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Google Pixel Watch vs. Apple Watch Series 8 – Digital Trends

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The Apple Watch Series 8 has a new rival: the Google Pixel Watch. Announced as part of October’s Made by Google event, it brings Google’s streamlined design and software chops to the now-familiar smartwatch. It comes in a sleek, circular, stainless-steel casing; runs on Google’s own Wear OS 3.5; offers health-and fitness-tracking software in partnership with Fitbit; and provides a helpful Emergency SOS feature.

At $350, it’s pricing puts it in direct competition with the Apple Watch Series 8, which begins from $399. However, while it has the Google name behind it, just how good is it as a smartwatch, and how does it compare to Apple’s latest wearable? We find out in this comparison test, which looks at the specs, designs, displays, software, and special features of each device.

Specs

Apple Watch Series 8
Google Pixel Watch
Display size 41mm: 1.53 inches

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45mm: 1.78 inches

1.2 inches
Body size 41mm

45mm

41mm
Resolution in pixels 41mm: 352 x 430

45mm: 396 x 484

450 x 450
Touchscreen 41mm: LTPO OLED Retina, Always-on display

45mm: LTPO OLED Retina, Always-on display

AMOLED

Always-on display

Storage 32GB 32GB
Wireless interface Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, NFC, LTE Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, NFC, LTE
Depth 0.41 inches / 10.5mm 0.42 inches / 10.7mm
Blood oxygen sensor
Yes Yes
Accelerometer Yes Yes
Gyroscope Yes Yes
Ambient light sensor Yes Yes
Heart rate sensor Yes Yes
Barometer Yes Yes
GPS Yes Yes
Compass Yes Yes
Water/dust resistant IP6X IP68
Battery life Up to 18 hours (36 hours in Low Power mode) Up to 24 hours
Price From $399 From $350
Availability Apple Google
DT review 4.5 out of 5 stars Hands-on

Design and display

Andrew Martonik / Digital Trends

Google has given the Pixel Watch a characteristically minimal and clean design, with the device housed in an 80%-recycled stainless-steel circle frame with a side button. It comes in three colors — Matte Black, Polished Silver, and Champagne Gold — each of which comes with its own particular strap design.

While you could argue that it doesn’t really take any design risks, its compact size and tidy sculpting help to distinguish it from the established design offered by the Apple Watch Series 8, which doesn’t really depart from the squircle form of the Apple Watch 7. This means you get a choice of two sizes (41mm and 45mm, as opposed to 41mm only for the Pixel Watch), a choice of different materials (aluminum and stainless steel), and a wide variety of bands. Again, nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary, but this design has worked well for Apple up until now, so it’s understandable that it isn’t departing from it just yet.

The Apple Watch Series 8 features an always-on LTPO Retina OLED display, with the 41mm version having a resolution of 352 x 430 pixels, versus the 45mm model, which offers 396 x 484 pixels. By contrast, the Pixel Watch houses a 1.2-inch AMOLED display, with a resolution of 450 x 450 pixels. Both offer around 1,000 nits max brightness, yet some may be put off by the fact that the Pixel Watch’s screen is noticeably smaller than even that of the 41mm Apple Watch 8, which comes with 1.69-inch display. What this means is that the Pixel has tangibly larger bezels than Apple’s device, something which may detract from its attractiveness for some.

Still, the display itself offers a similar pixel-per-inch density to that of the Apple Watch’s display, and given that it boasts a relatively new design overall, this balances out the large bezels.

Winner: Tie

Performance, battery life, and charging

Google Pixel Watch with a recycled loop strap on its charger.
Andrew Martonik / Digital Trends

The Google Pixel Watch is powered by an Exynos 9110 chip, as well as a Cortex M33 co-processor. The 9110 is constructed using a 10nm manufacturing process, which is worse compated to the 7nm process used with Apple’s S8 chip (a smaller number means you can pack more transistors into the same space). As such, it’s likely that the Apple Watch Series 8 will operate a little more smoothly and quicker than the Pixel Watch, with Apple claiming that it’s 20% faster than the Apple Watch 7.

