Google’s first flagship smartphone, Pixel 6 Pro is finally here

After months of leaks, Google finally launched its newest high-end Pixel smartphones: Google Pixel 6 and Google Pixel 6 Pro. Both smartphones feature a brand new design with a “camera bar” on the rear, OLED displays, upgraded cameras, Google’s own Tensor processor, bigger batteries, and faster charging. The Pixel 6 Pro is the company’s first real flagship smartphone in years, featuring the best-in-business display, cameras, connectivity, battery capacity, and other features. The smartphone can go head to head with the likes of the Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max (Review), Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (Review), Vivo X70 Pro+, and the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra. Let us have a look at the Pixel 6 Pro features, specifications, and pricing.

Google Pixel 6 Pro Features, Specifications

The Google Pixel 6 Pro features an almost bezel-less screen. It uses a 6.7-inch LTPO OLED display from Samsung, featuring QHD+ resolution, HDR10+ certification, and a 10Hz-120Hz variable refresh rate. It also supports the Always-On Display mode. The smartphone has stereo speakers and an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.

It has an 11.1MP front-facing camera (F2.2 aperture) hidden inside the display’s punch-hole-shaped cutout. At the rear, it has a triple-camera setup, featuring a 50MP wide-angle camera, a 12MP ultrawide camera, and a 48MP telephoto camera with 4x optical zoom. The smartphone has a dual-LED flash, Panorama, Live HDR, and HDR+. It can even record up to 4K 60fps videos with live HDRNet+.

Google Pixel 6 Pro Cameras	Specifications
Primary Camera	50MP (Samsung ISOCELL GN1), 1/1.31-inch, 1.2µm Pixels, F1.8, OIS, Omni-Directional Autofocus, Laser Autofocus, 4K 60FPS HDR10+ Video Recording
Ultrawide Camera	12MP, 1.25µm Pixels, F2.2, Fixed-Focus, 4K 60FPS Video Recording
Telephoto Camera	48MP (Sony IMX586), 1/2.0-inch, 0.8µm Pixels, 4K 60FPS Video Recording
Front-Facing Camera	11.1MP, F2.2, Fixed-Focus, 4K 60FPS Video Recording

Apart from new hardware, Google has worked a lot on the software front. The company was already deep into computational photography and starting with the Pixel 6 series, it has introduced some new features. Real Tone tries to capture skin colour for a variety of skin tones. The Magic Eraser mode suggests unwanted things that you can remove from images. You can also manually tap on things in an image to remove them. The Face Unblur feature makes sure you capture the right moment and the faces of kids, pets, and other fast-moving people don’t come out blurred. The Motion Mode blurs some moving objects in the background for a more dramatic effect.

The phone uses Google’s first in-house mobile processor: Google Tensor. The new chipset is built on a 5nm EUV process from Samsung. It has two ARM Cortex-X1 CPU cores clocked at 2.8GHz, two ARM Cortex-A76 CPU cores clocked at 2.25GHz, and four ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores clocked at 1.8GHz. For graphics processing, the chipset uses ARM’s Mali-G78MP20 GPU. This processor is significantly faster than the Snapdragon 765G processor that was used in the Pixel 5. Google says that it has designed the processor for general UI smoothness and improved AI processing. The Pixel 6 Pro features 12GB RAM and 128GB/256GB/512GB internal storage.

In terms of connectivity, the Pixel 6 Pro features 5G (mmWave and sub-6GHz), GPS, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, UWB (Ultra Wideband), NFC, and a USB 3.1 Type-C port. The UWB feature can be used to lock and unlock compatible cars and door locks. It lacks a headphone jack, similar to most other high-end smartphones. It has a nano-SIM card slot and an eSIM. Technically, you can use the Pixel 6 Pro in dual-SIM mode. The smartphone has an under-display optical fingerprint reader, making it the first device in the Pixel series to feature such a fingerprint sensor.

The phone runs Android 12 out of the box with the Material You theme. Google has promised to offer three major Android OS updates to the Pixel 6 series along with security patches for five years from its launch. The Pixel 6 Pro is powered by a 5,000mAh battery that supports 30W wired fast charging (USB PD 3.0 with PPS), 23W fast wireless charging (via 2nd Gen. Pixel Stand), and reverse wireless charging. The smartphone comes in three colours: Cloudy White, Sorta Sunny, Stormy Black.