Pixels Are Starting to Lose Me..
For years and years, despite the fact that Samsung always had more features, Pixel phones always felt like the phone line that was constantly picking up features that actually made a difference to me. These were features that genuinely changed the way I use my phone; they felt smarter, more intuitive. However, as of late, it feels like Google’s focus is subtly shifting. In doing so, they are starting to lose me.
The Rise of the Gimmick
The older, impressive features are still there, of course. We are not just talking about new applications. Everyone has voice typing, but the version on Pixel phones is far and away better than it is on any other phone. Google simply continues to make it better and better. You have an impressive array of commands that you can use without ever having to lift a finger, allowing you to send messages or insert emojis. On the newest Pixel 10 devices, you can even have AI rephrase things, although I admit I do not use that feature a ton. This is actually kind of emblematic of what we will be getting into.
The early enhancements, like the emojis and the commands, were truly cool. We could quickly say things like "Clear all" or "Delete" to manage text. Now we are getting into some new features that make me feel like maybe Google is losing its way a little bit.
After you use something like voice typing to quickly hammer out a message, you might not be paying super close attention to punctuation or grammar. That is why another cool Pixel feature is right inside Gboard. I can click one button, and the system will scan the text and fix it for me, adding necessary punctuation and correcting grammatical mistakes. That capability remains so very useful after all these years.
Even now, features like Now Playing still feel like magic. You can simply be out in the world, maybe in a grocery store, and your phone will hear a song playing in the background, identifying it immediately. You can even see a history of exactly what songs it was hearing around you, so if you wonder what that song was, the answer will be there on your phone.
Of course, Call Screening is another fantastic feature. Spam calls are simply not a problem on Pixel devices. The phone will pick up that junk and handle it before you even have to see it.
Fairly recently, Circle to Search has fundamentally changed the way I use my phone. I am constantly using this feature to grab text, even if that text is embedded within an image. I can quickly search it, copy it, translate it, or do whatever I need to do. Naturally, you also have the general visual search capability that allows for really quick searches as well.
Honestly, I could go on. I could probably continue naming features that have been added to Pixel phones over the years that truly feel like they are making the phone more useful.
The Shift to Features I Will Never Use
Lately, I find myself more often than not standing on the sidelines watching Pixel phones focus on features that might sound cool in press releases, but end up being completely useless to me. If we go back into the voice command section, we find a good example of this. Google is basically shoving AI into every nook and cranny, finding excuses and places to put AI.
Look, some of it can be useful. Some of it just feels like stuff that, again, I am simply never going to use. I am speaking specifically for myself and about myself. I am not telling you that these features are inherently bad. I am just speaking editorially from my perspective about how I feel about a lot of these new additions.
Consider Magic Cues, which has an entire section in the settings. Magic Cue uses AI to proactively show useful details and time-saving actions relevant to what is on your phone. I have had the Pixel 10 Pro Fold for over a month now, and my entire experience with Magic Cue can be summed up very briefly. I was texting with my mom, making plans to go bowling, trying to figure out what day and time. A little chip popped up that I could tap; it took me to my calendar and added the event. That is it. That is the sole time Magic Cue has done anything.
Part of that is because I do not think I am the right person for Magic Cue. It is looking for specific things it could help me with, but I am not doing any of those things. When you look at how they demoed Magic Cue, they are talking about it pulling your flight number and time out of your email, or organizing plans. I am just kind of boring. It is mostly just me and my wife, so I am not really doing enough for Magic Cue to have anything to work with. No one is texting me asking me for photos of my dogs that it could magically recognize and suggest a photo of my dog. It is just not a thing.
Pixel Journal is another good example of this. "Write about your day. Spark creativity, add photos, places, activities, get customized writing inspiration, and track how you are feeling." It is a smart journaling application that is going to be using the data your phone has about you to assist you with journaling.
Here is the thing: I just do not have a need for a smart journaling app. I use Google Keep and Google Tasks literally every single day. The reason primarily is because I am just quickly jotting down ideas and notes about content and that is accessible to me on all my other devices and in the web browser. I can go to my computer, quickly go into Google Tasks, write down a video idea, and when I check my computer, it is there. If Pixel Journal synced to my computer and I could see that stuff there, maybe I could find some deeper use for it. For now, Google Keep just kind of does a better job of doing this for me. I do not need AI inside my note-taking app. If I wanted to use AI while I am doing something like this, I will just go ahead and split screen with Gemini and use it that way. I do not really need it built in. I just need a basic note-taking app, which they made years ago. This just again does not feel like it is meant for me.
