Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Pixel 8, Pixel Watch 2, and a lot of AI

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

Techtober starts off with a bang! This week, Google had an event where it (officially) announced all of its products! Marques, Andrew, and David start it off with the Pixel Buds Pro update and the new Pixel Watch 2 before going deep on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. They talk about everything from the new camera system to the scary good AI features that Google is putting in its smartphones. Of course, we wrap it all up with some Google-themed trivia. There's a lot to get into. Enjoy! Shop products mentioned: Google Pixel 8 - https://geni.us/2LGS325 Google Pixel 8 Pro - https://geni.us/emmE Google Pixel Watch 2 - https://geni.us/OCxd Links: MKBHD Pixel 8 Impressions: https://bit.ly/pixel8impressions Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Instagram/Threads/Twitter: Waveform: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https:https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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What is going on, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And I think it's safe to say this will be a googly episode of the podcast because as Techtober rolls rolls on we had the google event this week they managed to surprise us with a lot of things i had no idea what they were going

to announce they turned out to have been working on a phone a watch i'm surprised they made a phone a bunch of software just a crazy amount of surprises uh so we'll get into all of that that was also laced with sarcasm i hope you could hear that i can't even the podcast like fake sarcastically pretend to be surprised i was trying i was trying but we'll get into all of that. That was also laced with sarcasm. I hope you could hear that. I can't even fake sarcastically pretend to be surprised. I was trying. I was trying. But we did get some stuff. What should we start with? Because we got Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro.

We got Pixel Watch 2. We got some Google and Bard stuff. Yeah. And then we got a, there's also a bunch of software features. There's a Pixel Buds update. Oh, yeah. Software update. Yeah.

Where do you want to begin? Do you want to start with a Pixel Buds software update? Yeah, let's just do that. Okay, we're bunch of software features. There's a Pixel Buds update. Oh, yeah. Software update. Yeah. Where do you want to begin? Do you want to start with a Pixel Buds software update? Yeah, let's just do that. We're kind of in order. Let's do retention farming and just go worst to best. Let's go from the most boring stuff at the beginning. How dare you. Pixel Buds update.

What was the Pixel Buds update? Okay, so, yeah, they put out an update. They have two new colors. It comes in porcelain and bay now. Nice. Bay meaning blue. Blue. Yeah, because the bay area. Neat. That's what it's for. Blue sky. Yeah. update they have two new colors it comes in porcelain and bay now nice bay meaning bay meaning blue yeah because the bay area neat that's what it's for blue sky yeah pacific ocean water yeah wet nice anyway so um yeah so the software update is that they now have a context aware ambient mode

um basically if you start talking it will it'll turn on transparency mode and then another person can talk to you and it'll keep on transparency mode but then as soon as they stop talking or after you stop responding it goes back to playing your music and having it in um in a noise cancellation it's exactly what apple added in the AirPods a couple of months ago. Yeah. I used it at the event. The Pixel one? Yeah. Okay. How was it?

Good. I'm excited to try it. My biggest issue with it is that it takes like a good second and a half, two seconds to actually kick in. So you start talking and then it goes, you wait like a beat or two, and it goes, and then it's in ambient mode. People start talking, and then you wait a little bit after they stop talking, and it goes. And it's just kind of, I don't like, I don't really love this feature for the same reason I don't like it on the AirPods Pro. The exact same reason I don't like it on the AirPods Pro.

It's like, the consistency is good, right? Like, they wanted to, the whole AI aspect of it is that they want to know it is always you talking. Right. If you want to go in transparency mode. If you start talking, then you probably want to hear things around you responding. So, let me turn on transparency mode. But I just, no. But I just know. Okay, I'll say two things. One, I tried the AirPods version.

I thought it was really, really good. But then two, also, I've tried, there are other headphones that just like, I think they have a conversation mode where the second you start talking, it just pauses your music. And that's good enough for me. I'm not like singing along or like accidentally triggering it usually ever.

So if I'm like on a flight, like my habit habit is just like as soon as the flight attendant walks up i just take the headphones off but now i guess i kind of you could do the cup feature remember the sony cup feature yeah the cup makes it seem like you're trying harder not to listen to somebody it kind of does but you know this is a this is a clever way of doing it and you're right it is exactly the way apple's done it with adaptive adaptive audio audio is what they're calling it um i think it's cool i think it'll be turned on by some people i think it'll be ignored by other people but it's a good feature to offer i feel like it's one of those things where in the case of airpods and the pixel buds pro it's like really good isn't good enough it needs this needs to be like perfect

because it's already kind of awkward to not pull your headphone out when talking to someone. To me, it just seems rude, but I don't use any of these. I will always pull a headphone out if I'm trying to talk to somebody. I agree. Yeah.

There's actually been a conversation around that with like, is it rude to talk to people with earbuds? Yeah. This is a, this is a thing. There is a small, I don't know how small it is but there is a subculture in certain cities where everyone walks around with their headphones in all day and never takes them out yeah and it's totally normal for them to talk to someone who has

their headphones in and they also have their headphones in and that's normal a lot of times it's airpods a lot of times it's whatever else i feel so rude doing that but this feature is designed for those people who think it's totally normal yeah feel so rude doing that i don't know why this feature is designed for those people who think it's totally normal yeah i think there's also eventually be normal to everyone i think i totally agree with that it will be normal to everyone but i think there's a small difference between what both of you said where if you are the one with the headphones starting the conversation then it's like is this rude there are people who like to have headphones on as a way of saying like i do not want to be talked to right now yeah and that's why you buy over ear headphones at this point if you're talking

to buy over your headphones unless you want to shut people up yeah that's the difference between earbuds and that's the main difference yeah yeah it's true yeah i i guess i i see it there's like two versions one is you start the conversation The other is the other person started. So if I'm going to go order food somewhere, I walk up to the counter and start talking. Then it'll work because I'm going to get a response a few seconds later. Yeah. The other version is someone taps you on the shoulder and starts talking

and you're listening to music and you don't hear them until you somehow manage to activate the mode by talking that's that's a good question if you are because it's trying to pick up your voice first right so if you tap me on the shoulder say a whole sentence and then i have to go like hold on my adaptive uh headphones haven't started coming out yet let me say another whole sentence and then can you repeat yourself and then it comes that that's yeah i will say it's really really good at knowing um like that someone is continuing to talk to you versus just ambient background noise it's really good at distinguishing that so it keeps it in transparency mode until you fully stop talking for like a second and a half or so but the biggest

issue right now is how long it takes to trigger and untrigger but of course course they need that because they don't want to accidentally going off all the time. That would be worse. You know, it's annoying that it like that it mutes your your music or your podcast, whatever you're listening to. So I don't know. I'm personally more of a fan of manual pause. Take your butt out. Talk for a while. Put back in.

That's what I'm gonna keep doing. But I think that like you said andrew a generation of people are going to eventually grow up just where it's natural and google even in their marketing they were like now you never need to take your earbuds out that's literally was in there glue them in baby yeah um never charge them i didn't get to try them but i have to say if you think they're even slightly impressive in a demo unit where there's probably 50 other people talking and trying them as well it was in it it was in an isolated sound chamber never mind i was gonna say if that was like show floor that would be super show floor would be

crazy impressive the demo that i got from apple is also in like a small room with like seven people yeah it worked amazing i'm sure it did yeah yeah but it is what it is yeah um the other thing that is really nice is they it now supports bluetooth super wide band which basically doubles the bandwidth so now phone call it should sound a lot better um because the biggest issue with phone calls is the bluetooth bandwidth just compresses the hell out of your voice until it just is this like thing so it'll be nice to actually hear that's how all my phone calls sound yeah um although super wideband is uh exclusive to pixelate and newer so you have to use the new phones for that um and then clear calling yeah really dope obviously we we showed that in the video that we made um and it sounds really good

removes background noise extremely well so this is another thing that like showed that in the video that we made, and it sounds really good. It removes background noise extremely well. So this is another thing that has existed in the iPhone for one year of software now, where there's a toggle to switch microphone modes, and it removes background noise, and it works really well. And now Google's like, yeah, okay, we can do that too. And we'll just built in noise cancellation in all phone calls. Has that been that long? Because they just showed that in the event this year. So I thought it was just this year.

iOS 17. Okay. Yeah. This one's just for phone calls and it's on by default for all calls. Yeah, I think they're using similar technology because in the video features of the Pixel 8, they also have Magic Eraser Audio. Audio Magic Eraser is what they call it what is

it it's called audio magic eraser which i think they'll probably eventually rebrand that's a bad name i think it's just kind of what they it's very cool though they showed me a demo of it and you take a video and it has a bunch of different sounds you hit edit audio and then it separates all the sounds and it's like talking wind, um, nature, this, and you can adjust each of those individual frequencies to go away. So you can just take the wind away or you can just take the talking where you can just take the, the like barking away. This is going to, if this works the way it's supposed to in the demo room, it worked really

well. Revolutionizes me shooting autofocus videos. That's true because every poor ellis over there every time i shoot autofocus videos it is me it is a lot of wind and it is a lot of beeping and train noises from that whatever's going on back there every single time ellis versus a part two it's just how much can i get rid of it that still is the question yeah feeling like a horse in a room full of Henry Fords right now, boys. Let me tell you. It's just that is the perfect use case because I shoot those videos on a phone.

