9to5 Google claims this is the Nexus 6/X.

[senseamp]

I find it amusing that so many people are screaming "$649 for a 6-inch smartphone? That's outrageously overpriced!"

Hi, folks, go take a look at the prices of the Galaxy Note 4, Lumia 1520 and iPhone 6 Plus. The $649 price is not only in the ballpark, it's actually one of the better deals. Google is reminding you that hardware companies have to make money, and that this is what phones really cost. It sucks in that the Nexus is losing one of its biggest selling points, but it long felt like Google was leading fans down the garden path and fooling them into thinking that $350 was a realistic price for a high-end phone.

Why is it not realistic? Just upgrade the SOC on the Nexus 5, and done.
BOM's on these are in $200 range, so even at $350, they are making good money on them, not that Nexus is supposed to be profit driver at Google.
This is a marketing error on Google's part. They aimed the product at too high of a price point, too big of a display size for their Nexus customer base.
Nexus is primarily aimed at pre-paid unsubsidized market who buys their phones on Play store. The one going down the garden path is Google, thinking they can sell Nexus phones at $600 price range. They got a niche overpriced product. They'll either come back to their senses and release a $350 5" phone in the next few months, or Nexus as a concept is finished.

 

[Commodus]

You yourself acknowledge that "it sucks in that Nexus is losing one of its biggest selling points,..."

Then why is it amusing for the rest of us sharing that opinion? Do you laugh at yourself often?

The amusement mostly comes from people being shocked, shocked that hardware manufacturers would want to make a profit. Just because it's unfortunate doesn't mean that it isn't funny to witness some folks' inability to grasp basic economics!

 

[Commodus]

Why is it not realistic? Just upgrade the SOC on the Nexus 5, and done.
BOM's on these are in $200 range, so even at $350, they are making good money on them, not that Nexus is supposed to be profit driver at Google.
This is a marketing error on Google's part. They aimed the product at too high of a price point, too big of a display size for their Nexus customer base.
Nexus is primarily aimed at pre-paid unsubsidized market who buys their phones on Play store. The one going down the garden path is Google, thinking they can sell Nexus phones at $600 price range. They got a niche overpriced product. They'll either come back to their senses and release a $350 5" phone in the next few months, or Nexus as a concept is finished.

I'll agree that this could hurt Nexus 6 sales.... at the least, it's a slightly risky experiment.

With that said, don't buy into the myth that the bill of materials is the total cost of producing a phone. That doesn't include patents, research and development, marketing, shipping and many other factors. At least when the Nexus 5 was new, Google and LG were most definitely not making a $150 profit.

 

[sze5003]

I'm trying to justify the price to the one plus. Ok newer processor, $100 more ok if that's the case...3gb ram..same thing..camera isn't as good or the same, two speakers in front, an upgrade. 32gb isn't that expensive to put 64 in there. So my guess is, is it really worth 300 bucks more? I hope so because I need a new phone and I'm getting one since I would rather not deal with the issues I had with my one plus.

 

[jlee]

I find it amusing that so many people are screaming "$649 for a 6-inch smartphone? That's outrageously overpriced!"

Hi, folks, go take a look at the prices of the Galaxy Note 4, Lumia 1520 and iPhone 6 Plus. The $649 price is not only in the ballpark, it's actually one of the better deals. Google is reminding you that hardware companies have to make money, and that this is what phones really cost. It sucks in that the Nexus is losing one of its biggest selling points, but it long felt like Google was leading fans down the garden path and fooling them into thinking that $350 was a realistic price for a high-end phone.

Almost doubling the price of the previous phones, and you're surprised people are complaining?

Refresh the Nexus 5 and I'll be happy.

