Apple can learn a thing or two from its great adversary.
Apple’s iPhone 16 and Google’s Pixel 9 were released just a few weeks apart earlier this year. If you compare main features, you might suspect that the companies were working from the same blueprint: both chose to focus heavily on building in support for their in-house AI platforms. Drill down to the fine details, however, and you can see how differently Apple and Google approached their task.
Apple Intelligence, for example, is primarily there to make everyday work easier: summarizing letters, running contextual queries. When you create something new, Apple ensures it’s clear from the outset that the work is not created by human hands, but by an algorithm. It’s not a coincidence that Image Playground mainly adopts a cartoon aesthetic. Google, on the other hand, offers AI features on the Pixel 9 that can intervene deeply in the editing of photos and create lifelike images.
This is a difference in philosophy, and it’s hard to point to one or the other approach as being objectively better. But there are specific areas where we think Google has made wiser decisions, and the iPhone could benefit by following the Pixel 9’s example.1. Get a serious power-saving mode
The Pixel 9 claims a battery life of 24+ hours. This seems impressive, but the devil is in the fine print: this figure is based on the use of Extreme Battery Saver mode, which turns off many features, pauses most apps, and slows processing to get some extra time between charges.
