Google’s next big Pixel

Today on the flagship podcast of the correct height-to-width ratio of a foldable phone: The Verge’s David Pierce, Allison Johnson, Victoria Song, and Chris Welch discuss all the new gadget announcements from Google’s Pixel event — including the Pixel 9, the Pixel Watch 3, the Pixel buds, and more. Further reading: Google Pixel 9 launch event live coverage: all the news Google’s Pixel 9 lineup is a Pro show Google’s new Pixel Buds Pro 2 seem better in every way that matters The Pixel 9 Pro XL showed me the future of AI photography Google Pixel Watch 3 hands-on: a big leap forward The Google TV Streamer might be the Apple TV 4K rival we’ve been waiting for Why Google decided now’s the time to move on from Chromecast The Nest Learning Thermostat gets its biggest upgrade in over a decade Google’s Pixel Fold one year later: I can’t wait for the sequel Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the correct height to width ratio of a foldable phone. I'm your friend David Pierce and I'm back. I was on vacation for the last two weeks up in New England, looking at leaves and frolicking in fields and drinking fancy coffee and doing all the things that you normally do on vacation. I missed a shocking amount of news for like late July and early August. Truly bonkers how much stuff is going on. But now I'm back. The team did an awesome job while I was out. Thank you to everybody who sent us feedback on the pilots we've been doing. We have lots more fun stuff coming up on that front, but it's gadget season, friends. So we have a lot to do. Today on the show, we are going to talk all Pixel all the time. The reason

• 0:44David Pierce?

  this episode is coming out a little bit late is because Google is having an event today, potentially right now, as you're listening to this, announcing all of its hardware for the year. We've gotten some of the hardware already, the new Nest thermostat, the new TV streamer, but all the phones, all the everything that's been leaked and talked about for months, it's all coming out right now. A couple of folks on our team have seen this stuff. They've been briefed on the news. They know what's coming. So we are going to talk about all the new stuff coming from Google and what it means. I really can't figure out Google as a hardware company. I've spent a long time trying to figure it out and we're going to try and do it all at once on this episode. So that's what this episode is. It's all Google, all the time. It's the Pixel special. We're going to get into it. But first, I just have one quick PSA for you. And I learned this again. I've

• 1:28David Pierce?

  learned this 100 times and I keep forgetting every time I go on vacation, the buffer day is everything. When you get home from a trip, make sure there is one whole day between the end of that trip and whatever thing you have to do next, back to school, back to work, whatever it is you're doing. Come home on Saturday instead of going on Sunday night and then going back to work Monday morning. That's awful. Didn't do the buffer day. Regret the buffer day. All hail the buffer day. Let's talk Pixel. This is The Vergecast. We'll be right back.

• 1:57Speaker 01

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• 2:27Speaker 02

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• 2:54David Pierce?

  Welcome back. There's lots of Google news to get to, so let's just get to it. I have a crew of people who, by the look of it, are very, very few of you are where you normally are when we do this. So let's, let's just go around and figure out what's going on. V-Song, hello, you appear to be where you usually are.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  I, I am in my normal spot.

• 3:11David Pierce?

  This is good. I'm very happy. Allison Johnson, I can't even begin to guess where you are right now.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  This is lovely mountain view, California.

• 3:19David Pierce?

  Chris Welch, hello, where are you right now? I'm in Brooklyn. All right, so you are the people who know what's coming from Google. And I should say, just for people who are curious how this all works. We're recording this on Monday. Google's event and the embargo are on Tuesday. But you all have, because of your wiles and excellence as reporters, you know what's coming. You have seen the things, you have talked to people about the things. So we're going to talk about the things. And I have a list of gadgets that I want to talk about. And first, what's going to happen is I'm going to give you the list. And then you're going to tell me if there's anything that I'm missing that are surprises. Because I'm coming back from two weeks of vacation and I missed a lot of things. And then I have ranked the things in the order in which I am interested in them. And then we're going to talk about them. Does that all sound good?

• 4:00Speaker 04

  Great.

• 4:01David Pierce?

  So here's my whole list. I have the Pixel 9, the Pixel 9 Pro, the other Pixel 9 Pro and the Pixel 9 Fold. Are those all the phones? Did I miss any phones?

• 4:10Speaker 04

  Those are the phones.

• 4:11David Pierce?

  Okay. I have a Pixel Watch 2 and Pixel Buds.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Pixel Watch 3?

• 4:16David Pierce?

  Oh, God, is it the Pixel Watch 3 already?

• 4:17Speaker 03

  It is the Pixel Watch 3 already.

• 4:19David Pierce?

  Okay, alright. Oh, and there's two of them. So we have the Pixel Watch 3 and the other Pixel Watch 3. And the Pixel Buds with a number attached that I can't be bothered to worry about right now. We also have the Google TV streamer, nay, Chromecast, R.I.P., which I want to talk about. Those are all the gadgets, but I also have, I have a Nest thermostat, I guess. We'll, we'll touch on that, but we're going to get to that with Jen later this summer, I think. And I have the Pixel screenshots thing, a bunch of AI, and just some other random nonsense to get to. Am I missing anything before we dive in? I don't think so.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  I think you got it.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Probably, but we'll get to it.

• 4:50David Pierce?

  I probably, yeah. This is Google, like, there's probably several gadgets that'll leak between now and the event on Tuesday, when folks are hearing this. So for anything we missed, I apologize. Blame Sudhar Pichai. Let's start with the phones, because I feel like this is, this is just where we have to start. Again, this, this is all new. I don't know any of the specs of these things. So the first thing you're all going to have to do is kind of give me the rundown of what's going on, and then we're gonna, we're gonna talk about our feelings about all of it. So let's, let's start with the Pixel 9. Allison, tell me about the Pixel 9.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, Pixel 9. So we used to have two phones. Wow, two phones that didn't fold. Now there's three phones that don't fold in half. So Pixel 9 is still the, the entry level is a hundred dollars more expensive this year, which seems to keep happening to this phone.

• 5:37David Pierce?

  Yeah, remember when the Pixel was like the cheap flagship? That was like its whole thing?

• 5:41Speaker 04

  I looked at it. Pixel 6 was $599, and we are $200 further away from that. So this year it's got 6.3 inch screen, which is like, they keep making it a tiny bit bigger without making the phone like meaningfully bigger. So it's still like the small phone of the Pixels, like do without what you want. But there's more RAM this year, upgraded ultra-wide camera, a little bit bigger battery, that kind of thing, like incremental stuff. And then there's all the AI, you know?

• 6:17David Pierce?

  There's a new chip, right? That's like, I would assume for all the AI stuff they're trying to do, that ends up being like the big spec bump here would be the new chip.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Tensor G4, and that's across the board in all of them.

