Google’s 2019 Pixel event: all of the rumors, news, and announcements

Every major phone launch has a “-gate”: a drama about some problem or worry with the hardware. With the Pixel 4, there are several: the battery may be too small, the face unlock works with your eyes closed, and now the conditions at which the screen will refresh at 90Hz and when it will ratchet down to 60Hz are pretty confusing. Google calls the feature “Smooth Display,” but its reception has been anything but smooth in the past 24 hours.

Google previously said it adjusts the refresh rate depending on what’s happening on the screen to improve battery life, but yesterday some Redditors figured out that refresh rate also drops down to 60Hz if the screen brightness is set below 75 percent. Further investigation from the Android community revealed that it may stay up at 90Hz at lower brightness levels if the ambient lighting in the room is bright enough.

With the Pixel 4, Google has finally added a second lens to the back of its phones. Speaking onstage at yesterday’s launch event, Google Research’s Marc Levoy explained the decision with a relatively simple statement of fact. “Some subjects are farther away than you’d like,” he said, “so it does help telephoto shots to have a telephoto lens.”

It seems like a weirdly obvious point to make, but Levoy had to spell it out because until last year Google was claiming that its phones could get by with just a single rear camera. Check out this interview with Wired, where one of Google’s product managers said that a second lens was “unnecessary” because of the company’s expertise in machine learning. The Pixel 3 included a feature called “Super Res Zoom,” which used a burst of photos to increase resolution while you’re zoomed in; no telephoto lens required. For context, Apple had already been adding a second camera with a telephoto lens to its iPhones for two years.

Google may have introduced a lot of new Pixel camera tech at its 2019 fall hardware event this week, but it quietly retired a camera product as well: the Google Clips camera has been removed from Google’s online store (via 9to5Google).

Google confirmed Clips’ removal to The Verge and tells us that Clips will continue to get support until December 2021. In addition, the Clips mobile app, which is required to transfer videos off of a Clips camera, will stop working in December 2021, according to Google — so it sounds like the device will essentially become useless in a little over two years.

After two years without releasing a new laptop, Google has finally announced the Pixelbook Go, a 13.3-inch Chromebook that starts at $649. Based on my colleague Dieter Bohn’s hands-on, it seems pretty good, and it’s a lot cheaper than the $999 Pixelbook.

So now that there’s a midrange Pixelbook, it could be much harder to pick which one of the many Chromebooks should be your next laptop.

After Apple’s iPhone 11 event, I noted that while the company was catching up on features like ultrawide and night mode, it was unclear whether it’d be able to get on the Pixel’s level in terms of basic image quality. Over the course of our review process, it became clear that Apple had indeed achieved that. Apple says it has a class-leading camera every year, but this time it actually does.

The next question, then, is how big a leap will come with Google’s new Pixel 4. We still can’t answer that yet, just as we didn’t know how good the iPhone 11 was the day after its announcement. (You can see some quick comparisons here, but stay tuned for the full review.) We can, however, take a lot from what Google did — and didn’t — have to say on stage yesterday.

Google’s Pixel 4 and 4 XL are here at last, after a mountain of leaks. But the choice isn’t quite as easy as “big” or “small” because Google’s new phones are expensive, at $799 and up — and because the excellent Pixel 3 and Pixel 3A are still sticking around for hundreds of dollars cheaper.

Here’s the full lineup as of today:

Google announced today that it will be rolling out a new version of its Nest Aware subscription service starting in 2020, with simplified pricing and new features.

Since 2015, Google has offered Nest Aware as a premium subscription for its Nest security cameras for $5, $10, or $30 per month. The subscription gives you 24/7 continuous recording, access to video history, and more options for alerts, but if you wanted to use Nest Aware with multiple cameras, you had to pay a discounted monthly fee per additional camera.

Google’s latest phone, the Google Pixel 4, doesn’t include a pair of earphones in the box, nor does it come with one of the company’s USB-C to 3.5mm adapters. With its own true wireless Pixel Buds not due for release until next year, Google just offered every other headphone manufacturer a nice opportunity to capitalize on any new Pixel 4 owners who might not already own wireless headphones.

Every previous Pixel phone offered a wired headphone option in the box, whether via a traditional 3.5mm headphone jack, a bundled pair of USB-C headphones, or a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter. (The original Pixel and Pixel 3A had the built-in jack; the Pixel 3 came with both accessories.) This will be the first time Google has shipped a phone without any of those options.

