5 Reasons Not to Buy the Google Nexus 6P Smartphone

Google announced its Nexus devices last month at their annual event in the Mountain View, which are company’s headquarters in the United States. Just yesterday, the search giant officially launched their Nexus devices in India. The Nexus 6P was priced Rs 39,999 onwards while the Nexus 5X was priced Rs 31,990 onwards.

This year company has left out some things that are not taken lightly by the core Nexus fans. They’ve missed out on a couple of things. While we admit that the Nexus range is moving towards a premium model, there has to be a silver lining that even a high-end device should not cross. This year many successor devices tried to cross it, and the result was good for all of them. We listed out the features that company missed out on their new Nexus 6P.

No Wireless Charging

The Nexus devices have always been considered as the standard among the Android smartphones out there. And these devices have been an integral part of revolutionizing the features. While it has been true for many generations of the Nexus devices, it seems to be fading away with every new generation device.

Qi Charging aka Wireless charging was practically introduced first on the Nexus devices. The facility is available on Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and the last year’s Nexus 6. Even with two Nexus devices being launched for this year, not even one of them sports a Wireless charging feature. Samsung’s this year line-up certainly has that feature on the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, Note 5 and even on the S6 Edge+. The faster wireless charging was introduced in the last two devices in the Samsung list for this year. While for a Nexus device, Google or maybe Huawei doesn’t care to offer such features.

USB Type-C

The world isn’t ready for USB Type-C smartphones. As we concluded that USB Type-C is the future, but it isn’t here yet for most us since the odds are that you’re still surrounded by the Type-A standard cable. Our laptops and wall chargers aren’t compatible with USB Type-C ports unless you have the Apple MacBook 12, which is among the first notebooks to have USB Type-C port, and it has only one.

There isn’t much you could make of the future right now that when the current standard would be commercially replaced by the USB Type-C. But tagging along with a decision to buy a Type-C enabled smartphone might not be wise practically. Though, remember the Nexus 6P retail unit comes with an adapter to convert USB Type-C to Type-A. But did you remember the last time you carried a data cable with you while travelling. These days we charge on-the-go with power banks.

Recommended Read: 7 Reasons Not to Buy the Google Nexus 5X Smartphone

No MicroSD Card

The trend of removing microSD card has been set for this year, as Google Nexus 6P also falls under the category. For the last six generations, Nexus devices didn’t come with a microSD card slot. So, this time around the hardcore fans expected some changes. But looks like Google doesn’t want to give its users what they want. We think this time the decision to not include a microSD card port would be taken seriously by the fans. And they might just stop their streak to buy the Nexus devices.

It might not be a deal breaker for a non-Nexus user who wants to upgrade to a Nexus device this year. But if you’re a media junkie or even a photography enthusiast, then I’m sure even the 64GB won’t suffice to you. And if you’re on a tight budget to get a 32GB model, wouldn’t it be nice to have a microSD card slot too.

No Dual SIM

Just like Nexus 5X, the bigger sibling, Nexus 6P doesn’t come with a dual-SIM slot. It might not be a deal breaker if we were living in 2013 but we are not. The dual SIM capabilities have become the integral part of our smartphones. Earlier, considered as a USP of the feature phones, the dual network connectivity empowers the smartphone users to use one device for personal and work needs.

The flagship smartphones of this year including Samsung Galaxy S6 Duos, LG G4 Dual, Sony Xperia Z5 Dual and many more offers such type of setup on their smartphones. Guess this isn’t the year Google starts to offer ports for expandable storage.

Low Camera Resolutions

This year we saw a unique launch of two Nexus smartphones while it was the first time for Google to launch two Nexus devices, the audience wasn’t new to the concept. We have seen Samsung do this more often since last year when the Galaxy Note 4 and Note Edge was announced, which was later followed by Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge earlier this year. And further recently with the introduction of Note 5 and S6 Edge+.

The point is that two Nexus devices have same camera capabilities and different pricing. That always introduces a contrary argument to buy which sibling or buy them not at all. This time, the camera resolution has been reduced to 12.3-megapixel from the 13-megapixel on the Motorola Nexus 6. While the company claims that it was a good decision and moreover, they claim the larger 1.55 µm pixels allows the camera module to absorb more light. But we know the numbers doesn’t always add up to the final output performance until tested.

Verdict

The Nexus 6P is a great package overall, but with plausible effects that might hurt you in the long run. And the most important feature missing out of the five is wireless charging. While every feature serves its purpose, we thought wireless charging should have been there. In the Reddit AMA, Google Nexus Team stated that there Qi charging was added on the Nexus 4 just because it was such a hassle to plug microUSB. And since the USB Type-C has a reversible connector, they excluded it. Well, that isn’t exactly a reasoning fans were looking forward too.

There are many premium smartphones in the category that can be better alternatives for the Nexus devices. We strongly feel that Moto X Style can easily outdo the expectations of real world performance. We had the hands-on with the device at the launch event and certainly felt it is a premium smartphone with excellent specs sheet.