Nexus team Reddit AMA: Camera bump, Qi wireless charging, peculiar names explained

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Published 1 Oct 2015

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The “ sts for emium. The camera bump actually looks good. And wireless charging was thrown out to keep the thickness down.

Those were the key takeaways from a Reddit AMA with ’s Nexus team, which answered questions shared more details about the work behind the Nexus 6 5X.

Hiroshi ckheimer, who described himself as “theoretically in charge of Android stuff,” joined Vice esident of Engineering Dave Burke the product manager for each Nexus device on one of Reddit’s well-known Q&A sessions.

y this matters: Both Nexus phones are rather powerful devices. However, there are a few compromises: there’s no support for T-Mobile’s B 12 (yet) neither has wireless charging, unlike Samsung’s flagship Galaxy devices. Such decisions are usually a balance of priorities. So if you’re a Nexus fan of have a particular interest about the insides of what makes a good smartphone, the Reddit AMA is interesting reading.

About that camera bump

Seep raich, the Nexus 6product manager, lamented the numerous leaks of the Nexus 6 as he said they misconstrued the actual design of the phone’s camera bump. He said the “visor” required a lot of design engineering effort to achieve the overall goal of a good camera large sensor for low-light performance. 

“The design was driven by major engineering challenges (putting in a great camera with big sensor for amazing low-light performance, AF, flash, antennas, NFC coils, -Fi 2×2 MIMO antennas) still keeping the form nice looking, optimizing for thin/light/comfortable feel in h,” he said. 

On the lack of wireless charging

One major bummer was the lack of support for wireless charging, which is incredibly useful if you’ve ever had a device that supports it. According to ckheimer, since the phones have B Type-C, which is a reversible connector easy to plug in, it was worth it to ditch the extra thickness that comes with wireless charging. so, the phones support fast charging, getting you back up to full power in a comparatively short amount of time.

If you already have a wireless charging pad, you can buy a rather inexpensive adapter that sits atop the pad powers up your device. I’m not sure how much the thickness argument holds water, as the Galaxy Note 5 (which supports wireless charging) is incredibly thin  packs in a stylus.

The cameras are the same, but not really

Vice esident of Engineering Dave Burke said both the Nexus 5X 6use the same camera sensor (IMX377) F/2.0 optics. Yet he went into more of the technical details about the 6 explaining that the 6camera has more C G horsepower features like 240 F slow-motion, “Smartburst” technology for capturing a large batch of photos at once, Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS).

so, Burke said, “Yup :)” in response to a question if there would be a tweak to the video stabilization algorithm with the 6 DxO found this to be one of the few weaknesses in an otherwise great camera.

T-Mobile B 12 is coming

If you’re thinking of getting one of these phones for use on T-Mobile, the team said not to panic. Support for B 12 is coming by the ship date, as the team is “hard at work” on a solution. If this comes through, you won’t need to fret over having potentially spotty or slower E performance.