The Pixel 6 (and Pixel 6 ‘Pro’) may get a radical new design

Google’s Pixel phones haven’t always had the most standout designs. Sure, they’ve made some good-looking phones, but they tend to be on the subtler side of the design spectrum, and the company made minor tweaks between the Pixel 4 and Pixel 5.

That may change this year. According to leaker and YouTuber Jon Prosser, the Pixel 6 is sporting a radically new design that appears to place a heavy emphasis on the cameras. Prosser says that to protect his source, he opted to create renders with the help of @RendersbyIan instead of revealing the images he saw of an actual device. Behold:

You can watch Prosser’s full take and analysis below:

One of the surprising bits of this leak is that the company appears to be planning on releasing two devices: a Pixel 6 and a larger Pixel 6 Pro. From the renders, we can tell the smaller Pixel 6 has two cameras, while the Pro has three.

I suspect this is why the Pixel 6 Pro is not using the usual ‘XL’ nomenclature. One of my favorite things about Pixel phones has long been the fact that both its small and large models had exactly the same set of features, differentiated only by their physical sizes. So in my book — as someone who likes small phones — it’s actually pretty disappointing Google might be going this route.

Still, it’s nice to see Google might finally be considering a triple camera system. Google’s amazing processing has long been held back by the company’s reluctance to offer more lenses. It doesn’t matter how good Super Res Zoom may be; it’s just not the same as having a dedicated telephoto lens.

Also notable: the phones will apparently sport an in-display fingerprint reader for the first time. Google just can’t decide how it wants to go about biometrics, can it?

 

Considering the company’s original camera guru left last year, I’ve been worried about the company resting on its laurels and falling behind the competition. This year, I actually felt the OnePlus 9 Pro outdid Google’s Pixel 5; even though I preferred the Pixel’s software experience, OnePlus was able to pull ahead for me with sheer hardware chops and some new color science thanks to Hasselblad.

Hopefully, this new hardware with its thicc camera module — you know, assuming the leak pans out — is indicative that the company is making a big push to retain its position in the camera space. Considering Google is reportedly planning to debut its own ‘GS101‘ processor hardware with the Pixel 6 lineup, these could be the company’s most exciting phones in years.