Google Pixel 8/8 Pro Impressions: Software Magic!
– Hey guys, Google had an event today where they completely surprised us by announcing the totally out of the blue Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, and the Pixel Watch too that somehow never leaked. It just completely caught us off guard. I hope you can detect my sarcasm through the internet, but hey, we dig an event and it has some stuff that I was really looking forward to, Pixel 8 and 8 Pro mostly because I’ve been a Pixel fan even though I know it has these big flaws like the Tensor G2 had subpar performance and
the somewhat average battery life. But like I still like the Pixel and there’s a lot that I was looking forward to for the next stuff. So, they delivered on a lot of that stuff but it also comes with a new price. So, okay, on the outside Pixel 8 and 8 Pro do still look like Pixels, right? I told you they were sticking with this design language with the visor because it’s very recognizable and they finally have that going for them. But this year it just feels like they rounded everything off like that’s the big visible
design update this year, everything’s a bit more rounded. And then there’s the new colors. Now, honestly, I’m just gonna say it. I think it’s been a pretty boring year for phone
my favorite alongside Matte Black. Maybe it’s a toss up between the two. But then around the front both displays have actually gotten better. So the bezels are a bit thinner and they look pretty uniform all the way around to me. And then they’re both dramatically brighter up to 2,000 nits peak brightness on the Pixel 8 and 2,400 nits on the 8 Pro. I think that’s the highest I’ve ever seen in a phone. So, I think it should look really good both indoors and outdoors. And then also the smaller Pixel 8 is now 120 hertz as
well. Love that. I know people love just dismissing 120 hertz on cheaper phones but we’re there. Now it’s not LTPO yet, that’s still just the pro. But yeah, just looking at these screens for the limited time that I spent with them I’m very excited to get them out in the real world. They’re calling it an Actua Display and a Super Actua Display. Not sure why, but I guess you gotta name everything. But anyway, this year the really big physical change we’re getting with these phones I’m gonna say is the new Tensor G3 chip. So, it’s
the new third generation of Google Silicon paired with eight gigs of RAM on the Pixel 8 and 12 gigs of RAM on the Pixel 8 Pro. And to be honest, Google didn’t really talk that much about, or at least flex very much of like just raw performance improvements. Like it’s not really about that. I’m gonna have to test these phones to see if they actually improved a lot as far as CPU and GPU, and just overall power. So definitely get subscribed to be first to see those reviews when they come out. Also here are the
battery sizes, the new batteries of these new phones. They’re both a tiny bit bigger than last year. But really the story with the Tensor G3 is there is way more TPU and way more processing power for AI-related tasks and that checks out because the Pixel story has always been all about the software, and that’s still super true with these. There is so much software. Like the Pixel is basically the smartest smartphone in the room. It’s not going to wow you with amazing numbers or incredible build quality, or huge hardware features or anything like that. It’s
gonna wow you with very clever software at every corner. So here we’re talking there’s a new Google Assistant feature where if you’re on a webpage in Chrome you can ask the assistant to summarize the webpage for you and then using the same tech, I imagine that’s in Google Bard, it’ll quickly give you a three or four bullet point summary that’s hopefully accurate. A speech-to-text is also now even faster and more accurate. It’s completely on device and does a much better job also at knowing that ums and uhs are not part of your actual sentence, so
it doesn’t write them down. That’s smart. They’re doing more stuff with the front facing camera to make stuff like face unlock and unlocking stuff in apps more secure. There’s also a new fix-it feature which will proofread your messages built into the keyboard before you send them with things like grammar and all that. One of the crazy ones is the new call screen voice. So if you’ve used a Pixel you know about call screen before which is you’re getting a call, it’s an unknown number. You just let the Google Assistant screen the call. The new one
has a much more human voice that I honestly don’t really know if it’s a robot voice or just a recording of a human but it’s much more human sounding. And then also it has the chips that pop up that you can hit to respond to people that are now context aware. So if it listens to somebody say, “Hey, I’m a UPS driver.” You can now hit a button that immediately says, “Oh, you can leave the package at the doorstep.” I got to record this. I’ll just let you listen to it. – Hi, I’m a Google
