Google says the “P” in Nexus 6P stands for “premium.” However, a new durability test video of the Nexus 6P posted by JerryRigEverything seems to call this into question.
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Before I go further with this, I want to say that I’m personally skeptical that the Nexus 6P could possibly be as poorly built as it looks in this video. The person who made the video, however, has a long history of doing durability tests across several different phones and I don’t think he’d use a fake or doctored device just to make the Nexus 6P look bad. It is possible that he’s using a pre-release prototype that was accidentally shipped to him or that he’s using a defective version of the phone. I have reached out Google for comment on this and have asked another “bend test” expert to weigh in and will update this post if I hear back from them.
That said, I do think this is worth writing about because anyone who’s shelling out hundreds of dollars for a supposedly “premium” phone should know beforehand about potential durability concerns.
At any rate: JerryRigEverything has done bend tests on several different smartphones in the past and has found the Nexus 6P to be the easiest to bend of them all. In fact, he goes so far as to call it “a joke.” The bend test starts at the 2:55 mark in this video:
“I am being completely serious when I say my little sister could have bent this phone in half,” he says. “The Nexus 6P is a joke, hands down.”
It wasn’t just bending either, as the video also shows the phone’s display and its rear cover are also very prone to easily scratching.
As I said, I’m still skeptical of whether the Nexus 6P could possibly be this poorly built, but this YouTube user does have a solid track record with these kinds of tests and it’s something to at least consider before you shell out money on an expensive new phone.
I’ll update this post with any comments from Google or any further Nexus 6P bend test videos as I see them.
UPDATE: I reached out to the Internet’s original bend test expert Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy. He shares my assessment that the video is not faked in any way although he does wonder if the small display crack in the early scratch tests made the device easier to bend than it otherwise would have been.
UPDATE 2: After doing some more research, it seems likely that the person who made this video wrecked the Nexus 6P’s structural integrity when he cracked the Gorilla Glass during the early scratch tests. Thus, when he went to bend the device, it came apart much more quickly than it otherwise would have.
Added to this, some other bend test videos of the Nexus 6P have popped up on the web that show the device is much more durable than what was shown in the original video. One example:
@Moody_Rohit #Nexus6P is vry strong.I hv review device & made ds video @max4974 @HuaweiIndia @psanjeevbrave @hdasari pic.twitter.com/ldInDl9OrF
— Ankit Chugh 🌪️ (@luckyankit) October 30, 2015
