- 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 colors across the board,
just putting it out there.
But with this one it's Hazel, Rose,
and Obsidian for the Pixel 8
and then Obsidian, Porcelain,
and this new blue color called Bay.
I think the blue is probably the most interesting
of the whole lineup
combined with the new matte finish
that's on the back of all the Pros.
I love that.
I think it might be 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.
- [Google Assistant] 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?
- [Courier] I'm trying to drop off a package for Kenny.
(no audio)
- [Google Assistant] They said you can go ahead
and leave the package by the front door.
(no audio)
- [Courier] Okay, thanks.
That's great.
(no audio)
- [Google Assistant] 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)