At an event here in San Francisco, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage to make several announcements. The most interesting news was the launch of the first-ever phone fully made by Google – the Pixel. Google is calling it the Pixel as the company has launched premium hardware products such as Chromebooks and tablets under the Pixel banner in the past and Google aims to set the benchmark for premium smartphones with the Pixel phones. The Pixel phones feature an aerospace grade aluminum body and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 and come in 2 sizes - 5 and 5.5 inches and are otherwise identical in terms of other features.
Powering the phones are the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor with 4GB of RAM alongside. The Pixel is the first phone to ship with Google Assistant which lets you interact with your phone and other Google services easily with simple voice and contextual commands. The new phones come with Google Duo and Allo pre-installed and run on the latest version of Android Nougat 7.1. Google claims the Pixel phones have the best camera in the market with a 12.3Megapixel camera on the rear and an8 Megapixel front-facing camera.
Surprisingly, India is one of first 6 countries to get the Pixel phones with pre-orders starting on October 13th on Flipkart and will later be available at Croma and Reliance Digital stores. The Pixel and Pixel Xl will not come cheap and starts at Rs.57000 for the 32GB version of the Pixel and goes all the way up to Rs. 76,000 for the 128GB version of the Pixel Xl and at the price directly competes with other high end devices such as the iPhone 7 and Samsung Galaxy phones. Google is planning to offer Interest free financing optionsat launch and Pixel users will get unlimited storage for photos and video content captured on the phone for life.
Google announced the DayDream VR headset priced at $79 and aims to simplify consumer VR headsets by making it very comfortable and easy to use.
Google also announced the Google Home for $129 which takes on Amazon Echo and brings the Google Assistant to the home. Google WiFi also priced at $129 aims to solve WiFi woes either in a standalone or paired configuration. Chromecast Ultra finally brings 4K support to the Chromecast.
Courtesy: fonearena.com