Google is saying the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro immediately, although it could be better to call it a preview or a tease. Rather than releasing all the main points on its new Android telephones, Google is as an alternative placing the concentrate on the brand new system on a chip (SoC) that will probably be inside the brand new Pixels. It’s known as the Tensor SoC, named after the Tensor Processing Units (TPU) Google makes use of in its knowledge facilities.

Tensor is an SoC, not a single processor. And so whereas it’s truthful to name it Google-designed, it’s additionally nonetheless unclear which parts are Google-made and that are licensed from others. Two issues are undoubtedly coming from Google: a cellular TPU for AI operations and a brand new Titan M2 chip for safety. The relaxation, together with the CPU, GPU, and 5G modem, are all nonetheless a thriller.

Less mysterious: the telephones themselves. I spent about an hour at Google’s Mountain View campus final week trying on the telephone {hardware} and speaking with Google’s {hardware} chief Rick Osterloh about Tensor. After all that, my most important takeaway concerning the new Pixel 6 telephones is straightforward.

Google is definitely, lastly attempting to make a aggressive flagship telephone.

Image: Google

This fall, Google will launch two barely completely different Pixel telephones: the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6 Pro. If the ultimate variations are something just like the prototypes I noticed final week, they would be the first Pixel telephones that don’t really feel like they’re sandbagging on the subject of construct high quality. “We knew we didn’t have what it took to be in the ultra high end [in the past],” Osterloh admits. “And this is the first time where we feel like we really have it.”

Both variations of the Pixel had been glass sandwiches with fit-and-finish which can be lastly in the identical league as what Samsung, Huawei, and Apple have to supply. “We’ve definitively not been in the flagship tier for the past couple years, this will be different,” says Osterloh. He additionally admits that “it will certainly be a premium-priced product,” which I take to imply north of $1,000.

Image: Google

Google is simply sharing a couple of of the important thing specs for every telephone, leaving the main points for later — seemingly October. (And no, there was no point out of a folding telephone nor a watch.) Google additionally wouldn’t permit us to take pictures or video of the units throughout our assembly. In any case, here’s what we do know:

The Pixel 6 Pro may have a 6.7-inch QHD+ show with a 120Hz refresh fee. That display screen could be very barely curved on the edges, mixing into shiny, polished aluminum rails on the aspect. It has three cameras on the again: a brand new wide-angle most important sensor, an ultrawide, and a 4X optical-zoom folded telephoto lens. Google isn’t sharing specs on the digicam past saying the primary wide-angle sensor takes in 150 p.c extra mild.

The common Pixel 6 has a 6.4-inch FHD+ display screen with a 90Hz refresh fee. Its display screen is completely flat, with matte-finished rails. It additionally loses the telephoto digicam.

Although there will probably be reminiscence variations between the telephones, each may have the brand new Tensor SoC, a Titan M2 safety chip, and in-display fingerprint sensor. There will probably be barely completely different coloration choices for the 2 forms of telephones.

As is commonly the case with polarizing designs, the look of the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro make a bit of extra sense in individual than in leaked pictures. There is a big “camera bar” that runs the complete width of the telephones, with a barely raised steel rail to guard the glass from scratches. There are solely so some ways to deal with huge digicam bumps on massive telephones and Google’s answer is to “celebrate and highlight” them, in Osterloh’s phrases.

Image: Google

If all Google had been doing was rescuing the Pixel line from the doldrums of the midrange, that might be important however not price a months-early pre-announcement. The most necessary a part of the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro is that Google is utilizing that new Tensor SoC inside.

Qualcomm has a digital monopoly on processors in Android units within the US. Worldwide, there’s a little bit extra competitors as Samsung, MediaTek, and Huawei all have chips in Android telephones. But on the entire, processing energy on Android telephones is rightfully regarded as woefully behind what Apple has accomplished with its personal in-house silicon on its A-Series line of chips.

