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With Android 12, the world’s most-used mobile operating system continues its steady march of carving out its unique selling points and finding differentiators from Apple’s iOS. Available for Pixel 3 and beyond, the new OS beefs up some of the strengths in the operating system, while adding some new features along the way.

When everyone has a phone that looks essentially like every other smartphone ever made, personalization becomes more important. That’s why Google brings the Material You feature to the OS — when you change your wallpaper, the entire Android 12 experience changes to match its colors. The OS includes color extraction algorithms which helps everything looks integrated and slick. Everything is personalizable, including the lock screen, notifications, settings, widgets and even apps. Material You comes to Pixel first, and will be rolled out to devices from other device makers further down the line.

Security and privacy are other themes across the OS. For example, Android 12 enables you to keep your precise location private from apps that, strictly, only need an approximate location to work their magic. You also can see when an app is using your mic or camera, with a new status-bar indicator. And if you want to turn off your camera and mic across the entire OS, you can turn them off in the Quick Settings with a pair of new toggles. The OS also adds additional features to lock down apps you’ve forgotten about, by automatically revoking permissions from apps after several months of lack of use.

The OS also finally divorces the connection between location and Bluetooth. As Google puts it: “While your wireless headphones need to connect to your phone, they probably don’t need to know where you are.” Android 12 makes that possible at long last.

Google introduced a ton of new Android features for Google Lens in previous releases of the OS — you can do optical character recognition on any screen shot, for example. Android 12 adds additional extensions to that functionality, such as “scrolling screen shots.” Just because you reach the end of your screen doesn’t mean you need to reach the end of your screenshot. New scrolling screenshots will allow you to capture all the content on the page in one image. Clever!

The new features extend beyond functionality; Android 12 also brings power-saving and better accessibility features. The company is also rolling out hot-updates, so you can keep using an app even while an update for the very same app is downloading and installing in the background. God forbid you’d have to put down Pokémon GO for a couple of minutes.

Google’s Android 12 operating system is rolling out to supported phones starting today.

Alongside today’s release of the new Pixel 6 smartphones, Google has again upgraded one of the device’s most basic — but often overlooked — functions: the ability to make phone calls. In previous years, Google Assistant learned to screen your calls and make your reservations by phone via a technology called Duplex. Last year, it learned how to wait on hold for you, too. Today, Google is expanding some of these existing features and adding new ones — including a tool that shows you the best time to call a business and a new Duplex-powered feature for navigating businesses’ phone trees.

With the Phone app on Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, a new feature called “Wait Times” will display the projected time it will take to get through to a person when dialing a toll-free number. You’ll be able to see this information before you place the call not only for the present time, but also for the rest of the week. This information may allow you to make a better decision about when to place the call.

Of course, in order to show this information, Google is leveraging its ability to collect data from its users. Similar to how Google Maps will show you when a business is the most crowded using anonymized data from Maps users, “Wait Times” are inferred from call length data when calls are placed through its phone app. This data is not linked to individual users, Google says.

Another new addition is the “Direct My Call” feature, which will help you get through complicated phone trees when you dial a business. Instead of listening and trying to remember the many options presented (e.g., “Press 1 for hours and locations”), Google Assistant will translate the automated messages for you. This allows you to read back through the options to see which number you’ll want to tap to get the information you need — or to reach a live agent, as is often the case.

In the past, users frustrated with difficult customer service calls may have turned to third-party apps and websites like GetHuman, to figure out how to reach a real person more quickly. But these websites aren’t always up to date. “Direct My Call” offers an alternative. You could multitask or even set your phone down while the various options are read aloud — something that’s tedious to have to listen to in real time. When you return to the phone, you’ll be able to read the options available and choose the one you need. (The feature could also help those who are hard of hearing, but who don’t yet require a TTY.)

Like the the earlier reservation-setting feature, “Direct My Call” is also powered by Google Duplex technology.

