At an event held in San Francisco today, Google unveiled its new Nexus handsets for 2015: the LG-made Nexus 5X and Huawei-made Nexus 6P. The Nexus 5X is the cheaper and less powerful of the two handsets unveiled by Google today, and is a spiritual successor to the original Nexus 5 released in 2013.

The LG-made Nexus 5X features a plastic body, with the front being adored by a 5.2-inch 1080p HD display. The display is flanked by a single front-facing speaker.

Under the hood, the Nexus 5X is powered by a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 chipset which comprises of 4x Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.6GHz and 2x Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. It is paired with an Adreno 418 GPU, 2GB RAM, and 16/32GB of storage space. There is no microSD card slot on the Nexus 5X, so it is disappointing to see LG and Google only offer 32GB as the maximum storage capacity.

The rear of the 5X houses a 12.3MP shooter with an F/2.0 aperture and a LaserAF sensor, while the front houses a 5MP shooter with F/2.2 aperture. Nexus devices have never been known for their camera performance, but this time around, Google has laid special emphasis on it. The company made many comparisons to the camera performance of the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P to that of the iPhone 6s Plus. You can also launch the camera by quickly double tapping the power button. The device is also capable of recording slow-mo videos at up to 120fps.

Other specs of the LG Nexus 5X include Wi-Fi b/g/n connectivity, LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, a USB Type-C port, and a 2,700mAh battery with fast charging support.

https://youtu.be/QLqHZLdt_jE

The fingerprint scanner at the rear is called Nexus Imprint and is capable of directly waking up the device from sleep. Thanks to the new power saving optimisations in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the Nexus 5X will be able to easily last a day of heavy usage and even last through the night.

The hardware is only one part of the story here though. The Nexus 5X is among the very first Android devices that will be available in the market running Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The latest version of Android brings with it a number of enhancements and improvements including a permissions manager, power saving techniques like Doze and App Standby, and native APIs for the fingerprint scanner.

The Nexus 5X goes on sale through the Google Play Store from today in the United States, Ireland, and United Kingdom, with its prices starting from $349 for the 16GB and $399 for the 64GB variant. It will be available in four colors: Carbon White, Ice Blue, and Quartz.

Google is also bundling 90-day subscription to Google Play Music with the handset. Additionally, for customers who pre-order the handset in the United States, Google will bundle a $50 Google Play credit with the device.