Huawei Nexus 6P: Full Review

When I first saw the initial leaks of the Nexus 6P, I was unimpressed and almost entirely set on getting the 5X as my next device. That was true, at least, until Google announced the prices and specs of these phones. The Nexus 6P is a much better bang for your buck, and I'd consider it the best possible smartphone on the market right now.

The fingerprint sensor, called Nexus Imprint, is insanely fast and accurate. Having it on the back may be an interesting change for people who are used to having it on the home button like Apple and Samsung, but personally, I like it on the back better. My finger naturally reaches it when I pick it out of my pocket and a lot of the time it's already unlocked when I bring it up to my face. To unlock from a tap of the fingerprint sensor, it takes just around one second. I timed it. When it is unlocked it directly goes past the lock screen, which is really handy.

The front facing speakers are another high point I thought I'd never use. I'm really used to using headphones all the time, but a few days ago I sure was glad I had these speakers when my friends asked someone to play some music and I knew my phone could produce the best and loudest sound.

The camera may not have the most megapixels, having a modest 12.3. But it does definitely get the job done by having a much larger pixel than other phones. When the pixels the camera takes are larger, this means it can let more light in. The result is better low-light pictures and all pictures are more vibrant. This is the best phone camera I've ever owned.

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The metal body feels incredibly premium. I have absolutely no complaints there. I chose to get the graphite model, and my only complaint about it is that the black sort of hides the diamond cut edges of it. In pictures, the aluminium model looks much nicer there. The reason I chose to get the graphite version instead of any other color is because I thought it would look better with a dbrand skin. I feel like a skin or case is required with this phone, because the metal is fairly thin and dents easily. That combined with the slippery surface makes for a bad combination for drops. 

The battery definitely gets the job done. Whether it's better or worse than my OnePlus One which was famous for its great battery life, I cannot say. It definitely gets me through the day with at least 4 hours of screen-on time. I've only had one issue with the battery life, and that was caused by a Google Play services bug which caused it to keep my device awake. Weird, but not unheard of. A reinstallation of Play services fixed the issue. Marshmallow's Doze and App Standby features can result in completely flat lines of battery usage over hours of non-use. 

I don't know whether it's Marshmallow, the phone, or a combination of the two, but the 6P is incredibly fast and smooth. I've never used a phone this fast before. Marshmallow's added animation refines what Lollipop set out to do and makes the experience much smoother. When I first got the phone I ran a quick AnTuTu benchmark, with the 6P earning 70924. While that isn't the best ranking around, it sure stacks up to the competition.

I'm incredibly happy with this phone, and I have to say, the fact that it's a Nexus is the best thing about it. I didn't get Nexus Protect, but the ability to have your phone protected for 2 accidental drops is incredibly comforting for those who do. One week after I purchased my 6P, the price dropped $50 on the Google Store. I wasn't worried, because I knew Google Nexus had a famous reputation for keeping their customers happy. From giving price change refunds to repairing Nexus 5 screens for free, Nexus has had a long history of great customer service. Sure enough, one five minute online chat with customer support resulted in $50 being refunded. I didn't have to do anything except message them. They even wished me a merry Christmas! If only every company could be this good to their customers.

Overall, I give the Huawei Nexus 6P a 10/10. There isn't much wrong with this phone. Newest possible clean software, well sufficient specifications, nifty features such as the fingerprint sensor, and the Nexus brand makes this a phone anyone would love to have. It's a pleasant experience for both the techie and the common buyer. If you're looking for a new phone, definitely consider the Nexus 6P, which is now $50 off on the Google Store!

Buy

Quest for a Rootless Experience

I've been rooted since the early days of my Nexus 4. It's just been a way of life for me. Why change it? Well, I got to wondering. Maybe all the things I'm doing to my phone don't really need to be done. Do you know how many bugs, crashes, and headaches have resulted from my tinkering? A lot. And now that I've had the opportunity to start fresh again thanks to my new Nexus 6P, I'm going to try the stock route. No root. No ROMs. Locked bootloader. But how will I survive without the root apps I've come to love?

First issue was battery life. I used apps like Greenify to help my battery in previous phones, but thankfully, Marshmallow already has me covered there. Although Greenify does indeed make Marshmallow's Doze feature better, you don't need root to use it! (You can find my post about that here.) Doze and app standby introduced in Marshmallow do many of the things root apps tried to do in Lollipop.

