This Probably Isn’t An Unreleased Pixel… But What Is It?

Google on Friday published a blog post on Friday sharing some details about how the Pixel goes through stress, durability and temperature tests. As part of that, there’s a short drop test video, but we’re not too sure what Google Pixel is being shown.

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The four-second video is captioned “Drop testing Pixel phones.” We see six phones in a rig being picked up and dropped. 

That display is showing a white screen and we see a centered hole-punch camera, which takes the Pixel 5a and earlier out of contention.

We see the USB-C port and a right cutout that looks to be a speaker and not the SIM card slot. (If Google is testing these devices, the tray would presumably be in place.) As such, this rules out the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro since that speaker is on the left.

Per previous leaks, this could be the Pixel 9a, which flips the speaker and SIM card slot.

However, there might be a camera bump, which the Pixel 9a should lack. It’s hard to discern but we spotted a curved one that slopes into the rails. 

Given the dark color and low-resolution of this video, it’s hard to make out whether the rails are flat or curved. There appears to be a matte finish (rather than anything polished).

If those aren’t flat rails and there is a camera bump, this could be the Pixel 8 or 8a. Google, at this point, is pretty good about not leaking hardware in public posts/videos. 

However, the generic “Drop testing Pixel phones” description certainly doesn’t help.

Going into the Pixel 10, we expect Google to refine the flat rails and rear design introduced with the Pixel 9 series. As such, changes are presumably going to be less drastic than Pixel 6 to 7 and 7 to 8.

What Pixel do you think is depicted? Chime in below.

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