Pixelated - They Don't Have Pixels in Oz

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Welcome to episode 78 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Abner, Damien, and Will tackle Google's surprise Pixel Drop, a jam-packed update filled with new features like low-power maps, notification summaries, and a Wicked-inspired theme pack. Then Will walks through his thoughts on the OnePlus 15, a device that crushes in the battery life department but falls a bit short when it comes to, well, everything else. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Timecodes 00:00 - Intro 01:25 - Pixel Theme Packs 09:35 - Notification Summaries 18:46 - Nano Banana Remixes 23:15 - Low Power Maps and Other Pixel Drop Thoughts 31:17 - OnePlus 15 Review 43:45 - Wrap-up Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Will Sattelberg Read more November 2025 Feature Drop: Pixel notification summaries, Maps Power Saving mode, more Journal app and Device health & support dashboard drop Pixel 10 exclusivity, more Pixel AI Notification Summaries start rolling out: How to enable Google Messages will let you ‘Remix’ photos with Nano Banana  OnePlus 15 Review: Extraordinary battery life at the cost of everything else 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 78. I'm your host, Will Saddlebird. This week, it's a double-header event as we spend the first chunk of the episode diving deep into Google's surprise pixel drop. From wicked themes to notification summaries, there's a lot more to this update than you might think at first glance. Then we break down my review of the OnePlus 15, a device that represents a pretty big departure from OnePlus's usual MO. Does it live up to the reputation of its predecessor? You'll have to listen to find out. So we've had some big updates this week.

We've had some cool stuff. We've had device releases. I mean, a typical week in the Android, I guess, ecosystem. Android, it wasn't QPR 2. It was a pixel drop, which I still hate the name of, but this is a big one. This was a huge one in November, right? This is the first time we've had this.

I'm excited by any updates of this. So, yeah, out of cycle update, we weren't expecting a feature drop until next month. Yeah, as you were saying, it's still QPR one. It's just a patch of QPR one, but that in itself carries a lot of bug fixes, emergency calling, camera stuff, battery stuff. But the real highlight is this full, very full feature drop. What Google's promoting is the theme pack, tied with the movie Wicked for Good, that sequel. Right now, TeamPacks a pretty basic change your wallpaper, which in turns, updates dynamic color,

which I feels like cheating a bit. App icons, there's only one app icon, the new styles, don't go live until QPR2. You get some gifts, you get some ringtones, new sounds. that's probably the most substantial thing but theme packs the I don't think it's what people are waiting for in terms of true customization it's really I don't know it just seems like a promo opportunity do you think that this is a case of I guess it's a bridge a bridge to future customization because I mean I was just looking at them about two seconds ago yeah I agree with

you that it's very, very minimal. I mean, I know, I know I'm not a huge customization guy anymore, but I'd still like to mess around my phone. Like, what do you guys use? Have you guys used a custom launcher for a while? Because this feels like that first step in the right direction. The, the one that I have ever been kind of drawn back into, at least over the last few years, because like, you know, forever ago, a Nova launcher fan, as I'm sure all of us were at one point or another. And then I am every so often. drawn back into niagara i think niagara is like a yeah smart approach to to launchers and looks really good and they just did like last week a uh a big update that added a bunch of ironically

themes uh that like really fit the overall design of that launcher uh really well which is which is great um yeah i'm i'm kind of underwhelmed by the themes on this because when these first started leaking i was like oh good this is exactly what i've been wanting from the pixel because i And we've talked on the show about it, but I love the pixel software. It's it's the it's what keeps me on pixel. And simultaneously, it's like probably the most restrictive, uh, Android launcher in terms of her Android experience in terms of being able to customize it how you want, you know, icon packs are not supported by default. And that's actually most other like launchers do support at least some amount of icon packs in some way, shape, or form. Um, I wish this was a little bit more in-depth, and I wish it wasn't launching with just like this, you know, sponsored, uh, uh, Yeah, it's sponsored.

Yeah, it just feels like an ad more than a new feature to me. I have a thought on that. I wonder if this is going to be a way for Google to kind of, well, it ties in. It's all part of the marketing, right? I feel like, who's paying this? Who is the question, though? I don't know.

It feels weird because I'm not, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know. anything about this film i don't know anything about the previous one apart from the ad that was with android and they had the little kind of the bug droid yeah that's that's the important thing to bring up this this google's very hot on this relationship it's not this android like you said the bug droid was customized um they did something else which is now scraping me but this is an existing relationship and i think anyway it's the existing relationship and i'm they're very hard this movie. So I'm sure it's popular enough to warn. Is that a pun? Abner. Is that a pun?

