Google Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL Launched: Price, Specifications and More

Google on Wednesday (October 4, 2017) announced the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL, the super charged successors to the company’s flagship smartphones from last year. They will would compete with an already jam-packed high-end premium handset market, filled with offerings such as the Apple iPhone X, and Samsung Galaxy Note 8. Leaks were in abundance leading up to the launch event, and a lot of them were right on the money. The two smartphones aren’t too different from each other, like the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL, with the display and battery being the biggest differences.

The Google Pixel 2 price starts from $649, while the Google Pixel 2 XL starts at $849. Both the smartphones will be available in six countries, including India in the first wave. The pre-orders starts today. The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL ship with “pure Android Oreo”.

The Pixel 2 features a 5-inch Cinematic 127-mm full-HD (1080×1920) display, while the Pixel 2 XL features a 6-inch QHD+ (2880 x 1440) P-OLED at 538ppi with 18:9 ratio. Both the displays are protected by 3D Corning Gorilla Glass 5.

Both the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC and 4GB of RAM. The handsets come in 64GB and 128GB storage variants. The Pixel 2 has a 2700mAh battery, while the Pixel 2 XL has a 3520mAh battery.

On the photography front, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL offer the industry-best camera sensors. How good? According to Google, DxOMark has given the new camera on Pixel 2 a score of 98. Both the phones house a 12.2-megapixel rear camera with f/1.8 aperture and optical and electronic image stabilisation. The front facing 8-megapixel camera has an aperture of f/2.4

“We are really proud of how the Pixel smartphones did last year,” said Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President of Hardware at Google. But for this year, Osterloh said, the company has imagined the hardware inside out, instead of just packing in the most extreme modules.

Aparna Chennapragada from Google onstage demonstrated improvements to Lens, with all the new features coming to the new smartphones first. You can now take picture of posters and Google Lens will be able to make sense of the useful things mentioned in there.

You will be able ask Lens follow-up questions, Chennapragada said. For instance, if you take a pickier of a book, you can ask what the book is about. The company says Google Lens offers an accurate rate of over 95 percent.

A lot is riding on these new smartphones. The Google Pixel 2, and the Google Pixel 2 XL are supposed to be the best representation of what Android smartphones should be like. For Google, which has been in the recent years attempting to assume more control over devices, being able to sell enough of them would be a priority as well. According to estimates, Google had sold about one million Pixel smartphones by May this year, even when they were lauded with positive reviews by critics.