Google’s head of Pixel 9 design won’t apologize for its big, beautiful camera bump

There’s 1 happening astir the just-announced Google Pixel 9 that’s hard to convey successful photos — its camera barroom is prominent. Bigger than ever before. It’s astir arsenic heavy arsenic 2 US quarters stacked unneurotic — astir a 3rd arsenic heavy arsenic the full remainder of the phone. It’s truthful large adjacent the vanilla Pixel 9 is present astir arsenic heavy arsenic a “Pro” iPhone, with a acold much salient camera module.

I’ve ne'er felt a bump rather similar it, but I don’t hatred it! I argued successful 2022 that Google’s camera barroom was a good thing: the archetypal large smartphone plan constituent that’s genuinely Google’s own. In an epoch erstwhile astir everyone’s telephone is simply a elemental rounded rectangle, it’s a playful mode to basal out, giving the telephone a cute robot face.

I inquire Claude Zellweger what he thinks astir the beefier bump — and helium says it’s “absolutely intentional.” As a manager of plan for Pixel phones, he’s the antheral down the squad down the camera bar, and helium calls it a “modern and unapologetic approach.”

I don’t bring up the thought that the camera barroom gives the Pixel a cute robo-face, and neither does Zellweger — erstwhile I inquire for his reasoning, helium says the bar’s simply “the astir businesslike mode to bundle these camera modules” and that it’s designed to item that minimalist beauty. “There’s a purity to our photography, right? We privation it to beryllium reflective of that.” (Elsewhere, Google says the camera barroom plan is inspired by the signifier of the hunt bar.)

But portion helium says Google wants to “set a caller epoch for telephone design” with the Pixel 9, helium doesn’t deliberation a large barroom volition needfully predominate Google’s aboriginal phones forever. To bump oregon not to bump? He says it depends connected however overmuch aboriginal telephone buyers request large camera hardware inside.

“The tendency to person truly bully photography is not going to spell away,” Zellweger says. Today, that means large sensors and large lenses, which mean large bumps if you privation the remainder of the telephone to enactment thin.

He says designers volition apt revisit the ratio of camera hardware to telephone hardware, arsenic the full conception of a “camera” continues to evolve.

Speaking of smaller hardware: I inquire Zellweger however helium feels astir tiny phones, the ones that have mostly died aft Apple and Google stopped selling them. (Some would reason they don’t merchantability well; I support these companies person ne'er fixed gadget enthusiasts a existent choice.) Surprisingly, Zellweger says he’s personally a tiny telephone instrumentality — and pulls retired his ain Pixel 9 Pro, which is the aforesaid size arsenic the Pixel 9, to show that Google’s nary longer pushing you to bargain the biggest telephone to get the champion features.

But erstwhile I constituent retired that his 6.3-inch telephone is obscurity adjacent arsenic tiny arsenic my beloved aged 5.4-inch iPhone Mini, helium says modern expectations marque that harder. “Building tiny phones is conscionable fundamentally a bigger challenge,” helium says, ticking disconnected artillery life, cameras, thermals, and idiosyncratic acquisition arsenic things that thin to assistance propulsion manufacturers toward taller and wider handsets. He says galore radical expect to ticker video oregon play games connected phones these days and, therefore, similar bigger screens.

But it mightiness not ever beryllium that way, Zellweger says. “I could spot a aboriginal successful which immoderate radical person antithetic priorities astir what they usage their devices for, and there, immoderate compromises tin beryllium made.”