Popular? It's like the most popular song from Wicked. I don't know. I literally am lost. So like that's that's the that's the side. You can even see it. If you look at the the image, the alarm is so popular. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. I see my my interpretation of this is that Google can use this as a vehicle for extra marketing for the devices. So you could have the, oh, I want the wicked phone or I want the... It's not like they have phones and ours. Yeah, well, no, I guess that. But I mean, if you're a big fan of this

or you're a big fan of, I guess my question is, is Google going to use this as another marketing vehicle because they already have partnerships with Liverpool, Arsenal, England, national football team. Yeah, these are seasonal themes. These are seasonal themes. So you'll stop being able to access this one January 31st, 26. So, yeah, these are tiring seasonal, and are they going to find a movie tie-in every single quarter?

That seems, I don't know, that would really double down on this being a promotional thing. And now I am super curious if money is exchanging hands and who's getting paid. Is it, are the movie people paying Google for this advertising opportunity, or is Google paying to get access to this I think it would be the other way around I think personally it would be the other way around because this like I say

it's a way for and I don't want the only way I'm going to describe it and don't mean it like this it's insidious style of marketing whereby you have oh look at this interesting little theme on my device like you don't

it's in your face all the time like you have these two characters from this movie is it released yet I don't even know like this is literally I've gone to just completely next week. It's like a Thanksgiving movie, yeah. Okay, okay. So that kind of makes sense. But I'm wondering now if, if Google does this continually, like they have the partnerships with the NBA,

they have partnerships with WMBA as well, correct? That's a big one. NFL? Yeah, the NFL. Do you do something with the NFL? Yeah, the YouTube TV is like the home of the NFL. That's exactly as someone who, and you can see this with the one plus 15 review, but someone who has a Buffalo Bills wallpaper on his various phones. like, I immediately where my mind went to of like, why don't they launch this with like,

and I feel like they should have. I feel like they should have arrived with like 20 themes and like, you know, 10 of them are just like generic, like not not themed around culture in any way whatsoever. And then like eight of them are sports and then they did, they could do like Wicked for good in like a movie or a TV. They could do stranger things. I don't know. Like, you know what I mean?

Like they could have figured out maybe a bigger launch for this that made. it feel a little less like an ad for wicked. Yeah, I think I think because there is the only well technically two themes within the one pack right. Yeah. I feel like that does make it feel like an ad. And it is an ad. Let's let's not sugarcoat it. Yeah, 100%. But I feel like this can be utilized in a way that would be good for every single kind of thing that Google wants to partner with because obviously Google has tons and tons of partnerships, right? Millions potentially across the globe. I feel like this could be a really good way to expand the, and it isn't just customizability. It's the, it's almost like the community aspect of pixel

theming. Like, because, hey, we all, we all like our themes a certain way, like on our devices. Like, I don't have much on my home screen. Right. But at the same time, I probably would have a, like if I had a sports team theme, I probably would go and apply that. Like, the downside here is if this is limited every single time, I do think that it'll kind of great and grind and people get annoyed by it. So what happens if what happens at the end of the day, do you think? You probably keep access. Do you think you have to download it? to it, but you, I think, so you have to sign in your Google account to this pixel theme packs app, which I found very weird. So maybe that's a storage mechanism, but in terms of

when you're able to doubt, once it's on your device, I'm sure they're not removing it, but once you get a new device questions. We've seen, you know, like Facebook Messenger has like themes that are no longer available, but if you, if you're using them, you can still use them. You know what I mean? It's just if you change it, you lose it. It wouldn't surprise me if that maybe is, but that feels like worst case scenario to me is that if you change, once it's gone, if you change your alarm clock sound, maybe you don't get it back or something. We won't know until it's gone. Yeah. Well, I can see that one being a good option. I think, but let's go wider scope for this pixel drop because I still feel guilty saying pixel drop, it's feature

drop to me. It's feature drop to you guys listening. AI summaries. This is probably the big addition, right? It's a big thing. And it's all. also the thing most out of left field for a random November feature drop for a not QPR, not QPR2. This is the most out of left field and the thing that most signifies its significance. So notification summaries, we saw them on iOS. They're now on Pixel phone specifically. They are just messaging apps. Google is avoiding that pitfall by just focusing on on group conversations and longer chat messages, short conversations don't, nothing happens to them. But other than that, it's pretty really straightforward. You see a sparkle icon,

summarize text is italicized. It's really, it's, I don't know, this should probably be an Android 16 feature. It's just out of the blue right now. Yeah. Yeah. I know you have some thoughts about this, Will, so please get into AI summaries. I know you have thoughts on this. You've told me. It's just, to me, it's, and, you know, maybe I've said this on a different episode or something.

