Fall has become the season for the biggest smartphone releases of the year. We’ve already seen what Apple has to offer, and now we’re going to get a look at what Google has been cooking up in the Pixel world.
A massive leak came from DroidLife, which details pretty much everything we can expect to see at the upcoming Google event. With that being said, if you want to shield yourself from spoilers, be warned. The event will start in San Francisco at 9 AM PST.
The Pixel 2
The next installment of the Pixel smartphones will no doubt be the star of the show on Oct. 4. The tentatively-named Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL will be launched at the event, giving us the newest hardware and software directly from Google. The phone was manufactured and engineered in partnership with HTC this year, which was recently acquired by Google for 1.1 billion dollars. We should expect this team, which is now in-house, to continue to develop the Pixel series moving on from here.
As for the details of the phone, the Pixel 2 will come in three color options, while the XL version will come in just black and white. The phones keep a familiar design to last year’s model with it’s two-tone color back, rounded corners and similar sizes.
Other leaks show that the Pixel 2 will be playing catch up on a number of key features, including a Portrait Mode for its camera app, the removal of the headphone jack and the upgrade to stereo speakers. The phone is also rumored to get the HTC U11 “squeeze to launch” feature that will give you a quicker way to launch Google Assistant.
There have, however, been some discrepancies in the leaks about the bezel situation. Originally, we heard that both the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL would get slimmed down bezels to match the competitive 2017 landscape. However, new reports indicate that the Pixel 2 may look exactly like the original Pixel, while the XL version will get the bezels cut down. This could match up with other reports that Google was working on a third smartphone, similar to what Apple did with the iPhone X.
There are bound to be plenty of other features announced at the event, but those are some of the biggest things we know as of now.
Pixelbook and Pixel Pen
