Google just announced a ton of new, unreleased products as well as new features and capabilities
for existing products that hint at where the Google and Pixel product roadmaps are
going. As someone who spends a lot of time reviewing Google products over the long term,
I wanted to give you my perspective and insights on what Google announced at
I/O 2022 and what you can expect for Google hardware this year.
First, the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. We got our first look at what these new phones will
look like with an arguably more polarizing external back design than last year’s phones.
They'll use the next generation of Google's Tensor chip and house new
cameras and a refined exterior design using polished aluminum which looks really nice.
And actually the more interesting pixel that Google talked about at I/O
in my opinion is actually the Pixel 6a which gets everything you get in the Pixel 6,
including the top-of-the-line Tensor Chip, minus the top of the line camera hardware, all for $449.
What's really interesting about Google's strategy here is they're giving you a top-of-the-line
processor at a really great price and this has been Apple's strategy for years
now with their phones, like the iPhone SE. And by putting the latest chips
in them, you get some really cool software features like Magic Eraser, Live Translate,
plus some of the best chip performance you’ll get in a smartphone at this price.
The Pixel 6a comes out this summer here in the US and we’ll of course be doing a long-term review on
the 6A, as well as the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. So make sure you subscribe to the channel in order to see
those videos and let us know down in the comments what you're excited about with these new pixels.
Now Google didn’t just stop with phones for their Pixel announcements at I/O, they also
unveiled the new Pixel Buds Pro which feature active noise cancellation, a custom-designed
Google Chip & Audio Processor, and they have transparency mode as well as spatial audio with
supported devices…which begs the question. Did Apple not trademark any of their feature names?
The Pixel Buds Pro come in at $199 with 7 hours of battery life with noise cancellation on and we’ll,
of course be reviewing them and comparing them to the Google Pixel Buds A Series,
which we’ll have a long-term review out on soon as well as the Sony XM4 earbuds which are high-end
noise, canceling earbuds and those have been my earbuds of choice now for the past few months.
Google also made official the Pixel Watch which will be coming this Fall and looks pretty
great.It's like Google's designers and product engineers had to ask themselves what exactly
would make us stop wearing an Apple Watch and wear a Pixel watch. We’ll see if Google delivers, but
with the Pixel watch, you now see them starting to build out the broader Pixel and Google ecosystem.
Now the last product Google teased won’t even come out this year but in 2023
and that’s the Pixel Tablet. A next generation Android tablet that from the front
looks exactly like a Nest Hub Max with slightly slimmer bezels. And, while they didn’t mention
what it was for, the back of the tablet in a rear seems to hint that this table will have
similar smart connectors to the iPad’s which is used for attaching the magic keyboard.
And here's my first prediction of a Google product that was not announced at I/O:
I think Google is going to create a smart speaker stand for the Pixel tablet, which will basically
turn the pixel tablet into a larger Nest Hub Max when it's not in use and charging on the stand.
And speaking of the Nest Hub Max, Google actually announced two new features coming
to that product later this year and the first one is called “Look and Talk” which allows you
to look directly at the Nest Hub Max and then start asking the Google Assistant for something,
all without saying the wake word, which is pretty cool.
The second feature coming to the Nest Hub Max is called Quick phrases which are phrases you can
set up in the Google Home app which will allow you to skip the wake word for phrases like,
“set a timer,” “turn off the lights,” or what time is it? So you no longer have
to use the Google Assistant wake word for some of your most frequent asks.
Now it’s unclear when this feature is rolling out and what devices will support it at the time of
this recording, but we can probably assume it’ll roll out before the end of the 2022.
Now, back to my predictions. Now the second prediction for a product that was not announced
at Google I/O is, I think Google is going to update their Google Assistant devices
with the Tensor chip built in. This will further reduce latency of the response time for the Google
Assistant and allow the Google Assistant to do just way more things than it can do today.
At an earlier part of I/O, Google talked about making the Google Assistant even more
conversational and said: “the breakthrough comes by creating more comprehensive neural
networks that run on the Google Tensor Chip.” This is why I think Tensor and
other Google Custom designed chips for natural language processing are going to be essential
to Google Assistant devices going forward and likely why we haven't
seen updates to the existing Google Assistant product lineup in some time.
Now, the third product prediction I'm making here today is, Google is going to make AR glasses,
because they have to. Now this may seem obvious to some who
watched the entire I/O event because of the AR glasses demo Google showed
helping people understand each other even when talking in different languages.
However, there was another part of I/O that I actually think is more important
to the argument for why Google has to make AR glasses. And that's when the
company started talking about Multisearch. Multisearch is all about using two different
methods for searching for something. For example, you use Google Lens to take a photo of a dress,
and then ask it for a similar dress in green and it’ll show you those results.
They also teased in the future you’ll be able to use a “scene exploration” feature
to visually search down an isle of physical goods and be able to see the reviews for each product.
Searching this way and identifying objects in the real world as you go about your day,
that's one of the cornerstone use cases for AR glasses. Google still makes most of their
money from search advertising and services which is don’t think they can seed ground to rivals
in the visual search space, and that's why I think it's likely Google will end
up being a major player in the AR glasses space competing against Apple and Meta.
So those are all of my hardware predictions for hardware that Google didn't announce at I/O
and a rundown of the announcements that they did make. and we’re now really starting to see
a compelling Google hardware ecosystem come together. This has been one of my
main complaints about Google’s Pixel phones is that up until this point,
they haven’t had a compelling hardware ecosystem that could compete with Apple & Samsung.
It looks like we're on the cusp of that finally changing. Now, make sure you're subscribed to
the channel to see long-term reviews of all of the products that were just announced at Google I/O.
If you found this video helpful and you liked it, make sure you hit that thumbs up button below.
And let me know what you thought of what Google announced at I/O by leaving a comment below. And
if you're looking for what to watch next, check out some of our other Google long-term reviews,
like our reviews on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, the Nest Hub second generation with sleep tracking,
the Nest Audio, and the Nest Mini. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.