Last night was a big night for Google with the search giant announcing a slew of new products and finally giving us a name for the next version of its Android operating system, as version 5.0 will now be called Lollipop. Of course with every new version of the operating system there needs to be a hero product to sell all of its benefits and features, this time around its a phablet called the Nexus 6.

The Nexus 6 which has been based off of the latest generation of Motorola’s popular Moto X smartphone has a 6 inch QHD display which means a resolution of 1 440×2 560 and a pixel density of 493ppi. It’s of course not the first smartphone we’ve seen running at that resolution with LG’s G3 and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 already rocking those kind of numbers and from what we’ve seen with them in the past, that kind of resolution means a seriously good viewing experience.

Powering the whole setup is a spec sheet similar to that of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 with a quad core 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor and 3GB of RAM with either 32GB or 64GB of onboard, non user-expandable storage. There is a 13 megapixel rear and a 2 megapixel front camera to handle your selfie needs as well as a 3 220mAh battery to keep it chugging along. As noted earlier the Nexus 6 will be running the latest version of Google’s mobile OS with version 5.0 Lollipop installed from the get-go.

The Nexus 6 will be going on sale in the US in November and will cost $649 (R7 185) when it arrives, significantly more than the $349 (R3 865) starting price of its predecessor the Nexus 5.

As to whether it will be coming to South Africa, traditionally we haven’t seen a Nexus model being offered by our local networks since the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, now three generations behind the times. However Orange has been offering the Nexus 5 through its online store for  just under R5 000 which is a good portent for the potential future offering of the Nexus 6.