[Nexus 6P Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cb474:
If you think that's what I'm saying then you really have not read my posts carefully, nor understood them. I've been saying repeatedly that the "too hot to touch" issue is not the issue. I've said that so many times in this thread. Go back and actually read what I'm saying, before responding to something that I'm not saying.

That aside, I in fact see a lot of people out there concerned about the throttling, so I'm trying to provide some real information so people can understand it better---but it's a little complicated, there is not a yes or no, good or bad, answer. Further, I've said over and over that it probably won't be an issue for most people. Again, you have not read what I'm saying. I've said that so explicitly, it's hard to see how it was missed. Further ArsTechnica and others have shown that once it gets warm the 810 underperforms the 808, 805 and 801. So it depends on your use case. The 810 might be "fluid" as you say in some situations and choppy in others.

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Thanks for the attempt to explain this to people who just can't seem to handle complicated situations, where the answer is neither it's better or it's worse, it's fine or it's not fine, but rather it depends on a whole host of factors and how you use the phone.

Android Headlines, by the way, did test the 6P after heavy use and posted the results, showing that the CPU downclocks considerably. They wrote: "The CPU down-clocks quite a bit and I found that performance was consistently 25-30% lower after about 20 minutes of testing to keep temperature in check, something that doesn’t really affect user experience now but could in the future as graphics ramp up on common apps and games." They also said: "Real-world performance of the phone was nothing short of breathtaking. It’s incredibly fast, fluid, never once hitched and never reloaded any apps for me."

So there you have it. I know people have trouble wrapping their minds around it, but it's possible both that the 6P is fluid and great in most cases and will underperform in other cases.

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Just about every review I read of a new Android phone, from reviewers I have also read for years, says how "snappy" the phone is. It's too subjective to mean anything. I take it as just excitement over a new phone. It's like when you change the oil in your car and then go out driving and feel like it has more power--it's just the good feeling of having done something on your car. And there's no reason to need to rely on subjective judgements, since at least some places do a good job at benchmarking. With the 6P so far, mainly Android Headlines.

I agree that people have to decide how much the throttling matters to them and how they plan to use the phone. I have not taken a position that the 6P is not good because it has the 810 and people should not get it (heck I plan to probably get it). But since I'm unwilling to pretend there are no issues with the 810 in the 6P, people seem to get defensive about their new baby and think I'm telling people not to get the phone or saying something negative about it. Anyway, in my many posts above, this is exactly what I've said over and over, people just need to consider if the throttling issue will affect them in a way they care about.

That said, people should also be realistic that after only ten to twenty minutes of heavy use the 6P is going to throttle and the performance is going to drop down to a level at or below lesser or older chipsets like the 808, 805, and 801 (every site that has done a real test, comparing the "cold" and "hot" performane on the 810, including in the 6P, has found this). There are a lot of gamers out there, so it could be an issue, if you're expecting an upgrade over a year old phone. This seems to be the point around which there's a lot of denial and burying of heads in the sand.

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Android Headlines, as has been pointed out over and over, did in fact test the 6P both "cold" and "hot" and showed that it throttles heavily just like every other phone with the 810. So it is patently false that the 6P has not been tested. And this has already been discussed in this thread.

Further ArsTechnica, in their in depth article about the 810, discussed the fantasty that somehow different phones with the 810 will perform differently and said this is just not the case. They all throttle in the same way and there is zero reason to expect any new phones with the 810 to be different. This is a chipset level issue, not a phone design issue, though many people hold out false hope for the latter.

So the truth is that when cold the 810 has great performance and this is how most people will use the 6P most of the time. But under heavy use the 6P throttles and has not bad performance, just performance that's equal to or not quite as good as older phones with the 801 and 805 and current phones with the 808. Those are great powerful chipsets. Why is this such a horrible thing to say? People act like it's some sort of personal affront.

As for the Android Central bogus unscientific heat tests, I was not suggesting the the 6P gets hot. In fact, we already knew it doesn't get hot from the Android Headlines review, which I pointed out in this thread when that review first went up and pointed out again when the Android Central heat test article was posted in this thread. All I said was the Android Central test was extremely bogus and badly done, in particular as a comparison to other phones that were not tested in the same way, so it doesn't really provide us with any new or good information. Whether or not the 6P gets hot is a separate issue form whether or not Android Central's tests were bogus.

As far as reviewers go in general, most of them get the phones for free from Google and are essentially writing advertorials (i.e. PR) for Google. They do know what readers want, which is to hear that the 6P is great and the 810 has zero issues and unicorns have at last come to live with us and our new 6P. So that's what they write. But that doesn't make it good testing or journalism. In the end, they just want to get readers, they just need clicks, they are fanboys themselves, not serious critics, they don't really care if they do a good job testing. (Can it really be a surprise to anyone that most of what's on the Internet is shoddy information?) Only a small handfull of sites bother to be more careful and honest.

As for nitpicking, I would call it bothering to be thoughtful, bothering to distinguish between the hard to find good information and the mass of PR claptrap, rather than being gullible and engaging in wishful thinking.

Anyway, if you wish the thread would die, why not just ignore it? Threads that I think are ridiculous, I just ignore. It's easy. I've never understood the need to jump into threads one finds to be pointless, criticize people, make glib statements, and generally go out of ones way to to drive oneself crazy and act like the mere existence of the thread is a personal attack on oneself.