Pixel 10 and Pro Fold hands-on: updates you can’t see

The Verge

Don’t be fooled by its familiar appearance — the Pixel 10 series has a ton of new stuff going on under the surface, despite looking basically like last year’s phones. All four phones have Tensor G5, Qi2, and AI for days, and Google figured out how to dustproof a folding phone. There’s lots to check out, plus an existential “what is a photo?” question or two to ask.

Transcript

00:00So these phones might look familiar. They look a lot like last year's phones. I'm talking about

00:06the Pixel 10, the Pixel 10 Pro, the 10 Pro XL, and the 10 Pro Fold. But there's actually a lot

00:16to talk about, even if you can't really see the difference from the outside. Some of the changes

00:21are like Gemini updates that are just floating around the UI. And one of them is inside the

00:27phone. So we definitely didn't see that. They might be lookalikes from the outside, but hang

00:33tight because we have a lot to talk about. So there are two things that all four of these

00:40phones have, Tensor G5 and Qi 2. G5 is the latest generation of Google's custom chipset, but it's

00:48the first one manufactured by TSMC. And Google says it's up to 60% faster for on-device AI

00:56has a faster CPU. There's a lot of power efficiency and thermal efficiency it unlocked.

01:03It seems to have really sped up or enabled a lot of on-device AI that wasn't there before.

01:10And we'll get into that in a minute. The other important update here is Qi 2. This is the first

01:16major OEM in the US to ship a phone with Qi 2, with apologies to the HMD Skyline. But this is the real

01:24deal. There's the magnets, the faster wireless charging speeds. Everything is here. The magnets

01:30are in the phone. You don't need a special case to use it or anything. This is great. Google is

01:35calling its line of accessories for the system PixelSnap. There's a little ring grip that also

01:43props up the phone. There's a wireless charger. And if any of this sounds familiar, it's probably

01:50because it's basically MagSafe. You can also use the phones with literally thousands of other

01:56magnetic accessories already on the market. So aside from those updates, there are not a lot of

02:02other things to talk about hardware-wise. Except the one I think is super important, the Pixel 10 Pro

02:09Fold is the first foldable with an IP68 rating. That means it is fully dustproof. And that's a huge

02:17deal. I wasn't even sure that could be done, really. Google did it. They did it with a new

02:23hinge mechanism that doesn't have any gears in it. Other than that, the outer screen is slightly

02:29narrower. The inner screen's a little brighter. There's new animations on that feature that gets

02:35your kid to look at the camera. They're super cute. But outside of that, it's really all about

02:41that IP68 rating. And you can finally bring your Pixel Fold to the beach. And you don't have to worry

02:46about getting sand in your crease. So this is normally where I'd tell you about a bunch of

02:54little hardware updates on the other phones. But to be honest, they're extremely minimal. The Pixel 10

03:00has a proper five times telephoto camera, which is cool. It never had one before. The batteries are a

03:07little bigger, which is always good. But to be honest, the AI stuff is really interesting. So let's get

03:15into that because it's wild. There's a journaling app. There's a translation feature that mimics your

03:21voice in another language. But most importantly, there's AI in the actual camera now, not just an

03:29algorithm deciding which pixels red and which one isn't. It's not AI processing in the photos app.

03:35This is actual generative AI in the camera's processing pipeline. It's only on the Pixel 10 Pro

03:43and the 10 Pro XL. And right now it's only used when you are zooming past 30 times zoom. Google calls

03:50this ProRes zoom. And when you take a photo in this mode, it kind of uses generative AI to fill in the

03:58details on what would normally be a pretty crappy photo, honestly. It does not work on people, which,

04:04thank God, it's really just intended for landmarks or vacation photos and everything taken in this

04:11mode gets metadata tags that say it was edited with AI. Also good. But holy crap, is this an extinction

04:20level event for what is a photo? And it makes me feel so weird. I have a lot fewer existential questions

04:28with Pixel 10's Gemini feature called MagicQ. This is a feature that basically uses AI to help fill in

04:36information based on the context of what you're doing. It's sort of like autofill, but for anything.

04:43If you're texting with someone and they ask for an address of an Airbnb, Gemini can go into your email

04:49and find it for you and suggest that you copy and paste it in. It can show you your flight details when

04:56you're calling an airline, that kind of thing. It's honestly the stuff that I want AI to do for me.

05:03And maybe I should have more existential questions about that. I don't know. I'm not as sure about the

05:10journaling app. So this is new and it's basically taking a cue from iOS, which Sherlocked a bunch of

05:17other journal apps. Journal apps are a thing now. Apparently you can add text and photos to your entries

05:24just like you would expect. And it's going to use AI to actually give you prompts on things based on

05:31what you've written in the past. It even gives you an emoji to kind of summarize your mood for the day,

05:37like smiley face or a frown. I think it's a little bit weird and kind of in the territory of an AI

05:45therapist, which is not a good idea. And knowing that AI is going to read my journal entries and use that

05:52information for future prompts, I think would probably change how I write in my journal. I'm

05:58not a big journaler, honestly, but this gives me the ick. There's a ton more AI features, as you

06:04probably guessed, including that translation feature for phone calls. So the way it works is if

06:09you're calling someone and talking in a different language, the translation will be spoken in that

06:15person's voice. It basically copies what they sound like. You know what? Listen to it in this demo.

06:21This will explain everything.

06:23The weather is very, very beautiful. When I look out the window, I can see the sun and the water. And you

06:33can tell here that I can also say phrases for a very long time, and it is still translated fluently.

06:40The idea is that it sounds a little more conversational and it feels more personal.

06:46The demo we got, it didn't sound exactly like the speaker, but you know, close enough. I'm going to be

06:53trying it out as soon as I can, along with every other AI feature that Google has put into these phones.

07:01In the meantime, the new Pixel phones go up for pre-order today. The 10 Pro starts at $999,

07:07which is the same as last year. The 10 Pro XL starts at $1,199. That's for the 256 gigabyte model.

07:14That's the same price as the 9 Pro XL, but now there's no 1099 128 gigabyte version. The Pixel 10

07:22starts at $799 and the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is $1799, which is a lot of money, but it's not $2,000.

07:31Thank you for watching. Head to theverge.com for more. As always, I'm going to be hosting the Tuesday

07:39Vergecast show coming up so you can expect a lot more. What is a photo talk? And tune in on Friday,

07:45because Jake and I will probably talk about that too. Just a little.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended