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| Google's foldable Pixel is coming in 2022 |
According to reports, Google's foldable Pixel phone will hit the market in 2022, but it will not use the same high-end camera sensors as the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro.
The camera is one of the biggest upgrades to this year's Pixel lineup. Google smartphones usually replace camera hardware with software and machine learning improvements.
The rear camera size of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro devices is 50 megapixels. The sensor of the Samsung GN1 Pixel 6 series is larger and can take brighter and more detailed photos.
With the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, Google had to compensate for this physical size, which means that the camera bar rises a few millimeters above the phone.
This is fine for traditional smartphones. But with foldable devices, every millimeter counts, as the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is just over half an inch thick when folded.
To that end, the upcoming foldable Pixel phone (codenamed Pipit) uses the same camera sensor as the Pixel 5.
The foldable Pixel doesn't use the new Samsung GN1 sensor, but rather the 12.2MP Sony IMX363 sensor that's been in use since the Pixel 3 and is likely the primary sensor.
More details about Google's foldable phone
Information about the development of foldable Pixel phones was released in August 2020. At that time, this phone was codenamed Passport and was scheduled to be launched in late 2021.
Since then, Passport has appeared several times, including in the source code of the Google Camera app and in various places in the Android 12 beta.
At some point in the development process, it appears that Google has switched from the original Passport model to a new foldable phone called the Pipit.
What changed is not clear. But this kind of codename change in development has happened before.
The Pixel Slate, for example, was developed under the name Meowth when it was supposed to run on Intel Cannon Lake processors. If the processor was late, Google rebuilt the Pixel Slate using an older Intel processor called the Nocturne.
Back to the camera specs: The foldable Pipit has a 12MP IMX386 sensor that should be used for ultra-wide angle lenses. This particular camera is marked as folded, which means that it can only be used when the phone is locked.
The pixel foldable smartphone is also equipped with two 8MP IMX355 sensors. One is marked as internal and the other as external.
The oldest Pixel phones, including the Pixel 6. But not the Pixel 6 Pro - the IMX355 sensor is usually used for the front selfie camera.
Hence, capturing two identical cameras helps the foldable Pixel phone take selfies with the same quality when folded or opened. One of these cameras is on the external screen and the other is on the internal screen, like the Galaxy Fold.
It's not clear if there's a camera sensor like the Galaxy Z Fold 3 at the bottom of the screen, or if it has a hole pattern like current Pixel phones.