So I am looking to the built-in features. I shot one on a Pixel last year and I was using the wind removal feature and it was okay. But this, if it works, is going to be cool. Yeah. And then there's also a new low latency mode that gets automatically activated whenever a compatible game gets launched. Oh, it's only for?

That's what it says here. I don't know. I guess he did say like for the gamers out there. He said for the gamers and I was hoping that meant like you could use it while you're playing on your computer. Like you could use them on the computer. Because the Mac now has that gaming mode that if you're wearing airpods doubles the sample rate i was really hoping that that would work on pixel buds as well i don't know maybe that'll come later um yeah so they basically

saved all of these updates for uh to introduce the new colors today feature drop those all went out yeah feature drop those all went out today okay at least everyone that already had pixel buds pro is getting all the updates, although some of them only work on Pixel 8, so there's that. Okay. Should we move to the watch? Yes, that is the next least boring thing. Hey, man.

The Pixel Watch 2. Okay. Okay. So if you haven't already seen our first impressions video, these are getting into things I did cover now, which was I covered both the phones and the watch. So the new Pixel Watch 2 is the same price as last year, 350 bucks. And it looks visually basically the same.

It's the same small puck, the same ultra modern minimal design with like the one button on the side, the curved screens around the outside, same bezel size and everything. But the major things they've changed are, one, it's got a new chip, new quad core chip they're very proud of. Yeah. It's a Snapdragon, a new Snapdragon chip.

Yeah. So performance and battery life should potentially be improved from that. We'll see. Two is they did, they have a bunch of new sensors on the back of your wrist to potentially have more accurate and more reliable heart rate sensor information. There are basically multiple heart rate sensors now, and because they can average all the sensors from different parts of your wrist, they can get more accurate information. Great. And then there's just a couple new software features. There's also a temperature sensor.

Yes, skin temperature sensor. Skin temperature, yeah. Which you're definitely going to use all the time. Apparently it helps with sleep tracking, is what they said. Yeah. It helps with sleep tracking. what they said yeah it helps with sleep tracking r8 sleeps the worst temperature right i think no they know your body no i guess it knows its own temperature because it's changing they have heart rate sensors though yeah i still

don't know but uh but yeah it said better sleep tracking i know nothing about how you track sleep anyways so like i could see how temperature could potentially be something yeah but i don't know i think most of it is heart rate like heart rate is very important to the pixel watch and when you listen to them talk about the new sensors they make a big deal about heart rate they're like heart rate variance heart rate sampling we want it to be much more accurate especially during more often yeah and so during activity well the thing is the regular everyday sampling during the course of your day will probably look the same but it's during a vigorous activity running around high heart rate variance type stuff then it should be more accurate than it was in the past so we'll

have to test that i'll i'll take it to a practice yeah and yeah then there's a couple other features safety check nice so if you walk home you want someone to be able to check in on you you don't check in it contacts them i think safety check in all these different devices we're seeing is might be like one of the most important features we're seeing in like the last year that is just such a good idea that could make so many people so much safer and it's feels like they could have done this five years ago but just like a really simple like hey i'm walking home check on me and if i don't make it in x amount of time maybe call someone i know yeah when i reach a certain destination it's just such a good idea i'm glad to see everything having it you can see the commercials writing themselves yeah basically yes as this happens um what else there's some new

auto workout start and stop yeah detection yeah that was actually a pretty major thing pretty happy about yeah i think the auto stop is actually more useful to me than auto start 100 i always remember to start it but sometimes i get off the bike and just walk away i think ellis did that today at lunch he was like my watch thinks i've been playing ping pong for three hours yeah auto start stop that's useful yeah um what else uh it's improved battery life 24 hours of use with the always on display now um previously it used to be without the always on display is that what the metric was okay yeah because i forgot what the old metric was i just remember it was not good yeah and i

appreciate that they're showing at least a stat with always on display on because it's so easy for all these different things to be like this is your battery life when you turn basically nothing on yeah i'm trying to remember did the pixel watch have always on display disabled out the box yeah it did are they are they going to enable it out the box? It is enabled out the box. Okay. Yeah. That's a meaningful difference. The Pixel Watch is a good-looking watch when always-on display is on. It looks great when you actually have things, or else it just looks like a weird dome. So I appreciate that that's on.

I mean, they needed to improve the battery life on that thing, for sure. So one thing that I think they need to get better at is they have six months of Fitbit premium for free, quote, quote, quote, because the quotes are because you still have to sign up to pay monthly or yearly. So you still have to like put in your credit card information and then do the first six months or whatever. And that gets you like a lot of the Fitbit premium features. But like the one one thing that the Apple Watch really has over it is that just has all the exercise stuff just for free you know there's like fitness plus yeah but fitness plus is everything outside of the watch and the watch just kind of like tracks yeah it's like all these exercises and stuff i don't subscribe to um fitness plus apple fitness plus because it's just classes that i don't take but you're right like tons of fitness tracking from how many steps you take to how long you walk to analyzing your trends

and all these other things all built into apple health that's all free that all just comes with having an iphone and apple watch yeah just cut your ties with it i know i just wanted to go straight to my phone like i'm in the google ecosystem for a reason. Stop pulling me out of it. It's just a weird, like, I think that they bought Fitbit in order to, like, get a head start on all the fitness stuff. But the problem is both the brands are too strong. Yeah. It's now Fitbit with Google. I can kind of understand the first time they did it because Fitbit did have a good name.

And people were buying Fitbits. But I don't think people were buying Fitbits as smart watches it's like its own category no right they just launched the fitbit charge six like two or three days ago as a recording and it it has like a very basic screen that has like the time and maybe it'll send you like icons of notifications but it's not a smart watch and i think that that's what they're doing on purpose they're trying to differentiate like if you want a smart band but i'm wondering how many people still use smart bands instead of i think a lot of people do actually there's like a lot of people especially i've learned this from uh claire's insurance has you get like 20 bucks off a month

if you hit x amount of steps in a month and i think people will buy cheaper oh yeah activity trackers like that for stuff like that because if you're saving 20 bucks a month and a fitbit's under 200 like you wear that for a few years and you're making money fitbit used to offer one that was just a pedometer that you'd put in the back of your shoe and i i wish they would make like an ankle bracelet you could go to jail you can get an ankle bracelet it's not gonna be easy but you can get one yeah it's just like i would i don't really like using smart watches that much anymore and i but i wish i could still get a lot of that information like on a place on my body that isn't really obvious that i have like a smart device that's the thing about the phone stuff. Google Fit on your phone

would just be in your pocket and just count your steps and do all that stuff. And the same thing now on the Apple Watch, this or the iPhone this year, the health app, the fitness app is on the phone. Just counting your steps and counting metrics on your phone. Yeah, so it's like pedometer and stuff, but you don't get any of that additional information. I think you still get trends.