• 6:28David Pierce?

  That is one thing Google does that I really like is have the same chip in everything. And they claim it's an AI thing, and that sort of makes sense. But at least your phone should perform very well, no matter which one you buy, is a nice and not always common thing to have going on.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, good job, Google.

• 6:44David Pierce?

  Not a lot of enthusiasm coming from you on the Pixel 9. I gotta say, like, I'm just, it's just, it's, there was not brimming with excitement.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's the boring one this year. I think mostly because there's now a Pro version and like Pro phone, that's basically the same size. And I get excited about this size phone, so I want to see the Pixel 9 Pro. Unfortunately, it is shipping much later than the other ones. So it's going to be TBD on like opinions about that one.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  The colors are nice this year on the, on the small phone, the boring phone.

• 7:20David Pierce?

  Are they? What are the colors?

• 7:21Speaker 03

  You know, there's always the two boring colors. And then there's this winter green and peony. So it's very like pink and green. It's, it's a vibe. It's a very happy pink. It's, it's pink. It's not like, here's a drop of pink. It's basically white.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  They went for it.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  They went for it. They, they were just like colors. We love them.

• 7:42David Pierce?

  I actually appreciate that from Google. I feel like everyone else is out here trying to like come up with fancy names for beige on their phones every year. And Google at least is, is committed to the bit of, do you want this green phone? And I do want this green phone. Yeah, like I do, Google. Yes, thank you. All right, so let's talk about the, the Pro because the, my guess would be that the Pro is going to be vastly more interesting to most people than the regular Pixel 9, especially because the Pixel 9 is not so cheap anymore as to be kind of a tiebreaker for money reasons for most people. So what, and, and like you said, you can now get a Pixel 9 Pro at the same size as the Pixel 9, which I think is also a big deal. So what's, what's the story of the Pro here?

• 8:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, the Pro, so all three other phones are Pro something. There's the 9 Pro, that's the smaller one. 9 Pro XL, which is a 6.8 inch screen, which is up in, you know, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra territory. It's like a big one. And then the the Fold, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a Pro phone this year. And as best I can tell, I made a spreadsheet of the specs. Pro means it has 16 gigs of RAM. That's the only like through line on the Pro phones. So like you said, they all have Tensor G4. Um, you have two choices of Pro phones that don't fold in half.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  Super big screen or reasonably sized screen. The 9 Pro is $9.99, so that's no, it's not a price increase. Even though the phone is small. It's weird comparing the 8 Pro to the 9 Pro because it's, you really want to compare the 8 Pro to the 9 Pro XL. Uh, it's real wonky.

• 9:28David Pierce?

  Yeah, Chris, Chris, can you make sense of this lineup for me? Because you're, you're the person I trust to want the most phone at all times possible. And I, I appreciate that about you. What do you make of this lineup?

• 9:38Speaker 05

  Uh, it feels pretty conventional. Like, once you just look at the 9 and 9 Pro XL, which are gonna come out first. So that's kind of like just the usual playbook for Google. And then 9 Pro will be out sometime next month, they say. But, yeah, I mean, I want the Fold, obviously, uh, for no reason other than it's very pretty this year. And they got the screen size right. And, yeah, there's a lot to like about it this year.

• 9:59David Pierce?

  Let's just get into that because I feel like I wanted to start with the Pixel phones because I feel like, A, they are the ones that most people who want these phones will buy. But also, they are what they are, right? Like, we're, we're in a phase with all of these phones, no matter what company you buy from, where you can pretty much write down a list of what's going to happen next year, and you're almost always right. So let's move on from that because I, I agree. It seems like the Fold is probably the most different and maybe most compelling thing in this phone lineup. And Chris, I particularly, I want you to explain this phone to me because you just wrote a, a thing that I would call like a, a deep backhanded compliment to the Pixel Fold, uh, where you're kind of... Like, I love this thing. It sucks. I can't wait for them to do it better.

• 10:40David Pierce?

  So, so tell me, tell me about the, the new Pixel Fold and what it seems like Google maybe did right this time.

• 10:45Speaker 05

  Uh, so they changed the whole form factor. So the first fold was like a passport style, like shortened squat. And that was fun. Like the outer screen was like not quite as tall as most phones. You could use it on one hand very easily. And then when you opened it, it was like a very wide like inner screen. Now they're going towards like the OnePlus Open direction where it's like a very tall outer screen. It's like a normal phone. It's like a 6.3 inch display, like just like the Pixel 9 display essentially. It's like the same size. So you've got like a whole phone on the outside now. So you're not really like making any compromises there. And then you open it up. It's just like a giant, like whole tablet now. So the first fold, I like had a ton of like, uh, black bars with many apps on the sides because like it's Android and no one actually like, you know, cares about like one device. Uh, so hopefully now Google's going to say that like all these apps are going to like open the full screen by default now.

• 11:28Speaker 05

  So it's going to have like better app compatibility and it's way brighter too. Like the first fold wasn't that bright outside. This one is like very, very, very bright. So they've like fixed many problems. The cameras are still nowhere near as good as the Pros. Obviously that's the main issue. Uh, there's just like not much room to fit super nice cameras in there. Uh, so that's the main compromise you're going to make if there is one. Uh, but it just seems like a super refined, nice version of the first fold. It's like what the first fold should have been essentially and, uh, but it's, uh, but it's now $1,800, which is extremely expensive.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Hmm. Improved flatness.

• 11:59Speaker 05

  It is very flat.

• 12:00David Pierce?

  Eighteen, yeah, I just, the price kills me. And it's like, Google, if I, if they made me the CEO of Google, I would be willing to lose so much money on Pixel Folds just to like, this is, this is your chance if you're Google. And I want, we're going to get back to some of the like big picture, where does Google fit into this universe stuff in, in a minute? Because I wrote a bunch of years ago, when the first Pixel came out, that this was the best phone on the planet. And I believed it then, and I think Google has the potential to do it now and like, just keeps getting in its own way in a thousand ways. But we're going to come back to all of that. But this is like, if, if I'm Google, this sounds like a real chance for this company to be like,

• 12:38David Pierce?

  we have done, we have done the thing. Like we got it kind of right. Samsung is getting a little closer to getting it right, but is doing sort of. A series of boring iterative upgrades. And Alison, I remember at I O last year, we were talking and it was like, okay, this pixel fold feels like it's not, it's almost there, but it's not quite there. And the, the clear vibe from the first pixel fold was like, I cannot wait for the next one. When they have another year to push at the hardware, another year of trying to convince people to make these apps. And it feels like this has a real shot of like, this might be the one. Like in terms of the closest foldable phone to getting it fully right. We might be almost there from Google. Am I, am I too excited about this?

