Google has announced that the Pixel 2 is expected this year…kind of. Rick Osterloh, Google’s Hardware Chief, told Android PIT that they would be following the industry standards of producing sequels to highly successful smartphones.
“There is an annual rhythm in the industry. So, you can count on us to follow it….You can count on a successor this year, even if you don’t hear a date from me now.”
-Google’s Hardware Chief, Rick Osterloh
Rick Osterloh shot down hopes of a budget Pixel phone coming out this year. The Pixel “2B” was rumoured to be in development and raised hopes for a budget device like the iPhone SE but Osterloh said that the Pixel would “stay Premium”. The phone will probably come out in October.
The Google Pixel has been a pretty successful phone for Google. Reviewers have called it an iPhone running Android and the best Android flagship on the market. It has been praised for its long battery life, clean UI and lack of bloatware as well as the vanilla Android experience. However, the Pixel has been criticised for not having premium features like IP 67/68 water resistance, haptic feedback and dual speakers. The fact that the Pixel did not have these features and was as expensive as the iPhone 7 Plus and the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, left a lot of people underwhelmed and disappointed. However, the smartphone still received a lot of praise and sold out pretty quickly during its initial launch. 
Features I’d Love To See In The Pixel 2
- IP 68 Water Resistance, of course. The big boys in the smartphone market are all sporting water resistance. And Google would look pretty stupid when OnePlus comes out with a flagship this year with water resistance and it stands in the mid-tier market in terms of a key feature.
- Android Oreo. This is a given, but the Pixel 2 should come out with the latest, stable version, of Android 8.0 Oreo (which is rumoured to be the name of the new OS).
- Dual Camera with a 5x zoom. With Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus sporting a true 2x Optical zoom, the Pixel shouldn’t hold back. One of its strongest points was the 12.3 MP camera. And it shouldn’t lag behind Oppo either, a company which showed off the 5x optical zoom at MWC ’17 this year.
- SD Card Slot/64, 128 GB versions. Google should ditch the 32 GB version and stick to the 64 and 128 GB versions of its phones. 32 gigs run out fast in today’s world and an SD card slot is a must for Android users that carry their whole lives on a phone.
- A 2.3/2.33 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM. The RAM doesn’t need to increase but the processors need to be beefed up. For the price that Google is charging, it needs to step up its game.
- Finger-print sensor on front. It’s a practical choice. While the phone’s lying face up on a table or bed, you need to pick it up to unlock it because of the rear-facing fingerprint sensor. That’s just inefficient.
- A better design. This is what ticked people off the most. The Pixel basically looked like an iPhone 4/4S. It needs to look more Google and less Apple.