00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: Is AI enough to make the Pixel 10 a worthwhile upgrade?
00:04 And will Google and Apple actually make eSIMs and RCS work better across Android and iOS?
00:10 I’m Mishaal Rahman.
00:13 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C. Scott Brown and this is the Authority Insights podcast, where we break down the latest news and leaks surrounding the Android operating system.
00:22 – Mishaal Rahman: So Scott, I am so jealous right now because you are in Brooklyn and I am stuck in Houston where it’s always hot and humid. I wish I was in your place because you got to attend the Pixel 10 launch and we have so much news to talk about. I cannot believe how much Google dropped on us on a freaking Wednesday of all days. They had the Made by Google event, then Android 16 QPR2, which is another topic we’ll talk about later today. And then we also of course had some Authority Insights posts from my colleague Assemble Debug, who discovered some interesting cross-platform upgrades that should improve the experience between Android and iOS users. So, why don’t we just get started? Why don’t we get started and talk about the big news from Google? You used the three Pixel 10 slab phones. Now, of course, to anyone who’s listening, we can’t offer a review right now because that is still under an embargo. There’s a separate review embargo. But we can talk about what Google announced in terms of the features, the specifications, and just our early impressions of what Google had to show at yesterday’s event. Or actually, this would be a couple of days ago if you’re listening to this on Saturday. So Scott, why don’t you give us a little rundown of your overall thoughts on the Pixel 10 series and the Qi2 charging and some of the other big highlight features?
01:42 – C. Scott Brown: Well, the number one thing that I felt as soon as the first time that I saw the devices was, wow, these haven’t changed at all. Like just like on the outset when you first pick up the phones, they look and feel exactly the same. You can find the differences, the camera bar is definitely thicker when you hold a nine and a 10 next to each other, you can immediately tell that the camera bar is wider, taller. I don’t know what the right word to use is there, but and but and you know, the SIM cards have swapped if you’re outside of the United States, it’s on the top and if you’re in the United States, it’s not there, which we will talk more about later. And you know, little differences like that, but really overall, they feel and look exactly the same. And it’s only when you start diving into the software that you start to feel, oh wait, these are very different phones with a whole lot of new features that the other pixel phones do not currently have. And on top of that, there are other things that are hardware related that are different too, but you don’t really see them when you’re holding the phone. For example, the Pixel 10 Pro XL charges faster than any Pixel ever at 45W and also charges wirelessly at 25W, which is also the fastest charging speed of any Pixel ever. And also has the biggest battery ever at 5200mAh. So really, there’s a lot of things going on throughout all four of the phones that are different, but you just can’t see it. And so I think that’s making the online discourse sort of skewed in the wrong direction. People are looking at the phones and being like, there’s nothing new here. And it’s like, no, there is a lot new here. It’s just that you can’t see it when you just see an image of the phone on a commercial or whatever.
03:32 – Mishaal Rahman: That’s right. Like if I were to hold a Pixel 9 and a Pixel 10 side by side, you would not be able to tell that they have the same camera hardware, but one of the phones can actually do 100X zoom, which is, I think, one of the big highlight features that Google showed off during the keynote. And actually, we think it’s quite controversial. My colleague Robert actually did an editorial basically talking about the controversial use of AI to enable its 100X zoom. Scott, have you had a chance to try this out yet or did you actually see it in person? What’s it like?
04:04 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, no, I tried it out and it is incredible. Like if you don’t care about the controversial nature of it, you will be blown away by how incredible the 100X zoom feature is. You know, I was at the demo area and I zoomed in with the Pixel 10 Pro all the way across the room to a tiny little bird coming out of a cuckoo clock. I mean, you know, I don’t even know how at least 100 feet away. And you know, zoomed in on this cuckoo clock and hit the shutter button and the picture as one would expect from a smartphone was grainy and gross looking and it just looked terrible. But then within a few seconds, Gemini did its magic thing and boom, it was a really crisp image of that cuckoo clock, you know, the little bird. But it was very clearly AI. Like, you just looked at it and you’re like, this is an AI generated image. If you don’t care about the idea that the photo that it spits out is not real, like it is literally not a real photo. If you don’t care about that, then you’re going to love this. If you do care about that and that doesn’t sit right with you, then yeah, this feature might not be the one you’re looking for.
05:23 – Mishaal Rahman: So just for my understanding, it seems like this is literally using generative AI to fill in details that weren’t there before. And I suspect a lot of people are going to try to do what this one Reddit user did. They zoomed in from very far on what looks to be a gift card for Mario Kart World. And because it’s generative AI, I think we all generally understand that it still has some troubles when it comes to recreating text. So you can kind of see the Google AI, it kind of like garbled the image of the Mario Kart World, the promo art and then also messed up the logo of the Nintendo Switch 2 and some of the text. But this is not the kind of thing you’re supposed to be using it for. You’re supposed to be using it on like far away landscape shots like to take in zoom in details of cars and like things that are kind of stationary and don’t really have text on them. But people are going to try to use text because that’s kind of when you’re trying to take a photo of some far away object, text is like the easiest thing you can tell, oh, is this a good upscaler? Because like if it’s if it becomes legible, then oh yeah, that’s a good use of zoom. But if it’s not legible, then people are like, oh, this is crappy zoom. And I kind of feel like we’re going to get a lot of people who get the Pixel 10 Pro, they’re going to try it out on text and they’re going to be like, oh, this thing sucks. Not realizing that you’re not supposed to be using it like this.
06:40 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, I’m also worried about people. Obviously, like you just said, 99% of the time, if you’re using something like a 100x zoom, you’re not zooming in on people. You’re zooming in on stationary objects. But at the same time, like I hike a lot and I can totally imagine hiking up a big mountain and wanting to get a picture of my partner from very far away so that we can have this gorgeous landscape and then see this tiny little person in the majesty of the wilderness. Yeah, like is the AI going to accurately render my partner or not, you know, like do I want an AI generated image of my partner in a photo? So I there’s a lot of questions here. There’s a lot of things, but from a not ethical standpoint and from a technological standpoint, it is incredible. Like it is, it is a 10 out of 10 feature from a technical perspective. It works flawlessly. So, I mean maybe a 9 out of 10 because it does take a couple of seconds for the image to render using. So maybe 9 out of 10, but still, like it’s incredible. It’s just that it doesn’t sit right with me for a lot of reasons, but for other people it might be fine. They might just be like, this is super cool. I love this. I don’t care, you know, so.
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