Duplex is sometimes confused with the reservation scheduling feature itself, which was one of the first big use cases for the technology when it debuted. But Duplex itself doesn’t just enable natural-sounding conversations for making your appointments. It can be used for understanding, too. In the case of “Direct My Call,” for example, Duplex uses advanced speech recognition and language understanding models to help determine when the business wants you to do something — like press a number, say a word (like “representative”) or enter your account number, among other things.

In addition to “Direct My Call” and “Wait Times,” which are launching with the Pixel devices, for the time being, Google is also expanding access to “Hold for Me.”

Since launching last year in the U.S., the feature has saved users over 1.5 million minutes per month. In the coming months, it will begin to roll out to Pixel users in Australia, Canada and Japan, as well, says Google.

Meanwhile, Google’s existing call screening functions are also getting an upgrade.

Before, Google’s own caller ID coverage would help users to identify spam and other calls from unknown numbers. Now, it will allow users to contribute data about their incoming business calls, too. That means you’ll be able to share what type of business had called you (e.g., bill collectors, finance, utilities, etc.) so that others who receive the same call in the future will know what to expect. This data is shared without any personal identifiers, notes Google. The company believes this will help double the number of businesses with caller ID information going forward.

In addition, call screening will expand to more markets. In the U.S., Canada and Japan, it’s now screening 37 million calls per month. Starting today, it will roll out to Pixel users in the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, Ireland, Italy and Spain, too.

Typically, Google releases new features to its latest Pixel phones first, before rolling them out over time to more Pixel devices or Android more broadly. That means “Wait Times” and “Direct My Call” will likely be exclusive to Pixel 6 phones for some time, initially.

May of 2020 marked the end of an era for the Pixel. Google’s team lost a few key players, as it looked forward toward a transformative future. Understandably so. The Pixel has never been bad a phone (though it’s had some struggles through the years), so much as an unremarkable one. But in an era when it’s hard to buy a bad flagship smartphone, pretty good is not good enough.

Google’s attempts to differentiate themselves from the Apples and Samsungs of the world have largely come up short. The company has had decent success with its budget range A-Series, but dreams of going head-to-head with premium manufacturers have thus far fallen short. Last year’s Pixel 5 wasn’t the departure fans had hoped for, because revamping a product line takes time.

This morning, at the company’s virtual hardware event, however, Google is finally showing us what it means to pick up and start over again. In many ways, the Pixel 6 marks the most radical departure in the history of Google’s flagship devices — and its most serious attempt to take the fight to Samsung and Apple.

The company gave us our first glimpse of the device back in August. It was a surprisingly complete look at a device it would take another three and a half months to announce. Hardware head Rick Osterloh primarily focused on chips, design and the fact that Google was becoming the latest company to buck its reliance on Qualcomm by building its own in-house chip, Tensor.

“AI is the future of our innovation work, but the problem is we’ve run into computing limitations that prevented us from fully pursuing our mission,” the executive wrote. “So we set about building a technology platform built for mobile that enabled us to bring our most innovative AI and machine learning (ML) to our Pixel users. We set out to make our own System on a Chip (SoC) to power Pixel 6. And now, years later, it’s almost here.”

And now it is. The Tensor had landed, alongside the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro it powers. I have the latter in my possession (review soon), and it’s immediately clear that this is a radically new direction for the Pixel line. Google’s clearly gone in a premium direction with the new device, which shares more common DNA with the likes of Samsung’s devices than any of the Pixels we’ve seen to date.

The Pixel 6 sports a 6.4-inch FHD+ OLED at 411 ppi – that bit, at least, is keeping with mid-range specs. The Pro bumps it up to a 6.7-inch QHD+ at 512 ppi. Those displays have refresh rates of 90 and 120 Hz, respectively, protected by a Gorilla Glass Victus cover, which curves on the edges.

