New AI options together with Magic Cue, Pro Res Zoom, Digicam Coach and Gemini Stay examined

Google’s new Pixel 10 line-up is a really spectacular vary of smartphones, with refined appears to be like, a clean model of Android 16, seven-year assist, nice shows and glorious cameras (together with a telephoto on the usual non-Pro model for the primary time). But as typical, the buzziest promoting factors are all about AI.

From the newest Gemini fashions to new computational images strategies, Google is promoting the Pixel 10 as the neatest smartphone you will get. So, how nicely do these options work?

Magic Cue

Ever because the Pixel 2 and its At a Glance widget in 2017, Google has been attempting to take the stuff its apps find out about you and provide it up whenever you want it. At a Glance nonetheless exists on Pixel 10, and it nonetheless often surprises with a prescient nudge about how lengthy it’ll take to get throughout city in time for a gathering, however Magic Cue goals to be on one other degree.

The primary concept is that the telephone ought to convey you info whenever you want it, even in the event you’re in a single app and the knowledge is from one other. To do that, the AI mannequin considers info saved in sure Google apps, together with Gmail, Calendar, Screenshots and extra – info that’s, or was, not too long ago displayed in your display – and “foundational” information reminiscent of your telephone quantity.

Examples through which a Magic Cue may present up embrace when calling a selected enterprise (a panel might seem exhibiting the variety of a current order you positioned, taken from an electronic mail), or if somebody mentions a location in a textual content message (a immediate might seem that can plot a route from you to that place in Google Maps, or that can take you to the climate forecast for that place, relying on context).

It’s a unusually ephemeral characteristic in that it exists solely when it thinks will probably be useful. At one level, my spouse messaged to ask concerning the time of a dentist appointment, and after I glanced at my telephone the Magic Cue was there. Next to different generic auto-replies (“I’ll get back to you”), there was a rainbow bubble with the small print of the appointment, pulled from my calendar. But then I tapped on the notification to open the Messages app, and the immediate was gone.

If all of it works as marketed, Magic Cue might be the perfect type of AI assistant. If I’m on maintain attempting to speak to my vitality supplier, and somebody solutions and asks for my buyer quantity, I ought to be capable of have a look at my telephone and have it there as a substitute of scrambling to get again to the e-mail I swiped away from out of boredom 20 minutes in the past. If somebody texts to ask the deal with of the resort, or the ETA of my Uber, my telephone ought to be capable of hand them that stuff immediately with my permission, given it already is aware of the reply. But proper now, as a result of Magic Cue is proscribed to sure Google apps and reveals up so often (not less than for me), it doesn’t really feel transformative.