Pixelated - AirDrop Me From Your Pixel 10

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Welcome to episode 79 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Abner and Will talk through the launch of Gemini 3, breaking down all of the changes Google has made behind the scenes to its LLM. The duo also talks through the (breaking) arrival of AirDrop support on the Pixel 10, a change Google seemingly made all by itself. Finally, with Black Friday around the corner, we take a look at what deals you can score on your next piece of Google hardware. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Timecodes 00:00 - Intro 00:53 - Gemini 3 21:42 - Surprise Pixel 10 AirDrop support 32:22 - Google's Black Friday Deals 40:08 - Wrap-up Hosts Abner Li Will Sattelberg Read more Google launches Gemini 3 with state-of-the-art reasoning, ‘generative UI’ for responses, more Gemini 3 Pro rolling out to Android as iPhone app gets redesign Gemini app rolling out Gemini 3 Pro as ‘Gemini Agent’ comes to AI Ultra Google rolling out Gemini 3-powered ‘Nano Banana Pro’ image gen, editing Android Quick Share now works with AirDrop on iPhone, starting on Pixel 10 Google’s AirDrop support for Pixel 10 likely exists because of the EU’s Apple ruling How to get Quick Share’s new iPhone AirDrop support on your Pixel 10 now [Gallery] Google Store Black Friday 2025 deals: $299 Pixel Watch 4, boosted Pixel 10 trade-ins 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.

Welcome to Pixelated episode 79. I'm your host, Will Saddleberg. This week, Abner joins me to talk through the launch of Gemini 3 and what this might mean for Google's AI ambitions as we head into 2026. Following a brief dip into some breaking news on the Pixel 10's surprise airdrop support, Abner and I finish up taking a look at what Black Friday sales you can already score on all of Google's latest hardware. So, Abner, just you and I this week, and it's a bit of an odd week as we build up to Thanksgiving,

but there are a couple new stories that are, you know, maybe going to shake up how we think about Gemini for the rest of the year. And end of 2026, this feels very much like laying the groundwork for the next 12 months of Google. So tell me a little bit about Gemini 3. Yeah, just to get started, it's very usually. Gemini 1 and Gemini 2 have been early December launches. Google decided to go noticeably early. And November, the week before Thanksgiving, always... It's actually a pretty good period, I guess,

to get just in before the holiday season starts underway. So that's nice. But yeah, Gemini 3, it's the year... Google's yearly update, their most intelligent model yet and I guess the theme of this one is bringing any idea to life which is which is just like to like there's obviously a lot of vibe coding coding in general but the other one is just making tiny mini apps making tools basically yeah it is on the on the benchmark front and all the comparison front it is reading the industry in at least all the main benchmarks

i think what's of note is that 2.5 pro the i.o six months ago release was on the cap on top of the reader boards for all this time until Gemini 3 Pro came. So that's somewhat notable. Yeah, it's interesting to see Google kind of lap itself, despite having given, you know, Open AI or other competitors six months to beat. And specifically talking like Elam Arena, but, you know, there was time there for a competitor to top 2.5 Pro. And, you know, Google is, at least in terms of these benchmarks, like it's competition. currently is itself, which is interesting.

Mm-hmm. And, I don't know, like three generations in, I feel like where Google has successfully changed narrative by doing good AI stuff. And even three years ago, that was absolutely not true. No, it's easy to forget how rocky of a start some of this was. Do you remember that, was it a Paris event? There was a really rough Paris event that Google did back in the Bard days.

It might have been where they launched Bard, actually. And, you know, now I feel like they kind of have both their announcements down, right, how they roll this stuff out rather than having big flashy events. And then also just going from feeling like an also-ran competitor caught on their back foot, you know, in the days of the early days of chat GPT to like, you know, being neck and neck and pretty consistently checking open. AI as these two companies develop their tools? Yeah, it's like, again, like three years ago, it's the media narrative, the news narrative was completely down on Google.

