Apple may have just released the iPhone 13 today, but it’s not the phones that excite me the most this year. My focus is on the Google Pixel 6 series, of which the Pro model will be Google’s first ultra-premium flagship smartphone. The Pro model has it all: a high-resolution screen and refresh rate, a periscope zoom camera, a flagship-level SoC, the latest Android 12 software, wireless charging, a sleek design, and more. Google itself revealed the most important details of the Pixel 6 range, but there are still some details to be discovered. Today, I received new information about the Pixel 6 Pro from a leaker who wants to remain anonymous. This is what I learned.
Most of what I learned today corroborates information that other people have already leaked, especially Jon Prosser, so I recommend reading our previous coverage, as I won’t be reviewing all the details.
First of all, our source addressed to clarify something about what we were wondering: it is compatible with the Pixel 6 both of us Active Edge (sides that can be squeezed) i Battery sharing (reverse wireless charging)? The answer is no, because at least in the Pro model, Active Edge is no present. Unfortunately, this means you can’t press the sides of the Pixel 6 Pro to activate the Google Wizard. However, you can double-tap the back of your device to start the Wizard (and do other things), thanks to the new Quick Tap feature introduced in Android 12. However, battery sharing is present.
We also caught the display options of the Pixel 6 Pro. Smooth Display, which exceeds the screen refresh rate above 60Hz for a smoother scrolling experience, has been updated to keep in mind that the Pixel 6 Pro supports a 120Hz refresh rate. The native resolution of the board is 3120 x 1440 and the Pixel 6 Pro can run at both 120Hz and 1440p. However, we don’t know if the Pixel 6 Pro supports a variable refresh rate or if the display modes are unobtrusive. However, when the screen needs to enter a low power state, such as when the Always on screen screen is active, the refresh rate may drop to 10 or 30Hz.
As reported earlier this year, the Pixel 6 series will be equipped with ultra-wideband (UWB) support, a short-range wireless communication protocol that is useful for accurately tracking the location of nearby objects. UWB is deployed on phones by Samsung, Apple and others to locate UWB-equipped trackers, but we don’t know if Google plans to launch its own tile tracker. However, we know that the company is working on compatibility with digital car keys, which will allow your Pixel to unlock your car using NFC or UWB. The Pixel 6 Pro comes pre-installed with a digital car key application and UWB hardware is provided by Qorvo, an American semiconductor company specializing in this type of hardware.
Google is expected to use a Samsung 5G modem in the Pixel 6 series and the firmware analysis suggests that the modem is related to Samsung’s exynos 512. We can now corroborate this finding independently, as we found another reference to “g5123b” on the phone. radio firmware. We can’t confirm compatible bands, but the Pixel 6 series is expected to support mmWave 5G, at least in the US
Late last week, a Geekbench result allegedly from the Pixel 6 Pro appeared online, though many were skeptical about its veracity. The result of Geekbench suggests that the phone has a 2x2x4 core configuration, which consists of 2 cores at 2.80 GHz, 2 cores at 2.25 GHz and 4 cores at 1.80 GHz (which many assumed that the SoC has 2 Cortex-X1 cores, 2x Cortex-A78 and 4x Cortex-A55 cores). RAM was classified as 12 GB, while the GPU appeared as Mali-G78. While we can’t confirm the exact microarchitecture of each CPU core, the 2x2x4 core configuration and frequencies match what we’ve seen in real Pixel 6 Pro hardware. In addition, we can corroborate the figure of 12 GB of RAM, which is expected to be an LPDDR5 module. We can also corroborate that the GPU will be the Mali-G78 and can be seen up to 848 MHz. Google itself leaked the GPU, so this should come as no surprise.
We can also corroborate the specifications of the camera, which in the Pixel 6 Pro will include a triple configuration of the rear camera at the back and a single camera at the bottom under a hole in the top center. The Pixel 6 Pro will feature a main rear camera with 50MP GN1 image sensor from Samsung, a secondary wide-angle rear camera with 12MP IMX386 image sensor from Sony and a tertiary telephoto lens with 48MP IMX586 image sensor from Sony. Google has previously confirmed that the telephoto lens supports 4X optical zoom. As for the front camera, it may have Sony’s 12MP IMX663 sensor.
We can corroborate a couple of other hardware details, including battery capacity, one of the storage variants, Wi-Fi specifications, fingerprint scanner type, and audio amplifier. The Pixel 6 Pro will have a 5,000 mAh battery, at least a model with 128 GB of storage, support for Wi-Fi 6E (6 GHz Wi-Fi), an optical fingerprint scanner under the screen of the Chinese seller Goodix and the wide Cirrus Logic CS35L41. There are a few details about which we expect more information, but we’ve learned that the rumored “sliding” code name applies to the Pixel 6’s boot loader; at 1230 MHz, and some of the possible new camera features include a “baby mode” and motion blur.
Finally, we learned that the Pixel 6 Pro firmware is based on version 5.10 of the Linux kernel, which coincides with the rumor that the Pixel 6 series will get five years of software updates. The 5.10 LTS core will be supported until the end of 2026, so it is possible that Google will stop providing security updates if the five-year rumor is true.
If we get more information about the new Pixel phones from our source, we will do another article. We wouldn’t be surprised if Google just came out and confirmed many of these details, though, given how they’ve announced virtually every detail that worries most people except pricing and availability.