As all of the leaks and rumors foresaw, Google announced its first smartphone this morning, built from the ground up by the company. The phone comes in two sizes—a 5.0-inch model and a 5.5-inch model. It’s a premium-looking smartphone without being too flashy, something like a mix between an iPhone 7 and a Nexus 5X. The two models are nearly identical in terms of feature sets and specs, unlike Samsung and Apple’s models which both make their larger phone more advanced.
As Google was insistent to point out, it made digs at Apple by mentioning that the phone comes with a headphone jack and without an ugly camera bump. The phone is coming exclusively to Verizon, but it’s also available for purchase unlocked in the Google Play Store. Lastly, we didn’t get a release date, but the Pixel is available for pre-order today.
So what more is there to know about the Google Pixel? Here are five features you should be looking forward to using:
1. Google Assistant
Google opened up its event talking about Google Assistant and machine learning. This might be the first time a smartphone manufacturer talked about its hardware products merely as portals for its advanced software, but that’s starting to make sense with how Google sees the world.
Google Assistant looks like it replaces Now On Tap and can be accessed through a long hold of the Home button. From there, Google showed off how the Assistant knows about what you’re asking contextually, based on what’s on your screen. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai talked about, the sound of the Assistant’s voice is even a bit smoother now, thanks to the machine learning processes Google has been investing in.
2. Camera
According to Google, it’s made the best camera smartphone ever made. Before getting too excited about that, we have to mention we’ve heard plenty of companies say that. As backup for its claim, Google brought up that the Pixel received an 89 rating on DxOMark, the highest rating of any smartphone.
It’s got a 12.3-megapixel camera with f/2.0, 1.55um pixels, and built-in optical image stabilization. We’ll have to wait and see if it deserves the award of the best smartphone camera, but at the very least it looks like Google is taking its cameras seriously on the Pixel.
