Google tries to trump iPhone launch with AI-powered Pixel 10 range In a celebrity-studded launch event on Wednesday, Google showed off its Pixel 10 hardware, including four smartphones, an updated smartwatch, and earbuds. Unsurprisingly, every gadget comes with a heavy dose of AI. It's been nearly nine years since Google unveiled its first Pixel phone in an attempt to challenge Apple in the …
10 is SLOWER than the pixel 7 pro
it started out technically faster, but the AI glommed on top actually results in a phone with LESS free memory and less CPU availability than the 7
And the always-on AI cannot be disabled, so it's listening to you 24/7, sending your emails and texts and documents straight to google HQ for 'processing' etc.......
Likewise. Phones are going the way of MS Office. 99% of us don't need more features to write a letter or do the accounts. I hear MS are adding copilot to formulae in Excel. I can't wait to see the mess that creates. What do people need AI on a phone for anyway? More data collection & monitoring for the corporates is probably the real reason. Government will love it too. Will help with predictive criminal offence - shudders with horror!
Got a Pixel 8a here, and it's taken me a while to find all the settings to turn off the AI crap. This newer model sounds even worse!
Given I bought it for the long update support life (Apparently it'll get security updates until 2031) I definitely won't be trading it in any time soon.
I've an Iphone 15pro, only bought it because my son needed a new phone and he got my 13.
For me the 15 added nothing to the 13 that I needed. The camera is marginally better but to my eye it really is marginal.
Then Apple added in their AI nonsense. Phone was slower and it did nothing I needed either. It could generate (slowly) an avatar from a prompt or a picture. A little entertaining for 5min.
All uninstalled as far as possible right now and not missed.
And I'm someone that works with AI daily at work. I'm not even a total hater (just mostly).
What I would actually like in a phone is a roll out screen or a slide out keyboard like the old HTCs. I really don't need any more of the current cruft
I'm retired so don't have to face AI at work, but I'm the same regarding AI on my iPhone. I've a 16Pro (for me, it was my wife that got my 13) and, after seeing what the AI hype was about, immediately set about disabling it where I could. It might eventually come in useful when my memory gets a lot worse and I'm searching for something, but I prefer exercising my memory to keep it working for as long and as well as I can. And when I get to the stage when I need AI, I'll probably not need it...
Same with browser search - just let me use the search bar as I've been doing for around 30 years, with Boolean terms as necessary, rather than try to second guess. At least DDG's search engine seems to know its place.
I believe there are several drivers to AI by incorporated in phones:
A large enough user base who think it is cool.
People who are simply too stupid to care about what big tech is doing gathering their data.
Big business buy AI results in searches and advice so that a user is directed to their product, not the most appropriate product.
The entire doohicky is mainly built on businesses seeing this as a way to make (more) money and users that are sucked in by the hype.
That latter is something it is simply not going to change. The majority of the tech-enabled population are simply too ignorant to understand what is happening. You only have to look at Social Media to see that.
> A large enough user base who think it is cool.
Really not seeing that. The vast majority of tech-savvy early adopters are, as far as I have seen, calling out AI as bullshit.
As with 3D televisions, AI may well be a short term fad that goes nowhere, no matter how desperatly it's pitched as being the future.
Generative AI is certainly bullshit, at least as it exists today. That may change, it may not.
AI as a tool to search through and present data from the Internet, i.e. as a search engine, is utterly fabulous, as long as you choose one that presents references for its finds. I use Perplexity, and it has cut my search times to a fraction of what they were previously, so much so that I happily pay $200/year for the Pro version.
GJC
For very narrow and specific uses "AI" can have the depth to do a job well (for a given value of "well") but it does not have breadth so for the sort of general uses "AI" that are being touted by the AI evangelists there's little chance of it working in the foreseeable future.
A local "AI" system that only uses data directly available on the device without sprawling across the internet could be handy for many users, not all but quite a few. - Local "AI" for local people.
I agree that AI is more useful in well-bounded data sets, within organisations, and I expect it to very quickly take over in things like telephone helplines, especially for stuff like account queries or product knowledge.
But it does also make a very good general Internet search engine, especially since the more mainstream search companies like Google have become so very poor. As I say, the key is to find one that provides references for its findings, like Perplexity or CoPilot.
GJC
Centre Stage is AI, and is pretty useful because you can do video calls without having to precisely position the camera to point at you.
I presume Android has something similar. Windows CoPilot laptops do, and the focusing and centring works just as well, the camera on my Samsung GalaxyBook Edge isn't anything like as good as the one on my iPad but that is a hardware issue and not Microsoft's fault.
