I didn't want to address this subject because I didn't want to spend any more time re-reviewing the Nexus 6, but given the amount of interest in this subject I'd like to introduce some information that Motorola shared with us, which was verified by Brandon in testing.

Erica Griffin and Francois Simond are using ~30% APL to test "maximum" brightness, which is necessary to achieve their stated 400 nit figure. In order to understand what this means, I'll give two examples of 30% APL, in addition to what APL really means.

First, APL is average picture level, and refers to the percentage of the display that is lit. 100% APL is a completely white picture, while 0% APL is a completely black photo, and everything else falls somewhere in between.

For the record, this is 30% APL. And this is 1% APL.

What we test at is 100% APL, which is similar to the homepage of Google or almost any website. Motorola themselves found the brightness of the Nexus 6 to be around 250 nits at 100% APL, which isn't up for debate. Even picture-heavy sites are around 80% APL. This is around 300 nits, which is still nowhere near 400 nits.

In addition, their testing program is far from custom. Anyone can look through Erica's videos and see that she uses hcfr, which is a free and open-source application. The only software that Francois could have designed is a pattern generator, which is hardly a point of differentiation when anyone can create their own image patterns to test with.

I will be the first to admit that our testing isn't ideal, but we are actively working to resolve these issues for future reviews. However, our results are valid. The Nexus 6's display is what it is, the results will not be altered, and our conclusions will not be changed.