Google Pixel 8 launch event: all the news

The Pixel 8 Pro has an infrared temperature sensor. Why does the Pixel 8 Pro have a temperature sensor?

For an unusual feature on a $1,000 flagship phone, Google really isn’t saying much about it. The Pixel 8 Pro announcement mentions it almost in passing:

One of the first known photo fakes, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, was made just decades after the dawn of photography itself. Since then, photographers have found themselves in endless arguments about what truly constitutes a photo — what’s real, what’s fake, and when is editing too much? Now, as we head into an era where AI-powered tools are everywhere and easily accessible, the discussion is going to be messier than ever. And with the Pixel 8, Google has turned the question of “what is a photo” right on its head.

Google has been leading smartphone photography down this path for many years now. The company pioneered the concept of computational photography, where smartphone cameras do a huge amount of behind-the-scenes processing to spit out a photo that contains more detail than the camera sensor can detect in a single snap. Most modern smartphones use a system like Google’s HDR Plus technology to take a burst of images and combine them into one computationally-created picture, merging highlights, shadows, details, and other data to deliver a more pristine photo. It’s accepted practice at this point, but it also means that a baseline smartphone photo is already more than just “a photo” — it’s many of them, with their best parts combined.

I can’t believe Google finally did it. I’m still in disbelief. An Android phone with seven years of updates — not security patches, but real OS and feature updates? It’s unheard of. It’s historic.

It’s the opposite of what we’ve come to expect from Google over the past decade and change — so many great smartphone features sadly left locked away because of Android fragmentation, so many products buried in the Google graveyard. With “seven years of OS upgrades, security updates, feature drops, and AI innovations,” will the new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro finally break the cycle?

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Google’s latest products are filled with AI. There’s Magic Editor, a photo editing tool powered by generative AI; there’s Conversation Detection, an audio transparency feature powered by AI; there are improved heart rate algorithms, which, yes, are also powered by AI.

Seven years of OS updates? Sounds like a great way to get more AI features from Google. New photography features? All AI. Tensor processor? Designed for AI, baby! “As always, our focus is on making AI more helpful for everyone, in a way that’s both bold and responsible,” Google’s hardware chief Rick Osterloh said in an introduction that, by my count, included the word “AI” over a dozen times. Over the course of the hour-long launch, Google’s presenters referenced AI over 50 times.

In addition to officially rolling out Android 14, Google introduced the Pixel Watch 2 and a new lineup of phones during its Made by Google Event on Wednesday. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro start at $699 and $999, respectively, and will be available on October 12th.

On the spec front, both phones sport Google’s new Tensor G3 chip, which is an upgrade over the G2 chip that marked Google’s Pixel 7 lineup. Each also comes with a 120Hz max refresh rate and seven years of software support and security updates. The Pro 8 touts a maximum of 1TB of storage as well, along with a new sensor for measuring the temperature of beverages, surfaces, and — perhaps one day — maybe even people.

Last year’s Pixel 7 phones were an iterative spec bump and nice refinement in the design department (as polarizing as their looks remained), but part of what made those phones special was how much they offered for fairly competitive prices.

Now, Google has announced the $699 Pixel 8 and $999 Pixel 8 Pro (which are $100 price increases over last year’s phones), each due to arrive on October 12th, and once again, they look a lot like a slow burn of subtle hardware improvements — albeit in a slick new light-blue color option on the Pro. But the showstopper feature of the new Pixels may be Google’s software support, as it’s claiming the new phones will see seven whole years of OS and security updates — rivaling Apple’s reign as the longest-lasting phones.

During an onstage presentation at today’s Pixel 8 Pro launch, Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh showed off how the smartphone is able to retroactively add detail to a photograph when you pinch to zoom in. “So the kind of zoom enhancement you used to see in science fiction? It’s right in the phone in your hand,” Osterloh said after introducing the feature, which Google is calling “Zoom Enhance.”

Osterloh is referring, of course, to the countless sci-fi movies and police procedural shows that have shown characters zooming impossibly far into photos to reveal clues and details that simply could not have been present in the original image. Often, these scenes hinge on “enhancing” unbelievably small reflections, inevitably revealing the identity of a murder suspect.

During the Made by Google event, where it debuted new Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2 hardware, Google also announced it’s launching Assistant with Bard, which leverages generative AI to provide personalized assistance to users. The company says the new AI-enhanced assistant can do things like help plan your next trip, find details in your email inbox, and even create a grocery list.

Just like Bard on the web, Assistant with Bard will integrate with some of the company’s existing apps, such as Gmail and Docs, to help you find and summarize information. Additionally, you can interact with the tool through text, voice, or images, and it will still retain some of Assistant’s key features that allow you to do things like send a text message.

Google’s latest Pixel launch event has come to an end. Even though some of the products Google revealed were leaked well in advance, the company still managed to throw in a couple of surprises.

Here are all the biggest announcements from the Made by Google event.