Moving to battery talk, the Apple Watch Series 8 lasts around 18 hours on a single charge. This was confirmed by our review, which found the device ended most days with around 30% to 40% of its charge remaining, even when using it consistently. As for the Pixel, Google promises that its 294 mAh battery will typically last around 24 hours (note: the Apple Watch 8 has a 282mAh battery). While we haven’t tested it enough to confirm this, the smaller screen size of the Pixel should indeed help it last a full day for most users.

In terms of charging, Google claims you can take the Pixel to 50% in 30 minutes and to 100% in 80. With the Apple Watch, our review found that it can go from empty to 80% in 45 minutes, so it has a slight edge here. Combined with a faster processor, this gives it the win.

Winner: Apple Watch Series 8

Fitness and health-tracking features

Google Pixel Watch with a recycled loop strap.
Andrew Martonik / Digital Trends

In keeping with its uncluttered design, the Google Pixel Watch offers the core range of sensors you’d expect from a smartwatch in 2022 without trying to be as comprehensive as the Apple Watch Series 8. Namely, it comes with a blood oxygen sensor, an electrical sensor, and an optical heart rate sensor (in addition to very standard stuff such as a compass, altimeter, and accelerometer). In tandem with a Fitbit Premium subscription, which is offered for free for six months, this lets you track everything from the quality of your sleep to your heart rate.

This is good, but it’s overshadowed somewhat by the sheer wealth of options provided by the Apple Watch Series 8. In contrast to its predecessor, it adds a new skin temperature sensor designed to detect very subtle drops in body temperature, as well as a sensor underneath the display to track temperate changes during your sleep, both of which are aimed at detecting illnesses early and assisting with ovulation monitoring. On top of this, it keeps the ECG, SpO2, heart rate monitor, and other sensors from previous generations, making it very powerful as a fitness and health-tracking device.

Winner: Apple Watch Series 8

Software and updates

An Apple Watch Series 8 showing its always-on display.
Joe Maring/Digital Trends

As noted above, the Pixel Watch uses Wear OS 3.5 out of the box. This features such additions as a UI refresh for improved at-a-glance fitness information, a rejigged weather app, more smart device integration options, as well as more workouts and customizability for third-party fitness apps. It all makes for a clean and user-friendly OS, which is more or less exactly the same thing you can say about watchOS 9, which the Apple Watch Series 8 uses. This brings in four new watch faces, as well as several Workout app updates, improved sleep tracking, atrial fibrillation (AFib) history, and a new Medications app.

In terms of updates, it’s likely that the Apple Watch will be supported with core updates for longer. That said, Google hasn’t yet clarified for how long it will support the Pixel Watch, and given that it has improved its smartphone updating game in the past couple of years, we’re leaving this round a tie — for now.

Winner: Tie

Special features

Car crash detection on Apple Watch Series 8.
Apple

There’s not much in it when it comes to special features, with both boasting largely the same perks. For instance, each has an always-on display, Emergency SOS functionality, fall detection, and the ability to pay for stuff at stores (via Google Pay and Apple Pay, respectively).

That said, each has a couple of features that are a little unique. The Apple Watch, for example, also includes crash detection, which uses a combination of the watch’s sensors and artificial intelligence to detect car accidents and automatically call 911 for help while providing your location and alerting your emergency contacts (only if you don’t respond to a notification within 10 seconds). As for the Pixel Watch, it has been IP68 and 5ATM certified, whereas the Apple Watch has only IP6X certification, although Apple does affirm that it’s also water-resistant up to 50 meters, like the Pixel.

Winner: Tie

Price and availability

Google Pixel Watch with grey strap.
Andrew Martonik / Digital Trends

The Pixel Watch is now available for preorder from Google, starting from $350 for its base model with GPS. There’s also the option to have it with cellular LTE connectivity, which will cost $50 extra.

