Due to a recent DOJ decision, Google’s lucrative relationship with Apple’s iPhone is in jeopardy, and that means the Pixel is even more important than ever to the company’s success. In 2024, it seems like the company will be leaning into AI. It’s got the Pixel 9 Pro with plenty of Gemini AI features, plus the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. The company’s also launching a new Pixel Watch 3 as well as the Pixel Buds Pro 2.
Allison Johnson has our first impressions of Google’s new flagships, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, with their new Tensor G3 chipsets, Android 14, seven years of updates, and, as we heard during the Made by Google event on Wednesday, all of the AI you can fit in a phone.
Victoria Song walks you through everything that’s new about the Pixel Watch 2, like its new sensors and promise of longer battery life. The wearable was fully revealed earlier today during Google’s big Pixel 8 event along with the new phones, Android 14, and lots of AI-powered features.
Google is rolling out Android 14 to Pixel 4A 5G devices and up. You can view the full list of fixes coming this month to all supported Pixel devices from the link below.
[support.google.com]
The biggest announcements from today’s Made by Google event for the release of the Pixel 8 phones, Pixel Watch 2, Android 14, and a slew of new generative AI features coming to Photos, Assistant, and more are all right here.
Bluetooth Super Wideband is only for Pixel 8 and newer — it’s in the fine print.
Wi-Fi 7 is limited to the US, CA, UK, EU, and AU for now.
For both phones, the “Beyond 24-hour battery life” claim is tested “across a mix of talk, data, standby, and use of other features. Average battery life during testing was approximately 31 hours.”
[support.google.com]
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!
I have a Pixel 6A that’s almost solely for Google Recorder, an incredible tool for journalists due to great real-time transcription. AI summaries... would they be useful? Exclusive to the Pro, apparently.
Pixel 8 starts at $699, and Pixel 8 Pro is $999. They’re available for preorder today and on shelves next week.
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.
Here’s a side-by-side crop of the before / after with the new Best Take feature. Would I use this? I have to admit I would; pretty hard to get the kids to sit still for a photo, and they did make those faces, after all!
There’s a new main 50-megapixel main camera sensor, an upgraded telephoto camera, and autofocus on the selfie camera. You’ll also get access to manual camera settings in the native camera app. You hear that, Apple?
It was announced at I/O. It’s Google Photos’ new generative AI photo editor. We saw a demo showing object removal and fully moving one element in the scene and putting it somewhere else. Oh, and you can mess with the lighting and sky. It looks intense.
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?
Best Take is a new Google Photos feature that lets you choose the expressions you want on the faces in your photos when you take a series of photos. Parents are stoked.
We’re getting better quality from the 2x optical crop zoom mode and improvements to low-light video, like faster autofocus. Audio Magic Eraser uses machine learning to identify different sounds and in videos and separate them so you can minimize the ones you don’t want. Also, adorable baby video alert!
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.
Monika says it runs more ML models and more complex models, which brings AI enhancements to just about every part of the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. It’ll read webpages out loud for you with a “more natural” voice and can read them in different languages. Call Screen is getting an upgrade, and the virtual assistant speaks more naturally.
Pixel 8 Pro has one, for some reason. Google is applying to the FDA to let you use it to read body temperature. It’s giving real mid-2020 product map vibes.
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.
