The Pixel 6 is official—and it’s $300 cheaper than a comparable Samsung phone

The Pixel 6 is lastly official, with Google taking the wraps off the telephone throughout a livestreamed occasion on Tuesday. We’ve got a lot to speak about.

First, the fundamentals: There are two telephones, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Professional. The massive information right now is the value, which is decrease than we had been anticipating: $599 for the Pixel 6 and $899 for the Pixel 6 Pro. Each telephones are an unbelievable $300 cheaper than comparable units from Samsung. The $900 Pixel 6 Professional spec sheet compares effectively to the $1,200 Galaxy S21 Extremely, whereas the $600 Pixel 6 lands someplace between the $800 Galaxy S21 and $1,000 S21+. Proper off the bat, it is fairly arduous to go mistaken whenever you’re this less expensive than your main competitors.

As for specs, the Pixel 6 Professional has a 6.7-inch, 120 Hz, 3120×1440 LTPO OLED show; 12GB of RAM; 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage; and a 5000 mAh battery. LTPO implies that the Pixel 6 Professional has a dynamic refresh price show that may drop right down to a extra power-efficient show mode for particular content material. You get 120 Hz for scrolling, a framerate-appropriate refresh for video (suppose 60, 30, or 24 Hz, relying on the content material), and 10 Hz for nonetheless pictures. That is additionally the one Pixel telephone with UWB, or extremely wide-band, a Bluetooth tracker expertise. There are three rear cameras—a 50 MP fundamental digicam, a 12 MP wide-angle, and a 48 MP 4x telephoto.

The smaller Pixel 6 has just a few variations, just like the 6.4-inch, 90 Hz, 2400×1080 OLED show that is not LTPO. On the plus facet, the show on the base-model Pixel 6 is flat, whereas the Pixel 6 Professional has curved sides that can distort video, pictures, and the rest that touches the edges of the show. With the smaller dimension comes a smaller battery (4600 mAh), much less RAM (8GB), and the removing of the telephoto lens and UWB. There’s additionally a distinction within the entrance cameras: 8 MP for the Pixel 6 and 11 MP for the Pixel 6 Professional.

Aside from that, each telephones are prepared for future networking with Wi-Fi 6E, aka 6 GHz Wi-Fi, which, with a brand-new access point, will let customers soar off the crowded 5 GHz Wi-Fi spectrum to extra open airwaves. Each units even have (replace: optionally available) mmWave and sub-6 GHz 5G. The 2 telephones have IP68 mud and water resistance, wi-fi charging, 30 W USB-PD charging, eSIM compatibility, and an in-screen fingerprint reader.

The primary digicam on each these units is a really huge deal. Unbelievably, the 50 MP fundamental sensor represents Google’s first main Pixel digicam improve for the reason that Pixel 2, which was launched in 2017. Google has shipped the identical tiny 1/2.55-inch sensor on the Pixel 2, 3, 4, and 5 and has by some means stored this historical digicam {hardware} aggressive via sheer software program processing. Google is now upgrading to a state-of-the-art 1/1.31-inch picture sensor (most definitely the Samsung GN1) and shall be making use of its industry-leading picture processing to that. There are excessive expectations for what the corporate can do and not using a {hardware} handicap.

The Pixel 6 is launching in “12 nations, together with US, Canada, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, UK, Germany, France, and Eire on October twenty eighth after which Spain, Italy, and Singapore early subsequent 12 months.” This record represents the same old scale of Pixel distribution, and right here, Google falls far wanting the 100+ nations that rivals like Apple and Samsung do enterprise in. You possibly can’t anticipate an excessive amount of this 12 months given the chip scarcity, however that is nonetheless a significant gap in Google’s quest to be taken critically as a {hardware} firm. Most individuals nonetheless cannot purchase a Pixel telephone.

The massive story, after all, is the Google Tensor SoC, which is Google’s first fundamental SoC in a smartphone. Most cellular ARM chip designs have “huge,” “medium,” and “small” CPU cores; this 12 months, that has sometimes meant one Cortex-X1 core, three Cortex-A78 cores, and 4 Cortex-A55 cores. The Google Tensor’s design is completely out of left discipline—it has two huge X1 cores, two A76 cores (these are from final 12 months), and 4 A55 cores. Google says that whereas this must be a “completely aggressive” chip, the corporate is aiming for sustained efficiency for extra medium workloads.

These “medium” CPU workloads confer with AI work, which incessantly has Google lighting up the entire chip to carry out duties like the brand new “HDR Web” video processing. Google’s digicam software program, known as “HDR+,” stored the older Pixel picture sensors aggressive for therefore lengthy due to picture stacking, which takes 10 footage directly and merges all of them collectively. Because of Google Tensor, the corporate can now run a model of the HDR picture stacking on video, even on each body of 4K, 60 fps video, which ought to lastly carry Pixel video high quality as much as Pixel still-image high quality. Contemplating older Pixel telephones have had overheating points with 4K/60 fps video with none of the flowery HDR stuff, it appears like Google is on to one thing with these “sustained efficiency” claims.