Pixel 6 and 6 Pro: Google's latest attempt to keep its smartphone business alive.

 It’s been a month now Google has unveiled the latest iteration of its Pixel smartphone lineup. Until last year Google was struggling with its smartphone business. They even tried offering a well you about smartphone package with the pixel 5 which had a mid-range processor Snapdragon 765. It was a decent offering but failed to produce an impressive sales figure.

The new Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro (Image: Google)

This year Google is coming back with the Pixel 6 series which have significant upgrade across the board. The overall package of this new series is very compelling to the enthusiast. The new configuration also has the potential to give premium white to the users. Whether it will succeed or not is yet to be seen.

From the previous pixels, we got amazing photos but all of them lacked something here and there. Remember the pixel 3 XL witch had a hideous notch on the top of the display? The tech community called at the bathtub notch. It was so hilarious that people made it a meme. The following year, Google tries to revive the sales with the new Pixel 4 and 4 XL. There were good-looking phones but could not impress the tech enthusiasts.

After those phones failed to revive Google's smartphone business they tried it again with pixel 5 in 2020. When all other OEM manufacturers came up with smartphones priced over $1000 Google made a smartphone with top of the mid-range processor from Qualcomm and offered it at a decent price tag. Even it was not enough to bring back Google in the smartphone game but they did give up. Last month they tried again with the Pixel 6 and the 6 Pro. This time they are offering quite impressive specs and chipset designed in-house named “Google tensor”. Is it enough to bring them back from almost dead?

Design

The previous design of Google pixels was introduced first with the pixels 2 and 2xl. Ever since then Google stuck with the same design form of 5 years. The latest mid-range from Google known as pixel 5A also has the same design. But this time with pixels 6 and 6 pro-Google is changing it.

New glass and metal sandwich design of the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro (Image: Google)

The Pixel 6 and 6 pro has a new visor-like design on the back. The visor on the back houses new and improved cameras. Aside from the upgraded design on the back, the front has also changed. Google is offering a full-body display with a punch-hole camera. Online per pixel 5 the punch hall is at the center of the top of the display.

 To protect the front and the back Google as always is offering Gorilla Glass from Corning. Where the pixels 6 pro has gorilla Glass victus on the front and the back the vanilla variant only gets this class on the front. The backup pixel 6 has the sixth variant of gorilla glass. To g improve the rigidity of the body both models have aluminum frames.

Display

The screens on the new pixels have quite some improvements. Gone is the 60 Hz AMOLED panel from yesteryear and new with the high refresh rate panels. The pixel 6 pro has a variable 120 Hz where the vanilla variant kids in 90 Hz screen. The refresh rate on the regular pixel this year is fixed to either 90 or 60. Apart from the refresh rate, there are other improvements as well.

The image quality of the new displays is improved with HDR 10+. In the pixel 6 pros, the display is curved on both sides to give a premium feel. The regular Pixel 6 users unfortunately get a flat display.

Power

The most notable improvement of the new pixels compared to the previous ones is the processing power. This year Google is introducing their custom-designed SoC called tensor. The tech industry already knew about this new tensor chip thanks to the leaks. It is a moderated version of Samsung’s own Exynos 2100.

Samsung’s Exynos chips might have a repetition for delivering underwhelming performance but this time Google is utilizing their software with hardware. They are trying to be the Apple of Android with the new chipset. If they keep improving their software like Android 12L alongside hardware, it would not take too long.

Material U from Android 12L (Image: Google)

The new in-house processor does have some performance to offer to the users. It might be a tweaked version of exodus 2100 but it does deliver an impressive user experience. The games run without a lagging and the operating system is smooth like butter. The most noticeable improvement comes with AI performance. The Pixel 6 and 6 pro has more capacity to run tasks like automated phones, Live transcripts, and various new camera features. The impressive fact is most of the AI tasks are handled on the phone itself thanks to a tensor chip.

The new chipset is accompanied by 8GB and 12GB ram. On the Pixel 6 Pro, the users will get 12GB ram. Those who choose the regular pixel 6 Gates 8GB of ram. Considering the stock Android operating system both ram configuration is enough for any user. For storage, the 6 pro has three variants going from 128 GB to 512GB. The vanilla variant also gets a cut in this department with 128GB and 256GB storage options. There is no 512 GB option for pixel 6.

Camera

Pixel smartphones were always impressive in the camera department if you look at still photos. They always produced sharper images compared to the other flagships. Even with high-resolution sensors, some vendors could not keep up with the sharpness of the photos taken by pixel smartphones. That is the reason Google stuck with the same 12-megapixel camera sense pixel 2. They even completed with dual camera features like portrait mode with a single unit. After 4 years they changed it with a 50-megapixel primary camera on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro.

On the Pixel 6 Pro, the primary camera is accompanied 48-megapixel telephoto camera which has periscopic zoom technology. Aside from the telephoto it also gets a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera. On the regular 6, you don’t get the telephoto but the 12-megapixel ultrawide unit.

Although pictures are impressive this year as always Google is still struggling with videos. The new phones still cannot produce sharp and dynamic videos even with the in-house chipset. In the Dhaka situations, it’s a struggle even more. Grains and unnecessary artifacts fill up the whole frame. In this case, Google should learn from Apple. All the people wear hopeful about video improvement of the new pixels they could not deliver enough.

Magic Erase feature of the new Pixel 6 and 6 Pro (Image: Google)

Thanks to the advanced AI processing Google is offering some new features. The new skin tone algorithm preserves the true texture of darker people. Google is also implementing AI in photo editing. Now you can eliminate any unnecessary objects from your photos. The users just need to mark the outline of the objects and the portion that they need to erase. After that Google tensor will take over and do its job. In most cases, it does a phenomenal job except for sometimes when it struggles to identify specific objects.

Battery & other features

Among other noticeable changes, the batteries after new pixels have some improvements as well. The manual of the variant gets a mere 4614 mAh battery. The 6 pro gets more with its 5003 mAh. Both phones have plenty of battery capacity to last a full day. The pixel 6 pros can even end the day with a considerable amount of charge left. 

Other features there is a new fingerprint reader underneath the display. This one is an optical unit that is very slow. Sometimes it requires multiple authentications to unlock the phone. It’s very displeasing to find such a poor feature in a flagship offering from Google.

Conclusions

The new devices are quite an upgrade compared to the previous pixels. Even with a new chipset, camera hardware and Android 12L Google cannot complete the package. Again it seems justifiable when you consider the pricing. The vanilla variant starts from $599 and the pro variant starts from $899. It might seem like flagship pricing from yesteryear but it’s way off compared two to the recent $1000+pricing from these days.

What do you think about the new Pixel phones? Does Google compel you to buy new offerings? Or will you wait for the next year's pixel 7 with upgraded video quality?