It was there behind. Are they like, I'm sure there are headlines about this is the end of Google, et cetera, et cetera. It was, they focused in these past three years and they're now where they are. so yeah Gemini tree pro is what they're launching they're going pro first I think last year they did flash but they're reading with pro

top of the most powerful model and I guess from a consumer standpoint the Gemini app it's gotten itself a little redesign its latest redesign it honestly goes through so many in just

over the past few every few months it feels like this something new, which is, I don't know how I feel about that. I'm sure stability would probably be help, but they are moving very quickly. Let's see. So, yeah, I guess the consumer stuff, it's, they say responses are more helpful, better format it, more concise. I'm not sure how much you've used it. But I feel like the thing I'm noticing is that at the end of every response It's like next steps, what do you want the next steps to be, which can, might be helpful. But yeah.

Yeah, it's one of those things that I feel like it's difficult to immediately feel a difference. This feels in some ways, like sort of an 01 change, you know, if you're comparing it to open AI, right? just in terms of like it's very focused on on thinking through answers and coding and that was very uh you know math math problems like that was very uh oh one model for for open a i but at the same time like i also the the handful of answers i've had with it so far have been like have felt more detailed or more topical or backed up a little bit more uh by facts and and you know one of the changes that they were pushing that Google's pushing with this is, oh, well, we're going to make it a little less like flattering to you, which has been like one of my most frustrating elements

of these tools is that I just, I don't need them to be my friend. If I'm going to use it, I wanted to just give me an answer. And if it can't give me an answer, I want it to be like, I can't give you an answer rather than like just trying to pretend it can. And I don't know if that's fully solved here, but it is at the very least closer to the, the tone and the level of response that I want of like, no, no, no, here's the information that you need. Here's like details. Here's we've dated more specific things. And I don't know. It's just like, you know, these, I don't know. What should the personality of Google be? I would just say from the context of like decades of Google search literary and Google search

answers. I like it when there's like a knowledge graph panel that just says the answer that just shows the weather, which, yes, Gemini does that, but for other stuff, I just sometimes want an answer, but at the same time, it seems very clear that people like everything in the sentence, which, well, we'll talk more about that, but historically it does feel like people prefer it phrased more personally. And that's honestly just such a shortcut to feeling like these are AI assistance, AI robots or a person giving you the answer. Yeah.

It's a real interesting shorthand strategy. Yeah. It sort of, I don't know, the more laid out information and the more I have the ability to see what this model is doing behind the scenes and like being able to peer at every step of its process, I think only strengthens, you know, your reliability on these tools to know what's going on in terms of where it's pulling data, which like that is, you know, hallucinations kind of remain like the biggest hurdle in terms of me really building any kind of like serious workflow around these tools is just being nervous that like, you know,

you can catch a lot of hallucinations if you were of expert level or you have some level of knowledge in terms of what you're doing. But the second, you leave that, you're kind of on your own and you're going to have to, at least for me, like fact check, anything that you're being told that you don't have any basis in, right? Because when I do know things and I see wrong answers, it's like, okay, well, I've spotted this hallucination. And so like, which ones am I not spotting? Having that ability to both have Gemini now a little less flowery in its language and then also these in-depth documents that are also pointing you in new directions. I think it's all just like a good improvement even if it's not, you know, the hallucination-free existence that would be great if it can ever come to fruition, which, you know, jury is out on whether that's possible or not. yeah i guess just go back on this the history a bit it's i do feel like that hallucination

rate was partly the reason why google did not think l ms as a technology was ready to go wide and honestly i'm probably in the same boat of like i'm surprised people are except this amount of hallucinations. I know we're four five years into this and I think this is now a mood point in terms of society like recognizing what hallucinations are if not accepting it in maybe not maybe I was going to say accepting it into the culture maybe that's a bit strong but hallucinations as a thing is a technological technological term that people are very familiar with. And I'm, from just like a culture standpoint,

I'm surprised how that has happened. Yeah, I guess it's just one of those things that when everybody is trying out these tools, right? Like, even if you are deeply anti-AI and you've only, you've probably tried Gemini at least once or activated on your phone. Everybody is tried it. You've tried it.

