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Phone Fight: Apple's iPhone 6 versus Google's Nexus 6

Which flagship phone is better for gamers?

Phone Fight: Apple's iPhone 6 versus Google's Nexus 6
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When it comes to deciding on a new smartphone, there are essentially two basic choices for the avid pocket gamer: an iPhone or an Android phone.

Yes, we know about Windows Phone. It’s pretty slick, but it’s not very good for games. What’s that? 'BlackBerry,' you say? You’re funny.

Things get a little more complicated when it comes to deciding which specific device to get. Sure, there are only two base choices on the Apple front - the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus - but when it comes to Android there are dozens of models from multiple manufacturers.

Allow us to make things a little simpler for you. If you want the nearest to an Android equivalent of the iPhone - that is, a well-built handset approved by Google itself and running on the pure unadulterated Android OS - then you need to get a Nexus phone.

Guess what? There’s a brand new Nexus phone about to be released. It’s called the Nexus 6, it’s rather massive, it’s packed with the latest components, and its priced similarly to the iPhone 6.

So, how is the Nexus 6 shaping up against the iPhone 6? Which is looking likely to be the better bet for gamers? Let’s take a wee look.

Design & Form Factor

The Nexus 6 really doesn’t look anything like the iPhone 6. It also doesn’t look anything like last year’s Nexus 5, and there’s a very simple reason for that.

Whereas the Nexus 5 was built by LG with one eye firmly fixed on a lower-than-premium price tag, the Nexus 6 was built by Motorola with both eyes fixed on creating a premium smartphone.

The Motorola influence here is clear. From a design standpoint, the Nexus 6 is essentially the recently launched Moto X, only bigger.

This means that it’s a lot fatter than the iPhone 6 (10mm versus 6.8mm), with gently bulging back rather than Apple’s flat-as-a-pancake design. Both have a base metal construction with metallic rims, but the Nexus 6 finishes with a soft touch plastic back, whereas the iPhone 6 is nowt but metal. And a bit of plastic for the aerial.

But the main thing to note about the Nexus 6 compared to the iPhone 6 is that it’s bigger. Much, much bigger. We’ll talk some more about the display in a moment, but suffice to say the Nexus 6 is arguably more comparable to the iPhone 6 Plus than the iPhone 6 in terms of sheer size.

From a design and usability standpoint, this means that the Nexus 6 is basically impossible to use one-handed, whereas you can do much with the iPhone 6 without bringing a second hand into play.

Display

The huge Nexus 6 is huge because of its huge display. It’s huge. Seriously.

At 6-inches, not only is the Nexus 6 screen bigger than the iPhone 6’s 4.7-inch equivalent, it’s also bigger than the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus.

While bigger screens often means lower pixel density, due to them being stretched over a wider area, that’s certainly not the case here. With a whopping QHD or 2K resolution - that’s 2560 x 1440 pixels - the Nexus 6 dwarfs the iPhone 6 and its 1334 x 750 display. In terms of pixel density, we’re talking 493ppi (pixels per inch) against 326ppi for the iPhone 6.

You might argue that this is overkill for a smartphone, but at 6-inches the Nexus 6 is closer to a compact tablet than most people’s notion of a classic smartphone. Believe us - you’ll notice the difference in sharpness at this size.

The differences between these two screens extend to the very panel technology used. While the iPhone 6 uses an IPS LCD screen - the very best in traditional LCD tech with accurate colours and exemplary viewing angles - the Nexus 6 uses an AMOLED display.

AMOLED technology is newer and more advanced than LCD, offering more vibrant colours and deeper blacks. However, it tends to produce over-saturated pictures with inaccurate colour profiles. Samsung has managed to bring balance to this technology in recent years with the likes of the Galaxy S5 and the Galaxy Note 4, but it remains to be seen if Motorola can do the same with the Nexus 6.

Lest we forget, this means that the Nexus 6 has the potential to be better for games than the iPhone 6 - or at least, richer, more detailed types of games. We’ll discuss why that might not prove to be the case a little later.

Power

So, the beefy Nexus 6 must batter the puny iPhone 6 when it comes to power, right? Wrong.

While the Nexus 6’s Snapdragon 805 CPU appears to trump the iPhone 6’s A8 CPU on cores (it has four, the iPhone has two) and stated clock speed (2.7GHz versus 1.4GHz), it’s not that simple.

For one thing, Apple’s chip is built on a more advanced 64-bit architecture, and has been designed specifically to run Apple’s iOS 8 quickly and smoothly. The fact that it’s not an off-the-shelf component counts for a lot.

