It's Pixel Drop time again, and the December 2024 edition of Google's regular phone and tablet upgrade series brings with it improvements to Gemini AI, photo sharing, instant messaging, device security, accessibility, and more.
There's a lot to cover, and given the way AI is dominating tech headlines right now, it makes sense to start with Google Gemini. The AI-powered assistant now has the ability to remember things about you—favorite movies, your taste in food, your love of sports—to provide more personalized answers. These memories can be viewed and deleted at any time, or disabled completely.
Gemini is getting more extensions too, as it aims to catch up to and go beyond the functionality in Google Assistant. New extensions will let you use Gemini to control Spotify, manage your smart home devices through Google Home, and ask about locations on Google Maps.
If you've got a Pixel 9 phone with the Gemini Nano model on board, you now have access to smarter, context-sensitive auto-replies for calls you've screened and decided not to answer, so you can essentially hold a conversation with someone without taking the call. All Pixels from the Pixel 4 onwards will show transcripts of these conversations on screen.
Photo sharing and picking has been streamlined for Instagram and Snapchat, and if you've got a foldable Google Phone—the Pixel Fold or the Pixel 9 Pro Fold—then you can get dual-screen previews of your portrait photos on the main screen. The Made You Look feature, for keeping young kids looking at the camera, has now been rolled out to the Pixel Fold, while more animations for it are heading to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
A new feature called Identity Check is being rolled out in beta form, which will insist on face or fingerprint authentication when you're changing sensitive settings on your handset—even if the phone is already unlocked. It gives you extra protection against someone accessing your phone and then changing your passwords or PIN codes.
Google is also rolling out what it's calling Expressive Captions, which use AI to augment the existing live captioning function on Android, where auto-generated captions can be put on screen for any audio. You'll get a better sense of the emotion in the audio through the use of signifiers in the text like capital letters and descriptions of sounds like gasps.
Another new feature is called Simple View, available on the Pixel 6 and newer phones, which increases the font size and the touchscreen sensitivity—definitely something to switch on if you struggle to see text on screen or hit buttons and menus accurately.
The excellent speech-to-text Recorder app that Google puts on its Pixels is getting an upgrade too, with a new 'clear voice' feature that reduces background noise to focus on the vocals. Another Pixel exclusive, Now Playing, will show album art for the songs it's automatically identifying around you.
There are several minor updates here as well. For Pixel 9 devices, Pixel Studio stickers can be sent right from the Gboard keyboard, while the Pixel Screenshots app gets tighter Circle to Search integration, Google Wallet syncing, auto-categorization, and suggestions on Gboard. On all Pixels, the Emoji Kitchen emoji maker is easier to navigate.
Away from phones, widgets on Pixel tablets can now be accessed from the lock screen with a swipe to the right, and Pixel tablets now have access to the Google VPN too. In the wearables department, the older Pixel Watch 2 is getting the ability to see live feeds from Nest cameras right on your wrist, to match the Pixel Watch 3.
Speaking of the Pixel Watch 3, the Daily Readiness, Cardio Load, and Target Load features Google introduced with that wearable are going to make their way to older Pixel Watches and Fitbit watches and trackers too, so watch out for the functionality arriving.
These updates are rolling out now. You can manually check for an update on your Pixel phone or tablet by heading to Settings, then choosing System and Software updates.
