Nexus 5X and 6P, Chromecast Audio, Pixel C and More: All the Big News From Google's Event

Phones, and Chromecasts, and tablets, and more!

Apple just dropped the iPhone 6S and iPad Pro, and today it was Google's turn to announce some new stuff. Usually the search giant reveals its new toys in a flurry of press releases, but this year they're getting a whole event. Here are the highlights. 

Two new phones

Unlike years previous where there has only been one Nexus phone, this year Google broke out two. Like Apple's iPhones, one is bigger and one is smaller, but Google's two new Nexii are more different than just that, offering different processors, on-board storage options, and designs. 

Decked out in metal, the Nexus 6P is as premium as a Nexus has ever been.

First, there's the Nexus 6P, the first Nexus phone to be made by the Chinese company Huawei, and the first Nexus phone to have a one-piece metal body. With a 5.7-inch screen, the 6P is a hefty sucker, in the iPhone 6S Plus size range, but with more screen and less phone around the edges. Also inside that body is a gigantic 3450 mAh battery. That's one of the biggest you'll find in any phone on the market, though that doesn't translate directly to good battery life. 

The Nexus 6P also has a 12-megapixel camera on the back, and an 8-megapixel camera on the front. Google's also playing up the importance of pixel size, saying that the Nexus 6P's camera's large pixel-size means it'll take great shots. Hopefully that's true; Nexus cameras have historically sort of sucked. 

The 6P also has a fingerprint scanner and fresh guts. With a Snapdragon 810 processor and 3GB of RAM, the 6P is a little more powerful than its little brother. It also has bigger storage options for media junkies, 32GB (enough), 64GB (plenty), 128GB (a TON) but still no microSD expansion slot. 


the Nexus 5X is a lot of phone for your money, but not especially high-end.

Then there's the Nexus 5X, a revamped version of the very popular (and very good) Nexus 5 that came out in 2013. It's got updated guts (of course) as well as a fingerprint scanner. These have been on various Android phones like Samsung's Galaxy S4-S6, but the newest version of Android will support them directly for the first time. Welcome to iPhoneland, Nexii.

With a 5.2-inch, 1080p screen, the Nexus 5X is smallish for an Android phone, but still a little bigger than the iPhone 6 or 6S. On the inside, it's running a Snapdragon 808 processor with 2GB of RAM which is a little on the light side; this phone isn't quite a powerhouse. And it only comes in two flavors of external storage: 16GB (too little) and 32GB (enough), with no microSD expansion slot to add any more. 

Made with a plastic casing (like every Nexus before it) and starting at a price of $350, the Nexus 5X is a lot of phone for your money, but not especially high-end. 

Both of the new Nexus phones also come with USB Type-C ports—the wonderful future of plugging in your gadgets—and Google's new Android Marshmallow. You'll be able to buy both on the Google store, and they ship in October. The Nexus 5X starts at $380, and the Nexus 6P at $500, and both come with a $50 credit to the Google Play app store. 

New Chromecasts and Chromecast Audio

Google's $35 streaming device gets a facelift this year. Instead of being a weird, protruding dongle, it's now a disk that sticks to the back of your TV with a flexible cable that plugs into your TV's HDMI port. It even comes in three colors. But perhaps more importantly, it has new connectivity powers. The new Chromecast will support 5 GHz Wi-Fi for faster speed and less interference, which ultimately means better video quality and less buffering. 

On top of that, there's also a new Chromecast for audio. It's a similar puck that plugs into a speaker, turning it into a smart speaker that can stream audio from your phone or even sync music between multiple speakers around your home. And, great news, Spotify will support Chromecast audio, which is really the only app that matters. 

The Pixel C

Does that look like an Android tablet that's also a Surface/iPad Pro? It basically is. Borrowing its design from Google's line of super expensive but stylish Chromebooks, the Pixel C is a $400 Android tablet  (with optional $100 keyboard)tricked out with an Nvidia Tegra K1 processor (a pretty powerful chip, but still the kind of thing you usually find in a tablet). 

With a 10.2-inch screen, it's a but smaller than the iPad Pro or Surface Pro 3, but just a touch larger than the regular iPad. The Pixel C's keyboard attaches by magnet, and can actually charge the tablet via wireless charging.

In that way, it's actually very similar to the Nexus 9 tablet that Google announced last year, to pretty poor response. The Nexus 9's hardware lacked fit and finish, and the performance was bizarrely and unreasonably bad. Hopefully the Pixel reinvention of the tablet will be better. 

Other fun stuff

Google Photos, the wonderful new unlimited-storage service announced at Google I/O, is getting a few improvements. Photos is getting collaborative albums so multiple people can keep all their photos of one thing or event in the same place. Even if you aren't adding photos, you can subscribe to an album so you can watch your friends or family adding their photos in real time. Photos is also coming to Chromecast, so you can force people to watch a slideshow of your vacation without a slide machine!

Google Play Music, essentially Google's Spotify, is getting a family plan option. Up to six accounts for $15, which is to say dirt cheap

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