[Nexus 6 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] CowboyNick13:
Nexus 6 VS One Plus One

Hey Guys,

So here goes my story...

I ordered my One Plus (during the preorder with no Invite) maybe a week after I ordered my Nexus 6 and got the OPO two days before my Nexus arrived. However, at that time I refrained from opening the OPO because I didn't want to lose the resale value of the OPO. In the end the chrome N on the back of the Nexus fell of and I decided to open the OPO to compare the two. I decided to keep the OPO and return the Nexus, below are some of the reasons I made that choice.

I opened the Nexus 6 and was stunned by the phone. Watching the videos and reading reviews you get a sense of the size of the phone, but never having held it before this I was not really sure what to expect. This phone is HUGE. I was stunned by the build quality and the size. I loved the curved edges of the screen and the resolution was amazing. I was okay with the size because it could still fit in my (skinny) jeans pockets, but I was not in love with it. I was originally gunning for the Cloud white, but couldn't get my hands on it. Got the Midnight Blue in 64 gig and ended up loving the color. I loved the color until I touched the back of the phone and realized that my fingerprints got everywhere. Seriously, this phone is a smudge magnet. However, since I am not a fan of cases, this was something I could live with.

Similarly opening the box of the One Plus One I was very impressed. The packaging was very nicely done. I know it does not have any impact on how the phone is used, but it is a very nice presentation that I appreciated none the less. The phone itself has very nice build quality. It does not have as many curves and subtleties as the Nexus, but I like the way it feels in my hand and equals the 6 in quality, even if it is a simpler design.

I used the Nexus 6 for three weeks and am on my sixth day with the One Plus. Here are my impressions of the devices after that period mainly focusing on what stands out during MY use of them.

Ergonomics:

As far as the feel of the Nexus 6 is concerned at first I was worried about how big it was. I was coming from a 4 inch screen of the iPhone 5 and was a bit scared about how it was going to work. After three weeks I was no longer worried about it. I have gotten used to it. However, I was not sold on the 6 inch screen. It was never 100 percent comfortable for me to use and I always had to use two hands. I have hands on the smaller size, but not freakishly small, however I was always scared to use it one handed, even just opening up my twitter feed and scrolling through gave pause because I was afraid to drop it and crack that beautiful screen. One thing that I found particularly difficult was texting. If I were in bed with the phone above my head, it was so hard to text because the screen was so wide. My fingers did not have enough range of motion to hold the phone in a secure way and also reach the outer edges of the screen to reach letters such as A or L, O and P. It was a weird experience that I remedied by installing the Swype keyboard app and condensed the keyboard to one side of the screen.

Using the One Plus One immediately felt more comfortable. It seems to fit my hand better and I am a huge fan of the “sandstone” texture of the back. I can use it more easily with one hand and am able to text using one hand as well.

Screen and Media Viewing Experience:

As for that Nexus 6 screen. What can I say. It is beautiful. The colors are great and its sharp as a tack. I loved watching videos on it and reading kindle books on it. It was noticeably sharper than the OPO's 1080p screen. It's not a day and night difference, and if the two weren't sitting next to each other on the table, I probably would not have noticed anything. But when the two phones are next to each other you can tell which one has a higher resolution display. I used the Nexus to watch a lot of youtube videos and loved the experience. With the front firing speakers, this was a great media consumption device. I loved being able to use this instead of my computer or tablet to watch videos and read books or news articles. Six inches was a great size to view everything on.

The One Plus One also has a great screen. The colors are accurate and it is very pleasing to look at. I can watch youtube videos here also, however the overall experience is not as nice because the speakers are not forward firing. Though they have great volume, the speakers are not as good to use as the Nexus simply because of their orientation. With this phone I am more predisposed to watch videos on my tablet or TV. Reading is a very similar experience and I have no problem reading for more than an hour on either device.

Usability:

This section is where the One Plus really starts to pull away. For those who don’t remember the specs (lets be real though, I’m just putting them here so we can all revel at the fact that both of these phones have more power than my current work computer) the Nexus 6 sports the new quad-core Snapdragon 805 clocked at 2.7 GHz with 3 gigs of ram while the One Plus One has the one generation older quad-core 801 chip clocked at 2.5 GHz with the same amount of ram. For reference my “vintage” 2012 Macbook Air has a 2GHz i5 intel chip with 4 gigs of ram.

I don’t know if I had a bad Nexus (or a spectacularly good One Plus), but it always felt like the Nexus was taking a tenth of a second more to think about the things it wanted to do. The One Plus, on the other hand feels zippier in everything I do. I don’t do crazy things on the phones. I twitter and Facebook and tinder a lot, but just opening these apps seemed to take a fraction of a second longer on the Nexus 6. If that were the only issue, then it would be less of a deal breaker than an annoyance, but I felt (at least on my particular phone) that the Nexus – and maybe Lollipop - had stability issues. Every now and then – maybe three times a week – the phone would do something weird which would require a restart to remedy. For instance on the last day I had the phone I was trying to open the phone app which is in my Dock on the very bottom of the screen. However, every time I pressed the app it would open something else that was in my dock instead. So instead of opening the phone, it would open up the messaging app or the email app. It happened like ten times in a row after I would get into the wrong app and press the home button. It required a complete reboot, then it would function normally. It was a weird thing that happened intermittently. However, It required a reboot a few times a week (this is what leads me to believe that maybe I had a defective unit?)

