Category: Technology

Google didn’t need to make its own smartphone. Even though the company spent several years having other manufacturers build phones it could slap its “Nexus” branding on, selling hardware is not core to Google’s business. Things like advertising and Search still handily dwarf the inroads the company’s made as a smartphone manufacturer, and that will likely remain true for the foreseeable future.

Compared to the contributions the iPhone makes to Apple’s bottom line, the Pixel has always, in some sense, been a hobby. Which means Google finds itself in a familiar place heading into the launch of the Pixel 10. It’s better than it’s ever been at the business of building phones, but the task for the Pixel remains the same: get people to use Google software (especially Search).

The first smartphones “made by Google”

Google sold its own hardware, including a lineup of phones, under the Nexus brand from 2010 to 2016 — but it was always known that hardware manufacturers like HTC and Samsung were actually building the hardware. 

That changed with the Pixel, the first time Google started using the now-ubiquitous “made by Google” phrasing. Ever since the first Pixel phone arrived in October 2016, Google’s phones have been defined by their camera skills. Google’s significant breakthroughs in computational photography influenced the entire industry, and continue to do so today. The original Pixel and Pixel XL featured a single 12.3-megapixel camera and let anyone take great HDR photos without any fuss. Purchasing a Pixel or Pixel XL also unlocked unlimited full-resolution backups of your photos in Google Photos for free, a strong incentive to consider switching to Google’s smartphone in its own right.

The company’s glass and aluminum phone was more than just its camera sensor, though. A big part of Google’s early pitch for the Pixel, and other hardware like Google Home, was that it could serve as a vehicle for Google Assistant. The AI-powered voice assistant had shades of Siri, and voice control features previously available in Android. But it was far more integrated into Google’s software and services and had a deep well of knowledge to draw on from Google Search. An “OK Google” could let you set a timer on your phone, but it could also answer trivia or tell you about an upcoming calendar event.

Google continued to lean on software for the release of the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, which put Google Now-style proactive information on a new always-on display, along with a refined design with pressure sensitive sides that could activate specific functions on the phone. In terms of the camera, Google’s major improvements over the original Pixel were the addition of optical image stabilization for video and a custom imaging chip, dubbed the Pixel Visual Core, that handled the image processing for both first-party and third-party camera apps. Besides being the first instance of Google sneaking some of its own custom silicon into its phone, the Pixel 2 was also was a significant challenge to Apple’s dominance in the photography department

That pattern continued with the release of the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, which again featured a slightly modified design, wireless charging and a collection of new camera features. The biggest was Night Sight, Google’s software solution for taking really good photos when there’s barely any light available. The feature was released after the Pixel 3 came out, and gave the phone the ability to capture more or less light at night depending on the shakiness of your hand. The third-generation Pixel was also paired with the introduction of Google Assistant’s Call Screen feature, a mixture of visual voicemail and audio transcription that allowed users to see why someone is calling and only pick up if they wanted to.

Google would go on to introduce the first budget version of the Pixel a few months later with the Pixel 3a, a practice that continues to this day. In the following years, the company’s releases were mostly memorable for gimmicks like the Pixel 4’s Motion Sense feature (using radar to detect hand gestures to launch shortcuts) and the adoption of industry trends, with the Pixel 5’s support for 5G.

The company followed up those phones with a few releases that were only memorable for gimmicks like the Pixel 4’s Motion Sense feature (essentially motion controls for specific apps) and the adoption of an industry trend, with the Pixel 5’s 5G support.

Say hello to the camera bar and Tensor chip

It would take the radical new design of the Pixel 6 to snap things back into focus for Google. Not only did the Pixel 6 have a massive, shelf-like camera bar on the back, but the phone was also the first to be powered by a custom SoC developed by Google. Rather than focus on raw power, the Google Tensor chip was designed to handle on-device AI tasks like Magic Eraser for editing photos, Live Translate for converting text to another language as you type and Direct My Call, which lets the Pixel navigate phone trees on your behalf.

The splashy launch of the Pixel 6 in 2021 marks the new path Google’s smartphones have been heading for the last four years. They’re still good at taking photos, but their main role is to be a showcase for whatever AI feature the company has cooked up most recently. Google continued to refine the idea with the release of the Pixel 7, which was paired with the first Pixel Watch following Google’s acquisition of Fitbit in 2021. 2023 brought the Pixel 8 as well as the company’s first foldable, the Pixel Fold.

