Today, on May 11, Google hosted its annual I/O event. As is par for the course, the company talked about a variety of different efforts and products, new initiatives and much more. But, as things started to close out, Google managed to unveil some new devices, too.
Today is not the day that Google is launching a brand new smartphone. It is the day the company is revealing it, though. Weeks, and perhaps even a couple of months, before Google makes its newest smartphone pair available to buy, we're getting a first look at what we can expect from the newest Android-based flagship.
iDownloadBlog's video editor Harris Craycraft has been playing with his Pixel 4 XL smartphone for a while now. We thought you might be interested to hear about some curious impressions of the latest Google device from the perspective of this particular iPhone 11 Pro user.
The facial authentication system in Google's latest Pixel 4 line of smartphones can be easily defeated because the face unlock feature works even if the user's eyes are completely shut.
The recently released Google Pixel 3 XL handset ships with a notch like the one found on the iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. For some early Google Pixel 3 XL device owners, there are actually two notches present thanks to a weird software glitch.
If you thought the iPhone X notch was hideous, wait 'till you see Google's upcoming third-generation Pixel smartphone. According to a new leak Wednesday, Pixel 3 XL could feature a really tall notch at the top of the display as well as a huge bezel at the bottom.
Google is reportedly considering building brick-and-mortar stores in India as a way of helping boost sales of its Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphone models, the Economic Times newspaper reported today citing three people with knowledge of the matter.
Some owners of Google's new Pixel 2 XL phone are complaining about significant ghosting caused by the persistent software navigation buttons, showing after just a few days of use. Google is aware of these reports and is “actively investigating” them, it told The Verge.
At a press event Wednesday, Google unveiled its new hardware lineup headlined by the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones boasting a new squeeze feature and no headphone jack.
We're just a few weeks away from an upcoming batch of major smartphone updates this fall, with Google now expected to officially announce a second-generation Pixel smartphone lineup just a few weeks after Apple launches its iPhone 8 and iPhone 7s/Plus series.
Veteran Apple chip architect Manu Gulati is now a Lead SoC Architect at Google, reveals his LinkedIn profile which states that he started in his new Google role in May.
According to Variety, Gulati has been tasked with leading the effort to build highly optimized chips for Google's Pixel smartphones in-house.
He had been spearheading Apple’s own chip developments for close to eight years.
By hiring an industry expert, Google is hoping to distance itself from the rest of the pack. Like other flagship Android devices, Pixel smartphones use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 821 processor.
This makes it harder for Google to differentiate Pixel devices from other Android phones.
“In addition to Gulati’s hire, Google is now looking to hire additional chip experts to tightly control future Pixel hardware,” Variety learned from sources familiar with the hire.
A custom chip would allow Google to develop a more secure smartphone with better camera features, advanced biometric authentication, optimized power consumption and so forth.
iPhone 7, for example, is six times faster at image recognition than Google’s Pixel phone because its 64-bit A10 Fusion chip has a highly-optimized Image Signal Processor.
And with iOS 11, Apple is integrating features like Metal 2, machine learning and augmented reality directly into a phone’s main chip, which would have been impossible if the company hadn't closely controlled chip design.
For those wondering, Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies, Johny Srouji, oversees the company's semiconductor and wireless teams, reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook.
“Johny has built one of the world’s strongest and most innovative teams of silicon and technology engineers, overseeing breakthrough custom silicon and hardware technologies including batteries, application processors, storage controllers, sensors silicon, display silicon and other chipsets across Apple’s entire product line,” according to his bio page on the Apple Leadership website.
Johny joined Apple in 2008 to lead development of the A4, the first Apple-designed system on a chip powering iPhone 4 and the original iPad.
Apple's semiconductor team is comprised of engineers who worked at startups like P.A. Semi that Apple acquired after releasing the original iPhone. Apple's logic was simple: it wanted to take its chip destiny into its own hands to tightly integrate the hardware and software, optimize device performance and power consumption and enable hardware features simply not possible on devices that use off-the-shel parts that are readily available to all vendors.
Incredibly, the strategy paid off big time.
Even the last-generation A9 processor inside iPhone 6s smokes competition in single-core performance, for instance. The A10 Fusion chip in the iPhone 7 family is even faster and Apple's latest chip, the A10X Fusion inside the new iPad Pros, features 30 percent faster CPU performance and forty percent faster graphics than the previous generation.
Speaking with journalists at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Google's Vice President of Hardware, Rick Osterloh, has confirmed that the successor of the company's Pixel smarthones will be launching later this year, Android Pit reported Friday. Osterloh shot down reports calling for a budget Pixel edition, saying Pixels remain premium smartphones.
While Google showed no intent to abandon its premium smartphone brand, the company's premium notebook bearing the Pixel brand has reached the “end of the line” status after shipping just two generations since 2013, according to Osterloh in a report by Frederic Lardinois for TechCrunch.