Generative AI obviously is worse than useless.
The bubble hasn't yet burst unfortunately. It's the current in-fashion shiny-shiny for developers, so to try and justify all the work that has been done with AI, they're just shoving it everywhere. The bubble will hopefully burst soon, a lot of the AI shit will go away (where nobody is using it or where it's not generating any value) and we'll hopefully end up with a more sensible deployment of limited AI in areas where it actually has some uses.
Personally I can't wait for that moment to arrive. I'm seeing more and more AI-fatigue kicking in as people become increasingly sick and tired of having AI shoved down their throats at every possible opportunity...
Same. Pixel 7 Pro. Bought it for the 7 years updates. Thats about it really.
Phones are all a much of a muchness. The only thing that would get me to upgrade before the updates run out is a good trade in programme. 50% if you trade the last gen in.
Phone manufacturers havent yet realised they're in the recycling industry now, not the tech industry. The profit it is in the number of times they can reuse chips and materials not the greatest amount of AI they can cram in.
For the Empty Headed:
>> In one demo, someone asked Fallon where he was having dinner tonight in a chat and Cue searched through and popped up the location.
Well I generally remember where I am going out for dinner, so this is no big demonstration of AI. It is rather the equivalent of remembering where I left my keys. Perhaps someone should ask me in a chat if I am going to the pub on Friday night.
>> For business, Cue should also work for meetings and presentations.
Yeah. All your data is now in Google's hands, meaning it is all in the American regime's hands.
>> Google has purposely set up Cue to just use information on the handset itself
Oh right. So not so useful after all.
>> you'll have to pay $20 a month extra
Aha. There it is. For some really pointless use of something you didn't realise you 'needed', give us $1,000 over the next 4 years.
>> a broader partnership with Golden State Warriors Stephen Curry
Never heard of him. I had to look him up. I guess a lot of people outside the USA have not either.
A lot of this supposed AI on Pixel phones seems unnecessary and not very useful. It is trying to be relevant. I think there is a market for a cheaper Pixel phone with a decent camera and no 'needed' AI. A lot of the other 'features' like wireless charging are just playing catchup. 5x telephoto lens? I had that years ago.
It's interesting to note that certain people of my acquaintance absolutely rave about Apple AirTags, and before that about Tile et al, precisely because they cannot remember such simple information.
So, yeah, there's probably a good market for a digital PA that's always in your feeds.
GJC
But this isn’t a digital PA.
20+ years back a client company had implemented a digital PA, it was good enough for the business environment - which had a restricted set of use cases (and back end integrations). The key limiting factor was the backend integrations necessary to make it work. Another limitation was semantic analysis, ie. Understanding what was being said and thus determining what was needed to be done.
>> In one demo, someone asked Fallon where he was having dinner tonight in a chat and Cue searched through and popped up the location.
So a simple diary look up is now a task which requires AI…
Not saying their isn’t a role for some intelligent agent to extract information form email, social media, SMS etc and populate the diary.
The laugh I have is that often I don’t know where I will be having dinner, because my social secretary may only have finalised those arrangements a few minutes after I have walked in the door, assessed my mood against the contents of the fridge and her mood…
I went from an S22 to a 9 Pro (and turned off all the AI-crap). There's little major benefit - cameras a smidgen better on the 9 Pro (especially the telephoto), but the S22 is pretty damn good on that front, battery life is a bit better on the 9 Pro. Pixel cameras also seem consistently worse than Sammy in low light or high contrast shots - I suspect that technically the Pixel images are more accurate, but in terms of actually producing a photo that matches the human eye+recollection, Samsung have done far better.
And despite what reviewers report about the "sleeker" interface of pure Android, I find the overall UX better on the S22. The S22 is quite likeable as far as smartphones go, the 9 Pro is technically admirable without being likeable.
Extending this to the Pixel 10, there's zero reason for me to "upgrade" and good reasons not to and I think that's true for anybody that doesn't want to suck up a big slurp of Google AI. I'm pretty confident my next phone won't be a Pixel. Maybe I (we?) are in the minority and the market is clamouring for a phone crammed with yet more AI, time will tell.
Well, on the one hand a thousand bucks for something you will use several hours a day for several years is actually not bad value, but on the other hand the FairPhone 6 fits my needs *far* better for only £500, so that was an easy decision to make.
If a thousand bucks makes you choke on your cornflakes, I rather suggest that you don't look at the Samsung foldables.
GJC
I have a second hand iPhone XR. I have had it for about 3 years now. Battery is knackered, the back of it is smashed (somehow smashed while being in a cover, who knew). I need a new phone.
