New AI options together with Magic Cue, Pro Res Zoom, Digital camera 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 help, nice shows and glorious cameras (together with a telephoto on the usual non-Pro model for the primary time). But as standard, the buzziest promoting factors are all about AI.

From the most recent Gemini fashions to new computational pictures strategies, Google is promoting the Pixel 10 as the neatest smartphone you may get. So, how effectively do these options work?

Magic Cue

Ever because the Pixel 2 and its At a Glance widget in 2017, Google has been making an attempt to take the stuff its apps learn about you and supply 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 fundamental concept is that the cellphone ought to carry you data whenever you want it, even should you’re in a single app and the knowledge is from one other. To do that, the AI mannequin considers data saved in sure Google apps, together with Gmail, Calendar, Screenshots and extra – data that’s, or was, just lately displayed in your display screen – and “foundational” knowledge resembling your cellphone quantity.

Examples through which a Magic Cue may present up embrace when calling a particular enterprise (a panel may seem exhibiting the variety of a current order you positioned, taken from an e mail), or if somebody mentions a location in a textual content message (a immediate may seem that may plot a route from you to that place in Google Maps, or that may 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 it will likely be useful. At one level, my spouse messaged to ask concerning the time of a dentist appointment, and once I glanced at my cellphone 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 may very well be the best type of AI assistant. If I’m on maintain making an attempt to speak to my power supplier, and somebody solutions and asks for my buyer quantity, I ought to be capable to have a look at my cellphone 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 tackle of the lodge, or the ETA of my Uber, my cellphone ought to be capable to 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 restricted to sure Google apps and reveals up so often (not less than for me), it doesn’t really feel transformative.