Whether it's like trends of activity up and down over time, how many steps, you know, it's not going to have like blood heart rate and all that get trends whether it's like trends of activity up and down over time how many steps you know it's not gonna have like heart rate heart rate and all that stuff but it's like basic information yeah yeah yeah well we'll try the watch i'm definitely curious if the battery life is meaningfully different because that was one of my big complaints with the last one yeah when i turn always on display on um do we want to talk about bard and ai stuff right now or do we want to do trivia i think we just i think we do bard now because then we're want to talk about bard and ai stuff right now or do we want to do trivia i think we just i think we do bard now because then we're going to talk about the phones and that'll be a while okay there's a lot of stuff here and i didn't watch the entire keynote but this is basically the

way i understand it uh google assistant combining with bard that's the that's the main the main thing that's happening google assistant combining with. So now there are generative AI features inside of Google Assistant. So you can ask Google Assistant to summarize a webpage that you're on, and it will look at your screen in Chrome and read the whole webpage and give you a generative AI summary,

things like that. So the idea is more of the features from this BARD experiment are going to be surfaced to people who use google assistant regularly lots of interesting stuff that that could open up the possibilities of i'm curious if you guys have favorite stuff that you saw but i kind of like the summary web page thing seems like very reliable to me if i just go real quick because i know david will go on for the next 45 minutes on

this um i mean this is exactly what we just talked about with co-pilot last week with like amazon alexa and uh chat chat gpt stuff a few weeks ago just like yeah all this generative ai inside of the assistants will make these assistants so much better because it's just like conversation based and they understand context and this can use your text voice images it can take actions on your phone yeah all of this is going again probably the third week in a row it's going to be the new tech support that we never have to deal with again it's going to make using technology for people who don't know technology so so much easier and that's a huge win yeah yeah i'm picturing like

my grandma using i don't know if she's gonna do it but like asking the assistant to do something that you would think is like an insane request like can you order the flowers from the site from the thing and then it just does it yeah like oh my god it actually works that's how all of us feel though when somebody asks us something and we're like well i can just google it and they're like how do i google it's like google is very good just literally type what you told me on the phone and google probably figures it out yeah that's what this is now and like assistant is just already the best out of all of them yeah so now we're getting barred on top of that yeah it's just gonna be awesome it's kind of super charging like a lot of the things that the assistant already was able to do and i think

when bard first launched we were kind of like why isn't this just google assistant better and i i am predicting that within the next two years, the Bard branding goes away and it just gets re-bundled into Assistant. You think so? This is going to be better Google Assistant. Hear me out. What if Assistant gets bundled into Bard?

I feel like Assistant's such a better name than Bard. I would so much rather say, hey, Bard, than hey, ****. But Google is the strongest brand name in the world as far as like i just want to stop saying hey also like the amount of devices you did it you did it andrew the amount of devices that are already out in the wild that use the hey g keyword is insane like and so it'd be a lot easier to software update those to on the back end just be a lot better at your queries than it is to totally change i don't care about ease i care about what i want google deeter i mean if they allowed you to just change the keyword like with amazon you can say hey

alexa you can also say um hey computer you know they let you say like three or four different things yeah maybe there's two maybe it's dual keywords google's such a pain in the neck to say every time that's the slippery slope though is you want it to be slightly irregular of a word because if it's too easy it's going to accidentally yeah then you get a serious shoe and then yeah so you just say hey mom and it says oh did you say hey bard and you're like yeah that wasn't that close but it thinks it yeah so you gotta be sorry yeah it's all good i feel like assistant with bard is just kind of like the natural progression of what they want Assistant to be, right? Because now it can, I mean, Google Assistant's always been able to look at your display and see what's on your display and stuff. But now it can do things contextually with that.

So it understands a lot more and it can bundle into your other google apps that you have too like a couple of weeks ago they announced bard extensions which allowed you to like access things in your email and do this and that and um you know we've talked about last week like i think casey newton tried it and it was not great for him like it was making up emails that he had never sent i'm gonna need to cite his sources yeah exactly um which by the way, the source citing on the new ARC version is amazing. That's a great shout out. So speaking of, this is a total tangent, but speaking of AI features, this browser that David put us on, this, what is it called? ARC browser. ARC browser, yeah.

Has this big new update where they added a bunch of AI features. Yeah. And they're actually genuinely very useful. And one of them is just, summarize this web page for me so if I'm on a web page I ask it for a summary and then it cites the it cites the part of the website that it's drawing that fact from so if I highlight a sentence and it goes I want like where did you read that it scrolls down and highlights the sentence that says what it was. And it doesn't pull the exact sentence. Like it generates a new sentence to make it simpler. But when you like you can see where you find on page, it brings you exactly to where it brought it.

Yeah. So, you know, when it's making something up or if it is actually drawing from the actual page. Yeah, that's that's good. Yeah, that's Google. Do a little more of that, please. Yeah. Yeah. Sighting sources.

Yeah. They have they also have like find in page where you do control F or command F to do find in page. But if you can't find in page, you just type a question about the page and it creates like a Gen AI answer about the page. Really good. Anyway, back to Bard.

Yeah, it's basically just like a supercharged Google Assistant. And this is, I think, what everyone sort of always assumed that Google Assistant was supposed to be. So now I can look at things on your screen. It can access things in your email. It is a lot more of like a generalized assistant, at least as far as plugging into Google services. Yeah, that's what I wanted it to be. Yeah. Yeah.

At IO, I thought I think we all assume this is what happens. I just wasn't expecting it to be five months later io i thought i think we all assumed this is what happens i just wasn't expecting it to be five months later yeah like already i mean chat gbt basically added um multimodal support like two weeks ago and then like like flies dropping it was just like amazon microsoft google like we're kind of moving towards that omniscient kind of ai at this point yeah um so unfortunately uh assistant with bard is not out yet it's coming later which is so many as are so many of these things yeah yeah i was curious apple did a couple of these now google's in a couple of these later it's a trend that i don't like i'm with you yeah it's weird that we don't know when exactly. Some of them would say, like, next month.

Some of them are saying later this year. Early next year. I don't like that as much. It's weird that they don't just, like, wait to release it or finish the feature first. I'm sure it wasn't the... One of the first ones I remember was that iPhone... What was it called? It's probably a picture feature.

It was a picture feature where it was like increasing the resolution or something oh uh it was um the like middle light detail it wasn't why can't i remember what it was the photonic engine has this feature i forgot what is it called what was it what are you it would like make your fine detail in pictures it had a better very uh distinct name i want to say it was probably like iphone 11 or 12 not photonic engine right it had a different name i just remember it being a like oh deep fusion deep fusion yeah yeah thanks thanks for the deep one deep fusion felt like the first one and that was like this very small thing and a huge list of stuff they announced it took forever to launch now it feels like 50 of the features they mentioned on a phone between the iphone event and the google event yeah aren't coming out till months at least a month there were

a couple years in a row we were right that started with deep fusion where the iphone every year would have like one camera feature that would be coming later yeah and every time i reviewed the phone i would have to be like i i guess we'll see because it's not out at the time of this review and then the next year there's another single camera feature and the next year there's another single camera feature but you're right now i feel like there's a couple things both with cameras and other stuff on the phone that are coming later or that are either about to come out or not yet yeah even on even double tap on the apple watch is still not out yet not out on the watch until sometime

soon i feel like every product in the last apple event had at like two things that weren't coming out when it was launched it's weird and it's it just makes me think a lot about you've always said like don't buy things based on future promises and we're getting to the point where half of the features are future promises and it's yeah i don't think it's a good look yeah in general if you are trying to buy any of these things i would buy it assuming that that feature is never going to come like for real that's true because half of this we're going to talk about the software features on the pixel in a little bit. And a lot of them are not going to launch with the phone. I would buy the phone assuming you never get that feature.

Yeah. And maybe someday in the future they'll put it on the phone and it'll be a bonus for you. But that's still true about every gadget. Or that's going to be way worse than they promised. Exactly. Like Deep Fusion, remember, it barely did anything. Yeah. Like we waited months for it.

