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- Okay, so, I've held the Pixel 6.
Let's talk about it.
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All right, so today we get a bunch of
officially confirmed real details
on the new Pixel 6, and Pixel 6 Pro
coming up this year from Google.
I got some very brief off camera hands-on time, okay,
so I didn't get to shoot any of that,
but I have a lot of details,
and I have some official images
that I can share with you.
So, let's get into all of it.
So, like I said,
there's a Pixel 6 and a Pixel 6 Pro.
They're both pretty huge phones,
but the Pixel 6 Pro is a little bigger,
around 6.7 inches.
It has glossy, metal rails
instead of matte black rails,
and it is slightly curved on the sides of the screen,
it's 120 hertz screen instead of a flat 90 hertz
on the smaller one.
And there's also new camera hardware across both of them,
with a shared primary and ultra wide,
but there's also a new 4x telephoto camera on the Pro.
And they have this horizontal camera bar
across the whole back of the phone, side to side,
that honestly it looks better in person
than it does with the renders.
It kinda reminds me of Nexus 6P
which also had a camera bar
go all the way across the back,
and you can actually notice the metal rails
on top and bottom of the camera bar
are again, glossy on the Pro
and matte black on the non-Pro.
Both upfront will have a hole punch selfie camera
in the middle,
and a nearly bezel-less display,
and of course both run Android 12
with all the new aesthetics and Material You,
and all those features.
So that's nice, and that's exciting,
and there's a bunch more details
to discuss closer to launch.
Things like the exact battery size, the screen resolution,
and of course, prices.
But the one thing I want to talk about
that's across both of these phones
is the new custom design silicon
that will be in both of them called Google Tensor.
So, this was rumored for a little bit.
You know, Pixel phones for years
had been using a variety of
Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm, whatever's available,
just like every other high end Android phone.
But it was rumored that brewing in the background
was this Whitechapel project
of Google designing their own silicon
to eventually go into the Pixel phone.
This turned out to be true.
So, there's a couple of different benefits to this,
and it's not even a new idea completely.
You know, obviously Apple designs
all the chips in their iPhones,
but also Huawei makes the Kirin chips,
and Samsung makes Exynos chips.
This is a thing that's been happening.
And there's even been little bits of custom silicon
inside Pixel phones before already.
They'd had a custom image signal processor
called the Pixel Visual Core
and then Pixel Neural Core,
and also the Titan M security chip.
But this entire chip, this whole phone
being powered by just a Tensor chip,
well, that's a big deal.
I think it's particularly important
for the Pixel line specifically
because of how much Google does with software
and that optimization process,
and I think we're gonna see a lot of big changes here.
So, let's start with the biggest, most obvious place
which is in their cameras.
So, we all know by now that Pixels
have had really good photo quality, specifically,
for a couple of years now,
and that's because of their awesome software
and computational photography.
But the video quality has always just been meh,
like nothing special, pretty average from the Pixel.
And so what Google showed me on Pixel 6
was a comparison with the Pixel 6 and the iPhone 12
and the Pixel 5.
And of course, this is a very handcrafted,
tailored comparison to show the best thing that they can do,
but they're basically taking all those
computational photography chops
and applying them to video,
because Tensor enables that now.
And it was really impressive what I was able to see.
We'll see much more hands-on demos, of course,
I'm sure very soon, but that's exciting.
That's the HDR, that's the noise reduction,
the stabilization, all of that smarts in video now too.
Also, you know, Pixel cameras have always been great,
but since Pixel 2,
they've basically been using the same kind of
small at this point, sensor.
Because they've got it so dialed with their algorithms,
they can of course improve the glass
and of course the Iris opening every year,
but generally it's been the same sensor,
and I suspect they were reluctant to change it
because why move to some huge, new 50 megapixel sensor
if you don't have the computational photography chops
to back it up.
So, they've just been sticking with the same sensor,
but this year with Pixel 6,
it is all new sensors, big new sensors.
And I'm really curious to see
what kind of results we're gonna get
with Tensor and the image processing
on these big, new sensors.
Now, another benefit, and the other sort of
main pillar one that Google was talking to me about
was speech recognition.
And basically being able to do as much of this as possible
on device as efficiently and quickly as possible.
We all know Google Assistant is very important to them,
and I use Assistant all the time,
so I'm happy to hear this.
