[ad_1]
As the maker of Android, the world’s most widely used phone software, Google has dreamed of making a best-selling phone that rivals the gold standard for half a decade. iphone.
Google’s Pixel phones consistently received positive reviews, but lukewarm sales due to one major weakness: They relied on off-the-shelf parts from other companies. As a result, they felt slower compared to devices made by Apple, which tightly controls the quality of their iPhones through in-house design.
with new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 ProCosting $600 and $900 and set to go on sale Thursday, Google now believes it has phones that level the playing field.
These are the first phones the company has included tensor, its own computing processor is similar to how Apple designed the silicon that powers its iPhones. Google said the Tensor chip enables Pixel phones to quickly perform complex computing tasks such as voice transcriptions.
After a week of testing, I’ve come to the conclusion that Google has made some serious progress with the Pixels – but it’s still delusional. His developments were not enough to change me elsewhere. an iPhone.
The new Pixels feel mobile, but their computing power lags behind the iPhone’s speeds by up to 50 percent. And while many photos taken with his camera appeared clear and well-lit, some looked overly sharp. The Pixel 6’s ability to instantly translate languages to a person’s native language also seemed unfinished – it didn’t work well with some languages, like Japanese.
Here’s what you need to know.
Meet Tensor
The Tensor processor is the result of Google’s long and expensive journey in smartphone technology. $1 billion acquisition of smartphone maker HTC To speed things up, Google has embedded its most sophisticated algorithms, including advanced photo effects and language translation, into the chips, eliminating the need to connect to their online servers to complete these tasks.
The speed gains were remarkable. The Pixel 6’s movement seemed smooth compared to its predecessors when navigating between apps and websites. However, when I tested some of the phone’s special features, such as watching foreign language videos and displaying subtitles translated into English in real time, the results were mixed.
When I opened TikTok and searched for videos of people teaching French, Italian, and Japanese language classes, the technology performed well with French and Italian. The software correctly translated the everyday ways of saying “I’m not” in French (pronounced “shwee pah” as opposed to the more formal “je ne suis pas”).
But struggled with the Japanese. One TikToker showed a basic conversation that, when properly translated in English, means:
“Today is very tiring.”
“Yes, the workload is too much.”
“Yes, that’s true. We’ll see you.”
“Yes. See you tomorrow. Thanks for the good work.”
Here is the translation of the Pixel 6:
“I am tired today.”
“Well, I had a lot of work to do.”
“Right. See you soon.”
“Thank you for your hard work tomorrow.”
This translation would probably get a C in a Japanese language class.
These results were not surprising. Pixel software said that Japanese for translated subtitles is in “beta”, so this is a work in progress. Another sign that this feature is missing is that the Pixel doesn’t support Chinese yet, so I wasn’t able to test translated video subtitles for Mandarin speech.
A Beautiful Camera That Sometimes Gets Too Hard
Pixel phones have always relied heavily on a mix of software, artificial intelligence and machine learning to produce clear and vibrant photos. Google says the Tensor chip will help the camera software take photos faster.
To test the new cameras, I took Pixel 6 devices and two of the latest iPhones to a park on a cloudy day and snapped hundreds of photos of my Corgi, Max (who now holds the record for most featured dog in New York). Times).
The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro’s cameras were fast as advertised, and many photos looked great, with lifelike colors and nice shadow detail.
The Pixel 6 photos, though, seemed like the phones had struggled a lot with more advanced effects. In some photos taken in “portrait” mode, which sharpens a foreground subject and slightly blurs the background, my extremely cute dog looked so sharpened that he looked much older. The iPhone 13 Pro painted a more aesthetic portrait of 8-year-old Max.
More often than not, Pixel 6 photos also looked too “cold” in colors, causing the Max’s white mane to appear blue. Color temperature could be adjusted in the camera software, but iPhone cameras often produced photos with more natural colors without any extra effort.
All told, the Pixel camera was very good. Zoomed shots looked sharp on the 6 Pro, the more expensive model with an optical zoom lens.
Google was the first phone maker to introduce the ability to take photos in low light without the use of flash, and the new Pixels still excel in this area. When comparing these to the low-light shots taken with the new iPhones, I’d call it a tie.
As a result
All in all, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are solid products. Given their starting price, which is about $200 less than competing high-end phones from Samsung and Apple, I can recommend it to Android fans.
But what will Google do with Tensor to make the Pixel stand out? It’s not just the unfinished parts of the software, the parts where the phone excels aren’t all that special.
First, the ability to transcribe foreign languages is useful, but it’s also something older phones can do. When I visited countries like Thailand and Japan in the past years, taxi drivers communicated with me using Google’s Translate software – they spoke to their phones and played the English translation over the speaker. It lagged a bit, but it was enough.
You can take advantage of other benefits of switching to Google’s own silicon. Battery life on the new Pixels is much longer than on past models – after each long day of testing, there’s still plenty of juice left before bed. But still, this is no different from other modern phones with equally long battery life.
Google’s competitors also have nice privileges. Most importantly, iPhones have the “blue bubble” effect or iMessage. Over the years, Google has gone through several iterations of the messaging app, and none have been as smooth and fun as iMessage.
This particular thing—something tacky, delightful, and ubiquitous—is what Google needs to provide in order to make the move to a Pixel. It’s hard to say what that might be.
[ad_2]
Source link