Pixelated - A Wild Pixel 10a Appeared!

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Welcome to episode 87 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Damien, Abner, and Will talk through Google's surprise Pixel 10a announcement, what we might expect from that phone, and whether it's worth picking up a Pixel 9a in its place. Their attention briefly turns to Google's February patch for Android — a patch without any much in the way of actual fixes, it seems — before finally debated Google's oddly-sad Gemini ad ahead of this weekend's Super Bowl. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Timecodes 00:00 – Intro and Pixel 10a announcement 17:27 - Google's February patch 25:25 - Gemini's Super Bowl ad 38:28 - Wrap-up Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Will Sattelberg Read more Google announces Pixel 10a with completely flat camera, pre-order Feb 18 The Pixel 10a is officially coming – here’s why you should get a Pixel 9a instead Google’s full lineup of Pixel 10a colors leak, including vibrant ‘Berry’ Why does the Pixel 10a look fake? Android 16 February 2026 update rolling out: No Pixel bug fixes Google airing Gemini ad at the Super Bowl: ‘New Home’ [Video] Listen to more 9to5 Podcasts The Sideload 9to5Mac Happy Hour Electrek Space Explored Feedback? Drop us a line at [e-mail], leave a comment on the post, or reach out to our producer. And for even more Android discussion, dive into the official 9to5Google forums!

Welcome to Pixelated episode 87. I'm your host, Will Saddleberg. This week, Google shocked us all by surprise announcing the upcoming Pixel 10A. And while we're still waiting until it's February 18th pre-order date for some real concrete info, it's enough for Damian Abner and myself to share our predictions, whether we expect the Pixel 10A to be another hit from Google, and whether you should pick up a Pixel 9A instead. We're also talking about the mysterious case of Google's February 26 security patch, which seemed to include next to no changes, and we wrap up by talking about Google's new Super Bowl ad for Gemini with one pressing question. Why is this ad so sad? It's all coming up. So Google have just decided that's it. Enough is enough.

We're going to effectively reveal the Pixel 10A. They've teased it in a new ad. Does it show us anything we already don't? know about this device or we're excited about, I'm not really sure. So when the weeks were happening, I think all of us on the team are like, why does this image look so weird? Why does the render of the pixel 10a looks so weird? And Ben captured in the newsreter. And we now know that it's because there is no camera bump. It is a completely flat. The back is completely flat. Last year, the story

The story behind the 9A was they did not, Google did not set out to make a completely flat camera bump. If you remember the year before the 8A, the lift on the camera ball was just so minimal. And the story with the 9A is that they didn't originally set out through that, but as they were building the phone, they noticed how it was just so minimal. Like if they tweaked, played around with it,

they could get it to not be a ball, and that's what they did. But there was still like a raised oval lip around the back of the phone. But with the 10A, as we've seen on just yesterday, it is completely flat. And the teaser that Google has makes great, goes in great lengths showing that it's nothing. How do you feel about the fact that this is a recycled slash, it's the least recycled design ever on a phone I think I've ever seen that I can, Invisage, like there's nothing like this, I think, on Android for a long time. I mean, I mean, look, we've seen, you know, I mean, you could argue the pixel 10, right?

Like, put the, put the regular one aside, but certainly the pros and the, and the fold. I mean, I mean, to me, the issue with this one is, is that it, it almost feels like they took the ring around the camera off just to have some kind of cosmetic difference, like, not because they thought it was better or worse without it. Like, I, I'd almost argue, like, it, it, it, it, it, it's a little bit of the protection for the camera compared to the 9A, but it obviously is going to... Not necessarily because it's just behind the surface. It's behind the surface, but I still feel like you don't want to get...

You don't want to put your phone on a table and then realize that you put it on something, like just the way you put it down, like scratched the glass that is in front of the lens. And I feel like the ring could have helped with that. Maybe I'm overthinking it. It's possible. Oh, this... It's plastic, isn't it? It has to be plastic. Yeah, the back is plastic.

