With today’s announcement of its Pixel phones, Google seems to be taking Apple’s iPhone head-on. Starting at a similar price-point ($649 for the base model), Google seems keen to position its rebranded flagship as an iPhone competitor, a position it made obvious in more ways than one during the event. As if citing the massive camera improvements and comparing its camera score with the iPhone’s wasn’t enough, the event was filled with demos of Google Assistant, Google’s supposed competitor to Siri, only possibly a bit more advanced. The Assistant is expected to be built-into the phone not unlike Siri is a part of the iOS experience.
It seems though that Google also took a fairly subtle dig at Apple in one of its Pixel spots. A month ago, Apple was criticized and trolled widely on social media for its decision to improve the 3.5 mm jack citing several reasons for doing so, courage being one of them. Many news outlets vetoed that decision and phone-maker HTC itself made fun of it in an online post stating how not-so-complicated it was to include the jack. Google today joined the list of those mocking this decision of Apple in one of its Pixel spots. The commercial highlights several features of the phone including unlimited cloud storage for photos and videos, fast charging (7 hours’ worth battery life in 15 mins) and some more until it comes to the 3.5 mm headphone jack. The commercial briefly pauses with the text “satisfyingly not new” popping on the screen with someone coughing (*ahem* *ahem*) into the background. Sounds like Google too has joined everyone else in mocking Apple.
Google mocks Apple’s removal of the 3.5 mm headphone jack
To reiterate, Google’s Pixel comes in two variants – the smaller 5.0-inch 1080 x 1920 resolution screen Pixel with a 2770 mAh battery and the larger 5.5-inch 1440 x 2560 resolution display Pixel XL with a beefier 3450 mAh battery. Both phones are powered by Qualcomm’s Quad Core Snapdragon 821 SoC (2 x 2.15 GHz cores and 2 x 1.6 GHz cores) and come with 4 GB LPDDR4 RAM and 32 GB / 128 GB storage variants. Both phones are equipped with a 12 MP rear sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 1.55 μm pixel-size and an 8 MP front sensor with an f/2.4 aperture and a 1.4 μm pixel-size. The phone supports 4K video recording @ 30 FPS with support for 1080P / 720P recording at 30, 60 and 120 / 240 FPS. The phones come with Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box and will set you back $649.
Pre-Orders begin Oct 13. For a full list of features and specifications, visit https://madeby.google.com/intl/en_in/phone/specs/
