Big, big, big round of applause as Osterloh says support for the Pixel 8 will continue until 2030. We’re wrapping up at the Made By Google event now. Allison and I are about to go run and get some hands-on time with all these new gadgets!
A lot of the cool stuff we’re seeing here today isn’t coming at launch. You’ll have to wait for future updates coming in December.
After all that Assistant with Bard barrage, Rick Osterloh is back onstage to give us a highlight reel of everything coming to Pixel. He’s showing off a demo of the Pixel phones creating summaries of long articles. He’s also saying the Pixel phones are the first to run foundation models directly on the device.
This demo of Video Boost shows how it’s supposed to make low-light scenarios much brighter. Except, to my eye, it looks kind of artificial. I lived in Tokyo for seven years, and the muddy contrast between the neon lights and dark alleys... doesn’t really feel like what I just saw. In my opinion.
In introducing Video Boost, Google’s just straight-up showing comparisons to the iPhone footage. Somebody in Cupertino is probably not loving that, but the folks in here are loving the extra spiciness.
This video demonstrating the Best Take feature speaks to the vain among us. The main character of this vid keeps haranguing his friends for being “photo ruiners.” As someone who always blinks in the group photo, I, once again, am feeling attacked during this keynote.
But what was that pot-shot at the lactose intolerant among us?
If you’ve got a Tensor-equipped Pixel and Pixel Watch, you’ll also be able to screen calls from your watch. Hanging up on robocalls got a lot of claps from the room, and it’s great that we, as humans, can all agree that we want to tell the robocallers to get lost in as many ways as possible.
The feature will come via a feature drop later this year.
Google’s Monika Gupta mentioned how the Pixel phones can now tell what language you’re speaking and switch back and forth between multiple languages. Big if true! I’ve had a lot of trouble when dictating Konglish (a mix of Korean and English) with friends and family. For immigrant kids or multilingual folks, it’ll be such a boon whenever a company truly nails this.
We got some lip service toward repairability for the Pixel 8 and Google’s partnership with iFixit. And yet, this wasn’t addressed for the Pixel Watch 2 at all. Google recently confirmed to me that they have zero repair options for the Pixel Watch so this... hm. Hmmm, I say.
