Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: 10 Pixels in, the purpose of a Google-made smartphone remains the same

Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2025 15:30:07 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/1...

Google didn't need to make its own smartphone. Even though the company spent
several years having other manufacturers build phones it could slap its
"Nexus" branding on, selling hardware is not core to Google's business.
Things like advertising and Search still handily dwarf the inroads the
company's made as a smartphone manufacturer, and that will likely remain true
for the foreseeable future.

Compared to the contributions the iPhone makes to Apple's bottom line, the
Pixel has always, in some sense, been a hobby. Which means Google finds
itself in a familiar place heading into the launch of the Pixel 10. It's
better than it's ever been at the business of building phones, but the task
for the Pixel remains the same: get people to use Google software (especially
Search).

The first smartphones "made by Google"

Google sold its own hardware, including a lineup of phones, under the Nexus
brand from 2010 to 2016 ΓÇö but it was always known that hardware
manufacturers like HTC and Samsung were actually building the hardware.

That changed with the Pixel, the first time Google started using the now-
ubiquitous "made by Google" phrasing. Ever since the first Pixel phone
arrived in October 2016, GoogleΓÇÖs phones have been defined by their camera
skills. Google's significant breakthroughs in computational photography
influenced the entire industry, and continue to do so today. The original
Pixel and Pixel XL featured a single 12.3-megapixel camera and let anyone
take great HDR photos without any fuss. Purchasing a Pixel or Pixel XL also
unlocked unlimited full-resolution backups of your photos in Google Photos
for free, a strong incentive to consider switching to Google's smartphone in
its own right.

The company's glass and aluminum phone was more than just its camera sensor,
though. A big part of Google's early pitch for the Pixel, and other hardware
like Google Home, was that it could serve as a vehicle for Google Assistant.
The AI-powered voice assistant had shades of Siri, and voice control features
previously available in Android. But it was far more integrated into Google's
software and services and had a deep well of knowledge to draw on from Google
Search. An "OK Google" could let you set a timer on your phone, but it could
also answer trivia or tell you about an upcoming calendar event.

Google continued to lean on software for the release of the Pixel 2 and Pixel
2 XL, which put Google Now-style proactive information on a new always-on
display, along with a refined design with pressure sensitive sides that could
activate specific functions on the phone. In terms of the camera, Google's
major improvements over the original Pixel were the addition of optical image
stabilization for video and a custom imaging chip, dubbed the Pixel Visual
Core, that handled the image processing for both first-party and third-party
camera apps. Besides being the first instance of Google sneaking some of its
own custom silicon into its phone, the Pixel 2 was also was a significant
challenge to Apple's dominance in the photography department

That pattern continued with the release of the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, which
again featured a slightly modified design, wireless charging and a collection
of new camera features. The biggest was Night Sight, Google's software
solution for taking really good photos when thereΓÇÖs barely any light
available. The feature was released after the Pixel 3 came out, and gave the
phone the ability to capture more or less light at night depending on the
shakiness of your hand. The third-generation Pixel was also paired with the
introduction of Google Assistant's Call Screen feature, a mixture of visual
voicemail and audio transcription that allowed users to see why someone is
calling and only pick up if they wanted to.

Google would go on to introduce the first budget version of the Pixel a few
months later with the Pixel 3a, a practice that continues to this day. In the
following years, the company's releases were mostly memorable for gimmicks
like the Pixel 4's Motion Sense feature (using radar to detect hand gestures
to launch shortcuts) and the adoption of industry trends, with the Pixel 5's
support for 5G.

The company followed up those phones with a few releases that were only
memorable for gimmicks like the Pixel 4's Motion Sense feature (essentially
motion controls for specific apps) and the adoption of an industry trend,
with the Pixel 5's 5G support.

Say hello to the camera bar and Tensor chip

It would take the radical new design of the Pixel 6 to snap things back into
focus for Google. Not only did the Pixel 6 have a massive, shelf-like camera
bar on the back, but the phone was also the first to be powered by a custom
SoC developed by Google. Rather than focus on raw power, the Google Tensor
chip was designed to handle on-device AI tasks like Magic Eraser for editing
photos, Live Translate for converting text to another language as you type
and Direct My Call, which lets the Pixel navigate phone trees on your behalf.

The splashy launch of the Pixel 6 in 2021 marks the new path Google's
smartphones have been heading for the last four years. They're still good at
taking photos, but their main role is to be a showcase for whatever AI
feature the company has cooked up most recently. Google continued to refine
the idea with the release of the Pixel 7, which was paired with the first
Pixel Watch following Google's acquisition of Fitbit in 2021. 2023 brought
the Pixel 8 as well as the company's first foldable, the Pixel Fold.

The move also matched internal shifts at Google itself. The teams developing
the Android operating system have long been separate from the teams building
Pixel phones out of respect for Google's partners who make their own Android
phones. That changed in 2024 when Google announced a reorganization that
placed Pixel and Android under the same "Platforms & Devices" umbrella. The
stated motivation was that aligning software and hardware would let the
company release new AI features even faster, which bore out in the various
Gemini features on the Pixel 9 lineup and whatever the company has planned
for the Pixel 10. On some level the intimate role smartphones play in
people's lives makes them an obvious venue for AI, something the company
clearly wants to take advantage of based on in-development features like
Project Astra.

Google clearly experimented throughout the life of the Pixel, but the phone
has always been a tool to sell software ideas. Demonstrating the potential of
computational photography had early success, and now the company is trying to
do the same thing with generative AI and Gemini. Competition remains fierce
ΓÇö OpenAI shared in December 2024 that ChatGPT had 300 million weekly users,
making it a real threat to Google's core business. Google has never been a
hardware company, nor has it needed to win at hardware. But with stiffer
competition in software than ever, using the Pixel series to get people to
use Google's many services is arguably more important than ever.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/1...
google-made-smartphone-remains-the-same-160007404.html?src=rss

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