Google's Nexus 6 smartphone should not only be hitting retail shelves later this year, when it does, it should pack quite a punch. New benchmarks show the handset to be on par with Samsung's Galaxy S5 and HTC's One M8 flagship smartphones.

According to a new TechTastic Manhattan test, the Nexus 6 (manufactured by Motorola and under the moniker "Shamu") outperforms the Sony Xperia Z2 and the LG G3 and is barely worse than the popular Galaxy S5 and HTC One M8. What's more is that we have some more benchmarks to tell us what's powering this smartphone under the hood.

AnTuTu benchmarks show that the Nexus 6 sports a 5.2-inch display with a 1440X2560 pixel resolution that will give users a 1080p Full HD experience. The Nexus 6 also apparently houses a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor clocked at almost 2.7GHz, 3GB RAM, and an Adreno 420 GPU. As far as cameras go, the Nexus 6 should come with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2.1-megapixel front shooter. Expect 1080p video recording on at least the rear lens. Oh, and the handset will launch with Android L onboard, although that's pretty much a given.

Bear in mind neither Google nor Motorola have announced the Nexus 6, or Shamu, so there's a possibility that these benchmarks aren't real, or that they aren't indicative of the final product. Previous rumors have more or else been in line with the specs from AnTuTu, although some have pegged the screen at 5.9 inches.

It shouldn't be too long, however, before Google unveils the next-generation Nexus smartphone. According to recent leaks, Google is looking to release the Nexus 6 around November, in time for the busy holiday shopping season along with Android L and a new Nexus 8 tablet.

Many expected Google to come out with a new Nexus smartphone at its annual I/O conference earlier this summer, and the absence of an announcement had many wondering if Google had scrapped the Nexus lineup for a high-end "Silver" program. Luckily for budget shoppers, head of Android engineering and the Nexus program at Google Dan Burke told ReadWrite in June that Nexus is alive and crucial to Android's development.

"When we are working, there are sort of two outputs. We're building a Nexus device and we're building the open source code. There is no way you can build the open source code without the phone or tablet or whatever you are building," Burke said.

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