Google’s new hardware

Google announced its new hardware this week. As I’ve mentioned previously, I hate notches on smartphones, so I’m not that fond of the Pixel 3 XL. Thankfully my Pixel 2 XL is still in good shape, so I’ll just stick with it. I do like the Pixel Stand, though; we played with a number of UX ideas for docked phones when I was at Samsung (the patent application is public now, so I can talk about the work in vague terms), and I’m happy to see that  someone is pushing on the idea (even though I think our work at Samsung actually pushed the boundaries a bit more).

The Pixel Slate looks kind of interesting too. I’ve got a Tab S3 with a keyboard cover that I bought before I left Samsung. It’s got a great display (which isn’t surprising for Samsung), but it’s never run Android particularly well. I’m not sure if Samsung did a lousy job putting their custom changes on top of Android (which is entirely possible), or whether the tablet is just underpowered (although from a purely spec sheet perspective it doesn’t seem like that should be the case). So I’m a bit curiously what it’d be like to have a really performant Android tablet. Plus it’d be nice to get regular OS updates, something that has never been Samsung’s strong suit.

The Google Home Hub is the device that I find most interesting, though. We’ve got one of the first generation Echo speakers and we use it every day, but really just to stream music and occasionally check the weather, which pretty much any smart device can do. But the Home Hub will also tie into my Google Photos account and show pictures from it, and it’d be great to regularly see the pictures we’ve taken over the years. Plus $150 is a really nice price point. So I suspect I may end up getting one once they’re actually on sale.