By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
Google on Wednesday unveiled a brand new line-up of Pixel smartphones injected with one other dose of synthetic intelligence that’s designed to do every part from fetch important data saved on the units to assist enhance pictures as they’re being taken.
The AI enlargement on the 4 Pixel 10 fashions amplifies Google’s efforts to broaden using a expertise that’s already beginning to reshape society. On the identical time, Google is taking a swipe at Apple’s Achilles’ heel on the iPhone.
Apple thus far has solely been in a position to introduce just a few fundamental AI options on the iPhone whereas failing to ship on final 12 months’s promise to ship a extra conversational and versatile model of its often-blundering digital assistant Siri.
With out mentioning the iPhone by identify, Google has already been mocking Apple’s missteps in on-line advertisements selling the 4 new Pixel fashions as smartphones loaded with AI expertise that buyers gained’t have to attend for greater than a 12 months to reach.
“There has been a lot of hype about this and, frankly, a lot of broken promises, too,” Google government Rick Osterloh stated throughout a 75-minute presentation in New York concerning the new Pixel telephones. The occasion was emceed by late-night TV present host Jimmy Fallon.
Google, in distinction, has been steadily rising the quantity of AI that it started to implant on its Pixels since 2023, with this 12 months’s fashions taking it to a different stage.
“We think this yeasr we have a game-changing phone with game-changing technology,” Osterloh stated.
Benefiting from a extra superior processor, Google is introducing a brand new AI function on the Pixel 10 telephones known as “Magic Cue” that’s designed to function a digital thoughts reader that mechanically fetches data saved on the units and shows the information on the time it’s wanted. As an illustration, if a Pixel 10 consumer is asking up an airline, Magic Cue is meant to instantaneously acknowledge the cellphone quantity and show the flight data if it’s in Gmail or a Google Calendar.
The Pixel 10 telephones can even include a preview function of a brand new AI instrument known as “Camera Coach” that can mechanically counsel the most effective framing and lighting angle because the lens is being aimed toward a topic. Digicam Coach can even suggest the most effective lens mode to make use of for an optimum image.
The premium fashions — Pixel 10 Professional and Pixel 10 Professional XL — can even embody a “Super Res” possibility that deploys a seize bag of software program and AI tips to zoom as much as 100 occasions the decision to seize the small print of objects situated miles away from the digicam. The AI wizardry might occur with out customers even realizing it’s taking place, making it much more tough to know whether or not a picture captured in a photograph displays how issues actually appeared on the time an image was taken or was modified by expertise.
The Pixel 10 can even be capable of virtually instantaneously translate cellphone conversations into a spread of various languages utilizing the individuals personal voices.
Google can be providing a free one-year subscription to its AI Professional plan to anybody who buys the costlier Pixel 10 Professional or Pixel 10 Professional XL fashions in hopes of hooking extra folks on the Gemini toolkit it has assembled to compete in opposition to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The costs on all 4 Pixel 10 fashions will stay unchanged from final 12 months’s Pixel 9 technology, with the essential beginning at $800 and the Professional promoting for $1,000, the Professional XL at $1,200 and a foldable model at $1,800. All of the Pixel 10s count on the foldable mannequin will likely be in shops on August 28. The Pixel 10 Professional Fold will likely be accessible beginning October 9.
Though the Pixel smartphone stays a Lilliputian subsequent to the Gulliverian stature of the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy fashions, Google’s ongoing advances in AI whereas holding the road on its marquee units elevate the aggressive stakes.
“In the age of AI, it is a true laboratory of innovation,” Forrester Analysis analyst Thomas Husson stated of the Pixel.
Apple, particularly, will likely be dealing with extra stress than standard when it introduces the next-generation iPhone subsequent month. Though the corporate has already stated the smarter Siri gained’t be prepared till subsequent 12 months on the earliest, Apple will nonetheless be anticipated to point out some progress in AI to exhibit the iPhone is adapting to expertise’s AI evolution reasonably than tilting towards gradual obsolescence. Clinging to a once-successful formulation finally sank the BlackBerry and its bodily keyboard when the iPhone and its contact display screen got here alongside almost 20 years in the past.
Apple’s pricing of the subsequent iPhone can even be below the highlight, on condition that the units are made in China and India — two of the prime targets in President Donald Trump’s commerce struggle.
However Apple appeared to realize a reprieve from Trump’s most onerous threats earlier this month by including one other $100 billion on high of an earlier $500 billion funding pledge to the U.S. The tariff reduction could allow Apple to attenuate and even keep away from worth will increase for the iPhone, simply as Google has completed with the Pixel 10 fashions.
Initially Revealed: August 20, 2025 at 1:08 PM PDT
