The Pixel’s camera bar is here to stay, and that’s a good thing

Image: Google

You can see the Apple iPhone from 20 paces away. I bet you would be able to tell the difference between the two. Until last year, the design language for the phone was all of its own.

The most distinctive, in-your-face design element ever, is here to stay. Not only did it feature on the last year's Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, but it will also be on the next iteration of the device, the Pixel 6A.

I'm talking about the camera bar.

Image: Google

Before he left us to work for Google, Dieter Bohn jokingly called it the "shelf."

This thing jutting out the back of your phone is immediately divisive. That is how we first saw Apple's ugly white earbuds. I remember when the original iMac G3 was ridiculed for looking like a toy. The weird designs became icons for fans and ads. We get nostalgic for transparent gadgets.

It doesn't hurt that the camera bar has some of that playfulness. The camera bar is similar to the one used in the R2D2 movie, but it has more of a robotic look.

I'm not saying that Google didn't have a design language, but it felt borrowed. Originally, the company didn't design phones for the operating system. The T-Mobile G1 and the Nexus One were both made by the same company, while the other phones were made by other companies.

Half of the phones had a horizontal wordmark, but the other half had no common design language.

In 2016 everything changed with the introduction of the Google Pixel. It's not necessarily for the better because of the fact that Google was after the iPhone from the beginning. We noted that the original Pixel looked too much like an Apple device, only with the fingerprint sensor and a partially glass back, but not really a distinctive look you'd recognize from.

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

The all-glass back of the Pixel 4 was saved by the removal of more and more glass. The glass disappeared altogether in the year 2019, after the failure of the Pixel 4 and the pivoted cheaper.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

It also probably doesn't help that in the early 2020s, Apple and other companies decided to use the squircle as their camera corral. Oops! The phones looked more like low-rent phones than ever before, until the Pixel 6 and the Pro arrived with the camera bar in October.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

There is nothing low-rent about the Pixel 6 or the new Pixel 6A, even though it does have a 3D thermoformed composite back.

Image: Google

The camera bar ties it all together. The centerpiece is not technically centered because the dead center is not a good place to put a camera. It's the feature that gives the Pixels an actual silhouette instead of being just another rounded rectangle. It is the line that divides the two tones of the design language for the entire family.

You can see what I mean by looking at the new portrait of the Pixel family.

Image: Google

Wait, what the heck? What is that?

Angry, ugly arrows by Sean Hollister / The Verge

You promised, what have you done?

I apologize to everyone.