[Nexus 6  General] Jayrod1980:
My first apple phone is the iPhone 6+ that I'm currently using. It is beautiful, and very high quality. It probably has the prettiest, most satisfying screen I've yet to use on any device. MUCH of this however can be attributed to the colors and schemes apple uses. Even though iOS 7 and 8 are relatively "flat," they still have amazing gradient to the icons and other tricks like the frosted transparency (windows aero never looked great like this) and sharp black text that emphasis the screen. Ditto for OS X, especially visible when moving from Mavericks to Yosemite (also my first apple laptop).

Say all you want about who's usage test is this or that and did whatever, but the iPhone 6+ (not the iPhone 6) has ridiculous battery life. Tablet-like battery life. I have gotten 11 hours of usage time, and yes I did use it with the screen on for that long. I even had 8 hours of standby time (It's almost got 3000mAH pushing a dual core proc). This is very much comparable to the time I get, or a little better than my Nexus 7, pre-lollipop. So say whatever you want against apple, but the plus is an amazing phone. Especially cool is the fact that the model with the least amount of radio bands still has over TWENTY! I literally get every LTE band outside of the 3 TDD bands that sprint, some chinese telcos, and softbank in Japan use. Brilliant. Camera is also nuts for a cellphone.

Now that I sound like some raging Apple zealot, after about a month of using this phone, I can't wait to go back to android. I got the phone to try apple for once, and being stuck in Asia for a year away from my family, this seemed the best bet to being able to stay connected (rest of the family all own iPhones). So while I'm able to take great pictures, consume media, use the thing for days without a charge, take awesome photos/videos, and FaceTime with everyone from my wife and kids to parents, etc, it feels like a damn appliance.

I've been an almost exclusive Android user since the G1, and have owned every Nexus device but the One and the Q. I'm really a Moto X fanboy, and actually got my Moto Maker 2014 model to replace the first gen, but had to return it due to a screen defect. Motorola doesn't ship to APO, and I needed something immediate, hence the iPhone.

The problems with the iPhone 6+ are many for a long time Android user. Despite being simple and iterative, iOS 8 is buggy, even after 8.1 was pushed. All these so called premium and exclusive apps can't hardly access anything outside of themselves. Integration is very minimal, and it just feels like everything non-Apple first party just sits on top of the OS, not in it. Still has no damn home screen. You are forced to banish apps you can't delete to folders on other pages to get rid of stuff you don't want. The phone also has giant top and bottom bezels, so those pages you want always default to the top first... meaning almost everything MUST be a two handed effort. The double tap to pull down the top of the screen trick doesn't help much.

Also, anyone who loves Google apps should just run away. Not only does every app have to be coded for each resolution or at least screen ratio to not look blurry (no scaling like Android), but all the things many of us love about google, like google now for example, are crippled because of how iOS operates and limits 3rd party apps. Right now, at least 50% of the major apps don't even have a full 1080p resolution version of their app available on the App Store, reducing that screen to a blurry mess.

Which brings me to my last point in this long winded post. To beat the iPhone 6+, project volta, the snap 805, and that huge battery need to pay off for the Nexus 6. We really need to see a phone that can get close to the usage time google posted. That means 8-10 hours on-screen doing normal phone tasks. I remember vaguely the Nexus 5 being advertised a max of 7.5 hours browsing on WiFi. I think the most I ever got was 6.5 hours in a very extreme environment. The phone also has to deliver in the camera department, which early hands-on reports have said are pretty good. I know Google themselves are pushing for that this time with 5.0 so hopefully that works out. Lastly, that huge screen better be awesome, because you give up a lot of portability with a 6 inch phone. It really does become that sort of all-in-one that does everything, but to be widely adopted, I think it has to fit that role as well as a Note. We already know it's fast as hell, so if those things come together, paired with carrier partnerships, this could be the best selling Nexus device ever. The fact that both 5.0 and the phone took cues from the Moto X look very very promising.

Also, if you all hate the size of this thing, and project Volta on 5.0 pan out, the Moto X pure edition might be your thing. The custom one I built felt and looked every bit as premium as any apple product, and it was totally my own design. You just can't beat that.