The Slow Death of Google Nexus Smartphones

Google recently launched the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P and Mihir Fadnavis thinks they are a sham.

Google Nexus 5 was made by LG. (Photo: iStock)

I used the Nexus 4 for two years. It was a beautiful fairytale relationship, and it was good while it lasted. I’ve moved on to fruit-based companies now but there’s something we need to talk about. The Nexus brand. And its death.

The Foreground

Google recently revealed two new Nexus phones – the Nexus 5X and the 6P.

The Huawei-made Nexus 6P is the direct successor to last year’s giant Nexus 6. This phone has a 5.7 inch 2k screen, 3GB of RAM, a 12 megapixel back camera, an 8mp front camera and the usual bells and whistles.

The LG-made 5X has a smaller 5.2 inch 1080p screen with 2GB of RAM, the same res back camera and a 5mp front one. Both phones have the dreaded Snapdragon 810 processor. All this sounds exciting.

The Background

Now here’s the thing. The Nexus 4 and the Nexus 5 became popular because of three things:

• Their specs were high end, yet they cost much less than the competition
• They ran stock Android, without any bloatware on top
• They looked pretty

Google Nexus 5x. (Photo: Google)

Those phones, the Nexus 4 in particular released at a time when the only other phones on the market were the overpriced iPhones and the Samsung Galaxies. The cheaper phones were crappy Micromax ones which no one wanted to buy because of their horrible quality and service.

The cheaper Samsung models were even worse – laggy and ugly-looking enough to be thrown in the garbage.

Google Nexus 5X and Google Nexus 6P. (Photo: Google)

In 2015 that is no longer the case. We now have a flood of Xiaomi, OnePlus and Motorola phones that offer great performance at ridiculously cheap prices. Even Asus and Lenovo are coming up with mid-range varieties.

But the Xiaomi, OnePlus and Motorola’s are not just cheap phones – these are great phones at affordable rates. You can get a OnePlus for 70 percent the price of a Nexus, a Xiaomi Mi4i for half the price, and a Moto E for one fifth of the price.

Google Nexus 6P. (Photo: Google)

They all run as fast and as smooth as a Nexus, click photos as good (or as bad) as a Nexus and have better battery life as well.

It is unclear how good the battery life and photo quality of the new Nexii are, but at a measly 2700mAh for the 5X and 3450 for the 6P, it does not look good at all. Newer versions of Android increasing battery life is a hoax, so depending on software optimisation is futile.

Google Nexus 5. (Photo: iStock)

Cameras on the Nexus phones are famously bad despite having big ‘megapixel’ numbers so it’s going to take a miracle for the new phones to reverse this.

Neither of the new phones look good. The giant bezels and strange hefty designs are a far cry from the understated textures of the earlier Nexus phones.

We now have the Moto X Play, which at Rs 18,500 blows away the competition. It’s got a better camera, a bigger battery and expandable storage, and it looks great too.

And it runs as smooth as any previous Nexus. So why would you want to buy a Nexus now? Who are these phones for?

Google Nexus 5. (Photo: iStock)

Certainly not the iPhone users, and definitely not the Android users who have found other options that offer equal if not more bang for buck.

This was a strange Nexus release by Google. Had they packed the specs and price of the 6P in the 5X, things would have looked more interesting.

As of now it seems like the Nexus brand is dying a slow death.