The Apple Watch Series 8 is available in the U.S. and over 40 countries. The base model with GPS connectivity and 41mm case size costs $399, while models with cellular connectivity start at $499. The 45mm model starts at $429, while its cellular sibling costs $529.

Overall winner: Apple Watch Series 8

The Apple Watch Series 8 may not have added too much in comparison to the Apple Watch Series 7, but it does win out against the Pixel Watch overall. Its superior performance and more expansive health-tracking features give it the advantage, even if the Pixel Watch certainly has an appealing design, easy-to-use software, a good range of fitness options, and some welcome special features to boot. Of course, if you own a Google Pixel smartphone (rather than an iPhone), it makes more sense to have a Pixel Watch to go with it (and vice versa), and you certainly won’t be disappointed if you do.

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Ask Andy: How can you tell whether a startup is a good place to work? When is it safe to disclose a mental-health challenge to coworkers?

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As a software developer who would like to work for a startup, what should I look for in a company so that I know it’s legit? If I am putting a lot of work into a product, I want to know that at minimum it’s for a legitimate company and founder—not just another person with an overdone app idea that knows nothing about the tech world. Sarah C.

If you’re learning the startup game, the best bet here is to go later-stage. Focus on a pre-IPO company that is growing quickly, has raised money from blue-chip investors, and is getting positive buzz in the market that it will go public within the next two years.

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Then, don’t believe any of it.

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Network your way into three of the company’s team members on LinkedIn or through your network. Have three virtual or IRL coffees. Have them tell you about the culture: If they’re learning; if the company’s really growing; and most importantly, whether or not they respect and, ideally, admire the leadership.

Keep looking until you find this vetted opportunity.

That’s a systematic, rational approach. But that’s not the only way to go. You could throw it all out the window.

Find a company where you believe in the mission. One where you fall in love with the product or service. You might already be a high LTV customer or a power user. Check your credit card statement and your app home screen to source ideas. Your passion for the mission will make it work for you for some time, even if the company doesn’t work in the long run.

However you get there, once you’re inside for a year or two, you’ll be learning.

You may have to switch horses. That’s okay.

When you do, you’ll know more people, you’ll have more insight, and the path on what to pick next will be clearer. Heck, you might even notice an inflection point and meet a cofounder that leads to you starting a company yourself.

It’s like dating.

You probably won’t marry your first love—but you might. If you don’t, your judgment will iteratively improve. And the good news is unlike a marriage, you can change out your partner every few years. (What I’ve found, though, is that the most successful people professionally, and those who generate the most wealth, have more like 5- to 10-year runs.)

Trust your intuition. Follow your heart on the mission or product. Then, don’t trust yourself.  Study the market. Use the product.  And do at least three off-list references outside of who you interview with. Read every single Glassdoor entry.

And then jump!

You’ll be fine.

Do you think you could have shared your mental health conditions publicly BEFORE you were professionally successful, and still have been successful? Or was the fact that you had already achieved professional success what allowed you to be open? Zack

No, I don’t think I could have shared before we succeeded. I wouldn’t have had the courage to, and I feared it might be career-limiting.

Then again, it was almost seven years ago that I had my I-can’t-deny-this-any-longer moment with my Bonobos colleagues and investors. As of today, I think it’s becoming more possible to be candid about mental health. I hope we can move to a world where I could have been more open, sooner, at least selectively with my leadership team and board.

Some entrepreneurs ask me when to tell their VCs about the mental-health challenge or mental-health diagnosis they wrestle with. I always say the same thing: at a breakfast meeting, four months after you’ve closed the round and hit your numbers. Nobody cares about your neurodivergence if you’re performing—and most VCs actually know enough to know that most founders have more going on than meets the eye.

