For those of you who follow me, you’ll know that I’ve previously been quite outspoken about my dislike with some parts of the Nexus experience. Previous Nexus devices have always had a trade off in one department or another and in the case of the Nexus 5, the camera and battery life were the biggest let disappointments for me.
However, the overall Nexus experience has been really impressive as it achieved one not-so-easy task: it bought high end flagship specs to a mid-range price point and showed that it is possible to make a popular Android smartphone with flagship specs and offer it at a mid-range price. Yesterday Google launched this year’s new Nexus devices and one thing was apparent – they’ve decided to no longer make the Nexus the cost-effective range it was.
The two new devices are both very impressive in their own right – the hero device is without a doubt the Nexus 6 which brings a 5.96 inch Quad HD display, quad-core CPU, 13MP camera with Optical Image Stabilisation and a 3220 mAh battery. The Nexus 6 is made by Motorola and comes with Motorola’s Turbo Charging meaning a quick 15 minute battery top up can add up to 6 hours additional battery life.
The Nexus 9 is altogether a different device – made by HTC it offers a 8.9 QVGA (2048 x 1536 pixels) display with a premium metal finish on the sides. The screen has a 4:3 screen ratio instead of the traditional 16:9 ratio and the Nexus 9 also comes with HTC’s iconic BoomSound speaker technology. The key standout feature has to be the 64 bit NVIDIA processor – a first for the Nexus range – along with 2GB RAM and around 9 hours battery life. Both devices are the first to run Google’s new Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system and there’s nothing new about that – for the past few years, a new Nexus device has usually signalled the launch of a new version of Android but the key thing putting me off the Nexus range is.. the price.
In past years I would never have thought I’d be writing that the price of the new Nexus devices has turned me away but alas, whilst deciding to bring the bells and whistles to its Nexus range, Google has forgone the low-cost factor. There’s yet to be confirmed pricing for either device in the UK but we’ve already heard they’ll be available on O2 Refresh and given that the US pricing is $649 and $399 for the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 respectively, I estimate they’ll cost £499 and £349 respectively when they launch in the UK.
In comparison, the Nexus 5 launched at just £299 and sold out completely within hours – its successor the Nexus 6 is around 70% more expensive. We’ve already heard that the Nexus 5 is seemingly sticking around on the market which means Google is taking a two-pronged approach with the Nexus 5 offering the low-cost Nexus experience and the Nexus 6 appealing to [...]
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