• 13:17Speaker 04

  I, I think I'm just like slightly less optimistic. It does feel like the move they should have made in like the phone that we wanted last year is here. I love the OnePlus Open Form Factor. So like moving towards that, I think is a great move. That my biggest complaint about the original pixel fold is so heavy. It was just uncomfortable to hold it for a while. And then it can be the best phone in the world, but if you don't want to hold it, there's a problem. So this one's significantly lighter. I think those are all really good things. I think I'm still confused by the, like, I get that they have to make trade off for the camera.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  But if you're putting Pro on the name of this phone and you're still having to compromise on the camera.

• 14:04David Pierce?

  You're also charging $1,800, which I feel as the person who says prices very loudly occasionally on this podcast. It's $1,800. That's so much money.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  I know. That's like the going rate for a folding phone, I guess.

• 14:18David Pierce?

  Which is like, fine. I get that that's, they're expensive and that's what they seem to cost. But like, I just don't, and I feel this way with everybody. I don't think you get to make any kind of significant compromise and get away with it at that price. And Google is going to say it can do a lot of stuff in software for the camera. And that what a lot of people are doing with the camera is not taking photos. They're doing all this AI stuff. And that's all well and good, but I do think the, we are going to end up pretty rigorously stress testing this thing. And I think there is absolutely no room for error in the camera in these folds because they're just too expensive.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  Agreed.

• 14:49David Pierce?

  V, are you a folding phone person? I don't feel like you and I have ever talked about folding phones.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  It's too expensive for me. I am a cheap ass with my phones. Well, not really, because I have the iPhone Pro Max. You know what I really don't like is I don't like how they keep adding adjectives to the ends of these phones along with numbers so that it's like an alphabet soup. But like, I'm always intrigued by them. I just, so I take my phone running and I have this feeling of if I drop this while I'm running, because I have eaten it while running before, I'm just gonna sit there and be like, "Oh, I'm bleeding." But also, "The repair bill! I'm bleeding both my blood and money." So that's why I haven't gotten any kind of folding phone yet, because then I would feel

• 15:38Speaker 03

  the need to have like a safe phone for running. And then that's, we're getting into two-phone, three-phone territory. I'm already have, I'm all, I'm already dual-wielding phones, because they've decided to make it so that Wear OS watches don't work with an iPhone. I used to be able to get away with one phone and test all of these watches. Nope, I have to have two frickin' phones at all times now. Oh, welcome to my world. So I don't need a third, I don't need a third folding phone, even though I would like one. I would just wanna play around with it, but you know. I'm still mad at you, David, for talking about the Books Palmas so much, so stop asking me to buy more things.

• 16:15David Pierce?

  I talked about it once. Everybody needs to leave me alone about this. I got very excited about it one time, and I was right. And now, this is, this is somehow my legacy, as I have convinced too many people to buy this deeply overpriced adorable little gadget. And to all those people, I'm not sorry at all. Remotely sorry. Just be glad, V, that they didn't release a Pixel Ring, because I literally had the thought in going through this that like, V is gonna run out of fingers. Like, it's just, we're just, we're toast here.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  So like, I'm basically testing all of these, and I've narrowed it down to the three that I think are the best. If they came out with a Pixel Ring, that's probably next year, but if they came out with a Pixel Ring this year, I would be in so much trouble. I already have six ring tans. It's bad.

• 17:00David Pierce?

  So let's actually move on to the wearables, because while we're just running through the news, let's run through the news. So the Pixel Watch 3, which I am reliably told is the new one. What's the deal with Pixel Watch 3?

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Well, there's a new size now there. After everyone complained that the 41mm is too small, they have now come out with a 45mm. And then they were like, okay, so the hardware, it's basically gonna look the same as last year, except we're gonna add an ultra wideband chip and actual displays, they're bigger, brighter, bolder now. Yeah, sure, they look the same. Most people looking at the watches are just gonna be like, that, that sure is a watch. The bezels are 16% slimmer. Love that. And then they were just like, and here is a laundry list of software updates that there's, it is physically impossible that I will remember every single bit of software that they have crammed into this thing. And it's like, actually quite impressive, the amount of software updates. There's like,

• 17:55Speaker 03

  you can stream your Nest doorbell or cam feed straight to your wrist. You can unlock your BMW if you have a BMW, can also unlock your Pixel phone. You can do custom runs now, which, you know, other watches have been able to do for a long time, but now you can program your actual thing. It's very Garmin-like. You have a morning summary of all of your stuff. There's an auto sleep mode. There's cardio load. It's a lot.

• 18:22David Pierce?

  So Google is, is deep in the like, health and fitness race now. Like, Google, there was a minute at the beginning of the Pixel Watch where Google was doing that, but also had some big ideas about like, the assistant, and this is an AI thing. And it feels like they're getting away from that and just pushing towards this is a health and fitness device.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  I actually think they're, they're pushing equally towards the productivity stuff and the health stuff. It was very heavy on the productivity stuff first, I think, because they were mostly coasting on Fitbit exists. This is a Fitbit platform.

• 18:51David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Now, this time around, they've basically gone, what is Garmin doing? And let's just add it to the watch. So there's like a morning summary now. You know, Garmin, a couple of generations ago, they introduced this thing called Morning, Morning Report. And it'll tell you like, your overnight stats and the weather, so that you can wake up and go like, oh, it's 90 degrees, time to die on this five mile run. So now the Google Pixel Watch 3 is gonna do that. And then, you know, they're adding something called cardio load now. I think if you've ever used a Garmin or a Polar or just like a multi-sport watch, you know what cardio load is. But that's not really something we've seen on these major flagship watches to be like, what's your cardio load?

• 19:34Speaker 03

  And cardio load is basically how intensely your heart has been working in your workouts over a period of time. And it's kind of a gauge of like, oh, you know, maybe my cardio load is really high. I should ease off or just do more like, I hate this, but like zone two training. It's, it's, it's very triggering to hear zone two training for me. So, you know, that's what that cardio load thing is. And then, you know, custom running workouts and running metrics like vertical oscillation, stride, cadence. Vertical oscillation is the most useless metric, by the way. I don't know what you're supposed to do with that. It just tells you how far up and down you move while you run and like the less the better. But you're just gonna, what are you, what are you gonna do? I'm a bouncy runner.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  How are you gonna change the fact that you're a bouncy runner anyway? But it's gonna tell you all those things. There's a new running dashboard within the Fitbit app. It's, it's a lot of stuff and just like, oh, the, the biggest one that I haven't mentioned that yet is that it can now detect a loss of a pulse and call emergency services for you.

