A day after Google’s announcement packed keynote, parts of the Nexus team, including Dave Burke and Hiroshi Lockheimer, are holding a AMA on Reddit. Unlike when President Obama brought down the website by answering only a handful of questions, the Nexus team have already provided a significant number of answers, so I’ve gone ahead and highlighted a couple that I thought were interesting.
One of the more interesting answers to come out of the AMA pertains to the fact that, for the first time since the Nexus 4, neither the Nexus 5X nor the Nexus 6P will ship with Qi wireless charging support. The decision to ditch the standard, according to Hiroshi Lockheimer, came about after the team decided to include a USB Type-C port on each phone.
“Qi wireless charging starting with N4 because plugging in USB micro B was such a hassle!” starts the executive. “With this year’s Nexii, we support USB Type-C which has a reversible connector so there’s no more guessing. AND it charges incredibly swiftly: 1% to 100% in 97 mins on the 6P for example (the first ~45 mins of charging is especially fast). Meanwhile, wireless charging adds z (thickness).”
Later on, the group is asked about the base Nexus 5X model only including 16GB of storage. “The idea here was to strike a balance between premium features/experiences and affordability,” says Krishna Kumar, the product manager Google put in charge of the Nexus 5X team. Later, Lockheimer added an edit to the initial response that says “It’s a conspiracy! MOVE TO THE CLOUD!” I’m tempted to say he was only half joking when he wrote this response.
The team also answered a question I’ve seen asked in the comments section on this site multiple times. That is, besides being able to record slow motion video at 120 frames per second and 240 frames per second, respectively, are the cameras on the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P identical? The answer, according to Kumar, is yes.
“Both devices have the same camera – a 12.3MP camera, with large 1.55um pixels, which works great in all conditions – especially low light. And both have LDAF for fast auto-focus.” Dave Burke later adds, “[they have the] same sensor (IMX377) and F/2.0 optics. But 6P has more CPU/GPU horsepower so has a few additional features like 240fps slomo (vs 120fps on 5X), Smartburst, and EIS.”
Burke’s last point is interesting because it confirms that the 6P has some form of software image stabilization.
Finally, regarding the naming of the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, the Nexus team stated, “X for the core of the Nexus brand (plus it sounds cool!), P for premium.”
[source]Reddit[/source]