Because of that scenario, there’s lots of curiosity to see if Google may probably make a extra aggressive chip that might differentiate its merchandise. But don’t let that curiosity trick you into pondering that Tensor is strictly equal to Apple’s A-Series chips. Tensor is the system on a chip, with a mixture of parts that Google itself has designed and others that it has licensed.

Google’s not sharing who designed the CPU and GPU, neither is it sharing benchmarks on their efficiency — although Osterloh says that it ought to be “market leading.” (Current rumors counsel that it could be Samsung providing those more standard component designs.) He provides, “The standard stuff people look at will be very competitive and the AI stuff will be totally differentiated.”

Instead, this week’s announcement is an try to reframe the narrative away from gigahertz and towards synthetic intelligence and machine studying in telephones — areas the place Google, in fact, has an enormous benefit.

Typically when you concentrate on a telephone’s specs, you consider the core three: CPU, GPU, and RAM. Those items of the SoC are what impression your day-to-day expertise probably the most — how briskly the telephone feels, how lengthy it lasts on battery, how properly it connects to a mobile community, and so forth. After that, there are typically some co-processors off to the aspect that deal with discrete duties like picture processing or safety. Google itself has already made a few of these — the Titan M chip and Pixel Visual Core have appeared on earlier telephones.

“It’s definitely very different than just another co-processor,” Osterloh says. “Like with any SoC, we license a lot of technology into it, but this is our design and it was designed specifically with the purpose of driving our ML and AI forward.” Google’s argument is that the brand new chips in Tensor are a vital a part of lots of the issues the brand new Pixel telephones can do — not not like Apple’s Neural Core in its A-Series processors.

Image: Google

Image: Google

“The computers of the future are becoming much more heterogenous than they have in the past,” Osterloh argues. He has for years been signaling that the tip of Moore’s regulation will imply that computer systems — and telephones — will must be constructed in another way. “There’ll be a lot more specialized sub-elements to the design to be able to do things in specific ways. This is a consequence of raw computing power running out of headroom or growing more slowly than the kinds of processing we want to do with AI,” he says.

The most necessary of these chips is a cellular model of a Tensor Processing Unit. Google has been making TPUs for its server farms for over 5 years now, devoted to extra effectively performing AI and ML duties. It provided an “edge” model of its TPU for enterprise options a couple of years in the past, however the Pixel 6 marks the primary time Google has put a cellular TPU in a telephone.

So what can the brand new TPU inside Tensor really do? Google had a small handful of demos. The first two had been, unsurprisingly, associated to images. Using ML to make higher pictures has traditionally been an enormous benefit for Pixel telephones, however lately progress has stagnated and rivals have caught and surpassed the Pixel — and much surpassed it on the subject of video.

Google clearly needs to take again the crown and thinks the TPU is the best way to do it. The first demo Google confirmed was a blurry photograph of a toddler — the child was shifting as a result of that’s what children do. A second model of the photograph was the identical however run via Tensor’s TPU, and the child’s face was sharper.

Image: Google

Image: Google

It wasn’t a deepfake. What the Pixel 6 does is run the method of snapping a bunch of pictures from the primary sensor and mix them right into a single, HDR picture. But now the Pixel 6 additionally has the ultrawide seize a quick, sharper picture to seize that element. Then the TPU acknowledges that there’s a face, after which combines the ultrawide’s picture with the remainder.

But spectacular picture demos are a dime a dozen today. Google itself famously promised to take away chain hyperlink fences from pictures in 2017 however by no means delivered. The promise of Tensor is to ship higher outcomes extra rapidly, for the reason that SoC is designed to extra effectively run knowledge via the TPU.

It’s proper to be skeptical till we get an opportunity to check the digicam ourselves. It’s vital to be skeptical of the Pixel 6’s video talents given the Pixel line’s historical past of mediocre video — however Google’s second demo didn’t make skepticism straightforward.