And like, so I do think it's just one of those things where, you know, it's, it's, reminds me of like learning you know how the internet worked when I was younger right or like like yeah that's a good point yeah you you just catch on to these things of like of like oh okay well if you're going to use this tool you have to know about hallucinations in the way that like if you're going to use social media you have to learn about I don't know fishing attempts or something right like there's there's all these little like pitfalls that come with any new technology and

I wonder if like hallucination like just know about that is the thing you need to know to properly use these tools or to yeah it's more than knowing it's it's it's also accepting i mean nobody wants a long answer but at the same time people clearly have a tolerance for this yeah they do that is really i guess unexpected from it's still unexpected to me but again people have clearly accepted this and it is a norm so that's the world we're living in now

for better or worse for better or worse yes so yeah I guess more on Gemini 3 Pro in the Gemini app I think one of the most interesting things that stand out to me is generative UIs generative interfaces wherein your

generated response, generative response, is met with a generative UI as the best way to showcase stuff. So I think the example Google gave was there's two gen UIs in Gemini right now. The first one is called visual layout. It builds, I'll just quote, immersive magazine style view complete with photos and modules. The example Google used was plan a three-day trip to next summer and you get these UI interface filters basically you get filters to pick whether you want a leisurely pace slider to set the pace to what you're interested in like art or food or whatever and it just lets you customize the response without having a without having to specify in the prompt and I to me this is like getting closer to the other thing about

AI that surprised me was how much people are willing to read how much they're happy with text-heavy interfaces. And this, to me, addresses some of that. Yeah, it also brings us closer to where I see this kind of tech going, which is that eventually it will just sort of power. You won't really open the chat bot so much as you will open Google's itinerary tool right and like it will it will be a little bit more streamlined and specific in what it's doing and in terms of and you'll still be able to do it through jemini maybe but like this sort of you i of like don't worry about having to to type all of those words into a chat box at once or having to modify your prompt or having to to be more specific and a follow-up like we will

you know get started with this tool and we will walk through every step of the way and then use you know, LLM powered backends to create this, you know, itinerary through Rome, for example, or things like that. I think it's just, it's the natural evolution of these tools in the same way that you can look at like web one to web two or something, you know, 30 years ago, right? Of just like, no, no, no, like we had these, you know, it's, it's so interesting because it is kind of like, with LLMs, we reverted back to like having to type every, into a box as opposed to visual UIs and it's like but I like the visual UIs and so this this sort of brings that back it ties the two together oh absolutely it I don't know why you're being so

introspective about alams in general this way this podcast that was also the other thing that shocked me about people's acceptance to do a chat chat bot UI versus like tapping filters or whatever on a screen. I know, to me, a blank box always feels daunting. And I always felt, I was always surprised that people understand, appear to innately understand this interface. The counter argument is that people, you're just supposed to ask questions how you were to another person.

Right. By the same time, we have decades of the internet of search. like training us how to best shape our question basically but it's a lot of unlearning that and it has been to say it really pretty successful

yeah well and not to get too far away from the Gemini three of it all but like to me it was always frustrating because you know yes to your point the idea of these chatbots specifically is that you need to you know type you're talking to it like it's a friend,

but a friend would have levels of context, you know, whether it's personal or even just historical that you're talking about that these LLMs might not initially have if you don't give it to it. So, yeah, you talk to it like it's a friend, but you also have to be like, you have to give it basic information

that a friend would probably already have about you. And to that end, I think the visual, again, the visual layout of Gemini III, to bring it back to that like sort of helps with that where okay you're not going to give it maybe all the information it needs up front but it's going to prompt you to do that and it's going to do it in this way that feels that doesn't feel like it's asking you a bunch of follow-ups that you need to type back in but it's going to give you these you know here here's a bunch of boxes that you can select from like and this will give us the prompt in the background but you don't

need to know that you're essentially typing all of this into a box I don't know it's it's smart. It's it makes me want to use these tools more because as a you know long time quote unquote search power user I've I've been frustrated by the switch to LLMs because I don't want to type 200 words. I like knowing search shortcuts and things in ways to find what I'm looking for faster with with as little input for me as possible and that's not what LLMs have really been about up to now, but I can see this visual layout as a move back towards that sort of, you know, will prompt as little as possible.

Yeah, and I guess the other highlight about the Gemini tree pro in the Gemini app is Gemini agent. It is taking Google's work on Project Mariner, which is a browser agent, and adding it to Gemini app. this is just for AI Ultra subscribers right now but I think so yes this can browse the open web for you but I think what's a bit more interesting is that it can

given its Gmail integrations its calendar integrations it can manage your inbox by making an inline UI within the Gemini app so let's say it can give you five messages that you might want to archive and Marcus read and if you agree with those suggestions you just press a checkmark next to each of those five messages

and then it archives it for you you can reply inline into Gmail in line within the Gemini app to Gmail and send a email message so yeah that kind of stuff again ultra subscription right now which I doubt most people have

but it is I think this is a good starting route for it especially on the web and fingers crossed on it coming to mobile soon. Yeah, yeah. I'm waiting to be bought into the, the idea of agentic AI. Nothing I've seen really realized.

