Somewhere inside a deep, dark lab in Mountain View, a fully assembled xel 2 is being put through its paces. th a launch likely less than five months away, has all but wrapped up development of its next flagship phone, very little about it is going to change between now when it ls this fall.

But unlike last year, when the xel was a pleasant somewhat unexpected surprise, there’s a whole mountain of expectations on this year’s model. The original xel was sort of given a pass on some of the premium features we normally expect from a $700 phone, mainly because the overall experience was so good. But as 2017 phones like the G6 Galaxy S8 pack on the features make the xel seem more more outdated, there are some things this year’s model absolutely needs to do to keep pace.

already know that the xel will have the smoothest version of Android O, but it’s going to need a little more than that if it wants to take the best phone crown away from Samsung. 

at makes xel so good?

The greatness of the xel can be summed up in one word: friction. “Friction” is everything that gets between you having a good experience doing what you want to do. The xel is the lowest-friction of all Android phones.

iting for Android OS updates is high-friction. th xel you get them immediately ( it was first with Android N, first to support Daydream).

Dealing with photo video backups running out of storage space is high-friction. xel gives you unlimited full-resolution cloud backups of all the photos videos you take with it.

Getting a great photo can be a high-friction activity. The xel has a dead-simple camera (maybe too simple) that is super fast delivers a killer shot every time.

Slowdowns, jittery frame-skipping, unresponsive touchscreens…other Android phones are littered with minor performance annoyances that make using the phone “feel” worse than it should, even with top-end hardware. The xel’s performance may not lead all benchmark charts, but its instant response consistent smoothness remain unmatched by any other Android phone.

Apple or Motorola taking away our headphone jacks? That’s the very definition of a high-friction move. ile we would prefer the headphone jack to be on the bottom, the xel kept it right at the height of headphone-removal hysteria.

Battery life is probably the most universal low-friction feature. Keeping an eye on your battery gauge, carrying chargers or cables, that’s a source of friction we’ve become all to familiar with. The xel’s great battery life meant that you could go all day every day without worrying about topping up.

Of all the features the next xel could incorporate, we think the “zero friction phone” concept is key to its success. Therefore, we would like to see focus on those features that make the phone simpler less stressful, the kinds of things that don’t require any space in the Settings menu. Some smartphone features are great, but ask too much of you—new accounts, sign-up processes, or lots of custom settings. want the xel 2 to dem less, deliver more.

Better design

The least attractive thing about the xel is its design. ile it’s not necessarily bad looking, its giant bezels, enormous forehead chin, two-tone back are more utilitarian than seductive, in the shadow of the G6 the S8, it’s really starting to seem kind of stale.

The xel doesn’t necessarily have to be a Galaxy S8 clone— in all likelihood, it won’t be—but it will have to update its design if expects it to compete against this year’s hottest premium phones. An 18:9 screen is a strong possibility, especially since has already started to convince developers to embrace the new format. The lscape certainly seems to be shifting away from 16:9 in premium phones, if waits another year to jump on the bwagon, it’ll likely be one of the last on board.

And along with the new aspect ratio, it’ll hopefully have a greater screen-to-body ratio. Oh, one more thing: ease keep the headphone jack ( move it to the bottom).

Camera

The camera on the xel is already one of the best we’ve ever used, but with Samsung stepping up their game this year, there’s definitely room for improvement. ke Samsung Apple, works most of its magic behind the scenes, we fully expect the xel 2 to take its awesome image processing to the next level. has already teased incredible results from its experimental nighttime photography techniques, we’re drooling over the xel 2 possibilities.

But there are other ways could elevate the xel 2’s camera. First foremost, it could add a second camera. Dual-lens photography has gone from gimmicky to great, we’d love to see what the ’s hotshot image processing researchers could do with a second camera. A true portrait mode, wide-angle shots, or faux-optical zoom on the xel 2 would all be great additions.

And optical image stabilization is practically a necessity. has defended its decision to use electric image stabilization in the xel due to its ability to improve the system over time, while that may be true, it still pales in comparison to good OIS. And it’s not just for taking super steady videos. OIS helps enormously in low light, one of the areas where smartphones notoriously struggle.

’s image processing magic relies on taking lots of very fast under-exposed images adding them together using intelligent algorithms. Sony’s new Exmor RS sensor with stacked DRAM (coming in the Xperia XZ emium) can do more than just super slow-mo video. It’s the perfect technology to enable extremely rapid bursts of still photos, seems like a natural fit for ’s multi-exposure HDR+ mode.

No matter what does, it needs to keep it’s “unlimited full-resolution photo video backups to otos” feature intact. That’s a seriously useful benefit.

ter resistance, SD card, wireless charging

Certain features that were novel just a couple years ago are quickly becoming staples for premium smartphones. And a few of the features that the xel was able to get away with not having last year absolutely must be in this year’s model to justify a premium price tag.

For one, water resistance. It was a bit of a surprise that didn’t include at least I7 water dust resistance in last year’s xel, but it was hardly the only premium phone that you couldn’t get wet. However, after brought it to the G6 even HTC’s newest phone looks to be on board, some degree of water dust resistance—preferable I8 like the Galaxy S8—needs to happen.

reless charging isn’t a must-have feature, but it’s exactly the kind of zero-user-effort feature that the xel is all about. Reversible B-C is a lot friendlier than microB, but it’s still a pain to have to plug in our phones every night. reless charging might not be as fast as a plug-in charger, but the convenience can’t be beat. There are no settings, no menu items, no accounts…just put your phone down on the pad it starts charging.

And while we’re at it, an SD card slot would be nice too. Expable storage is one of the main differences between Android phones the ione, just because we have 128GB of internal storage doesn’t mean we want to fill it all up. It’s not high on our list, but we’d certainly love to pop an SD card into the next xel.

Battery fe

The original xel xel Xhave 2,770mAh 3,450mAh batteries, respectively, still are among the longest-lasting phones you can buy. But we’d still like the xel 2 to push it a little further. 

doesn’t necessarily need to put bigger cells in the next xel, however. Apple has been able to eke tremendous life out of relatively pedestrian batteries, could use Android O’s power-saving benefits really low-level software optimization to make the xel 2’s battery life way better. The xel is hs down the best showcase for Android, we’d like to see use its advantage to stretch the battery even further.

But a bigger battery would be nice, just imagine the marketing possibilities from being able to honestly claim “two-day battery life.”

Availability

But no matter how good the xel 2 is, it won’t matter if you can’t get one. More than six months after its release, is still struggling to keep the xel in stock, it’s not because of overwhelming dem anymore. It’s that just isn’t making enough of them.

The vast majority of U.S. buyers still get phones from their carrier stores. Verizon may be the biggest, but leaving out 3 of the 4 major carriers just won’t do. en a customer walks into AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint to buy a new phone, the xel 2 just can’t be a no-show. 

And the production rate needs to be easily ten times what it is today. Customers should have no problem going to ’s online store to buy one. 

Above all else, the people who want to buy a xel 2 need to be able to find it. To do less is to betray ’s promise that the xel is not just another Nexus with a name change.