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The Pixel 10 Smartphone Unveiling
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All the headlines from the Made By Google event where we saw the new Pixel 10 lineup and the 4th gen Pixel Watch. We have a release date for those new Xbox handhelds. More seeming chaos at Meta’s AI headquarters. And a report back from the first ever AI film festival.
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Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride home for Wednesday, August 20th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, all the headlines from the Made by Google event where we saw the new Pixel 10 lineup and the 4th gen Pixel watch. We have a release date for those new Xbox handhelds, more seeming chaos at Meta's AI headquarters, and a report back from the first ever AI Film Festival. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Over 10 years ago, Mizzen and Main invented and some might say perfected the performance fabric dress shirt. To this day, they continue to embrace that same entrepreneurial spirit by re engineering classic American styles with modern fabrics. The goal is to make it easier for guys to achieve and enjoy their version of success. So whether you're grinding away in an office in San Francisco or on site in Austin, they've got you covered. You know me, I'm a Polo guy. So personally, I'm super into their Versa line of Polos. Go to mizzen and main.comtechbrew and use promo code brew15 to get 15% off your first purchase. That's mizzen and main.com techbrew promo code brew15. Google held its made by Google event this afternoon in Brooklyn. Jimmy Fallon hosted and actually they trotted out a bunch of celebrities. But that's not what we're here for, right? Let's just get to it. First up, they announced the flagship phones, the Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL. They look similar to last year's models but get meaningful under the hood upgrades. Both move to the new Tensor G5 chip, which Google claims delivers around 34% faster CPU performance and around 60% faster on device AI via the TPU. The phones add true Qi 2 magnetic wireless charging branded by Google as Pixel Snap actually, and they Both stay at 16 gigabytes of RAM. The display also stays at 6.3 inches for the Pro and 6.8 inches for the Pro XL. The XL alone has the fastest Qi 2.2 charging spec up to 25 watts wireless charging, while the Pro tops out at 15 watts. Storage on the XL now starts at 256 gigabytes. And as far as pricing, the Pixel 10 Pro starts at $999 while the XL starts at 11. $719. Pre orders are open now. Retail availability begins August 28th. They come in silver, green, white and black varieties. Cameras took a two track approach with these phones. The Pro models keep the larger 50 megapixel main sensor and a bigger 48 megapixel ultra wide sensor than the base model. And they add a new controversial trick, Prores Zoom, an on device latent diffusion model that cleans up pictures that you take that have a greater than 30x zoom. Quoting the Verge Prores Zoom kicks in when past 30x all the way up to 100x digital zoom. Typically the camera uses an algorithm to help fill in the gaps left by upscaling a small portion of your photo to the original resolution. Typically the results look like hot garbage, especially when you get all the way up to 75x or 100x. Despite every camera maker's best efforts over the past two decades, ProRes Zoom aims to give you a usable image where you wouldn't have gotten one before. And that's where the diffusion model comes in. That might be an understatement. In the handful of demos I saw, Prores Zoom cleaned up some pretty gnarly 100x zoom photos remarkably well. The processing all happens on device after you take the photo. Google tells me that when Google started developing the feature, it took around a minute to run the diffusion model on the phone, but the team got the runtime down to four or five seconds. Once the processing is done, the new version is saved alongside the original. I only saw it work a handful of times, but the results I saw looked pretty darn good. Other notable hardware changes to these two phones US units are ESIM only, dual active ESIM. By the way, they store eight or more profiles. Apparently. Batteries tick up slightly, 4870 milliamp hours for the Pro and 5200 milliamp hours for the Pro XL. The screens are also brighter across the board. As for the straight up Pixel 10, it gets its biggest camera rethink in years for the first time. The base Pixel model, the Pixel 10, now includes a proper telephoto moving to a three camera system. Hardware isn't identical to the Pros. The main camera drops to a smaller 48 megapixel and a half type sensor versus the Pros 50 megapixel and the ultra wide is 13 megapixels. The new telephoto is 10.8 megapixels with a 5x optical zoom. You also get tensor G5 Qi 2 magnets with 15 watt wireless charging, a slightly larger battery and peak brightness up to 3,000 N. The price starts at $799. Pre orders begin today. They're in stores August 28th. Colors for the straight 10 include Indigo, Light blue, bright green and black. But maybe the bigger news comes from the new Pixel 10 Pro Fold Google's foldable keeps the $1,799 starting price but lands a first full IP68 dust and water resistance thanks to a new Gearless H. The COVID screen grows to 6.4 inch with thinner bezels and the inner OLED display stays at 8 inches and now has peak brightness at 3000 nits versus 2700 nits before. It shares the entire family's tensor G5 and Qi2 magnets at 15 watts. Wireless though the camera hardware still trails the Slab style Pro's. Pre orders for the foldable phone start now. They hit stores October 9th. The colors are moonstone gray and jade, which is sort of a green greenish yellow. But for this entire lineup beyond the RAW specs, the pitch from Google is, you guessed it, AI AI AI. Standout features include MagicQ, a proactive system wide assistant that surfaces the exact text or info you likely need inside of apps like Gmail, calendar, messages, phone, etc. And call translators that mimic speakers voices, all running on device via the G5 chip. Google is also pushing visual overlays in Gemini Live, which