.

The intended market is people who don't carry their phone in their pockets, e.g. women who don't wear pockets that can fit a standard-size phone anyway. If you're just putting it in your purse, the extra inch isn't ab problem.

But they all seem to be getting bigger. Why are all offerings moving toward exclusively serving only half the market?

They are serving the whole market. You may be thinking, "I need a decent sized phone that can fit into my pocket, and I'll just use my laptop/desktop for the heavier lifting."

The vast majority of the market is thinking: "I need a computer and I also need a phone, but I can only afford one." Obviously, this second segment wants the screen to be large, because they don't have an even larger screen sitting at home.

> but I've never once in my life thought "boy, I wish my phone was even larger."

Labeling these "phones" is the wrong thing to do. These are computers that happen to have some lineage with phones. I think the ultimate aim is this: most people don't need computers, they need and want a single device. A phone with a small display is inadequate for that, but a phone with a display this big could be more than enough for a lot of people, for almost all purposes.

More than lineage; because of the way service contracts hide the actual price of the phone, phones get premium features over other devices.

> A phone I cannot fit in my pocket is virtually useless to me.

Conversely, a pocket that wouldn't fit a Nexus 6 (or Note 3, or iPhone 6, or a decent-size wallet, or...) is virtually useless to me.

I used every nexus phone too. When I first heard about Nexus 6 specs I thought they are ridiculous too. Then I was given Nexus 6 couple months ago. At first I thought you have to be crazy to use it. After 30 minutes I thoughts it's actually not that bad. After one day, I loved it...

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!

> The nexus 5 is already a bit oversized IMO.

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...

I think as more of the older crowd has gotten into smart phones the screen size has gotten larger to compensate for their poor eyesight.

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

And you'd be wrong because resolution has gone up. I can ably read very small text on a 1080p screen which I wouldn't be able to on a lower res one. The larger form factor means I can take advantage of all that extra DPI ably.

I know resolution has gone up. I didn't say otherwise. I can also read small text.

Neither of those points is an argument against what I claimed. I was stating that resolution has gone up, along with screen sizes, but that the default text rendering size has not gotten any smaller (i.e. they're not putting more stuff on the screen).

Wait until you need reading glasses.

Size matters

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

I had a Nexus 5, but I bought a Sony Z3 Compact a few weeks ago, and I don't regret doing so. This phone is simply too big.

For anyone interested, I would highly recommend the Z3C. It's a fantastic phone and a really great size.

If only Sony would acknowledge the existence of wireless charging (Qi). It has been great having many recent Nexus devices use it.

True, but the Sony magnetic chargers are actually pretty great. I got a dock that essentially does exactly what my wireless pad did.

Qi is an open standard. I have several Qi chargers including one in the car. A proprietary charger doesn't help.

Glad to hear, I'm getting one for sure.

The trend of correlating device number (i.e. Nexus 'X') with screen size is going in the wrong direction. 6 is already too big (and heavy) for some. Next year, there'll be no distinction between phones & tablets.

Edit: Disappointed with the pricing too: $649. Google had set a good trend with Nexus series - Awesome devices at exception price. All that's gone. Kind of against the Android One initiative.

> 6 is already too big for some.

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.

Dimensions : 82.98mm x 159.26mm x 10.06mm

Weight : 184g

Source : http://www.google.com/nexus/6/

Ahh, I didn't realize that the specs section had an expandable button to see more details.

It's definitely a huge phone, although barely taller than the 6 Plus, which is exactly what I suspected.

I missed that too. I was looking for the weight of the Nexus 9 (slightly less than the iPad Air).

From the page : 82,98 mm x 159,26 mm x 10,06 mm.

Ok, 8cm broad, is not that much as I thought.

I personally think that 5 is already too big...

So apparently there is no 7" tablet anymore. I think that makes sense, since the 7" tablets get cannibalized by the ever growing smartphones. After I bought a Nexus 7 I started to carry it around all the time. I used my Galaxy Nexus less and less (only for calls and whatsapp) so after a short time (when the Galaxy Nexus started to show its age) I decided I can live with an even smaller (and not so flexible) phone and bought an 5s. Now, with the Nexus 6 I may be able to retire both and get back to only carrying one device with me.

Yup, good point. I think the sweet spot for phones is about 5 inches now (up to about 5.3 with thin bezels) and for tablets it's probably around 8-9 inches.

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.

7" screen was the perfect size for reading books and comics in my opinion. I'd preferred to have gotten a new 7" with smaller bezels. Might as well skip this Nexus generation.

I never got into the tablets bandwagon.

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

Yes but tablets are great for pleasure. I wouldnt use my iPad to do work on but for browsing the internet on the couch or reading emails (usually non-work) it really excels for me.

But I may be changing my mind as soon as my iPhone 6 plus gets here.

I've owned an EVO, a Note 2 and a Nexus 5. The form factors being small, large and medium-to-large, respectively. I went from small to large, and while I thought the Note 2 had fantastic specs, it was too unwieldy for me and I decided to downsize to the Nexus 5. I still find the Nexus 5 a bit unwieldy with one handed use, but it's at least possible. Which brings me to my current conclusion: I want a smaller phone which doesn't give up too much in the screen resolution. Which brings me to my question: What makes ideal specs for you? Here's what I want, but cannot seem to find (something is always missing):

* Size: 4.9" screen

* Resolution: 1080p (it's really hard to find any phones this size with this resolution, which is disappointing because the PPI is possible, especially given the quad HD resolutions being slapped on phones now).

* SD expansion slot: One thing I really liked about the Note 2 that the Nexus phones don't have. I could upgrade with a 64G SD card which didn't cost much. 32G can fill up pretty quickly with videos and photos and it's annoying Google has a philosophy which shuns SD cards.

* Battery: At least 2600mAmp (should last at least one day).

* Stock android: No bloatware and no touch-wiz. This isn't as important as the other considerations though.

* CPU: This doesn't matter too much to me. 99% of what I do doesn't need a latest generation processor

* Memory: 2G is fine. Memory again isn't the main thing that's bothering me about the current android offerings.

What really bothers me is no-one is catering to this market segment and the trend is increasingly into the phablet market.

it's not perfect, but something in between the Sony Xperia Z3 and Z3 compact sounds like what you're looking for.

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?

Yeah definitely, and thanks for the great recommendation. The Z3 is getting close, but still slightly too big. The Compact is the right size, or even a touch small, but it sacrifices the resolution. It's very cool that it's water proof though. My Note 2 died in a hot tub!

The Compact is supposed to have excellent 48hour+ battery life as well.

Upgrade the Nexus 5 to L and all you're missing in this list is the SD Card slot, which, given the 802.11ac support you shouldn't miss. At this point, my wifi speed tests on the Nexus 5 outpace my SD Card slot read tests by 5x or more. ;-)

Many people here complain that phone is too big without ever using phablet. I was in this camp too until I started to use N6. I was testing this phone for last couple months. It's an amazing device, and even though sometimes it does feel big, on day to day basis it was never an issue for me. Consuming any type of content was much easier and more pleasurable. I noticed the difference especially when I sometimes moved back to Nexus 5 which I thought was perfect size. Well, it turns out I changed my mind now:)

If you can, try to use phablet at least for 1-2 days before discarding it.

One thing that might have helped is that I'm also using a smartwatch now and I take out my phone less frequently, but I don't think this change anything much.

That's exciting to hear. My gut reaction is that this is far too large. However, the idea of always carrying with me something that is nearly as big as my Nexus 7 is enticing. I love reading on my N7, but I never seem to have it on me when I want it.

