EMILY FORTUNA: Joining us now is Soniya Jobanputra, a product
manager at Google, who is here to give us
the 411 on those sleek new phones.
Hi, Soniya.
SONIYA JOBANPUTRA: Hi, Emily.
EMILY FORTUNA: So your team has been amazingly busy
these past few months getting out this new Pixel
to the lineup.
What inspired you to create this phone?
SONIYA JOBANPUTRA: Yeah, well, we set out to do Pixel in 2016.
We really set out to do something different,
to really bring radically helpful hardware
to our consumers.
And we thought we could do that by bringing
the power of hardware, software, and AI together.
And we still believe that.
That's still our mission with these devices.
But with the benefit of three years,
we've been able to finally bring a phone that's
more affordable to more people.
And what we've managed to do is essentially
improve our capabilities from a manufacturing standpoint,
improve our capabilities from a hardware design and software
standpoint, and three, we've just
understood our users better over the last three years.
Starting with the third one, understanding our users.
By understanding our users, we can pick which pillars
and which parts of the product are most important to our users
and focus on those areas to design
phones that give users what they need in a really optimized way.
On the second two, we really have
year over year improved our manufacturing.
When we started out, we had other people
building our phones for us.
We are now a full-contract manufacturer.
We design and build our own devices,
which means we've come a tremendous way
from a manufacturing standpoint.
Finally, on the engineering side,
just last year we ended up acquiring
a huge and talented engineering team in Taiwan from HTC.
That team has been the lead on these devices.
And they have brought years and years of experience,
in conjunction with our Chicago design team and our Mountain
View design team, to come together
to build this new Pixel 3a device, the more affordable
Pixel device at $399.
EMILY FORTUNA: That's super cool.
I am personally very excited to see a new phone come out
with a headphone jack and a great camera.
What are your three favorite features on this new phone?
SONIYA JOBANPUTRA: Yeah, well, let's talk
about that headphone jack.
We debated on this headphone jack.
But we really felt that consumers at this price point,
in this price tier, really needed flexibility.
And that's what that headphone jack gives you.
We still support digital audio, and it is the ultimate way
to consume your audio, right?
You can either use our USB-C adapter on the bottom
or you can use Bluetooth headphones.
And digital audio is incredible.
But a lot of people have headphones,
and we didn't need to create anymore e-waste in the world.
So, we've decided to put a 3.5-millimeter headset jack
in so that people could use the accessories that they already
had available to them.
Now, my top three.
Let's start with the camera, because I
think that's everybody's top for Pixel, in general.
And Pixel 3a is incredible.
It shares the same camera experiences
that you get on your Pixel 3 device, minus group selfie
mode.
But, in general, you get all the great stuff,
starting with Night Sight, which lets you take
incredible images in low light.
My favorite is taking pictures of my kids
when they're sleeping because they sleep in the most
awkward positions, but you would be surprised
at the detail you can get.
You can catch their bedspread, their little stuffies,
and that's without turning any lights on in the room.
It is truly incredible.
On top of Night Sight, of course you get Portrait Mode.
So you can take those incredible selfies
with that bouquet effect, with that beautiful blurred
background.
And we have a depth editor, so you
can change and adjust that just to
how you want to see that picture.
We also have Photobooth.
Again, I'll say, savior when you have kids.
You just turn on the Photobooth and it
captures the picture when they're both facing the camera
and smiling.
That is a rare split-second event anywhere.
And Photobooth captures it every single time.
And that's also available on the Pixel 3a.
So, by far, the most incredible thing on this device
is this camera.
It's amazing.
And finally, it has unlimited storage,
just like our Pixel 3 devices--
with high quality, though.
My second favorite has to be Google Assistant.
Google Assistant is awesome.
It saves time and effort all day long.
You just have to talk to the phone to set reminders,
get directions.
It's super quick and easy.
And when you're on the go, that's
what you need, something that's quick and easy and reliable.
Finally, it also has Call Screen.
I don't know about you, but I get a lot of spam calls.
Call Screen is a savior.
And with the power of Google Assistant and Call Screen,
I only pick up calls that matter now, which is amazing.
And the bonus?
You get to waste a little bit of time of that spammer's time
as they try to call you and have to deal
with your little automated message.
So I really appreciate Call Screen.
And then my final one has to be battery life.
We heard this loud and clear from our research
that battery life is an issue.
And we all feel this anxiety of, like, oh no, I have 20%.
Am I going to get through the day?
We wanted to eliminate battery anxiety,
and I think we've done a fabulous job on these devices.
One, we beefed up the batteries, so they're just bigger.
On top of that, these both support Adaptive Battery,
which we introduced on our Pixel devices earlier this year.
And that just makes the battery a little bit smarter
around how it's using the power and extending it.
And so these devices both get up to 30 hours of battery life
on a full charge.
On top of that, we put a fast charger in box.
That's an 18-watt charger in the box.
You can charge this bad boy for 15 minutes
and get seven hours of battery life,
while you're, like, getting ready to get out the door.
Charge it and you have the whole night available to you.
It's pretty fantastic.
So those would have to be my top three.
EMILY FORTUNA: That is quite an impressive list.
SONIYA JOBANPUTRA: Thanks.
EMILY FORTUNA: I'd be curious to learn a little bit more
about the camera itself.
Can you tell me some more of the specifics
on how it's able to create all these cool effects?
SONIYA JOBANPUTRA: Yeah, absolutely.
So it starts with the hardware.
The hardware that we've picked for these cameras
is not mid-tier.
It is premium hardware.
In fact, the imager on the rear is the exact same imager
that we use on our premium devices.
The front imager is also the same normal field
of view imager that we use for our premium devices.
So we started with really great raw images.
From there, our magical software team took over.
They are phenomenal.
And they really were put to task on this phone
because, as you may know, the phone has not
the same type of processing power as our premium phones.
It has the Snapdragon 670 in it, versus the 800 series that
sits in our premium phones.
So we've really condensed their processing power,
and they were still able to deliver.
They optimized every last aspect of the camera
features to get them to work on here.
Each individual feature was revisited by the team
to not only optimize the algorithms,
but to optimize the overall experience to work
on these particular devices.
And they did it.
They did a phenomenal job of delivering those low software
features.
EMILY FORTUNA: Thank you so much, Soniya,
for coming to talk to us about the Pixel 3a and 3a XL.
SONIYA JOBANPUTRA: Thanks for having me, Emily.
It was really exciting to talk about them.
[MUSIC PLAYING]