It needs to happen on the smartphone. Absolutely. I think so. It needs to be a thing that is not, I'm not thinking. But like, I also, I want to be told what this is for. And I think Google's going to be the company to do that. But like, you know, the earliest agentic AI things we've seen. has been completely just

it'll order DoorDash for you it'll do it'll it'll call an Uber for you it'll shop on Amazon for you we've seen recently with like Open AI and to me it's you know even out even removing the aspect that this is always just about buying things and I'm glad to see that Google's example of organizing your inbox is not

about buying things you know I I want it to be the something that like convinces me like oh okay like I see how this would change and simplify my life and organize my inbox is the closest we've gotten so far. So, like, I do think Google is going to be the company more than other rivals that is able to kind of, like, change my outlook on the concept of agentic AI. This is a decent first step, even if it's not something I will be using because I'm not, I'm not, I'm not paying $200 a month for it.

But maybe some people are, but it's a lot of money. So, yeah, the other piece of Gemini 3 Pro news is Nanobanana Pro, which takes that viral popularity of that image editing and generation model and bases it off Gemini 3 Pro now. It's just more advanced controls, better fidelity, especially when you're working with text. Impressively, all of this stuff is rolling out now in the Gemini app, in AI. mode. So this is, again, three years later, and Google is much better at lowering this stuff out. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things that it's also, you know, I'm not even on a paid AI account right now, and it's still, I can access these changes. It's, it's an improvement over where we were even like a year ago in terms of trying out these features. So it's, they're just

getting them in the hands of people faster. And that's, you know, in terms of how fast as market's moving, that's important. So that is Gemini Tree Pro. There will be more Gemini Tree models in the family soon. And yeah, I'm sure we'll still have AI stuff from Google this year. So the other thing this week is there's a lot of pixel stuff read by the fact that Google has made QuickShare interoperable with AirDrop on the iPhone. Yeah. And I mean, I mean, not to not to raise the curtain too much, but this happened while we were.

recording. So this is this is as breaking as it as it can get. Yeah, basically Google announced this week that QuickShare works with AirDrop on iPhone, iPad, and Mac to, you know, starting with the Pixel 10, but this is a change that they seem to intend on rolling out to other Android devices, including non-Pixel devices, which I think is big. So tell me a little bit about what we know on how this works, Abner. So at the high, at the high, high level it's meant to be very simple so apple devices that have the airdrop everyone for 10 minutes mode active will see will be selectable by android users again starting on the pixel 10 in that full screen quick share interface um like yeah you just select an apple device and if the other

person accepts your file will be transferred and similarly quick share devices will appear in the airdrop picker and yeah that's it's basically exactly how it's supposed to work um of note here is that google did this themselves yeah uh they did not partner with apple and uh they are heavily emphasizing as they announces that this is secure. I'm going to quote from their dedicated security blog posts. This feature does not use a workaround. The connection is direct and peer to peer, meaning your data is never routed to a server,

shared content is never logged, and no extra data is shared. So they go on and on about how secure this is and how they did penetration testing, how they are the lead teaming internally, how they brought in an outside firm to test this and it's secure. But it's notable that Apple, they did not do this, do anything, really. Am I crazy to think that this is like a big swing on Google's part?

And obviously they've backed this up from a consumer angle to really, as you said, stress the security of it. But Google and Apple have been kind of getting along lately. There's all those rumors about, you know, these two companies striking a deal for Gemini to serve as the LLM back end on the iPhone. And, you know, we've seen RCS kind of build a bridge between these devices. And yet this is a swing that has no partnership between these two companies whatsoever. It's unclear if Apple knew Google was announcing this today. it's unclear how Apple will respond, whether they'll ignore it, whether they'll, you know, pick up Google's invitation to work together to enable context-only mode, which would be a little