You're right. Maybe the camera. The camera is good to be glass. Oh, I'm very, oh, so it's not one seamless piece? I don't know. Well, actually, now I don't know. That's a really good question.

What do you think? So if, okay, let's speculate a little bit. Yeah. If they make this one big piece and the camera lens is plastic, then over time it's going to pick up so many scratches that it might actually be genuinely to be worthless as a camera in a few years.

if you don't, even with a case on, like, plastic does scratch, like you can buff it out, but not in the same way that you come with glass. Yeah. Hmm. It's got to be two different pieces, right? Right. I don't know. What if it's all glass?

What if it isn't plastic at the back? What if it's, what if there's no way? There's no way. There's no way. No way for an A series. Yeah. There's no way. But yeah.

So, okay, so in terms of what we think, I'm very, I admittedly I'm over-indexed on this design. I love this design. I also love this design. So honestly, that kind of makes it's a deal, a big deal for me. This is my patonic idea of a phone. And it looks like they just like made it like, I think according to the weak dimensions,

they made it like one millimeter thicker or whatever. So there is some engineering work in it, I guess. Yeah. But no, this is this is the design I want. I was definitely not as interested with 9A before this. Now I am slightly a bit more. But yeah, it is design is, it's just a rounded rectangle. Do you think this is kind of a bit weird because this feels like old is new again.

I think we talked about it last year when the 9A came out that it felt like, and I don't want to say that it's paying homage to the Pixel 4 series, the iPhone 4 series. But a lot of people have made those similarities. I think we have as well. And in some ways, it almost makes this phone stand out more than the competition. Like you have this device that isn't trying to do everything that every other phone is doing,

but it's doing it at a cheaper price anyway. And you have this classic-ish, classic-ish? It's kind of classic design, isn't it? It's classic design. I mean, I've complained about this before in my past writing career, But like, I've been so frustrated by the idea of like, uh, that any budget phone feels the need to build a camera bump because every budget, every sub $500 Android phone does not need a camera bump. It's just there to make the device look premium because people associate a camera bump with better cameras and therefore a more premium device. And so last year when Google did this, I found it like incredibly refreshing and did not care at all about the some of the complaints people had of like, oh, this loses the pixels. I know. because one, I don't think it does.

I think it keeps it. And two, it's not my problem anyway. That's Google's issue, not mine as a consumer. Who else is doing a fat phone? Well, exactly. So this kind of brings like on the flagship side, obviously everything has a camera bump. And then as I said, on the budget side, everything is pretending to need a camera bump. And so, you know, is this is kind of one of a kind in a way?

Like, like, or at the very least, like, very, uh, do that, do the nothing budget phones have a camera bump, actually? I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember. I've not used a nothing phone very often. So it's possible that like 3A doesn't have one or something. But, yeah, but so I don't want to, but, but as far as like mainstream brands go, right? Because I would put nothing in the enthusiast category.

I would say that this is the only one that you'll, you'll find. And certainly the only one you'll find in like, a. carrier store in the US. I think this is also a little bit weird in terms of the optics of this device, because obviously this, just going back to the kind of, it is an announcement trailer, I guess, really than details when we can pick it up, which I believe is February the 18th on the Google store. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think, like I say, looking at the background to this and the teaser trailer, it's a bit weird because they've shown off a color that we've already had of the Pixel 9A. So I wonder if that diminishes. I mean, recent leaks have said, kind of shown us that there are going to be other colors and we're excited to potentially see a, I believe, is a kind of a reddish color that very very hard. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm surprised I haven't led with that one to begin with. But at the same time, the teaser trailer is very red heavy. I just find it a little bit weird that, like I say, they've gone with this. particular colour variant, the iris colour again. Because it is so similar to the 9A and it kind of, I think again, it pulls the 9A back into focus.

