Huawei Nexus 6P officially announced, 5.7-inch QHD AMOLED display, Snapdragon 810, more

At its event in San Francisco this morning, Google has finally taken the wraps off its latest Nexus smartphones. The larger of the two is made by Huawei, and marks the first time Google has partnered with a Chinese manufacturer for its Nexus smartphone. In every way, this is the flagship Nexus. From build quality and size, to screen quality and battery, this is the phone that all tech-hungry, pure Android aficionados will flock to…

From a design standpoint, this is the most premium-looking Nexus we’ve seen since the original Nexus One all those years ago. Huawei’s taste for metal unibody phones shines through, with a phone that looks incredibly elegant despite its obvious large size. The aluminum chassis will come with a choice four different anodized finishes: Aluminum, Gprahite, Frost, and a Japan-exlusive gold. The only part which isn’t metal on the back is the slightly protruding camera hump. The phone measures in at just 7.3mm thin, 77.8mm wide and 159.4mm tall, making it smaller in every dimension than the current Nexus 6.

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The 12.3MP rear camera is housed in a large pill-shaped glass panel along with a dual-LED flash. It’s also equipped with optical image stabilization and 4K video recording, along with an f/2.0 aperture to ensure low light pictures look as good as they can from a sensor this small. It also has pixels much bigger than standard smartphone cameras and can take 30fps bursts of photos to help create cool GIFs and choose the best pictures.

Arguably the smartest choice made by Google and Huawei was to reduce the screen size from last year’s mammoth Motorola-made Nexus 6. This year, the flagship Nexus has a 5.7-inch QHD resolution AMOLED display, with a pixel density of 515ppi. Pushing content to light up all those pixels is Qualcomm’s revised Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor, paired with 3GB RAM. What’s more, there’s an impressive-sounding 3,450mAh battery inside, which should be enough to easily give any consumer a full day’s use.

There’s also a new sensor called Android Sensor Hub, which ties in a bunch of cool features like being able to tell when you pick the phone up and automatically activating the ambient display.

With baked-in support for fingerprint reading and Android Pay, the first out-of-the box  Android 6.0 Marshmallow phone also has a fingerprint sensor and NFC. This fingerprint sensor has been named Nexus Imprint. Nexus Imprint gets better over time and can recognize fingerprints in less than 600ms. With USB Type-C, the Nexus will charge super-fast too.

The Huawei Nexus will come in three storage capacities: 32GB, 64GB and 128GB in Aluminum, Graphite and Frost in most markets, while Japan will get an exclusive gold model at launch. Nexus 6P will be available to pre-order from today with prices starting at $499, and jumping up to $549 and $649 for the 64GB and 128GB models. As previously rumored, you’ll only be able to snag one direct from Google, your carrier store will not be stocking this year’s pure Android phones.

The Huawei Nexus 6P will ship in October and come with 90 days free subscription to Google Music, and come with $50 Play Credit. What’s more, there’s a new Nexus Protect extended warranty option which covers you for 2 years and costs $89 for the 6P.