And then it came and everyone was excited. And it was like, that maybe looks like one percent better if i squint yeah if you take the photo and just the perfect dim lighting yeah maybe see more detail yeah yeah um but yeah with this with this bart assistant thing one of the examples that they give is like you've got a picture of your puppy on your phone and then you pull it up and you say write me a cute social media post about my puppy and it just does it and it just like contextually writes on but it's like i remember why are we just making all the computers talk to the computers now we talked about this at io remember like how it's like drafting social media posts you guys were mad at the face swap making my own social

media post feels so much a line across so much yeah that's the social media post thing though i'm like this feels weird especially if we're having our computers like scrape to gain like the general consensus of other people's yeah posts and then all those other posts are made by ai too it's like what do we i also feel like they probably use the example of a dog because a dog's not gonna care that i didn't write a social media post for it but you sure as hell know that i can be like write my mom a really nice birthday message that i post publicly and it's like greatest mom in the world blah blah and then like she finds out that i didn't i asked bard to write that that's the most

oh my i hate just thinking about that. Mom, I love you. I will write real messages to you. I will still put photo editing features on the other side of the line. We'll get to that later. But we'll get to that later. I think that overall with the Bard and Assistant stuff, it's like they're going to introduce all of these flashy things that you can do with it but

the most important thing which is going to be just the way we interact with computers in the future is that you can just interact with them more naturally and that's that's like a low-key like not super exciting not flashy thing but the fact that like you can talk to your computer and it knows what you're talking about even if you don't use the very specific keywords you're supposed to use with a smart device. It's a big deal. I mean, think of what every quality of life small update is on anything. It's to make usability better.

This is like the quality of life update for tech. Yeah, if my grandma can interact with it, then that's important. It lowers the barrier of entry of every advanced feature. Yeah, which is pretty sick. Yeah, so that's important lowers the barrier of entry of every advanced feature yeah which is pretty sick so yeah so that's coming later they're testing it uh with a limited number of testers right now whatever that means yeah i won't hear this tribute um otherwise yeah we got new call screening with a more human voice which was cool did you see that demo yeah i'll do that in the pixel features because i'll count it as a pixel feature so i'll get to them cool so i think let's take a quick break yeah we'll do a trivia question and then we'll do pixel phones okay the lights are back the lights are back it was i can't tell

you what the lights are back and adam's gone coincidence whoa no yeah i got it where are working this thing is fussy man it uh it kicks and it screams and then you get it out of control and it's happy anyway question number one i'm doing both questions this week oh boy it's been a while oh boy question number one what was the first pixel to have a sip made by google wait but google doesn't call it a sip they call this piece a sip did they really yes they do i thought apple was the only one that did that let me rephrase this the wikipedia page for this piece of silicon refers to it as a sip exclusively wait so say that again oh say the question again

there is a piece of silicon made by google which wikipedia refers to as a SIP. Okay. System and a processor. And package. Right? System and package. Sure. What was the first pixel? Okay, now I've gone too far. So you've gone full force.

So what was the first pixel to have a SIP made by Google? To have silicon in it that Google designed and had manufactured? Oh, this is such a trick question. It's not. You silly, silly man. It's not a trick question. It's a straightforward question. Sure it is.

Okay. I'm writing down my answer in advance. Yeah. I think. Do you know? I have a guess. I do not know, but we'll see if I'm right. I have an idea, but we'll see. All right.

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Complete offer eligibility criteria by March 31st, 2025. Choose one of five eligible charities. Up to $500,000 in total contributions. I am so dreading groceries this week. Why? You can skip it. Oh, what? Just like that? Just like that. How about dinner with my third cousin?

Skip it. Prince Fluffy's favorite treats? Skippable. Midnight snacks? Skip. My neighbor's nightly saxophone practices? Uh, nope. You're on your own there. Could've skipped it. should have skipped it.

Skip to the good part and get groceries, meals, and more delivered right to your door on Skip. All right, welcome back. Let's talk Pixel smartphones. New generation of Pixel phones, Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. Right off the top, more expensive than last year. We've got plus $100 for each of them 9.99 and 6.99 so 6.99 for the pixel 8 9.99 for the pixel 8 pro and so with these higher prices we go well what's new about them what's more expensive what's better about them and there's quite a few interesting

things i'll start with uh the new sensor it's on the list but i can't say i think it made it more expensive uh no i'll start tensor g3 that's going to be in both i think i have a lot of hopes just about efficiency and battery life and tensor g2 was okay but it wasn't good and so i think so i think what we're hoping is that tensor g3 gives us maybe not a huge improvement on raw power because that wasn't necessarily what was bad about it but it was just inefficient and it was not great with batteries so we're hoping for that to be better but naturally the focus of tensor g3 is the tpu a lot of ai related features and we'll get to those but tensor g3 but then there's the other two new things which is new cameras and new screens these phones then there's the other two new things, which is new cameras and new screens on these phones.

So there's the two different sizes. Pixel 8 and 8 Pro are different sizes. Also, the 8 Pro is a higher resolution, as always. But also now, the Pixel 8 is 120 hertz. So it's no longer, it was 90 hertz previously. So it's up to 120 hertz. It's not LTPO. I think it's 60 and 120.

Yeah, 60 and 120. The Pro is still LTPO. It'll go all the way down to one hertz um they're all also both flat i'll just say that so they're not like curving over the edge on the pro which i think is nice the bezels look pretty much the same all the way around there's no more chin remember how we had like a chin on those previous pixels that's slowly been shrinking over the years it feels like it's pretty much even all the way around and then they they felt the need to name this new brightness but they are legitimately some of the brightest screens i've ever seen in smartphones

and this is just from the hour that i spent with it but they're calling it an actual display on the pixel 8 and it's super actual display on the 8 pro yeah 2 000 nits on the pixel 8 and 2400 nits on the pixel 8 pro yeah um i will be fact-checked on this but i'm fairly sure that's the brightest smartphone screen i've ever seen in my life it's i think the same as the oppo find x6 pro right okay it might be i don't know but i i looked at it and i said oh my god this is the brightest screen i've ever seen there's probably like a lumia from like seven years ago where it's one feature was like 3000 nits but but it it is genuinely very impressive and i know that when i take these things outside they're gonna look great

outside oppo claims it can reach 2500 oh so oppo is technically still slightly brighter my bad my bad but still on a pixel usually you don't get crazy big hardware numbers on pixels it's all about the software but that was cool to see yeah um eight gigs of ram with tensor g3 battery sizes are both like a tiny bit bigger than last year not like a meaningful amount i think we'll still look for tensor to give us that difference in efficiency and then new cameras um same primary camera on both it's a i believe a 50 megapixel sensor then you get either the 12 megapixel ultra wide on the pixel 8 or you believe a 50 megapixel sensor then you get either the 12 megapixel ultra wide on the pixel 8 or you get a 48 megapixel ultra ride with macro on the 8 pro alongside a 48 megapixel 5x telephoto on the 8 pro so i got a new camera suite i didn't notice that wait so

they left the worst ultra wide in the regular one and gave you a better ultra ride with macro in the pro in the pro yeah i think this year they definitely are trying to justify the price gap the price gap yeah because it's still a 300 difference between the phones yeah and if i'm looking at it like those two phones 300 apart have the same tensor g3 have the same primary camera and both have incredibly bright 120 hertz displays that's you got to really start to squint again to find the differences between them and it's going to be like okay an extra telephoto camera extra resolution if you want it which is not even on by default like stuff like that

but that's the main hardware differences and then once you get into using the phones it is all software baby it is the classic pixel story of and i think this is probably going to be the theme of the review oh eight and twelve gigs of ram did you say that oh twelve on the pro twelve on the pro okay eight gigs around on eight twelve on the pro yeah okay so that's you get more ram will anybody pay 300 bucks to get more ram i don't know maybe but it's there yeah um but i think yeah the the story with the pixel is definitely that you you kind of just accept that the hardware is just going to be fine and they've had this design for a couple years now with the visor and i was actually just thinking about this the visor which is like so iconic to the pixel it still collects dust like

in the corners right above and below it you had this with your pixel right just like it seems to be something that like a lot of these newer it's it specifically happens with the pixel because of the big visor but yeah just filming a lot of macros with iphones the new lenses on the new iphones do it all around the circles as well like it's bad oh yeah it's so annoying to do especially if you have a case but like cleaning that out is so annoying and i like i use a case or use the case on my pixel and when i I go climbing, I take the case off, and there's just chalk caked on both of them. Yeah.