 

[dlock13]

If any of you are selling your Nexus 5s to supplement the cost of your new and shiny Nexus 6, by all means, let me be the first to buy.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Why is it not realistic? Just upgrade the SOC on the Nexus 5, and done.
BOM's on these are in $200 range, so even at $350, they are making good money on them, not that Nexus is supposed to be profit driver at Google.
This is a marketing error on Google's part. They aimed the product at too high of a price point, too big of a display size for their Nexus customer base.
Nexus is primarily aimed at pre-paid unsubsidized market who buys their phones on Play store. The one going down the garden path is Google, thinking they can sell Nexus phones at $600 price range. They got a niche overpriced product. They'll either come back to their senses and release a $350 5" phone in the next few months, or Nexus as a concept is finished.

Yeah, the way to look at this is if Samsung, instead of launching the GS5, axes the GS series and pushes you to the Note. But this is even bigger than the Note.

You can bet that 5" market, which is larger than the 6" market currently is going to run off in different directions. Now you could argue Google is pushing the 6" market to be the new phone market like the GNex redefined what phone sizes should be, but maybe its not. I doubt that's what Google's going for.

So the market that bought these phones for cheap is clearly being cut off, the market that wanted a good sized phone (the N5 was a small increase over the N4 only) is out.

What do you have left? People who want a $650 phone? That market is tiny in the US. They make up for this by having a subsidized carrier model, but for those who buy carrier phones, the 5" phones get the most attention still. Why buy a 6" phone? I guess an unanswered question is the subsidized pricing. Is this going to be $199 or $299 like the Note? This is going to be a hard sell against other $299 phones like the Note and iPhone 6+ considering those are smaller phones too. Even if the 6+ is "huge" with its bezels, the public perceives it otherwise with the 5.5" spec.

Totally wrong move. Google tried to do too many things at once. If they just sold this as a 5.2" phone or even 5.5" phone MAX, I could see things working out.

 

[sze5003]

The screen size doesn't bother me. It looks better than the 6+ my opinion. It's the price per specs that annoys me.

 

[Commodus]

Almost doubling the price of the previous phones, and you're surprised people are complaining?

Refresh the Nexus 5 and I'll be happy.

I'm not surprised that people are unhappy with the price! It's when they act as if they're entitled to low pricing (i.e. anything over $350 is horrendously expensive, no matter what hardware is involved) that it gets strange. People: Quad HD screens cost money. Snapdragon 805 chips cost money. Giant batteries cost money.

I do think Google should've thrown Nexus 5 fans a bone and upgraded to a newer chip (801 or maybe 805), but at least it didn't drop the device entirely.

 

[Skurge]

Why is it not realistic? Just upgrade the SOC on the Nexus 5, and done.
BOM's on these are in $200 range, so even at $350, they are making good money on them, not that Nexus is supposed to be profit driver at Google.
This is a marketing error on Google's part. They aimed the product at too high of a price point, too big of a display size for their Nexus customer base.
Nexus is primarily aimed at pre-paid unsubsidized market who buys their phones on Play store. The one going down the garden path is Google, thinking they can sell Nexus phones at $600 price range. They got a niche overpriced product. They'll either come back to their senses and release a $350 5" phone in the next few months, or Nexus as a concept is finished.

The BOM may in the N$250 range for a samsung or an apple phablet, but I doubt Motorola are getting a good deal on that 6 inch QHD SAMOLED Panel.

 

[OS]

I find it amusing that so many people are screaming "$649 for a 6-inch smartphone? That's outrageously overpriced!"

Hi, folks, go take a look at the prices of the Galaxy Note 4, Lumia 1520 and iPhone 6 Plus. The $649 price is not only in the ballpark, it's actually one of the better deals. Google is reminding you that hardware companies have to make money, and that this is what phones really cost. It sucks in that the Nexus is losing one of its biggest selling points, but it long felt like Google was leading fans down the garden path and fooling them into thinking that $350 was a realistic price for a high-end phone.

At this price atleast the carrier phones have promotions and free financing. Google play is full price up front and never runs any discounts.

I've owned every nexus device from gnex to N5 and they blew this one.

 

[v8envy]

I'm sure they will sell hundreds of these to the right buyers.

With iPhone now being offered in larger screen sizes the key advantage Android devices have is price. Priced the same as an iPhone 6 (which will likely have a $200-$300 trade in value 2 years from now while the Nexus 6 will not) I can't see people forming lines at the Google store to buy this item.

