HUAWEI NEXUS 6P

Huawei Nexus 6P

Nexus goes metal, and it’s great.

It’s time to throw everything you thought you knew about Nexus phones out the window. For the first time, we’re actually interested in a Nexus as a worthy piece of hardware. And that’s discounting the warm, gooey bit at its core that is Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

With the Nexus 6P, Google and Huawei have finally made a Nexus phone that can truly be called premium. Build quality feels absolutely topnotch, and we’d put its allaluminium body in the same league as Samsung’s latest Galaxy line of phones. Rumors about spontaneous cracking of the camera window and an unflattering bend test notwithstanding, these so far remain unsubstantiated, and we really wouldn’t worry too much about them.

The screen is an AMOLED display with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels, which translates to a pixel density of 518ppi. This puts it slightly behind phones with smaller displays like the Galaxy S6 (577ppi), but on par with the Galaxy Note 5. In fact, the team behind the Nexus 6P confirmed that it uses the latest generation display panels from Samsung, so it might very well be the same as that used on the Note 5.

As is typical of AMOLED screens, colors can appear a tad bit oversaturated, which should endear it to those who prefer vibrant, punchy colors. However, if you enable the sRGB color mode, the colors immediately become more muted but also more accurate, which is just the way we like it.

The front-facing stereo speakers are also a welcome feature, but while they were certainly loud enough, they were otherwise unremarkable.

One of the standout features on the Nexus 6P is its excellent fingerprint sensor, dubbed Nexus Imprint. The lack of a home button means that the sensor has been relocated to a nifty little depression on the back of the phone. You may need some time getting used to it if you’re used to a home-button sensor, but you’ll eventually find that the new placement is a cinch.

The sensor’s performance was also just about flawless. In our time with the phone, it read and registered our prints in a heartbeat, regardless of the orientation. In fact, we found that we didn’t even have to perfectly cover the sensor to get our print recognized.

Another key implementation is a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer (only USB 2.0