Second, I missed some features from my custom ROM days. Namely, the ability to skip tracks using the volume keys while the display is off. This is super handy when I'm driving or when I don't want to pull it out of my pocket just to change the song. I spent all day looking for solutions. There were many solutions for rooted devices, for sure. Many threads ending with "just flash a custom ROM!" Thank God for app developers, because as they say, there's an app for that. The app Pocket Skip Track does exactly what I was looking for. Sure, it requires root to have the "hold-down" method of changing songs, but you can still activate it with a single press or double press, which is good enough for me.

As for customization? Marshmallow has more of that than ever before. Sure, there are still a bunch of things you can't customize without root, but there sure is a lot you can do. If you hold down the settings icon under your quick settings, you'll see it begins to spin. Hold it down long enough and you'll unlock the "secret" System UI Tuner. This allows you to rearrange your quick settings, show a battery percentage, and disable status bar icons. Features included in many custom ROMs. That and a nice launcher like Nova is good enough for me.

Lastly, Tasker. I wrongly placed Tasker in my best root apps list. There are some functions that require root, but most of them don't. I honestly never knew this until after I tried to use it rootless. Many of my profiles could just be transferred over! No worries. Awesome profiles like having my phone go silent at school, automatically connect to bluetooth, enable auto-rotate in certain apps, and go silent when face down make Tasker one of the most powerful non-root apps. Period.

Point is, there's a lot you can do without root that you wouldn't expect. It just takes a little more work. Whether I'll stay on the rootless side depends. There are many things you can't achieve without root. Many things to miss out on. But I'll try to stick with it, if only to prove a point.

Rootless 'Aggressive Doze' from Greenify Saves Battery on Android 6.0 Devices

I assumed with the introduction of Android Marhsmallow's battery improvements, I wouldn't need Greenify anymore. After all, what could they do that Doze hasn't already done? The Greenify developer has been on top of updates, trying to keep his app relevant across versions. The new "Aggressive Doze" feature is another one of Greenify's amazing attempts to keep your battery full. Doze is a feature introduced in Android 6.0, which drastically lowers the amount of background processes used when the device is asleep. In order for Doze to activate, your device has to be immobile on a flat surface for quite a long time. (Some sources say around an hour.) Greenify's Aggressive Doze causes Doze to, well, act more aggressively. It shuts off extra sensors while in Doze mode and activates as soon as your device is immobile and the screen is off. Some users report excellent standby time. Others report crippling bugs. But the most interesting part? It's available without rooting your device.

Now, I haven't done too much testing, but on the surface it seems awesome. I've tested the most recent Beta 3 version and, strangely, it felt like it had more bugs than the Beta 1 version. Beta 3 caused the system time to lag behind the actual time or freeze after entering Doze mode for a while. Beta 1 hasn't had this problem. Here is a little battery graph (which should be taken with a grain of salt. This is only one trial.) that describes my experience turning it on half way through the day. (Beta 1)

The red line is a line of best fit describing how the graph would look, roughly, if I continued without activating Aggressive Doze. The green line is a prediction of the graph continuing with Aggressive Doze enabled. Like I said, these results are in no way scientific, but you can clearly see a difference in battery life here.

A few issues are to be expected. For example, only apps that use high priority Google Cloud Messaging will be able to break through Doze mode and wake the device. Some apps don't support this. Luckily, you can disable battery enhancements through Android's settings for specific apps if you find this issue. Aggressive Doze is an experimental feature and should be treated as such, but still, it's amazing such things can be accomplished without root. 

Apple Sets New Lows with Its New 'Smart' Battery Case

Battery cases have been around since battery life became a problem, aka since the conception of smartphones. They can be useful for when you want that extra bit of juice but don't want to carry around a power brick. Apple just recently decided that they would jump on this, announcing a battery case for their iPhone in response to the lackluster reviews of the iPhone 6s's battery. But unfortunately, it's one of Apple's biggest design, engineering, and product failures ever. (Right up there with the Apple Watch and MacBook 2015.)

This new battery case has been infamous for its ugly hump on the back. Instead of rounding it out to match the width and height of the phone, Apple went for a "pop-out" approach similar to what they did with the iPhone 6s camera. Something not big enough? Let's just have it stick out the back instead of having a flush surface! That's not the only design issue, though. Apple also made the absolutely stupid decision of having an LED light inside the case to tell if it's charging. What use is that? Are you going to take your phone out of the case to make sure it's charging?