bit more, I'm going to say secure, not in the back end, but in terms of who can send you files, who can start the file process, you know, or are this, is this going to be a thing that Apple, you know, reacts negatively to? Like, I really don't know. I could see. could really see any, I feel like working together is the option that is, you know, the path forward that is the least likely to happen just because Apple sees AirDrop as one of its benefits to being in its ecosystem. And obviously, if this, if that goes to not just the pixel, but all of Android, you know, that sort of falls by the wayside. But I, I could kind of see them just ignoring it. And I could see them trying to work to, to close the sound. So I don't know,

what do you think, Abner? Where do you, where do you think? this feature. I probably think it's hard to close down. Well, the way they're phrasing this in their security blog posts, it's direct, it's peer to peer. I'm sure in the coming days you'll get a breakdown by people testing and seeing what, there has to be an element of the Android device masking itself or giving itself as an identifier, a different. Apple line identifier. I could see Apple taking issue with that. I don't know if these identifiers are generic for a specific device class or whether they're unique to the, um, unique to each device, each user, each session, that kind of stuff. And whether, yeah, we don't know. I'm sure

we shall find out, uh, soon. But if it's, I could see Apple. shutting it down from a security standpoint from their quote-unquote security standpoint because that's the way they are over control. See the I-Message thing however long ago. Though that said, that always felt giving anybody your Apple ID was always, ooh. But this feels, this is different from that in that regard.

But the other option, like you said, be ignoring it and I don't, yes, it is, they are losing some lock-in and by them not wanting to bring iMessage over to Android ever, that could be something. But at the same time, file sharing is, I don't think that's the hill to die on. No, I agree. It's not as big, because obviously any, anytime we see something like this, right, and we even saw it sort of recently although it hasn't shipped yet with with one plus saying that oxygen OS16 can work with with Apple Watch. So that hasn't rolled out yet to my knowledge. But it's it's more, you know, the two that it brings back to the two events this reminds me of the most is this is, you know, recent memory, it's, it's Beeper and it's the I message on Android, you know, I don't want to say gimmick, but, you know, approach of like Beeper worked for three or four days and then kind of.

came back and then never really came back and and is its own you know separate app now uh away from the i message stuff and then going way back it reminds me of uh it'll i'll never forget this drama of the the the palm pre and its i team generation where it would just palm would find a work around apple would squash the work around palm would find a work around and so it's you know on and on it went for six eight months or whatever obviously this this leans a little bit more in terms of the bigger picture of it on on that side of things right like i think i message integration on on android was a much bigger deal than being able to share files as you said uh but but it's not you if it's not using a workaround beyond maybe masking um its device identifier you know i don't know

yeah i don't know if google or if apple has a lot of wiggle room to make the stop unless they rebuild how airdropper works to begin with because um yeah i don't i don't see what else they could they could do but then again you know we've seen that company do things like that before so it's it's possible that they they look for a way to to kill this but i agree with you not the hill to die on if i were if i were tim cook so yeah but this on the the the use and user side this is i think this is a win this is absolutely a win that it's people use it immediately yeah it's it's it's Because like, I don't know. I mean, I can't speak for you, but anything that allows any device in my life, whether

it's something I own or something, you know, a friendodes to, you know, work better together is, regardless of platform is good in my book. And like I don't, I can't say I use, I feel like I don't use QuickShare or AirDrop very much, but it is because I have so many things in my life that are not, you know, I'm not locked into one ecosystem. personally. And I, you know, even on the, on the, on the, on the Android side of things, like, you still have those moments where I have a, I have a MacBook floating around the house, right? Like, I have these, these things where, you know, it's like, oh, okay, well, like, Android on

laptops is it a thing yet? So maybe, maybe, you know, maybe that. But, uh, there's these elements of, well, I would use X service, but I have Y device that doesn't work with X service and so on. This sort of thing, like completely masks that over and it just makes, it feel like you have more choice as a user without losing those ecosystem benefits. It's a win-win for users. Okay, you can obviously

send people stuff in messages. You can obviously do drive. But all those sharing methods leave a footprint that I just like it's a one-off thing. I don't care about a history being logged or whatever

or it quattering up my history. So I do think Personally I think this will pick it up Just as a tangent I'm this The flashback I'm getting to

It's like Erie iOS era Where somebody made that That bump app I think Where you could bring it to somebody Bring your devices close to somebody And it transfers And obviously Android

Had the NFC sharing thing Android beam which was killed but yeah I don't know I just like when technology has a physical element

to it I don't know yeah I agree it's cool I hope it either stays as good as it is now because it's you know

it's launching at a pretty solid state it seems like and I hope Apple does work to get this you know functioning better

if that ability is there but yeah we'll have to wait and see what they do So, yeah, that's quick share. I'm, again, like, the holiday, it's a, this is a great time to launch it, heading into the holidays and all that. Oh, yeah. So speaking of holidays, holiday deals are upon us.

