THE REAL REASON GOOGLE KEEPS CHANGING THE PIXEL CAMERA BAR
Lais Borges/Inverse; Photograph by Raymond Wong
Not too long ago, smartphones had more personality. An iPhone with a home button looked distinct from a
BlackBerry with a keyboard; an HTC might have used metal instead of the plastic in a Motorola; Samsung phones flaunted their curved glass edges while OnePlus devices touted pop-selfie cameras.
You used to be able to identify what phone everyone used just because they all had so much character. Nowadays, phones mostly all look the same. With the exception of
phones that fold or flip, they’re turning into iPhone clones.
The last easy way to distinguish phones in the wild is by their rear camera setup. How many lenses does a phone have? Do they sit on a platter or a bar? Are the lenses vertically or horizontally aligned? The best way, for example, to tell the difference between a
Galaxy S24+ and
iPhone 15 Pro is to look at the camera arrangement — three cameras in a triangle for the iPhone, a vertical row of three for the Galaxy. The next biggest difference is one of them has an Apple emblazoned on the back.
When I visited Google’s highly secured Pixel CMF (Colors, Materials, and Finish) and Industrial Design lab last month to
talk with the head of Pixel cameras, Isaac Reynolds, I also took a little detour to chat with Claude Zellweger, Director of Industrial Design (aka the guy in charge of designing new Pixel hardware).
“It’s natural for people to anthropomorphize the products.”
“No, it was architecture,” Zellweger tells
Inverse, when I ask whether the Pixel 8’s prominent “camera bar” was inspired by Daft Punk’s helmets or R2-D2, two pop culture icons that reviewers and consumers always seem to reference as potential source material. “It’s natural for people to anthropomorphize the products. We’re wired that way as humans to see faces and things like that.”
For my visit, Google brought out every single Pixel (from the original to the current 8 Pro) and I could see seven years of smartphone design laid out in front of me, all at once. It was revealing how much the upgrades to the camera (arguably the most important feature on phones nowadays) facilitated the changes in design. Google has refreshed the Pixel’s design language every time a new camera has been added, which might have kept things fresh back when there was more phone differentiation, but the camera bar is now a recognizable design element that makes a Pixel a Pixel. What direction will Google take the Pixel hardware in now that it’s at the
beginning of injecting generative AI into its phones? Zellweger gives
Inverse a tease on what’s to come.
HARDWARE IS NO HOBBY
Claude Zellweger, Google’s Director of Industrial Design, is in charge of developing the look and feel of new Pixel hardware.
PHOTOGRAPH BY RAYMOND WONG
Zellweger has been at Google since 2016. Prior to arriving at the Mountain View, California-based technology titan, Zellweger was a creative director at HTC, where he worked on the
Vive VR headsets. He joined Google to do industrial design for Google’s ill-fated Daydream headsets and then moved over to the Pixel hardware team.
When we meet in the atrium of the Pixel design lab (a discrete-looking building that requires high-security clearance), Zellweger’s tall Swiss frame towers over me. But he’s an easy-going guy who lets his goofiness hang out every once in a while. We talk about how the natural light gleaming from the overhead glass and the earthy tones of the furniture keep everyone in the lab invigorated and inspired, and where and what he and his team draw from to design Google hardware. Our focus is on the Pixel phones, but Zellweger reminds me that all of Google’s hardware (Pixel phones, tablets, smartwatches, wireless earbuds, Chromebooks, Nest smart home products, etc.) are designed so that they not only work together, but look cohesive.
“There are a ton of eyes on us including the CEO [Sundar Pichai] who cares about having a really well thought-out and deeply integrated experience, and there is a pressure in the sense that we need to be successful as a company,” Zellweger says. “Making hardware went from a hobby to becoming a critical element for the Google business.”
“Making hardware went from a hobby to becoming a critical element for the Google business.”
Pichai’s involvement in the Pixel wasn’t always a given. Just four years ago, when Google launched the Pixel 4a,
a mid-range phone that was entirely forgettable, it seemed as though the company was done with smartphone innovation. But then a year later, Google released the
Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, marking the start of what has been a three-year run of high-end phones, with
custom Google-designed Tensor silicon and packages that compete head-on with iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones with gorgeous designs, versatile cameras, top-notch displays, and big batteries, but that also leap ahead of them in terms of AI features.
“[Pichai] loves design. He actually has great insights. He will comment on color, ergonomics, on things like that. But at the end of the day, it’s [Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President of Devices & Services at Google] hardware organization.” (After my trip, Osterloh was promoted from leading only Google hardware to also overseeing Android and Chrome services.)
You can read the full interview here:
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