In an age that is increasingly becoming indistinguishable between hardware and software, tech giants are changing gears because new and innovative software features like AI capabilities appear to be more important today than the iterative hardware upgrades of years past. Case in point, Google’s annual spectacle last month featuring the release of two new smartphones, the GOOGLE Pixel 9 series, displays the emphasis it is placing on AI capabilities as the main evolutionary feature of modern smartphones. This article explores how Google is redefining the very nature of these digital companions and what we can now expect from our smartphones.
The GOOGLE Pixel 9 launch spectacle announced both its latest squadron of smartphones and brought the Google Gemini features to the fore – the latest advances Google is integrating into the hardware. Apple is likewise telling a story about Apple Intelligence with its iPhone 16, which is focusing more on generative AI features than on marginal hardware upgrades.
While the AI hogs the limelight, it places unprecedented demands on the hardware. Google has stopped it in its tracks with the GOOGLE Pixel 9 Pro and GOOGLE Pixel 9 Pro XL. The device comes with a massive 16GB of RAM in tow, not only for today, but for tomorrow as well, raising the bar on what’s required to power the AI smartphone of the future.
RAM is the key to the growing intersection between the worlds of hardware and software, and Google’s updated versions of flagship Pixel phones have increasingly high amounts of RAM, with the latest GOOGLE Pixel 9 Pro boasting a massive (for a phone) 16GB. This amount of new RAM doesn’t affect battery life, display quality and other aspects of the phone that affect the user’s experience in the short term. Instead, Google is betting that in a few years’ time the phone will still be a hotbed of AI. There are other vendors willing to ramp up the capabilities of their latest phones as well, which will force manufacturers to increase hardware resources in their future products to stay competitive. Hopefully, smartphones in the future will be evaluated by how many years of continual AI-powered upgrades they can handle, rather than by their ability to act as miniature movie theatres.
Meanwhile, with specifications that would shame a VFX nerd’s PC rig, the hardware promises made by Google in contrast to Apple’s offering (which is currently limited to 8GB iPhones) seem to suggest that the ceiling of what hardware can deliver hasn’t been reached – but that the possibilities with AI sure look like they could demand a lot more juice under the hood. As Google rolls forward, setting benchmarks for what an AI-powered smartphone might look like, how will Apple find a way to meet the demand for AI experiences within the tech giants’ ongoing hardware battle?
It’s no coincidence that, as Google rains AI dreams over a gadget landscape already soaked to the gills by its own wares, just about every new feature of the GOOGLE Pixel 9 is an AI feature, and just about every single one is only the beginning.
The launch of the GOOGLE Pixel 9 series marks not the end of a cycle but the beginning of a new chapter in the evolution of ‘symbiogenesis’ between AI and mobile tech. Every day, the contours of Google’s AI-centred future grow more palpable, not only to users but also to Google’s rivals. This new frontier will require all of us to rethink what our digital companions can – and should – be capable of.
The story of how Google built the first great search engine, but is now chasing its own footsteps to see where machine learning might take us next, is one of ambition and foresight. With the Pixel 9, and its sights set on a bigger, bolder future in AI, Google is once again showing us how it has become a driving force in the evolution of technology.
Like a star on the horizon that beckons us onward as we contemplate the next horizon, Google’s sophistication reminds us that what is really important about the proliferation of AI-driven explorations is not so much the gadgets in our pockets, but the openings they create for us to explore. The question now isn’t will AI change our lives, but how soon we want it to.
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