On the matter of clock speed, the Snapdragon’s stated 2.7GHz is a maximum speed that, in real world usage, cannot be sustained for longer than a few minutes. In practice - such as in extended gaming sessions - the two will be clocked at a similar rate.

Even more importantly for gamers, there’s the A8 chip’s monstrous GPU, which has been proven through benchmarks to be more capable at pushing around polygons than the Snapdragon 805’s Adreno 420 equivalent.

Yes, the Nexus 6 has three times the RAM of the iPhone 6, but again that ties into the accompanying operating system more than anything else - and iOS is famously frugal with its memory usage in a way that Android isn’t.

Ultimately, though, both of these phones can handle the very latest games with ease, and will be able to do so comfortably for the length of a 24 month phone contract.

Camera

The iPhone 6 has one of the best all-round smartphone cameras on the market. It might 'only' be an 8-megapixel job, but the images it produces are crisp, and the speed at which is produces them is snappy.

That last part is largely down to a new phase detection autofocus system, which makes it lock on super-quick.

The jury will remain out on the Nexus 6 camera until the first reviews start to roll in, but early impressions seem to be positive. Motorola isn’t known for making good smartphone cameras - in fact it’s probably one of the worst out there - but this 13-megapixel snapper has promise.

It has OIS (optical image stabilisation) for steady shots and improved low light performance, and its f/2.0 aperture is wider than the iPhone 6’s, letting more light in.

All in all, the Nexus 6 has it all to do to even match the iPhone 6 camera, but we’re expecting it to be an accomplished snapper regardless.

OS

Are you an iOS person or an Android person? It’s a simple question, but choosing between these two behemoths could really comes down to such a matter of OS preference.

That’s because they’re both excellent operating systems, and they both plough their own furrow whilst borrowing from the other where it suits.

The Nexus 6 will be the first smartphone to ship with Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google’s bold new mobile OS. As redesigns go, it promises to be akin to a combination of Apple’s radical new look with iOS 7 and its revamped underpinnings in iOS 8, only all arriving at once.

With Android 5.0, you get the new Material Design, a unified design language that treats every UI element like a physical object in the way that it moves, contracts, and casts shadows. Google has also let loose with the primary colours. It’s lovely.

There are also overhauls to the multitasking system, making it even more powerful than the iOS equivalent, and countless other improvements that make it great for tinkering and productivity.

On the iPhone 6, of course, you get iOS 8. This has the same attractive flat design of the previous version, but with lots more useful stuff like deeper third party app integration and a far more powerful and useful Spotlight feature.

It's likely to remain the choice for those who just want their smartphone to work, with as little faffing around with menus and toggles as possible.

So, are you an iOS person or an Android person? Either way, you win.

Games & Apps

You can make arguments for either handset in each and every category of this feature - except for this one. There’s simply no denying that the iPhone 6 has access to a better selection of apps and games than the Nexus 6.

Android has improved rapidly to the point where you can get pretty much all of the non-gaming apps that you need, even if you sometimes have to settle for the second best in the category.

Its games offering, meanwhile, is still way behind iOS. Google Play's games selection is better than it has ever been and games now arrive on Android soon after or the same day as the App Store, but iOS still has all the best exclusives.

Both devices have had or will have issues with optimisation of older apps, as both adopt relatively new screen resolutions that don’t match perfectly with existing apps.

However, we suspect that the iPhone 6 will fare better here. Apple has made its own scalable allowances for the iPhone 6’s new resolution, which isn’t that different to the iPhone 5S anyway.

On Android, however, QHD is still a considerable leap forward from most other Android phones (which tend to be 720p or 1080p), and we suspect that developers won’t be in quite such a hurry to update their apps as on iOS.

Conclusion

Physically, these two smartphones are very different. The operating systems they run on are very different too.

What they share is an essential quality throughout - both in terms of premium hardware and a slick software experience. They're also likely to be priced similarly.

So it really does come down to personal preference in a couple of key areas. Do you like big phones? And if you think that the iPhone 6 is a big phone, well, you should probably stick with that.

Do you crave a massive, high definition, near-tablet experience in your pocket (or, more likely, bag)? Then the Nexus 6 is the better choice.

And perhaps most importantly of all - are you an iOS person or an Android person? If you have a clear leaning in this regard, there's no reason to defect now.

As for which is the better gaming device, the Nexus 6's bigger, sharper display gives it the potential to be an absolute beast in this regard. But the simple fact remains that the App Store has more essential games than the Google Play Store.

If gaming is your chief metric here, there's really only one choice: the iPhone 6. Or you could have your cake and eat it and buy an iPhone 6 Plus. Just saying.

Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.