New York News
For better or worse, adding an IR temperature sensor to the Pixel 8 Pro is Google-y. The company has a history of peculiar hardware additions.
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There was Active Edge on the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 for squeezing to launch Assistant, while the latter phones offered a second front-facing camera with 97-degree FOV for wide-angle shots. (Again, I’m still so surprised this dual-camera setup was not used for facial recognition.)
Google’s willingness for its phones to have something unique peaked with the Pixel 4 and Soli radar for air gestures that could end alarms and control music, as well as for speeding up Face Unlock. Reportedly, sales for that year weren’t very good, and consequently, none of those features made it to the next generation.
The Pixel 6 saw a new design language that presumably was always coming side-by-side with Google Tensor, while the Pixel 7 was a clear refinement year. Basically, since the Pixel 5, Google hasn’t tried anything out of the ordinary with hardware.
The temperature sensor on the Pixel 8 Pro could break that streak. To Google’s credit with the Pixel 2 and 3, those hardware additions did not heavily impact the phone’s design. Both generations looked mostly in line with their contemporaries, but the Pixel 4 did not, with its large upper notch to fit the radar array.
The Pixel 8 Pro does not look drastically different from what came before, a sign that there are no downsides to usability with this sensor’s addition. If that remains true in usage, it becomes purely additive.
It’s too early to predict usage of that particular feature (though I have my thoughts), but my primary concern here is Google’s commitment. Since the Pixel 4 situation, Google has been focused on the core phone experience.
With the Pixel 8 P