The One Plus, so far, has not had any stability issues (maybe because Kit Kat is much more mature than Lollipop). It is great and feels significantly faster than the Nexus. Everything I want it to do it does on command without hesitation. I think this more than anything else is the reason I decided to keep the One Plus instead of the Nexus, it just feels better to use.

One thing that I did like better about the Nexus (and even my old iphone) was the scrolling ability. The One Plus one just does not have as good scrolling in apps such as facebook or twitter. The Nexus has great sensitivity and response. The One Plus feels like it’s a generation behind with its scrolling capabilities.

I also liked Lollipop over Cyanogen Mod Kit Kat because 5.0 has beautiful themes. Material Design is something that I already miss going to the One Plus and I cant wait for the 5.0 Cyanogen Mod update. The one feature I really miss is lock screen notifications. I had that on my iPhone and on the Nexus, but will have to wait for 5.0 on the One Plus.

Camera:

Another area that was very important to me was the Camera. I am not a professional photographer, but I love taking nice pictures. I am a DSLR guy and used to try to tote mine around whenever I could. However, now that camera phones have gotten so good I have been doing so less and less, just using my phone camera for the majority of my day to day shooting. The iPhone 5 camera was great for me. I used it all the time (for snapchat and Instagram) and loved the low light shooting characteristics.

The Nexus 6 camera was great. It was sharp and I loved that it shot video in 4k, making for great impromptu jam session with my brother. When the light was good the camera produced sharp and vibrant images. It was great for anything I wanted to snapchat or Instagram. and even candid’s that I wanted for later, which I what I usually use my phone camera for. However, lowlight shooting was awful. I couldn’t get lowlight images at all. Living in NYC there are streetlights everywhere, but even in that environment I was not able to get any good nighttime shots that are even useable for snapchat (for which I have very low critera). Even compared to my two year old iPhone, it was awful. The front facing camera was doubly bad. Everything that I took with the front facing 2mp camera was poorly exposed and very soft. There was no definition to the shots and it was very splotchy.

Having the same sensor (but without optical image stabilization) I was not holding out much hope for the One Plus One. However I was pleasantly surprised with its low light shooting capabilities. In places where the Nexus was just unable to get any kind of image (often producing just a black shot with different intensities of light) I was able to get useable shots with the One Plus. The front facing camera is ten times better than the Nexus 6 camera.

Battery Life:

Here is another place that the One Plus pulls away from the Nexus. The battery life on the One Plus is phenomenal. One reason I got rid of my old iphone was that the battery life was down to four hours. I was literally carrying around a charger with me wherever I went because it wouldn’t last half a day. Now the OPO will last me 1.5 days of regular use. For me regular use is about 3.5 hours of screen on time. I will last from 7 am until about noon the next day. This is amazing battery life. I never have to worry about it. With the Nexus I would get about 2.75 hours of screen on time. This translated to a day of use. If I unplugged my phone at 7 am, I would be at 5 percent battery around 10:30 pm. Normally this would be okay, unless I was going out with my friends at night and had to stay out past midnight (which I normally do on weekends). With turbo-charging this was largely a non-issue. However, psychologically I don’t really like plugging in my phone for fifteen minutes and then unplugging when the batter is not full. I hate the feeling that I am ruining the battery (even if that’s not how batteries work anymore…). Personally having a great battery like the One Plus One is a huge win and is one thing I don’t have to worry about. It makes my life less stressful (I understand that this is a side affect of being too dependent on technology and am working to fix this in myself, haha).

Conclusion:

All in all I liked the Nexus 6. It was a good “pocket internet device” however as something that I want to use every day, I was not in love with it. And thus, comes the OPO trump card. Its price. If I was in love with the Nexus I would have had no problem spending $771 on the phone. However, I was not in love with it, so paying that much for a phone I didn’t love was out of the question. Futhremore, the thought of paying more than double the price of the One Plus One ($361) which I liked better was Ludacris. So in the end it was an easy choice.

I tried to like the Nexus 6. I did love the screen and the experience I had while I was watching youtube. I love material design and lock screen notifications. I loved being able to talk to the phone (“OK Google”) when the screen was off. In the end, however, it fell short. The One Plus One is a great phone and I am smitten with it. It offers everything I want for a very low price and that is why I am keeping it.

Sorry for that long rant, and hope some of you stick around to read the whole thing.

Cheers,

CBN