Google officially revealed new phones, a second gen watch, and a whole slew of chatter about AI!

Numerous outlets are pushing out the press releases, and listing all the new specs. I won’t bore you with all those numbers here. It’s a great time to share some reactions to the keynote from my notes, and my posts on social media during the event. We can speculate on the direction Google might be treading with this announcement.

You can catch the replay of the Made By Google event here:

Now, in order of appearance…

Pixel Buds Pro

Google’s adorable little earbuds are getting a fresh update for style, coming in new colors. Thankfully, this isn’t a totally new ear bud. Software is getting refreshed for improved calling capabilities.

Clear Calling will reduce more background noise during a call, and Bluetooth Super Wide Band will improve call fidelity. This combination sounds like some of the improvements to audio quality we’ve seen from other Bluetooth codecs. What’s the benefit of getting better call quality to your phone, if it has to pass through another brutal stage of audio compression to your earbuds?

Also impressive, the Buds Pro are getting a new speech detection mode. AI listens for speech, and when detected, will automatically flip to transparency mode. It’s a feature similar to what I’ve used on headphones like the Sony XM4. Anything that makes that operation easier or more natural is certainly appreciated.

What Should Come Next?

Google has the “Pro Bud” segment covered well. From this point, we hopefully won’t have to cycle earbud tech yearly if we can update the software to include these new features. Moving forward, there’s a huge opportunity to turn our standard earbuds into “hearables”.

We’re already using AI to detect speech and trigger different audio pass though modes. We’re close to using the earbuds’ noise reduction to improve someone’s ability to hear speech in a crowded environment. I’ve played with other hearables in the past, and a move like this from a large player would help reduce the stigma of using hearing assistance, especially for folks who need a LITTLE help, but aren’t quite ready for a hearing aid.

The other omission in Google’s lineup would be an over-ear headphone. It’s not as directly popular a product segment, but it seems like this would be the natural next step for Google’s consumer audio team.

Pixel Watch 2

I know many techies were a bit disappointed to see the same watch style on display, but this is a time where consistency of design helps build the awareness for a new product line. This consistency means new bands will work with older watches and vice versa.

The main upgrades, Pixel Watch 2 is moving to a Qualcomm SOC, which should hopefully improve battery life, and charging speeds. The heart rate sensor is getting a significant improvement to health tracking, and new skin temperature and electrodermal sensors monitor activity and stress.

In terms of consistency though, I am upset to see the watch go to pogo pins for charging. There’s a nice bit of synergy when a watch can charge off the back of a phone in an emergency, or when you can’t find your charger puck.

Wear OS4 brings some new software tricks when paired with the Pixel 8, like better tools for call screening.

The Fitbit integration is getting deeper for the phone companion apps, but the main conversation during the keynote focused on potential AI future integration. Where the watch might soon be able to engage in a more conversational assessment of your workouts.

Pixel phone owners will be given priority when those beta features go live.

What Should Come Next?

Boy. There’s a lot that needs to happen here.

For Google specifically, I think many people would appreciate two models of watch for size. The Fitbit idea of a tiny fitness tracker makes sense, but many people (myself included) would like a larger version with an even bigger battery.

Next, Google definitely needs to get ahead of conversations on durability and repair-ability. This new watch might boast improved durability, but it’s all rounded glass. It makes the fitness lifestyle conversation a little harder to believe, if the watch is so exposed.

My wife’s Pixel Watch 1 just fell apart. The adhesive failed on the rear cover from sweat during workouts. Google is stepping up the repair-ability conversation with their phones. The watches now need more attention and better support.

More broadly though, Google also needs to demonstrate a commitment to Wear OS for their partners. Moving to a Qualcomm chip, there really isn’t a good reason for brands like Fossil and Mobvoi to be stuck on older versions of the watch OS.

Google’s primary partner in this space is obviously Samsung, but these other brands have been keeping Wear OS on life support for years now. It’s time Google supported them properly.

Pixel 8 and 8 Pro

The phones are an interesting exercise in iteration and modest hardware updates, but bringing more and more of the services conversation forward.

