Google has announced a major upgrade to its Nexus product line with new smartphones, tablets and a set-top box powered by Android TV, running its new Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system, with none of the devices manufactured by Samsung.
The product line is anchored by a new flagship 6-inch phablet called the Nexus 6, by Motorola. The device includes a 6-inch Quad HD display with a resolution of 1440×2560 pixels (493 ppi), a 13 megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation, a quad-core Snapdragon CPU at 2.7GHz, NFC and a massive 3220mAh battery.
On most key measures it outclasses the iPhone 6 Plus, which features a smaller 5.5-inch 1920-by-1080-pixel display (at a lower resolution of 401 ppi), an 8-megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation, NFC locked to Apple Pay and a 2915 mAh battery.
The 4G/LTE Nexus 6 also comes with a Turbo Charger that can supply six hours of battery life with just a 15 minute charge, come in Midnight Blue or Cloud White, and will be available with either 32 gigabytes or 64 gigabytes of storage.
There is also a 8.9-inch tablet developed by Asus called the Nexus 9, that features a laptop dock, a 2.3GHz 64-bit NVIDIA Tegra K1 CPU, a screen resolution of 2048×1536 pixels, and a 6700 mAh battery.
Alongside the two devices, Google is releasing an Android TV set-top box called the Nexus Player manufactured by Asus, which runs apps directly (unlike Chromecast), includes a voice-activated remote, and has a gamepad sold separately.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
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