In Sunday’s segment on Sky News Australia (Weekend Edition with Jaynie Seal) we took a first look at Google’s new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro. Widely regarded as the smartest phones available, the Pixels go on sale from October 13.
If you’ve ever deleted a photo because it was blurry .. you may have made a mistake. Google says Photo Unblur can improve blurry photos that suffer from mild to moderate motion blur, camera shake, and mild misfocus blur. The phone uses machine learning to work out what should be sharp in the the picture. These are examples supplied by Google but I’ll be testing this feature on many photos ahead of the review embargo. It works .. and it might save your old library.
Magic Eraser should work faster and so should the whole phone with the new processor, the G2 Tensor chip. The three new cameras on the Pro model are impressive. The Macro lens can focus on subjects at 3 cm. Super Res Zoom up to 8x on Pixel 7 and up to 30x on Pixel 7 Pro (this 5x optical + 48 MP long lens is big news as it challenges the S22 Ultra) but we’ll see how it goes in testing.
It also has enhanced video – a cinematic mode like iPhone, can also guide visually impaired to take selfies, do deal time translations and message transcriptions. It can even separate who is speaking in meeting and record it as text. There’s plenty more from the Pixel 7 that I’ll dig into over the coming weeks.
PIXEL 7 STARTS FROM $999
PIXEL 7 PRO STARTS FROM $1299
PIXEL WATCH IS A GOOD START
My first impressions of the Pixel Watch are very positive. It looks stylish with a round design. It has a large bezel but it’s hidden well. This is a Google Pixel Watch with Wear OS but it’s using Fitbit health and fitness tracking. Google finalised its purchase of Fitbit in Jan of 2021.
The bands have a special locking design. They slide and click into place. Battery life is listed as 24 hours but I’ll put that to the test. It will work with other Android phones but not with iPhones. This is a big moment for Android smartwatches. If the Pixel Watch is a success – it makes the ecosystem more attractive to Google and that’s good for Android users.
PIXEL WATCH STARTS FROM $549
META GIVES USERS NEW TOOLS FOR FEED CONTROL
This week Meta announced new ways to customise what we see on our Facebook Feed. Now, you can select Show more or Show less on posts from the people and communities you’re connected to and posts that Facebook recommends to you. Selecting Show more will temporarily increase the ranking score for that post and posts like it. If you select Show less, you’ll temporarily decrease its ranking score.
It’s believed the filter will last for 60 days.
I also reveal how I UNFOLLOWED everyone on Facebook. I’m still friends with everyone so they can tag me and see my posts but I don’t see anything like politics or links to stories I’m not interested in. This is my own experiment and so far it’s keeping my feed clean but you do miss out on the group conversation. So maybe I’ll start following everyone again soon.