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

I have Samsung Galaxy Gear Live. It's a really convenient to check your notifications on the wrist and not have to take out the big phone ;)

I feel the same way; once you go big you don't go back!

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.

Fascinating arguments about size. It isn't the only phone on the market, so the size question is resolved by market acceptance. Granted there are confounding factors, Lollipop vs Android 4.x, cost, availability. But in general larger screens seem to sell well (compare the iPhone 6+ backlog to the iPhone 6 for example [1]). I get that this might not be a "good" thing for some people, but it is pointless to argue that Apple or Google should take less money by selling phones the market doesn't want (a strategy which is being employed by RIM at the moment)

[1] http://9to5mac.com/2014/09/12/iphone-6-and-6-plus-already-se...

That link only establishes that the 6+ is sold out, not that more of them were sold. It seems equally likely that fewer 6+s were produced.

The point was that the 6+ sales exceeded the forecast by a significant margin. This same size debate goes on inside Apple, and Steve Jobs even highlighted the intense scruitiny they put on size when designing the iPhone, and the "Giant" (in Apple's words) Samsung Galaxy and Note phones were outselling them. And Apple released the 5s / 5c which tested some aspects of the equation, and they release the 6 / 6+ which tested the size question. Given those two market tests one might presume that Apple learned 'plastic was not a good material for an expensive phone' (under performed the forecast) and 'larger phones have significant appeal' (over performed the forecast). And as I stated outside Apple's testing this hypothesis there are a bunch of different Android phones in different sizes and they too inform on market acceptance or rejection of various design choices. The age old model of 'buy what you like, they will make more of them' is more true today than it ever has been, manufacturers are so intensely watching and tracking the buying habits of their customers that feedback is immediately implemented in products in the next round (you'll notice neither the 6 or 6+ are 'colorful' :-)

Can anyone confirm what is driving this larger screen war? I know when LTE was rolling out manufacturers needed space for larger batteries but couldn't make the phones thicker due to market backlash so bigger screens began to trend. Now I can't help but think it is completely consumer driven but if that is so what are the larger screens enabling users to do? Is it the resolution? The multitasking? This just doesn't look like a valuable tradeoff for less portability and 1 handed use.

I think the loop goes something like:

- 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 ;)

Exactly - I don't know many personally who like the big phones, but you are exactly right that they sell anyways because nowadays there are few other options.

I know a lot of people whose smartphones have become their primary computing devices. A big phone offers much better battery life, much more usability across countless apps, and it makes watching videos a tremendously better experience.

I think it is a real possibility that many folks legitimately like bigger phones.

Keep in mind that the Nexus 5 is still around and is still a perfectly viable phone. It will also receive the Android L update. It's not like the Nexus 5 is being killed and replaced with a 6" phone. Rather, a 6" phone is being added to the lineup.

There's also the 2014 Moto X, which is effectively a Nexus but with a 5.2" screen.

Many of us are not 5' tall and want to get things done on our phones.

True but 75% are under 6' [0]

[0]http://www.wolframalpha.com/share/clip?f=d41d8cd98f00b204e98...

Nice.

Seriously though. Why wouldn't you want as large a screen as fits comfortably in your pocket? For touch devices screen size is important even beyond having more context for what you are doing. Since it is also your interface you get larger buttons to press, thereby increasing the speed of your interaction. [0] This is especially important because your screen is also your keyboard, so every little bit counts.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

It's a portable computer. The "phone" in smartphone is an anachronism of a bygone era, and actually seeing people using one as a phone is rare now.

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".

> The "phone" in smartphone is an anachronism of a bygone era, and actually seeing people using one as a phone is rare now.

That's absolutely not true. I can assure you people actually buy phones to phone.Or they would be buying ipod touch en masse without phone/data plans.

> 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

Well,it's HN business to make its interface usable on my 320*480 (yes,I have a 3.5" screen phone).If HN doesnt,then HN doesnt care about smartphone users...

> If 95% of your use is as a landscape portable computer, that 5% use of "one handed through a parking lot" should rightly suffer.

... No it just means they didnt go mobile-first which is a mistake today. HN layout isnt even responsive. Responsive == Future proof. It's a simple as that.

I've been wanting 6" for years; it's the sweet spot where it's large enough to watch videos comfortably but small enough to fit in a pocket. A better question is why it took so long to get here.

I realize this is probably only the case for me, but I've been looking for a 6-7" phone for reading comics on. A tablet is nice, but I find it a hassle to carry around in my bag. A 6-7" phone will fit in my pocket and I can easily pull it out in an elevator or waiting in line somewhere and read a page of my comic.

Maybe that's just me though.

> Can anyone confirm what is driving this larger screen war?

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?).

The fact that this has a thunderbolt resolution display shows how lame it is most desktops haven't adopted 4k yet.

4k monitors are not that rare/pricy. You can get pretty cheap 60hz ones from Asus and the best ones from DELL.

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.

I'd say the real problem is the fact that the affordable ones you mention, tend to have terrible specs apart from resolution (and latency). Low contrast, bleeding, terrible colour representation. At least that was my experience.

Before anyone goes jumping on the "best ones" from Dell, take a read through this 35 page support discussion about their UP2414Q:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/35...

Anecdotal, but a friend and I both have problems with ours, and he got lucky with the 1.1 firmware revision (Dell won't let you upgrade it, you have to go through support for a replacement, and they'll send you a refurb that might have the newer firmware because they decided it would cost too much to update their existing inventory). And even then it might not work. He's waiting on Dell Support for his 3rd unit.

Do yourself a favor and wait until DisplayPort 1.3 is widespread and can drive a 4k screen without using Multi-stream Transport. It's not worth the headache.

Right now my computer is convinced that the left and right halves of my screen are separate displays and nothing will convince it otherwise. Other times MST will fail to connect and it only picks up 1/2 the resolution in the middle, with 1/4 width black bars on the left and right. From what I remember reading, Dell botched the DisplayPort handshake, and the workarounds that AMD/Nvidia have put into their drivers to try and fix it aren't 100%.

I need to return mine for backlight flicker too. But I'll write that off an an excusable manufacturing flaw that's going to pop up occasionally on some number of any model.

EDIT: Just for perspective, this is a screen with an MSRP around $1100, though we both bought ours on sale. The amount of shit we're dealing with for a screen that expensive is not reasonable.

    UPDATE

My friend's 3rd display just came in this afternoon. When he plugs it in and turns it on, the computer stops responding. When he turns it off, the computer resumes working normally.

Ordinarily I would scream "driver problem" at that one, but the 2nd screen did not have this problem with the same GPU and driver installation. (That one just randomly disconnected and reconnected every 30 seconds or so)

He's trying it on different computers next, further updates as events warrant...

    UPDATE 2

Hooked up to his Mac. It flickers on and then goes blank.

Even running at 30 Hz on single-stream transport, it doesn't work over DisplayPort. HDMI works at 30 Hz, but DisplayPort 1.2 with MST is the only option with enough bandwidth for 4k at 60 Hz.

> Do yourself a favor and wait until DisplayPort 1.3 is widespread and can drive a 4k screen without using Multi-stream Transport. It's not worth the headache.

It reminds me of getting an external monitor for my T420 from Dell and seeing that DisplayPort to DisplayPort 1.2 cables are practically non-existant. I ended up getting one after hours of search online, the only proper manufacturer of these being Lenovo itself. I wonder if the situation gets any better...