What phone am I going to buy? I'd buy another iPhone. Then I saw the price and thought - no. Fuck that.
So I'm going to get a Fairphone 6 instead. At least there's a promise of:
1) A de-googled experience
2) Modular so I can change the battery
3) No glass back.
Choosing Apple does feel like paying a "Not Google" tax.
Still miss my Nokia Lumia 920, it was good value, solid, good camera and the right size and I really liked WinPho 8.1 OS. The WinPho UX was the only thing MS have got right in about the last 15yr so obviously they made a complete arse of it.
Nokia could see where it was going and sold off the consumer phone business while it still had some apparent value and then got into high-end networking kit and are doing very nicely thank you.
Nokia is the world's third-largest telecoms equipment manufacturer, measured by 2017 revenues (after Huawei and Cisco)". - (Wikipedia)
Doesn't negate the fact that they didn't see the iPhone coming and thought they were fat and happy on their market share. Microsoft did the same; remember Ballmer's interview where he ripped strips off the iPhone, called it a toy and said it would never threaten WinCE and Windows Phone?
The point being; if you're safe and warm with a substantial market share and a well regarded product (like Apple is now), it can make you complacent; and it's absolutely zero guarantee that you can't be toppled.
I'm from the other side of the pond, but when I read:
'and a broader partnership with Golden State Warriors Stephen Curry, signed on as a "performance advisor"', I had to fire up my search engine of choice (not Google, as it happens)
This didn't help much. WTF is a basketball player going to contribute to using a phone and smart watch?
You need AI for that now ? I thought you just needed a sensor, like, for exmple, off the top of my mind, the microphone that's already included, plus a bit of local CPU code to adjust the volume "automagically".
But no, now you to send the data God knows where to have it treated by God knows what and spend a portion of your Internet bandwidth on that simple function.
I am curious to see just how fast and how far this new AI-Pixel version will crater. I hope the hole will be deep.
Thats a little bit mis-leading. Unlike Apple, google makes the majority of money by pushing users to its services. The pixel line is more a technology demonstrator, encouraging other manufacturers to follow its lead and build on the service.
Google really does not care about market share as long as Android and the bundled services (Currently 72% of the market) is dominent and any AI services use the google cloud
Still, I'm generally surprised that Pixel phones are not doing better. From my point of view they are technically at least as good as their Android competition, and often better. Also they don't come with all the apps that Samsung inevitably stuffs into their handsets. Is marketing truly the only difference?
Not that I would ever buy a phone from Google but can you turn all this crap off?
I know exactly where I'm having dinner tonight, tomorrow and almost every night for the forseable future. I have one meeting per week at the same time on the same day and do not have large volumes of email or pictures on my phone. I don't need an AI answering my phone to scammers and have no idea what a Golden State Warriors Stephen Curry is or what I would use it for; although I do think it's missing an apostrophe.
Apple iPhones are so far behind what flagship Android devices offer (usually for less money) that I wonder how they maintain market share at all. There has to be a lot of inertia behind those sales from people who own too much content they're scared to lose if they jump ship.
Always on, daylight readable display. Multi week battery life, it used to last a month between charges but its getting old now. All the usual pulse and step monitoring stuff built in. Zero AI and next to no pointless screen animations.
Great job Google on releasing the new all-AI-whether-you-want-it-or-not feature phone in the week that even big names in AI were admitting that AI is a bubble. In a few years AI chatbots will be the topic of jokes about how everyone was weird in 2025.
You can watch it going down in real-time as the number of new grifter articles on AI is outpaced by the number of grifter articles on Quantum.
I was thinking my 6 year old Pixel 7 next year but the ever greater quantity of AI on the 10 is not making me keen.
I have just replaced my home PC (Win 10) with something with nothing from Microsoft on it to keep AI away from my forthcoming retirement. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will not find it easy to get rid of the undesirable, over-hyped, AI.
Pity...
I don't want to wave the Apple banner here because they have their own flaws, but I do like how they implemented their appraoch to AI. It's there, but it's not rammed down your throat like it is with Microsoft and Google - it behaves as it should be: optional. I'm not sure how "I" Apple's AI is (because I don't use it) but I appreciate not having to shove it out of the way every time I want to do something.
Personally I think tht at work we should start adding up how many manhours and thus FTEs are wasted by bad UI design and flinging marketing at people at work - I don't think we pay personnel to watch MS flogging products. Depending on the sum it could be beneficial working out how much we could save switching to another OS since everything is now browser based anyway..
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