Virtual Calling Assistant recording this call on behalf of the person you’re trying to reach. Can you say what you’re calling about? – I’m trying to drop off a package for Kenny. (no audio) – They said you can go ahead and leave the package by the front door. (no audio) – Okay, thanks. That’s great. (no audio) – Great, I’ll see you soon. (beeps) – So yeah, that’s pretty good to me. It sounds very human, but again, I don’t know, it could just literally be a human recording. Either way, it says it’s a virtual assistant. But what
would a Pixel be without some camera magic? So, let’s just jump into the new camera stuff with the Pixel ’cause there’s a lot of software magic here, lot of software magic. So the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro now share the same upgraded 50 megapixel main camera system. Then the 8 also has a 12 megapixel ultra wide but the 8 Pro just sends it all the way with a 48 megapixel ultra wide and a 48 megapixel 5x telephoto. And I also really like the new camera app layout which is now separated basically into photo and video
mode. And then all the various settings and modes are inside of each. So I think it makes a lot of intuitive sense. You could just switch to photo and then go to a specific photo mode. There’s manual controls. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it laid out this way but when you get so much stuff happening in the camera you don’t wanna move it out or hide it, you just need to sort of organize it in a capable way. I think this does a good job. So I’ll have to save my photo and video
quality analysis for the full review. But like I said, there’s a lot of software features that they’ve added that just seem, they just get more and more wild as you go on. So the really insane one is the Magic Editor. So you’ve probably already seen, you can erase people from the background of photos with Magic Eraser but now this Magic Editor will let you straight up select subjects and just move them around, and completely alter the entire photo with just a few taps. So they showed me this example of like moving a subject to a
different spot in a photo on the beach but there’s also all kinds of other demos of like changing the sky or changing shadows or all kinds of other stuff. Honestly, it seems like nothing is off limits. And then there’s also a feature I didn’t get footage of but it’s called Best Take, which is like when you’re taking a photo of like a group of a bunch of people and you’re like, “All right everybody, try to smile at the same time.” And you take a bunch of photos but there’s always somebody blinking in one of them.
It’s never perfect with everyone’s faces. You probably see where this is going. So Google detects that you’re taking a burst photo of a bunch of people and it will take all of those together, and give you the ability to tap on people’s faces and change them to a different instance of a different face that they’re making at a different time just to stitch together this Frankenstein photo with everyone having perfect faces even though it’s a moment that never happened. What is a photo? (chuckles) But then there’s another one called Audio Eraser. It’s a video editing
feature. It’s just on the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro but you can actually use it on any video you’ve ever taken in your library. But that literally just erases background sounds from like a video of a subject. It supposedly works really well, I gotta test this on more stuff but the one they showed me worked amazingly well. And all of this is basically along the theme of awesome software magic enabled by Tensor G3. Like all of the neural cores and all the things that it’s doing with AI processing is what’s enabling all of this awesome,
weird, fancy software magic stuff. And then there’s two other little things that didn’t really fit into the rest of this video but one is there’s a new hole on the back of the Pro phone as you could probably see, and that is a temperature sensor. Yeah. Actually. So, there’s a new thermometer app on the phone and when you open it, it asks you to select a material to measure the surface temperature of I guess to be the most accurate. So you pick your material and then you just get up close to your subject like within
two inches of it and tap to measure, and you get your temperature, which is it works. It’s pretty neat I guess. I don’t know that I would use this very much. You may also notice that humans are missing from the object selection menu because measuring human temperature is still awaiting FDA approval. Maybe that’ll get added to the menu when it gets approved later this year. Although I guess technically you could just tell it you’re a ceramic or like a hot liquid or something and measure yourself anyway. I don’t know. Whatever. There’s a temperature sensor now
