New York
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How many apps does it take to plan a piece assembly or a dinner with associates? It doubtless entails bouncing between your textual content messaging app, an e mail app, a navigation app like Google Maps and maybe a reservation app like Resy or Opentable.
Google wants to reduce down on that back-and-forth with a software coming to its newly introduced Pixel 10 phones, introduced on Wednesday and launching on August 28. The characteristic, known as Magic Cue, makes use of synthetic intelligence to analyze what you’re doing in your cellphone and recommend the subsequent motion.
The idea isn’t solely new, and the tech isn’t superior sufficient to deal with refined duties. But it might set the stage for extra dramatic alterations to how smartphones function within the age of AI, a aim that Apple and different cellphone makers are additionally chasing. It might additionally give Google one other manner to differentiate its Pixel phones from the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy devices, each of which dominate the marketplace for smartphones each within the United States and all over the world.
“A lot of what (smartphones) are doing is actually helping to store information for us, but then it’s up to us to remember where we can find a specific document, or an email or an appointment that we’re looking for,” Tyler Kugler, a gaggle product supervisor main the Pixel AI group at Google, stated in a press briefing forward of Wednesday’s occasion. “And that whole process can end up being deceptively tedious.”
Magic Cue makes use of Google’s Gemini Nano AI mannequin and the corporate’s Tensor G5, the chip inside Google’s new phones, to course of what an individual is doing on their machine in actual time. It’ll then provide ideas, similar to a button to name a restaurant inside a textual content message thread asking about dinner reservations. Computing occurs regionally on the machine reasonably than being despatched to the cloud, Google says, which is mostly thought of to be extra non-public, as a result of knowledge doesn’t want to go away an individual’s machine.
In one demo seen by NCS, a button labeled “Call United” seems proper under a textual content message asking the recipient to name the airline to change their flight. The aim is to pace up the method by eradicating the necessity to lookup the suitable cellphone quantity and swap to the cellphone app. Google may also show flight particulars within the cellphone app through the name.
In one other demo, Google surfaced the tackle for a restaurant when receiving a textual content message asking the place the reservation was. The firm stated Magic Cue will work for particular use circumstances like settling a restaurant tab, including occasions to one’s calendar and previewing climate forecasts for an upcoming journey, with extra capabilities rolling out over time.
In addition to these examples, the tech shall be integrated into Google’s Daily Hub, which is a bit of the cellphone’s interface that reveals issues like upcoming calendar occasions and steered playlists. In the Daily Hub, Magic Cue will present tidbits like reservations or reminders to return a web based order.
Google hopes the characteristic will make its smartphones simpler to navigate by stopping customers from juggling a number of apps to accomplish a single job. But there’s additionally proof to recommend that individuals are altering their conduct on their very own: US smartphone homeowners are utilizing fewer apps, in accordance to a 2022 eMarketer report. Meanwhile, general time spent on smartphones was up, indicating individuals are dedicating their display screen time to a comparatively small pool of apps.
Still, tech giants imagine there’s a necessity to make it simpler to get issues achieved with out having to swap apps, and Google’s new characteristic marks the most recent instance.
Apple’s Siri Suggestions could make suggestions primarily based in your routines, similar to suggesting who to add to a calendar invite or e mail primarily based on earlier exercise. Based on the corporate’s demo, Google’s Magic Cue appears to go a step past Apple’s characteristic by making it simpler to take a particular motion, like calling an airline or restaurant, by analyzing the content material in your cellphone. Apple is anticipated to launch a brand new model of Siri that may deal with duties inside apps for customers subsequent 12 months after delaying a serious replace to its standard digital assistant.
Samsung is taking an analogous method, too. In January, it highlighted the flexibility to use Google’s Gemini assistant to take actions throughout apps as being one of many Galaxy S25’s hallmark options.
A shift to utilizing AI to deal with duties can be comparable to how the web labored earlier than cell units, when customers used one central utility, like an online browser, to accomplish duties versus utilizing separate apps, stated Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst for analysis agency Creative Strategies.
“And so instead of going to one place, we went to many places. And now it feels like we’re going back to that one place, but, you know, a much more capable place, which would be your preferred, AI agent,” she stated.
But Google will doubtless want greater than new AI options like these to enhance its {hardware} presence within the smartphone trade. Market analysis companies that monitor world smartphone shipments, similar to The International Data Corporation (IDC), Counterpoint Research and Canalys, don’t even escape Google of their metrics as a result of it has such a small share. Nabila Popal, a senior director with the IDC’s knowledge and analytics group, informed NCS through e mail that Google’s Pixel phones account for just one% of the worldwide smartphone market as of the second quarter of 2025.
Smartphone makers have been pushing to incorporate extra AI into their units over the previous two years. But buyers sometimes improve their phones out of necessity reasonably than a need for brand spanking new options, in accordance to Josh Lowitz, an analyst with Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, which tracks shopper habits within the United States.
The agency’s knowledge signifies 68% of American buyers improve their cellphone as a result of it wanted changing – both as a result of the battery life is simply too quick or the display screen was cracked, for instance.
Google’s new Pixel phones ought to provide enhancements in a few of these core areas too, the corporate claims, by providing longer battery life, digicam upgrades similar to an AI-powered characteristic to help with framing photographs and compatibility with equipment like wi-fi chargers that may snap to the again of the machine comparable to Apple’s MagSafe charging system.
The Pixel 10’s AI options won’t persuade buyers to run out and get a brand new cellphone. But Popal sees it as being a step in the direction of broader adjustments to the way in which customers use cell units.
“I do too see a future without apps, where the AI is the driving operating system and the user does not need to switch between apps to perform tasks,” she stated over e mail. “I still see the smartphone as the computing device for consumers to use AI, but how we use it will change.”