I was under the impression that DP's cables have all been backward compatible, and a 1.0 device could just plug into a 1.2 screen and work. Not the case?

I have my UP3214Q working just fine. You need to A) make the SIMULATED_* monitor settings match the 4K ones; and B) use an HDMI cable along with the displayport cable. My instructions are here:

http://jmswrnr.com/blog/the-firmware-issues-of-dell-up3214q-...

Just got up a Seiki 39" from Walmart.com for $329. After some flashing and calibration, its a beast! Highly recommended for day to day/dev use. Gaming, too, but not in 4k. It can do 1080p 120hz.

Can you elaborate on the flashing/calibration? Is that to get better than 30Hz at native 4K resolutions?

For coding / web browsing, how good is the screen (i.e. can you notice lag for those use cases). I have heard mixed things about the Seki 39" but it looks like it could be a great development monitor

I use one for development and love it. There is lag and it is noticeable - it's most noticeable for moving the mouse cursor, and it is somewhat annoying because it makes any mouse operation feel slower and less precise. The lag doesn't really affect anything else I do.

Still worth it for the price IMO, the screen real estate makes a huge difference in my productivity.

If it only does 1080p, you're not getting any additional screen real estate, just huge pixels.

It's 4k.

It's basically the equivalent of four 20" 1080p monitors with no border between them. For (nowadays) a bit over $300. Pretty nuts.

Sure.

Flashed it with SE50UY04, the 50 inch models, firmware. Just extracted the zip, put the install.img on a FAT32 formatted USB drive, and went into the secret menu (with the menu open press 0000) and updated the firmware.

After that I started with these calibration numbers: Contrast: 42 Brightness: 66 Color: 34 Sharpness: 0 Color Temp: normal Turned off Noise Correction.

--These settings can be changed in the secret menu - other settings options. Red Gain: 141 Blue Gain: 126 Green Gain: 132 Red Offset: 532 Blue Offset: 510 Green Offset: 504 DCC: Off Backlight: 75

And modified it to my liking. Actually had my Macbook Retina open next to it and sort of color matched. My numbers could vary greatly from these. My backlight is at like 50.

Overall, I'm really happy with it. Yes there is a mouse lag, but the 50" firmware makes it LESS noticeable. Also tbh, you sort of get used to it. In my case I try to minimize mouse usage anyway.

I've seen no evidence that 490 DPI has any advantage over ~300 DPI; it sounds like spec wanking. And there are rumors of a 5K retina iMac tomorrow (4K tends to be a downgrade from 2560x1600).

Downgrade? 4K is 4096x2160! Sounds like an upgrade from 2560x1600.

I think that he means with the typical pixel-doubling you get with "retina" branded screens, UI elements on 4096x2160 would actually have the same on-screen size as UI elements on a non-retina 1080p display, which on a 27" screen is probably too big. (27" iMacs are 2560x1600 which makes onscreen elements considerably smaller than if they were 1080p.)

OSX on a "5K" 27" display would maintain the same size of on-screen elements as the current 27" iMac, but everything would be twice as sharp. I would probably buy one in a heartbeat if the price is right.

(Edit: I guess the other alternative is that OSX would use a 4k screen but would do some graphics card tricks to render everything at 5120x3200 and downsample it to 4096x2160, but that's an odd ratio (5/4-ish) so things may not look as good. That's what they do on retina MBP's when you set the display settings to "more space", which renders everything smaller.)

It's significantly harder to produce large, 4K panels without imperfections when compared to small panels.

What on earth is a "thunderbolt resolution display"?

Yes! Google continues to add barometers to phones!

Although, it's disappointing that the Nexus 9 does not also include a barometer. I suppose they've decided that the use case for fast GPS and altitude works better in a phone than a tablet - that, or, since the 9 is built by HTC it would be their first time adding one. Oddly, though, Motorola put its first barometer in a tablet (the Xoom) before they tried any phones.

Just curious, what do you use it for? :)

I make a platform that automatically collects the atmospheric pressure sensor reading on a schedule, and sends it to scientists for analysis. The idea is to build the best weather forecast (higher accuracy, hyperlocal) by using this dramatically denser data source as inputs to models.

We make an open source app called PressureNet: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbu...

We also build an SDK and API so that you can integrate this into your own apps, and also access the live+archive data feed: http://pressurenet.io

Intriguing! How frequently does the SDK sample the barometer's readings? Does having the phone in one's pocket affect the perceived atmospheric pressure?

Our SDK default is 10-minute intervals, but some apps choose 1-hour to better fit normal schedules. The pocket problem isn't a big deal, but altitude changes do add noise to our system. The barometers are very elevation-sensitive (see other poster, commenting about flying!), which means that the reading will be different every time you move your phone.

There are a number of ways to solve this noise problem - first, merely detecting trends in the data over 6 hours is quite easy and tells us a lot about the atmosphere (is the pressure rising or falling? easy to find out from the noise). Second, getting enough density means we can use statistics to filter out most of the noisy data.

Do you use other data to correlate locations that might have different offsets at different times? (EG; slightly pressurized buildings with forced air circulation or vehicles in motion?)

Or are such offsets too minuscule to notice?

There's actually a wide variety of noise in the data, but the one that really matters is altitude (the barometer can measure the altitude difference between your feet and your head)! Other sources of error are the biases in the sensors themselves (place two phones side by side, get different readings), pressure-controlled buildings, sensor drift, etc.

We have a number of mechanisms to filter out most of the noise, but it's not easy.

The FAQ on pressurenet.io/about/ should be updated to show that the iPhone 6 does in fact have a barometer.

I paraglide and a barometer sensor allows me to use my phone as a variometer (measures altitude changes while flying amongst other functions).

Does it have a removable battery or is it another sealed device? That's not clear from the web page. Everything else looks great about this device but if it lacks a swappable battery then that's a deal breaker for me and I'll have to get a Samsung Note 4 instead. Even a 3220 mAh battery is insufficient and external battery packs are just too much hassle to deal with.

Looks like a sealed case, based on an unboxing video on Boy Genius Report. That's disappointing, though wholly expected. It seems like only Samsung and Nokia make phones with removable batteries and storage card slots...

This thing is a beast in every sense of the word! also with dual front speakers! That can make a huge difference in sound quality.

However it looks like this is heading to $500+ territory so the days of a cheap good Nexus may be coming to an end. Looks like the Moto E etc is filling that niche.

The Nexus 5 is still available, which I hope they keep refreshing and maintaining its price point. But yea, Moto G, or E for anything cheaper is the way to go.

The Motorola blog post says "starting at $649" http://motorola-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/nexus-6-from-goo...

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.

As someone against having any form of debt other than a mortgage or useless obligation such as a cellular contract:

$649 is where I stop paying attention to the Nexus line.

The hours worked to afford the device and it's needed case and accessories make the 6" screen not worth it.

And trying to hide the cost behind a cellular contract brings that cost over a thousand dollars. Stupid.

I don't understand the appeal of having dual front speakers, whats the point?. This is a feature a very small group of people will find useful, but adds to the price.

I have an HTC One with dual front speakers. Before I bought one (for reasons entirely unrelated to the speakers) I would have agreed. But now that I have them, I frequently find myself casually plopping my phone down for some music while I cook or do other chores. It's one of those things that, for me, inserts itself into your life in unexpected ways.

Not in public, but ocasionally it's nice to have at least decent sound out of the phone.