I can't tell, but I can't remember. But to me, it's a dead end feature. I get why companies, like we've seen Apple previously, and now Google on a much more limited scope, want to run towards this type of like AI summary feature for notifications, because if you just, if you're just writing stuff down, if you're just like brainstorming what AI,

could change or enhance, right? The idea of like, oh, summarize your notifications. Like you can, yeah, put that on the wish list. In action, I just like, I don't know who this benefit, right? Because like, if you're in a group chat, it's either, either, it's going to fall into one of two categories, usually. It's either just nonsense, right? Like, for lack of a better word, bullshit, right?

It's, you're just, you're just talking. and so a summary in that case is probably not going to help you because, what, it's going to summarize like a funny joke that somebody sent? Like, it's not going to work. And then, or it's going to be like actually important details of like, oh, we're all getting together for this birthday party. Here's all the information you need to know, which is kind of the example Google uses. And I can see, I can see where that comes from. But if I'm thinking about it, I wouldn't trust the AI summary to like fully get the details right. So I'm going to end up reading those messages anyway. And then, and then I just, I don't know. Like, I don't think it takes

me that long to read my incoming messages. I either want to catch up on them or I, I don't. I just don't. This feels like a feature that, uh, is very appealing to, to, you know, Silicon Valley types, but I just don't think we'll ever really catch on or find a lot of use in the real world. And maybe I'm wrong. I'm open for you guys to, to disagree with me on this. But I just, I don't see the vision. I agree with you on the messaging side of things. I quite like the idea of the notification grouping, i.e. promos, news. Fine with that. Although that's hilariously a little similar.

It's not exactly how it works on iOS, but it is kind of how it works on iOS, where it's per app. It's just funny to see a little bit of an iOS concept bleed, just a little bit, bleed into Android. But I fully, I'm fully with that. It's more of the summaries where I start to. not see the video. Yeah, I mean, I hope that Google isn't looking over and seeing what they're doing with notifications on iOS because they have atrocious. I nearly swore then.

That's how much I hate notifications on iOS. They are absolutely, they're horrendous. That's the most polite way I can describe it. So taking one aspect of it, yeah, okay, I'll allow the AI notification summaries, but I don't know. I agree with you that you kind of in group chats for people and you don't want everything single thing summarized. Yeah.

You kind of want all of that. context. And especially, I feel like, I feel like if you're having a one-to-one conversation with people, I know that Google said that they're going to try and do this more, or it appears to be more catered towards group chats. It's almost like a bit of, I know, I'm extrapolating a lot here. I'd feel a little bit disrespectful if people were like, oh, I want a summary of what you've said. Like, no, read what I've said. I've sent you this for a reason. If it's one-to-one comms, it's a little bit different. But I don't know, there's some things I like, there's some things I don't like. I mean, it does appear, Abner, that you can disable this anywhere or you have to

enable it to be available. So that element is kind of good. At least it's not opt, it's opt in rather than opt out. Yeah, it's very, very straightforward about that being off by default. Some, I don't know, I, more than life, everybody gets so many notifications. So I do think messaging, I kind of think messaging is the wrong. to start almost because it's so personal. It's inherently personal. So maybe that was the long stretch. So the feature you're talking about, the grouping of low priority notifications, that's coming next month, which speaks to another odd thing about which we'll get to in a bit. Yeah, that's coming next month, notification grouping. I kind of feel like notification overload is a thing, but I don't think

that it's necessarily chat. People love seeing messages. They love seeing chats from other people. But maybe there is another aspect of the population where you just get too many messages. They're too popular. Maybe some people are too popular. This is who this feature is for.

No, see, for me, the biggest worrying thing is, and this is, I'm reaching the point where my parents are in the 60s now, if I get a message from my parents and it gets summarizing correctly, that can send my heart rate up into the, upper echelons. So in that respect,

I hope that Google has erred on the side of caution with the way that they summarise this stuff. I think that's probably what me and you were thinking here. Well, like, the way that Apple handle it was terrible. They just was like, let it loose. Let's see what happens. It felt like that. I'm sure it wasn't the case.

