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Google-Pixel-Phones

Google unveiled its new Pixel smartphones — and a brand-new strategy for dealing with hardware and software integration in future Google-branded products. Going forward, instead of working with partners to brand devices as Nexus hardware, Google will handle all of its ain blueprint, including choosing the specific components that are baked into the device. Commencement impressions from on-site journalists suggest the hardware is well-made and attractive. Only the $649 and $769 toll points for the Pixel (5-inch screen) and Pixel XL (5.5-inch) demand top-notch equipment if the company doesn't want its debut smartphones to bomb.

Google has big long-term plans for its hardware, upward to and including a potential program to blueprint its own silicon for futurity devices, according to Bloomberg. Right now, the Pixels are powered past a Snapdragon 821 — the virtually powerful iteration of Qualcomm's Kryo CPU and Adreno graphics on the market, with a meridian clock speed of two.34GHz and a max GPU clock of 653MHz. For the most role, the Snapdragon 821 is a clock-tweaked version of the Snapdragon 820, but the lower-power cores accept gotten a substantial performance kick. Max clock has increased from 2.2 to ii.4GHz, or roughly 10%, while the lower-ability core clock has jumped from 1.6GHz to roughly 2GHz, a 25% increase. That should make the Snapdragon 821 substantially faster than its predecessor in certain workloads.

Qualcomm has released its own extensive PR detailing the Pixel's X12 LTE modem, Qualcomm's Aqstic codec engineering (if you don't get the make name, say it out-loud). The photographic camera runs using Qualcomm'due south Hexagon DSP rather than on the CPU. All in all, the Pixels are impressive devices, though nosotros'll have to wait for reviews to see if they tin can alive up to the hype.

Google, however, may have bigger long-term plans than simply licensing an ARM design from Qualcomm or a stock core from ARM itself. The company has reportedly poured pregnant resource into building a hardware design team. According to Dave Burke, who runs Android engineering at Google, the company will somewhen be able to ship its own custom silicon. That'due south unlikely to happen whatever time soon, but it could upend the Android market if Google ever goes downward that route.

Google-Experience

The ad copy and overall site design are straight out of Apple's playbook.

The reason it won't happen in the near future is considering designing SoCs is a long-term endeavor. Historically, information technology takes four to five years for a semiconductor company to move a flake from the cartoon lath into consumers' hands. Apple bought PA Semi in 2008 and began aircraft custom SoCs relatively chop-chop, just these chips were only custom inasmuch as they had specific I/O blocks rather than a full general set of capabilities. Apple tree didn't launch its kickoff new CPU architecture until four years later, in 2022. AMD's Zen initiative began in 2022 and the chip is expected to launch in Q1, putting it at 4.v years. It only took Intel a little over iii years to move from the Pentium Yard to the Cadre two Duo (March 2003 – July 2006), but Cantlet took roughly four years to develop also, from 2004 to 2008.

If Google goes this road, it could jeopardize its long-term relationships with other Android vendors. The visitor has pledged to treat its own devices just as information technology would treat partner hardware built by any manufacturer. Only if Google controls both Android and (potentially) its own silicon design, the company could tailor its hardware direct to its software and vice-versa. Low-level optimizations could yield significant performance improvements.

Google, to the best of our knowledge, would be the get-go consumer company to control both its ain operating system and complete evolution of the underlying hardware. Remember Apple was never the sole programmer of the 680×0 or PowerPC, while Microsoft allied with Intel and to a lesser extent, AMD. IBM both designs its own hardware and controls its mainframe operating systems, but these tin scarcely be considered consumer products. Google is openly targeting Apple and the iPhone, but there's a very limited amount of profit in the current Android ecosystem, and Samsung currently earns most of information technology.

Google claims that all of its hardware partners are completely on-board with Pixel and the company's push button into hardware. But the various Android OEMs are scarcely going to circulate their own unhappiness at the prospect of competing with its own Bone developer. Samsung has long kept a toe in Os development and periodically launches new phones and devices based on Tizen. If we commencement seeing more activity around that project, information technology may hateful Google'south various partners are less thrilled with the visitor's newfound status as a hardware manufacturer than they've publicly allow on.