I love to watch Netflix on my phone when I'm doing the dishes. The 90 degree change in going from a backwards-facing speaker to the Nexus 5's downward facing speaker made a huge difference in the sound quality. I'm really looking forward to having stereo, forward-facing audio.

I've never actually used a phone with dual speakers, but does it really make that big of a difference?

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.

> front-facing speakers

Great! This is why I bought an HTC One M8 instead of a Nexus 5. Great for speakerphone or if you do watch a video on that high resolution display.

It amazes me how the essentials get sacrificed really easily and that consumers often don't demand better when they are purchasing. I would buy a Mac, but I do have to demand a matte screen instead of just getting accustomed to glare.

The glare has been reduced a lot in recent Macs. I'm not sure if it's as good as the anti-glare screen you could order for some MacBook Pros in the past, though.

I'm visiting Japan, but I don't read Japanese. When I visit this site everything is in Japanese without any button to change local.

Apple and Ikea will redirect you to a url with country code in it (ikea.com/ja/en/bedroom kind of style) making it easy for people on the tech savvy side to manually change locale. But Google? No way in hell am I allowed to read this in English if I'm not physically in an English speaking country.

yes ... it's frustrating. I actually can read Japanese a bit, still even if you are LOGGED in to Google with preference English, they show you the Japanese page. Well done! VPN or TOR to the rescue ...

>With a large 3220 mAh battery, you get over 24 hours of use from a full charge.

I would hope so, call me old-fashioned but I would say that once a day is the absolute limit on how many times I'd accept having to charge my phone.

Of course, you don't use your phone 24 hours in a day (at least I hope you don't) however, marketing being what it is they generally mean "very very light usage" when they quote battery-life.

I'm at a desk in work, so I have my (3 year old iPhone) phone plugged in all day.

I tend to do so to, my phone has it's own spot on my desk, where I keep the charger. So charging it daily would not be a problem for me _most days_.

However, say I'm doing some travelling for example I will tend to use my phone a lot throughout the day. Be it listening to music, playing a game while waiting on $MODE_OF_TRANSPORTATION or browsing the web. That would be one of the days were I would pretty pissed if my phone would not last throughout the day, or I would have to make constant considerations like "If I watch this movie now, will I have enough battery life left to make a call if my flight gets delayed".

Generally those time-measurements are based around assumptions about typical use. If you're constantly using your radio and your screen and making it do processing, you cannot hope to come anything close to typical usage.

That's slightly larger than the 3200 mAh battery that my Note 3 has and I have no issues with battery life.

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.

Everything about it looks great except for the 6'' screen. I understand the appeal of big screens, but 6'' is just too much.

I think they might keep the Nexus 5 around. Maybe in the future they will update it with a bigger battery and better camera.

> they might…

Indeed http://www.google.com/nexus/5/ and http://www.google.com/nexus/9/

Too bad the Nexus 5 can't be upgraded to replace the battery with the rapid-charge battery technology they are touting for the Nexus 6.

>>Get up to 6 hours of use from only 15 minutes of charging.

There's no real special technology there, if you do the math on their claim it works out to a maximum power draw from the charger of 12-15W, which is about on par with most tablets. This is just a function of having a large surface area to dissipate waste heat.

I felt exactly the same way, everything was well thought out (camera, battery, speakers, etc...) apart from the screen size. The consensus seems to be that 5 inches is the absolute maximum for most people (aside from phablet fans). It's such a shame because it's so close to perfect (for this generation at least). I do wonder what kind of market research phone companies do because I could have very easily predicted this negative outcome, and I'm sure plenty of other people could too. At least it should be the first Nexus phone with decent battery life.

> The consensus seems to be that 5 inches is the absolute maximum for most people

Here's the current line-up of flagship phones side-by-side:

http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/1338/2298/o...

Given that ( > 5 inches ) outnumbers smaller by 9:5 I'd say the consensus is that big phones are fine.

Aside: I remember the incredulity when I bought a 5" Dell Streak 5 four years ago. "You're going to make a phone call on that tablet?" Nowadays it would disappear in that line-up.

"Given that ( > 5 inches ) outnumbers smaller by 9:5 I'd say the consensus is that big phones are fine."

You're mixing things up, the reality is that there's a difference between what people actually want and what gets produced.

I have a feeling I won't be able to convince you on screen size (despite many of the comments on this post being about the screen being too large), so let's choose battery life as a talking point. Everyone who has owned a smartphone knows how critical battery life is to the user experience, yet time and time again we see companies skimping on battery life. Instead they make their phones slimmer, or with super high pixel counts, or just cut costs on factors that don't influence the appearance. Why do you think they do this? Do you really think they are paying attention to what matters in a phone?

In india at least people want larger displays. For most of them mobile would be their primary computer/internet connected device hence its desirable to have maximum size as possible. You can even get 5" for less $100(if you visit flipkart nearly 50% android mobiles have 5" or more). You want bigger batteries as well which comes with some mobiles. But at least with battery you can keep charging.

6" is the perfect size, I've been saying this for years. (It was particularly obvious with the nexus 7 - just too big for a pocket). I'm looking to replace my Galaxy Note 2 this January, so I'm looking forward to a comparison between the Nexus 6 and the Note 4.

6" is the perfect size for me

FTFY

Are you going to go around making these insightful edits for everyone with an opinion in this thread?

If they attempt to pass off a personal opinion as a universal truth? Absolutely, if I had the time.

I see an important question looming on the 5-year horizon: how are people going to be carrying these large devices? Clearly carrying large phones in pockets is impossible for many, increasingly impractical for many more, and simply undesirable to the curious.

Will handbags or hip bags become common for all? Will the average size of phones rebound and approach some smaller-screen equilibrium size near 5"?

Everything depends on the adoption of these devices by younger people -- whatever becomes "cool".

My prediction is that phones will become strapped to arms or shirts somehow. I see some sort of arm-hoslter or dedicated shirt pocket that comfortably, securely houses a mini-tablet.

Arm holster is the way to go, like a Pip-boy.

Isn't the size of your arm/hand coupled to the size of your pocket? After all a pocket that can't fit a hand isn't a pocket.

I think the pocket problem is a little over played (at least for men). The 6+ fits fine in the pocket of my hipster skinny jeans.

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.

>Clearly carrying large phones in pockets is impossible... impractical... and... undesirable.

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.

> People keep saying that and time and time again it's proven wrong.

Surely you agree there is an upper bound, though?

Sure. 27" is just too big to be practical for most.

What I was specifically saying is that people here keep calling 5"-6" phones "too big" yet the mass market keeps buying them, in huge numbers. I'm not sure if you can walk into an Apple Store and pick up an iPhone 6 Plus off the shelf yet or if they're still sold out.

Aren't we getting to the point where you don't have a choice, if you want a new phone? The market wants phones, not necessarily with a strong preference for the sizes being offered. I recently bought a new phone, and found my options getting quite limited if I wanted less than 5" screen size, and SD card. If I compromised on SD card, maybe there's more options, but all the main choices seem bigger in general.

There was a point where the market had a choice, much like when phones still came with physical keyboard. There was a long period where you could buy a phone with a keyboard and a phone without. People bought the phones without keyboard. There was a time when you could buy the phones with 3" screens, and people bought the 4". Then when 5" screens came along, people bought those. Then the 5"+ screens.

The people who want physical keyboards, SD cards, smaller screens, and removable batteries are not numerous enough to sell $600-$700 phones to, not with competitive specs. I live in the US and I would love a mid-size diesel truck-based SUV. Toyota even makes the 4Runner that meets those exact requirements, sold overseas. But I am massively in the minority in the US, so I Toyota won't sell me one.