But yeah, I want to make sure when I test this out for myself, I'm sure there'll be some really funny AI summaries. Some of them will be hilarious, unintentionally. But to your point about your parents, I mean, the problem becomes that there's an inherent distrust. You have to have an inherent distrust of these things. And that's true of any AI feature.

You have to at least a little bit be on your guard at all times to look for things that might be wrong. It's, you know, I find myself, and I'm sure this is true for all of us. But like, you know, you do look at the AI overviews when you do a Google search. It's almost impossible, especially on mobile, to like, fully like, commit to skipping over it every time. And sometimes I catch myself being like, oh, that's probably the right answer and moving on. But every now and then you catch one where it's the wrong answer and you know it's the wrong answer. And that's going to be true here too.

And then you're going to have to open up the messages anyway and read through them and see what context it got wrong or what context it misunderstood. And at that point, are you saving any time? I'm here to say no. And what I really would like is, I mean, God, it's basically just like all of these like Daily Hub concepts, which is not my messages, but other, you know, emails and, and DoorDash advertisements and all this stuff wrapped up into one, like, evening summary that AI if I's it all in a easy-to-read post, but I don't want that, I want that to be for corporations talking to

me. I don't want that to be for, like, my best friend texting me about what we're doing this weekend. Like, it just feels, you know, as we've talked about, like, so impersonal and so and human in a way that like I agree with Avner it's it's if there is a route for these this sort of concept I don't think messages is is a particularly good place to start or even one again where there's I see a lot of utility when we get into this I do wonder if this is going to be gamified a little bit by specific messaging systems because obviously the scam detection has rolled out a lot further now which I think is great I do wonder if there's going to be some crossover there like just talk us talk us to what's happening with scam

detection avenue because i believe this is coming to all the devices which is great so scam detection is now applying to any app previously this is just google messages but now uh google's just looking at any chat app that sends a notification and applying its scam detection features to it um it's going from pixel six and newer it's which is pretty that's a pretty good thing to go that far back so yeah you just get a prominent red badge that says possible likely scam on the alert. So yeah, it's a pretty, that's a genuinely good feature, scam detection. So the other announcement is messages. Well, it's pixel drop adjacent kind of.

It's launching for all Android phones, but remix, a remix feature powered by Nanobanana. You just long press on the message in the bottom corner. or when you add a photo in the bottom corner there will be a remix button which you add a prompt and it's pretty straightforward but at the same time it's always popular

this editing and changing the styles always popular I have tried this a few times it is quite fun to play around with and again I think it comes back to something I've said for probably the better part of a year when we saw Pixel Studio for the first time it feels like it's the it's in the perfect position

for like that memeification of stuff that you have in group messages or you chatting with your friends and someone might send a picture and then you can just remix that. You can take that picture and remix it again. I think that's kind of good. I'd quite like that aspect of it. And I think some of the results are fantastic. We know that nanobananas incredible at doing certain things.

But have you guys even had the opportunity to try this yet? Because I've been playing around with some of my friends' photos in group chats and it's quite addictive. At a high level, it's, yes, it's already in the Gemini app. It's also an AI mode, but really putting it into the social apps, people, you might not think that, like, going to Gemini, their Gemini app is a hassle or whatever, but the fact that it's right there, it's one of the better parts of putting AI everywhere, that it's just there, you don't have to think about it, you don't have to switch context. so yeah this is it's a it's a very simple feature in terms of we've had this for a few months few weeks now but it is going to be a popular one yeah I do wonder if that people will take it for trends as well like we have that miniature figurine trend recently I know Google have given

that as an example but that that kind of stuff is is kind of cool especially with friends and family and obviously I hope that obviously everything's watermarked and stuff like that but I can show people make some absolutely funky creations. So if you haven't tried that and it is available on your device, definitely give that a go. I highly recommend it. It's good fun. They don't stop there with this AI stuff because this feels like the AI pixel drop, right? Tell me a little bit about this photos, personalized edits, because this is one that I glossed over initially when we did the deep dive into video. Because I don't have this available. Google had a lot of, at the same day on Tuesday, they had a lot of photo announcements. Ask photos, which is horribly named. But it's, yeah,

ask photos. That is conversational search. That is rolling out worldwide at the U.S. Availability. But the feature you're talking about is, so if you have face groups, Google will be able to, you'll be able to ask Google to conversationary, edit your images. And Google will look at your face groups, people that you've identified, that you've manually tagged, and it'll use those previous photos to update, to accurately modify the image you want. So the example who gave was removing some of these sunglasses, opening their eyes, making some of these smile, et cetera, and those will tap into the previous known photos of that person that Google has that they've already stored.

