The Pixel 6 is priced notably below rival handsets at the lower end of the flagship spectrum: prices for the standard iPhone 13 start at $799 / £779 / AU$1,349, while the Samsung Galaxy S21 is priced almost identically at $799 / £769 / AU$1,249. That starting price is lower than the launch price of the Google Pixel 5, which was available in only a single configuration (and a sub-flagship chipset) for $699 / £599 / AU$999. We've yet to find out the price for the higher variant in the UK. Prices for the Google Pixel 6 start at $599 / £599 / AU$999 for 128GB of storage, while 256GB starts at $699 / AU$1,129. The Google Pixel 6 was unveiled on October 19 alongside the Google Pixel 6 Pro, and each of these smartphones were released on October 25. It might not be the most impressive phone on the market, but it hits a sweet spot of capability and more unique perks for its price point.
Sufficiently powerful, with a battery lasting little more than a full day, but with cameras and photo software that outstrip other flagship phones.
The Pixel 6 Pro is significantly pricier than the standard-issue Pixel 6, making the latter incredibly good value for its price. It packs an extra rear camera, too: a periscope telephoto lens offering up to 4x optical zoom. Its 6.7-inch OLED display has QHD Plus (3120 x 1440) resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, and it comes with 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. Yes, the Pixel 6 is launching with a bigger sibling, but a larger screen and boosted 5,000mAh battery capacity aren’t the only things that set the Pixel 6 Pro apart.
That’s just scraping the surface of the update there are some Android 12 features that are only available to the Tensor-powered Pixel 6 and Google Pixel 6 Pro, like Live Translate of audio and through Google Lens which can finally be done on-device – situational perks, yes, but powerful. Most of these upgrades are incremental or not too noticeable, but some are huge.Īt the top of the list is the new Material You color palette coordination, which syncs up widgets and UI icons to match a chosen color theme. The phone is the first to launch with Android 12 out of the box, and there are plenty of new features to discover. And the hype is deserved: the Pixel 6 takes great photos, at all levels of light, capturing nuance in color and shadow, as well as taking clearer photos at night than any other phone that has come before it. Google finally gives us higher-megapixel sensors worthy of its outstanding photo software, along with its Tensor chipset tuned to Google’s image algorithms. Nevertheless, it will be the phone’s cameras that many Pixel fans will likely be most excited about. The 6.4-inch Full HD (2400 x 1080) OLED display is larger than the screens that accompany most flagships, and with a 90Hz refresh rate, offers smoother browsing than phones that max out at 60Hz – although 90Hz is really the minimum we’d now expect to see on a phone in the Pixel 6’s premium-mid-range price tier. The phone also packs 8GB of RAM, 128GB or 256GB of storage, and a 4,612mAh battery, which lasts around a day. That’s okay for a phone at the Pixel 6’s price, though.