Google has certainly had a busy week. As many other tech companies are gearing up for the holiday season with new product lines, Google announced the next generation of its software and hardware with the reveal of the Nexus 9 tablet, Nexus 6 phone and Nexus Player streaming box, which all run on the upcoming Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system.
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Google has given us plenty of announcements to work with, so let's break it down piece-by-piece to see what Google has in store for this holiday season: what it is, what it does, what it costs and when you can get your hands on it.
Nexus 6
The Nexus 6 is Google's next smartphone. The Motorola-made phone gets its name from its 5.96-inch display, making it one of the biggest phones in the phablet market ahead of both the iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 4. The device sports dual front-facing speakers for better stereo sound. It comes with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with optical image stabilization and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The phone's battery, however, turns out to be one of the Nexus 6's big selling points. Using Motorola's Turbo Charge technology, the Nexus 6 is advertised as being able to go from low battery to six hours of life with just 15 minutes of being plugged in. A full battery is said to last for a full 24 hours.
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With a Snapdragon 805 quad-core 2.7GHz processor and an Adreno 420 GPU, the Nexus 6 sports some serious power under the hood. The phone will go on preorder later this month with an official release date sometime in November. You can either buy an unlocked Nexus 6 from Google's Play store, or you can buy one through a major cell carrier. If you go for the unlocked version, it'll run you $649 for the 32 GB version and $699 for the 64 GB version.
Nexus 9
The Nexus 9 tablet by HTC comes with an 8.9-inch screen and HTC's own BoomSound speakers for top-notch video and audio. It sports an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera. The tablet packs 2 GB of RAM, a 64-bit NVIDIA Tegra K1 Dual Denver 2.3GHz CPU and a 192-core Kepler GPU. Handily beating the Nexus 6 on the price point, the Nexus 9 starts at $399 for a 16 GB model. A 32 GB model runs $479, and adding 4G to that increases the price to $599. The Nexus 9 is available for preorder starting today and will be on store shelves starting November 3.
Nexus Player
Google's unexpected announcement this week was a media streaming box in the same vein as Amazon Fire TV. The compact box can stream movies, TV shows and Android games to a TV screen through Google Play and other apps. A handy microphone on the included remote allows users to search through the media library with a simple voice command. The box is also compatible with Google Cast, meaning a user can stream feeds from their mobile device or laptop through the Nexus Player. Finally, with the magic of Android 5.0 Lollipop, a user can start a movie on Nexus Player than switch to their tablet if they need to leave the room.
ASUS is even manufacturing a Nexus Player game controller (which is sold separately) to let console players feel right at home playing their Android games on the TV. Online multiplayer is free through Google Play Games, and achievements earned while playing will sync across Android devices to make sure they all stay in one place. The Nexus Player is available for preorder starting today through Google Play for $99.
Android 5.0 Lollipop
For its final announcement, Google revealed the details of the upcoming 5.0 Lollipop Android operating system. The new operating system focuses on increasing connectivity between Android devices, allowing users to surf the Internet on their phones, then switch seamlessly to their tablets and pick up where they left off. The connectivity even extends to Android Wear devices. Lollipop also adds a power saver mode that can give Android devices extended battery life and increased security options to make sure that only you can get into your Android phone.
All of the devices listed above will ship with Android 5.0 Lollipop, but in the coming weeks it will also be made available to Nexus 4, 5, 7 and 10 devices.
