Review: Google Pixel 6 phones combine power and clever tech
Google has nailed it in 2021 with new Pixel 6 phones that combine great hardware with imaginative and powerful software.
Google has nailed it in 2021 with new Pixel 6 phones that combine great hardware with imaginative and powerful software.
The Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are due to sell from Thursday October 28 and are competitively priced from $999 and $1299 respectively. You get from 128GB of storage, 6.4 and 6.71 inch AMOLED screens respectively.
The phones handle both Nano SIMs and eSIMs for calls, support 5G, and offer more than 400 pixels per inch fine resolution screens. This is Android on steroids.
There’s also the high end camera setups, with the Pro a better option.
I have been using the 6 Pro to see just how far Google has gone with innovation this year.
This year‘s models are big with all glass bodies and horizontal rear camera arrays that jut out at the back. The Pro with its 6.71-inch screen is larger than phones I normally use; you have to like big phones to want it. But it is a great phone all around.
Each year that I review Pixel phones, I wonder why Google doesn’t do better in global sales compared to Samsung and Apple, given Google’s wealth, reach and commitment to innovation.
This is despite the one thing we don’t like about Google – its relentless collection of information.
In Australia in 2020/21, Pixel phones represented less than four per cent of the smartphone market.
In the end, I don’t think Google tries too hard to see Pixel beyond early innovators and seasoned phone users who appreciate their capabilities.
Software and hardware are made to work together on Pixels, with Pixel hardware designed to support the latest Android version, now Android 12 released this month. There is no need to layer Android software with device specific software as other Android phone makers do.
Google is offering five years of security updates with Pixel 6, and there’s now a new security hub that puts all security settings in one spot. You get three years of regular software updates too.
The 6 Pro handset that I used has a triple camera system with a 50 megapixel main sensor, 12 megapixel ultrawide camera and 48 megapixel telephoto lens with 4x optical zoom.
Photos are detailed and vivid.
I found that you get very good shots at 20x hybrid zoom thanks to the phone’s computational photography capability. This isn’t the case with many phones that attempt 20x or more magnification.
Like this year’s iPhone, the 6 Pro can vary the screen refresh rate to adjust to your activity, going from 120 Hertz for displaying fast moving activities such as games to 10 Hertz to save power.
You get 12 GB of memory for speedy performance and the option of 128, 256 and 512GB of internal storage. There is no option to add external storage such as microSD cards. There’s a big 5003 milliampere hour battery aboard to power the 6 Pro.
The Pro model not only supports 5G but also ultrafast 5G millimetre wave (mmWave) in Australia, Japan and the US. In future this will enhance phone performance in crowded locations when the infrastructure is installed. The regular Pixel 6 does not support mmWave.
Google Pixels also contain powerful machine learning and artificial intelligence features available through a new Google Tensor chip which enhances phone photography.
Computations involving language take place on the phone and are not be sent to Google for processing without permission. This includes speech dictation and recognition, automatic video captions computed and displayed in real time, and live messaging translations. These are among the phone’s coolest features.
You can create voice messages to a person in English, and the phone will translate that message into any of several languages on the phone in real time. The receiver will see captions in their language.
This doesn’t work in reverse unless they too have the same translation facility.
Currently this service is available for English, Japanese, French, German and Italian, with more languages coming aboard eventually.
This live messages translation feature works with regular messages, WhatsApp, Google Chat, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Line, with other message services coming on board.
For now you’ll need to use fingerprint recognition and PINs for unlocking this phone, however Google says facial recognition will return, presumably through a firmware update.
This machine learning/AI capability also is evident in photography.
Take motion mode, where the camera combines seven images to portray a moving subject sharply with a blurred background, such as cars, bikes, and people skiing and snowboarding.
There’s the magic erasure feature, where you can remove extraneous people in shots of you, say, at the beach or in a city street, so that the photo concentrates on you and not distractions in the background.
Samsung years ago offered a similar feature; it would take multiple photos of a scene and substitute people you wanted to erase with background found in another photo.
Google achieves this by using AI to substitute what it believes the background should be through machine learning.
There are other natty features such as face unblur. Faces are shot using two cameras at different speeds so that, if the main photo is blurred, computational photography will substitute the face in the photo taken at the faster rate to correct the blurring.
The phone also supports astrophotography.
Google says there has been a bias against accurate portrayal of non-white skin tones on camera phones. It says this has been addressed with tone improvements in the Pixel 6 range.
The translation and photography improvement features using AI and machine learning are the highlights of this phone which, as I said, combines great hardware and interesting AI-led software options. You shouldn’t be disappointed if you buy one.
White settlement involves the billionaire’s second NDA
WiseTech boss Richard White has settled the court fight he started with his ex-lover and it involves the second NDA he has signed with women he’s allegedly been in a relationship with.
Audiovisual specialist Audinate shelves its target
Audiovisual company Audinate has told investors it’s had weaker-than-expected demand from customers and that’s led to revised financial targets.