Why are Google Pixel phones important?

When Google unveiled the original Pixel in October 2016, many people wondered why Mountain View was embarking on the design, build and sale of phones. Two years later, this sentiment persists, as expressed by Benoît Evans, an analyst at Andreessen Horowitz, when he has request"What are Google Pixel phones for?"

Critics of Google's strategy are right to say that this seems contradictory: the company has invested a lot of time in building devices, but it has not accompanied them with the distribution and marketing necessary to truly challenge a significant share of the market. Google claims to be serious about its hardware business, but Pixel phones are still only available in a limited number of countries and through a limited number of vendors.

And yet, declaring the pixel irrelevant simply because it is not sold in large quantities would be naive. That would be saying that Nokia was thriving in 2010 because it was selling the most phones at the time. Despite Google's heavy decision-making, Pixel phones have a far greater influence than the unimpressed number of people who own one. Here are three of the main aspects of the importance of Google pixels.

The Pixel is competing with the iPhone for the part of the mind, not the market share

Apple can no longer claim to have the best camera on a phone. Google can say it. If my Illustrated love poems the Pixel camera was not enough to convince you, find out what The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times had to say about the first two generations of pixels. This year, Google is investing heavily in amplifying the message about its advance in the camera. She recruited renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz – who was previously a voice follower of the iPhone camera – to take a photographic tour of the United States with a pixel in her hand. Condé Nast, too, should have shot covers of seven high-profile magazines like Ryan Gosling. Google does not try to make money out of its phone business but rather to avoid its reputation as a technology leader.

In the battle for sharing the spirit, in Trumpian's quest to take part in all conversations, the Pixel far exceeds its ridiculous sales. The ratings of the iPhone X and the iPhone XS are rich in camera comparisons over Google phones. When another Android provider launches a new device, the benchmark in user experience is that provided by Google. The pixel is important because in the narrow context of the picture quality of the camera and the Android user experience, they are the best you can get.

Even without selling tens of millions of phones each quarter, Google has an influence on the smartphone market simply because of the existence of these phones. Apple will never be ranked second, and the latest iPhone camera system – arguably the best of Apple to date – has a striking resemblance to the approach of digital photography developed by Google. No need to believe that Apple has copied Google to see how the iPhone XS is less impressive for those who have seen the results produced by the Pixel camera. And the number of people aware of the pixel is much larger and increases much faster than the number of people who own one.

The pixel sets the Android standard

Like the Nexus lineup before it, Pixel from Google represents the company's vision for an optimal Android user experience. Which is to say that the Pixel is designed to promote Android at its best and that Android is increasingly designed to create the best pixel possible. When Google decided to break with the traditional 16: 9 format with the Pixel 2 XL last year, it issued design guidelines in this sense six months in advance. When the company opted for a notch with the Pixel 3 XL, it again released a tip for application developers who advocated respect for "cutouts". You can validly argue that Google was adopting the trends already launched by Samsung with elongated screens and and others, with nicks. However, it is always interesting to note that each time Google decides to support a new hardware feature, it is available on the last (or future) pixel.

For any Android device manufacturer, the adaptation of the operating system to a particular hardware configuration drops dramatically if this configuration matches Google's choices with the Pixel. OnePlus, for example, had to test the 1,000 most popular apps on the Play Store to make sure they were working with the Notch OnePlus 6 slot. Now that every app developer has Google and Android guidelines, giant notch of the Pixel 3 XL, this effort can be saved.

The existence of Pixel is nothing more than an idealized Android experience. Not only do Android application developers design a solution thing In a very diverse market, it also allows buyers and fans to express more directly their discontent with other Android phones. Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and their counterparts may be subject to stricter standards if Google is able to give this standard a physical incarnation, and that's what the Pixel line represents. Everything is very meta and unambitious by Google, but it makes sense: the Pixel expresses the philosophy of Google on the best use of Android and its quality makes it relevant for the entire market.

The Pixel is the only Android phone capable of competing with the iPhone

Other than Apple, Google is the only company to control the design of the hardware and operating system of its smartphone. The tight integration between hardware and software has always been a key benefit for Apple devices, and its importance will only grow. The A12 Bionic processor specially designed by Apple for the iPhone XS has a section dedicated to accelerating artificial intelligence tasks, while Google offers its own custom Visual Core pixel chip to make the tasks of faster and more efficient photography. The future of smartphones lies in such custom-designed hardware to enable new software features.

I do not want to ignite users of Samsung phones, Huawei, LG or HTC who believe that their device is no less worthy or desirable than an iPhone. To date, it's still possible to create an impressive array of glass-covered hardware, send it with Google's built-in operating system and compete with the iPhone. But that's not the future. The differentiators of our future based on artificial intelligence will be custom software, such as Google's HDR + camera system and intelligent call filtering in Pixel, powered by custom silicon. In this battle, Apple's prodigious chip design team has a considerable lead in terms of hardware. Google is the most advanced application in artificial intelligence and all the others are somewhere in between.

You do not have to love the Pixel to recognize its importance. Without Google bothering to make its own phones – and to make them evolve successfully from one generation to another – we would face the very real threat to Apple and its unmatched ability to control and direct the design of every aspect of his phone. .

One of my indulgences with this work is to look at audiophile earphones at $ 4,000. They are guilty of all that is blamed on Google Pixel: having a niche importance because of its limited availability and affordability. Even though I like high-end headphones, the entire audiophile market of over $ 1,000 could disappear overnight and you would never know what your life is different from. Few practical technologies flow from this market. Pixel, on the other hand, is a device that undermines the mystique of the iPhone by offering a better camera and a smarter artificial intelligence. It raises expectations about Android as a whole by offering a more enjoyable experience than most of its rivals.

The pixel is important, no matter the price.