Nexus 6 leaks: 5.9-inch Moto monster with 2560×1400 display, 3200 mAh battery

A madeup picture showing Nexus 6/Nexus X

It now seems likely that Google’s next Nexus smartphone will be the Motorola-made Nexus 6. Yes, as the numeral indicates, this will be a 6-inch device (or 5.9 inches to be exact, according to some sources). A recent photo of the Nexus 6 (codenamed Shamu) suggests the phone will essentially be a scaled-up version of the new Moto X (and indeed, it might be called the Nexus X instead of the Nexus 6). The Nexus 6 will have some impressive hardware specs, too, including a 2560×1440 (QHD) display and a large 3,200+ mAh battery. It should be released in October. Pricing isn’t known yet.

If you were hoping that the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus was merely an outlier, and that smartphones would remain sensibly sized for at least a little longer, it would seem you were sadly mistaken. By the year’s end, your 5-inch HTC One M8 or 5.1-inch Galaxy S5 will be on the smaller end of the spectrum. There had been a long-running rumor that there would be a smaller Shamu smartphone — something around the 5.2-inch range — but all of the latest leaks strongly point towards the Nexus 6 being a 5.9-inch device.

A leaked photo that reportedly shows the Nexus 6 (left) vs. the LG G3 (right). The LG G3, with a 5.5-inch 2560×1440 screen, is already a very large device.

Android Police has received enough leaked information recently that it’s now reporting with “9 out of 10 confidence” on the Nexus 6′s hardware specs. The device will closely resemble the new Moto X — it will have the same aluminium frame around the edge, a similar 13-megapixel rear shooter with dual ring flash — but the body will be significantly engorged to cater for a new, 2560×1440 5.9-inch display (496 PPI). The larger body means there’ll also be a huge battery — 3,200 mAh or greater.

Apparently the Nexus 6/Shamu/Nexus X will also have dual front-facing speakers (the Moto X only has one), and the power button and volume rocker will move farther down the right hand side of the phone. There’s no word on whether the Nexus 6 will be customizable like the Moto X, but I doubt it. The “turbo charging” feature present on the Moto X, which can imbue the phone with 8 hours of use from use 15 minutes of charging, will also be coming to the Nexus 6.

A stylized version of the 64-bit (Denver) Tegra K1 SoC that will power the Nexus 9 tablet

Curiously, though, we don’t know much about the internals of the Nexus 6. Previous leaks suggested the Nexus 6 would be helmed by the Snapdragon 805 — which makes sense, as it’s still the best chip on the market. This is slightly at odds, however, with Google’s work to support 64-bit processors with Android L and rumors that the Nexus 9 tablet will be powered by the 64-bit Denver Tegra K1 chip. This isn’t to say that Android L will run badly on 32-bit processors, but I would’ve thought that Google would be keen to get developers and power users testing the 64-bit version of Android as soon as possible.

In any case, we’ll find out everything about the Nexus 6 (and Nexus 9) soon enough: Both devices should be released in October, alongside Android L (which looks like it’ll be called Lollipop, incidentally). Pricing is unknown, but it would be very interesting if the Nexus 6 keeps the same low price as the Nexus 5 (~$400 off-contract).

Android L

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, a 5.9-inch smartphone really is too big for everyday use — unless we evolve larger thumbs (or use thumb extenders), and clothes designers start adding larger pockets. But hey, who knows? A lot of people said the same thing about 5-inch smartphones, and more recently the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus. The only real way of finding out how big is too big is to keep going until something snaps — or bends, as the case may be.