With rave reviews about the Pixel phones pouring in, Alphabet, Google’s parent company is seeing its shares reach record highs. Mountain View based Alphabet's stock rose to $828 before ending the day at $826.85. This is their highest stock price since August 19, 2004, when Google first traded shares in the public markets.
The reviews should come as a relief to the Mountain View tech major, as the Pixel phones are the first line of the company’s in-house designed smartphones.
While the Pixel’s camera was praised, the company drew flak for battery performance. Walt Mossberg at theverge called the Pixel the best Android phone he had ever tested. He added that the built in Google Assistant, Google’s artificial intelligent assistant, was impressive and far better than Apple’s Siri. Mossberg remarked that the Pixel was comfortable and practical; fast and fluid; takes very good pictures, but criticised it for the below par battery performance.
Techcrunch lauded Google for the great photo and video experience on the Pixel. It remarked that the photos are clicked easily and the automatically-enabled HDR+ smarts allows for even exposure in most conditions. However the iPhone 7 Plus outperforms the Pixel, with more vibrant colors, and brighter defaults for light areas, the website stated.
Bloomberg quoted analyst Youssef Squali, from Cantor Fitzgerald, who linked Alphabet’s rising stock to the support for the Pixel and market confidence due to Netflix Inc.’s positive quarterly results. “Part of it is the Pixel reviews, which have been more positive than I expected. Partly it’s the Netflix effect. Great earnings. Google is reporting next week. There’s hope for a strong quarter from all internet companies,” he stated.
The Pixel sports a 5-inch 1080p AMOLED display with a 2770mAh battery, while the Pixel XL comes with a 5.5-inch AMOLED 2560×1440 pixel resolution display with a 3450mAh battery. All other specifications are the same for both the devices. Both devices come in 32GB and 128GB storage variants. There is also a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC mated to an Adreno 530 GPU. There is an 8MP front camera, along with 12MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, phase detection autofocus and dual-LED (dual tone) flash. As for the pricing, the 32GB Pixel is priced at Rs. 57,000, while the 128GB Pixel is priced at Rs. 66,000. The 32GB Pixel XL will cost Rs. 67,000 while the 128GB Pixel XL is priced at Rs. 76,000. The smartphones are available online exclusively with Flipkart, and in Reliance Digital, Croma Retail and Vijay Sales offline stores.