Google Pixel Review

The first Pixel looked like the phone Google had meant to build since the Nexus One. HTC assembled it, but the design, the software and the price were Google's, and the price was the iPhone's: $649 for 32GB. Inside was a Snapdragon 821 with 4GB of RAM, and the result was the smoothest Android phone of 2016 by some distance, partly because Android 7.1 was tuned for exactly this hardware. Google Assistant debuted here, held behind the home button, and buyers got unlimited original-quality Google Photos storage for life.

The camera is what people remember. The 12.3-megapixel Sony IMX378 had no optical stabilisation, yet HDR+ merged bursts of underexposed frames into photos that beat the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7 in most light, and DxOMark scored it 89, the highest mark it had given a phone. The 5-inch 1080p AMOLED was fine rather than special, and the 2770mAh battery got through a day, helped by 18W USB-PD charging.

What it lacked was as visible as what it had: IP53 splash resistance when every rival had gone to IP67 or better, a glass-and-aluminium back with a large unexplained chin, and no stereo speakers. A run of early units developed dead microphones from a hairline crack in the audio codec's solder, which ended in a $7.25 million class action settlement in 2019. Google promised two years of OS updates and delivered three, ending on Android 10 in 2019.