With your team, I think it’s doable, even now. Perhaps especially now. The truth is, they know. They know you deal with stuff because they’re around you. And the vulnerability you share in disclosing will multiply their respect for you. More importantly, it’ll give those team members the space to reciprocally share their stuff with their colleagues, and potentially you as well, and bring their full selves to work.

Wouldn’t that be cool?

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Take-Two Buys Gearbox And Its New ‘Borderlands’ Game From Embracer

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If you’re a game developer owned by Embracer Group at this point, you are nervous about layoffs, shutdowns or game cancellations after the last few years. But now, there is a somewhat happy ending for one of them, Gearbox.

It’s just been announced that Take-Two, which owns GTA developer Rockstar, will purchase Gearbox for $460 million. This also includes the properties Gearbox owns, the Borderlands and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands franchises, Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms and Duke Nukem. The report says Gearbox has six games in development, five sequels, including a new Borderlands game, the not-announced-but-definitely-happening Borderlands 4. Here’s Strauss Zelnick:

“Our acquisition of Gearbox is an exciting moment for Take-Two and will strengthen our industry-leading creative talent and portfolio of owned intellectual property, including the iconic Borderlands franchise,” said Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two. “This combination enhances the financial profile of our existing projects with Gearbox and unlocks the opportunity for us to drive increased long-term growth by leveraging the full resources of Take-Two across all of Gearbox’s exciting initiatives.”

Gearbox has been working with 2K and Take-Two for decades, so it was a logical place for them to land. This is, of course, not a great look for Embracer, who only purchased Gearbox three years ago. The price tag back then was “worth up to $1.3 billion” but there were a lot of strings attached to that where it’s not necessarily the case that selling for $$460 million netted them a ~$900 million loss.

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As for what this means for gamers, it would seem something like the Borderlands franchise is now on more stable ground, as it was hard to believe any project at Embracer is fully safe these days. Last year, Embracer quietly cancelled 29 different unannounced games and shut down seven studios in a six month period including Volition and Free Radical Design. That came with around 1,400 layoffs. More recently, Embracer laid off 97 people at Eidos in Janaury and cancelled a Deus Ex game.

Sufficed to say, those at Gearbox probably feel pretty good about this. And as for Take-Two, Borderlands is still a valuable IP, and Tiny Tina’s Wonderland was a surprise hit. There’s a new Homeworld game coming as well. In an era for multi-billion dollar acquisition, Gearbox for $460 million doesn’t seem that bad. That’s probably a third of what GTA 6 will sell on day one next year.

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What’s Brewing in the iPhone 16 Rumor Mill? AI, Action Buttons and More

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As the iPhone 15 settles into the market, the tech community is buzzing with anticipation for Apple’s next-generation handset, which is expected to be named “iPhone 16.”

We’ve heard whispers about the iPhone 16’s features, which are said to span from a new power-efficient display to larger screens, better zoom lenses, an action button and, perhaps not surprisingly, a suite of new gen-AI powered features.

Read more: Best iPhone of 2024

However, the iPhone 16 is still presumably six months away and nothing will be confirmed until Apple’s iPhone event in the fall. Still, these rumors could give us an idea of what to expect from the next iPhone.

Here are the most credible rumors for the iPhone 16.

Will the iPhone 16 fold?

Probably not. The newest rumors suggest Apple has been working on iPhone Flip models in two different sizes, though there have been difficulties in making the devices to Apple’s standards. The company may also be working on a folding tablet with a screen around the size of an iPad Mini. Even though virtually every major phone-maker — from Google to Oppo to OnePlus and Samsung — have launched their own bendable handsets, Apple has been characteristically quiet about whether there will ever be an iPhone Flip or an iPhone Fold.

Prior rumors said Apple may not launch its own flexible screen device until 2025. Samsung hasn’t let phone fans forget it — by releasing an app that will let Apple phone owners experience a Z Fold-esque experience by placing two iPhones side-by-side.

iPhone 16 Pro models to get bigger screens?