Knowing what we know through leaks, obviously nothing has been confirmed yet in terms specifications, it does seem as though the 9A now looks like a really good option for people, I guess. I mean, I mean, I love the phone anyway. I think we're all kind of in agreement that it is a fantastic device. but if the 10a is more of the same, does that mean that a 10A is going to be a fantastic device potentially, or is it just, oh, we've added a version number to this one at the front of it?

I guess it depends on your expectations, right? Because like if you expect this to be a leap, even just like a generational leap over the pixel 9A, like every spec leak we've seen implies otherwise. Like it's going to perform very similar, if not identically, to the pixel 9a in every regard that matters from you know raw performance to the display to the camera like all of this stuff seems like essentially unchanged you know the processor is either identical or it's you know it's maybe the normal tensor g4 version used in the pixel 9 but either way

you know it won't really matter it's just a difference in modem yeah i i don't know like I don't think the 10A is going to be a bad phone, but it's going to be, you know, one of those things where every review is kind of... There's a caveat to it. Yeah, it's just... It's just... It's what you experienced last year or could have experienced last year. And the only, you know, sure, it re-ups the seven years as opposed to if you were to buy

a pixel 9A right now, you'd only have six years remaining. I still think that's more than enough for most... So long. That's such a long time. That is such a long time. But, you know, and I wrote an article this week about, like, Like just if you are, if you think this is the year that you're going to buy a new pixel a series device just in you, if you have $400, like go grab the 9A because all you're losing

out on is a year of support and you're saving $100 for it. Like I think that's a pretty fair trade, all, all things considered. Yeah. So, so, you know, once this is out, right, I expect the 9A to, you know, either, there's no way they could sell for cheaper. So I assume it'll just be discontinued. And the conversation that we'll have to have is about like, how is it as a replacement for the 9A rather than as a successor to the 9A when the 9A is still around, which it is right now. Yeah, it's going to be a difficult phone to kind of review it a way because it's sort of already out, but not really.

I don't know. Do you think that Google take this off the store? You said you think it's going to be discontinued. That was going to be my main question and like a big query to both of you. Like, if they keep the 9A on the store, which they've done with previous releases, surely, like, most people are going to be like, why would, for the sake of... You'd just be paying more for different colors. Yeah, you'd pay more for a different color.

Basically. Yeah. Yeah. Is that an Apple strategy or is that more of... Then again, they update the chipset and obviously the room with specifications so that this is going to have the exact same core internals as the 9A. So, I... Yeah, I think this could be a bit of a kind of a banana skin for Google in some ways.

It could be business as usual, and other fantastic A-series phones. And I think that's where Google makes the most gains, to be honest. Yeah, I think their best product lineup has almost always been the A-series, apart from their earbuds, but that's a discussion for another day. Yeah. I find that this could be, and I hope it isn't, I hope it isn't, I hope it isn't a turning point for the A-series in terms of people looking at it.

Why are they charging more for this device when it's the same thing? I don't know. I think we have to talk about this phone right now. because we're at a transition point. The good news for Google and for pixel owners is that, like, you know, come July, come June, none of this will matter. The pixel 10A, like, I really can't see them keeping the 9A on shelves because it is, it will be so similar that like, it's not like when the 7A rolled out and you could buy the 6A for cheaper, but it was like not as good of a phone. They will have to remove the 9A, right? Like, I can't imagine both.

And so if you walk into a store and the 10A is there for $500 in June, you're not going to be thinking about the 9A. You're just going to pick it up and probably if the 9A is any indication, get a good phone. It's just that in this awkward, and this kind of happens all the time with Pixel because they're always discounted. But anytime there's a transition between models, there's always a conversation about like, should you just go buy last year's right now and just lose out on a year of software support but then save a bunch of money? and this year more than ever, the answer is like, yes, if you can. Because you're really not going to lose anything but a year of software support. So that's kind of where I'm at.

I think this is going to be a great phone, but it's going to be a little difficult to talk about it until like April. Yeah. I have a question for you, Abner, as well. And you will. It's always questions for both of you. Because I've been thinking about this recently. Is this, I know I alluded to that it was kind of, I'm concerned a little bit. But I wonder if this is a realignment for the A series.