• 20:36David Pierce?

  That seems good.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Loss of pulse, like, it's basically like, are you dying?

• 20:41David Pierce?

  Yeah, I love it. Loss of pulse is such an amazing euphemism.

• 20:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a serious one, right?

• 20:46David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's very serious. So it's like, you know, if you overdose, if you have a heart attack and you're alone, it's gonna call emergency services for you. In the EU, not in the US yet, because obviously this needs regulatory go ahead for that because the potentials for a false alarm are very scary. I talked to Google and they were like, sensor fusion. Don't worry, if you just take your watch off, which is a loss of pulse event, it's not gonna call emergency services. But, you know, that's like, kind of an interesting thing from Google because thus far they have pretty much been playing catch up in the smartwatch space. They are very late. Only on iteration three of the Pixel Watch.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Apple Watch, we're coming out with number 10 and Samsung's fucked up their numbering such a long time ago, but we are already on seven. So you know, they're, they're, they're several generations behind, but they are coming out with a health feature that nobody else has by a gen three. And you know, they say it's because the Pixel Watch samples your heart rate at a, at a much, much, much higher frequency than other flagship smartwatches, which is true because they're doing it every other second. Most other smartwatches, unless you are in the middle of a workout will do it once every five minutes or so. So, you know, it's, it is something that they can differentiate themselves with. So many updates. I literally, I'm sure I forgot like five or six software updates in there.

• 22:11David Pierce?

  Yeah, but there's an interesting theme there, which is like down this deep tracking yourself rabbit hole, which is kind of what everyone has, has leaned into in this space, which makes a lot of sense. Two more questions on this and then we're going to take a break and then we're going to do the rest of these sketches. Question number one, Fitbit, where?

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Fitbit is increasingly going the way of Nest in that like it is a word that we use. There's a lot of history there. Technically you still are using the Fitbit app, but it's all Google now, baby. The Google-ification of Fitbit is, I think, almost complete. I think next year is the deadline for migrating all of your Fitbit accounts over to Pixel or Google accounts rather. And if you want to buy the new watches, you gotta migrate. So eat.

• 22:58David Pierce?

  My absolute hottest take on all of this is that Google branded these exactly wrong, that it should have gone all the way into the Fitbit brand and all of these products should be called Fitbits, which were like, Fitbit was like Kindle and Kleenex for the longest time and Google was just like, nah, never mind. Nobody, nobody knows what Fitbits are. They're like Pixel Watches.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's weird because they still have some Fitbits. It's just this main flagship Fitbit watch that's actually a Pixel watch. And I think that's just probably part of their ecosystem play because you do see it working more with other Google services, offline maps. You have Google Maps, offline maps now. So there, that's why, but at the same time, it's just very confused. And it was more so confused with the original and the Pixel Watch too. So.

• 23:45David Pierce?

  Okay, last question on the Pixel Watch. If memory serves, we have broken our review unit both years of the Pixel Watch, I believe?

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Chris cracked the first one, I cracked the second one.

• 23:58David Pierce?

  Oh, Chris, that was you the first time?

• 24:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, and if memory serves, it was one of those like, you didn't do anything and then it was cracked.

• 24:06Speaker 05

  That's how it went?

• 24:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  That Google doesn't believe me, put it on a charger, looked at it, and I was like, why is it scratched to hell and back? And everyone's like, you, there's no way you got those scratches without knowing what you did. I don't know what I did. They, it, I woke up and it was scratched, so, yeah.

• 24:22David Pierce?

  And that to me is like, the bar for me, right? It's like, if I fall on the ground and scrape it against concrete and it scratches, like, I understand how that happens. But if I don't even know how it got scratched and it scratched, that's, that's, that's a you problem.

• 24:35Speaker 05

  It's just a very fragile design, you know, it's like a glass dome, it's gonna happen.

• 24:39David Pierce?

  Totally.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  And it's not sapphire.

• 24:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  I will say, I wear a Pixel Watch with most of the Android phones I review, and I'm just the dingus, I'm like, always ramming it into like a doorway.

• 24:50David Pierce?

  Allison is seven feet tall, is an important thing to say.

• 24:54Speaker 04

  Flailing all, all this time, uh, it's been okay, I don't have any, I don't have any scratches, I don't know.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  I, I was totally fine with the first one. I, I legitimately am telling you, I went to bed and I either put it on the charger where I was wearing it, I don't remember, it was a year ago. I woke up, it looked like my cat went to town on it, but my cat did not go to town on it, so I, I don't know what happened. Google actually took the watch from me and they sent it to a lab and they were like, abrasions happened. And I was like, well, no shit, but we don't know what they were.

• 25:24David Pierce?

  Abrasions Happened is the title of your memoir, by the way, just to, just to put that out there right now. Any word on if this one is going to be better at that stuff? Do we have any, like, we've been saying since the jump that one of the worries of this design was that it would be more fragile, and that has clearly, I would say, proven out over time. No changes this time?

• 25:41Speaker 05

  No changes. Yeah, I'm very excited for the big watch, but like, that's even more like, surface area for it to be damaged, so we'll see.

• 25:48David Pierce?

  All right, all right, fair enough. All right, well, we gotta take a break, but we have a couple more gadgets to get to, we'll be right back.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest, or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Subaru. You know that place your mind always wanders to? The lake, the mountains, the homes of the people you love most? The completely redesigned 2026 Subaru Outback is built to help you get there. With legendary capabilities, standard symmetrical all wheel drive, and the confidence to go further. The 2026 Subaru Outback. Love never looked so good. Visit subaru.com/outback to learn more.

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• 27:03Speaker 07

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• 27:25David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. We have more gadgets. And I would say these are the two that I am maybe most interested in. One, for reasons I can't even explain, and then one for reasons that I think are very obvious. Let's do the Pixel Buds. Chris Welch, one of my running theories is that the Pixel Buds are like criminally underrated headphones. And have been for a couple of generations now. What's the story with the newest Pixel Buds?

• 27:47Speaker 05

  They're smaller, lighter. The noise cancellation is said to be twice as good. So Google now has its own like tensor chip for earbuds, just like Apple has their own like silicon for the AirPods. Now Google has a tensor A1 chip, which is in the new Pixel Buds Pro 2. So the ANC is twice as good. The sound quality is set to be also much improved. And that's like my main reason for not... Really being like a very big fan of Pixel Buds Pros that they sounded okay. But if you buy the Casanhaizer or like the new AirPods Mac, AirPods Pros, or even Samsung's new Galaxy Buds Pro 3s, they sound quite a bit better. So I'm hopeful that Google's finally, you know, kind of made some strides there with the new ones. But yeah, they're smaller, lighter. They brought back the fin tip, which people were a fan of in the older

• 28:31Speaker 05

  Pixel Buds. So these will stay in your ears better during workouts. But on the whole, you know, same thing, same case. The case now is a speaker on the outside. So if you lose it, it'll make a noise. So some small quality of life improvements. But yeah, the main things are the much better ANC and the sound quality, which we'll see.