Apple has maintained the two screen sizes for iPhone Pro models since 2020 when it launched the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 Pro and the 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max. However, that’s rumored to change with the iPhone 16 Pro models, which might get bigger screens.

Display analyst Ross Young suggested earlier this year that the iPhone 16 Pro models will have larger screens, putting the sizes at 6.3 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro Max. That rumor was later corroborated by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who said the iPhone 16 Pro models could grow by “a couple tenths of an inch diagonally.”

The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus models are believed to be sticking with the current 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch sizes. If the size increase is accurate, it would be yet another move from Apple to distinguish its Pro iPhone models from its regular ones.

iPhone 15 screen sizes

  • iPhone 15: 6.1 inches.
  • iPhone 15 Plus: 6.7 inches.
  • iPhone 15 Pro: 6.1 inches.
  • iPhone 15 Pro Max: 6.7 inches.

Rumored iPhone 16 screen sizes

  • iPhone 16: 6.1 inches.
  • iPhone 16 Plus: 6.7 inches.
  • iPhone 16 Pro: 6.3 inches.
  • iPhone 16 Pro Max: 6.9 inches.

iPhone 16 gets more AI tricks

One of the most salient selling points of Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series and Google’s Pixel 8 lineup were each of their souped-up AI tips and tricks, and it wouldn’t be a major shock if Apple went in the same direction. Apple CEO Tim Cook has gone on the record this year confirming Apple sees “a huge opportunity for Apple with gen AI and AI.”

According to Gurman’s Power On newsletter, iOS 18 will feature generative AI technology that “should improve how both Siri and the Messages app can field questions and auto-complete sentences.”

A September report from the Information says Apple plans to use large language models, a crucial part of generative AI, to make Siri smarter. The report said this feature is expected to be released with an iPhone software update next year.

Read More: iPhone iOS 18: A Possible Big Leap In AI

iPhone 16 design: New action button?

In March, AppleInsider published a collection of photographs purportedly displaying 3D-printed dummy models of the rumored iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. The images revealed that the iPhone 16 may have a vertical camera stack as opposed to a diagonal one and an action button, similar the one on last year’s iPhone 15 Pro.

iPhone 16 gets more power-efficient display?

Another change that could make its way to iPhone 16 displays is greater power efficiency. Samsung Display is apparently developing a new material set, dubbed M14, specifically for Apple, according to a TheElec report, which says the new technology should arrive on iPhones launching next year. M14 will replace the blue fluorescent technology that’s used now with blue phosphorescence technology, creating an even more power-efficient screen than the current LTPO ones used on Pro models, the report says.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

iPhone 16 gets better zoom?

Both the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max could both have 5x telephoto lenses next year. According to Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo, a tetraprism lens will make its way to both Pro models next year, as opposed to just the Pro Max model. Apple equipped the iPhone 15 Pro with a 12-megapixel 3x optical zoom, while the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 12-megapixel 5x optical zoom camera, which is the equivalent of 120mm lens on a full-frame camera.

If this rumor is true, it could mark a breakthrough in design. When Apple launched the 15 Pro Max with its 5x telephoto lens, it cited the phone’s bigger body as to why the Pro Max had it, but the Pro didn’t.

iPhone 16 processors: A18 chip for all models?

In a break with the past two years, all four iPhone 16 models will apparently get a next-generation Apple chipset, which will all receive A18 branding. According to a MacRumors report citing Jeff Pu, an executive analyst for Haitong International Securities, all four models will have an A18 series chip with Pro iPhone models getting an A18 Bionic Pro and base models getting a regular A18.

The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus currently have an A16 Bionic, which debuted on the 2022 iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, while the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max run on the A17 Pro processor. Pu says the A18 chip will be manufactured with TSMC’s cutting-edge 3 nanometer process.

Read more: Apple iPhone SE 4 Rumors: iPhone 14 Design, Face ID and More

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