And I'd love to ask someone from Google this question. So we've seen Apple do this with their own hardware. They'll kind of will have a device that hangs around the SE, and it'll be in the lineup for a few years. And it doesn't necessarily need many changes. It might not get a chipset upgrade. But I wonder if this is Google's way of saying, okay, we have these chips left over from the Pixel 9 series,

pixel 9A, they tend to G4. Next year, potentially the A series will be powered by G5. I mean, I don't think that's a great kind of Sherlock Holmes level intellect to try and make that assumption. I wonder if Google is potentially going to do this for the A series to create more of a separation. I know the core selling point has always been, it's the same chip as a flagship device. But I do wonder if long term it makes more sense to give people the previous generation chip cheaper price point. It allows them to keep bringing the price down. If you don't miss out and stuff.

If they keep the old chip, they have to, it has to somehow impact. the price and that it's cheaper. But I don't, I think right now the G5 is too expensive a chip to and I probably think that if it's expensive now or keep being expensive and they probably

have to wait for a G6 or just a cheaper next gen chip to put into the A series. So that's my thinking about why we don't have how they're doing it. I think it's

better selling point for them if they can say they uses the same chip i think that needs to that's how they can justify the price but if they're sticking for not if they if the plan going forward is using the same is using an older chip i think that needs to be affected in the price for the consumer i'm curious to see um you know because the rumors about price for the 10a or that it's it's going to launch at the same 500 price point as the 9A launched at, and the 8A, I think, before it. You know, I'm curious to see moving forward, depending on what they do with the chips, how the RAM shortage affects this too.

Obviously, it's not, doesn't seem to be affecting this generation. But, like, most analysts seem to, like, don't think it's going to be fixed this year. They think it's going to extend into 2027. So I am curious to see how the A series sort of, and every budget phone sort of deals with that. You know, we've seen leaked Galaxy S26 pricing that implies, like, those phones are getting more expensive. And obviously when you're at the the budget end, you have a lot less headroom to work with. Um, so yeah, I don't, I don't know. Like I could definitely see, I could see Google having to stick on G4. I could see Google having to, you know, make a, a different

tensor chip, like a G5E, you know, like something that, that, uh, demonstrates that it's, maybe it's a TSM made chip, but it's, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a slower chip or has less cores or something. Like I could, I could see that. I don't, you know, obviously they're not going to want to do it because so much of what Google wants to do with Pixel is AI related and you need processing power and and RAM for any on device stuff. But it's, it's going to have to be a compromise they're going to make in this market. I, you raise an incredible point. I do wonder, yeah, how they handle this because there's going to be some, some marketing things that they have to deal with this. It kind of how they're going to.

going to talk about it as a product. Does this mean that the A series therefore becomes a three and four year upgrade cycle for most people? I'm not really sure, but yeah, kind of a strange one. But another strange one that happened, I think we'll leave that one behind because we probably will learn more if in a couple of weeks time when Google does, when these devices eventually we come up for pre-order people and we can kind of learn the full specifications. And I think we've covered 10A to death now. We will do, we will be covering it even more in depth. well when hopefully we get the opportunity to spend some time with them. I want to talk about something really interesting,

and this was one that we were scratched on our heads at Abner this week, and I know we kind of have no precedent for this before, but the February patch rolled out right on cue, perfect timing, zero device-specific updates, which is, even saying that out loud sounds weird. Yeah, I don't know, pixel updates have felt weird in the past few. past year or so, I guess, in terms of when they come out, it does seem that Google is taking more time to release updates. So, yeah.