AI is Not the Problem, Target Audience Is
It is not just that these features use AI; that is not the problem at all. I use Gemini all the time to organize my thoughts, research things, or generate tables to help me organize different data sets and so forth. That is not the problem. It is just that these features feel like they are targeting a different customer.
I think maybe the best example of this is the Camera Assist. When you are in the camera app, you hit a button, and it is going to try and analyze what it is seeing through the camera, attempting to help you frame it. It might say, "Aim a little higher," or "Over to your left. Try to center things." If Google has ever made a feature that I have found to be completely, totally, utterly pointless and useless, it has to be this one. This is at the very tippy top of what I am talking about: this focus on shoving AI into this phone to create features that just do absolutely nothing for me.
Then we have the things that Pixel devices just kind of ignore, which would be better for power users like myself, things we have been expecting for a really long time. Obviously, you can split screen with two apps, but that is really it. You cannot do a third app. You cannot do a floating window. I appreciate that they are working on a proper desktop mode for when this thing is plugged into an external screen, but we are still lacking fundamental, years-old features. It feels like Google is saying, "Yeah, you can split screen and that is fine. It works well, whatever, but we are not really focused on that. That is not really our target customer."
The AI I Love, But With a Catch
One place where they have been injecting AI that I actually really like is inside Google Photos. Magic Editor in particular helped me edit. The ability to just tell my phone what I want to have happen and it just does it for me is really cool. I have shown you guys trips to the zoo where I got rid of the fence by just literally saying "Remove the fence." Now you are going to be able to tell it, "Hey, open this person's eyes," and it is going to know who they are based on the context of your other photos you have taken of them that are labeled, and it is going to replace their eyes correctly. The list goes on and on. Really, really impressive stuff.
But there is one thing that kind of bugs me. Google Photos can use the Autoframe option to do AI Outpainting, which is cool. Being able to zoom out a photo can really come in handy, but why can I not do this in a more manual way? On my Honor Magic V5, there is an option for AI outpainting too. What I love about this is I can tell it how much outpainting to do. I can actually go into a free mode and I can outpaint in one direction more than the other. I can just kind of dial that in and do exactly what I want to do.
Why is it on the Pixel device that it is a very handholdy guided experience? That is a lot of what Google seems like they are doing more and more of these days. They are sort of taking the control away from you and saying, "This is what we are giving you. This is what we can do and this is what you are going to get." A lot of it is very, very good, but it is just not how I would want it. I would want that more granular control.
I have so many phones that let you long-press on an object that is in the photo to pop something out from that photo that I can then share, send, or turn into a sticker. That is super useful for me in terms of making thumbnails. You cannot do that on a Pixel phone. Let us be real, Google is absolutely more than capable of doing any and all of these things. They just are not doing them. It is just not a priority to them.
Shifting Perceptions
I think the way I would describe it is like this: Google seems to be shifting their focus from cool techy phones with really neat new features to more lifestyle-sorts of things. You might remember earlier this year when I told you guys that I had been jettisoned from the Team Pixel program. They do not send me review units anymore and I think that is part of this as well. Team Pixel is now for super fans and for lifestyle influencers. That seems like that is more who they are sending their phones to now. It is all about this change of perception that Google is trying to usher in around their phones. They are kind of leaving the techy people like me behind a little bit and trying to capture a different segment of people.
If you guys remember in the leadup to the launch of the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, when we kind of saw that the hardware was staying basically exactly the same, I told you the software was going to have to carry the day for me. There was going to have to be a handful of really impressive software features that would make me go, "Wow, I absolutely need to try that." The device has been out for a month now and there is like one feature, and it is Help Me Edit, which I think is really cool, but that feature is on every phone, so really there is kind of nothing new.
Do not get me wrong, this is a fantastic phone and I still enjoy using it, but a lot of it is because of the features they introduced in prior years. The features they introduced for this year that I enjoy are things like Pixel Snap, and things like the larger battery. They have improved the 2x, 3x, and 4x zoom on this device as well. But the norm of new Pixel phones meaning a really cool, crazy new software feature just was not a thing this year.
I do not know, maybe I am crazy, but I just cannot help but shake this feeling that maybe, just maybe, their target audience is shifting to try and pull in an audience that have different sensibilities, maybe a fruitier disposition. Of course, Pixel Snap, all jokes aside, is one of my favorite things about this device, so I cannot really complain about that one.
Am I the only one that feels like the software features are indeed shifting into that lifestyle category and leaving the nerdiness behind? Are you feeling maybe the allure of a slightly nerdier phone like the Z Fold 7 or like some of these Chinese OEMs that have sort of more power user features? Let me know in the comments down below.