I'm guessing you need a big library of images of those people within your photos library for this to work correctly, right? I'm not, I mean, I guess, does it just work with people for now? Or is it pets as well? Because I have a huge library of photos of my pet. So I'm wondering if I can kind of be like, oh, make sure she's not looking down at the floor or looking at the tree in my hand, that kind of stuff. Because I, like, am I right in thinking this is US only for now still?

yeah i think this one personalized edits a lot of the photos things are but like i said like they're starting to expand internationally with finally with um ask the conversational search and i'm sure help me edit will be next but yeah uh there's a lot of photo stuff you can read that on the site but i think the last big one for this feature drop is this uh power saving mode for google maps only available on the pixel 10 series when you're navigating with car navigation just car navigation driving navigation you can press the power button and you get the ui on your basically you're always on display ish we haven't tested it out but it's a black and white simplified navigation UI that just shows the map next direction and other key details so i'm sure this is

going to be another popular one. Yeah, I think this is a good one. You, I mean, you're an Android Auto user as well. Yeah. You use your phone propped up. I think this would maybe use my phone propped up to be, to be quite honest with you, because this is kind of cool. Yeah, it's one of the things that I guess I don't need, but for people who are in older vehicles, or even just vehicles without, without Android Auto, or you prefer using your phone. Like, what a no-brainer idea of like, you know, you probably won't need this feature usually, but if you either you're in a situation where you didn't realize that you didn't bring a charger and you went on a road trip or something. I don't know. There are situations where you can see this just

being like, yeah, you know what? I just need to get home. I'm an hour away from home and my phone's at like 8%, but this is going to get me there or something. Like I, it's a worst case feature, right? But like those are sometimes the best features because you want to have those in your time of need. So I don't know. I really like this. I wish, I hope it comes to to more than just the Pixel 10 series because I don't see a reason that this has to be restricted to just the Pixel 10 or even just Pixel in general. I feel like this could this could come to other Android phones considering most of them have Amel-led displays now. It's probably tied to that wallpaper feet that always on display wallpaper feature that the pixel 10 God. Yeah. Are you using

that? I'm not using that. I'm not I've it's my least I've never liked it. Yeah. I didn't like it when Apple did like a similar thing. I didn't like it when everybody wrote about it. Oh, I hated when Apple did it. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, I am a give me the time, give me my notifications. I'm fine with the time being lit up in color, but that's, that's as far as I go. I'm going to turn it on just to spite the pair of you and see how it's on with it because I didn't realize you can do this. I, this is one that I have to, I remember setting it up. I reset my pixel 10 recently again. And this is just the pitfalls of making videos for the channelists. Sometimes you end up having to restore your phone quite regularly to do things a certain way.

But yeah, I'm going to do it. I'm going to see how I get on. But this, to me, feels like one of those features that, like you said, Will it, why has this not been a thing before? This just feels like the ultimate low power way to get maps. Like I can see this as a cyclist. I mean, does it have to be in a vehicle to use this or can you use this on a bike? Oh, damn.

I mean, I'm sure you can set yourself to drive, even though you're talking. Probably not safe. Maybe here in the UK is, because we do cycle on the same roads. But, yeah, maybe you could try it and see if it works. But this feels like a no-brainer to just bring this wide to everyone. But I can kind of understand, like you say, make it a pixel 10 feature for a little bit. Even if it wasn't, even if they kept it like, to your point, Amner, if it is like a specific pixel feature that it's tying into, I still think that they could

build like a lighter version of this into maps in general to just like go black and white and like maybe turn off you know if it can turn off any specific like background feature like if it's like looking for nearby restaurants or something I don't know like you could see a way where like

they split the difference and maybe it is better on pixel better on pixel 10 but is available more widely I think any safety specific feature like this and I would say that this is a safety feature I'd like to see as wide as possible. Yeah, safety features, they keep coming, actually,

because the VIP, Pixel VIP's widget, have any of you guys using this? I'm not using this widget at all. No, I'm not either. There's a new option here, right? I'm using a lot to open messaging, open messages. And the current, the conversations.

So basically it just gives you like four or five people, four people, is it maximum that you have? Eight people, yeah. Eight people, okay, well, you're calling me intrigue now because this sounds like a really good option to have when I have like friends and family and stuff. So this will give you information on the person nearby if there's like weather warnings,

crisis alerts, that kind of stuff. Do we know what the limitations of this is? I think the example they gave was potential flooding. Yeah, so Google has an extensive, they have an extensive weather, crisis alert system around the world when they, when people identify these emergencies. so you just get to see a nice certification so you can check in with people have to see how they are.

