The 'best' Pixel experience now only comes in one size

This generation may be doubly disappointing for compact-phone fans

We're all abuzz over the announcement of the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. Thanks to a prolific leak cycle, we more or less knew everything about them already, but with official confirmation of both specs and price, we can start to get officially excited — and officially annoyed. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro represent the biggest gap in functionality between Google device sizes since Pixels have been around, and I'm really not here for it.

The market has spoken, and people love big phones. Personally, I don't: I like my mobile tech to be as easy to carry around as possible, and if I'm consuming media, I'm probably on my couch or at my desk, where bigger and better screens are available. While the non-Pro Pixel 6 isn't entirely unwieldy — with a 6.4-inch display, it's right around the size of the Galaxy A52, which I liked just fine — it's unequivocally a big phone, bumping up against how large it can be before deciding whether I want to take it out of my pocket becomes an equation. Will I be able to do what I'm trying to do one-handed? Will I have to set my drink down to avoid dropping this phone?

The Pixel 6 is definitely big, but, well, less big.

The 6 Pro, on the other hand, is well past that point. It's got a 6.7-inch display, and its footprint is within just a couple milimeters of the notoriously chunky Galaxy S21 Ultra. It's a giant phone. If that's what you're into, fantastic! I'm not saying you're wrong, and I'm happy you can now buy the enormous Google phone of your dreams.

For the Pixel line's entire history, though, feature parity between sizes has been a given. Sure, the XL models have always had larger batteries and displays — that's inevitable. There was also that Pixel 2 snafu that, due to supplier differences, saw the smaller model sporting a higher-quality display. But this year, Google has, for the first time, drawn a clear line: the larger Pixel is functionally better, full stop. The name — 6 Pro — and the pricing — a $300 jump between models — also make that intention abundantly clear.

If the Pro's added bulk is a deal-breaker for you, you're missing out on kind of a lot. The Pro has a 120Hz display; the regular Pixel 6 is 90Hz. The Pro has 12 gigabytes of RAM where the lesser model has eight. But the biggest bummer for me is in that awkward camera bar: the 48-megapixel 4x telephoto shooter the Pro has is nowhere to be found on the smaller phone, and I can't help but be disappointed. I'm much more likely to want to zoom in with a telephoto camera than "zoom out" with an ultrawide. (I do realize this is far from a universally held view.)

Of course, this approach isn't unusual within the industry. There are normal and Pro versions of practically every Apple product, and Samsung's Ultra-series phones are similarly better than its less-huge flagships. But Google was a rare bird among its peers, and one of the last bastions for we lovers of tiny phones. The Pixel 5 only came in one (fantastically compact) size, but aside from its ludicrously small battery, the entry-level Pixel 4 was every bit the phone the larger Pixel 4 XL was.

Google sort of tested the waters for this tack with the Pixel 4a. That phone later got a bigger, better brother in the Pixel 4a 5G, which picked up an extra camera and a faster chipset (with 5G, obviously) for a $150 upcharge. But those phones launched three months apart. It would've been weird if the newer phone wasn't materially better — it felt more like a mid-generational refresh than an accompanying higher-quality trim level. It somehow stings more at the higher end of the price spectrum, too.

Cordoning off Pro-level features does make sense for a few reasons. The Pixel 6's $599 starting price is very enticing; Google surely wanted to avoid repeating the $699 Pixel 5's reception (which was a near-universal "this is too expensive"). And as much as I think stuffing more Pro stuff into the non-Pro Pixel 6 would've made a hgher price justifiable, its sub-$600 price point is definitely generating buzz. It gets people in the door, so to speak, so Google can then try to sell them more things — like the $899 Pixel 6 Pro, for example.

I have no doubt Google ran the numbers and found that catering to people who want as many features in as small a package as possible — people like myself — was less profitable than further stratifying its flagship offerings. But that doesn't change the fact that, for the first time, Google's biggest Pixel is also objectively its best Pixel, in a number of very tangible ways. And for those of us still clinging to the antiquated notion that our phones should fit in our pockets, that's a real bummer.

Buy Pixel 6:

$599 at Amazon

About The Author