is basically camera aware guidance. Also camera coach composition tips and a take a message with action ready transcripts feature in photos. You can now literally talk to the app to make edits to photos. Edit by asking they call it and the whole Pixel 10 line writes C2PA content credentials to captured images flagging when AI assisted, just describe the change by voice or text that you want. Like brighten the subject, remove glare, make the sky bluer and the AI does it. The app composes the edit for you. This launches first on Pixel 10 devices in the US in a couple weeks. On the health side, there's a new Fitbit AI Health Coach app which is Gemini powered inside a redesigned Fitbit app which builds adaptive weekly plans from your data, then adjusts for sleep, illness, travel or injury and explains trends in your health conversationally. It arrives in October as an opt in preview for Fitbit Premium, not limited to just the newest hardware, but it does pair naturally with these new Pixel 10 phones. But wait, there was more beyond the phones. The new Pixel Watch 4 comes in 41 millimeter and 45 millimeter sizes, has a new domed Actua 360 display which apparently is 10% more screen with 50% greater brightness up to 3000 nits. Also faster charging, a Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 chip raised to talk Gemini assistance, emergency satellite SOS service, no extra fee and a big win user repairable display and battery. This is all coming October 9th starting at $349. Also there are budget Pixel Buds 2a which jump to 12999 with active noise cancellation, transparency, Gemini hands free assistance and a replaceable battery case. The Pixel Buds Pro get adaptive audio, hand gesture, call controls and more via a September Software update. The Pro 2 headphones ship August 28th, the Buds 2A on October 9th. If I had to give a summary of the whole event, this is just one of those classic cycle upgrade years for the Google phones. Conservative hardware tweaks wrapped around a big silicon shift. The TSMC built tensor 5 chips which maybe we'll talk about more tomorrow. And of course the continued drum beat about on device AI. The headline spec ads are probably the Qi 2 magnets/charging across the line, the E Sim only in the us the brighter screens, the bigger batteries and the base Pixel finally getting a telephoto lens. But the demos were probably the most exciting around the cameras that generative Pro res zoom on the Pros paired with the system level C2PA. If you care about wireless charging speed and storage, the XL is maybe the way you want to go. But if you want to jump on board the foldable bandwagon now that we have maybe the first foolproof design with the hinge that is a dust proof foldable for the first time, well, Google has the only game in town that's not the only hardware News Today though, this is just an announcement about an unveiling of new hardware, not the unveiling itself. Microsoft and Asus have announced that their new Xbox Ally handhelds, including the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, will launch on October 16 in various markets worldwide. Pricing details and pre orders have not been revealed yet, but leaks suggest the Xbox Ally could be priced at about $699 and the Xbox Ally X at $1049. Both handhelds will feature a 7 inch 1080p screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and VRR support. The Xbox Ally will use an AMD Ryzen Z2A chip, while the Xbox Ally X will feature a more powerful Ryzen AI Z2 extreme processor. Microsoft has also introduced a handheld compatibility program to optimize games for the devices with two categories handheld optimized and mostly compatible. The devices will ship with the Xbox full screen experience and Microsoft is working on improving the game shader experience and introducing features like Automatic Super Resolution and AI powered highlight reels. Quoting the Verge, the price information delay could be related to the leaks or ongoing uncertainty with US tariffs alongside release date confirmation Microsoft also announced its handheld compatibility program today. Quote we have worked with game studios to test, optimize and verify thousands of games for handheld compatibility, allowing you to jump into the game without having to tweak settings or requiring only minor adjustments, said Roanne Sons CVP of gaming devices and ecosystem at Xbox. Additional improvements to the docking experience for the Xbox Ally devices are also coming soon. Microsoft is working to enable a seamless, high performance setup that supports big screen gaming, Auto SR intuitive controller pairing, optimized display output and more, according to Sones. End quote okay, I mentioned yesterday how Meta is reorgang the reorg of their AI efforts yet again, but at this point I kind of have no idea what is going on over there because now there is this quoting the Times On Tuesday, Meta announced internally that it is splitting its AI division, which is known as Meta Superintelligence Labs, into four groups. Two people with knowledge of the situation said. One group will focus on AI research, one on a potentially powerful AI called Superintelligence, another on products, and one on infrastructure such as data centers and other AI hardware, they said. The reorganization is likely to be the final one for some time, the people said. The moves are aimed at better organizing Meta so it can get to its goal of Superintelligence and develop AI products more quickly to compete with others, the people said. But some AI executives are expected to leave after this reorg, the people said. Meta is also looking at downsizing the AI division overall, which could include eliminating roles or moving employees to other parts of the company. Because it has grown to thousands of people in recent years, the people said. Discussions remain fluid and no final decisions have been made on the downsizing, they said. In what would be a shift from Meta using only its own technology to power its AI products, the company is also actively exploring using third party artificial intelligence models to do so, the people said. That could include building on other open source AI models which are freely available, or licensing closed