Well, a near $2000 phone (which would have been $1700'ish last year), let's see what I've thought for the first week.
First things first, as you look over the device compared to last year's model, there's no real physical difference. The only thing that you can find (and most people will gloss over) is the HiLight - which is just a fancier looking notification light ... a la ... phones from a bygone era (remember the Galaxy Nexus? or the first Samsung Edge).
Right now, the only thing it can do is let you know when Gemini is listening/thinking/responding or when a specified favourite contact calls and is set up to do so in the contacts app. Hopefully, more comes down the road. As it is, I rarely put my phone face down to notice that thing - I don't want to give the screen a chance to get a micro abrasion or anything...
...speaking of that screen, another physical difference, that you won't notice right away, is that it apparently has a better coating to protect it from those kinds of scrapes. Which is awesome. I baby the heck out of my phones and still after a year there is one or 2 of those tiny little striations. Nearly imperceptible, but still it bugs me that 'I let it happen' and didn't do a better job protecting it.
Not that you'd see it either, but the other update physically with this phone is the battery. It's bigger than last year's, but last year I had only the Pro, this is the XL (and it's technically a 2% reduction from last year), but I am not used to the bigger size and I like it's performance - maybe it's the Tensor G6 being more efficient. It's really nice being able to get 45W charging (I was so used to just 30W ... I never ever got the notification of 'rapid charging' on the 10 Pro and it's such a treat). All models this year are now at 25W Qi2 compatibility (if you have the right charger and adapter), so that is nice that it's across the board and not just an upgrade.
Outside of those things, the rest of it seems to be 'features' that would differentiate this from last year's model, and who knows, those features may just show up in the 10 at a later date.
Here is my 'highlight' reel (get it? hah)
Media Auto Translate
Instead of getting Google Translate to auto detect if webpages or texts come in a different language and offering to translate them for you, it can now do this for media. So, you could watch a french YouTube and it can start to dub the conversation into your language. Neat. A little 'delayed', but it's still neat.
Rambler
This just came in on my phone (as an option for input on Gboard). A week with it and it wasn't showing up, but just as I started to do my last take on the device and going to say "hey this is something that should be here, but isn't" it was there. This is a feature that you could use your voice for input into a text message or Google Search, or ... anything you might use to input text into. Nothing new about that, but this waits to hear it all, and then will automatically give you the appropriate intent. It'll remove 'umms' and 'ahhs', or even when you do that "no... wait, we do have eggs, don't need to get those".
It's neat, but I just don't know if it's anything I'll ever use - but ... who knows, with all this help in self correction, just maybe (I just ever so rarely see myself using voice to text input except on rare occasions where I use my watch to do it.
Camera features:
- Creator Mode
- ProZoom
Last year's 5x telephoto lens, added in with digital zoom it could use some AI tricks to get up to 100x. And it worked... I guess. This year you can achieve up to 120x. And, it's doing a pretty awesome job of it, in my mind.
- Magic Capture
Now, this is a pretty neat feature; essentially, you turn on the mode and just start recording, you give it a rough aim at what you want and don't have to watch the camera anymore. So, you can pay attention to what's going on etc... it'll figure out from the capture what's a good picture, what's a good video clip etc... I like the idea, but I will have to play around to find out what's the best use case for it in my world.
There's some other features but I'll hold off until I do a bigger, fuller review. Plus, I'd like to cover some of these features one by one as their own article.
What was kind of interesting is that features that I had noticed on my other devices are now not there on this. Like, the Sticker mode on Google Photos. My other devices are on Photos v7.87 where as this phone is 7.88 and the option isn't there. Same with 'Reimagine". Or that 'automatically have options for cropping before sharing a photo' option. Google just being Google, I guess. I did notice that I had a LOT of updates to do. Especially manually doing the Play services update. Odd.
Overall, I'm enjoying it. I don't think it's any 'faster' than last year, and if you have a 10, I think there'd be a hard decision if you should go for this one. It's over $150'ish more expensive as it is, and to get the RAM from last year you'd add another $150-170... for features that just may come to the 10 in the end. Who knows.
For me, I'm enjoying the better battery, it's a little bigger than last year, but it's outperforming that little spec bump, so there's got to be better usage in this model. The camera is always awesome, and the ProZoom is cleaner (the new telephoto sensor is slightly larger, so that can help).
Let me know if you have questions about the phone you'd like answers to, and I'll do what I can.
Comments
Post a Comment