Personally, I’m happy to see another manufacturer walk away from curved glass on the display. It was an expensive aesthetic design choice, but now other components on the phone are adding even more to the price tag. I no longer have to deal with those optical distortions or reflections when my phone is propped up in landscape orientation.

Not a lot of details were given for the new Tensor G3 chip, and that’s about on par for Google. We all know this chip will lose the outright CPU/GPU synthetic benchmark races, but the major updates to the silicon are coming to AI and ML components on the die.

Tensor G2 was the lowest scoring chip of its generation in tools like Geekbench, but it was the fastest phone of its generation for editing and rendering video. This is the game we hope to see continue with Tensor G3. If it doesn’t win these benchmark races, it hopefully produces competitive real-world results.

While Google states the WHOLE chip has been upgraded, the main focus was on the TPU, where all the AI work will be done, and that’s significantly more powerful than on the Pixel 7 Pro.

Those upgrades to machine learning improve on-device services. Speech recognition can now go multilingual as one example, reducing the need to transfer data up to a server to be processed. Similarly, the phone should also be faster at reading articles to you. That AI hardware is the backbone behind call assistance and call screening features, which are getting a boost on the Pixel 8 series with a more natural speaking voice heard on the other end of the call.

A new screen technology is touted on the both phones called “Actua Display”. I’m never a fan of branding a hardware tech like this, as it’s just a fancy badge to put on a product that means nothing to consumers.

Looking up the limited data on the Google pre-order page, Actua Display on the Pixel 8 is an LTPO screen, with a variable 60-120HZ refresh, but the big upgrade is a max peak brightness of 2000 nits. The Pixel 8 Pro gets a higher quality screen with 1-120Hz refresh and an even higher peak brightness of 2400 nits.

Unfortunately, there was precious little data on the temperature sensor. I feel there’s a story there, why we would want a feature like this on a phone, but this was glossed over in the keynote.

If it was a situation of poor timing (say this was an add on considered for a world in global pandemic), or if maybe a feature for feminine health tracking (in a time of political division over reproductive rights), we probably won’t ever get the true story on why they launched it now.

Of course, a Pixel presentation has to show off some fancy camera tricks. This year focusing more on video and AI editing.

Leveraging that new hardware in the Tensor chip, Google expects a significant boost to video quality, especially in dynamic range. The phone is capturing an incredible number of frames per second to produce a more colorful and better exposed final output.

Real Tone was a fantastic upgrade on older Pixels, for more faithfully capturing skin tone in photos, and more of that processing is coming to video.

What’s concerning, the full impact of Video Boost requires an online connection. Your clips are uploaded to a server, and then the deep photo style processing happens there, to later be returned to your phone. Google SAYS this will happen “fast”, but I’m skeptical of a server side editing process chewing up 4K videos over poor data connections.

AI is improving audio editing as well. Audio Magic Eraser looks like a stunning addition to the camera. Older Pixels have had terrific Speech highlighting modes, but now when editing, we can cut noise behind a subject more specifically, and the AI will replace the audio of your subject that would have been degraded with older styles of noise reduction. It’s not just about reducing or cutting a noise, it’s also about replacing the sound that was affected.

Another new editing feature, Best Take will swap faces out from concurrent photos, so you get the best expression from everyone in a group photo.

Taking that idea a step further, Magic Editor will let you move actual objects in your photo around for a completely different composition. I have some issues with this idea of editing, but we’ll have to see how it’s implemented in the phones and how consumers use it. I appreciate photography as a capture or a representation of a moment, but this kind of editing can have significant ramifications for things like legal and journalistic documentation of events.

When used for things like the new ML content aware fill in Magic Eraser, I think we’ve gotten comfortable with that kind of replacement in photos, but we’ve yet to address a phone camera that can literally move objects and people in the frame as a native feature.

The flipside of the AI camera features, Pixels are finally getting pro controls and true high resolution output options. It’s always bothered me that Google advertised “50MP CAMERAS!” but never gave us the option to shoot 50MP stills. If you’re looking to craft a specific look, now we can do that more authentically from the manual controls, and with options for JPG and RAW capture across all the rear cameras.