Really, it's a global holiday, Black Friday, isn't it? It's the one true global holiday. It's sort of separate outside of, it's, it's weird, because obviously it's, it's the day after American Thanksgiving. And it's, you know, the kickoff to the Christmas. shopping season, like, more traditionally in the U.S., and now it's just like, oh, Black Friday, that's, yeah, as you said, it's a shopping holiday for everybody. It literally started on Thursday, the Thursday, the week before. I've been getting emails on early Black Friday deals since before Halloween.

So, you know, at this point, once the leaves start to turn throughout the U.S., you will start getting those Black Friday push notifications on your phone. So, yeah, in the case of Google in the U.S., you, have $200 off the pixel 10, which you've been using. 599. That's a solid deal. Yeah, it's a deal that really helps the 128 gigabyte controversy feel a little bit more manageable. When you can, when suddenly that phone is back down to $600 or $700 to upgrade to $256, which is a move. I think anybody buying the pixel 10 should do. It's a little bit easier to stomach. And at, you know, even even if you go with the cheaper option at $600, no brainer if you're in the market for a new

phone. I mean, I honestly, I sent, you know, we saw this price kind of soft launch on Amazon a week or two ago. And I sent it immediately to one of my friends whose pixel six just gave up on him. And I was like, here you go. Like here's, here's, I told you there'd be deals. Here's your deal. So, you know, it's, yeah, highly recommend. But I mean, I mean, across the board, the pro starting at 749, the ProXL at 900, and the ProFold at 1500, all of those are like, they're pretty big discounts for a phone that is, you know, and that's nothing new, but it is nice to see

that despite the stress towards being a little bit more of a traditional flagship, rather than a budget-oriented flagship for Pixel, we're still getting these, like, big Thanksgiving discounts, big Black Friday discounts. Yeah, and it's definitely a, by the fact that the pixel already launched in August, the earlier timeline

definitely helps make deals more likely. As you were saying, there was a soft launch of these deals, like in the first week of November for a week, Google discounted. That was very weird. But yeah, these are probably the deepest

discounts of the year. I don't foresee Google dropping lower than this. I'm pretty sure these deals will come It ends on December 6th, but I'm sure there'll be like one week towards the middle of December just before the holidays properly start that these will be back. But in terms of buying now is a good time as ever, like maybe you get $50 more from Amazon

close to the holidays, but I don't think I don't foresee anything else more substantial. Yeah, an Amazon gift card bundle almost seems more likely where you pay the $600. but then it comes with $50 of Amazon credit or something. And even beyond the holidays, I wouldn't really expect to see these prices beat until, you know, March of next year. Like, you're going to be waiting a bit for something even cheaper than this, really.

So, like, yeah, if you're in the market and you've been patiently waiting since August, like, this is what you've been waiting for. Your patience has paid off. So, but this is the first discount in the pixel. 4, which of course launched later in October, but $50 off Wi-Fi, $100 off LTE. Not bad. This is the pretty standard discount, so it's pretty straightforward deal.

I don't know. A watch, upgrading a watch yearly, I know does not make sense for most people. But at the same time, it's literally on your skin every single day. it's it could be more expensive yeah I know you and Damien have have sung the praises

of the pixel watch for but I do want to shout out that for $200 if you're after a larger pixel watch the 45 millimeter pixel watch three at 200 bucks is like a great buy like you're not you're not losing that much to save

you know to almost cut the price in half it's it's a good deal. So I like, I would, I would, you know, if you're new to wearables or you're not really sure if it's, you know, a thing you want to invest a lot of money. Oh, please get this and not like an original pixel watch. Oh, yeah, for sure. That is out the window. The pixel watch two is, I don't know, it's still fine, I guess, but as long as you're okay at the smallest screen. Yeah. But yeah, the picks that, that honestly, that 45 millimeter the pixel watch tree, I feel like it could be sticking around a long time for Google as