• 28:47David Pierce?

  Yeah, I'm very curious to see how the sound quality turns out because like at least for my purposes, it's always been good enough.

• 28:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:52David Pierce?

  Definitely not best in class, but good enough. And it was, the pairing was super easy. I always found them more comfortable than most of the other ones.

• 29:00Speaker 05

  They are super comfortable.

• 29:01David Pierce?

  They just fit my ears better for whatever reason. And I always thought their noise cancellation was pretty good. Anyway, they do a really good job with noise cancellation on mic performance. We've tested them on the show and they did some, they did really well cancelling out noise as you're talking into them. So if they can like vastly improve that again.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:19David Pierce?

  That's pretty exciting.

• 29:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 29:21David Pierce?

  But yeah, they're like, they're just AirPods for Android territory. And I think that is a useful and good thing. And frankly, every company is gonna end up having those and that works fine. Now we get to the big news, which is, which is the, the death of Chromecast. This is the real story here. This is, I, I went on vacation, Google lost an antitrust trial and killed Chromecast. And it was just, like, I don't know how I'm supposed to deal with this when I don't have a podcast on which to talk about this. So Chris, give me the quick rundown, both on the new thing that is coming out and the old thing that is dying. What's going on here?

• 29:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. So the new thing is the Google TV streamer. Quite a name.

• 29:58David Pierce?

  Terrible name, by the way. Just before, just before we get into awful, awful name.

• 30:02Speaker 05

  Chromecast had brand recognition, but now let's do Google TV streamer. Just flows right off the tongue.

• 30:08David Pierce?

  It really does. What if we had more Pixel streamer? Pick that, pick anything.

• 30:11Speaker 05

  So it costs a hundred bucks. It's a box now. It's not a dongle anymore. So it's a set top box. It's it's nice. It's pretty. It's got like a built in Ethernet jack, which is nice to have on streamers all the time. But it runs the same like software as the most recent Chromecast. So you're gonna have all that. It'll have like Gemini AI features. Sure. It's gonna be 20% faster than the Chromecast. People have always been like waiting for like a fast Chromecast. And so they claim that like the Nvidia Shield was their like main like goalposts here to reach. I don't I don't think it's gonna reach that. It's like 20% faster than the four year old Chromecast with Google TV is like still not gonna be a barn burner of a of a device. And it's like most of our comments were like, that's not gonna get it done for me. I'm gonna, you know, just go buy an Apple TV, yada, yada.

• 30:54Speaker 05

  But the Chromecast is dead, but the casting feature is still alive and well, obviously. So you can still cast to the box, do all the same stuff, but the name is now gone.

• 31:02David Pierce?

  Quick poll before before I I get it. How do all of you do your smart TV stuff? Like V, what's your what's your smart TV situation? Like when you wanna watch Netflix on your TV, what do you have?

• 31:11Speaker 04

  I got two Apple TVs.

• 31:14David Pierce?

  Okay. Allison, what about you?

• 31:15Speaker 04

  We have a Samsung TV. We do all the built in apps. Oh, my God, that's so brave.

• 31:20David Pierce?

  No, well, so, okay, we're gonna come back to that because I think that I think this is the whole point of this device. Uh, Chris, what's yours?

• 31:27Speaker 05

  I mean, I have everything. So I've got the Apple TV, Fire, TV Cube, Roku Ultra.

• 31:32David Pierce?

  What is your like man when you're like not thinking about work and you're just like, I just wanna sit down and watch something? Which remote do you grab?

• 31:38Speaker 05

  It's the Apple TV 4K.

• 31:40David Pierce?

  Okay. So if I if I were to like big picture, try and explain what Google is doing here. It seems like the thesis is if you want just a simple, kind of cheap, don't really worry about it way to stream shows. Performance isn't amazing, but you just like need a thing that plays your shows. You kind of have infinite choice, right? Like your your TV probably does it. You probably have a dongle that does it. You probably have a box that does it. Your cable company will happily give you one. Like, there's a million ways to do it. And so if you want to differentiate and win, you have to do better, right? And and we've been in this weird space for the last few years where the only ones doing better have been

• 32:21David Pierce?

  Apple TV and the Nvidia Shield, both of which are like old outdated devices at this point, but both of which were so far beyond everybody else that they continue to be the only options. If you're like, I want my TV to be fast. And on the, on the one hand, I think that the idea of let's compete at the top end and make them better and make people want to buy them instead of just the default thing that they have is very exciting. But I do, I kind of agree with our commenters in the sense that I'm not sure, at least from what we've seen so far. We'll have to test the thing and see that this is that thing. Like if Google had come out and been like, we have 5X to the performance of the Chromecast. It's going to blow your freaking mind through the back of your head. And it's $500.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  People would have freaked out.

• 33:02David Pierce?

  Yeah. But I, am I, am I, am I thinking about this the right way, Chris? Like, is that your read on the situation too?

• 33:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think like they're saying prices like their ceiling for like what they can do as far as like a device, which is fine. But even then, I think you could have squeezed some out. Just toss like a two-year-old tensor in there, you know? Like, what's the issue here? Like, you've got your own silicon. Like toss a tensor G1 in there, you know? Or whatever they are. And just, yeah, so 20%. I mean, it's not nothing. It's got like twice the RAM, which should also help out quite a bit. But as far as like a speed demon, you know, this is probably not going to be quite that. We could see a new Apple TV this fall. So that would just be like Apple just kind of like lapping them again very quickly. So we'll see how that shakes out.

• 33:41David Pierce?

  Allison, is there anything here for you? Are you excited about this at all?

• 33:44Speaker 04

  I just.

• 33:45David Pierce?

  They're, they're going for you, right? Like you're now the person who is not going to buy a Chromecast. And because your TV does it fine, they're trying to give you something else.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Okay, you know what they don't have is there's the, all the like 10,000 free, you know, ad-supported channels on the Samsung TV. We have one called Ocean Vibes and that's just plays when we, when we turn the TV on. It is the best thing in the world. There's just like fish swimming around in coral reefs. And you just sit there and you're like, yeah, this is all right. So talk to me, no, talk to me when you have ocean vibes, Google.

• 34:24David Pierce?