But yeah, in this one in particular, there are no functional updates. There are no bug fixes, which people obviously still care about. The main Android security patch has nothing. The only security fix is a specific one for the just pixel. devices. So you're installing basically a 20 megabyte OTA just for a security fix, a sole security fix. And that is never very exciting. It's weird. I, again, you can tell that I'm flabbergasted by the situation because there are people who are having problems with the phones. And there are constantly little issues that we all have with, with every device. And for Google not to to even

I mean, I'm not doubting that they haven't attempted to fix something, but to not push anything. It could be, I don't know, could one pixel wrong, there was a pixel out of alignment on the status bar, that kind of stuff. Like, there is nothing. And it's really strange. It's really, really strange to see this. I do wonder if, I do wonder how this affects the pixel six and pixel seven series, because we know that both of those devices haven't been updated for a few months now. They weren't included in the January patch. So although those devices are technically eligible, I do wonder if there's something bigger at play here in terms of how those devices are updated. As that switch to quarterly updates, nobody's any of the wiser. And this patch with basically no fixes kind of confuses the situation even more.

I think, too, what I was alluding to in regards to updates have been weird. It does seem that Google in the past year has been more trying to conserve their resources, engineering resources. Yeah. releasing updates every month is not, I'm not sure if it's the best use of their time. It's, okay, the context for this month specifically, is that next month is the big update, QPR3, the last major Android 16 release,

that's going to, that, as seen in the betas, that's moving a lot of things around. That's going to be a sizable, meaningful update. So I guess the question, And this other thing to fact is that these updates, there's a lot of testing, carrier testing, partner testing that goes into releasing these updates. They might be, they might appear to not do anything for users,

but there's still a process in submitting updates that I assume is pretty intensive. So again, it does seem that Google is trying to be more efficient about this. And whether that means, that normal monthly security patches, whether that's, what's the difference between a month and a quarter, really, especially if you more broadly

for the entire Android ecosystem, is there a better way to do updates, basically? That is a question worth asking anything. How does Apple handle their iOS updates? I don't really know. Do they kind of throw them out regularly, or is it kind of... Whenever they need to, basically, right?

They have a cadence. ever there's something always in bay the testing but it's like 0.1.01 updates like yeah it's not a month three yeah it's not it's probably closer to buy month three and i don't know that i feel like there's some efficiencies there to be had yeah because that feels like maybe google kind of is i'm thinking as you as you kind of said there abner is that it's a better use of the resources to have more people working on this bigger updates and i guess with They kind of stretch quite thin right now, so they have canary, don't they? They have canary, canary, QPR, and I'm guessing versions of QPR for specific updates.

Like that is a lot of resources that you have to kind of a lot to these particular updates and then security patches on top on a monthly basis to fix these issues. And then certain issues tend to be, tend to linger for a lot longer. I wonder if there's some reasoning behind that. There could be an idea that this, I mean, I don't think this is a firebreak update, but I wonder if this is the first sign that, okay, QPR updates are now much more important than they ever have been because we can do a multitude of fixes all in one go.

Yeah, I think plus it's also update fatigue. I think most people, when they see they have an update, they're kind of hesitant. I don't think people ever besides feature drops, I don't think people go out of their way most people to update their phones. they just do what the overnight thing or whatever, they trust that. I also wonder as well, like we've kind of been conditioned

to update our phones ridiculously regularly, but I wouldn't update my, I wouldn't update my computer. I wouldn't update my in-car stereo system at the same rate. I wouldn't do it every couple of weeks. Like, it would be very rare. I want it to work, first and foremost.

Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't considered the computer comparison of like when I see that, When I see that little Windows update logo in my task bar, I'm like, I'm terrible. I'm like, this is going to break everything on my computer. Do not install this until, and sure enough, there will be like a, you know, whatever headline, insert your publication here two weeks later of like, the latest Windows update broke half of all known drivers, which obviously Android does not do nearly as much.

It's not to say we haven't had bad updates, but I think it's a little more reliable than that. But yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, I think the right. regular people thing is kind of a good point here, which is that most people are just letting their phone do their thing in the background. And if there's a very, very minor security fix that rolled out with this patch, nothing else, like I don't, you know, I don't think people are going to be annoyed about it either. Regular people, not enthusiasts, but are going to care either way. I would be surprised if they even notice their phone got updated. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people's phones will update automatically.