The battery case doesn't even match up to its competition. It won't even provide a full 100% charge, and you can't decide when it activates. The only thing that makes the case good is the ability to see the battery level on your iPhone, since it coordinates with the OS. This is once again Apple using its exclusive hold over their OS to sell their product.

Once again, it's $99! For a case! Even if it did what it's supposed to, that's hugely steep. You can get better ones, that actually fill your whole battery, for below $20 on Amazon. What is Apple doing? Does it just know people will buy it because it's Apple? This case is for people who don't want to think about anything, and just buy something that works. Even if that's over $80 more for a worse product. Apple's recent decisions have been like icebergs, and frankly, I can't wait to watch Apple sink.

Why I Just Upgraded to the Nexus 6P

That's right. Today I purchased the Huawei Nexus 6P for just over $500. (If this price seems odd to you, you should probably read my "Your 'Free' Smartphone Isn't Free, and Why You Should Buy Unlocked" post.) This is going to be replacing my OnePlus One, and seeing how competitive that phone was in the "last generation" of flagship smartphones, I'm going to be comparing it to the Nexus 6P in terms of features and specifications. The OnePlus One should serve as an example for the last generation of smartphones compared to the best of today. You should also be expecting a full review of the Nexus 6P as early as next week.

Comment from discussion [MKBHD] Pictures taken from the Nexus 6P.

First, the Nexus 6P has an amazing latest-gen Samsung Quad HD AMOLED display. If that's a lot of gibberish to you, let me explain. Samsung makes some of the best displays in the smartphone industry. Amazing colors, high DPI, the best technology. Quad HD (1440p) is 33%  higher resolution than the common 1080p found on the OnePlus One. OnePlus's 1080p display is also IPS LCD, which is generally considered worse than AMOLED. What makes AMOLED special is the fact that blacks are as pure as they can be. When a pixel is black on an AMOLED display, it is actually turned completely off. This makes for rich blacks and also saves battery.

The Nexus 6P's camera has been, surprisingly, heavily acclaimed by pretty much everyone. This is a huge change from the previous camera-related infamy of the Nexus brand. In fact, the camera is so good, it has climbed to the #3 ranked smartphone camera on dxomark.com. While it only has 12.3 megapixels, those pixels are considerably larger than most smartphone cameras.

The larger the pixels are, the more light is collected. This allows for better pictures all around. The 6P has been praised for its amazing low light performance, likely thanks to those large pixels. So while the 6P may not have the most megapixels, it sure takes some amazing pictures. It also has laser autofocus, which makes for quick and accurate focusing on objects. The OnePlus One, on the other hand, lacks this. It also has much worse low light performance.

The OnePlus One's build quality was praised for feeling good in the hand at a low price. Unfortunately, this just doesn't match up to the all metal build of the Nexus 6P. The OnePlus One had a new material called sandstone black, which had a unique texture to it. Problem was, it wore off fast and attracted lots of dirt. Not only that, but the "metal" edges around the One aren't even real metal. They're painted plastic. Talk about a let down. I've chipped mine from dropping it in one corner, revealing the very un-premium material underneath. The Nexus 6P has an all metal unibody, making it feel much more premium than anything else.

Source

Time to move on to things the 6P has that the One simply lacks. A fingerprint sensor, for one, is a major selling point to me. We unlock our phones dozens if not hundreds of times per day, I think it is a good investment to save that portion of your time from entering in passcodes. Not only does it have one, it's apparently ridiculously fast. (I'll confirm this when I test it.) The 6P also comes equipped with a USB-C port, which is considered to be the new standard in ports. It's also fast charging compatible, meaning you can get it from 0 to 100% in a flash.

Last but certainly not least, is the simple fact that this is a Nexus. You already know my disdain for OnePlus if you've read my first post, but if you don't want to read it, let me summarize it for you: It's just a bad company. They've been making terrible decisions since their inception. Nexus is a trusted brand owned by Google that delivers software updates as soon as they're available. OnePlus is a brand with infamous customer service and extremely slow and fragmented software updates. The choice here is simple. The Nexus 6P will be an amazing upgrade for me, and I can't wait to get my hands on it and review it here.

Unsourced images are from Google's official press event or the Nexus website.

Computer Literacy

I've found much of what makes computers possible isn't appreciated or understood by the general public. I'm going to help you understand some basic elements and terms of modern computers that are necessary in daily life.