The move also matched internal shifts at Google itself. The teams developing the Android operating system have long been separate from the teams building Pixel phones out of respect for Google’s partners who make their own Android phones. That changed in 2024 when Google announced a reorganization that placed Pixel and Android under the same “Platforms & Devices” umbrella. The stated motivation was that aligning software and hardware would let the company release new AI features even faster, which bore out in the various Gemini features on the Pixel 9 lineup and whatever the company has planned for the Pixel 10. On some level the intimate role smartphones play in people’s lives makes them an obvious venue for AI, something the company clearly wants to take advantage of based on in-development features like Project Astra.

Google clearly experimented throughout the life of the Pixel, but the phone has always been a tool to sell software ideas. Demonstrating the potential of computational photography had early success, and now the company is trying to do the same thing with generative AI and Gemini. Competition remains fierce — OpenAI shared in December 2024 that ChatGPT had 300 million weekly users, making it a real threat to Google’s core business. Google has never been a hardware company, nor has it needed to win at hardware. But with stiffer competition in software than ever, using the Pixel series to get people to use Google’s many services is arguably more important than ever.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/10-pixels-in-the-purpose-of-a-google-made-smartphone-remains-the-same-160007404.html?src=rss 

Is it finally happening? Team Cherry just announced a livestream for the long-anticipated sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong. It takes place on April 21 at 10:30AM ET. The company says it will be making a “special announcement” about the game. We don’t exactly know what this announcement will be, but it’s starting to feel like a release date or at least a release window.

Rumors have been swirling that the title would finally be getting a release date during this week’s Gamescom festivities, with Geoff Keighley offering a tease a couple of days ago. This is all happening more than six years after the game was first announced.

It’s possible that the special announcement won’t involve the release date at all, but will instead offer new game modes or a deeper dive into the story. It’s worth noting that reports have indicated that the game would finally see the light of day this year, though we’ve been fooled by that kind of thing before.

For the uninitiated, Hollow Knight: Silksong is the followup to Hollow Knight, which was an indie Metroidvania that absolutely took the world by storm. It actually started as DLC for the original game before the developers realized the scope of their ambitions would take nearly seven years to see through.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/theres-a-hollow-knight-silksong-livestream-on-april-21-at-1030am-et-153220983.html?src=rss 

Whether you love or hate them, PDFs are an inescapable part of the job for many of us. In fact, it’s safe to say the format isn’t going away anytime soon, with Adobe reporting there are 3 trillion PDFs in circulation worldwide. However, there’s no denying they can be a pain to work with, and in an effort to make it easier to manage projects involving multiple PDFs, Adobe is launching a new product today called Acrobat Studio. And wouldn’t you know it, the company is marketing the inclusion of generative AI tools as a major selling point of the suite.

The main feature of Acrobat Studio are hubs Adobe calls PDF Spaces. Here, you can upload up to 100 files — including PDFs of course, alongside public web pages, RTFs, DOCXs and more — and Acrobat Studio’s built-in AI assistants will help you make sense of everything. To start, the hub will generate a summary of all the documents, with a few pre-populated prompts to help with further analysis. Accompanying each bullet point from the AI is a citation you can use to verify the model’s summary by quickly jumping to the document it pulled the information from. Sharing your PDF Spaces with colleagues is built right into Acrobat Studio.

In addition to chatting with Acrobat Studio’s AI assistant, you can create custom assistants to carry out specific tasks. By default, Adobe offers three of these — analyst, instructor and entertainer — to get you started. The names do a decent job of communicating each assistant’s purpose. For example, the instructor will attempt to explain complex topics. You can create your own by writing a set of custom prompts.

There are some notable limitations to PDF Spaces. For one, the hub’s generative AI features currently only work with documents written in English. Adobe says it will add support for other languages “over time.” Similarly, the hub can’t analyze videos, handwritten notes and password-protected files.

Outside of PDF Spaces, Acrobat Studio offers access to Adobe Express built right into the app, meaning you can use Adobe’s Firefly AI models to generate commercially safe images for your PDFs. As you would expect, the suite also comes with Adobe Acrobat and all the tools you might need to create and edit your own protected documents.