On both, on, like, the top and the bottom of the visor. So, you know, you're not, you're not, I guess my point is you're not buying the Pixel for the hardware quality. It's still going to be, it's still going to look like a Pixel. So, I think there's now, there's new colors, and there's, like, a satin back on the Pro, which is, I like satin back on the pro which is i like both right

or sorry yeah on both is it both yeah okay which is sweet they're matte textured like yeah yeah they're like a satin slash like velvety satin is a good way which i really appreciate on the new iphones as well um but you're really buying it because it's the smartest smartphone it's got google assistant you're talking about call screening i use call call screening a lot. Wait, no way, really? Before we get into that. Oh, yeah. All the time. I'm just going to iterate that.

That doesn't mean all the Pixel hardware sucks. It's not bad. It just means the software is incredible and that's why you're buying it. I guess what I'm saying is if you want to buy a smartphone because it has the craziest, biggest numbers and the best hardware,

you're not buying the Pixel. It's just not the Pixel. It's either some Xiaomi or Oppo or Samsung phone, they all have bigger, more impressive numbers. Xperia, I don't know, there's like a slight tilt to the camera stuff there, but like, you think about 100x zoom, when you think about 75 watt charging,

like that's not the Pixel experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what's your opinion? I just wanna make sure, I know there's people who took that finger trying. I'll take it, my words, I mean what I say. I mean what I say. Take the heat. Now now sorry i interrupted a ellis marquez call screening conversation i was ready so i regularly get calls some random numbers that i don't know

and five times out of ten it's a delivery and the other five times i'm so glad i had call screening because it's just a random person and i just you know you just hit the button and it says screen my call and it's just some guy going is this is this marquez and i just hit hang up or it's just a delivery person going like hi i'm outside and then i like pick up or i just say like yeah you can leave the package or whatever do they stay on the phone no so a lot of people that's another that's another good point probably three or four out of ten times when the assistant is done answering the phone they just hang up right away and i just never find out who it was and that's fine too yeah i didn't have to talk on the phone but this year the new call assistant is both much more human sounding and will give you context aware chips to press,

to respond based on what it hears the person say. Which means if a UPS driver calls me and it's an unknown number and I don't pick up unknown numbers and I hit screen call and it says, hey, I'm a Google assistant screening this call. Who are you? And it sounds like a human

and the person doesn't pick up, they will say, hi, I'm the UPS driver. I have a Google Assistant screening this call. Who are you? And it sounds like a human, and the person doesn't pick up, they will say, hi, I'm the UPS driver. I have a package for you. Without me even picking up the call, it will show a box that I can press that just says, leave it on the front porch or something like that. I press it, it says it in a human voice,

and the person probably doesn't even think twice about the fact that it's a robot, and they'll just do it. And I don't have to talk on the phone. As long as they don't hang up immediately when they hear I'm a Google Assistant. I think because the last one it's a robot and they'll just do it and i don't as long as they don't hang up immediately when they hear i'm a google assistant i this i think because the last one sounded such a like robotic yeah people hung up early yeah this one sounds really this one sounds like a person yeah totally yeah in theory i think this sounds great i'll be interested to see how it does

because that last one i don't know a single person that ever stayed on the line long enough for the old call screening to ever like... Fair. We're just so used to getting robocalls. Have you heard the new voice? I heard the new voice. It does sound better. It's pretty good.

There's a lot of spam calls that sound really damn good these days too, and I turn that shit off immediately. I guess it's just if you're calling someone, you're already expecting to hear a voice pick up. Yeah. So they might not even process the first two words which are like i am a google assistant here's my counter to that there are fedex people who knock on my door when i'm home who don't even knock on the door they just put the missed delivery slip on before even knocking you think those people are gonna like listen to my robot assistant answer they probably won't they ain't got time if they do go through the

trouble of calling and they were expecting a human to pick up this accomplishes the same task does this new one can it make reservations for you are we just done with the reservation that is a separate uh feature so this is just screening incoming calls i don't know that this new voice will apply to that i don't know just good question we'll see it'd be nice or it's just something google killed again yeah i don't know actually probably should be killed but there's a bunch of new other software stuff there's a new camera ui i think it looks better it's kind of separated into photos and videos at the bottom and then there's all the sort of controls right above it uh night sight video got added there's a bunch of new hdr

processing looks just better in general i mean we'll have to test for quality manual controls are dope they look really good there are so many manual controls and it like puts aperture iso and shutter speed at at the top in these little bars and you can just adjust them and it has focus peaking nice like for photography it's really really built out yeah all right before we get even deeper on some of the madness that is the pixel and all of its software we'll take a quick break we'll do some trivia and we'll come right back all right we're doing google trivia today it's a goy day. I have in front of me four Google products and services.

Completely coincidentally, I think almost all of them have been discontinued at this point, but I need you to tell me which one I made up. It's one of those. Oh, boy. Long, it's been a minute? Yes. Yeah. Ready? All right. Number one is called Google Lively. Google Lively is essentially Meta Horizon, but it was before VR was invented. So it was just with a mouse and keyboard.

Other than that, it is like hilariously similar to Meta Horizon. So like Second Life? Horizon Worlds, you mean? Is that what it's called? Whatever. That thing. But what makes it different than Second Life is that Google imagined different websites and IPs would set up their own thing and that it would gradually become how you surf the web.

They just abandoned it because they thought it would never be a thing. Hilarious. B, Google Fibonacci. B, Google Fibonacci. Google Fibonacci was a really complex API for devs that would analyze really, really, really long strings of numbers. Which one is real? Which one is fake? Oh, okay.

Gotcha. C is the Google Crisis Response Team. The Google Crisis Response Team is a team within Google that seeks to make critical information more accessible during times of natural disasters. The Google Crisis Response Team. I hope that's real just because you said most of these are discontinued. So if they had a crisis response team and then discontinued it.

Crisis response team is their PR team. Wow. And D, this is all caps goog 411 gog 411 it is a telephone based voice search service to get business information so you'd call goog 411 and be like i need a blockbusters number or something i don't know nice um so yeah a google lively b google fibonacci c google crisis response or d the gook 4-1 4-1-1 which one's fake which one is fake got you okay we'll think on it i've already thought on it we'll think on it we'll be we'll be right back. you need to do is make a new deposit before December 31st, 2024 to pay $0 in management fees on net new deposits until the end of 2025. Lower fees means you can keep more of your money where it belongs in your account. Don't wait. Opening an account is quick and easy. Switch to Quest Wealth Portfolios today and keep more of your money. Conditions apply.

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waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. Well, okay, let's talk camera features. There's a bunch of camera features. There's a lot of camera features. Okay, this is where it gets really googly. What is a photo?

Okay. Yeah. First camera feature that I thought was fine was the audio magic eraser. Yes. I think this one's fine. This is erasing background noises or reducing like wind or whatever. That's not the subject of the video. It's like audio processing that you're going to do in post anyway.

Thumbs up. Yeah. Green light for me. Okay. Then there's, we already know about magic editor which let you like erase someone from the background magic eraser magic eraser sorry yeah this is updated magic now this is magic editor oh well that okay there's also a magic eraser but yeah what's the i guess what's that first updated magic eraser is that it uh it now

uses generative ai to fill in those areas right it used to just use in painting to fill in those areas yeah so that should be better quality yeah it is a lot higher quality yeah yeah okay but so then there's magic editor yeah which is it analyzes the entire image and lets you move around things change the size position color texture weather sky change all sorts of things about a photo yeah and completely change the photo one version of this is called best take yeah right is that what it's called yeah so best take which is what we were talking about last episode is basically as we as we thought it is a bunch of people in one photo you take a burst of photos it looks at all the photos you took and all the faces and lets you

take one base photo with the best face from each of the bursts from every person in the photos yeah i think that's fine green light i love it i'll also clarify one thing from last year that i realized when i was fighting very hard for this. One of the things David said was like, your kids are being demons. That is a scenario where I guess like, I don't think it makes as much sense because then your kids are just being all over the place. This is for a scenario where the point of the picture and people in the picture want it to be a nice picture. Yeah. And a variable happens. Someone sneezes sneezes blinks very like minimal things that are being changed i think the face swap and that is great and especially because like you said

burst of photos you were trying to take a bunch assuming a variable was going to happen yeah yeah i talked to some of the camera engineers at the event today about it um they said this is sort of like an evolution of top shot if you remember that feature. Which was like, if you took multiple photos, it would automatically select for you the best ones that you think were good. Just whatever everyone thought was the best. Yeah, yeah.