It sucks, it does. But much like we don't say we have a "big screen" or "flat panel" TV anymore (now it's just a TV), a phone the same size as the iPhone, the Galaxy, the Moto X, the One M8, etc isn't really a big phone anymore. It's just a phone.

Agree, there's no choice. Everything you find today below 5" is budget phones that are so slow and have such a bad screen that they could almost make you vomit. It can't be impossible to make smaller phones fast and with high dpi, a few years ago all phones were like that, take iphone 4-5s, nexus 4 or htc 1S as example. I've been thinking it's better to buy a high end old phone than a small new one because there simply aren't any high end small phones to buy. And by small i don't even require super super tiny, just finding something slightly below 5" is very hard.

True; wanting a decent-DPI screen and fast CPU, while having a "small" screen, was also restricting my options.

>>If large phones were impossible, impractical, and undesirable, people would stop buying them.

I think you're conflating several different things here. Something can be impractical but still desirable. For example, big SUVs are a pain in the ass -- they are inefficient, difficult to maneuver and hard to park. Yet people still buy them because of a simplistic "bigger is better" mindset. How many people with big SUVs actually use all the space in the vehicle? How many people with half-trucks actually use it to haul big and heavy equipment that would not fit in a smaller car?

Yes, big phones are impractical. This is simply common sense: they are difficult to fit inside pockets and impossible to use productively with one hand except maybe by Hafþór Björnsson. And yet they are desirable because "Big" is a status symbol.

I don't see the connection with SUVs. They aren't impractical in the same way. For example, for many people (men and women alike), a device above a certain size cannot be carried hands-free. This is a fact. For me, this would be a dealbreaker. It's not about status; it's more closely linked with my unwillingness to type anything longer than a sentence or two on a small keyboard and screen.

On the horizon, I see a disconnect between the ideal size of mobile devices and the practicality of carrying them around everywhere. Poolside, hiking, on the toilet, out to dinner.

Something will have to change to fix this. I see the solution as new fashion trends that will be ushered in by people who are young -- young enough not to think that, for example, wearing a cell phone on a hip holster is symbolic of greybeard-ness, etc.

Women carry handbags. There's very obviously a lot of men commenting on this issue who cannot imagine that pocket size has been nonexistent for one genders fashion for a long time now, and so was never a practical constraint on device sizes.

Male fashion will just up pocket sizes in response - my dad when he goes traveling has a jacket he can fit a 13" macbook air into.

There's also a difference for what seems like a good idea in the context of a retail showroom and what is a good idea over a year or two of real life usage.

The TV with the brightest, most overly saturated image might seem like the best choice when sitting on the shelves of Best Buy, but not the best choice overall.

Perhaps megapixels in cameras is a better comparison. The quality of each pixel erodes so you can't view most pictures at 100% anyway, yet faced with a decision in the store and one camera has MOAR PIXELS than the other, it's enough to sway it.

I don't hear people saying "big phones will never catch on" but I do hear people saying "these bigger phones are too big for me."

> how are people going to be carrying these large devices?

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

Long term you'll have a radio with a battery in your pocket/bag, a wireless bluetooth headset that you issue voice commands to for a lot of things and then another small display either on your wrist and/or in front of your face. You might have a larger dumb display as well; I'd expect eventually those would be flexible, activating some sort of electromagnetic skeleton tentpoles to hold the shape when needed.

Lot of people with big phones carry them on upper shirt pocket. Another option is belt clip. Nokia did research on this here: http://research.nokia.com/sites/default/files/45590483.pdf

I don't see how a 6" phone is convenient at all. I can only assume that the reason major brands are making oversized phones is because there hasn't been enough technical innovation in the past year to create an adequately exciting "update" to an existing phone (the Nexus 5, for example). Is this the case, or am I missing something?

I agree this is exaclty it.

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.

iPhone 6 Plus: 5.5" 1920×1080 (401 ppi)

Nexus 6: 5.96" 2560×1440 (493 ppi)

The iPhone 6 Plus is comically enormous. This thing is ridiculous. And the same resolution as the current 27" Apple displays.

2.7 GHz quad core vs iPhone's 1.4 GHz dual core (but 32-bit, vs Apple's 64-bit).

That is some serious hardware.

The Nexus 6 has smaller bezel on the top and bottom than the iPhone 6+ which has to make space for the TouchID/Home button. Android uses on-screen soft buttons.

My biggest peeve with the onscreen buttons (using flagship Galaxy Nexus) is accidentally pressing them, primarily when I'm trying to take a selfie with the rear camera. It's insanely frustrating the way the orientation moves them around and trying to find the on-screen shutter button rather than clicking the home button.

Something that should be easily fixed by allowing power or volume buttons to take pictures. I'm not sure why that isn't the case.

It's a Qualcomm 805, so competitive with the iPhone 6's chip, but certainly not massively faster than it (and in practice somewhat slower in many scenarios). As we should remember from the Pentium 4 age, megahertz are not everything.

Anandtech&Wikipedia suggest the Nexus's Krait CPU is 4-instructions wide vs iPhone's 6-instructions wide?

Slightly off topic, but is it just me or does this page brutally ignore your browser's language settings? (as well as those of your google account.)

Apparently it guesses a language based on your IP address and serves you an inappropriately localized version. Kind of a noob-ish mistake to make for such a campaign. Too bad for you if you're abroad! There's a language drop-down in the "help" section, but it's not stored in the session and it's completely ignored by the other pages. So you simply cannot view the landing page in your own language!

>> Too bad for you if you're abroad!

You should use a VPN anyway :)

Anybody found a way to force it to display in English? I'm in France at the moment so I can't even read the text on the site. None of the usual tricks (?hl=en, etc.) work. No links on the site to change language or redirect.

Seems silly to have to VPN into a box in the US just to read a website.

How about /ncr ?

same problem here.

As ~always~ with Google sites my Accept-Language header [1] is ignored and I end up being redirected to a different, 'more suitable' site. But yeah, those people can talk about SPDY and HTTP/2 and new standards all day long I guess. I'm sure that makes sense..

1: en-US,en;q=0.5

Nano Sim. Do they really need the space saving from micro to nano? Prepaid carriers charge extra for nano sim. Not sure if it is because it is more expensive to manufacture. Requires more delicate handling for those who swap sims which is more common in Asia.

Ah, but the Nexus 6 only has a 4 year lifespan. Then .. time to die.

I thought that Google decided not to release a phone named Nexus-6 out of deference to Blade Runner and Phillip K Dick's family who were annoyed that they used the name.

If Google could produce a phone that lasted 4 years, that would be incredible.

and then it would grab you by the throat, give an incredible speech that makes you realize the true splendor of life and then it would shut itself off.

Yeah, they did say that, but what [google|insert corporation name here] say and what they do are two entirely different things.

I'm thinking the real deal-breaker for me will be the camera, which seems to be the same as the mediocre Moto X camera. Otherwise, it looks like a nice device. Nothing particularly amazing, except for stock Lollipop.

Actually it seems it's a different camera than the 2014 Moto X, my evidence being primarily the larger aperture size, also OIS.

"Nexus 6 will be available for pre-order through the Google Play Store in late October starting at $649."

This is from Motorola http://motorola-blog.blogspot.fr/2014/10/nexus-6-from-google...

Didn't Google sell the Motorala cell phone business to Lenovo?