So as I say, it's not available for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series. We don't know why that is at this stage. There hasn't been an update for a couple of months. My theory, my personal theory, and this is me speaking for me here, is they've probably gone to quarterly updates for those. It kind of makes sense. They weren't expected to be updated for five years. But Google gave owners an olive branch.

I think it's fantastic olive branch to get five years of updates. And even to go to quarterly and potentially get these quarterly platform updates, fantastic because you just wouldn't get that elsewhere. So yeah, if you just want your phone to say February 20, 25, 26, God, I'm getting my years wrong, patch, then go ahead and get this. If not, hey, I'm going to say it, somebody strike me down if I'm incorrect. You don't necessarily need to install this. You don't necessarily need to install this. It's weird to say that out loud, but you don't necessarily need to install this because there's nothing game breaking that could potentially be major here. I know it's a vision processing unit.

resolution for pixel phones, which is, I think it's a handoff between AI processing GPU and CPU. So, yeah, nothing that I don't think most people will care or too drastically about it. Let's get into something else interesting this month. We've just had Google share their Super Bowl. Is it halftime commercial? Halftime advert? Well, it'll just there at some point during the game.

Okay, right. Well, you guys need to teach me about this because I'm not an NFL guy. I don't know any, don't know your American sport. So you're a big NFL fan, Will. So please give me the load on what this means or why it's a big, big deal. Yeah, it's, it's Google's as they, as they, and Abner, you included this in your intro, in your lead. It's their big game ad because you have to pay the NFL to save the World Super Bowl. Okay.

So, so, yeah, so this is, this is Google. They, they usually have a Super Bowl ad airing sometime during the game. And this is it. It's, it's been Gemini focused for at least a couple of years now and it's Gemini focused this year. And I, like, I would say it's a really weird ad. I, at the very least, like, it certainly spurred a lot of conversation in Slack this morning for, for all of us.

On its face, it's, it is an ad about, um, it is an ad showing what you can do with Gemini to edit photos, like kind of on the fly or to bring up photos. Um, so it's this mom. unseen, kind of showing her also mostly unseen son, the new room in the house they're moving, the new home they're moving to. And it's like, oh, this is what your room's going to look like. Gemini can put stuff in it from this photo I have of your current room. And now it looks like what your room's going to look like when we move. And now the walls are blue and so on and so forth. But it's set to this Randy Newman song that is very, it's a little weepy. And near the end of

it, it takes this like very odd turn where the, where the, where the, mom's voice like starts to like break as they're talking about like it'll be just like before and like I don't my initial reaction was like did someone die in this family which is incredibly bleak but like I was not the only one in our Slack channel that thought this so I'll let one of you jump in on your thoughts on on Google's Super Bowl ad so yeah it's a good ad in terms of get the functionality, expressing the functionality, that showcasing a room to like adjust a child to big change, that is pretty good in terms of like you just want to get them familiar with stuff just to adjust that that kind of thing is actually a novel use of AI that was not possible before.

And so from that perspective, yeah, like I know I think one of the best. the use cases of nanomadana and image generation that wasn't obvious at the start beyond just like generating random crap was that like if you interior design it's generally good for interior design like managing what your current room look like if with adjustments or whatever that's a genuinely good thing yeah that's a use case now that's quite common for everybody and the other thing the good part of the ad was showcasing the Google Photos integration. If you are a user of this stuff, if you uploads backup to Google Photos, that is a good incentive, another way to use Gemini, et cetera, et cetera. So the intended tone of the ad is clearly heartfelt. There's always a

nostalgia play. They showed some clips of the kid growing up with the mom. And yeah, that's that's it's heartfelt and I think most people will recognize that it's that's intended thing. Yeah. That to what you were saying, the tone, there is an undertone of like, sadness a little bit. Sadness. Yeah. I think loss.