And so this one is like, as long as you take, I asked them like everything about how this works. So as long as you take two photos of the same general scene, when you hit edit, it will offer you the option to swap out the face for the face when you hit edit it will offer you the option to swap out the face for the face that you took in another shot and like they they told me this at the event and i agree with them almost every single time you like take photos you take like at least three or four even if you hand it to a stranger it's just a habit strangers do this too yeah and this is an

interesting like psychological thing i don't really know why we do this but we always do this just to be sure one more for safety yeah no one ever takes one photo of you you always take a few psychos take well that actually that makes perfect sense when i'm like when i'm somewhere and claire and i are together and we want a picture together you hand it to someone and you don't know what their photo taking capabilities are so you always just as safety take multiple photos and now i get to actually like we were trying to take a nice photo just because the person i handed to maybe isn't great at taking photos and miss something yeah now i can make it a little nicer and you can move yourself around in the frame too yeah you can do the classic leaning tower pizza thing totally miss and fix it you can

do in your bedroom in the u.s yeah well this is okay so there's a lot of there's a lot of did i get every camera feature i think that's it you can change like where the person is you can make yourself look like you're dunking even though you're not you can do all kinds of that was one of the things you saw the the ad they ran for i missed that the ad was like it went slowly further and further into just lying like it it was like, oh, not all of your faces were right. Okay, like now all of your faces are smiling. Oh, not everybody was like enjoying the experience. Okay, well, we put everyone's happy face in

so they're all enjoying. And I think the last one was just like a kid pretending he was dunking and he just drags himself higher over the rim so it looks like he's dunking. It's like, okay, now we're lying. And then the commercial ends. So you can kind of continue down that path in your own head where you think this feature will go.

I think this conversation is writing half of the script for the review for me. And I'm just going to call it now. The title of the Pixel 8 review is, we'll fix it in post. That's a good title. Because that is every single one of these camera features. Photo unblur. Yeah. Your photoblur. Yeah. Your photo was blurry.

Yeah. I actually, I rethreaded this the other day because it was, gosh, I'm trying to remember the social media outlet that did it, but basically they posted that Taylor Swift had taken a selfie with her and a bunch of other celebrities at the game. Which game? The football game. Which one? The Jets game?

Is that as Jets? At the Chiefs Stadium? I don't know. I don't know. I don't fall for football. I'm sorry. the at the game which game the football game which one the jets game the or the as jet at the chief stadium i don't know i don't know i don't follow football i'm sorry i don't follow football either anyway uh they had taken this photo together it was like heath ledger wait is he dead yes i'm sorry okay so it's the jets game i'm sorry the jets gameets game. Anyway, point being, it was a selfie that they had taken, and it was perfectly blurry, where I was like, this literally looks like one of Google's sample shots that they would have used to fix with photo and blur. So I rethreaded it, and I quote-threaded it,

and I said, Google's PR team needs to get on this stat. They should. Because they need to rethread that and be like, if Taylor had a pixel, she would have team needs to get on this stat. They should. Because they need to rethread that and be like, if Taylor had a Pixel, she would have been- They should run it through their own and just like reply with the unblurred version. Well, a ton of people replied to my thread with the unblurred version and it was perfect.

It was so good. So that's the classic. That is the entire ethos of Pixel. If you were Samsung or Oppo, you would go, all all right we need a bigger sensor to let in more light to have a faster shutter speed we need bigger aperture to get more light so that we can freeze the action so that doesn't happen yeah and that's always technically correct but you're still just gonna miss sometimes and with the pixel they focus so

much on the fix it and post part, photo and blur. Oh, you had a person behind you in the photo? We'll fix it in post. Remove them. Oh, you weren't high enough in the photo? We'll fix it in post. And the list just goes on, every single one of these things with the Pixel, until it's just the story of the entire Pixel.

Oh, the phone doesn't have a very big battery? We'll fix it in post. Like, we'll just have really smart... AI generate a new battery. Exactly.'ll just have a really smart new battery exactly generate a new battery to fill my battery up i was sick with that b but that's that is the feeling that you get as you look down the statue trick the ions into thinking that they're filmed you just don't get crazy high-end hardware you get software optimization and software trickery yeah to fix it yeah is that good enough for people i find probably honestly yes so so i really want to see

stats on this because i swear to god since the pixel 7 came out especially in the last like six months or so i see so many pixel 7s and pixel 7 Pros throughout New York. So many of them. I see them all the time. And on stage this morning, they said that Pixel 7 was their fastest growing Pixel ever. For sure. It's also one of the first ones that they really successfully ran commercials for

and got in carrier stores and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're doing really well. Also, the visor is, I think, has helped. It's easier for us to see, but I also do think it's easier for people to see other people using it and being like, oh, what phone is that? And then I want to look it up. It's the Google phone.

Yeah. They also did that special audio or video, super video. What is it called? I keep forgetting the name. Oh. Boost to the Cloud. Boost. Video Boost.

Video Boost. Okay. It's a weird one. Also not available until later. Yeah. I talked to them's a weird one. Also not available until later. Yeah. I talked to them extensively about this too. Okay. And effectively what they said is

when you take like a 4K 30 video or something it's taking so much information from like the HDR detail and whatever that it like can't process that it can't store it all in ram or something i i need i'm gonna get a deeper breakdown into how this actually works because i don't know how

much of it is like they they the reason they said it was only on the pro is that they said they needed more ram for to be able to shoot it in that mode before upload to the cloud okay and they also the other thing they said i asked why are you doing this in the cloud and not on the device? They said that this is specifically CPU intensive and not TPU intensive. So if it was TPU intensive, they could probably do it on device,

but because CPU is better at the floating point math that is necessary for this kind of thing, they're doing in the server centers. Okay. So it's a combination of more ram on the pro and it allows you to store more info as you're recording as you're recording in order to bake it into the file because you have to hit the button um what is the name of it again video video you have to decide before you shoot the video yeah oh before you shoot the video you

hit i want this to be a video boost video at least that's what they said today if i'm wrong i apologize in advance default it ah well i don't know that's interesting so but yeah the idea is you have a video that you really really deeply care about the quality of for whatever reason you have video boost turned on you take the video it processes for several hours with this information that you've sent up to the cloud it comes back several hours later overnight the next day whatever and i saw before and after test and the results in google's test were incredible yeah uh but it was much better hdr much better stabilization much less noise much less noise it was brighter was brighter and more evenly lit.

It was just a better colored, better looking video in general. And I kind of wonder, number one, is anybody going to use this? But number two, how good is it actually going to be for random stuff that I try? You know why this is like the perfect way to distinguish like Apple versus Google? Is Apple is like ProRes pro res log on device we're just giving you all the features that a regular camera has at like a really high bit rate everything google's like servers we'll fix it in post baby the cloud send it to the cloud they'll come back a few hours later yeah yeah so it's weird it uploads to the cloud and then a

few hours later it just shows up in your google photos fascinating yeah so i'm really wondering like when people are going to want to use this um i asked why it was pixel 8 pro exclusive and they said only pros really want to use this feature i don't really know what that means they also said they needed the ram the ram yeah um but i would love to see you shoot an autofocus video all with video boost yeah it'd be fascinating and just see how it looks it could it could be amazing the time it takes to process is probably the same time it takes to offload pro res footage on computers that's true well the new iphone kind of the usb iphone actually makes a meaningful difference but yeah i am very fascinated'm going to try this for sure.

Yeah. I'll also have to see if audio gets better with video boost. I don't know. Yeah. We'll see. I mean, being able to do it. They had a bunch of samples and they made the stabilization look like it was better, too. Yeah.