its affordable device. Yeah, I think it's a good space for it because I do think, you know, even if you're an OG pixel watch one user and maybe you always wanted the larger size, well, now it's not quite as big of an upgrade to pick up something that might fit your wrist a little bit better. So yeah, I think that's a great deal. So you have the pixel budget. stuff, $100 as to what you were saying earlier during a review that it should have probably just been $100 to $100. It's a, this is the price it should have launched at. It's good to see it there on sale. Not a huge surprise, obviously, but, you know, if it had launched a 100, we wouldn't be seeing an even cheaper price. But I feel much more confident and comfortable recommending these for

for $99 bucks as opposed to $130. I have, I've kept using them since the review as a mini update. You know, I still think they're just okay. I like the sound on them. I think it's like a decently balanced sound. But every now and then, I will,

you know, this happened earlier this week. I was using them to work out in our basement. And my fiance came down the stairs. And I, I had passed through audio on and I thought I didn't. And I was like, oh, you're just, you're actually just really muddled through these. Let me take them off.

I thought I was like, oh, yeah, I must not hear you because, nope, that ANC was not on. So, yeah, it's okay. It's not terrible, but it's, you can get much better. At $100, I think it's a decent deal. Yeah. But yeah, those are those that we know Black Friday. Yeah, don't, you know, if we're going to give buying advice, I want to also say, $250 for the pixel tablet, I don't think people should buy that. I don't, it's not a bad deal, but the pixel tablet was not great when it came out, and it's two and a half years old now. I would, I would, I would shop around, you know, and see if you can get a good deal on like a mid-range galaxy tablet, but yeah, I would, I would not, I would stay, that's my one, my one don't buy is

probably the pixel tablet. Yeah, it's, uh, end of the load for that. Yeah, unfortunate. yeah uh yeah it's black friday it is here already let me ask you this uh abner to to to wrap up maybe are you are you do you have your eyes on anything google or not google do you are you looking to buy anything uh next week on friday but the thing on my bucket risk which i don't need and probably speaks to over preparation is like a large solar panel like portable solar panels and the biggest possible portable battery

like the thing that you wheel around listen as someone who will say on record that a generator saved his life during a blizzard not a terrible idea to keep some kind of battery backup around that is big enough

to be used for actual appliances in an emergency it's not a bad buy because I we were without, you know, three years ago during the Buffalo's Blizzard of Christmas 2022, my house didn't have power for three days. So it's, thank God for the generator we had, because otherwise I don't know what we would have done. How about you? Anything catching your eye? I'm so bad about just kind of buying things when I want them. It makes me much like my father, a very difficult person to shop for. I've been told that I just, if it's,

something I want and I convince myself that I need it or that it'll fit my life. I will just pull the trigger on it. So no, not, not anything specific, but I'm open to seeing the kind of deal that that surprises me. I'm mostly hoping to use it to get a start on my actual Christmas shopping because I have, I have not done that yet. And I shouldn't. We're a month away. But for some reason, my brain is like, maybe it's all those early Black Friday deals, but it's like, you're behind. started yet. You're never going to catch up. So I, you know, there's a lot of like tech specific stuff that I know like my parents specifically have asked for. So for me, it's kind of just keeping an eye on like, do I want to buy like the Google TV streamer for 75? Is that like a good

streaming upgrade for my parents? Stuff like that. So not so much for me because I have upgraded a decent chunk of my gear this year already. But, but certainly for, for, for, loved ones in my life. Gotcha. So, yeah. Those are recommendations. Yeah. It's not a bad year for sales, especially, you know, with the tariff question up in the air constantly.

Like, it is good to see that these sales are, at least right now, continuing onward, kind of on the large company side, unopposed by tariff madness. So always good. And that wraps it up for us this week. No show next week, I believe, Abner, right? We're taking the week of, not the entire week, but we're taking the week off for podcasting because we would have to record this on Thanksgiving otherwise. So we will be back, oh my God, first week of December.

Wow. This year is flown by. Late December. But yeah, I mean, with Gemini three kind of laying the groundwork for whatever's next, I imagine there will be some kind of. kind of Google surprise in December, as there often is. So who knows what it'll be? Damien will be back then to talk about whatever's in the news.

But until then, we'll catch you in the next one. 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 and help spread the word by sharing the show with friends or on social media. Thank you.