Yeah, I'm intrigued to see how this works. I'm hoping that they were, again, err on the side of caution and kind of give you the base level of risk rather than just be like, oh, it has to be a certain level of threshold. The threshold's quite low if that makes sense because you kind of want to know what the threshold is

before you act on it. You know what I mean? Like you want to know, is a genuine potential flood risk or is it like almost a little bit too cautious from Google? I don't know. I don't know what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is that this could be quite scary for people who don't know. They don't know and then they get,

they see that one of the contacts has a potential flooding risk nearby, but I guess we'll know in a few weeks when this starts rolling out a bit more widely. As for the wrapping up the kind of the pixel feature drop or feature drop before we get into kind of what's happening with the 1 plus 15, there's been some big expansions of other applications here that, I think it might be glossed over a little bit. I think adding some of these features like the journal application to pixel 8 and 9, because I think a lot of people complained about that when it launched with the pixel 10 is fantastic.

I'm glad that Google is whether the listing or not is doing this and bringing back porting things that people want to use on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. And we've seen this. I feel like we see this a lot over the last couple of generations of like, you know, Pixel generation launches in either October or August, depending on what year it is, but, you know, or maybe both. But, you know, you get this new hardware. It's got some new software features. And then in the next, like, big feature drop, whether that's, you know, in November like it was now, whether it was in December or October, whatever, like two to three months after new hardware comes out, those, some of those features start to come to, especially if it's like new apps like this, some of them start to come to older hardware. I think that's, fine. Like I, I think it's like a nice little perk for those, you know, early upgraders, like early adopters upgrading from their old phones to get like a taste of

what's new, uh, you know, before Google brings it to older hardware. They don't hold it for a year or something. I think it's totally, you know, I, I, I kind of like the strategy. I think it's like a smart way to like reward people who are jumping to new, to new hardware. Yeah. I like, I like the idea that you hold on to your device. Like I say, everyone's holding on the devices for longer than ever. And if Google is understanding that and making sure that the previous two to three generations get specific applications, I think that's great. Same for that. We're seeing device health roll back to Pixel 6 series.

I think that's great because obviously are they coming up to their final year of support now, Pixel 6? I think it is the fifth year, they're rolling into it now, 2026. so yeah you want to know the health of your device should I get a battery replacement it's all good stuff as far as I'm concerned I think that you can never see a negative there let's get into one plus 15 then will because me and you have been using this device I'm yeah I want to hear your thoughts because you wrote the review on this there's a lot of things I agree with you with some things I want to clash with you but let's get get into the meat and potatoes of this review and tell me what you think of this

survive. Well, it would be a boring conversation if we agreed on everything anyway. So yeah, I mean, I mean, look, the short, the long and short of it is the best battery life I've ever used on a smartphone, bar none. I mean, like, we're talking, you know, yesterday I was at while I was taking photos and you could see it in the review that I'm at like 21%. And that was on my third day off the charger. And I wasn't being like, I was, you know, I was hitting like three-ish, three and a half hours of screen on time per day in that span. So, you know, nine-ish hours of screen on time over three days with background tasks, right? Like, that was primarily on Wi-Fi, but still, I mean, we're talking about, like, this is a two-day phone for 99% of people, like a true two-day

phone. And then, you know, beyond that, like, depending on your use case, you might hit three or even four days and when you need to go charge like you could throw that thing on the charger for 10 minutes and be good for another day like it's it's it's it's remarkable i mean this thing has a bigger battery than the pixel tablet like that's where we're at with with silicon carbon which i think is it's nuts like it's crazy and it makes me want to use the phone and it's a bummer that many of the other aspects about the phone don't make me want to use it um you know i think the design is clean and sparse, but I also think it just, it feels so much like an iPhone, you know, insert number here, pro max. Not the newest one, I guess, but like certainly an iPhone

15 or 16 pro max, you know, which is, it's fine, but it's considering the last couple of one plus devices, especially the 13, had such a strong identity. It's disappointing to see that gone. I thought the camera was okay, but it's certainly a step back compared to the, the Hasselblad processing. Now, that evolved over time, so I'm willing to see, you know, if One Plus is kind of backup to the standard that their last couple of devices set, you know, in a year or two. But at launch, it is decidedly not as good of a camera system as the one plus 13. And then I just, I really struggled with the software. Oxygen OS16, most of its new features are either add-on AI abilities that I don't think are particularly interesting. There's not even that many

new this year. And what is new is, you know, pretty lackluster. I feel like if you're using, you know, AI skills on this, it's going to be Gemini. And then, and then it's a lot of iOS clone software up to including, you know, the shortcut key is such a rip-off. It made me laugh when I saw it. And, you know, the lock screen has big, like, glassy numbers on it now. Or you can set it that way, which, where have I seen that before? And, yeah, so it's, it's this very amplified One Plus experience that just, it feels like you're using a knockoff. I compared it in my review to, to buying a quote-unquote,