I think samples. So the one example that I thought was really good that they showed me, and I don't know if anyone else has seen this demo, but it was a nighttime video. Like, imagine being on the streets of New York City and you're in the street and it's really dark and you point it in like a storefront. So it's really bright in a storefront. There are bright lights in there. It's a very HDR type of scene. Yeah. on a lot of smartphones,

you get this like HDR processing bleed from point lights where you point it at the inside of the store and it's just like overly saturated with light until it fixes itself and exposes for the store

and then the outside is darker. The improved version of this with video boost was like perfectly well exposed the entire time. So it's clearly doing a lot of HDR math with different exposures yeah and

like mapping them on top of each other and that's obviously very intensive but i just you know there's gonna be i don't know i'm i'm drawing the conclusion in my head that there's a limited number of special situations where this will make a big difference and then probably a regular video of like me and you in the studio on your phone will not look that much better after video boost yeah that's what i'm guessing but i'll have to see what actually happens yeah i i talked to isaac reynolds who he used to work with mark lavoie who is the guy that invented hdr plus who's also the guy that invented night sight and i taught he's the one who like led this feature and i asked him to like break it down for me and he said a lot of words that i don't understand so i i was like i'm gonna

follow up with you an email because i really want to know what the heck is happening here that's a great idea um but it seemed very impressive okay so yeah i'm gonna talk to him more about it we shall see it is an interesting feature there's a thermometer thermometer on the phone there's a thermometer you can measure the temperature of objects and only objects. Don't you dare measure yourself with it. You're not an object, David. I'm not FDA approved.

Thank you. And that is not FDA approved. So you can't do that yet. So there's a thermometer app just on the pro phone. You actually have to tell it. Well, yeah, you do. You tell it what kind of material you're measuring, I guess, to be most accurate. And then you put it two inches from the thing.

Sorry, I shouldn't do a person. Two inches from the thing, and then hit measure temperature, and then it tells you the temperature. So you'll know exactly how hot that coffee is. You can see how hot your iPhone 15 is. The weirdest. That's true.

The weirdest feature. Random. I opened the temperature app on one of the demo units at the Google event. It looks very hacked together. It's just like a the Google event. Yeah. It, it looks very hacked together. It's just like a dog food feature. Yeah. Like why is this there?

You open the app and then it's a whole screen that only has one option that says like select material. So you click select material. Yeah. I think it was just said temperature and then you click that and then it was like, so like, so yeah.

And then, and then there's a bunch of material options and then there's a little window and then there's just this pulsing big like sun icon in the corner and i'm like what is that you tap it and it just says the temperature sensor is on the rear of your pixel and i'm like okay because i think they're worried that people are gonna like try to take their own temperature with the front facing camera or something it just I would have liked to get any kind of explanation why they did this like they kind of were like now pros need you can take the temperature of your pixel from your tea to your it's like they mentioned I gotta re-watch the event but I didn't really get any examples there's a lot of beverages I think they showed

yeah so I need to know There's one material on here. So here's the material. Yes. Here's the materials that are. Material U, but it's not FDA approved. Wow. Got them. Checkmate, Google.

Materials included food, beverage, cast iron, ceramic glass, matte material, shiny material, plastic rubber, fabric, wood, walls, windows. I love that matte material and shiny material are just different. I feel like because it's reflectivity yeah yeah yeah because i was gonna add do we did they say is it like it's an ir sensor right like i'm guessing it's a temperature sensor that's what it said i think it has to be you you can't just sense temperature right because temperatures have made up yeah temperature social constructs no but there is no, like, absolute. I'm hot as hell. If there's, like, there's absolute zero, and then there's everything else, right?

So you can measure, like, the IR. Well, there isn't absolute zero, actually. So there's nothing. And then there's something. And then you'd have to define nothing. Anyway, so it's like you can get, so it's IR, that's why the reflective versus the matte. I guess. I believe it's IR.

Measuring how fast the molecules are driven. They've had, like, infrared sensors and phones forever so this has got to be a different type of infrared sensor or just maybe way higher frequency you have to be two inches from your source yeah so you have to it's probably just way faster it just i don't know the app really feels dog food like it does like it feels like they just threw it together in like a week it feels like they put the hardware in the phone and then they got so far in development that they realized they couldn't take it out so they were like i guess we're putting a thermometer out yeah like we were saying like maybe they tried to try to do this for covid and then it feels like a covid

thing that came way later and now but that would be you have to do yourself there's one thing on the list that i would be like kind of do yourself there's one thing on the list that i would be like kind of interested in and that's cast iron like because if you're cooking with but when you're cooking with cast iron you don't want to get two inches away yeah because like you're generally heating a cast iron pan pretty like i usually use mine for searing so i want that thing like ripping hot how hot is hot like 500 degrees so like i don't want to really put my pixel near and usually like yeah you're like putting some oil on it too yeah like yeah i don't know yeah would you trust it food wasn't on the list right you're not supposed to measure food with this

either no food's the first thing on the list option oh because you can't do internal temperature so like you can do surface temperature cut your steak steak open. I can't wait till I, I'm going to send back a steak at a steak house. Excuse me. My pixel says this is actually mid well instead of medium. Oh my God. Someone's going to do it. It's just the weirdest thing. Yeah.

Like Google doesn't do hardware except for when they add a temperature sensor. That's like, this is the most unique hardware feature. That's true. Of a phone this year. That's true. Shout out to Google. Um, I will say,

from the time I spent like an hour and a half with these phones, shout out to the haptics team. Whoever's on the haptics team for these phones, and I just remember typing on the Pixel 8 Pro,

and I handed it to Brandon. We were shooting this together, and he was typing on it, and we were both like, oh my God, the haptics are amazing. It's super, and we were just typing

on the keyboard, so it was just clicky. Really, really strong, really tight haptics. Love seeing that in phones we were just typing on the keyboard so it's just clicky really really strong really tight haptics love seeing that in phones good underrated it's good haptics are one of the first things you can cheap out on so yeah because you should turn it off it's one of the most common things but just for like scrolling around the ui and like bouncing at the top of an app or like the bottom and just feeling that dude do you remember when the pixel 6 came out and the when you first turn it on it has this like bouncing wheel that's like get to know your pixel and every time it bounces it bounces the bottom it shakes the bottom of the phone you can't replace that it's amazing

that's hardware you can turn it off but for that i haven't had a haptic on the phone in you're missing 35 years you're missing out um the biggest last announcement of the entire show pixel eight seven years this is incredible of software will pixel still be around in seven years we need to we need a slow clap for this okay it did get the biggest cheer during the event it deserves it 100 so so just to just to solidify this google pixel 8 and pixel 8 pro are the first phones that google is now promising will have seven years of os security and feature drop updates for the entire lifetime of the phone seven years of everything yeah that's a new industry standard i mean the fair phone might be the only one i've seen approaching that but as far as phones we've seen the fair phone had to

use a chipset that wasn't even made for phones remember that right the new fair phone had to like go to qualcomm and be like you have a chipset that you're willing to like support for longer the next amount of time this is another reason why tensor is such an important thing for google is they have such full control over it right they they can offer seven years of updates yeah previously that's kind of on qualcomm like it's not really the manufacturer's like fault that a lot of these phones are not updated longer a lot of the time it's just that qualcomm doesn't support that many years of updates yeah so now that google owns the entire pipeline yeah the tensor chip the entire software stack right down to like the software that they make for this phone it makes sense that they can actually offer yeah and are promising seven years you know it's wild

too you know what came out seven years ago what the pixel one oh yeah it's pixel eight yeah so i'll be imagining if the pixel one got Android 14. That'd be crazy. That'd be crazy. That'd be pretty nuts. So we're expecting 2030 to get the last software. So here's a potentially silly question. Sure. 2030 is a great number.

Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Do you think it's getting seven years because 2030 is a good number? Or do you think it could have been seven years last year, but 2029 is just not as good of a number, 2030 is a better number it's an interesting question that's a really really good i hate that i thought about that immediately because this is legitimately an incredible announcement yeah i had thoughts that and i think i said this in the initial impressions video this seems like something google could have been doing with Tensor 1 and Tensor 2 because they owned the whole stack then too.

So I don't know why it's just happening now. Maybe there was some pressure. Maybe some other phones had their, you know, Samsung got up to five years or something like that. Maybe there was some pressure. That's why they decided to do it now. I don't know. But I won't shun it. I think it's great.

I'm just happy. And I hope future Pixels and future other smartphones start to push the amount of software they're able to provide. As long as they own the whole stack. I mean, you look at the iPhone. They are pretty good about software updates for a long time. And in an Android world, this feels like the absolute best equivalent. Yeah. Yeah.

