Google Pixel 6 Pro Review

The Pixel 6 Pro was Google's reset: its own Tensor chip, a camera bar across the back, a 6.71-inch 1440p LTPO panel at up to 120Hz, and a flagship price it undercut rather than matched, at $899 against the $1,199 Galaxy S21 Ultra. The 50-megapixel Samsung GN1 main sensor was the first new Pixel camera hardware in four years and it showed, with wider dynamic range and far less noise than the Pixel 5; the 48-megapixel 4x periscope was the first proper zoom on a Pixel. Tensor's CPU roughly matched the Snapdragon 888 and its TPU made Magic Eraser, Live Translate and offline voice typing run on the phone itself. Android 12's Material You launched here and looked the part.

The first year was rough. Tensor's Exynos 5123 modem held weaker signal and drew more power than Qualcomm's, so battery life from 5003mAh was merely a day. The under-display optical fingerprint reader was slow and often failed outright. Charging peaked at 23W despite the 30W charger Google sold beside it. The December 2021 update was pulled for dropping calls, and Assistant ghost-dialed contacts from the lock screen until a fix. Google promised three OS upgrades and five years of patches, then did better, shipping Android 16 in 2025 with security support through October 2026. It was a phone that improved for three years and never stopped feeling a little unfinished.