Google, We Need to Talk About the Pixel 3 Lite (Premium)

It’s getting to the point where Google and I have a rich history of the search giant ignoring my advice. This is going to be another example.

As you may have seen, Google has created and will soon sell two new members of the Pixel family, the Pixel 3 Lite and Pixel 3 Lite XL. As the names suggest, these upcoming new Pixels are much like Google’s expensive flagship smartphones, but with lesser components and smaller price tags.

Less obviously, the Lite Pixels are in some ways more desirable than the mainstream Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. For example, the Pixel 3 Lite XL doesn’t include the Pixel 3 XL’s obnoxiously-large buck-toothed display notch.

I’ll get to the other particulars in a moment. First, I need to get this off of my chest: Google should not sell either of these new “Lite” handsets. Doing so would simply add weight to the sinking ship that is Google’s Pixel smartphone business and accelerate its decline.

Yes, this should be obvious.

A more credible company—say, Microsoft—would look at the Pixel’s current market situation and the product line’s unbelievable reliability problems and would scuttle any plans for more phones. That is, Google should do what Microsoft did in the wake of its Surface reliability problems: Fix the issues first.Then release new devices.

As important, we now have Apple’s struggles with the iPhone XR as a shining example of what happens when a company that makes only flagship handsets releases a less expensive version that isn’t quite as good as the rest of the product family. (And no offense to Google, but OnePlus briefly offered a non-flagship handset years ago, too, and that smaller company is a lot more similar to Google’s handset business than Apple is.)

I have a solution.

It’s the same solution I offered to Google in 2016 when it foolishly tried to mimic Apple, both stylistically and in pricing, with its first Pixel phones, eliminating the advantages it had previously offered to consumers with the Nexus 5X and 6P. It’s also the same solution I offered to Google in 2017 when it inexplicably raised prices yet again, as if by imitating what the market leaders were doing at that time would somehow make Google a market leader too.

Google needs to lower the price of the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. Permanently.

Introducing lower-priced options doesn’t solve this problem. As it stands, the Pixel 3 and 3 XL are not competitive. They do not justify Google’s pricing.

Understanding the Pixel 3 Lite and Pixel 3 Lite XL will help put this argument in context. In doing so, it’s likewise important to understand how the iPhone XR differs from its much more expensive iPhone XS and XS Max siblings.

While there are a number of differences, including the price, there’s one that really stands out: The display technology, which is LCD, not AMOLED, and it requires backlighting that necessitates bigger bezels. Beyond this, there are differences in display size (which is too big for many), body construction (which is aluminum not stainless steel, but is available in multiple colors), and so on.

What isn’t different are the core iPhone XR internals. You get the same high-end A12 Bionic chipset as the flagships. Less technically, the basic iPhone experience remains identical between the three newest iPhones, so buyers get the same Face ID sign-ins, the same gesture-based animation, the same performance and longevity. (Actually, the iPhone XR gets better battery life too. Anyway.)

This kind of consistency is important. And it’s what makes the iPhone XR the sweet spot of the new iPhone lineup. That this hasn’t translated into better sales is somewhat confusing, but there you go: The flip-side to Apple’s trendiness is that appearances do matter. And no matter how good the iPhone XR is, it’s tainted by being less.

Google has dramatically different concerns in the smartphone market. Its Pixel devices are also-rans that barely register in the sales charts. Where Apple sells 10s of millions of handsets each quarter, Google sales 100s of thousands. Google has experienced endemic reliability issues in each of the past two Pixel generations, a problem Apple hasn’t had since the ill-fated iPhone 4, in 2010. And because the Pixel is based on Android, those phones suffer from performance problems that are unknown in the iPhone world. Especially now that iOS 12 is making even older iPhones seem faster.

If Google didn’t have such a hard time making reliable handsets, one could almost make the argument for a lower-cost Pixel. But that Pixel would need to have the same internals, the same processor and RAM and basic storage options as the more expensive units. The differences would need to be related to the body—aluminum vs. glass, so no wireless charging, and the display, which could perhaps be LCD isn’t of AMOLED.

But Google does have these problems. And with Android’s performance issues, offering a Pixel 3 Lite and 3 Lite XL with lower-end internals is simply untenable. And yet that is exactly what the Pixel 3 and 3 Lite XL are. Lesser.

They are lesser in two major ways. First, the processor architecture is a mid-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon 670, not the flagship-class Snapdragon 845. Second, it ships with only 32 GB of storage in the base version, compared to 64 GB in the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. That’s simply not enough storage.

Yes, some of the specs in these Lite phones are compelling: They will ship with the same camera as their higher-end siblings and will have the same 4 GB of RAM, for example.

And it’s possible that the Pixel 3 Lite and Pixel 3 Lite XL will target certain countries where low-end Android One phones are sold. So we may not even get these confusing new options here in the US or in other mature markets. But that doesn’t concern me. Because Google’s current offerings are simply too expensive. Period.

Google’s Pixel lineup does not have the cachet or the sales level to justify iPhone-like pricing. Even Samsung, which sells more handsets than Apple overall, prices its own flagships under the equivalent iPhones. If Samsung—the biggest maker of smartphones in the world—must do this, then so must Google.

I know this will never happen, know that Google is ignoring me institutionally, but I would like to see a return to the pricing levels we saw with the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P. The Nexus 5X started at just $380 in 2015, and the larger Nexus 6P cost just $500 to $650 depending on storage. At those price levels, Google’s phones were—and would be today—no-brainers.

But a year later, Google went off the deep end: It priced the Pixel XL at $770 and up, a price increase of $270 (!) in just one year; that’s even bigger than Apple’s 2018 price increases, which I call Apple Jacked. A year later, the Pixel 2 XL was even more expensive: That one started at $850.

Google, stop the insanity.

I know that Google’s a boutique handset maker and it doesn’t have the scale and resulting cost-savings. But it also can’t afford how badly Pixel is undermining Android. Something has to give. And adding more phones is not the solution.

So I’ll meet Google half-way on pricing, since I know the $380 and $500 levels from the Nexus days can never happen now. The Pixel 3 should start at $600 and max out at $700, and the Pixel 3 XL should start at $700 and max out at $800. Those are, perhaps not coincidentally, almost exactly how Samsung prices the Galaxy S9 ($620 to $740) and S9+ ($740 to $860). Interesting.

That Samsung’s handsets are far more reliable than Google’s deserves a mention. Regardless, those are the only pricing levels that make sense for the Pixel 3 and 3 XL.

But the Pixel 3 Lite and 3 Lite XL? They make no sense at all.