Loss is the first thing I thought. Yeah. And especially like Randy, like you said, Randy Newman, toy story. But if we all remember how the last toy story almost ended. And then there's also, was Randy Newman an up? Did you do anything for Up? I'm not sure. I'm not hot on Disney IPs.

So I don't know. No, oh no, that's a Gia Chino, Giacino score. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, okay. But no, that, I immediately thought up for whatever reason. Yeah, I can see that. Those vibes of. And now here's the question. This is the meta question.

what's this intentional? Is this like the best Super Bowl ads get to talk about them? Oh, maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I just feel like it was like, most of the ad plays how I think they want it to.

It's just one of those things. And I compared it. I made a joke, you know, that this is like an audio version of the Cool Shav effect, which is in film when you, it's an editing technique in film where it's like, oh, you know,

if I show a shot of just a man staring straightforward, and then I show you a shot of soup. Your brain is going to think that he's hungry and so on. And so you can change how your brain responds emotionally based on the next image after the same shot of the man. And that's how I feel about this, where I'm like, I hear this and I'm like, I'm seeing all these images. And I'm like, right, I'm supposed to be heartfelt and excited for this family

that's moving to this new home. But then, like, there's something about the way that she's talking about. She sounds so sad to be moving. And they're like, well, recreate the garden. like before and I'm like, before what? Like, what happened? Like, the house did they lose, did they unfortunately lose their home or something?

Exactly. It just feels like the unspoken off-screen something bad happened. And to be clear, this ad did not need that. No, it's fine without it. There's absolutely ways to cut this ad to be happier. And I'm sure that though, like, in these ad meetings,

they go to rounds and rounds of notes. And there's probably there of different variants of the voiceover, et cetera, et cetera. The fact that they ran it on this one is like, was it intentional? That's to go off for conspiracy. They got me talking about it. They have me talking about it.

I think all of the confusion could have been lost if it wasn't a slideshow at the end, almost like clips. It's almost like, it's almost like. It's almost like. It's almost like, The end of a sad movie.

I think the only thing I notice, and this is completely off, really out there is usually when we see these videos that YouTube Google does on YouTube and on other platforms, when they enter in a text box, like a Google search box or search bar, it's always like a typing on a keyboard. Yeah.

But this time it's typing on a, I think it's on a pixel phone. You can kind of hear the dull thuddle. of a display that they're touching. So I thought that was kind of an interesting touch. But the toolbar is, looks like it's on a desktop. If you listen to the sound, it does not sound like a keyboard. Oh, I didn't notice that. That's a, that's honestly, it seems like an error to me. Yeah, that's, it's, it's, it's Gemini, it's the web, it's the current web UI and all that. But yeah, so again, this, they could have done this any other way and they would have

remove those undertones. I think the music, all it would have taken was to change in the music. The music could have been a tiny, tiny bit more upbeat rather than like reminiscing about a past life kind of thing. That's what it thought to me. It was like, it felt like the ending of a toy story movie. And I'm like, I guess that kind of works because a lot of people resonate with that. And you can see the comments on the YouTube video.

There's a lot of like positive comments. Oh, it's really sad. This is really, really, there's not many saying it's sad, actually. And one person asking where the dad is. Well, yeah, it's a strange one. It's a good, I do think, I agree with you. It's a good, a good demo of what you can do with this tool. Because I don't think anybody really going out there and doing that.

And in general, AI has not been presented in the best way of how you can utilize these tools. And I think Gemini Nanobanana is fantastic for that. Like you say, you can prototype, you can design, you can change things on the fly quickly without having to have Photoshop skills or just see them in real time. I think it's really, really cool, a really good usage of it. So the ending tagline of this

is a new kind of help from Google. And I guess more broadly, this speaks to how they are trying to advertise all this. Like you're saying, Damon, everybody is trying to advertise. I think Open AI had something last year, and I'm sure all of them are going to have something this year. Oh, yeah.