How do you announce a phone without a price? That is always a terrible idea.

Edit: I guess it's $649.

According to http://motorola-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/nexus-6-from-goo..., yes - starting at $649. I wonder how that'll translate to GBP...

I bet it will be £649..

Yep pretty how most companies price their tech in the UK, change $ to £ and call it a day (we pay a premium even with VAT added onto the USD price)

After long back and forth I ended up buying iPhone 6 over Nexus 5. So the news of Nexus 6 was exciting but it still seems bit behind on hardware front:

* No 128GB memory option. This is absolutely important for me and it seems Apple is the only one of few company who gets this. I started running out of 64 GB long time ago.

* No TouchID equivalent which is excellent and works flowlessly on iPhones.

* No slow-mo videos at 200+ frames per second.

* From hardware perspective N6 still stuck in 32-bit world. Plus it lacks motion processor that monitors my movements and fitness data all the time without draining batteries.

* 8MP camera is actually better than 12MP and gives better low light performance. Higher MP is actually deal breaking for me (if sensor size remains same).

* At 10mm thickness, that's actually going backwards from 7mm for iPhone 6. Every mm of thickness adds perception of "hugeness" dramatically.

> * At 10mm thickness, that's actually going backwards from 7mm for iPhone 6. Every mm of thickness adds perception of "hugeness" dramatically.

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.

I agree with many of your points, but

> 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?

You're seriously questioning why someone would want more storage on their mobile device? Clearly 640kb is enough for anyone.

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

How is that relevant?

Full specs: https://i.imgur.com/S0ifg2B.png

Of note: Nano SIM, 493 ppi display, 4K video recording.

(The specs on the Google page have a button to expand them. It's a bit hidden and not linkable, hence the screenshot.)

But how much volatile memory does it have?

At least 4 thousand words IMHO.

3GB FYI ^^

Sadly this will bring the Nexus buying streak for me to an end. 6" is too large... the price is too high. Too bad though, that battery and camera would have been nice. I think the Nexus 5 will hold for another year.

I agree with all your points and also own a Nexus 5, but I'll keep it until it dies. I kept an LG Optimus for 3 years, to the point that I replaced it when I couldn't reliably make a phone call. My one gripe with the Nexus 5 is that the camera is pretty bad, and I find the controls pretty awful too

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

Like many others here, I agree on the screen size issue. I'm actually at a bit of a loss as to what phone to use next. I want something that's future proof for several versions of Android, runs smoothly, runs vanilla android by default, and doesn't exceed the screen size of the galaxy nexus (the one that's currently stuck without a stable upgrade to kit kat due to firmware issues), and has a great resolution. I'd gladly pay good money for a device like that.

Feel more like marketing data collecting, to see how size the phone relates the sales... I'm interested to know the result. Personally, it's definitely too big.

Without going into specifics, Apple's event(whatever they reveal) is scheduled for tomorrow and so today is Google's day.

Today, some startup/enterprise somewhere in the valley may be making final touches to a press release on some bad/shocking news such as layoffs...etc tomorrow so that little attention will be paid to that, since most tech press may be glued to Apple's event.

Life repeats on and on as before.

It seems like we just got the Nexus 5, the Nexus One is still fun to pull out and mess with. The One was the perfect size. I'm not even sure the 6 would fit in my pants pocket? Seems like it would jab into my groin when driving. Storage isn't even listed or Chrome's Ctrl+F can't find it? Does it have external storage or expandable storage? The 5 messed this up.

The Nexus 6 not having a high-speed camera sensor is really disappointing. I was hoping Apple and Google would eventually break down the high-speed / slow-motion camera market, because industrial applications cost well into the multiple thousands of dollars for cameras not much better than the iPhone 6 with the only exception being that it is PC-controlled via software.

Frustrating.

So if I understand you correctly, the nexus 6 will NOT be able to take slow motion video?

It is not in the detailed specs that I can find.

http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_nexus_6-6604.php

"Video: 2160p@30fps, optical stabilization"

No other frame rates or resolutions listed.

What will the screen resolution default to ? The resolution mentioned i.e. 2560×1440 (493 ppi) is too high for human eye to decipher on 6" frame. MacBook Pro's with retina displays have 2560x1440 resolution available however the highest viewable is 1920x1200 (unless you use 3rd party software like SwitchresX to override the maximum )

Doesn't it depend on how close the device is to your eyes? Also just because the individual pixels aren't visible doesn't mean there's a noticeable difference in picture or animation quality. Just because Apple claims that "retina displays" use the smallest pixel size noticeable doesn't mean it's true.

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

I don't see any details on the body anywhere. I'm assuming the sides are in aluminium, but what about the back? I always hated the cheap android phone for their glossy cheap plastic feel. (Also the reason why I can't stand any case on my iPhone) But with a price point around 650$ I'm expecting some more premium feel.

Was the Nexus 5 refreshed at all? I can't tell by the website.

I do not think it was (yet).

Last year, the N4 got a price cut before the N5 launched. This year, no such. The Nexus 6 is so hugely expensive that the line may just sit and stagnate on the "price:performance" frontier. :-(

In my opinion as a owner of a N5 there is no need for a refresh now. The hardware (except battery and camera) are still on top of the tree.

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

http://www.google.com/nexus/9/

I find this an interesting departure by the trend which has been set by the previous phones in the Nexus program. Prior phones followed an average lower price that what is most likely to be seen here. Given that the Nexus program has stood as the pinnacle of the Android environment more so than just simply being "reference" hardware it does seem logical to me that Google would want to escalate the quality and produce a true flagship. That being said, this is also atypical and as much as it plays into the trend of higher quality for the entire ecosystem, it also undermines their tenant of simply finding hardware which promotes the qualities that the OS does. In the end it is most likely I will still buy the phone, but still, on morals, I dislike the anticipated pricing.

Why the storage on all high end phones is stuck at 64gb? I honestly would like to have more storage space.

Help drive adoption of Google cloud storage would be my guess.

For Google/Apple it makes sense, but this is the case with all the handset manufacturers. Like, what does HTC, LG etc have to gain by limiting storage size?

Lower price points.

SD card support would be even better.

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).

It has always been standard for Nexus phones to not have SD card expansion [1]. Whether it is justifiable is up for debate. I've always assumed the main reason is so they can sell people overpriced storage upgrades and push people into buying a new device.

[1] http://www.androidcentral.com/why-nexus-devices-have-no-sd-c...

1. The Nexus line is supposed to be something like Google's Android reference device, and implements the minimum common set of features -- up-to-date computing hardware and screen, reasonable-resolution cameras, standard set of sensors (GPS, acceleration, etc.). An SD card slot doesn't really add any technical possibilities.

2. Google probably wants to push the idea that any storage beyond local apps should be to the cloud.

(which is comically unviable in Canada, where you're paying $25-50 per 1 GB of mobile data)

---

I recently got a Nexus 5 after a long search for a replacement for my stalwart iPhone 3GS. The lack of SD card was the primary sticking point, and caused me days of choice-agony. In the end, price and "cleanliness" (stock android, lack of shitware, doesn't fight software customization very hard) won out.

With the increase in price and out-of-the-gate contract subsidies, the Nexus line has now transitioned from a developer-targeted effort to a full-fledged mass-consumer brand.

Having said that, this transition demands that they compete with the iPhones and Samsungs. Taking that into account they should've released an additional 4.5" phone, along with the 6". This could steal away the people who hesitated in getting the 4.7" iPhone 6 due to the size, and if someone is into getting a humongous 5.5 inch iPhone 6 Plus, they'd be even more into getting a 6" device with not much larger physical dimensions. The goal should be find the perfect two offers to cover the whole spectrum of buyers.