on the 8 Pro. And but the other thing is number two, the haptics. Oh my god, I was typing on these phones and this is like the number one thing I noticed on the 8 Pro is the haptics are so much stronger. I mean I was just poking around the UI and scrolling a bunch, but especially when I was typing, the haptics are super strong and really refined. So there’s a difference between strong haptics and like clean, refined haptics. This was both and I think that’s super underrated. I don’t know if they’re gonna mention this
or put it in the marketing materials at all but I just love the haptics from the hour or two that I spent with this phone. All right, quick interjection. There’s actually one more thing I wanted to mention with these that’s called Video Boost and it’s one of the weirdest, I don’t even know if I can call it a software feature actually but it’s one of the weirdest things yet. So first of all, it’s only available on the Pro Pixel. Second of all, it doesn’t actually launch with the phone. It’s coming soon or later. But basically
what it is is you take some video on your Pixel and it looks okay at first but then you have it uploaded to the cloud where it then processes overnight or for a few hours and then comes back to you with a result that looks dramatically better, better HDR plus better color grading, and looks much better than the video you originally took. I don’t know why it’s only on the Pro phone. I don’t know why it has to upload to other servers. I don’t even know what’s happening. It’s just this weird video magic feature. It’s
called Video Boost. We’ll see what happens if it actually comes out by review time but just wanted to throw that in there. Another weird feature. So then the new prices. So, Pixel 8 is gonna start at 699 which is a hundred bucks more than last year. And then the Pixel 8 Pro is gonna start at 999. I think you can justify it though. I mean the base Pixel just got upgraded to 120 Hertz display to a much brighter display with thinner bezels, to the Tensor G3 that’s got a new primary camera that’s the same as
a more expensive phone. So I still feel like that’s a fair price for it even though it’s not the bargain of the year like it was before. And then the other massive update that’s for both of these phones, this is awesome, is seven years of OS security and feature drop updates for the 8 and 8 Pro. Seven years which seems like something they probably should have already been doing with Google’s own phone running Google’s own chips and Google’s own software. But yeah, that’s, think about that. That’s pretty sick. They’re leading the way. This is a
phone that’s gonna get its last software update in 2030. (snaps fingers) Good looks, Google. But also, yeah, they announced an update to the Pixel Watch 2. It is in the same super sleek pebble design so it’s gonna look the same from the outside. But now inside there’s a new quad core processor that should speed things up significantly and also potentially extend the battery life by a little bit ’cause they’re promising 24 hours but with always on display on now instead of off. And there’s a bunch of newly redesigned apps like Gmail and calendar. And then
it just felt like they added a bunch of stuff that we also recently saw added to the Apple Watch. So there’s a new safety check feature that works almost exactly like the one Apple just announced. They also added a skin temperature sensor that can be helpful for monitoring patterns. They also now have auto workout start and stop detection and they also added backup and restore, which actually other watches have had for a while and they should have had this ages ago but they also now have that. If you look at the back of the watch,
there’s a bunch of improved sensors that should better monitor heart rate and health data while you’re moving around a lot more vigorously. And this watch will launch at the same price that last year’s did so 349 for the wifi only and 399 starting for the LTE watch. And that’s a pretty good spot for our segue to the sponsor of this video, which is the Dbrand Ghost Case. They’re gonna make one for these new Pixels, Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, so you can see that matte finish or that new color through the case while keeping it
protected and that even though it doesn’t have G2 wireless charging like it was rumored that they might, that didn’t stop Dbrand from just putting a MagSafe compatible ring on the back anyway. And I also kinda like what they did with the question mark design compared to the classic Apple MagSafe layout. But also I like the fact that Dbrand says the Ghost Case will never turn yellow unlike every other clear case. So, if you wanna pick up a ghost which will never turn yellow, I’ll leave link below. And so that’s it. Let me know what you
guys wanna see in the reviews of each of these devices, the phones, the watches because my name is Marques Brownlee and it is Techtober officially and there’s gonna be a bunch of videos in the next couple weeks. So, stay tuned for that stuff. Get subscribed. All right, catch you in the next one. Peace. (uptempo music)
