Google officially unveils Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones

Says final goodbye to affordable Nexus smartphones

Google has now severed its connection to the affordable Nexus lineup as it has  unveiled two  premium smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL.

Built by HTC but still coming only with the Google logo, the Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones will cover the two most popular sizes, 5-inch and 5.5-inch, respectively. Both smartphones will feature AMOLED screens but with different resolutions, 1080p and 441ppi on the Pixel and 1440p and 534ppi on the Pixel XL.

Although having a different size and resolution screens, both the Pixel and Pixel XL are fairly similar, both packing Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 SoC with quad-core Kyro CPU and Adreno 530 GPU, 4GB of RAM, 32GB or 128GB of storage and same rear 12-megapixel, 1.55µm main camera with f/2.0 aperture and Electronic Image Stabilization, which was quite impressive during the live demo.

The only other difference that we are currently aware of, is the battery size, as the Pixel comes with a 2770mAh one while the Pixel XL packs a much larger 3450mAh battery.

As expected, both Google smartphones will use Android 7.1 Nougat OS, which will include  sustained performance mode, detailed earlier, and offer unlimited Google Photos storage for all photos at full resolution.

As it has decided to ditch the Nexus-branding, Google also ditched the affordable price, so Pixel and Pixel XL will have a premium price, starting at US $ 649 for the Pixel and US $ 769 for the Pixel XL. In the UK, these will start at £599 for the Pixel and £719 for the Pixel XL.

As you can see from the pictures, both the Pixel and Pixel XL will be available in Quite Black, Very Silver and Really Blue color options, although the Blue one will be exclusive to the US.

The Pixel and Pixel XL will first come to the US, Australia, Canada, Germany and the UK and be available for pre-order in the next few days, with first shipping later in October.