Anika Begay
There’s one thing about the just-announced Google Pixel 9 that’s hard to convey in photos: its camera bar is prominent. Bigger than ever. It’s about the thickness of two quarters stacked together, nearly a third as thick as the rest of the phone. It’s so big that even the base Pixel 9 is about the thickness of a “Pro” iPhone, with a much more prominent camera module.
“A modern and no-excuses approach”
I’ve never felt a bump like it, but I don’t hate it! In 2022, I argued that Google’s camera bar was a Well what: The first major smartphone design element that’s truly owned by Google. In an age where almost everyone’s phone is a simple rounded rectangle, it’s a playful way to stand out by giving your phone a cute robot face.
I ask Claude Zellweger what Him thinks of the more massive bump, and says it’s “absolutely intentional.” As design director for the Pixel phones, he’s the man behind the camera team, and calls it a “modern, unapologetic approach.”
I don’t bring up the idea that the camera bar gives the Pixel a cute robot face, and neither does Zellweger: When I ask about his reasoning, he says the bar is simply “the most efficient way to package these camera modules,” and that it’s designed to highlight that minimalist beauty. “There’s a purity to our photography, right? We want it to reflect that.” (Elsewhere, Google says the camera bar’s design was inspired by the shape of the search bar.)
But while he says Google wants to “set a new era for phone design” with the Pixel 9, he doesn’t think a big bar will necessarily dominate Google’s future phones forever. To bump or not to bump? He says it depends on how much future phone buyers need big camera hardware inside.
“The desire to have a really good photograph is not going away,” says Zellweger.. These days, that means big sensors and lenses, which in turn means big protrusions if you want the rest of the phone to stay slim.
He argues that designers will likely reconsider the relationship between camera hardware and phone hardware, as the entire concept of a “camera” continues to evolve.
Speaking of smaller hardware: I ask Zellweger what she thinks of small phones, the ones that have largely died out since Apple and Google stopped selling them. (Some would say they don’t sell well; I would argue that these companies never gave gadget enthusiasts any real choice.) Surprisingly, Zellweger says she’s personally a fan of small phones, and she brings up her Pixel 9 Pro, which is the same size as the Pixel 9, to prove that Google is no longer pushing you to buy the biggest phone to get the best features.
But when I point out that his 6.3-inch phone isn’t nearly as small as my beloved old 5.4-inch iPhone Mini, he says modern expectations make it harder. “Building small phones is fundamentally a bigger challenge,” he says, ticking off battery life, cameras, temperature, and user experience as things that tend to help push manufacturers toward taller, wider phones. He says many people expect to watch videos or play games on their phones these days, and thus prefer larger screens.
But that may not always be the case, Zellweger says. “I could see a future where some people have different priorities about how they use their devices, and there are trade-offs that can be made.”
