Google teases the future of hardware: Pixel 7, Pixel Tablet and AR Goggle Glass

Google I/O today featured a million different hardware announcements, some of which were just two-minute product teasers, presumably to prevent product leaks. First up is the Pixel 7, Google’s flagship smartphone released later this year.

Google called the work done with the Pixel 6 and Google Tensor SoC “a hardware foundation we’ll be building on for years to come,”and the Pixel 7 is the next step on that roadmap. It will have a similar design and Google’s next generation SoC. The camera panel is now brushed aluminum instead of glass, which should solve some of the glare issues on the chunky glass panel on the current camera panel. The Pixel 7 Pro has three rear cameras, while the Pixel 6 has two rear cameras. Google promises that the professional will “set a whole new standard”for camera performance.

That’s all. That’s how fast those teasers were. Next!

Google Pixel Tablet

Google is taking Android tablets seriously again. In order to meet the tablet-centric Android 12L, Google has committed to launch more than 20 Android tablet apps for various Google services. He also announced the Pixel tablet! It will be the first Google Android tablet in seven years when it comes out in “2023”.

We got a glimpse of the device by showing the widescreen design and fairly thin bezels. There are four cryptic moving pin connectors on the back, likely for the intended smart display functionality. The only other information you can glean from the 30 second presentation was that the sides looked thick. Google showed the USB-C port at the bottom, and there was a lot of space around it – usually devices are not much thicker than the opening of the USB-C port.

That’s all Google has to say about the Pixel Tablet. It’s been six long years since Google’s last Android tablet, the Pixel C, arrived in 2015. Even this device started out as a Chrome OS product, and as a last resort, Android was installed on it. The last Android tablet designed for Android was the Nexus 9 from 2014. None of the Android tablets were well received, so Google pulled out of the tablet market for three years. In 2018, the company released the Chrome OS-based Pixel Slate and then left the market for another three years, when that device didn’t do well either. Third time charm?

Augmented reality glasses prototype

Next: Augmented Reality Glasses?! Yes, Google talked about augmented reality glasses and showed a video. We must stress that this is not really a “product announcement”and CEO Sundar Pichai only presented it as “a new prototype we’ve been working on”. It also doesn’t look like it’s a multi-function device that replaces a smartphone. Google showed off glasses that seemed to only do translations and didn’t seem to have “apps”with other features. Pichai’s opening remarks focused on the following: “Let’s see what happens if we take our advances in translation and transcription and put it in front of you in one of the first prototypes we’ve tested.”

The augmented reality device looked like a standard pair of thick-rimmed glasses. In the demo, the device only listened to the spoken language and displayed the translated text on the screen. The limited functionality probably helps keep it all in a normal looking package.

Google hasn’t gone out of its way to prove that augmented reality glasses work in real life. We’ve just received a finished video of regular glasses with overlay text describing the potential user interface. Let’s hope this isn’t the same as the original Google Glass concept video, which Google didn’t even come close to making. Again, this was not a product announcement, just a prototype demo.