Google debuts AI-powered phones in latest attempt to best the iPhone

The newly announced Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold is tested during a Google event, in Mountain View, Calif., on Aug 13, 2024. Google unveiled the next generation of Pixel phones, headphones and watches to stand out in a hardware market that has mostly ignored it. — The New York Times

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California: When Google released its first Android smartphone in 2008, the company’s founders slid onstage in roller skates. One of them, Larry Page, said the device was as advanced as a computer had been a few years before.

On Aug 13, executives left the skates behind but kept to the tone of that pitch: Google crammed all the cutting-edge technology it could into the latest Pixel phones. The devices are chock-full of artificial intelligence, to let users engage with a conversational assistant, edit people into photos and search for information found in their screenshots, the company said in blog posts.