There you have it. With the advent of the Google Pixel phones, all the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers have now flexed their muscles. The Pixel phone has effectively rubber stamped two things: the Nexus is GONE forever and Google is now moving into the hardware line as the Pixel and Pixel XL are both designed by Google from scratch. Let’s examine the Pixel for now.

Build quality and display

The Pixel phones see a new kind of a design that seems like a mixture of many smartphones. The metallic unibody design with easily distinguishable antenna bands is a reminiscent of the iPhone 6 and 6S whereas the glass panel, which stretches from the top of the camera to just below the fingerprint sensor, is an addition we’re not really sure about. We don’t know why it has been incorporated and neither do we think it is doing the Pixel’s looks any favors. The 8.5mm width is fat compared to the 6.9mm of the Nexus 5X while 143g is good!

The display also sees some downsizing compared to the Nexus 5X with a 5.0 inches but AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 441ppi pixel density. This results in a 1080p HD resolution which was a requirement for the latest Google VR gadgets that will be rolled out to work in tandem with the new Pixel devices.

Cameras

We were thoroughly impressed by the cameras of last year’s Google phones so there’s no reason to doubt the Pixel as well especially when it features a 12 megapixel sensor with phase detection and laser autofocus technologies. The selfie camera also sees a nice upgrade, up to 8 megapixels, which means that both photo and video-graphy are at 0% risk.

Hardware and software

One thing that you can be sure off is that the Nexus or now Pixel phones will NOT lag. Apart from the software/hardware optimizations made by Google, this is down to their Quad-Core processors with an additional 4GB of RAM. The smartphone comes in with Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box while its internal storage variants begin checking-in at 32GB and continue upwards to 12 gigs.

To cap it off, yes the Pixel also supports Fast Charge, a large 2770 mAh battery and USB Type-C capabilities.