The rear camera visor present on Google’s Pixel family is considered a breath of fresh air in terms of smartphone design. With the competition churning out models that look similar to the next one, the Pixel lineup manages to stand out entirely, but the design team at Google made this ‘camera bar’ for an entirely different reason, which was to accommodate bigger sensors to capture higher quality images and video.
The camera bar of the Pixel models also helps to keep the devices evenly placed on a flat surface with the screen facing upwards
In Google’s blog post, the team wanted to do away with the Pixel 5 camera arrangement, believing that all the rear sensors grouped together would greatly compromise the design and would bring little improvements to the image quality. By shifting to the camera bar on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, physically larger sensors could be used while also letting users place their devices on a flat surface without the phones wobbling.
The teams building the Pixel 6 lineup had big goals for the new camera. The kind of image quality they wanted to accomplish would require more light, and bigger lenses. But they didn’t want those much bigger lenses to mean a much bigger phone. “If you look back at Pixel 5 all the sensors were all grouped into this little square — so when we knew the camera would be greatly improved, we wanted to do something different,” says industrial designer Sangsoo Park. “We didn’t want the phone to be bigger, and wanted to really maintain everything being contained and streamlined, but also celebrated in a way.”
The camera bar on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro was just the stepping stone that led to further improvements, says Google. As soon as the team could scale past the first models’ challenges, it was time to refine it with the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro. This time, industrial designer Jaeun Park says that the team took inspiration from liquid metal surfaces and applied that to the newer models, with the material surrounding the cameras forming the shapes of a circle and pill. Though it might have been difficult to tell the camera bars apart from the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series, the Pixel Fold featured the biggest change.
With the foldable form factor, Google says that the design team was dealing with something completely new, so the updated design displays the visor as if it has been fixed in place, almost like a piece of the puzzle. At the same time, the Pixel Fold’s primary camera included a high-resolution main sensor, a great ultrawide unit, and a 5x telephoto lens, all within a single housing. Google’s team claims that space optimizations were critical in this regard, and right at the end, they had no space to spare for further changes.
The upcoming Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro will likely share some of the same characteristics as its predecessor, but we are still curious to see how the camera bar will evolve this time. With the two flagships slated to launch in October, we will know soon enough.
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