Google’s Pixel 10 phones have set the stage for what we need from the iPhone 17.
The release of the Google Pixel 10 phones with deeply integrated AI features that offer impressive new capabilities has revealed the biggest gaps the iPhone 17 needs to fill.
Many of the smartest AI services in the world are already on the iPhone as apps, and so there’s the possibility that Apple could partner with them for deeper integrations.
The new AI camera features in the Pixel 10 could be the biggest differentiator between it and the iPhone 17.
While the iPhone has virtually all of the smartest AI apps available from the latest AI trailblazers, it lacks the kind of deep integration of AI features that are only available at the intersection of the operating system and the latest hardware. That’s what we’ve seen with the rollout of Google’s Pixel 10 lineup.
Here are seven features that would make a huge impact if they were seamlessly embedded at the system level in the iPhone 17.1. ChatGPT’s Voice Mode
But Voice Mode — which is being renamed ChatGPT Voice and is soon rolling out to free users — is still limited in the commands it can carry out on your iPhone. An Apple version of this feature or a partnership with OpenAI could allow much deeper integration across calendar, email, text messages, notes, settings, and other operating system tasks (with Apple privacy protections in place). Similarly, Google already has Gemini Live and Microsoft offers Copilot Voice, so Apple needs to move more deliberately to help the iPhone keep up.2. Pixel 10’s Pro Res Zoom
I’ve written about the fact that I love zoom photography and how it’s the one area where phone cameras still fall down and I have to regularly turn to my Sony mirrorless camera and 70-200mm zoom lens. However, Google has recently taken a big step to fill the gap in zoom photography in the Pixel 10 Pro. With its new Super Res Zoom feature, the Pixel 10 Pro will fill in missing data and automatically process a digital zoom image up to 100x to make it more usable.
This brings up a number of questions about what makes a photo, and I still need to try it out on the Pixel 10 Pro to report back on how well it works, but this feels like a worthy use of computational photography. And the only smartphone maker that’s going to compete with Google on computational photography is Apple.
