Nexus 6 price drops to just $349 ahead of expected Google announcement

By Jamie Lendino 

If you’ve been wanting a Nexus 6 but were put off by the $499 direct price, now’s your chance: Amazon has just dropped the price of the phone $150, to just $349 for 32GB and $399 for 64GB, putting it on an even keel with the $329 and $389 OnePlus 2 (which is difficult to get anyway). You can get one from Amazon in either midnight blue or cloud white. The price cut is ahead of Google’s widely expected announcement at the end of this month for new Nexus phones.

The Nexus 6 is a beautiful phone with fast performance, a gorgeous quad-HD 493ppi display, an excellent 13-megapixel rear camera, solid front-facing stereo speakers, a large 3,220mAh battery, and stock Android 5.1 Lollipop (which is always the biggest appeal for me with Nexus phones). Underneath the hood is a quad-core Snapdragon 805 with an Adreno 420 GPU and 3GB RAM. And with a 6-inch panel, it’s basically a stand-in for a tablet when you don’t have one around, while still being (just) small enough to function as your main phone.

Meanwhile, as we reported earlier in the week, it seems as if we may get two new Nexus phones at the end of the month instead of one. The rumored phones are a 5.2-inch model from LG with a 1080p display, a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB RAM, and a 2,700mAh battery. The larger handset is expected to be from Huawei and sport a 5.7-inch quad HD display, which puts it slightly smaller than the existing Nexus 6, as well as the notorious Snapdragon 810 — supposedly a finely tuned version (with help from Qualcomm) that lets it perform well without being subject to heat issues.

Both of the new phones should come with the long-awaited Android 6.0 Marshmallow, but an update for the Nexus 6 to that OS should also be imminent as well. If you buy a Nexus 6 now at Amazon’s discounted price, you’ll still get Android 6 at some point soon, but you won’t get the newer phone’s USB-C ports, fingerprint reader, and (possibly) improved cameras. If the rumors are correct, you will get a larger display than both of the newer phones, which counts for something.

Note that the phone still starts at $499 from Google’s store; you’ll need to buy it at Amazon to get the discount. It may still be worth waiting until September 29th to see what Google has in store, but there’s no guarantee this price cut from Amazon will last — or if the new phones will even be in stock and available to purchase yet once Google announces them (though chances are they will be).