Pricing for Acrobat Studio starts at $25 per month for individuals, with a 14-day trial available.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/acrobat-studio-is-adobes-new-ai-powered-hub-for-pdfs-130003264.html?src=rss 

Qualcomm revealed its latest mobile platform for more affordable smartphones and devices called the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4. Compared to its predecessor, the new Snapdragon chips have overall improved performance, support for more detailed displays and a feature that allows for better video quality in low-light situations.

We were able to test the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 with smartphones like the Nothing 3a and 3a Pro, but this next-gen chipset represents a seven percent improvement with both the Qualcomm Adreno GPU and Kryo CPU. The Gen 4 specs also show higher peak CPU speeds of up to 2.7 GHz, compared to the previous generation’s 2.5 GHz. On top of the overall performance boost, Qualcomm added support for WFHD+ displays that have a 2,900 x 1,300 resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate. For better video in dark scenarios, Qualcomm infused the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 with the Low Light Vision feature, which was previously reserved for the company’s more expensive chips.

Beyond these upgrades, the fourth-generation Snapdragon 7s chips keep the AI-powered ability to take 200-megapixel photos, Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4+ Technology that can recharge a device from zero to 50 percent in five minutes and support for real-time translation and transcription with multiple languages. It’s a minor upgrade from the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 that was announced last August and Qualcomm hasn’t announced any phone makers who plan to use this chip yet. However, we could see the latest chip being used by companies like Honor and Vivo, who previously used Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 models.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/qualcomms-latest-snapdragon-chips-offer-slight-power-up-for-budget-smartphones-130017850.html?src=rss 

NVIDIA is working on a new AI chip meant for the Chinese market that’s more powerful than the H20, according to Reuters. It will reportedly be based on the company’s latest Blackwell architecture, which can produce chips between seven and 30 times faster than its previous AI platform. Reuters says the product is tentatively named B30A and will have a single-die design, putting all its main components on a single piece of silicon. It will apparently be capable of half the computing power of NVIDIA’s Blackwell Ultra GPUs, which have dual-die configuration. The product will also come with high-bandwidth memory and the company’s NVLink technology for speedier data transmission between processors. 

It’s possible that NVIDIA is developing the chip after the Chinese government discouraged local companies from using the H20, especially for government and national security purposes. Chinese regulators even reportedly ordered big tech corporations, including Alibaba, Bytedance and Tencent, to suspend their purchases from NVIDIA until the government is done with a national security review. China’s warning to local companies came after the US government lifted its export restriction on the company’s H20 chips. 

If you’ll recall, the US blocked the company from selling its H20 chips to China back in April over concerns that the Chinese military could use the chips to develop AI technology. In July, NVIDIA announced that the government has assured the company that it will approve licenses to ship and export H20 chips to China. The Financial Times then reported in August that the government had agreed to grant NVIDIA (and AMP) export licenses in exchange for 15 percent of their profits. 

Reuters says NVIDIA is still finalizing the specs of B30A, but it’s hoping to deliver samples to Chinese clients for testing as soon as September this year. Trump seems to already be aware that NVIDIA is working on a chip based on Blackwell for the Chinese market, but whether it gets regulatory and export approval remains to be seen: The president told reporters that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huan is “coming to see [him] again about that.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/nvidia-is-reportedly-developing-an-ai-chip-for-china-more-powerful-than-the-h20-130057520.html?src=rss 

OpenAI has debuted its cheapest subscription yet for India only, product head Nick Turley announced on X. Called ChatGPT Go, the 390 rupee ($4.60) GPT-5 plan will offers users 10 times more message limits, image generation and file uploads than the free offering. “Making ChatGPT more affordable has been a key ask from users,” Turley wrote. “We’re rolling out Go in India first and will learn from feedback before expanding to other countries.” 

The new plan was leaked earlier and OpenAI recently introduced local currency pricing in India via India’s payment framework. With that, ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Pro are now offered for 1,999 rupees ($22.95) and 19,990 rupees ($229.50) — more expensive than the $20 and $200 users paid prior to the local currency rollout. 

ChatGPT Go now gives local users a more budget-oriented option. However, it doesn’t offer access to GPT-5’s advanced reasoning, has “limited deep research,” no custom GPTs and lower message, image and file upload limits compared to the higher-end subscriptions, according to OpenAI’s plan page in India. 

