The new Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro showcase one of the biggest year-to-year phone upgrades I’ve seen in a long …
The new Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro showcase one of the biggest year-to-year phone upgrades I’ve seen in a long time. In the lead-up to Google’s fall Pixel event on Tuesday, the company behind Android and YouTube did something many other phone makers don’t and announced both new Pixel 6 phones back in August. The Pixel 6 has new camera hardware, runs on Google’s first in-house processor and has a design that looks unlike any other phone sold today. The Pixel 6 series is an important release for Google because it’s a big shift away from the company’s pleasant midtier phone strategy of the past and a significant step toward a portfolio designed to compete with premium phones from Apple, Samsung and Huawei. Thematically, Google has aimed to make the Pixel 6 work well for more people. Part of that means making the cameras work better for people with different skin tones and improving voice recognition to easily identify different speaking patterns and accents. Of the two phones, the $599 (£599) Pixel 6 is the more affordable model. It’s priced to compete with the iPhone 13, the Samsung Galaxy S21 and other midtier Android phones such as the current Motorola Edge. For more information on the Pixel 6 Pro, check out my comparison below or read our first impressions of the Google Pixel 6 Pro by my colleague Andrew Hoyle. (Pricing for Australia hasn’t been announced, but the price in the UK, which has similar tax, converts roughly to AU$1,100.) Google used 100% recycled aluminum for the body of the Pixel 6. The sides have a matte finish and overall the Pixel 6 has an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance. The Pixel’s defining physical feature is its horizontal camera bump strip. It would be easy to say the camera strip was inspired by Robocop’s visor, or the visor on Cylons from Battlestar Galactica. But Google said it wanted to make a unique camera bump that celebrates the camera system. So instead of a square in the corner the designers went for a strip. In person it looks like a piece of a black mineral that has been cut, shaped and polished into a camera bump that keeps your phone level so it doesn’t wobble. The camera bump houses wide and ultrawide cameras (more on those in a moment). On the front of the Pixel 6 is a 6.4-inch display covered in Gorilla Glass Victus with an under-display fingerprint reader. The screen has a 90Hz high refresh rate, which should make animations look smoother and feel more responsive.
