Google Announces Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro Smartphones

Google finally introduced the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro phones that will debut this fall.

In a series of Tweets posted by Made By Google on Monday, the tech giant gave insight into the features and design of the new Pixel smartphones. The new Pixel phones will each come in three different color combos: yellow, light grey, and black for the Pixel 6 Pro, and pink, blue/yellow, and black for the Pixel 6. 

The Pixel 6 Pro comes with three cameras located across a sleek black camera bar, including a telephoto lens with 4x optical zoom. The Pixel 6 will have the same three cameras, just no telephoto lens. 

The new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro also will be powered by Google’s first smartphone chip, which it’s calling Google Tensor. The chip is custom-made for Pixel and can process Google’s most powerful artificial intelligence and machine learning models directly on the Pixel 6. 

Google said users could expect a transformed experience for the camera and better speech recognition, voice commands, translations, captioning, and dictation thanks to the Google Tensor chip.

Both the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6 Pro will have the new personalization system called Material You, which was introduced during May’s Google I/O event and adapts your phone’s wallpaper, widget colors, notification bar, and other menus to your personal style. 

Finally, Google said that the new Pixel 6 phones will have the most layers of hardware security in any phone (which Google said is based on a count of separate hardware security layers). 

While a new Pixel phone was expected to be announced, the Google Tensor chip is a surprise announcement. Apple recently debuted its own ARM-based chip, as well, known as the Apple M1 chip. However, unlike Google, Apple’s M1 chip is only available in its iPad devices and Mac computers, rather than its smartphones.