Until last year, Google historically held its mobile device launch events in October, ceding the yearly first-mover advantage to primary competitor Apple with its September comparable-device announcements. In 2024, however, Google “flipped the script”, jumping ahead to August. The same thing seems to have happened this year…assuming Apple does a late summer or early fall event at all, of course, since all we have right now is a lot of leaks, not a solid date. That said, Google rolled out the latest updates to its longstanding smartphone, smart watch, and earbuds products last Wednesday, August 20^th at its Made by Google event, along with making additional announcements related to other R&D programs and product lines.

I suppose I probably should touch on (and get past) the “schtick” aspect of this post title’s first. I didn’t watch the livestream, as I was fully focused on my “day job” duties at the time. And truth be told, I still haven’t watched the archived video in its entirety, because I can’t stomach it:

Say what you want about Jimmy Fallon as a comedian, television host, actor, singer, writer, and producer; I personally think he’s quite talented, generally speaking:

As a tech event host, however, in this initial experiment at least, his skill set was a mismatch, IMHO at least. Not that the other guests, or even Google’s own spokespersons, were much—if any—better, for that matter. Here’s what TechCrunch noted in retrospect:

The result was a watered-down, cringey, and at times almost QVC-like sales event, which Reddit users immediately dubbed “unwatchable.” In large part, this had to do with Fallon’s performance.  Trying to shift his goofy late-night persona to a corporate event, he ended up coming across as deeply uninterested in the technology, necessitating an over-the-top display of decidedly less-than-genuine enthusiasm.

The Verge’s conceptually similar take was aptly titled “The Made by Google event felt like being sucked into an episode of Wandavision”. Here’s an excerpt:

The real unsettling thing was understanding that I — and other gadget nerds and media — were not the target audience for this show. The point of a keynote is to be both informative and impressive, telling the most interested audiences about the ins and outs of the new products and attempting to wow them with live demos and technological feats. Today’s Pixel event was less concerned with product minutiae and more concerned with making it all entertaining.

That said, Victoria Song’s self-aware closing comments were thought-provoking; perhaps at least some of the reason for my underwhelming reaction was that I’m traditional and…old:

Back in the day, [Steve] Jobs needed media to get the word out and build buzz. In this new age, companies can go straight to the source through influencers, YouTube (which Google also owns), and livestreams. It’s why you see an increasing number of influencers invited to launch events — and featuring in them. There were plenty in attendance today. It’s not that journalists are getting left out. It’s more that the keynote as we know it isn’t the only way to get attention anymore. All I know is today felt like the end of an era. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ll confess that traditional keynotes have felt stale as of late. As cringe as it was, this was at least something different.

That all said, I give Google kudos for taking it straight to Apple this time, which depending on your perspective, reflects either genuine confidence or deluded arrogance. And I’d still suggest you stick with The Verge’s 11:39 abridged video versus slogging through the full 1:16:55 version:

The processors

One downside to the reality that “gadget nerds and media were not the target audience for this show” is that we didn’t end up getting nearly as much technical detail as we’d like. At this point, for example, we don’t have any idea whose SoC is inside Google’s new Pixel Buds 2a earbuds:

To be fair, we don’t generally find out this kind of info for these kinds of products anyway, at least until either the supplier reveals its presence or someone like me tears ‘em apart. And speaking of suppliers subtly-or-not revealing themselves, the fact that Qualcomm rolled out its latest “Snapdragon W5+ and W5 Gen 2 Wearable Platforms” for smart watches and the like the same day as Google’s event was a tipoff that it’s what’s powering the new Pixel Watch 4:

The main IC, comprising a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU matrix and a Hexagon V66K AI DSP, is fabricated on a 4 nm process (foundry source not identified). The key difference between the W5 (which Google’s smartwatch uses) and W5+ is the latter’s inclusion of a separate 22 nm-fabricated always-on coprocessor (AOC). The Qualcomm chipset’s narrowband non-terrestrial networks (NB-NTN) support enables emergency message transmission and reception via satellite when out of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage, something rumored for the (near) future with Apple Watches but not available with Apple’s current wrist-wearable products. And dual-band GPS capabilities, coupled with “Location Machine Learning 3.0” RF front-end (RFFE) and processing algorithm enhancements, claim to improve positioning accuracy by up to 50%.

Speaking of “foundry sources”, a supplier transition here is one of the most notable aspects of the new Tensor G5 SoC powering Google’s latest Pixel 10 products, including the newest Fold:

Google provided no detailed block diagram, sorry, only a pretty concept picture:

And when it comes to specs, there’s only high-level handwaving, at least for now, until third-party developers and users get their hands on hardware:

• An up to 60% more powerful TPU
• A 34% faster on average CPU, and
• New security hardware

The other thing we know is that Google switched from its longstanding foundry partner, Samsung, to TSMC this time around. The Tensor G4 (along with its G3 precursor…perhaps that lithography stall was behind the foundry switch?) had been built on a 4-nm process. Now it’s fabbed on 3 nm.

Beyond that… Read Original