PIXEL

Eight years in the making, Google GOOGL -1.15% has adopted the ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself’ approach and bypassed its Android partners for the first time. The result is a premium smartphone range comprised of the 5-inch ‘Pixel’ and 5.5-inch ‘Pixel XL’. The duo replace the beloved (and more affordable) Nexus lineup and gun straight for Apple AAPL -0.48%’s iPhone by promising premium hardware, a class leading camera and fast, reliable software updates.

Design & Sizes – Premium Builds, Bland Looks

Let’s get this out of the way: the new Pixels look like iPhones, and not in a good way. For a company looking to Wow The World with its debut smartphones, creating what essentially appears to be the living embodiment of generic iPhone clipart seems an odd route to take.

Equally odd is a lot of the Pixel and Pixel XL design appears nonsensical. The top and bottom bezels are huge but serve no function (there’s no physical home button or front facing speakers to be found), the left and right bezels would’ve been considered thick on phones from 2013 and Google GOOGL -0.54% says the half glass/half aluminium rear is for cellular reception but still chisels antenna bands into the aluminium chassis anyway.

Gordon Kelly ,  

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