A slew of new Google products is coming, with the new Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL phones heading the list. If you’ve already got a Pixel phone and are in the mood to upgrade or if you’ve finally decided that this is the year you’re going to take the plunge, we’ve got all the info you need.

Available for preorder today and shipping on October 24th, the Pixel 4 and 4 XL are (for the first time) going to be available from all the major US carriers, in addition to major retailers and, of course, Google’s online store.

By now, you’ve heard: the new Google Pixel 4 has a tiny radar chip inside it, which allows you to swipe or wave your hand to do a few things. More importantly, Motion Sense (as Google has branded it) is designed to detect your presence. It knows if you’re there. The technology comes from Project Soli, which was first demonstrated publicly in 2015 and is now inside the Pixel 4 as its first major commercial implementation. Responding to a few air gestures is fairly minor, but Google sees the potential for it to eventually become much more.

That’s always the way with new computing interfaces. The mouse and the touchscreen led to giant revolutions in computing, so you see the potential for a new one to do the same thing. It’s a trap Apple CEO Tim Cook himself fell into when he introduced the Digital Crown on the Apple Watch, saying it was as important as the mouse. (It wasn’t.)

Google has announced the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, joining the ranks will all the other 2019 flagship phones. If you’ve been following along with the numerous leaks, you might already have a good idea as to what this phone offers. That’s simply because most of the leaks were actually true.

Both phones have a fast 90Hz refresh rate display that makes scrolling around more enjoyable, and games that support it animate smoother. Each has a Snapdragon 855 processor and 6GB of RAM, and comes with Android 10 pre-installed. They differ when it comes to screen resolution, as well as their screen and battery size. The Verge’s Dieter Bohn has a first look with the devices that does a thorough job of breaking down their differences.

Google showed off some new camera features on the Pixel 4 today at its annual hardware event, focusing on improvements to its Live HDR and Night Sight mode. The back of the Pixel 4 houses dual cameras in a new subtle square camera bump. There’s a 12.2MP main camera and a 16MP telephoto lens, which is a hybrid of optical and digital zoom.

New Pixel 4 features include Live HDR+, with dual exposure controls in the viewfinder, which shows how photos will look in real time. There are HDR sliders to adjust brightness and shadows when you compose. A learning-based white balance feature is applied to all photo modes, so shots come out with true-to-life colors.

Google is debuting a new voice recorder app on the Pixel 4, and it has some features that very much set it apart from traditional recorder apps. The app, simply called Recorder, also has the ability to transcribe your recordings. That alone is uncommon among voice recorder apps — let alone free ones — and Google pushes that even further, creating those transcriptions on-device and in real time, without sending data to the internet.

For whatever reason, Google hasn’t made a voice recorder app before now. It’s been an odd absence on Pixel phones. And while it could be remedied by downloading any number of apps from the Play Store, having a simple one built into a phone should very much be an expected feature.

Google has updated the Google Home Mini, creating a new version that looks identical but has a few new features and a new name: the Nest Mini. That’s part of Google’s larger plan of putting all of its smart home and smart speaker products under the Nest brand name. It still cost the same $49, though if the past is any indication, you will likely be able to find deals for it quite regularly.

The new Nest Mini is a minor update, so existing users really don’t need to upgrade. There are a few new features worth running through, though. First, Google has improved the speaker by making it ever-so-slightly larger inside the exact same body — though I suspect even the most obsessive audiophile would have a hard time hearing a big difference.

Google has announced the second-generation version of its Google Assistant software, which promises new capabilities, a design overhaul, and a noticeable boost to speed. That last upgrade means the new Assistant can launch and return answers to queries much faster than before. The service is coming first to Pixel phones, and Google made the announcement onstage at its Pixel 4 reveal event in New York City on Tuesday.

We already knew quite a bit about the new Assistant, thanks to Google’s initial reveal back at its I/O developer conference in May, but we also got to see it in action on the Pixel 4 ahead of release, thanks to a flood of leaks that included, among other things, new Assistant marketing videos.

Google has just shown off the Pixel 4’s “Motion Sense” features, demonstrating how you’ll be able to use it to skip tracks, silence calls, and even interact with the pokémon Pikachu, all without laying a finger on the phone. The functionality is powered by Project Soli, a radar-based technology developed by Google. Google advertises that the Pixel 4 is the “first smartphone with a radar sensor” and says that this allows it to offer what it claims is the “fastest secure face unlock on a smartphone.”

