MAGID ON TECH: Google's high-end phone is valiant first try

By Larry Magid

For the past few days, I've been testing Google's new Nexus 6 phone, which compares favorably against the iPhone 6 Plus.

The Nexus 6 is a very big phone, so if you think the iPhone 6 Plus is too big, you'll feel even more so about the Nexus 6. On the other hand, the screen is also bigger, so the way I do the math, you get a 8.4 percent larger screen on a phone that's less than 1 percent longer and 7 percent wider than the iPhone 6 Plus.

One thing Google (and Motorola, which built the phone) did better than Apple is to avoid wasted space by avoiding an extra tall bezel, especially at the top of the phone. Unlike iPhones, the Nexus 6 doesn't have a physical home button. Its new Lollipop (Android 5.0) operating system provides for virtual buttons including a home button, a back button and the recent apps button, all of which look a bit different than on previous versions of Android.

The Nexus 6's 1440-by-2560-pixel (493 ppi) AMOLED display is brilliant and compares very well to the iPhone 6 Plus's 1920-by-1080-pixel (401 ppi) screen. You can't go wrong either way when it comes to screen resolution. I watched a Netflix video and read portions of a Kindle book on the Nexus 6, and while watching video on a large phone isn't quite as immersive as watching it on a tablet, it's not bad. And the sound quality from the Nexus 6 front-mounted stereo speakers is excellent. With the volume cranked all the way up, I could hear it well from anywhere in an average-sized living room without significant distortion. It's one of the few phones I would consider listening to without headphones.

The phone is equipped with a 3,200 mAh battery which, according to Google, offers up to 24 hours talk time and 300 hours of standby time or 8.5 hours of Internet use. The iPhone 6 Plus has a 2,915 MAh battery, though Apple claims higher usage. In my experience, a manufacturers' battery life estimates need to be taken with a grain of salt. Google is also promising a 15-minute charging time with the Turbo Charger that comes with the phone.

The phone has a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 2 MP front "selfie" camera. The picture quality is quite good, as smartphone cameras go. Video can be shot at 1080p HD and 2160p Ultra HD at 30 frames per second, according to Google.

Overall, I'm walking away with a positive first impression. I need some more time to delve into the phone's features but -- based on what I've seen -- Google has an excellent entry in the high-end phone category.

At $649 for the 32 GB version or $699 for the 64 GB unlocked models, it's toward the high end of the price curve, but still quite a bit less expensive than the iPhone 6 Plus.

Unfortunately, there is no microSD slot for additional storage. The phone has a 2.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 quad-core processor and an Adreno 420 GPU, which helps contribute to the snappy response time.