But yeah, just being as dedicated as possible
by literally giving parts of the Tensor chip
that sole purpose of decoding speech into text,
and making things like Assistant way faster.
And speaking of power,
I think battery life is another thing to keep an eye on
with the Tensor chip in Pixel 6.
So, I don't have official battery size numbers.
If I get them from them I'll put them on the screen here,
but the point is, do you remember when the Macs
switched from Intel design chips to Apple designed M1 chips
and literally doubled in battery life?
That's because of optimization and efficiency.
I'm not saying we're gonna get
that insane level of gains here.
They're still both ARM based.
You know, Tensor and Qualcomm chips
are already ARM based, so same architecture.
But we are now approaching the same level
of vertical integration that Apple has had with those Macs,
so maybe it'll be a little better.
I think the streamlining
of power and efficiency with Tensor chips
should make for a better battery experience.
But then on top of all that,
now we gotta think about Android in general,
Google makes Android, they can optimize for everything,
but also now they can offer much longer software updates.
Much longer than other Android phones.
As of right now, technically,
Android phones can offer software updates
as long as Qualcomm also officially supports those updates.
So, typically you'll get something like three years,
which is nice.
But now that they control the entire stack,
they can optimize Android for as many years as possible,
and they want to.
They want to optimize Android for as long as possible
to continue giving you updates,
'cause they want to keep you on that phone.
I feel like we've seen this kind of
from the other side, from the iPhone.
Apple has made a lot of money
from selling iPhones for a really long time.
But that's slowed down a bit,
and now people are keeping their iPhones longer than ever,
so Apple realizes they want to make as much money
from the person with that iPhone
during the life cycle of that phone as possible.
So, you've seen them move into services.
Apple TV, Apple News, all these services
you can buy and pay monthly,
and then that iPhone that you have for a long time
will make Apple a lot of money.
So, with the Pixel,
Google already makes a majority of their money
from ad services from things like
Gmail and Google Search and Google Assistant.
And so now, Tensor just enables them
the ability to guarantee way longer software updates
to keep you using that device way longer like the iPhone.
Now, if you really want to go into the weeds,
I think this could also have an effect on pricing.
At least internally, I don't want to get too crazy with it.
But, Google has had to bargain with Qualcomm
to get a certain price for a certain order size
for a certain number of chips.
But then, Samsung might come along
and place like a way bigger order
which could effect the supply of certain chips,
and the whole supply chain's out of their control.
So, with Tensor, it's better for Google
to have more control over this.
But, obviously...
Maybe not obviously, but Qualcomm has to bargain
with their foundry and get certain prices,
and eventually upsell to OEMs like Google.
So, cutting out that middle man of Qualcomm
can actually save them money,
and make the price overall lower, especially at scale.
And I don't know, this might not get passed down
to the user at any point,
maybe they'll use those savings for something else,
but it's just one more advantage to this.
But you know what, actually,
one more thing just came to mind.
This could be the beginning of an ecosystem wide
silicon thing for Google.
You know, the same way,
I keep going back to Apple's example,
but the same way that M1 chip we've talked so much about
is basically a scaled up version of the A14,
I feel like there could be a scaled up
or scaled down version of Tensor in Google's future.
Maybe a scaled down version for a Pixel Watch someday,
or a scaled up version for a Chromebook,
or really any other device, or a Smart Speaker,
or something like that, or a Smart Display,
that would just make sense to happen down the line.
So, yeah, and that also makes sense for future parity
because now, you know,
the same reason the M1 Macs have better webcam quality
than any other Mac ever
is because they're using the same image processing
as the iPhone.
So, for all of this, I guess what I'm trying to say here is
the first generation of Tensor chip
we're about to see in the Pixel
is gonna be really interesting to see what it unlocks,
to see how it performs.
Obviously in regular day-to-day,
people are gonna benchmark it and all that fun stuff,
but to see what type of stuff
it really unlocks for the Pixel now
and then in future generations too.
So, something to keep an eye on.
If you want to see my full video on Android 12
and all the features that are already coming to the Pixel
when this phone comes out later this year,
I'll link that below the "like" button
if you want to check it out,
but that's been it for me, just some quick thoughts
on Pixel 6 which is coming up.
It's coming up, along with a bunch of other stuff.
So, you want to be subscribed to see that,
of course, you should.
Thanks for watching, catch you in the next one.
Peace.
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