Everything You Need to Know About Google’s New Nexus Phones, Chromecasts, and Tablet
Less than a month after Apple unveiled its new iPhones, iPad Pro, and Apple TV , Google fired back with a big product event of its own.
The show, held this week in San Francisco, included the launch of Google’s new Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P smartphones, its Pixel C tablet, and a pair of Chromecast streaming media devices.
Here’s the lowdown on everything the tech giant revealed.
Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P
Let’s start things off with the biggest news of the day: Google’s new smartphones. The Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P pack 5.2-inch and 5.7-inch displays, respectively.
The smaller handset is a more value-oriented proposition starting at $380, while the larger $500 Nexus 6P is geared more toward people interested in a big-screen, high-powered phone.
Both handsets get identical rear-mounted fingerprint readers and high-powered 12.3-megapixel rear cameras. According to Google, the phone’s cameras have larger pixels that allow for better low-light photos.
The Nexus phones also come with the new reversible USB Type-C connection, which means no more trying to figure out which way to plug the cable into your phone.
Both handsets come loaded with Google’s new Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system. Marshmallow includes a variety of useful updates, including improved battery management, better voice search integration across apps, and a new Google Now on Tap feature that lets you use Google Now within apps to quickly look up relevant information.
For instance, if you’re using Spotify and listening to Iron Maiden, you can ask how old the lead signer is or what the band’s best songs are. (Answers: Bruce Dickinson is 57 years young, and the band’s top songs are “Run to the Hills” and “Two Minutes to Midnight” — at least, according to Google.)
Pixel C
In addition to the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, Google surprised everyone in attendance with a new tablet called the Pixel C. Unlike Google’s other tablets, the Pixel C was built and designed by the tech giant, rather than a third-party manufacturer.
It sports an all-aluminum body and a large 10.2-inch display with a 2560 x 1800 resolution. It’s thin, lightweight, beautiful, and costs $500 with 32GB of memory.
But the Pixel C isn’t just a tablet. This is a slate designed to take on the likes of Microsoft’s Surface, thanks to Google’s optional keyboard accessory.
But whereas other tablet keyboards are cumbersome and easy to misplace, the Pixel C’s $150 keyboard is designed to attach to the Pixel C via magnets. There’s a kickstand that folds down into the keyboard and is strong enough to hold up the tablet at almost any angle; the magnets are so powerful that the tablet stays attached to the keyboard even when you hold it upside down.
Chromecast and Chromecast audio
Google also showed off its two new Chromecast streaming devices: the second generation Chromecast and the brand new Chromescast Audio. Like the first version, the standard Chromecast is designed to let you cast video content from your phone, tablet, or laptop to your TV.
Google says it has improved its Wi-Fi antennas so you’ll see better streaming quality for your favorite shows and movies.
The new Chromecast also gets an updated app that lets you see what shows and movies are available to stream in your various Chromecast-enabled apps, which is a major improvement over the previous Chromecast app.
The app now lets you search for shows, movies, and actors across multiple streaming apps such as Netflix and Hulu. When it finds the movie or show you’re looking for, Chromecast provides you with a list of the apps you can use to watch it and how much each program will cost.
This is the one feature that finally puts the Chromecast on a more equal footing with the likes of the Roku 3 and Apple TV.
Chromecast Audio, meanwhile, is a new device designed to let you cast music from your phone, tablet, or laptop, to nearly any speaker you own. To connect your Chromecast Audio to a speaker, you simply plug it into the speaker’s 3.5mm audio jack, optical audio slot, or RCA port.
You can then connect your phone to your Chromecast Audio via Wi-Fi and control all of your music with ease. You can even have multiple speakers with their own Chromecasts play the same song at the same time (a feature Google says will appear later this year).
Both the new Chromecast and Chromecast Audio cost $35.
Nexus hold ‘em
Google is clearly hoping its new products prove it can produce great software and hardware. Based on our initial impressions, the company has succeeded. Still, we’ll wait until we can give each device a thorough review before we pass final judgment.
Email Daniel at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley or on Google+.