Interface

Pixel: A tiny square on your display that only shows one color at a time.
Resolution: The amount of pixels something is. A general computer monitor is around 1920x1080 pixels, the more pixels the clearer your picture will be. Popular resolutions include, in order of largeness: 480p, 720p, 1080p, and 4K. There are resolutions different from these as well.
Bitmap: An image created out of specific pixel placement. A bitmap will look blurry if it is stretched out at a larger size than it was created.
Vector: An image created out of equations. These are generally simple and flat, used namely for icons. No matter what size they are stretched, they will always display as clearly as the resolution of the display allows.

Software

Operating System/OS: The underlying software that your computer runs. Desktop OS's include Windows, OS X, and Linux. Mobile OS's include Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.

Kernel: The software that allows the OS to communicate with the hardware. Decides sensitivity of touch input, how much power should be used for different tasks, etc.

Program: Coded object on a computer meant to preform a specific function.

Browser: A program that renders websites.

Hardware

Motherboard: Allows communication from all the different parts of the computer.

CPU/Processor: Preforms arithmetic functions.

GPU/Graphics card: Renders graphical interfaces.

RAM/Memory: Temporary memory of the computer. Holds things short term.

HDD/Hard drive: Stores large amounts of data for indefinite amounts of time. Uses moving parts, so it may be slower.

SSD/Solid state drive: Similar to HDD, but much faster. SSD's have no moving parts and are usually much more expensive.

Image source: American Museum of Science and Energy Oak Ridge Tennessee

Technology in Music

Technology in music is often seen as a bad thing from people who don't understand it. You'll frequently find people of the opinion that auto-tune and computer generated sounds becoming popular is something that destroys music as an art form. This simply isn't true.

Electronic music is at the highest point it's ever been in history, and while there is a fair share of uncreative dance music, in order to believe it is all like that you have to be willingly ignorant of the beautiful music created of this genre. I'll use Porter Robinson as an example. He started his career producing dance music to be played at popular festivals. Typical stuff to get people going. Over the past few years he has transitioned into using his talent in a more creative way, making music with meaning and experimental genre mixing. A great example of his transition is in his song Fellow Feeling, which describes his opinion on how popular electronic music sounds ugly to him. "Hear what I hear" preceding the industrial and "ugly" chorus, saying the ugliness will all die out, are all talking about mainstream electronic music. If it sounds ugly, that's because it's supposed to contrast with the beauty at the beginning.

Electronic music isn't only EDM. Dance music has its place. People want to get pumped up, but to think that all music made with a computer is made without creativity is ridiculous. If anything, electronic music requires more creativity than standard music production. Designing the individual sounds, combined with the infinite possibilities allowed with a computer makes it one of the most creative outlets music has ever had. 

Many other genres have also been heavily influenced by electronic music, namely pop, R&B, and alternative. Similar to electronic music, there is music of this genre meant to get people pumped up, but there is also music made with beauty and meaning. Below are just a few examples of what can be done from each genre.

Technology has opened up new doors for music and to undermine that by calling all electronically-influenced music talentless is an insult to artists everywhere. Amazing music is constantly getting released, and it's more accessible than ever thanks to services like YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, and more. Technology has not only made music better, but more accessible for everyone. 

Even Adobe Doesn't Want Flash Around Anymore

Adobe Flash dominated much of the web just a few short years ago. YouTube, advertisements, games, animations, and even random website banners used Flash because it was easy. Just two years ago I took a web design class through my high school that taught using Flash as a website banner to be acceptable. (That whole class was a mess, still using tables, but I digress.) Flash is a resource hog and a security risk to everyone. When HTML5 became heavily adopted as an alternative to Flash, it was clear what was going to win between them. Flash requires security updates, it's slow, it crashes, and isn't supported on mobile devices. For the web to be what it is, everyone needs to be able to access it quickly and efficiently. Flash is holding that back.

Adobe announced last night that it is finally acknowledging that Flash is falling behind its competitors, and suggests users switch to HTML5. Along with this, Adobe is renaming its Flash Professional CC application to Animate CC, indicating that it's trying to move away from the Flash branding and instead focus on general animation. While this isn't completely deprecating Flash, it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully soon Adobe will begin working with Google and Microsoft not just to deliver security updates for Flash, but to remove it from the web completely. Of course, this is up to developers, but I think some anti-Flash propaganda could easily persuade developers to not use it. There are already some trying to do this, such as Occupy Flash, which aim to increase public awareness against Flash and get them to disable it in their browsers.

Source: The Verge