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The Google Pixel 5 is very much a phone with a utilitarian design and feature set; there is no Pixel 4 Soli radar chip and no Motion Sense control for the phone. But Google has said that the technology will return.
It may seem a bit reductive to remove some pretty cool features from a next-gen Pixel phone. But Google’s hardware leader Rick Osterloh told The Verge that the use of Google’s radar and motion control technology would have made the Pixel 5 too expensive.
“They will be used in the future,” Osterloh explained. They were too expensive for the phone Google wanted to build this time. “
At $ 699, the Pixel 5 is $ 100 cheaper than its predecessor at launch. With phones like the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE also costing $ 699, and non-professional iPhone 12 models are expected to have the same pride, there seems to be a growing appetite for creating near-flagship phones for less than $ 800.
The Pixel 5 comes with a Snapdragon 765G chipset rather than a flagship Snapdragon 865, so you’ve already promised to make sure you’re targeting what we’d consider the upper echelons of a mid-range phone price. As such, it’s no wonder the Soli chip and Motion Sense have been removed from the Pixel 5.
However, if Google hasn’t canceled the technology, where will it be used next? That’s a question that needs a bit of speculation. Google could bring the technology back for the Pixel 6 if it decided to make another true flagship phone, perhaps from a time when the world is recovering from the economic shock of a global pandemic.
Or we could see the technology built into Google’s Nest smart home technology. Powerful motion control and robust facial recognition technology for Chromecast devices and the Home Hub kit would make sense, allowing multiple users to authenticate to open custom options like music playlists. Or by enabling better control of smart home technology with gesture recognition instead of having to bark commands at the Google Assistant or use a smartphone app.
As things stand, we’ll have to play the wait-and-see card, as Google didn’t mention what it will do next with its devices let alone Soli and Motion Sense technology, but it’s interesting to see that it hasn’t. discarded technology from hands.