The smartphone market is constantly pushing for the next big thing, trying to sell consumers the latest of the latest. However, is there really as much innovation as Google, Apple and co. try to tell us? Or has smartphone evolution hit plateau already? Evidence points to fewer sales, suggesting that consumers are increasingly satisfied with the devices they already own.

Personally, I haven’t purchased a new smartphone in 30 months. My daily driver is a Nexus 6P — a phone released in September 2015 which I purchased same year in December, and which was replaced with an identical model in a warranty exchange in October 2017 (German law requires two years of warranty). How is this phone holding up today, standing in the shadow of its direct successors, the Pixel and Pixel 2?

A Look at Hardware

The Nexus 6P is one of the most refined Nexus devices that was ever put out. The aluminum finish, bending around the understated, clean back, which incorporates a fingerprint reader for the first time, makes for a stunning visual appearance. Even the originally frowned upon visor of the that device grew on me. As the last device in the Nexus line, this design appears to have paved the way for a lot of hardware decisions in the Google Pixel phones, e.g. the maxed-out glass panel on the back. One drawback of this glassless design is the omission of wireless charging — but since I have not used this feature on other phones a lot, I don’t really miss it.

To me, the Nexus 6P’s design is only topped by the glass sandwich Nexus 4, which still stands out through its outlandish play with light reflection on the back glass panel — something that was never seen on any other phone.

Nexus 4 glass back.

The visor.

My biggest caveat with the phone’s physical design is the bending it’s prone to. I used to carry it in its Google made case. When removed after half a year or so, heavy bending was visible between the power button and the volume rocker. Maybe it happened when I dropped it, maybe it happened when I carried it in my front pocket while tying my shoes up (and thus putting strain on the phone). Still, that shouldn’t happen and highlights the structural weakness of the thin aluminum encasement.

The bending.

In an unrelated warranty claim, I received a brand new 6P with double the storage and none of the bending. Google quickly acknowledged the dreaded my 6P’s Bootloop of Deaththat it and its sister device 5X are prone to, with no questions asked. I even only had to send in my phone when I received the replacement — theoretically, you can continue using your damaged device until you get the replacement. Of course, that wasn’t possible with my bootlooping device, but it’s still a consumer-friendly move.

But back to the hardware: I still appreciate the stereo speakers a lot. They are a big plus whenever I want to watch a YouTube video or listen to music without headphones. Unfortunately, the microphone of my first device was the horror. Whenever I talked on a phone call, the other side could barely hear me, especially on speaker phone. As I found out much later, Google had trouble with noise cancellation. Luckily, my replacement unit is free from this issue.

One thing I’ll never want to live without anymore is the fingerprint reader. To me, it’s the most intuitive way of unlocking the phone, even if that means losing some security only a strong password can give me. But convenience wins: before switching to the 6P, I did not have any security in place at all.

Software: Still up to date

The phone — who would’ve thought — handles most everyday tasks with ease, such as messaging, reading the news, or browsing the web. There are stutters when using the usual suspects (looking at you, Facebook). However, the device becomes sluggish under heavy load and the processor throttles, as it is well-known with the Snapdragon 810 (and the Nexus 5X’s 808). These days, this becomes especially burdensome when navigating in Google Maps or playing somewhat graphically intense games. The interface lags behind every touch and feels very unresponsive unless one manually closes all other apps.

The battery could last longer, but that has always been a problem in the Nexus line. It gets me through most days of mild to medium use. The fast charging capability makes up for this — I just plug it in for 30 minutes and I’m good to go for another 5 hours. Lately, the battery is really acting up, though. I barely get more than two hours of screen-on time. I’m still trying to find out what’s behind that with Better Battery Stats. The problem can’t be pinned down to one app, but it’s also unlikely that the battery is already dying, given that the replacement phone is only half a year old. Before I got it, the phone would sometimes die with 15% battery left — another well-known issue with both 6P and 5X.

However, ever since I got used to not looking at my battery stats every five minutes, I’m way less anxious about uptime. It’s a bummer that many background services keep draining the battery so bad on Android, but that’s not a problem limited to the Nexus 6P.

I already dread the day when the phone loses its official Android updates in October. But since it is a Nexus device, it probably won’t be too bad since there is a huge developer community supporting it. Just take a look at the Nexus 4: It only recently received Android Oreo 8.1 support through Lineage OS. This will only make the updating process less convenient.

Camera: Where there is light, there is also shadow

The camera is a double-edged sword. If I have time to play around with the settings and I want to take a picture of an immovable object, I can get great shots. However, as soon as I’m in a hurry and want to take a snapshot of, say, a moving person, things get tricky. The camera app itself takes forever to load, and when it’s finally there, I have to wait an extra moment until it recognizes the tap on the shutter button.

Still, it’s great to see the active development on getting the latest Pixel camera features to other devices, including the Nexus 6P. Camera NXmanages to squeeze out the best performance from any camera, supporting better and faster HDR image support, the Pixel’s portrait mode, as well as some slightly broken support for AR Stickers. The downsides are also huge, unfortunately: once a picture is taken, image processing kicks in and doesn’t allow to view the taken picture until it’s done processing. The only way to work around this would be by installing Camera NX on the system partition (which is only possible on rooted devices).

AR Stickers look … bad.

So where does that leave us?

Even on the technological level of 2015, the Nexus 6P does everything I could wish for a smartphone to do. While the phone was plagued with a lot of issues, I was lucky enough to receive a replacement unit from Google, nullifying many of my complaints. Still, considering the price it was sold for (699 € incl. taxes — $750), I hoped for this phone to live up to higher expectations, especially in the long term.

While the latest smartphone features like edge to edge displays, 18:9 ratio screens and better cameras are tempting, I don’t see strong incentives to upgrade. To me, this shows that phones have reached a plateau — from a usability standpoint, there is not a lot that can be added or changed on a 30 months old phone.

What leaves a grain of salt, though, is the fact that if the bootloop wasn’t covered by warranty, I would’ve had no other choice than buying a new phone after the incident. Another question is the durability of the battery, a component that is often the first to fail in any device, just as it did on mine. But smartphones are used for numerous hours every day, so it comes to no wonder they degrade as quick as they do. While older devices can hold up performance wise with new devices, they often die because of technical failure.