The Pixel 8 Pro marks the death of curved smartphones

Google’s Pixel lineup has been the subject of a huge number of leaks over the past few days, with the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel 7a, and even the Pixel Fold making the news, all at once. It will take some time.

Let’s start with the Pixel 8 Pro, which has a set of renders from OnLeaks and Smartprix. It feels like it’s being leaked earlier and earlier every year, but this phone should be out sometime in the fourth quarter. Biggest change in new renders compared to last year: flat display! The smartphone industry may have finally abandoned the pointless gimmick of curved smartphone displays.

We have been against curved smartphone displays for nine years. Samsung, the world’s leading smartphone display manufacturer, figured out a few years ago that it was possible to bend OLED panels by bending the left and right sides of the display down and wrapping around the body of the phone. Samsung never really considered if this was a good idea, and curved displays only add a lot of negatives to your phone’s design. A curved display distorts your apps, videos, and photos that should be displayed on a flat surface. In many lighting conditions, the curve captures a lot of highlights, making it hard to see anything that is actually in that area. The curve also makes it much easier to accidentally touch the curved parts of the screen, which tend to stop the touch screen from working.

Although it was introduced by Samsung, Android OEM groupthink meant that every manufacturer was quick to adopt these distorted displays for their flagship phones. Most Android apps get around this by simply having very large side margins so they can stay away from the distorted screen area. The only opponent of smartphones was Apple.

However, after nine years, Android users finally have hope: the Google Pixel 8 Pro. The new renders show a nicely flat display with no distortion. It looks incredible. In our review, the curved display was one of our biggest (albeit minor) complaints about the Pixel 7 Pro, especially since Google also revealed what could have been with the cheaper Pixel 7. Last point in conclusion: “Google’s best.”“The engineered phone is actually a cheaper Pixel 7 that has a flat screen and a brushed aluminum finish,” and Google dismisses one of those big complaints. (As for the easily scratched specular finish of the “Pro”version, you won’t get that kind of detail in the pre-render.)

Other changes include a new aluminum camera panel layout. The Pixel 7 Pro had two separate camera lenses: one large oval covered the first two cameras, and then a separate circle covered the zoom lens. The Pixel 8 Pro has one large oval that covers all three lenses. Interestingly, there’s a new cutout for the sensor below the LED flash, and Smartprix’s report doesn’t know what the cutout is for. These renders are usually based on CAD drawings provided to accessory manufacturers, so while you get the shape and location of the main components, the features are usually left up to guesswork.

However, we can guess, and we’ll go the conservative route and say that the notch is probably nothing new. Android manufacturers feel obligated to change the design of the camera block every year for marketing purposes, so Google moves sensors around for no reason, it’s quite normal. The Pixel 7 Pro has two sensors in the main camera unit right now: a color sensor and a laser autofocus sensor. Google always likes to have the color sensor next to the main camera lens, so if I had to guess I’d say the laser autofocus location just moved under the LED flash.

If you want to go crazy with speculation, the other possibilities are endless. The iPhone has a damn LiDAR sensor for using AR, and no Android phone has ever lived up to that. It’s strange since we’ve already passed the normal two year period it takes for Android OEMs to copy everything Apple does, but I feel like if there was a viable supplier, one of the fastest growing Chinese OEMs like Oppo or Xiaomi. would jump on it first. Less dramatic options are a macro camera (although Google already uses a wide-angle lens for this) or a depth sensor, but Google likes to rely on AI for depth perception. Most likely it’s just autofocus.

The Smartprix report says the phone measures 162.6 x 76.5 x 8.7mm – all within 0.3mm from last year – and the screen is the usual 6.7 inches. The corners of the display are reportedly rounder.