The rear, meanwhile, is covered in Gorilla Glass 6, with a large and distinctive camera bar that runs along the top third. It’s a sizable enough bump that the phone sits at an angle on its back, unless the phone is in a case [seen above], which keeps things more (but not perfectly ) flush. There’s a slight difference in the hues above and below the camera bar, in an effort to inject a bit more color into the device, now that the Pixel no longer sports the color pop power button. The focus on camera hardware is, in and of itself, a departure for the company. Google has long been so bullish on computational photography that it has implied that hardware is almost a moot point. Perhaps one day in the future, someone will be able to make a compelling version of this argument, where AI and ML are doing most or all of the heavy lifting here. For now, however, camera hardware is still important.

Look no further than the setup on the new Pixels. The 6 supports two lenses: a 50-megapixel wide-angle camera and 12-megapixel on the 6, plus a 48 megapixel telephoto on the 6 Pro. That last one does 4x optical or up to 20x Super Res, though even with computational photography, things are going to degrade pretty quickly. The front-facing camera, meanwhile, is eight megapixels on the 6 and 11 megapixels on the 6 Pro, with 84- and 94-degree fields of view, respectively.

There’s more info on the various camera features in some of our breakout posts, but here’s a list of what you’ll be able to do on both systems:

• Magic Eraser
• Motion Mode
• Real Tone
• Face Unblur
• Panorama
• Manual white balancing Locked Folder
• Night Sight
• Top Shot
• Portrait Mode
• Portrait Light
• Super Res Zoom Motion autofocus Frequent Faces
• Dual exposure controls Live HDR+
• Cinematic Pan

The most interesting new additions are Real Tone, Motion Mode, Magic Eraser and Face Unblur. The latter is pretty much what it sounds like, sharpening a subject’s face after shooting. Motion Mode is similar to Portrait Mode, creating a motion blur around a moving subject. Magic Eraser uses a Photoshop-like tool to remove unwanted subjects from the background of the photo, with AI filling in the gaps. Real Tone, meanwhile, is an effort to take better photos of subjects, regardless of skin color — something that’s been woefully lacking on smartphones to this point.

The system sports a quick in-display fingerprint reader, and all of the sorts of first-party software you’d expect on a Pixel device. That includes Live Translate, Recorder and Android’s new Material You, which creates aesthetic consistency across the wallpaper and apps. The company described it thusly at the last I/O,

Material You explores a more humanistic approach to design. One that celebrates the tension between design sensibility and personal preference, and does not shy away from emotion. Without compromising the functional foundations of our apps, Material You seeks to create designs that are personal for every style, accessible for every need, alive and adaptive for every screen.

Also new is Calling Assistance, a new feature, which, much like Duplex, is designed to ease the interaction between human and robot operators. Here, it offers projected call wait times for toll free numbers, based on day and time. Direct My Call, meanwhile, uses Google’s transcription feature to display text versions of audio menus that direct to the dial pad. Hold For Me, meanwhile, will wait on the call and notify you when a human picks up.

There’s also improved Assistant Voice typing. Saying, “Hey Google, Type” will use Assistant to dictate text. “Stop” turns the feature off, and “Send” fires off a message. You can also spell out difficult words, letter by letter and dictate emojis.

The company has addressed some of the battery issues that plagued earlier models. The 6 and 6 Pro feature 4,614 and 5,003mAh batteries, respectively — that’s a nice jump from the Pixel 5’s 4,080mAh (which, in turn, was a nice jump from the Pixel 4). Google says that should translate to around 24 hours of life, or nearly double that if you go into Extreme Battery Saver mode. On-board fast charging via the 30W USB-C plug (sold separately) should give you half a charge in half-an-hour. Both systems also support wireless charging via Qi.

The Pixel 6 is available with 8GB of RAM and 128 or 256GB of storage, and the Pro comes with 12GB of RAM and 128, 256 or 512GB of storage. The company has still managed to keep the pricing low, with a $599 starting price for the Pixel 6 and $899 for the Pixel 6 Pro. They’re up for pre-order now and set to launch October 28.

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