Huawei Nexus 6P Quick Review

Huawei has been making successive wins this year with several great handsets, starting with the P8 and followed by the Mate S. They also became a serious player in the smartwatch market with the introduction of the Huawei Watch (all sold out within 2 days of release in the Philippines). To cap the year off, their partnership with Google for the Nexus program resulted into the Nexus 6P, the most powerful Nexus device to be ever released.

The model that is release din the Philippines is the one with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage in either gold or black colors.

The Nexus 6P took off from the original Nexus 6 which was manufactured by Motorola a year ago. While the Nexus 6 was a full 6 inches, the Nexus 6P is is a little smaller at 5.7 inches. Unlike the Nexus 6 which only has a metal frame and polycarbonate back panel, the Nexus 6P has a unibody metal body which attributes it to a rather hefty 178-gram weight. It has the same profile and look as the Galaxy Note 5 but has some unique subtleties.

The power button is on the right side along with the volume controls while the micro-SIM card slot is found on the left side. The SIM card tray is actually large enough to carry another slot for the microSD card but they just covered that up. Would have been nice if Huawei that went with it since they’re one of the first to actually popularize dual-SIM functionality in high-ends phones.

Up top is the 3.5mm audio port while the charging port is found at the bottom. The Nexus 6P actually features the new USB Type-C which very rare these days with only the OnePlus 2 as the other handset we’ve reviewed that also had it. This allows the handset to be charged very fast and transfer bigger files quickly. Also, the device can do reverse-charging — meaning one Nexus 6P can charge another device.

The back panel has a flat metal surface which matte finish that slightly slightly curves towards the corners. There’s a strip of black glass at the top corner that houses the 13-megapixel camera and the two LED flashes. The design is intentional to allow the built-in antennas to broadcast with little interference. This is evident with those plastic stripes along the edges as well as another similarly sized strip of plastic at the bottom that provides the gaps from the metal chassis.

There is a small slit just below the glass strip that serves as a rear microphone for noise-cancellation. The fingerprint scanner, called Nexus Imprint, is placed in a small circular depressed section in the middle of the rear panel. The placement allows you to reach the scanner with your index finger while holding the phone. Since Android 6.0 now natively support fingerprint scanners, the Nexus Imprint supports up to 5 unique prints and can be used to login to sites and 3rd-party accounts aside from just unlocking the phone. The scanner is pretty fast and accurate too.

Below the scanner is a huge Nexus logo printed vertically with a smaller Huawei logo just beneath it.

The front panel is completely covered with Gorilla Glass 4 that spans from edge to edge. There are two slits near the top and bottom end of the display to make way for the speakers.

The 5.7-inch AMOLED display has a quad HD resolution (2560×1440 pixels) that gives it a pixel density of 515ppi (the same as the Note 5 and S6 Edge+). It’s very crisp and clear, with deep black and high contrast.

The Nexus 6P uses a Snapdragon 810 chip that uses a dual quad-core processor. The faster set is a Cortex A57 that runs up to 2.0GHz while the more power-efficient set is a Cortex A53 running at 1.55GHz. This is the same processor we’ve seen in the OnePlus 2 and the Xperia Z5 which is currently one of the best chipsets out there. The unit also has 3GB of RAM which is just enough for multitasking and a lot of memory-intensive applications.

Benchmark scores revealed a top score of 53,411 on Antutu 5.7.1 (the number shot up to 75,770 on Antutu 6.0) and around 21,991 on Quadrant Standard.

Antutu Benchmark: 53,411
Quadrant Standard: 21,991
PCMark: 4,455
Vellamo: (2,105 Multicore; 1,469 Metal, 3,260 Chrome)

The Antutu score of 53,411 is just about right and sits between the scores of the OnePlus 2 and the LG G Flex 2, both of which are running the same Snapdragon 810 chip (note that the new Antutu 6.0 produces a different and much higher score that we cannot compare with our chart so we used version 5.7.1).

Being a Nexus device, the Nexus 6P comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow right out of the box. In terms of look and design, it’s still almost similar to Lollipop with a few changes here in there. The App drawer has been re-designed, as well as the SMS interface and the voice dialer. Most of the improvements are actually under the hood so the cosmetic difference is not that much.

The 13MP rear camera of the Nexus 6P is actually the same as the one found on the Nexus 5X so expect the same superb quality, even on low-light shots:

(More on this in our full review.)

Another impressive feature on the Nexus 6P is the dual front-facing speakers. Very few handsets have this implementation and it was first introduced by HTC in their One series (called Boom Sound). Sound quality is very good, volume levels are high and we also get some relatively good bass though not as deep as the one in our HTC One M8.

The Nexus 6P is a great balance between form and performance. It’s got everything spot on in terms of design, material and build quality as well as performance. Check back with us next week as we give you a more in-depth analysis in our full review.

Huawei Nexus 6P specs:
5.7-inch WQHD AMOLED Display, 2560 x 1440 @ 515ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 4
Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 octa-core 64-bit processor
3GB RAM
64GB internal storage
12.3-megapixel rear camera with dual-LED flash
4K video recording
8-megapixel front camera
4G/LTE
WiFi 802.11ac
Bluetooth 4.1
GPS w/ A-GPS, GLONASS
Dual Front-facing speakers
MicroUSB Type-C port
Nexus Imprint
3,450mAh Li-Po battery
Android 6.0 Marshmallow
159.4 x 77.8 x 7.3mm (dimensions)
178 grams (weight)

The Huawei Nexus 6P is now available in stores for a suggested retail price of Php29,990USD 511INR 43,324EUR 487CNY 3,722. It’s available in black and gold with 3GB RAM and 64GB storage.

You can also read our full review of the Nexus 5X here.