Transcript

Voiceover 00:00:00 Welcome to the Made by Google Podcast, where we meet the people who work on the Google products you love. Here's your host, Rashid Finge

Rachid Finge 00:00:08 Welcome back to the Made by Google podcast. It's the final episode of this season and just like the past one, the final one is the one where you get to ask your questions. It's the Pixel Superfans Ask Me Anything and you had loads of questions, and I'm bringing you the answers from the people who work on our products every day. So, we send your questions to the experts and they recorded their answers and that's what I'm sharing with you today. And you know what?

Let's just dive straight in with a question from Gregory Scott Wright. He asks, what are the top 10 things we should be doing to get the most out of our Pixel devices? Well, Gregory, I've got some great news. You're getting the answer from Pixel's Product Manager Stephanie Scott.

Stephanie Scott 00:00:52 Pixel is so packed with many great features. It's hard to choose a top 10, let alone a top 3. Of course camera comes to mind with incredible camera quality. The first tip I'd give is to try all the lenses, especially on the Pro device with the triple rear camera. I love zooming in with a telephoto to get beautiful detail of architecture or buildings when I'm walking around a city. I also loved zooming out for use of macro mode on the rear as well. I was using that this weekend on the beautiful texture on the top of an everything bagel in New York. Also, don't forget to try the new post capture features, especially this year. Best Take is one of my absolute favorites. It helps me get an amazing picture of friends and family where everyone looks their best. By using that series of photos that you're already taking and letting you automatically select the pictures of people's faces where they're actually looking at the camera or smiling, I can't wait to use this on my holiday card as well. The 3rd feature I'd select is probably Assistant Features. I personally love smart dictation, which makes it so fast for me to reply to messages on the go.

Rachid Finge 00:02:04 Thanks, Stephanie. But we got more questions for you because here's one from Alex Madden and Alex is wondering, people often find inspiration in the weirdest places. Are there any fun ways that new Pixel features or designs have come about Steph?

Stephanie Scott 00:02:19 Yes, we take inspiration from a broad range of places. A few fun examples include our Pixel industrial design team, which is frequently inspired by nature. They may pick up a stone or a pebble from a weekend hike and use that as inspiration for the contoured surfaces of how the phone feels in your hand. Another great example is our design team, which is inspired by nature for the colors of the phone. Bay Blue, for example, was inspired by the sky on a clear day. Porcelain was inspired by beautiful ceramics. And then a third is actually users and family members. So our accessibility team is often really inspired by users that we meet, including family members and building with a strong desire to improve the experiences and help people.

Rachid Finge 00:03:10 And thanks again, Stephanie, for taking the time to answer these questions both. We have many more questions to go through like this one about the new displays on Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 8. Zach Dewald wants to know more about the new displays. Well, Zach, you're getting the answer from our Pixel Display Product Manager.

Zach Chen 00:03:28 Hey, Zach Chen, the Pixel Display PM here, and I'm glad you asked about this. With the Pixel 8 series, our goal is to push the boundary of what the great display means. The extra display on the Pixel 8 is 42% brighter than the Pixel 7, which makes it easily visible in the bright sunlight. We also put this higher brightness into good use when you're viewing HDR photos and watching HDR videos. These content record more details in the highlights and in the shadows. The higher brightness brings those extra details to life and makes them look so much more like seeing it in the real world. The super extra display on the Pixel 8 Pro is even better at 2,400 nets. It is our brightest display, yet the super extra display also dynamically varies the refresh rate from 1 hertz to 120 hertz giving you the battery smooth animation while considering power when the screen doesn't need to update frequently. So there you have it. I hope you like the new display on the Pixel 8 in April, and thank you for being a Pixel Super Fan.

Rachid Finge 00:04:29 Next question from Mateo. He's wondering how is the Pixel Pro future-proof for seven years of updates? The answer comes from the Pixel software team.

Aisha Sharif 00:04:39 Hey Mateo, from the very beginning, we set out to create amazing phones that people would want to hang onto. And as funny as it may seem, we still see people using even the very first Pixel. So we know that we've built phones that people wanna keep. This inspired us to see how long we could continue to support our devices. And given how we've continued to grow our expertise in testing and development, it felt like a good time to reevaluate our commitment. We landed on 7 years of support. It's an industry leading number that's over double our years of OSS support previously, and it's increasing our years of security updates significantly. On top of that, in addition to the 7 years of OSS security updates and feature drops, we've also extended support of the hardware parts to 7 years. We made this decision thoughtfully to ensure that we're confident in our ability to deliver on this exciting promise.

