Daniel Howley · Technology Editor
4 min read
Google (GOOG, GOOGL) rolled out four new smartphones and its latest smartwatch as part of its latest Made by Google event in New York on Wednesday.
Part of Google’s Pixel lineup, the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold — that’s a lot of phones — get performance upgrades, camera improvements, and more. And while the devices themselves are certainly interesting, Google is also using its latest smartphones to flaunt its AI leadership role.
Yes, Google has been outfitting its Pixel phones with generative AI since its Pixel 7, but with Apple (AAPL) flailing as it tries to gain traction in the AI race and its next-generation Siri not expected until 2026, the search giant is pushing its Gemini AI as the marquee feature for the latest iteration of its smartphone line.
Google isn’t just hyping Gemini in its smartphones, though. The company is also bringing the technology to its Pixel Watch.
Of course, Google’s latest Pixel lineup is far from an existential threat to Apple’s iPhone. According to research firm Canalys, Apple’s iPhone made up 49% of US smartphone shipments in Q2. Samsung accounted for 31%, while Motorola had 12%. Google devices made up just 3% of shipments.
But Google’s AI capabilities should eventually find their way into Samsung’s smartphones, since Samsung runs on Google’s Android platform and the two collaborate on Samsung’s own smartphone AI.
Google’s most impressive, and seemingly useful, offering as part of the new phone lineup is what the company calls Magic Cue. The feature surfaces information from different Google apps as users need them.
Say your friend texts you to ask when your dinner reservations are. Magic Cue will pull the information from your Gmail and serve it up in a suggested reply. If you call your airline to ask about your upcoming flight, Magic Cue will display your travel information on screen so that you don’t have to search through different apps to locate it.
The Weather app can tell you personalized weather updates based on what Magic Cue sees in your Calendar, as well. If you save an upcoming trip to Yellowstone in your Calendar app and check the Weather app, it will tell you if it will rain during your trip and provide tips like how to keep your electronics dry and more.
Google says Magic Cue won’t send information to the cloud and that data is saved in a secure enclave on your Pixel phone. Apps also don’t see the data Magic Cue pulls in unless you allow them to.
Google has also added AI-powered real-time voice translation for phone calls, something that’s also coming to Apple’s iOS 26 this fall.
Other AI options include Camera Coach, which helps you figure out how to compose a photo, and the ability to edit photos using natural language similar to how you communicate with the Gemini app.
Magic Cue is among the first signs that smartphone makers are thinking about AI as a more useful tool than just something that can automatically change your email writing style to Shakespearean or generate goofy AI images.
Samsung’s own Galaxy AI has some interesting agentic AI features that can interact with multiple apps and services. For instance, you can ask the assistant when the first football game of the season starts and have it save the game’s date and time to your calendar, performing a web search and scheduling an event at your direction.
Apple’s Siri is supposed to provide similar functionality, but we haven’t seen it outside of a brief demo during the company’s WWDC event in 2024.
That’s not to say that Magic Cue will push Google’s Pixel phones to the top of the smartphone sales charts. Nor would a new Siri kick off a massive sales cycle. It’s unlikely that an individual software is going to get consumers to upgrade their phones en masse.
It’s more likely that Magic Cue, Galaxy AI, and Siri will continue to get more features over the next few years until we get to a point where AI features become table stakes for customers. At that point, users will look at phones without AI tools like we currently look at Blackberrys.
Google and Samsung are steadily heading in that direction. And while Apple’s iOS 26 will have new AI options, without Siri it won’t have the kind of useful capability that its competitors do and that will help it turn the AI corner.
But I’m not expecting a single software release, or even a few releases, to get people to ditch Apple for Google, or vice versa, yet.
Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on X/Twitter at @DanielHowley.
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