It is one of the most exciting times of the year for the people at Google and the Pixel fans all around the world.
I was excited about the event too.
There are a few things that I would like to share my thoughts regarding this year’s event.
The Pixel sales jumped 67% globally year-over-year coming into Q1 2023 as 9to5Google writes. The sales in Japan were notably very exciting.
If you look at this stat, the growth of Pixel surged from 10% to 34% in Japan. No wonder Rick Osterloh, the SVP at Google’s Devices and Services, mentioned their fans in Japan who were staying up late for the launch of the new Pixels.
Rick was excited to share this as well with all of us.
Some of the exciting stuff that they mentioned at the event were:
Clear Calling
Some of the clear-calling improvements made possible by AI in the Pixel Buds Pro had a really good demo. I’m sure the Pixel Buds Pro owners must be excited. Unfortunately, I just have the Pixel Buds A Series, so I won’t be able to enjoy that.
Long Lasting Battery on Pixel Watch 2
One of the reasons why I never considered buying the original Pixel Watch was because of its poor battery life. This year’s Pixel Watch 2 can last 24 hours even when the always-on display is on. That was pretty amazing to know. They also upgraded the processor and I believe it is gonna be more smoother experience in using the Pixel Watch 2.
In addition to that, it charges much faster as well. That’s even cooler.
And then, they shared a story of Shauna Coxsey using a Pixel Watch 2. I felt pretty bored watching that segment. I found nothing inspiring or interesting in what she shared.
I don’t know why they want to mention so much of Fitbit in their presentation. Now that the acquisition by Google of Fitbit is complete, they could have just integrated everything with the Google Fit and called it a day!
It just felt like too much of a partnership to care about, when it just could be Pixel Watch everything.
Multilingual Fast Typing
After they perfected the fast typing in the Pixel 6 line-up, they went a whole next level with their 2X faster machine learning algorithms in the Pixel 8s.
Now, voice typing can even recognize the switcheroo of the voice language and can type accordingly. I think that is so much cool.
Read Aloud in Multiple Language
Even if the page itself is not written in Spanish, Japanese or many other languages, the new Pixel can read aloud in many such languages from the posts in English.
Best Take
This might be one of the coolest features of the Pixel 8. The users now will be able to pick one of the best expressions from one of the group pictures that they have taken and can seamlessly apply that so that everyone’s picture looks perfect at the moment.
Video Boost
I think Google went pretty hard on the iPhone when they showed this. I don’t even think this is a feature of the Pixel Phone. This is more like a feature of the Google Cloud servers because it happens once the video is backed up in the cloud (Google Photos Backups) and the automatic boosting kicks in in the cloud.
Once, the boosting is complete, the video is then the users are notified about the completion of the video boost.
Night Sight Video
Back in 2018 when I was using the Pixel 3, I had thought about this and wished the Pixel could shoot night sight video as well.
5 years later, the reality is here.
7 years of OS upgrades
It’s the one thing that I can not miss to mention. They went off the rails with this one.
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