If this was a Motorola phone nobody would bat an eye at the price, but nobody would expect it to sell enough units to matter, either.

 

[Judgement]

Well, this is a huge let down. Now I don't know what to do, I guess I will have to take another look at the 2nd gen Moto X

 

[hellfire88]

For the specs, the price is reasonable. With that said, this should not have been marketed as a Nexus IMHO. To me the Nexus line was all about top-end specs (for the time) at discount (at-cost) prices with some compromises (usually camera and build quality). I think if they wanted to sell this as a Nexus, they should have made it $449-$499 max. At $649, they should have sold this as an "Android Silver" device or something. And at this price, the camera better be an improvement over the Moto X 2014!

Anyone else not that impressed by this Fall's new phone releases? No 64bit support and the Snapdragon 801/805 aren't really that much faster than the 800 in real world use. The Galaxy S5 and HTC One M8 aren't that much worse spec-wise than the latest/greatest.

I'm regretting selling my LG G3 (sold it in anticipation of Nexus 6). To me its a great all-around phone and I'll either get another one or look at the Moto X 2014 again. That or live with my LG G2 (which works great on Android KitKat) til the 64bit phones come out next year.

 

[Dari]

This phone will have vanilla Android + high-end specs. It'll definitely beat the Note 4 in performance (no bloat) and battery life. Plus, with 32GB min, I see no reason for mSD. Not bad at all. Unfortunately, it has Samesung AMOLED.

 

[sze5003]

How much more is the 64gb version?

 

[hellfire88]

How much more is the 64gb version?

$50 I believe, so $699

 

[sze5003]

$50 I believe, so $699

So I'm looking at $716 vs $762 with tax and assuming shipping is $15 bucks. I'll probably go for the 64gb white model.

 

[dguy6789]

The N6 looks fantastic to me. Unless something even higher end than this comes out really soon then I think this is my next phone.

The price seems very normal for a phone of this caliber. It isn't that too good to be true price that the previous two Nexus phones were but I fully expected the "selling at/near build cost" price of Nexus phones to not go on forever. Nearly every smartphone I have ever purchased out of 13 or so in the past 4 years was around $650 since I purchase off contract and brand new so the price is pretty standard as far as I'm concerned.

 

[sze5003]

I wonder if any place will have floor models before pre order begins. I would like to see it in person. Of course I can refund it to Google if I do find it too big to use. Did they say only the unlocked models are available for pre-order?

I know Verizon is getting them too and since I already have Verizon I would rather not leave my unlimited data. But I don't want to wait if they are not allowing orders for Verizon off contract. I'll just go to the metro $60 unlimited plan since they have good coverage here.

 

[GTRagnarok]

This looks like an awesome alternative to the Note 4 if you don't use the S-pen. I hope the AMOLED display is the latest and greatest variety and not last gen stuff like on the Moto X, but I wouldn't be too hopeful on that. Still, if I were to upgrade my phone this year, the Nexus 6 would very likely be my choice.

 

[jiffylube1024]

I really hope there's a cheaper 5"-5.2" Nexus phone coming out as well. This is too much of everything for me: too big a phone, too expensive.

 

[dguy6789]

I really hope there's a cheaper 5"-5.2" Nexus phone coming out as well. This is too much of everything for me: too big a phone, too expensive.

I am curious what you would expect a new 5 inch Nexus phone to do that the Nexus 5 with Android 5 wouldn't do.

 

[Commodus]

I really hope there's a cheaper 5"-5.2" Nexus phone coming out as well. This is too much of everything for me: too big a phone, too expensive.

The short answer: it sounds like the newer Moto X (and to a lesser extent, Droid Turbo) is effectively the new mid-size Nexus. It's not quite stock, but Motorola's light customizations means that you probably won't be waiting months to get Lollipop.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I am curious what you would expect a new 5 inch Nexus phone to do that the Nexus 5 with Android 5 wouldn't do.

Better battery, better camera?