Google is slowly ruining one of the best reasons to buy a Pixel

Google got a big benefit from the switch from Snapdragon processors inside Pixel phones to Google’s in-house Tensor chips. Vertical integration gave Google greater control over the entire hardware and software experience, as Apple has always maintained.

We started to see the benefits of this deep integration when Google moved quickly to bring features introduced in the new Pixel to older models. This was a win-win situation, especially for older Pixel generations, where users would gain access to new features without being forced to upgrade. This was the biggest advantage of having a Pixel – that it would remain suitable for the long term future.

However, we’ve recently seen a change with the arrival of the Pixel 9 and 10 series phones, which overturns the long-held notion of longevity.

Pixel Feature Drops were a solid addition to the overall Pixel experience, as they brought all the new goodies to even older Pixels every few months. This was true until the Pixel 8 series arrived. Many of the features that were exclusive to the Pixel 8 lineup were soon ported to the previous generation Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 phones – sometimes within a matter of weeks.

Circle to Search and Magic Editor are the greatest examples of those golden days. Google quickly brought these features to older phones without requiring any hardware upgrades. Heck, Magic Eraser was introduced with the Pixel 6 series, the first Tensor-powered Pixel phone, and later made its way to Snapdragon-powered phones like the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4.

Those golden days meant that sticking with your Pixel phone for more than a few years didn’t mean you were stuck with outdated features. Google constantly updates these tools, keeping them relevant and keeping users happy.

But there has been a very decisive change since the release of the Pixel 9. Both the Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 come with a number of useful features that provide sheer convenience using AI, whether it’s through Magic Q or the Pixel Screenshot app. Despite the Pixel 10 being out for half a year and the Pixel 9 being out even longer, not a single one of these new features has reached older Pixels yet.

Magic Queue is probably the biggest feature I would love to see on older devices. Even new camera features like Add Me and Auto Frame haven’t slowed it down. Then, there are also plenty of AI-powered tools, like Call Notes (a limited version with text-only output is available on some older phones) and Pixel Studio, which Google is strictly monitoring.

But all these features have one thing in common.

Identity is a clear priority for Google at this time. Differentiating your products from other brands is important, but making new models more attractive than older models is even more important to keep the business going. If you look at the approach from a business perspective, it makes sense to reserve features for the new phone for a longer period of time. However, that’s only one side of the story – there are also real technical reasons why Google might not be able to port them easily.

If you look closely, the features that made it into the old Pixel were mostly software layers on top of existing capabilities and could run from the cloud. That is why they drip downwards more rapidly. But with Google’s increasing insistence on running everything offline using your phone’s hardware, these AI features are becoming increasingly hardware dependent. They need a more powerful Neural Engine on the SoC, and they need 16GB of RAM to work efficiently.

Take Magic Q for example. It doesn’t appear based on any single input – it requires context and historical data about you to process information in real time, such as holding your boarding pass in front of you when you’re on a call with an airline. If your Pixel was dependent on the cloud for this, the latency and delayed response would render the feature useless.

The same applies for call notes, which have to work in real time during a call – whether summarizing it or detecting that you’re dealing with a scam and alerting you in time. These time-sensitive features require an on-device model, and handing them over to the cloud would defeat the purpose.

Offline processing also helps Google make the case for more privacy-conscious smartphones, where your data isn’t constantly sent to the cloud in the name of AI. Since everything stays on the device, you’re in better control, and this works in Google’s favor too.

It’s fair to say that although Google is prioritizing hardware, it could still bring some of these features to older phones if it really wanted to. For example, there’s no reason for the Try It On feature to remain exclusive to Pixel 10 models; It can work from the cloud. Or the Pixel Screenshot app could at least be brought to the Pixel 8 series, which already runs the Gemini AI model natively.

That’s exactly what I’m pinning my hopes on. We’ve already seen Google bring the Gemini Nano to the Pixel 8, after initially suggesting only the Pro sibling could handle it. This shows that Google can relax these limitations whenever it wants — and I hope its engineers are working in the background to make these features work on older Pixel models.

If Google allows users to choose cloud processing (with a clear understanding of latency and privacy trade-offs), it could bring at least some of these features. As long as the core experience is not compromised, features like image creation in Pixel Studio do not need to run on the device at all times.

A hybrid approach can work here: on device where necessary and on the cloud where acceptable. Even if the experience isn’t ideal, users will still have access to features that would otherwise be locked. And that alone will go a long way in bringing back the old charm of owning a Pixel phone.