Google heats up its smartphone rival with seven years of updates and new photo tricks

Google will unveil the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro on October 4. The company published the first images and videos of the new Google smartphones two weeks ago.

What surprises the smartphone world: Google’s Pixel 8 series has now been receiving updates for seven years. This is evident from a data sheet that leaker Kamila Wojciechowska received from an internal source at Google. It mentions “seven years of OS and security updates and feature loss.”

Update comparison: five to ten years

That would put Google at least on par with Apple and close to the new Fairphone 5, which is expected to get eight to ten years of software updates.

We probably won’t know until after the Google event whether the new Pixels actually get seven generations of Android updates or ‘just’ seven years of feature and security updates. Both would represent significant progress compared to the current status.

Previously, Google only guaranteed three generations of Android updates and five years of security updates for its current devices. By comparison, Samsung promises operating system upgrades for four generations and security updates for five years for its Galaxy models. For smaller manufacturers of mobile phones and low-cost devices, this often ends after three years.

What is often forgotten in the update discussion: First, major system components and all apps on all Android devices are kept up to date via the Play Store, even after the official end of support for a device. And second, Google is increasingly bringing new features to its Pixel smartphones via feature drops outside of major Android updates to continually improve the devices.

New camera tricks

A typical drop in Pixel features is new camera features. For the Pixel 8, for example, a Google promotional video shows a feature that allows faces to be swapped at the touch of a button. This is probably intended for group photos where not everyone is looking into the camera or someone has their eyes closed.

Google’s Pixel 8 comes with several AI tricks. For example, the ability to edit images afterwards without knowledge of image editing using AI running locally on the device.

In the future, AI will also remove annoying background noise when recording videos and generally optimize recording quality when filming in poor lighting conditions.

The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro will be unveiled at a launch event on October 4. It will then also become clear whether the new Pixel generation will be officially available in Switzerland for the first time.

(oli)