Probably the Nexus 5 will remain in production as the smaller alternative. It's going to run Android L so the user experience should be similar.

Well, I want to see it, and hold it, but I fear the size is probably too big for my small hands, and I know the price is too big. The battery being big is nice, but with a screen that size I don't believe the battery life claims until I see independent reviews.

Given that the battery isn't removable too, this makes for a very shitty development phone. (What do we do if it freezes? How do we hard-remove power?) I think this won't do.

I'm also rather disappointed this isn't the Snapdragon 810 or 808. For a phone this expensive, it doesn't measure up.

Overall this is not what I hoped for from a new Nexus. Perhaps Android Silver will deliver something better, but I doubt the Nexus 6 will be my next phone.

> Given that the battery isn't removable too, this makes for a very shitty development phone.

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.

For me, the biggest surprise here is that it will be available on Verizon.

I thought that Verizon and Google parted ways permanently for the Nexus line after Verizon botched the Galaxy Nexus so badly in 2011 - this is the first Nexus available on Verizon since then.

Anyone remember the HP Veer? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Veer

This phone was advertised for beeing as small as a credit card. Now Nexus 6 is as tall as a whole opened wallet.

So it's announced, and the price is a surprising $649, nearly double the price of the Nexus 5 ($349). I suspect the Nexus 5 will continue to fill the "budget development" niche.

In fact, now that I've seen the official N6 specs, I'm going to go ahead and order an N5 to replace my Galaxy Nexus because I need a device that does BLE. In a couple of years, perhaps it will be time to upgrade to a refurb N6 or maybe a less expensive N6.5, if they decide to go back to the loss-leader pricing of the older Nexus models.

I'm disappointed that the N6 doesn't come with memory expansion. A MicroSD slot might have tipped the scales for me.

What keeps me off buying another Playstore device is Google's terrible customer support, especially before they can command such a premium price. I have an unresponsive Nexus 4. I cannot just send it in for warranty repair. In order to return it, I have to go through a list of steps on their website, then get on a phoneline on which they state I have to wait for 45 minute to get a customer rep. Often the line is interrupted. I haven't been able to get my number for two weeks now.

Eric Schmidt recently said in Germany that Amazon is their biggest competitor. For that to be true, they need to seriously up their support.

Weird. I returned a Nexus 4 last year and got faultless support. I was gobsmacked.

Same here. Google's support phone line has been second to none.

Same, between me and my parents, we've replaced three Nexus 4s, all really easily without issue.

Really? I had the mic go out on my N5 at one point. Support was perfect. They sent me a new phone, I sent mine in, and everything was beautiful.

I am sure they will exchange it, but the key problem is the support system which requires me to speak to them in person to initiate the exchange process. The waiting time is never less than 35 minutes. I have a few dev devices and always have to go through this. There is no alternative system in place. And I always have to go through a lengthy process to even get the phone number. On Amazon I can do everything online in a number of ways and get called by their customer rep.

At no point was I ever required to talk to a person. I did mine entirely through email.

I have no idea what kind of bizarro world you seem to be dealing with.

Germany = Bizarro World

This one is huge...And seems like Google didn't upgrade their Nexus 5 model?

As a Nexus 5 owner, I can see why. It's by no means obsolete (runs the newest games still, very smooth and fast, great screen), and easily has the nicest 'feel' of any phone I've ever used...

I still thinks a better camera is necessary.

However I agree even without any upgrade, nexus 5 will still be one of the most cost-effective phones out there, only a little bit disappointed.

1440x2560 leaves my laptop in the dust. That's insane... I want that kind of resolution for my laptop too!

Seems kind of big for a phone though. This Nexus 4 that I have is about as large a phone as I'd want.

There is a missed opportunity in the tagline. Instead of "More space to explore" it should have said "More space for Activities". Because, you know, the Activity class.

What is this obsession with having to use the phone with one hand? I have big hands and even with iPhone4/Nexus One I found myself using two hands to get things done more quickly.

As I see it, there are tree reasons for ridiculous six inches.

1) To fit a larger battery, better screen, more horsepower, better camera with OIS they just have to make them bigger.

2) Nexus line has gone out of control and people instead of buying other phones are queuing up for nexuses which initially were meant to be just reference devices for new android oses. Instead they became so popular that had an impact on sales of other Android devices.

3) They got focus groups or questions all wrong.

I remember being mocked when talking on my Treo 180 due to its size when fully open...I find the increased dimensions of new phones amusing in this light.

I'm still looking for a replacement for my Nexus One that matches three criteria: metal case, stock Android, not stupidly large. With the noticeable exception of the tiny amount of app storage the N1 still holds up well for my purposes.

I reckon they should have just gone with HTC for both tablet and phone.. it would have resulted in a much better outcome on the latter.

"Available for pre-order starting late october ..."

Sort of like "you can watch this movie as soon as you'll grow up ..."

Going to wait and see the reviews about the camera. The Nexus 5 had the absolute worst camera I've used in a smartphone. It takes 3 or 4 seconds to focus and gets unfocused super easily. I have so many terrible pictures and am embarrassed giving my phone to someone else to take a picture with.

Although I can't speak for all Android phones, in my opinion this is absolutely what the manufacturers need to focus on (hurhur) to compete with Apple.

It's true that it's hard to focus and it's by far not the best camera in the market but i take really nice pictures with it. I would say it's on pair of my wife S5.

The screen is a deal breaker for me too. I was super excited for this phone. It's a Moto X with all the stat bumps I really wanted. Sure the camera and battery are the weak points but both better than what I have in my 1st gen Moto X. But I don't want a phablet, so i'm out of luck.

> Camera

> 13MP front-facing with optical image stabilization > 2MP rear-facing

Is it really 13MP front-facing? Selfie optimization!

hopefully that is a typo (it was, it's been fixed already)

I caught this too. Must be a typo-switcheroo

I was confused by that too, seems they switched the definition of front and rear. The new "way" is used consistently also on the Nexus 9 and Nexus 5 tabs.

maybe that is a mistake made on purpose to get more people talking about it...

This is the real new selfie phone ;-)

Must be a typo (also in the German Translation)

It's a typo. If you click the blue <> button next to the specs you get more details, including the corrected version of this.

Dear Google, Please announce a 'Nexus 6 Mini' someday in the near future. Just trim the screen size to a sub 5" level and price to sub $400. Rest all features are welcome. The reduction in battery size proportionately is acceptable.

- Sincerely, A long time Nexus user !

Being a long time Android user with fairly large screens (+5"), I'm now using an iPhone 5C for three days and I really love its size. I guess that even the iPhone 6 is way too much for me. Around 4", it's the ideal size for me.

Many people don't realize that the Nexus 6 is not the next iteration in the Nexus line. It is Google's entry into the phablet market.

To me, the follow-up to the Nexus 5 is the Moto X. Decent specs, moderate price, stock Android, etc.

I'm casting my vote for "Screen Size Too Big!" I can't imagine using a device larger than the Nexus 5. I'll test out similar size phones in stores, but it looks like the size is a deal breaker.

The pricing is really high. Seems like Google is now no longer interested in forcing great phones out of Samsung/HTC etc. Now that great phones exist they raise the prices and no longer upset the hardware chain.