Gucci bag on the street and it's like sure you're saving money but you're using a knockoff and in this case you're not saving that much money like the Gucci bag off the street in Chinatown or whatever is going to be significantly cheaper than a real Gucci bag. This is not that much cheaper than an iPhone if what you're after is that type of experience. So I don't know. It's it's not a bad of phone at all. I could I could stick on this for the entirety of 2026 and and be totally fine and have a perfectly fine smartphone experience, which is kind of the baseline that you'll find in every flagship today. But compared to the 1 Plus 13, which, you know, it's still a 2025 phone. So I think it's safe to say it personally is one of my phones of the year. It's just a big step back. And it's

a little disappointing. And I don't know where One Plus really goes from here. I think they need to kind of rethink this strategy. Yeah, I agree with you on some aspects. Do you know what I will say is it is eerily similar to the pixel 10 in the hand. The shape, size, a pixel 10 proxel, sorry. And the camel bump looks like the pole fold. Yeah. So it's like, it's like this halfway house between what Google's doing with the pixel, but they're differentiating themselves on the software.

And then with the, um, they kind of haven't differentiated, differentiated to too much from the, from the iOS software. Yeah. They've like, I think you alluded to it. It feels like one, uh, two steps. forward, one step back. They're no better off than they were than the 1 plus 13.

But at the same time, the releasing in the same year has probably hindered that a little bit. I don't know why we're not seeing one plus specifically an oppo by extension lean more into material for expressive because this would be a way to truly

separate it from what Apple is doing with iOS. Because there are touches. It's like they've said, oh, we'll put a little bit of what Apple's doing with liquid glass in here. but we won't go a whole, like whole, whole foot in, if that makes sense. It's like, I don't know.

I don't know if you see this. Like you say, the lock screen is annoying because it's like, why have you made this see-through that doesn't make any sense? And then it's like, there's barely anything else in the OS that you see-through. It's like, it's the buttons, I guess, on the lock screen. But otherwise, it feels very iOS 18, I suppose. And then, and then with these little touches. And maybe, you know, maybe it just was too, too late in the development cycle to really

lean into that. So maybe that comes with oxygen L. 17. Who knows. But, but yeah, it's, you know, they built this, oh, it's terrible. They built this categories view into the app drawer, which is like the most nonsense thing I've ever seen because it, it replicates the app library from the, um, from, from, from iOS, which is already like a, a worse version of the app drawer. It's essentially, it's Apple loves to do this where they finally realize they want to take an Android feature. but they have to they have to do it differently they can't just copy it they have to change it which is how we ended up with the always on display that always had a picture on it uh before they eventually added a blacked out one like two months later um but but so they add this this category's

view to the app drawer which you can't set as the default you always have to toggle to it manually so nobody's going to do that it's a worse version of what already exists and most unknowingly and maybe this is petty of me but despite the fact that that the word fits categories, the word categories will just constantly scroll when you have your after open. It actually does eventually stop after like three minutes, I realize. But, but, but it's, it's just, it drives me nuts. It's one of those decisions where it's like, this isn't for anybody. You can't set it as the default, so nobody's going to use it. And it's annoying. And like, that's kind of how I feel about OxygenOS 16, which is so frustrating because just a year ago,

I was like, oh, I like Oxygen OS 15 more than what, when you want. is doing, what Samsung's doing with one UI, like I felt like it was the right mix of like looks a little bit like normal, you know, quote unquote pixel normal Android, but with these flourishes, these power user flourishes of like icon customization or, you know, stuff that made it feel a little bit more flexible than what the pixels launcher does. And it's not that this stuff's gone, but like they've leaned so much more into some of these Apple decisions that it just, I don't know, it's so frustrating. I think, I disagree with you on the camera, by the way.

