Google now has its own podcast, talking about hardware
Amidst the buddy Pixel launch event on October 6 that brought usgreat new flagship phonesand thePixel Watch, Google also introduced something else and slightly unexpected, too. The company has entered the podcast creation business with its own podcasts. The “Made by Google” podcast debuted with its first episode on October 6, talking about the camera advancements Google pioneered over the years, culminating into thePixel 7 and 7 Pro.
As spotted by9to5Google, the podcast is hosted by Rasheed Finch, who introduces himself as a “Googler here in Amsterdam.” He promises that the show will bring you behind the scenes details on new Google products and in-depth conversations with the product managers behind them. The first episode doesn’t disappoint in that regard, with Finch talking to Isaac Reyonolds, the product manager for the Google Pixel camera.
Finch goes over the background Reynolds comes from and the history of the Google camera technology so far, including how it led the industry for a long time now when it comes to still photography. It’s interesting that Reynolds doesn’t consider himself a pro photographer, but rather someone who wants to make it as easy as possible for everyone to take the best shots, without the camera getting in the way. Finch explains that all Googlers have an internal mission statement, and Reynold’s is “Create more confident photographers and more beautiful memory.” Reynolds explains,
When I wrote that, I actually got made fun of by one of my friends at Google. But more beautiful memories and more confident photographers, there are two different ways to interpret that. It either modifies confident, or it modifies photographers.
I mean it all four different ways. But yes, we have to think about the creative side as product managers here. Cameras are tools. They achieve something for you. The camera is not the thing that you want. It’s the pictures and the videos. Those are the things that you want. My goal is to get people in and out of camera as fast as I can. Get them on their journey to share, to post, to edit, to create, to curate. It’s really not about camera for me, it’s about the sharing and the art and the creation.
It’s clear that the Pixel camera does its best to achieve just that already. When using Pixel phones for photography, you’re able to usually be sure that whatever you do will turn out great or at least good enough most of the time. That stands in contrast that to other phones that might be more specialized in certain areas than the Google camera, but which might not provide quite the same level of consistency.
For Reynolds, this isn’t his proudest achievement, though. He is much more happy to have spearheaded Real Tone, Google’s algorithmic magic that ensures that all skin tones are represented as true as possible. He goes on to explain how he and his team improved Real Tone even further for the Pixel 7:
I never really had an answer for what I’m the most proud of until we launched Real Tone. What’s really new in Pixel 7 is we’re doubling down on the process. Where we started from with Pixel 7 was talking to some of the same people we’ve talked to for Pixel 6. Some folks who were really amazing at showing us how to build a better camera. And the main things we focused on were bringing a lot of the Real Tone improvements across the camera—so not just baked into photo mode, but we wanted more of those things to land in video mode, for example.
So, we continued to work on the accuracy of color and skin tone and skin color and skin richness—the richness of that skin tone. And in particular, we tried to achieve more of, as we call it internally, temporal consistency. You can imagine that when you take two photos or three photos in a row, those photos are probably going to look similar, but there might be little tiny shifts in the color or the detail or the focus or something like that. That’s sort of acceptable for pictures because you’re going to post them one at a time. It’s less acceptable for videos. Because in video, you start to see the wavering.
You don’t want to watch the shifts happen in real time. So, focusing on temporal consistency and making sure that color is consistent over time instead of wavering back and forth between two different colors is especially important in video. We made some improvements in video that help with the temporal consistency in particular. And then we also just focused on optimizing the skin tone and skin color across the board.
The episode is well worth a listen. The two Googlers dive deep into everything that’s new in the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro camera department, and explore the journey of how the team got there.
Each episode of the Made by Google podcast will be a good half hour long, trying to strike the balance between too long and too detailed and too shallow. You can tune into the show anywhere where you can also find our ownAndroid Police podcast, like Google Podcasts or any othergreat podcasting app out there.
Note: The quotes above were lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
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Google did not reinvent the wheel with the Pixel 7, but there was no need to. With improved cameras, the next-gen Tensor G2 chipset, and Google’s wonderfully feature-filled software, the Pixel 7 earns its price tag again this year.
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