  That is so diametrically opposed from the answer I was expecting from you. I love it. That's great. That's fantastic, fantastic outcome. But yeah, I mean, and I think to some extent, Chris, like this is the thing here, right? Is if I'm Google, and I am curious what they've been telling all of you about the AI stuff coming in general here, because I'm very excited about the pixel screenshots feature, which is like a sort of man at AI organized library of all the screenshots you take. I think that's very smart. But in general, the idea here is like, we're going to put lots of new power into these new devices, dot, dot, dot, AI. And I don't know, at least from what I've seen so far. Again, it's Monday as we're recording this, the event is on Tuesday. I'm very curious to see if they can find a way to make a really compelling AI case for this stuff.

• 35:10David Pierce?

  But with the TV streamer in particular, I'm like, okay, you're giving me theoretically more power other than my apps launch faster, which is meaningful to me, but not to most people.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  You can use Gemini to make screensavers, which is interesting. Because they see like how all the frame TVs doing. So they're like, you know, they've got this whole ambient mode.

• 35:26David Pierce?

  So Gemini can make you open ocean vibes.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no.

• 35:30Speaker 05

  That'll be ocean vibes.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  I want real ocean. I don't want your AI ocean vibes.

• 35:37Speaker 05

  So there's that. And also, I guess they're going to do summaries now. So they already show you like the Rotten Tomato scores for movies, but now it's going to like spring in content from across the web. So it might be like, here's what someone on Reddit said about the show. Hopefully not that, but you know, we'll see.

• 35:50Speaker 08

  Oh, God.

• 35:51Speaker 05

  So that's the other thing is like summaries for everything that you're like seeing and browsing. But beyond that, you know, not, not too much compelling.

• 36:00David Pierce?

  Which kind of brings me back to like, I'm very sad that Chromecast is gone, because I continue to think the Chromecast was a really good idea. Because I think, this might be an unpopular opinion, I have no idea how people feel. I think Google TV is like by a mile, the best interface.

• 36:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I like it a lot.

• 36:16David Pierce?

  It does a really good job of like, it's very content first, but it also makes getting to the apps easy. Apple is super app first. I think the Fire TV is mostly just trash. Roku is super app-first, and I think Google TV like does a pretty good job of showing you everything you would want to see relatively in one place. And so for me, like, I have a Roku TV and I bought an Apple TV that I just use instead on my Roku TV. So my Roku TV's one job is just to take me to my Apple TV, because it is like an unusable interface on this trash TCL TV I bought at Costco a million years ago.

• 36:49Speaker 05

  That is probably true for many people these days, yeah.

• 36:51David Pierce?

  Right, so I think if I'm Google, I'm like, okay, keep pushing at this idea of like a $30, $50 way to give you Google TV, which is better. And I feel like what Google is instead doing is saying, okay, we want to, they're like splitting a weird difference between make it easy to get Google TV and make a really powerful box. It seems like they're kind of in a middle ground that I'm not super positive is going to work for them.

• 37:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're not going to make anybody happy. It's like not quite the full speed

• 37:17David Pierce?

  Right.

• 37:17Speaker 05

  box and not the cheap thing that the Chromecast was either. So we'll see. I mean, I'm looking forward to checking it out. You know, if it's faster, that'll be, that'll make a big difference. But yeah, I love Google TV like you, David. The ads aren't as in your face as Roku or, you know, so there's that. But yeah, we'll see. I'm excited to check it out. It's shipping like last month on all these devices in like late September, so it's going to be a while before we get it in our hands, but it's coming.

• 37:40David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's going to be an interesting fall for a lot of that stuff.

• 37:43Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 37:43David Pierce?

  So, okay, any other announcements coming? You all have gotten all the news, seen all the things. Any, any other like newsy cleanup we should do here before we talk big picture? What is the future of Google and everything? Hmm.

• 37:54Speaker 04

  No.

• 37:55David Pierce?

  Have you, have any of you tried Pixel screenshots?

• 37:57Speaker 05

  They showed me it very, very briefly. It seemed cool. They did a search for like someone's Wi-Fi password that, that someone had like sent like a screenshot of.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 38:04Speaker 05

  That seems to be like the example every company shows.

• 38:06Speaker 04

  But it's a separate app, right?

• 38:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a separate app.

• 38:08Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 38:09David Pierce?

  Oh, it's its own app? It's not like, I assumed it was like in the, in the Photos app. Interesting.

• 38:14Speaker 04

  That's what I'm so curious about is like, that sounds great. We've got that feature over there. Like, how do you bring it all together? Is it going to be Gemini? Is it gonna, am I gonna have to pay for a version of Gemini that's going to do all these things? I don't know. That's, that's where I am with AI on Pixel phones right now. It's like. Show it to me.

• 38:34David Pierce?

  My thing is like, I was thinking about this recently. My go-to use case is, so we live maybe like a mile down the street from the library and I'm frequently walking past the library and every once in a while, they put up a banner with the dates of the book sales that they're doing. And every single time I take a picture of the banner, because I'm like, oh, I have to remember when the book sale is. And every single time it just goes into my camera roll and disappears. Like, all of those photos and screenshots and that kind of stuff does. Where I'm like, oh, this is a thing I should buy. And then it goes into my camera roll and disappears. And so the idea of like, I can just sort of constantly tell my phone, this is the thing I think is interesting, and then it can make sense of all that for me, is so compelling to me. And I think makes way more sense than all

• 39:16David Pierce?

  the recall stuff, is like, I, all I have to do is tell it, remember this for me, and it will do it. Like, that is perfect. But I think you, to your point, Alison, like, how you integrate that with everything else makes a lot of sense. Because if I have to take a photo and then put it in the screenshots app, I'm going to forget to do that. And I have now solved none of my problem. So I think it's, it's going to be a really interesting, like, push and pull there, trying to figure out, how do you make this not creepy, but really seamless, but not too in-your-face as you're trying to do other stuff? Which I feel like it's kind of the story of all things AI and Google right now.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is the thing I want. I want to be able to look up the door code for the Airbnb without like, digging through emails or logging into Airbnb or whatever. I, I don't need to put a hat on a picture of a bunny that I took.

• 40:05David Pierce?

  What do you mean? To be fair, you have been doing that non-stop for weeks.

• 40:09Speaker 04

  Which I have been. It's a blast. But honestly, it's where we're at, I think, with Apple Intelligence, which is still, you know, in developer preview, blah, blah, blah. It's like, it's still missing that thing of like, what is going to tie it all together? And am I just going to be able to be like, Jim and I put the book sale on my calendar, or tell me if I have a conflict or something? Or, or is it gonna? Just be like, I don't know.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Right. I think the latter.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Based on the history of AI features.