Google Assistant is being expanded again, opening up more natural language commands, and better support for continuing interaction. Built on Bard, Google is feeding more data from Google apps into your assistant, enabling more fluid conversations. Hopefully this improves interactions, like asking for calendar updates or navigation estimates on travel. These features have been touted before, but the main stumbling block has been the process of communicating commands to the assistant. If the structure of the syntax is too rigid, it’s not a helpful feature.

Lastly, support was a major topic for the Pixel, announcing a partnership with iFixit for replacement parts, and on the software side, the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro will get seven years of OS updates. I was happy to see that announcement, and surprised that it wasn’t a different staggered support promise. I was expecting 5 years OS and 7 years of security patches.

What Should Come Next?

Even though all the specs were leaked aggressively before the announcement, there’s still a lot we don’t know about Google’s phone strategy.

We’re rapidly confronting a market where consumers are interested in what more a phone can do. In a practical hardware sense, there’s curiosity around a “phone that turns into a tablet” or a phone that can use AR glasses. Google’s main focus on the Pixel has always been software services, but even they can’t continue to evade the other ideas of productivity and gaming from competing phones.

Unfortunately, we don’t seem to see the updates we were hoping for on features like video output from the USB-C port, or an improved “large view” mode when connected to a larger display. There’s still room for Google to implement a tablet view or a Chrome OS style view when you connect a Pixel to a Chromecast, but that’s still not as capable a solution as what Motorola and Samsung can offer for workhorse phones.

We also need to see the impact of real world use with these Samsung components inside the phone. I’m excited to see a true generational change for the Tensor G3, this is very different hardware than the G1 and G2, but we know this is still made by Samsung. The phone will still have Samsung radios. These are the issues with the Pixel 6 and 7 and Fold that result in higher power draw, poorer battery life, hotter thermal performance, and poorer network connectivity compared against Mediatek and Qualcomm powered devices. Google is the only premium tier option this year to use Samsung components. Even Samsung isn’t using their own hardware in the Galaxy S23, so I really hope this isn’t what drags the Pixel 8 down.

For Samsung fans, you need to be critically interested in the Pixel 8’s performance, as this should be a sneak peak of what Samsung might have instore moving forward for the Galaxy S24 next year.

The other complete unknown, with seven years of updates, how long should we expect the Pixel 8 to be supported for new features and feature drops. If we think back, the EOL on the Pixel 8 would be like going back to the Pixel 1 and comparing it against the Pixel 7. While the advances over the next seven years won’t likely be AS dramatic, we have to hope our phones will continue to evolve. A promise of support, and getting a new number slapped next to your OS, doesn’t mean we should expect parity across newer and older phones. At what point will Pixel 8 owners start to really feel left out? We won’t know until it happens.

Wrap It Up!

This was a solid presentation, quick and to the point.

None of us techies were much expecting massive surprises here. My expectations were primed for iterative hardware announcements, and a clear focus on services. Anymore, that seems to be “The Google Way” to launch new products.

There’s a lot we have to really test and live with now. In an era of growing concern over AI tools, and with the current regulatory interest in BIG DATA companies, we’re still finding our balance between tech novelty, convenience, and privacy.

For these bits of hardware, Google is in a unique and challenging position still. They drive the discussion of what Android and Google services should be, but they can’t step on Samsung’s toes. This year we haven’t gotten any public demonstrations of Augmented Reality for example. Samsung seems to have persuaded Google to kill off experiments like Project Iris.

We see Microsoft struggling with a similar issue, slashing the Surface team, scaling back on future Surface R&D, and losing Panos Panay to Amazon.

Google is trying to help elevate the idea of Premium Android with consumers, and those marketing efforts are paying off. In many regions, Pixels are picking up more market share, stealing customers away from Samsung and Apple.

I believe these next couple years will be challenging for Google to walk that line, between being a distant competitor of Samsung’s, and more directly challenging Samsung with products above $400. It was cute and charming when Pixel was just a halo product, but now they’re starting to get more visibility at a time when most other Android brands are slipping. Premium Android is almost invisible to consumers under the age of 30, but Pixels are picking up steam.

The Pixel phones look like they could be solid premium competition. The Pixel Watch 2 should help improve the daily battery issues of the first watch. The updates to the Pixel Buds Pro are appreciated.

Google’s hardware ecosystem looks a little healthier today.