India is a key market for OpenAI, being second only to the US by user base. CEO Sam Altman recently met with India’s IT minister about a plan to introduce lower-cost AI plans. According to Turley’s X post, it looks like ChatGPT Go will come to other countries soon, though the company has yet to say which ones. Turley recently said that ChatGPT now has 700 million weekly users globally, up from 500 million in March. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openais-chatgpt-go-plan-arrives-in-india-only-for-under-5-per-month-120053087.html?src=rss 

Leave it to Tesla to charge its customers for a feature it purposely left out. The company is now selling an almost $350 retrofit turn signal stalk for its Model 3 cars after removing from the initial model. Instead, it used buttons to activate the turn signal.

As of now, the add-on is only available in the Chinese market. But, Model 3 drivers will need to shell out another 2,499 yuan ($348) to get a normal part of almost every car. However, there’s a slight catch: The turn signal stalk is only compatible with models produced from February 7 of this year onward. 

Only one month earlier, Tesla launched a refreshed Model Y that brought back the turn signal stalk. “We always say at Tesla, if you aren’t deleting so much that you have to put something back, you have’t deleted enough. Well, maybe we deleted too much,” Tesla’s vice president of engineering Lars Moravy said in an interview with Jay Leno shortly after. 

The option to buy a retrofit signal stalk isn’t that surprising. Creator Chris Zheng first leaked the news back in February on X (formerly Twitter). It’s unclear whether Tesla plans to bring the add-on to additional markets. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/tesla-offers-a-350-retrofit-turn-signal-stalk-after-removing-it-from-the-model-3-123034169.html?src=rss 

UK officials will no longer compel Apple to create backdoor access to its users’ data, according to US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. She wrote on X that she, President Trump and Vice President Vance worked closely with their “partners in the UK” over the past months. “As a result,” she continued, “the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a ‘back door’ that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties.”

As The New York Times notes, the UK government issued the secret order earlier this year after amending the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016. The law gives the UK government the right to compel companies to turn over data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Reports about the mandate started to come out in February, however, and Apple pretty much confirmed it when it disabled iCloud’s Advanced Data Protection feature in the UK. ADP gives users the power to to add optional end-to-end encryption to a variety of iCloud data, which means the information can’t be accessed by authorities unless they have the user’s device in their hands. “As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will,” Apple said at the time. 

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers asked Gabbard to take measures to prevent what they called “a foreign cyberattack waged through political means” after the information about the mandate went public. Meanwhile, Apple filed a complained with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which “investigates complaints about the alleged conduct of public bodies in relation to members of the public,” to get the order reversed. The company has yet to issue an official statement about the reversal of the UK mandate. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-uk-will-no-longer-require-apple-to-create-backdoor-access-to-users-data-110014398.html?src=rss 

Spotify routinely debuts new playlist features for its users, but the company’s latest update has the potential to dramatically alter custom mixes. Starting today, premium users will have access to a new tool for creating customized transitions within playlists. This will allow seamless progression from one track to the next, with natural-sounding changeovers and no awkward silence. 

Once you’ve created a playlist, you’ll notice a Mix option on the toolbar. When selected, the tool gives you the option to pick Auto and allow Spotify to instantly make the transitions, or you can tap in further to customize things as you see fit. From there, you can choose presets like Fade or Rise to quickly apply transition styles or try specific changes to volume, EQ and effects. The app will display a waveform for the two songs, helping you select the best place to make the swap. 

After making your transitions, you can save them for future use or for sharing with friends. And speaking of friends, the transition editor is available for collaboration on any playlists you build with your pals. Spotify allows you to toggle the Mix option on and off at any time, so you’re free to listen without any of that creative customization if needed. 

To help you create a playlist that’s ready for mixing, Spotify will show you the tempo in BPMs (beats per minute) and Camelot keys for each song once you tap Mix. The company reminds users that the best options for this tool are songs that were created for seamless transitions, so genres like house and techno will provide the best results. Spotify also recommends using the Mix tool for making running playlists with consistent BPMs to help with pace or to create roadtrip playlists that can maintain “the vibe.” Lastly, you can create your own cover art for mixed playlists using Spotify’s built-in editor that debuted last fall. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotify-now-lets-you-create-seamless-transitions-between-songs-on-your-custom-playlists-100051537.html?src=rss