Meanwhile, the smartphone design talent that HTC sold to Google in early 2018 has been growing steadily over the last few years. While the Pixel 4 is now considered a flop, the Pixel 5 was an excellent intermediate device, and the Pixel 6 was a competitive flagship (albeit one with seemingly more than its fair share of software bugs). In contrast, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to understand what HTC’s remaining smartphone division is working on beyond vague buzzwords like “metaverse.”
