Being a key player in the technology market means your competitors will likely be hurling insults at you the moment your latest product goes live. We all know that there’s no such thing as a perfect product, otherwise we wouldn’t need yearly releases with tweaks and new designs, but some products are certainly more of a step back in some areas from their predecessors, while others work to capitalize on a mistake obviously made by a competitor’s product. Google’s Pixel and Pixel XL are two knew phones that fall under the ‘Made By Google’ tagline, meaning that these devices were designed from the ground up by Google and more or less had their manufacturing simply farmed out.
This year’s devices are certainly a leap forward in some areas over last year’s Nexus devices, while they are a clear step back in other areas, but Google’s own Nexus line wasn’t the target here; Apple’s iPhone was. It’s pretty clear that Google was marketing its new devices directly to Apple consumers who are looking for something new and interesting, and perhaps have been unimpressed by Apple’s design decisions in one way or another. First up Google specifically called out Apple’s problems with storage, namely the fact that storage on an iPhone still comes at a significant premium all while not offering microSD card expandable support. Google significantly one-ups Apple by giving Pixel users unlimited photo and video storage via its Google Photos service, all at original photo and video resolution.
We’ve seen a pretty goofy trend in recent years where manufacturers have been slimming down the size of their phones, but not leaving any room for the camera modules that have become so important for users. Google’s Pixel and Pixel XL don’t feature a camera hump of any kind, yet retain a slick and slim body and reportedly the best camera on any smartphone to date. Third of course is the odd naming many OEMs have given their smartphones in recent years, and it’s clear with Google’s silly names of Quite Black, Very Silver and Really Blue that Google went a bit off the deep end when naming its phone colors. Lastly of course is the fact that Apple removed the 3.5 mm audio jack from its latest iPhone, a point of contention that many users have lauded as a mistake on Apple’s part for many reasons, yet Google is keeping the popular jack on its Pixel phones.