If I scroll to the "Introducing Lollipop, our sweetest release yet" section, there's a google now card for a coffee place I've been to recently (in Portland, OR for that matter ...).

It's uncanny...

That was weird for me too, I was just at heart last week.

I see that card as well!

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

Is RAM not a worthy technical specification to list? I think its pretty critical.

Until somebody corrects me I'll just assume this thing has the 1GB of RAM which is pretty standard these days.. But not enough IMHO

It has 3GB of RAM. http://www.motorola.com/us/Nexus-6/nexus-6-motorola-us.html#...

RAM really doesn't matter for most people, IME, at least after Project Svelte. For example, here's a video [0] of the Moto E (not G, but lower-class, 125$ E) outpacing a Samsung S5 at simple tasks like opening Facebook, etc.

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

What is the reason for nexus devices to not have fingerprint scanners?

Possibly because they're pointless.

really? I absolutely love it on my iPhone 6!

Really. They've been demonstrated to be easy to break. You leave your impossible-to-change fingerprints (basically your permanent "password") lying around everywhere you go. I'm quite happy that android manufacturers aren't encouraging users to think that profligate "security" is a feature.

http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2013/ccc-breaks-apple-touchid

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/1999/08/biometrics_...

Looks like they took the design that was widely praised with the Moto X and used it for the Nexus 6. The Nexus 6 looks like just a bigger version of the X (obviously better specs).

Using the N5 I already have a problem distinguishing the top from the bottom at a glance. I'm sure with the new design this will be much more than a minor nuisance.

I've found I flip my phone around less with the N5 compared to other phones. The little white earpiece thing gives both a tactile and visual cue.

Although a bit too big for my liking (still using a Galaxy S2) I wonder if that LCD will be in the next Oculus Rift iteration, having 1280x1440px per eye!

Deckard, I need your magic, I need my old Blade Runner.

What model are they?

Nexus 6

The one thing I've waited for is the DSP support so I can just say "OK Google" and go instead of having to do a long-press.

I still have heard no word on whether this will support a Moto X like 'always on listening'. Anyone can comment on that?

I guess all icons are going to have to be SVG to scale on these new devices, otherwise they are going to be impossible to see.

Yet, Android doesn't support SVG.

How does it support icon sizes - multiple resolutions stored in a single format?

You can provide resources in multiple sizes, and Android will also scale as needed

https://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_suppor...

Shame they didn't release a new Nexus 7.

My main gripe is lack of memory. Since it has no sd card, it should have at least 128GB like the iPhone 6.

$650!!!! for that price, i'll get me two nexus 5.. this way I can talk to myself, never get lonely....

Well I'm not letting one anywhere near me until someone runs the Voight-Kampff test on them.

great ... I'm in Japan (signed into Google/Gmail in English) and the whole page is in Japanese without any obvious way. Great Job Google ...! (sorry for the rant, my Japanese is not so bad now, still it annoys me ...happens very often with google pages)

Did you find a solution? I also have the same problem.

no except using VPN or Tor :S ... great!

Any news yet on whether Verizon is going to fumble it as badly as they did the Galaxy Nexus?

Anyone knows how I can display this page in english? For some reason it displays in french.

"4 inches in a smartphone? That's too large!" /Everyone, 2008/

There's a typo in the spec area where they mixed up front and rear cameras

This thing has a screen resolution higher than my laptop, and 4x the RAM...

You're probably misreading the flash space (32 or 64GG) as RAM. Either that or you only have 750MB of RAM.

You're right. They list storage as "memory". How much RAM does this thing actually have?

For those looking who were looking for a new Android and disappointed by this release, have you considered the Galaxy Alpha? http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_alpha-6573.php

Does this mean they won't be releasing a new 5" nexus this year?

    Display
    5.96” 1440 x 2560 display (493 ppi)

Insane!

1440 x 2560 is becoming more common. LG G3 has the same resolution but a higher pixel density (538 ppi). Samsung also has a 1440 x 2560 phone.

Hey jclark, I read some of your comments on another thread and wanted to ask how extensive your knowledge on optics is. We might be interested in looking for someone to help us consult in this subject. If it's something you might be interested in please email me at louis8989 at gmail dot com thanks

2560 x 1440 - that's the resolution of my 27" monitor.

Finally, a Motorola Nexus! A mighty succesor to the Moto X-es.

The Moto X has been a Nexus-ish device at carrier prices. This is an actual Nexus device, still at carrier prices.

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).

Pricing and more info here: http://motorola-blog.blogspot.de/2014/10/nexus-6-from-google...

Looks like buying the one plus one was the smarter choice.

off topic (i think)

for a "phone" that has 493ppi, you expect the site introducing the phone to be retina ready (couple of images and the favicon)

Nexus 9 as well.

Completely off-topic, but I can't help but notice how posting a new-device link gives you a lot more Karma in one day than I earned in a few years. :)

localized version without an option to change the language? really are they smoking crack?

The price killed it for me :-(

Come on, stop with making bigger and bigger phones.

I do not think, this is how technology should evolve.

Wasn't Nexus 6 the last model of replicants in Blade Runner? Just sayin'...

3220 mAh battery. Wow.

No Wireless charging?

Google's spec don't list it but Motorola's claim it does support Qi: https://www.motorola.com/us/Nexus-6/nexus-6-motorola-us.html...

comparing with N5, obviously it's too expensive.

Does this have a flash? I can't see one, unless I am being dumb?

Not sure why the downvotes, but I can't see a flash at all on the back of that thing.

that is one thick phone.

Likely due to the larger 3200mAh battery, compared to 1800mAh for the iPhone 6.

I've been dying for a thicker phone in exchange for better battery life for quite a while now. Seems like this phone might negate a lot of that benefit with the much larger screen, but I wish more phones were willing to make that trade-off.

for $650, i'll pass...unless nexus 6 can answer my emails for me.

i can't fit this phone into my pocket. i guess im gonna wait till nexus 4 or 5 drops in prices and buy that instead.

The nexus font is too big on the back of the phone.

Whatever version it is. NEWS is best. NORTH OR EAST WORLD IS BEST!!!

Another beautiful device and it is only at the cost of your privacy.

Can you elaborate?

I think he's saying he rather use a landline, so they can't pin point his location via GPS

You would need a very long cord for that land line for that to be an effective countermeasure! I think it is just generic Google-hatred.

Well, you can still follow a cord...

No, he has a point. If the cord is long enough, whoever is following it will get tired and turn around.

Also you can tie the person up with the cord.

why not just generic mobile-phone hatred?

they are all privacy intrusive in some way or another.

it's not all Brand Y vs. Brand X.

I think he's saying that in the last few years Google has become extremely thirsty for all king of user data. Their latest Android apps by default send a ton of personal data to the Google servers. E.g. the Android keyboard periodically uploads a list of the hundred most often typed words, unless you go to settings and disable this "feature".

I think he's saying that any modern phone has firmware on it that has the keys owned by a third party other than the purchaser of the hardware. Anyone with the keys can potentially be 'thirty for user data', which may include "Peaceful-country-turned-regime's" 's, new owners.

No I was merely stating the Google's business model is subsidised via owning your data. Which then they can manipulate/share at their discretion. Which is fine because you get an affordable piece of tech right? ... right? ...

It's true. There's no selective control of permissions per app on Android. This is a glaring omission. Eg, granting permission for the app to use the internet, while denying access to your address book. This is important for maintaining control of your private data.

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

(off topic) hey @exodust, don't forget to codepen some examples of ur web approach! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8349825

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