Nexus 6P review: The best Nexus?

Since the launch of the Nexus hardware in India, Android fans here get to choose between the Nexus smartphones and products from various other manufacturers. This year's Nexus portfolio had two smartphones  - Nexus 5x and Nexus 6P . We had already reviewed the Nexus 5x and were not very impressed with the built and the design. The Nexus 6P is slightly expensive than the 5x but at Rs 39,990, is it the best Nexus smartphone?

Design: Manufactured by Huawei, the Nexus 6P has got a sleek, full metal body. Despite the metal body and housing a 5.7inch display, the Nexus 6P only weights 178 grams. It has got curved edges at the corners and the slight cut design on the side panels makes it comfortable to grip. There are two metal strips on the top and the bottom of the display for speakers. Power key and volume controls are on the right panel, auxiliary port on the top, SIM card tray on the left and the USB-Type C charging port at the bottom. There aren't any physical keys below the display. Instead, the home key, back key and multitasking key all pop up on the display. There is a raised camera module at the rear followed by a circular fingerprint scanner. On design it definitely scores full marks.

Performance: The Nexus 6P is a great device in terms of performance. It has got Android Marshmallow onboard and the overall interface looks neat. All the apps in the app tray are placed in one single page. One has to slide the window upwards to access mode app icons. I was able to search for the apps or even the app store from the search bar in the app tray. Moving beyond the user interface, the Nexus 6P has got a lot of power too. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor and is paired with 3GB of RAM. It smartly handles heavy graphic games such as Asphalt racing and many more. It smartly handles full HD video streaming too and switches between multiple running apps with ease. My only issue with the Nexus 6P is that it heats up while navigating or playing heavy graphic games. The fingerprint scanner at the rear works like a breeze.

Camera: The camera module at the rear of the Nexus 6P is an attention grabber. On a silver metal body, there is a black glass raised hump housing the 12.3MP rear camera. It has got the Sony sensor and comes with laser autofocus. The camera on the Nexus 6P is worth praising as it manages to capture rich and sharp images. The colours look natural but at times it does over-expose a few images. Low-light photography is just about average. You can also rely on HDR mode to shoot images. It can also capture 4k videos at 30 frames per second. The video quality was good and the sound is neatly captured. There is also an 8MP front facing camera which captures great selfies too.
Battery: With the 3450 mAh battery onboard, the Nexus 6P just manages to last me a day with average use. If you are a heavy user, you will have to carry its charger all the time. Similar to the Nexus 5x, even with this one the charging cable has got the Type C port on both the ends. But thankfully, the company has added a USB cable with Type C charging port to the box that helps in transferring data from the PC to the smartphone and vice versa.

Bag it or Junk it: One of the best Nexus smartphone I have used till date.

Price: Rs 39,990

Rating: 4.5/5

Plus: Camera, Performance

Minus: Heats up, Battery