Google says that the Motion Sense feature allows the phone to sense when you’re reaching for it and get ready to unlock or maybe just lower the volume of an alarm if you’re reaching to silence it. Google’s Sabrina Ellis added that you’re able to turn the feature on or off at any time, and all the gesture recognition is done locally on the device, with no information saved or shared with other Google services. Ellis says that the Soli team is working on more features, covering areas such as gaming and personal wellness.

You’ve seen them, you’ve read plenty about them, and now Google’s latest smartphones are finally, really, officially here: the company just announced the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL at its hardware event in New York City.

The Pixel 4 comes in three new colors: white, black, and a limited-edition orange option. It goes up for preorder today, and it will ship on October 24th. The Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL will be sold by every major US carrier. The regular Pixel 4 starts at $799, and the Pixel 4 XL starts at $899.

You want working, reliable Wi-Fi in every room of your house. Maybe you’d like every room of your house to properly hear your Google Assistant voice commands, too?

Now, Google is about to offer a way to extend both your internet and the range of your voice at once — with the just-announced Nest Wifi mesh router system.

Google is changing the name of its Google Home Mini and integrating it into its Nest line of products. Announced today, the Nest Mini is an upgrade to 2017’s Google Home Mini. The Nest Mini looks nearly identical to the Google Home Mini, except it comes with improved speakers and an included wall mount. It’ll come in four colors: black, light gray, coral, and light blue.

Google’s particularly marketing the Nest Mini as an audio device. The company says the bass is twice as strong as the original Google Home Mini for more natural sound. If you’re listening to audio content, the speaker will light up when you place your hand close to the device for volume adjustment. It can also pair with other Nest speakers to create a larger sound system. This means people can make Google Duo calls through the Google Home app or use other Nest speakers as intercoms.

Today, at its October hardware event, Google announced the Pixelbook Go, a new Chromebook laptop with a 13.3-inch touchscreen that starts at $649. Google said you can preorder the laptop now in “just black” and soon in a “not pink” color.

In a video, Google showed off the black version with what looks like a quieter keyboard as well as a ribbed bottom plate that appears to make the laptop easier to grip. The video also claims that the Pixelbook Go has up to 12 hours of battery, and, in a blog post, Google said that charging the laptop for just 20 minutes will give it two hours of battery life.

Today, at its October hardware event, Google announced its second-generation Pixel Buds earbuds, the follow-up to the original Pixel Buds, which came out in 2017. The new Pixel Buds have a reengineered fit and are true wireless earbuds, coming in at $179.

The new Pixel Buds come in a rounder, egg-shaped case versus the flatter square case of its predecessor (which proved to be the source of many irksome problems).

Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service is right around the corner, and we knew nearly everything we needed to know about its launch — except when in November it’d go live for the first wave of early adopters who spent $130 for the Founder’s Edition package. We just got the answer at the company’s Pixel 4 launch event, and that answer is: November 19th. Google also confirmed to The Verge separately that Stadia will support the Pixel 4 at launch.

That’s literally the only Stadia news we got before Google’s Rick Osterloh moved on to other topics, and he didn’t come back to it later, so that’s all we’re getting today it seems.

Google executives will go onstage today to announce the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones. There have been so many leaks of that phone that the company will have a hard time surprising anybody, but it may try. The new Pixels are rumored to have radar, for Pete’s sake, so Google surely has something it can show off onstage that we haven’t seen before.

We are also expecting a new Pixelbook made by Google, called the Pixelbook Go. There were leaks abound it as well, and they indicate it’ll be a midrange device instead of the expensive flagships Google usually tries to make with Chrome OS.

Google is launching the Pixel 4 today — at least, it’s launching it more officially than the teasers it coyly tweeted before leaks took all the wind out of its sails. We know exactly what to expect. In fact, we know nearly everything except maybe just how good the cameras are. But there is one thing we don’t know, and it’s the thing we have been asking since the very first Pixel hardware.

Is Google serious about selling hardware now or what?

October is the month that major technology companies introduce their latest and (they hope) greatest devices. We’ve already heard from Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft; now it’s Google’s turn.

Leaks have been abundant, and so we’re expecting to be introduced to Google’s Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL phones. According to the info that has been bouncing around the internet, the phones will be missing the much-disliked notch, will include a square bump for the upgraded camera, face unlock, new gesture abilities, and a sleeker design. And what else? A next-gen Google Assistant? We’ll find out soon.