Rachid Finge 00:05:30 Thanks Aisha. And we have one more for you from Ankur. And he asks, how are the monthly Pixel updates and feature drops released? Are there particular days when they're released for example?

Aisha Sharif 00:05:41 Hey Ankur, there are no particular days from the monthly Pixel updates or feature drops are released, but we're always working to provide relevant updates as quickly as possible for the feature drops. We get excited about providing our Pixel owners with updates every few months across the entire portfolio. When we say our devices get better over time, we really mean it.

Rachid Finge 00:06:02 Thanks again, Aisha. And yes, I also love those Pixel feature drops as they continuously improve your device. And that's not only the case for phones, but as you'll see for other Pixel products as well. This question comes from Nitesh. What was the idea behind the Pixel Buds Pro new feature conversation detection. I'm loving this in the gym, as do I, by the way. And conversation detection was part of a Pixel feature drop. So what was the idea behind it? Let's ask the Product Manager on the Pixel Buds team.

Pol Peiffer 00:06:35 This is Pol. Thanks so much for sending in your question. We always try to listen out for feedback. And a piece of feedback we have been hearing was that people love the long battery life of Pixel Buds Pro, but they need to take out the earbuds when they want to have a conversation, for example, to order a coffee or say hi to a colleague. And this is of course, especially cumbersome when your hands are full. That's what we set out to solve with our conversation detection feature. We use AI to detect when you start speaking, pause your music and then switch you to transparency mode so you can hear your counterpart. Awesome to hear that you can now keep Pixel Buds Pro in your ears at the gym. Thanks again for your question and for being a Pixel Super Fan.

Rachid Finge 00:07:16 Thank you Pol. And by the way, if you want to know more about Pixel Buds Pro, Paul had his own episode on the Made by Google podcast this season talking about the feature drop that made the Pixel Buds Pro even more special. So if you want to know more about them, just go and find that episode in the Made by Google podcast.

Our final two questions are about Tensor G3, the chip inside Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 8 that does all the magic. And the first one is what kind of AI feature integration are you cooking for Tensor G3? The answer comes from another Pixel team member that's been on the Made by Google podcast before. Here's Prasad Modali.

Prasad Modali 00:07:55 With Tensor G3, we've been able to bring Google AI and ML research innovations almost across every major Pixel user experience such as video capture, phone calls, audio, Google Assistant, and so on, including upcoming generative AI feature drops like Zoom Enhance. Tensor G3 provides the highest quality video preview on live HDR plus, resulting in improved colors, contrast and dynamic range on photos and videos in your viewfinder.

Tensor G3 also features a more efficient camera processing silicon capability, providing the best zoom and video quality in your Pixel.

We also combined state of the art speech recognition with server quality natural language understanding models for the first time with Tensor G3. This combination of capabilities allows the users to pause as needed while talking to the assistant. You know how we normally talk with pauses in a conversation, enabling a natural conversational experience with the assistant. Tensor G3 packs in more AI capabilities within the mobile power budgets, allowing us to apply a lot more ML to silently screen calls while making the user experience more natural for the person that is being screened. As a result, many more types of spam calls can now be filtered out quietly.

Rachid Finge 00:09:26 And finally, also about Tensor G3 and also answered by Prasad with the introduction of Pixel 8, what is the new Tensor G3 capable of?

Prasad Modali 00:09:36 Tensor G3's, cutting edge hardware, ML, computational photography and advanced image processing features enable your phone to render more dynamic images, capture more details during Zoom and produce sharper and higher quality videos. Best Take in Pixel 8 is my favorite new camera feature that brings together Google's best ML techniques, advancing past breakthroughs such as stop shot, Real Tone, portrait mode, as well as new ML techniques. All of these coming together to deliver that perfect group shot.

Rachid Finge 00:10:10 Thank you Prasad, and thank you to all the other members of Team Pixel who answered your questions today. And of course a big thank you to you, our listeners, who are super fans who made this AMA possible by asking these amazing questions. So this season of the Made by Google podcast, we've been talking about the new Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 8, about the Pixel Watch 2 and about the new updated Pixel Buds Pro. If you want to know more about them, then why not revisit some of the episodes of this season? Or of course, go to the Google store, that's at store.google.com, to learn more about the devices and get your hands on them yourself. Well, it's been a great season of the Made by Google podcast and we're already looking forward to the next one. Thank you so much for listening and we'll speak soon. Take care.

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