Google Killing Off the Pixel and Pixel XL?
Google is out of Pixel and Pixel XL phones to sell, with the pages for the Google-branded phones already been removed from both the Google Store and Project Fi websites. Is the company doing away with their flagship phones?
That just might be the case, at least with the original Pixel and Pixel XL which launched back in 2016, according to a report from Ars Technica. The original, first-generation Pixel and Pixel XL phones were never made in huge quantities as it were, and now, the company seems to have stopped making more units.
The removal of the Pixel and Pixel XL pages on Google's online stores likely means that, at least on the company's warehouses, all units of the original flagship phones have been sold or otherwise sent off. Taking off the pages could only mean that Google has no plans of producing more units of the first gen mobile handsets, in any case.
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The Pixel 2 series launched late last year, two years after the first generation Pixel phones came out. The new phones, both regular and XL variants, have gone on to become the standard when it comes to camera technology, which perhaps has taken over the original Pixel's niche as the best phone camera in the industry in its time.
Not that the original Pixel phones were produced in mass numbers, as it is. Both original Pixel and Pixel XL were never reliably on stock in Google's Store, both before and after the Pixel 2 phones came out.
In 2017, the company only managed to sell 3.9 million Pixel 1 phones, according to the IDC. That's a tiny portion of the flagship phone markets, and analysts have noted Google's limited distribution reach and stock problems as the main issues.
There was also the notion that the original Pixel phones were overpriced since they were being compared to the relatively cheaper Nexus handsets during launch, as well.
Google has also given the original Pixel phones a brief window to stay up-to-date, according to their support page. "Pixel (2016) phones get Android version updates for at least 2 years from when the device first became available on the Google Store. After 2 years, we can't guarantee more updates," Google noted in their update.
That means Android updates for the original Pixel and Pixel XL will be available over the air only until October 2018. Security updates are also scheduled to dry up by October 2019, which goes away along with Google's official support for the original Pixel devices.
By October next year, the original Pixel will be, for all intents and purposes, deprecated. Overall, that's three years of support the company has provided for those who supported the launch of their original flagship phone, which might be a little on the short side as Gizmodo pointed out.
Meanwhile, Google appears to be decisively moving on from the first Pixel phones. With the Pixel 2 units launching in October 2017, a Pixel 3 is likely to be announced later this year as well.