I real like the colors on it. And you can see that they've learned from the, the Hasselblad partnership. I actually think the colors are fine. It was, it was the sharpening. Yeah, no, true. That aspect, yeah. Some of the, uh, sometimes the Zoom is good as well. But I've had some bad luck with the Zoom where I feel like I get a lot of bloom off like

sunlight and stuff like that. But it, once you're, I don't know, it's a mixed bag. I don't think it's like a disaster or anything, but it, it doesn't feel I never, not once, Did I have a moment, like I did with the One Plus 13, many times, where I would take a photo and go, whoa, like when I see the finished result, like the processed result. I would see the photo and go, oh, okay. Which is like, not what you want. I think that's kind of how we feel about this phone a little bit, even though there's some fantastic elements of it. I think if we just frame it as a gaming phone, this is insanely good.

Yeah. This is an insanely good game. This is probably the best gaming phone. Like, you have a tablet-sized battery, and I do think that One Plus has lent into that with a marketing. pre-release and in China. This is a fantastic gaming phone, in my opinion. It has all of the top tier specifications that you need. The software is a little bit. It feels like they've toned it down. The good parts of it from last year. But yeah, I can't really fault it in too many ways. What we think in seven, eight out of ten at the most? Yeah. If I had scored it, it would have been like

a seven out of ten, which is to say like it's totally like no, I don't think anybody's going to be mad about this. And if the stuff I'm complaining about, you can brush right by if you, like, don't care about the iOS stuff. And you can't ignore it pretty well if you, if you go around it. You know, there's the plus key, maybe you can't. But otherwise, you can, you can set enough stuff up that, like, you can kind of ignore it. The battery life alone. I mean, man, you know, I've seen a couple comments already of like, oh, who cares about this? This kills battery anxiety forever. Like, you will never have a. The combination of a battery this size with charging that fast, I mean, it's like, that's it.

So to get to that battery, to get to that battery, is it, is the device any thicker or? It feels chunky, right? It feels chunky, well. It feels chunky, but that comes with this squared off design that everybody's using. It's the same on pixel, where it's just, if you're not going to make it a thin phone, the lack of a curved side, and I, you know, I'm not counting the very slightly chamfered edges, But the flat edges just make everything feel chunkier. And like that was true on it.

But it feels like you're holding an iPhone, whatever, 16 Pro Max, which I reviewed. I haven't used the 17, but I've held an iPhone 16 Pro Max. It feels very similar thickness-wise. But with this massive silicon, I mean, this thing has me convinced that's, you know, despite its shortcoming, silicon carbon is the future of battery tech. Because, yes, silicon carbon batteries will, you know, degrade. faster. Let's put aside whether or not they'll expand faster, because that is a real concern. But in terms of the degradation, okay. So like in four years, maybe, yeah, you lose a couple of hours.

You're still going to be looking at a two-day phone. Like, you know, I've been using my pixel 10 this morning, not that the reviews live. And like, I'm watching that battery percentage number just drop. And I'm like, how fast it gets you to adjust to, how long did it take to adjust to having a multi-day battery phone. A few days, after a few days, I stopped plugging it in overnight. And I was just like, I'm just going to rock. And like, when I need to plug it in, I'll plug it in. And so that was like, again, you know, I took those photos yesterday afternoon.

And then I think I hit like 18 or 17 percent and I threw it on the charger. I was only going to throw it on the charger for 20 minutes. And then I ended up making dinner. And so it definitely was on there longer than it needed to be. But, you know, I came back to a full charge. And even now after a night of using it and then it's sitting next to my bed overnight and then using it a bit this morning,

it's at 87%. Like, you know, it's pretty good. I just wish the rest of the phone around it was as good as the one plus 13 was because if you just shoved this battery in the one plus 13, I'd be like 10 out of 10. I love it. But yeah, I think that definitely is how I kind of feel about it as well.

There's a few shortcomings. But hey, all I want to see is Google now take this and be like, hey, we've seen these guys doing these insane battery life. Maybe that's one for the pixel 12, probably. Or we see silicon carbon in a future pixel. But that's the feature drop or pixel drop, whatever you want to call it. 1 plus 15, quick overview. We've only given you the highlight reel there.

Go check out Will's deep dive into this review. It's fantastic read. I just read it before this podcast. And only a couple of things I disagree with them, which is a good sign, right? We've got consensus. But, yeah, expect more. content like the one plus 15 will be comparing some other devices in the coming days. But yeah, I just want to say thanks for joining me again, guys.

It's always good fun, chit-chatting, pixel drops, random devices that feel really out of place. We're getting a flagship one-plus phone after we've had a flagship one-plus phone in January. It is what it is, right? But, yeah, thanks for joining us, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Pixelated, a 9-to-5 Google podcast.

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