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm so nervous about it because I got, I'm doing the labs for the labs, like preview for Gemini in your Gmail, they find, which they like finally integrated. And I was like, great. I'll search for this order number for my shoes and it does its thing. And it's like thinking, it's like, there's no order number for your shoes. I'm like, this is no, you had one job. Like it was right there. And like, I tried it again later and it able to do it. I don't know why it got caught up that time. It's like, it feels that one time for you. And you're like, why am I going to try and use this again? I'm not.

• 41:17David Pierce?

  Yeah, it is really funny. We're in this phase with so many of these features where like, because I have this specific problem that these things can solve for me, I'm willing to try any of them. But the tech broadly speaking just isn't there. And so like, you try it twice and it doesn't work. And it's like, well, that's pretty much that.

• 41:36Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  Or you could get nagged by it.

• 41:39David Pierce?

  Oh yeah. Oh my God.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Google is, is just basically also kind of following Samsung's lead. And I forgot, but they're adding AI suggested workouts to the Pixel Watch three, based on like your metrics.

• 41:51David Pierce?

  My suggestions are going to be like, just do anything, just stand up. Just, just, what if you just walked around for once in your life?

• 41:57Speaker 03

  But, but you know, they were showing it to me and they were like, oh, you know, you haven't really been pushing it in terms of cardio load and you took a rest. So why don't you do like a bunch of sprints? And it's just like.

• 42:09Speaker 04

  Get out of here.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  Fine. I mean, it's hard. It's hard. Building a training plan is hard, but that I was just like, oh, okay.

• 42:16Speaker 04

  If my Pixel Watch tells me, I'm going to throw it into the sea.

• 42:19David Pierce?

  Yeah. Wait, V, can we talk about the notification you got from a Galaxy Ring? This is just a little, little, little diversion into V's experience.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  I was about to say, so like I, you know, I'm sinking my ring this morning and looking at the energy score. And it's like, hey, you need to move around or you might start gaining weight.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  No.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  And I was like, excuse me, what, what? I ran three miles this morning. Go to jail.

• 42:42David Pierce?

  Wait, is that, that's literally the words that it said, you, or you might start gaining weight?

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Hold on. Let me, let me look at this.

• 42:47David Pierce?

  Absolutely not.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  Your active time has decreased compared to your usual. Insufficient activity may result in weight gain and other health issues. Try standing up, moving around, and reducing your sedentary time. And it's because I let the dumb ring die yesterday. So it didn't, it didn't basically like capture my three mile run yesterday, too. Because, you know, I be out here doing 10 hours of workouts a week. But, you know, just like it thinks I missed one day. And it's like, get up, ho, move around.

• 43:19David Pierce?

  Oh, my God.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  You might gain weight. And I was just like, yeah, but what if I want it? I'm trying to get jacked. I want to gain weight because muscles are heavier. So there's a lot of nuance and context with health that AI just completely shits the bed with.

• 43:35David Pierce?

  It's like the worst possible combination, too. Because it's like, do you remember the carrot apps that used to like ruthlessly make fun of you all the time? That was like their whole shtick. They had like a character who would be like, oh, what if you checked something off your to do list today? Dumbass. It's like, if you're going to do that and like make it a bit of being mean to you, that I actually, I could get behind. Like if my Apple Watch is going to actively nag me, like that's actually pretty funny. And is a thing some people would find useful. But this like concern trolling trend from wearables where it's like, oh, I'm so sorry. But if you don't do better, you're going to die, like, like potentially tomorrow. That's so embarrassing for you. It's like, screw you, like, leave me alone.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  It's like too heavily reliant on HRV, which is the proxy for your autonomic nervous system. So it can tell whether like how strained you are. Dude, if I have a, if I have a calf cramp, these things can't tell. These things have never been able to tell when I'm like injured. So it's sort of like, okay, you can just go away now. Like, I'm not a big fan of AI and fitness. I get what they're trying to do because it is very hard to know what you should be doing in crafting a, a training program. If you're new to it, or if you have new goals, but this, this ain't, this ain't it. I can't wait to see what it tells me my AI workout should be. It's just going to be like run up, run up a giant hill. I already do that. Go away.

• 45:02David Pierce?

  Run up a giant hill. Or just say that when you wake up in the morning, it's like, what's up, V? Time to run up a giant hill. Fine, I'm great with that.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's gonna be all Kate Bush on me.

• 45:13David Pierce?

  Love that. Alright, we gotta take one more break and then I wanna talk just for a few minutes about some like, big picture Google stuff on the heels of the announcement and then we'll get out of here. We'll be right back.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest, or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 45:57Speaker 02

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• 46:54David Pierce?

  Alright, we're back. So, another year, another bunch of Google devices that I would say, by and large, seemed to be very good. Kudos. Right? Like, this is whatever year, we're almost a decade into Google appearing to genuinely, earnestly care about making hardware. I think for a long time, we were all skeptical if this is gonna be a thing Google kept caring about for a long time. I think to its credit, Google has kept caring For a long time, never say never with Google, but it feels like this matters to Google in a very real way. What I still wonder, and what seems to be true is that Google has not made any kind of like mainstream dent as a hardware company yet. I think ironically, like the Chromecast was probably the most successful piece of hardware Google ever made.

• 47:39David Pierce?

  It was a huge hit, especially at the beginning because it was cheap and it worked really well. And there's really nothing since then that feels like a sort of gigantic mainstream winner. Like there is still very much Apple and Samsung, especially in the United States, and then like gigantic gap down to Google.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  I would argue that the Pixel Watch is actually kind of the opposite. Like, I think Samsung is hurting a little bit and they're having to actually bring up their game a little. And because the Pixel Watch was wildly popular when it first came out to the point where Samsung was like, oh, I gotta do things. Here's a copycat Apple Watch Ultra and a ring. So, you know, I think that's surprisingly one area that it's doing pretty well in, but you know, smartwatches are kind of bifurcated into iOS and Android at the moment anyway. So it didn't have to really compete with Apple at all because people on Android can't get an Apple Watch. It only really had to compete with Samsung, which is weirdly its partner in where OS land.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  But it's kind of been eating Samsung's lunch for a little bit because it's, I don't know, it's, it's, it's interesting. They're doing weird, interesting stuff there and it's kind of ecosystem-y in a weird way.

• 48:50David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the, the Pixel Watches actually is, is a good example. And it does seem like, at least on that front with the first one, I remember people being so excited just about the way it looked. That it was like, this is the first smartwatch that doesn't sort of scream technology at you. And that was, that was a big win for Google. So maybe that's one of the answers to my question, which was going to be, do we see anything here that feels like it has kind of breakout potential? I think I'm maybe the most bullish of the four of us on the possibility that the Fold could be a winner. I think at $1,800, there's a pretty big, then low cap on how big a winner it can possibly be. But from the stuff that you've seen and, you know, y'all have been testing and talking to folks about these things for years now. Do we see anything that's? Sort of a possible kind of game changer in the Google hardware business?

