Google officially announces the Pixel 6 lineup

After many leaks, official harassment, and months of waiting, announced Google officially announced its new Pixel phone lineup, Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, which are the latest high-end phones from the company that has traditionally not been able to make a big impact in the high-end phone market.

Both are available for pre-order starting today October 19 and shipping begins October 28. The company says that all major US carriers, as well as retailers such as Google Store, Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, Costco and others, sell the phones.

The phones come in at $599 and $899. These are the base prices for Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro phones, respectively.

This price is considered competitive compared to the iPhone, Samsung, or even similar OnePlus phones, especially when you consider that the company offers 128GB of storage in both base models.

The Pixel 6 can be equipped with a capacity of up to 256 GB. While the Pixel 6 Pro has options up to 512GB.

The devices get their own specially designed new processor, which the company calls the Tensor. Google says it can compete with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888.

And there is a TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) dedicated to artificial intelligence built into the chip. In addition, there are two high-power cores, two medium-power cores, and four low-power cores, a dedicated security coprocessor, a private computing core, and an image processing core.

The Pixel 6 comes with 8GB of RAM. While the Pixel 6 Pro has 12 GB.

The new phones visually represent a departure from the previous Pixel phones. Although, they share a common design language. But this language is not present on the Pixel 5 or Pixel 4.

Instead, these are glossier phones with polished metal frames on the Pixel 6 and a glossy glass back on both. The company offers each phone in three different colours.

The most prominent feature of the phones is the location of the rear camera. Which the company denotes as a bar, which is a protrusion that extends across the entire width of the phone and includes two cameras in the Pixel 6 or three in the Pixel 6 Pro and related sensors.

And Google switched to a new camera sensor after using the previous sensor for four consecutive generations. Both phones have a 50MP main sensor to output 12.5MP photos. The sensor has 1.2 µm pixels with an f/1.85 optically stabilized aperture.

The company says the sensor captures 150 percent more light than the Pixel 5 camera. There’s a 12-megapixel ultra-wide lens with a 114-degree field of view and f/2.2 aperture.

And if you’re using the Pixel 6 Pro, you also get a 48MP 4x telephoto camera not available on the Pixel 6.

The front cameras differ between models as well, with the Pixel 6 getting an 8-megapixel camera with an 84-degree field of view. While the Pixel 6 Pro gets an 11.1MP camera with a 94-degree field of view.

The new wizard brings some new photo-editing features, like the Magic Eraser tool that automatically gets rid of distracting elements in your photos, a new long exposure mode, and capture motion blur.

Google says it is ready to face Apple and Samsung

For video, both phones can shoot 4K video at 60fps, complete with automatic HDR image processing, or capture up to 240fps for slow-motion video at 1080p.

Moving to the front of the devices, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro both have OLED screens. The Pixel 6 has a screen size of up to 6.4 inches with a resolution of 1080 pixels and can be refreshed at 90 Hz for a smoother scrolling experience. It is a flat screen and has slightly larger bezels all around compared to the Pixel 6 Pro’s display that uses curved sides.

The Pixel 6 Pro has a 6.7-inch screen with a resolution of 1440 pixels. This phone also uses LTPO technology to change the refresh rate from 10Hz to 120Hz, depending on what you do on the phone. The screens of the two phones are covered with the latest Gorilla Glass Victus and supports HDR.

Both devices have wireless charging, reverse wireless charging for accessories, IP68 weather ratings, in-display optical fingerprint sensors, stereo speakers, and fast charging support.

But you won’t get a charger in the box, and you have to either buy a 30W charger separately or use what you have to take advantage of this last feature.

Both phones also support 5G connectivity, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. The Pixel 6 comes with a 4,614 mAh battery. While the Pixel 6 Pro gets a larger battery with a capacity of 5004 mAh.

The Pixel 6 Pro also has a UWB chip, similar to recent iPhone and Galaxy models. The phones work with the latest version of Android. The two phones add some new features that take advantage of their dedicated processors, such as faster cross-device translation and new photo-editing features powered by artificial intelligence.

Google says new phones get at least five years of software support, longer than any other Pixel phone before and longer than any other Android phone you can buy now.