source models from other companies. Since Mr. Zuckerberg created the superintelligence team under former Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, tensions have surfaced. Mr. Wang's team is focused on creating the company's most powerful AI model, known as a frontier model. Two of the people with knowledge of the matter said the new team has discussed making Meta's next AI model closed, which would be a major departure from the company's longtime philosophy of open sourcing its models. A closed model keeps its underlying technology secret, while an open source AI model can be built upon by other developers. The new team has chosen to abandon Meta's previous frontier model called Behemoth, and start from scratch on a new model, the people said. Behemoth's release was delayed last spring after disappointing performance tests, one person said. As Meta has spent billions to bring in AI talent, some members of the old guard have chafed at the new hires, three people with knowledge of the matter said. End Quote Hmm, maybe we are seeing now why there are whispers that even with all the money in the world, Zuck is facing some recruiting headwinds for this AI initiative. You don't want to jump to a lily pad if the lily pad might have been moved before you can even land on it. Even with all of the money in the world on offer, I wonder if this segment is at least tangentially related to that last segment, because if Zuck were to ever signal that he's slowing spending on AI, it'd be Katie Barr the Door for the Markets quoting the FT US Tech stocks sold off on Tuesday as warnings that the hype surrounding artificial intelligence could be overdone hit some of the year's best performing shares. Nvidia, the CHIPS group that has surged to become the world's first $4 trillion company on the back of AI, fell 3.5%, while software group Palantir dropped 9.4% and chip designer ARM shed 5%. The tech heavy Nasdaq Composite closed down 1.4%, the biggest one day drop for the index since August 1. Traders pinned some of the declines in the US on a critical report on Monday, Author a branch of the Massachusetts Institute of technology researchers said 95% of organizations are getting zero return from their investments in generative AI, the technology that has sent US stocks soaring to record highs in recent months. The story is spooking people, said one trader. Close to a multi billion dollar US tech fund. Just 5% of integrated AI pilots are extracting millions in value, while the vast majority remain stuck with no measurable profit and loss impact, the MIT report said. The stock drop also came days after OpenAI Chief Executive S.A. altman signaled an AI bubble might be forming. Are investors overexcited? My opinion is yes, altman said. Late last week, he said. I do think some investors are likely to lose a lot of money and I don't want to minimize that. That sucks. There will be periods of irrational exuberance, but on the whole the value for society will be huge. End quote. Finally today from Wired, a look at the 2025 AI Film Festival, backed by AI startup Runway AI and screened by iMax. Some cinephiles in attendance have derided it, while others have been praising the quality of the short films shown. The AI Film Festival is backed by Runway, a New York based AI company offering tools for human imagination. Among those tools are image and video generators, allowing users to create characters, sets, lighting schemes and whole immersive scenes. With its Gen4 software, users can theoretically create a whole movie or something vaguely approximating one anyway. We were all frustrated filmmakers, said Runway's co founder Alejandro Matamala Ortiz of he and his partners, who met as grad students enrolled in the Interactive telecommunications program at NYU's Tisch School for the Arts. We wanted to build the tools that we wanted to use. The film festival was born of a further desire to help legitimize those same AI tools. A gala screening held earlier this summer at New York's prestigious Alice Tully hall at the Lincoln center, home to New York Film Festival and year round programming, saw filmmakers and technologists gather to watch the creme de la creme of a technology typically written off for producing mere slop. The festival format, Ortiz says, serves to bring people together. Now that same gala program is touring IMAX cinemas around the country for a limited engagement. As with any billing of 10 shorts made by 10 different filmmakers, the quality is a bit scattershot. The program begins, promisingly enough, with Mattie Hong's Emergence, an immersive nature documentary shot in quotes and narrated from the POV of a butterfly larvae hatching from a chrysalis. With a bold pastel color palette, the rotoscope animated more tears than harm, superficially evoked the work of American primitivist painter Horace Pippin, who is one of my favorite artists. 6000 Lies is a rapid collage of gestating human fetuses, followed by a photo of a fetus burial sight. In an abridged form, it might make an effective advertisement for a pro life group. Indeed, if there was anything like an aesthetic sensibility shared by the films, it was a sense of commercialized gloss, rapid fire edits, satiny photorealistic images. A few, like Editorial and Fragments of Nowhere, played like perfume ads for a fragrance an Android might wear. The lousiest of the bunch was an anime short called A Million Trillion Pathways, credited to a filmmaker named Hachi and IO beyond being whol derivative, it highlighted the rather obvious shortcomings of the technology, like characters, earlobes and shirt colors seemingly mutating in shape between scenes. One filmmaker in the audience, Robert Pietri, came away mostly impressed by what he saw. Quote a couple of them were really pushing and going where I think you should be going with this, he says, which is creating a cinema that you can't create otherwise. I was excited by it. He sees the weaker films as not being limited as much by the emerging AI toolkit, but by the limitations of the creators. An AI, it seems, cannot render away bad ideas input by the human beings plugging in the prompts. Well, not yet anyway. End quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.