Google Nexus 6P
It is a successor to the Nexus 6 featuring a number of major changes, including an all-aluminum based body that is thinner and lighter than the Nexus 6, a rear fingerprint reader called Nexus Imprint, a faster octa-core Snapdragon 810 v2.1 system-on-chip (SoC), an AMOLED display, better cameras, enhanced LTE connectivity, a reversible USB Type-C dock connector, and the removal of wireless charging.
The Nexus 6P along with the Nexus 5X serve as launch devices for Android 6.0 "Marshmallow", which introduces a refreshed interface, performance and battery life improvements, Google Now on Tap integration, a fine-grained permission model, fingerprint verification, and other new features.
History
The Nexus 6P is the first Nexus phone that Google has chosen to co-develop with a Chinese company, Huawei. Images of the device first leaked in September 2015, showing an aluminum design with a raised bar on the top of the device containing a camera.
After the Nexus 6P was officially unveiled on 29 September 2015 at a press event at Left Space Studios in San Francisco by Android Engineering VP Dave Burke, It was made available with the 32 GB model starting at a price of $499.
Unlike most other phones, the Nexus 6P was noted to have had an unusually short design and development period of seven months. Significant effort went into improving the design of the Nexus 6P compared to its predecessor, with Google exercising a considerable amount of design influence. Google engineers mention that an effort was made to improve the ergonomics of one-handed use of the phone by shrinking the screen to 5.7 inches, and a singular bump on the Nexus 6 was changed to a horizontal strip in order to avoid the potential of the phone spinning when lying on a flat surface. There was push back on certain design elements, notably the centering of the Single Reversible USB Type-C charging port. Huawei VP of R&D described the Nexus 6P as a dream project, despite the challenges including the short development cycle, technological complexities in introducing a phone with the LTE bands to target the global market, and the design difficulties in an all aluminum phone.
Further information: Android (operating system)
The phone arrives running Android OS version 6.0 "Marshmallow". Compared to Android OS 5.0, the most significant changes include a new permissions architecture that allows for fine-grained control of app permissions instead of bulk permission granting during app install, and Google Now on Tap, an ability to perform a Google search based on the information currently displayed by holding down on the home button.
Due to the popularity of fingerprint based authentication, there is now support for an official fingerprint API that allows users to unlock their phones and perform app purchases in Google Play. Android "Marshmallow" also allows website owners to set a preferred app to open their links in, and allows users greater control over this behavior. Sharing has been improved with a feature called "Direct Share", which allows information to be sent to a contact directly, rather than to a third party app first. On screen volume controls have also been simplified, with more extensive control exposed via a tap. Text selection has been redesigned to show a floating toolbar next to the highlighted text, replacing the actionbar which existed on the top of the screen in previous versions of Android.
Android "Marshmallow" includes a battery life enchaining feature called "Doze Mode" that suspends network access, disables sync and scheduled jobs for suspended apps during periods when the phone is inactive.
Hardware
The Nexus 6P features an octa-core Snapdragon 810 v2.1 system-on-chip (SoC) with four ARM Cortex-A57 cores at 1.95 GHz and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores at 1.55 GHz in a big.LITTLE architecture. The SoC includes an Adreno 430 GPU including support up to OpenGL ES 3.1.
The Nexus 6P has 3 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, which has lower energy consumption compared to the LPDDR3 utilized in the Nexus 6. Available storage sizes include options of 32, 64, or 128 GB of internal storage. The storage used is Samsung manufactured eMMC 5.0 multi-level cell NAND flash fabricated at 10 nm.
Similar to the previous Nexus 6, the Nexus 6P also uses an AMOLED display manufactured by Samsung. The screen has a WQHD (2560 by 1440 pixels) resolution at 518 ppi. It has a reduced size of 5.7 inches which contributes to improved accessibility. The AMOLED screen used is the same generation but lower binned compared to those used in the Samsung Note 5, the latest available as of the time of release. Benchmarks conducted by AnandTech indicates that this results in a screen power efficiency that is in-between that of the Note 5 and Note 4. It was found that the phone contains a sRGB mode in "Developer Options" that increased color accuracy by lowering saturation.
The battery has a 3450 mAh capacity and uses a USB Type-C connector for charging.
The Nexus 6P has a rear facing Sony Exmor IMX377 sensor with f/2.0 aperture, that can take 12.3-megapixel (4032 by 3024 pixels) photos. The sensor has a large pixel size of 1.55 micron which assist photography in low light conditions. It is capable of recording video at 4K resolution, as well as slow-motion 720p video capture at 240 fps. The front facing camera has a Sony Exmor IMX179 8.08 megapixel sensor with a f/2.4 aperture lens. The IMX179 was previously used in the rear camera of the Nexus 5.
The back of the phone includes a round fingerprint recognition sensor branded Nexus Imprint below the camera. It is based on the low power FPC1025 sensor developed by Fingerprint Cards AB that can read dry or wet fingerprints in 360-degrees, with a resolution of 508 dots per inch.
Sensor wise, a TMD27723 digital ambient light and proximity sensor from ams is present on the front of the device. Internally, there exists a Bosch Sensortec BMI160 inertial measurement unit containing an accelerometer and gyroscope, a Bosch BMM150 geomagnetic sensor, and a Bosch BMP280 barometric pressure sensor.
In order to save power, Google has introduced what it calls an 'Android Sensor Hub'. It is a low-power secondary processor and its purpose is to monitor the device's movement by connecting directly to the accelerometer, gyroscope, fingerprint reader, and camera's sensors. This chip runs advanced activity-recognition algorithms that allows it to interpret activities and gestures independently of the main processor. The main CPU needs to only be engaged when something happens that requires more attention. The Sensor Hub recognizes when the device has been picked up and will automatically display notifications in a low-power white-on-black text until the screen has been properly activated. Additionally, the Sensor Hub stack also supports hardware sensor batching, a feature introduced in KitKat that permits sensors for a short period of time to delay handing off non-critical data to the operating system – as opposed to sending a constant stream of data to the CPU that results in the use of more power. Sensor batching has been used in step counters and therefore does not require the main processor to constantly remain awake as each step is measured.
Design
It is 159.3 millimetres (6.27 in) high, 77.8 millimetres (3.06 in) wide, and 7.3 millimetres (0.29 in) deep, compared to the Nexus 6, which is 159.3 millimetres (6.27 in) high, 82.9 millimetres (3.27 in) wide, and 10.1 millimetres (0.40 in) deep; making the Nexus 6P both thinner and less wide than the Nexus 6. Weight wise, it is 6 grams lighter (178g compared to 184g) than the Nexus 6.
The screen is protected by a panel of Gorilla Glass 4, while the back and sides are aeronautical-grade anodized aluminum. There is a rear bump that spans the width of the phone that houses the camera sensor, LED flash, laser auto focus, NFC coil, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular antennas. Internally this bump was called a "visor".
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