It was a easy pan throughout a seaside, with the setting solar absolutely in body for a lot of the shot. As an HDR video, it was difficult. Google arrange a rig with the Pixel 6, Pixel 5, and that iPhone 12 Pro Max and shot the identical pan with all three. As you may anticipate in a demo supplied by Google, video from Google’s new telephone seemed the perfect.

Specifically, it didn’t artificially brighten shadows an excessive amount of just like the iPhone 12 Pro Max and in addition maintained a extra pure white steadiness all through. Compared to the Pixel 5, it was no contest. Last yr’s Pixel over-sharpened every part into summary artwork whereas the Pixel 6 seemed far more pure.

The most important purpose the Pixel 6’s video was higher, based on Osterloh, is that placing the TPU consistent with the entire picture processing stand implies that the identical HDRNet course of that Google applies to nonetheless pictures can now be utilized to each single body in video. The demo I noticed was in 4K at 30fps.

The different demos had been a bit extra delicate and had been associated to translating speech to textual content, which Tensor dealt with domestically while not having an web connection. In one, the Pixel’s on-device auto-caption function seemed to be a bit of sooner and extra correct — and was even in a position to translate from French to English in actual time from a enjoying video. “We’re now able to run data-center quality models on our device,” says Osterloh.

In one other demo, Osterloh confirmed that chatting with sort was practically instantaneous and that he may use the keyboard to edit phrases inline on the identical time he was talking — each enter strategies had been lively on the identical time.

In addition to the TPU, the Pixel 6 will even have a brand new model of Google’s Titan M safety chip. In the weblog publish saying the Pixel 6, Google goes as far as to say that “with Tensor’s new security core and Titan M2, Pixel 6 will have the most layers of hardware security in any phone,” with a footnote that the declare is “based on a count of independent hardware security subsystems and components.”

Finally, Osterloh says there will probably be an “always-on computer” that may deal with low-level, low-power processes just like the ambient show. The battery life goal for the Pixel 6 continues to be solely “all day,” nevertheless.

Image: Google

The factor about AI and ML is that it would make search extra correct and pictures higher, nevertheless it’s not essentially going to enhance every part that occurs in your telephone. Osterloh means that because the TPU takes up extra AI cycles, that might release the opposite chips for extra efficiency. That could also be, nevertheless it’s nonetheless onerous to make AI a promoting level for a telephone.

So Google has its work minimize out for it. Doubly so, really, for the reason that Google Pixel line has languished within the low single digits of market share within the US ever because it was introduced.

With the Google Pixel 6, Osterloh says that’s going to alter. He’s prepared to start out grabbing market share wherever he can get it — whether or not that be from Apple or Samsung. “The product is really, now, The Google Phone,” Osterloh says. “So we are ready to invest a lot in marketing and we want to grow.”

In final week’s earnings name, Google CFO Ruth Porat warned traders to maintain a glance out for increased than traditional advertising and marketing prices: “In addition, we expect sales and marketing expenses to be more heavily weighted to the back half of the year in part to support product launches in the holiday season.”

It has been 5 years since Google began making Pixel telephones and in practically each single a type of years I’ve requested some variation of the identical query: is Google actually severe about {hardware}? Does it intend to be an actual competitor and make actual cash or is all the effort only a rehashing of the outdated Nexus technique? Or, to make use of a more moderen reference, is the Pixel line simply in a type of “Pantry Mode,” saved alive simply in case it’s ever wanted for actual?

Osterloh says that work on this new Tensor silicon started 4 years in the past. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was about 4 years in the past when Google introduced it supposed to purchase HTC’s telephone {hardware} division. That will need to have been the yr Google received severe concerning the Pixel line — and it’s solely now that we’re starting to see the fruits of that effort.

Will or not it’s sufficient? Will the Pixel 6 significantly vie for the fanatic crowd that wishes the easiest telephone and in addition seize measurable market share on the identical time? We are very removed from with the ability to reply these questions proper now.

I’m not going to inform you to get overvalued for the Pixel 6. It’s too early and there’s an excessive amount of we don’t know. But I do assume it’s very attention-grabbing that Google needs to start out build up hype.