Google Announces Android 5.0 and Three New Nexus Devices

By Nathan Kirsch

Google today announced Lollipop (Android 5.0), the 13th major release of the Android mobile operating system. Lollipop will be introduced on three Google-designed devices, including the massive Nexus 6 smartphone, manufactured by Motorola Mobility. The other devices are the Nexus Player, a $99 TV set-top box made by ASUS that appears to have similar features to the Apple TV and then a new $399 tablet called the Nexus 9 that was developed with HTC.

The Nexus 6 will be available for pre-order in late October and will be made available for pickup in November. The Nexus 6 features a giant 5.9-inch screen and will sell for $649 without a two-year contract. The 5.9-inch screen on the Nexus 8 is going to dwarf both the 5.5-inch Apple iPhone 6 Plus and 5.7-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 4. The dimensions on the Nexus 6 will be 6.26 x 3.24 x 0.39 inches (159.2 x 82.3 x 10mm) with a weight of 6.49 ounces (184g). The native screen resolution on the smartphone will be 1440×2560 QHD (2K) with 493 pixels per inch. It will also feature a 13-megapixel rear facing camera with an 42.0 lens that supports 4K video recording along with a 2.1MP front facing camera that is capable of 720p video.

Nexus-Family

What powers the Nexus 6? It looks like a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 SoC is being used that contains a a quad-core Krait 450 CPU at up to 2.7 GHz per core and an Adreno 420 GPU. The Nexus 6 comes with 3GB of RAM and either 16GB ($349) or 32GB ($399) of storage. Interestingly, it doesn’t appear that there will be a microSD card for storage expansion.

All that horse power needs a battery and for that there is a 3220mAh batter that offers 330 hours of standby time and about 10 hours of internet usage over WiFi and 4G LTE services. The talk time on the phone is up to 24 hours and it has 10 hours of video playback time, so you won’t be searching for a charger during the work or school day.

Google says the Nexus 6 will be available through AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, US Cellular and Sprint. Here is the Google promotional video for the Nexus 6.