• 49:35Speaker 05

  Screenshots app.

• 49:38Speaker 05

  It really comes down like past years have always been, oh, the camera is great, which it still is like, people know the Pixel camera is great. Like that's its like main thing. But this year it feels like all this AI stuff, like if it works, it's going to be great. You know, like if it doesn't, then it's going to be meh. Like I see pixels out in the world. Like I think they're selling some, they are selling a few. So I think like, you know, they've got a base of customers, but it's like, how do you get them to upgrade? Cause like hardware is like all the same year of year, like all these like Pixel nine Pro and Pixel nine. It's like, there were some like tensor G4 benchmarks. It's like barely faster than last year's chip. So like, it's not going to be like that. That's not why you're going to upgrade. You're going to upgrade for Gemini potentially for like some of these new camera software features. It's like software, software, software this year. And so like if the screenshot app works, like that's going to be great.

• 50:22Speaker 05

  And if it doesn't, then it's, then I'm going to buy the fold. And for the next five years, that'll be my phone because I can't afford an $1800 phone.

• 50:29David Pierce?

  I was going to say, and, and you are historically representative of people who buy smartphones. So that makes perfect sense.

• 50:34Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 50:35David Pierce?

  No, I mean, the, the AI thing I think is, is a really interesting point because the bet from all of these companies really is that they can take a bunch of kind of little AI things, whether it's in the camera or in the productivity stuff, or in some of the wearables. And that all of that adds up to something that is kind of a tiebreaker to other devices. And I feel like Alison, this has been a theme of a lot of the coverage you've been doing recently is like, does all this AI stuff really add up to anything? And I'm curious how you feel. Obviously we have to review all these things. There's still lots to be seen and this is all changing really fast. But do you have an early read of like, is there a kind of hole greater than the sum of its parts in the AI story here?

• 51:15Speaker 04

  I wish I did. This is just one of those like, I feel like you gotta live with the phone a little bit to see if it, I, I think, you know, we, we all bought a Chromecast because it solved a problem. We're like, this is incredible. It's 20 bucks and you just plug it in the back of your TV. I don't see anything like that, you know, like in the Pixel phone series right now. Gemini could be that thing if it's, if it really could, you know, bring all the AI pieces together and make your life easier. But I think we're going into this, this ecosystem era is really going to like, we're just going to drill down in it because. So many of these things are going to be wrapped up in your Google One subscription

• 51:59Speaker 04

  or your Apple subscription.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Totally agree.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  If you want smart Siri, you need the expensive iPhone and probably an Apple subscription plan at some point. I'm nervous about AI subscription hell.

• 52:14Speaker 03

  I think it's just the whole ambient computing thing. Like, I think completely to your point, it's going to be the whole ecosystem play. Because, you know, the Pixel, I'm just, you know, wearable lady, so of course I think in wearables, but like the Pixel Watch when it came out, they were like, this works for anyone with any phone. And just increasingly, year by year, more and more features are just going to work better if you have a Pixel phone with your Pixel Watch. So like this year, it's going to be Pixel Recorder app on the watch, it's going to be seeing your doorbell feed, and it's just going to be one of those things where I think it's just, what do my gadgets play well with? And that's how we win dominance. So if the Pixel Watch is great, and it works with other Pixel hardware, that's Google

• 52:58Speaker 03

  saying, fuck it Samsung, because who uses smart things? Honest to God, I think that's like, kind of what they're doing and why they just go, ambient computing when you're now watching every once in a while, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

• 53:12David Pierce?

  Well, and I think that's, that's what's been so sort of backhanded about Google's entire hardware strategy over the years, is that, like, the reason people end up in the Samsung ecosystem is because they buy Samsung phones. And so then, then they're forced to use smart things. Google is trying to convince you that there is some, like, essential Googliness that is worth buying into the ecosystem. And it has just always felt like they needed the one hardware victory to get there. And, and it's like, people, people want the gadget, and then they buy into the software. And Google is trying to do that backwards, which I think is really interesting, but doesn't really seem like it has worked in a huge way. Obviously, time will tell, and the reviews will be really interesting, and I'm, I'm like, I, I think it's not crazy that the Pixel Fold might be a way a lot of people

• 53:57David Pierce?

  actually end up in this ecosystem, because I think there is like latent interest in this stuff. All right, we all need to go. You guys have things to do, and phones to touch, and more watches to wear, I'm sure. Are we excited? Happy times? What, what's the, are we, are we bullish or bearish on, on Google heading into this fall? This feels like a, I'm, I'm a little like, overall, kind of like, yeah, it seems fine. But that seems to be where we are in so many gadgets this year.

• 54:20Speaker 04

  Optimistic with reservations.

• 54:23David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm surprised because I was expecting nothing but a hardware refresh. And then they're like, wham, hit me in the face with all the software. So I'm curious to see how the software works. My smart home is mostly Google based. So if this Pixel Watch works with my smart home in a meaningful way, I'm just going to be really shocked.

• 54:43David Pierce?

  I like it. Yeah, I, the Pixel Watch 3 being the star is not something I would have had on my bingo card, but.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  Me neither.

• 54:49David Pierce?

  I'll take it. All right. Thank you all. Super fun. Appreciate you doing this as always.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 54:55Speaker 03

  Bye.

• 54:56David Pierce?

  All right. That is it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to all the folks who came on and thank you for listening. We have tons of coverage of the whole event, all of the new devices, everything on theverge.com. I'll try to put as much as I can in the show notes, but actually we've been covering this Google stuff for months now. The leaks have been really fascinating. So actually go back and look at the way this stuff has trickled out over time. It's been really interesting and I have this odd feeling we're not done hearing what Google is up to this year. I have no evidence to base that on, but I think it's true. Anyway, as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or foldable phone specs that you think are more important than I'm realizing, you can always email us at [email protected] or call the hotline 866 VERGE11.

• 55:40David Pierce?

  We love hearing from you. We love hearing all of your thoughts and questions about all things tech. I'm still looking for some tiny tech mysteries. We've gotten a few. We're working on some fun stuff, but keep them all coming. This show is produced by Andrew Moreno, Liam James, and Will Poor. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex and I will be back on Friday to catch up on just again, a truly crazy few weeks in the news. We have a what is a photo apocalypse. We have a bunch of AI stuff going on. Lots to talk about. We will see you then. Rock and roll.

• 56:20Speaker 09

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