I hope they last seven more years, too. I hope the Pixel still exists in seven years. I do. Yeah. Unlike a Pixel Pass that promised two years. Yeah. Oof. that didn't last yeah that's it oh wait wait i have one we did all the good stuff but this is one kind of thing that

i think snuck under the radar that i thought was kind of cool yeah the face unlock is now secure face unlock because you can actually so you can actually use it for banking and payment apps again which you haven't been able to do since the pixel 4 yeah i know the small thing that i thought was kind of neat that as well i don't know the details of how that's working because yeah i'm not sure it's still an rgb camera it's probably ai algorithm i am believe i would bet that tensor and some sort of isp tp whatever magic is happening where it's analyzing a little bit more like depth information from the rg RGB camera and is able to do that, which is pretty cool. That's good to see. It's good the temperature sensor allows for that.

Yeah, that's on the back, which also helps the Pixel 8 do it. So you can't deface on the back of the phone? I don't know. Oh, oh, oh. Remember with the Pixel Fold, how they had the dual translation thing where you have it open

and you can translate with another person because on the other side it has the words. That's finally shipping. They announced that at the event. Oh yeah, they did. Another feature that they said would come eventually and came six months later. It's a good thing I didn't base my whole purchase off of that. That's good that it's coming out now.

I think that's it. I think that's it. That's it. Okay. Is that it? Stay tuned. I mean, look, we're going to get the phones. We're going to review the phones. We're going to test to see how good these software magic features actually work. And the Pixel 8 is slightly smaller this year. I forgot to mention that. Is it?

It's 0.1 inches smaller. Corner to corner. So it goes from 6.3 to 6.2 diagonally? I know it's 6.2 this Diagonally? Yes. I know it's 6.2 this year. Okay. Yeah, I think it was 6.3 last year, and it's 6.2 this year. Okay, honest question. Yes, that's correct.

That's correct. Honest question. That's a small phone. It's the iPhone mini killer. It's not the smallest phone. But do you think there is enough new stuff in the pro to warrant it over the regular pixel 7 or would you or pixel 8 or would you just get the 8 you're setting us up to be tweeted that marquez i just this is one of those things where it's like the lens you look at it through

matters let's go over the differences everything you would get the updated the pro phone for you would get more ram telephoto camera higher resolution slightly brighter screen also better wide angle yeah better ultra wide better with macro yeah video boost video boost someday um temperature sensor and you'd get i guess a battery, but also a larger screen that's brighter. So maybe that sort of nulls out and that's about it. I honestly think it's just like, do you want a bigger phone or not? Yeah.

Yeah. That's it. I don't. So I want the smaller one. The telephoto is the number one thing other than the size that I care about. And that's it. Agreed. Yeah. I think the nicer ultra wide is probablyphoto is the number one thing other than the size that I care about. And that's it. Agreed.

Yeah. I think the nicer ultra wide is probably good too, because it really feels like ultra wide are the place that phones like skimp out on. Yeah. I want to see more good ultra wide. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I think that if like the, it's still an incredible deal to get the small one.

$699 is still really good price for a phone that that is that feature which is also crazy because it's a hundred dollars more expensive than last year and still like a really really good deal yeah 699 i think this is going to potentially have again this is me guessing it might have the best camera in any 699 phone it might have the best screen it's the brightest maybe not the best but the brightest screen in any 699 phone. It's going to be 120 hertz and it's going to have some of the best software in any 699 phone.

And if you care about camera, screen, and software, which is most people, that's a pretty good set of things to ace for that price range. So either way. Either way. That's about it. I think this was a good googly gathering.

Great googly. Great googly moogly. Great googly. Great googly moogly. Great googly. Great googly moogle. Gathering today. We should wrap it up by finding out the answers to those Google trivia questions.

Oh, yes, we shall. And we will. Hey, Bard. Hey, Bard, what are the answers to Ellis' questions? In the waveform episode, what was the answer that Ellis gave me on the... I think it was on Wednesday. Yes, Bard, what are the answers to Ellis' questions? In the Waveform episode, what was the answer that Ellis gave me on the...

I think it was on Wednesday. Yes, David, the answer is... See? He knows context now. It's better. Can you go over the score? I think I have nine. I need to issue a correction.

Adam! This week's score on the Waveform podcast, we have andrew with five you have to do the thing what's the thing you start with marquez i don't know adam always carry the one marquez steamrolling the competition with a whopping steamrolling 10 10 he's barely stepping on me it's not the same as when adam does it. I don't know. That's fine. I'm sorry, fans. David, cruising, absolutely destroying the person below him

with nine. I'm saving my battery by being right behind Marquez. And Andrew, cunningly plotting and storing his points for later with five. One, two, carry the one. Carry the one.

I'm sorry. I'm just not him. All right. Okay, question number one. What was the first pixel to have a sip made by Google? Goodness gracious, golly gumdrops. And I'm looking, I'm not looking for the name of the processor. I'm just looking for which pixel it was in.

So really, you have a one in eight chance. Was it that one or was it that one? It's this one. Oh. Okay, I'm ready. Are you ready to rumble? I'm running out of... Are you ready to rumble?

Yes. David, you want to go first? Four'm running out of... Are you ready to rumble? Yes. David, you want to go first? Four. It's three, isn't it? I said four also. I said one. It's three, isn't it? Alas, it was the Pixel 3.

Two with the Pixel Visual Core. Oh, yeah. When did the Titan show up? The Titan showed up in the three. Oh, wait. So I should have at least said three. I already knew. I was thinking Sully in my head.

I was thinking Sully. It was the three. If Google made a chip before that that was in the Pixel 1, please let me know. They didn't. You know what they made? What? The HTC team be able to eat dinner that's what they did with the pixel one yeah yeah brutal okay should we move on to google services real or fake yes i forgot about pixel visual core a so did google no

just realized i left the blue lights on that whole time that's fine Adam leaves for one day everything falls apart I should have half a microphone here the ratio of microphones you're just not used to this much microphone he needs to move away from you every time you speak

so that you have to grab it alright here we go A. Google Lively B. Google Fibonacci you speak so that you have to grab it yeah all right here we go okay a google lively b google fibonacci c google crisis response team or d goog 411 while they're reading when you first said it i thought the name was google b not like b the option because fib and fib yeah google b movie 2 makes no sense um okay i just want to say i know for a fact that fibonacci is real okay okay good yeah so the answer is a the answer is not a sick it's perfect i said b b for google fibonacci yeah b is correct i made up people fibonacci there's no such thing as it okay david you you made me

really confused i was gonna say i think everything else you explained way too much on a yeah i also realized uh fibonacci was the only one that i did not look at my computer to read kind of gave it away there wow i'm really overconfident yeah dang well i also i also said that also just sounds like such a google product is the google crisis department really defunded it's gone no i think that one's still around that would be a rough thing to take that's like when there's an earthquake in all of twitter's like i just saw an earthquake then google goes hey guess what world there's an earthquake yeah well he just said that a bunch of them were disposed of so that feels like when you can't yeah lively is not around anymore oh no yeah it was real it's hilarious looking too i want a goog 411 t-shirt wait goog 411 also

existed it's real google lively is really 800 goog 411 it was created yeah goog 411 also existed. It's real? Google Lively is real, yeah. 800 Goog 411. It was created? Yeah, Goog 411 sounds like a thing they would have made in like 2003. Google Lively was created in 2008 and shut down in 2008. Oh my god. That doesn't shock me at all. This is real? This is real.

Encounter of two Lively avatars. Oh my god. Now that the podcast is over over if you guys go just google google lively and just look at what we're looking at right now and try to picture this being announced in 2008 my lord after they go guys we are really ahead of our time oh that was before google glass because it was a long time ago man yeah that was when i was graduating high school for the fact that google fibonacci is not actually real. I was really overconfident. I really thought that I knew that. You're like, the one thing I do know.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Catch you in the next one. Peace. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We're partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network, and our intro-outro music was created by vane silver i was waiting for one of us to change notes i also forgot to show you guys my socks they're rainbows rainbows and then oh yeah wait what android you didn't

match oh wait no