This ad is very much in Google's usual they go for the heartfelt nostalgia. Parisian love is their most famous example of using Google search to move to a new place to as you go to major events in your life, et cetera. So this is very much in the Google style. I do sometimes wish that their ads are a bit more novel, that their ads were a bit more experimental, I guess.

Well, sometimes they get in trouble. They get yelled at, right? Like I was the thing that this immediately reminds me of and maybe it is because we're the winter Olympics are kicking off like tomorrow. Another thing that will be on NBC, which also has the Super Bowl this year. Is there the Olympics ad from 2024 that Google ended up taking down where they had somebody like generate a letter? They had Gemini generate a letter for the kid to send to his Olympic athlete hero or whatever. and and you know Google maybe felt like they flew

a little too close to the sky on that one or too close to the sun. And so they decided to you know, go with, and not that that one wasn't trying to be a little heartfelt melancholy maybe, but they tried to they decided to go really safe with this one and be like nobody's going to yell at us about

us showing a kid what his new room is going to look like in the new house. Like I have no anger about that. You know what I mean? There's no sense of like you don't need AI to that. So I wonder if that sort of impacts how they're how they're approaching this specific. Yeah. It's the brand is always safe. They'll never go for anything edgy or whatever, even though I feel that real interesting. And I could go on about how pixel ads have been so boring for

the past five years. I don't know. They did a vanilla ice cream advert. That was that's aging for a pixel advert. Like everyone's got a vanilla phone pro. Yeah. It was good if the iPhone wasn't different this year. I can't emphasize that enough. Like any other year, it would have been fine for the iPhone. It would have been fine to make fun of the iPhone. But this year, but last year, they revived everything in the lineup change from the air to the pro.

So it does not stand up. But that was just what continues to be my pet peeve about that. Yeah. Well, this will air in and around the Super Bowl. Sunday. Yeah, Sunday during the Seahawks and the Patriots. and the Patriots. And of course, I can announce that, and I've of course consulted with both of you that the pixel-lead of podcast is endorsing the Seattle Seahawks. Congratulations to the Seahawks.

Well, that's news to me, but I back it, yeah. I thought this is going to be a thing about the bills. No, well, sort of the Patriots are a rival of the Bills, so I will not be reading from the Patriots. West Coast, best coast. I was going to say, I bow down to both of your knowledge on that, literally knowing what a player's name would be enough to kind of usurp my NFL knowledge, so I apologize. But yeah, go check up the advert if you haven't already seen it. It's, yeah, it's confusing. Good messaging, but confusing messaging towards the end.

I think they're kind of, hey, if they've got 80% of the way, that's all that matters. Yeah, I think most people are not going to, I think it was us, you know, for our jobs, reading, and do it a little bit and analyzing it in a way. And nobody adds, even beyond that. Like, everybody's always cynical about ads these days. That's how you beat up to your default lens.

I'm excited to see what they do with other future ones because obviously now they have nano-banana as this tool. What else can they kind of advertise as a tool? I'm guessing the integration with more of your account stuff. But then there's a privacy element there. But yeah, Google Super Bowl ad, Super Bowl area. I'm not going to say it's at the halftime because I don't know. Yeah, just sometime during the game.

Sometimes during the game, you will see this ad if you're watching it on. NBC you said? I don't know. NBC, Bacock, 630, Eastern, 330 Pacific. That's all you needed. That's all you needed was Will to correct me there. Yeah, thanks guys for joining me. I know this is a short one this week,

but we haven't had as much to talk about as we would have liked. But I think there's some nice little topics to get into. And we will be back talking. Yeah, a lot coming up. Pixel 10A now that we know that the pre-order date is the 18. So from hopefully in and around that time period, we'll have an idea of what's happening with that device. We believe the S-26 is imminent at some point, so there's a lot to talk about there.

Yeah, it's going to be a fun start to the real smartphone season because it's starting earlier and earlier. But yeah, thanks guys for joining me. I've really enjoyed it, as always, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Pixelated, a 9 to 5 Google podcast. If you enjoyed the show, we ask that you rate and review it on the podcast platform of your choice

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