Google’s Pixel 5 event is finally here. The “Launch Night In” starts at 2PM ET/11AM PT, and you can watch it with us below. Alongside the company’s stream, we’ll offer our commentary on all the news in real time. We know that Google will announce a new Pixel phone, Chromecast and smart speaker, and several leaks have already provided additional details on those products. It’ll be interesting to see what’s left to announce.

When Google launched the Pixel 4a in August, it promised that 5G-ready versions of the Pixel 4a and Pixel 5 would arrive this fall. We know the 5G devices will start at $499. Thanks to leaks, we also know that they’ll come with OLED displays and be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765G processor. They’ll support 18W fast charging, too.

Google has just announced the date for its annual Pixel event. Set to take place this September 30th, the company plans to announce its “new Chromecast, latest smart speaker and new Pixel phones.” The event will take place virtually, as the invitation has the tagline of “Launch Night In” and “Your couch is the best seat in the house.”

As stated above, we already have some idea of what the announcements will be. There have already been leaks aplenty about Google’s upcoming Android dongle, which is slated to be a “Chromecast with Google TV,” we’ve seen photos of the company’s latest take on a smart speaker and we even know about the company’s plans for a 5G-enabled Pixel 4a and Pixel 5.

Months after the Android 11 beta was released in June, the final version is finally here and ready to roll out to consumer devices. While we already saw upcoming features like messaging bubbles, grouped conversation notifications as well as new media and device controls in the preview, Google surprised us today by also adding built-in screen recording. At last! iOS has offered this natively, while Samsung, LG and OnePlus have integrated versions of the tool into their skins.

The update rolls out to select Pixel, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo and realme phones starting today, with Google saying that more partners are set to launch and update their devices in the coming months. You should see a notification telling you the installation is ready, and the process will involve downloading and installing a 1.72GB package.

Since I still have to go through the entire notifications list instead of dealing with just the alerts near the top, the new section headers actually add to the amount of scrolling and swiping I have to do. 

Google placing conversations near the top is nice in theory, but it leaves out people I interact with on apps like Twitter, Instagram and email. I prefer to address Twitter and Instagram alerts sooner than messages, so Google’s ranking isn’t my favorite. You can prioritize specific chats, but only if they’re already coming from supported messaging apps. If you hate clutter like I do, you’ll be disappointed to learn that there’s no way to disable these section headers.

Media and other device controls

Another change that Android 11 brings to your notifications shade is a new persistent media player in the Quick Settings panel. When you’re playing music or a video via a supported app like Spotify or YouTube Music, a dashboard appears above your notifications for quick access to controls. This is meant to make it easier to change your output device, whether it’s headphones, speakers, a TV or the phone itself. 

In general it’s effective but unnecessary. The player takes up two rows of space, pushing notifications down. And, honestly I found the lock screen controls more convenient. 

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

My early build of Android 11 continued to be a bit buggy here, with the player sometimes not showing up even though Spotify was streaming a banging KPop playlist. I started playing a show on HBO Max after pausing Spotify, but HBO did not take over the controls as I expected and music controls remained. This is on by default for media apps, so developer support shouldn’t be an issue. You can choose to hide the player when your media sessions are over, though I preferred to leave it on to resume playback whenever I wanted. 

It’s nice to have a space dedicated to playback controls instead of in a notification card like in Android 10, especially since the feature was a little finicky in the older software. But a lock screen version would still be easier to use since my phone is usually locked if I’m listening to music or casting a video and it’s faster to access the lock screen than the notifications shade.

With Android 11, Google is also trying to cram more controls into spaces that were previously underused such as the power button menu, which now shows devices connected to your network — like your smart lights, security cameras or speakers, in addition to your Google Pay cards. Oh and the shutdown and restart buttons, of course.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Each of your devices has its own tile, and one tap on them will turn them off or on.  There’s also a master control tile that can turn off all your lights at once, which is handy. The master switch is the first box you’ll see, but you can also rearrange all your devices to put your favorites higher up. 

I was dubious of this feature when I first tried it in the beta, because I thought it was easier to just tell my smart speaker to turn my lights on or off. But I’ve since come around, especially after I added my Chromecast to this page. It’s much easier to hold down the power button and immediately control all my devices than having to find the Google Home app and search for the specific speaker or TV I wanted to turn off. Those in large homes with many rooms and multiple gadgets connected to their network will very likely find this helpful, too. 

Privacy permissions and small interface tweaks 

Those were the most obvious updates, but there are some small, less noticeable tweaks too. Google handles screenshots a little differently in this iteration. They appear as a thumbnail in the bottom left corner after being captured, with options to share, edit or dismiss. Thank God the company has gotten rid of the notification after every. Single. Screenshot, which used to really clutter up the page. Also, when you’re viewing all your open apps, Android 11 will show options at the bottom of the screen to take a screenshot or select parts of the page.These two interface tweaks will only be available on Pixel devices.

Another imperceptible but important update is the ability to set one-time app permissions for things like location and camera access. This way, you can have greater control over what apps are following you in the background. Plus, if you haven’t used an app in a few months, its permissions will automatically reset and it will have to request access when you open it again. Obviously I haven’t used Android 11 long enough for that to happen yet, but I appreciate it in theory.

Google

Android 11 also added the option to show an extra row of apps at the bottom of your home screen for easier access to what Google thinks you use most often. It’s similar to the suggestions already available at the top of the app drawer, but is pretty redundant. Most users already place their most frequently used apps on their home page. When I enabled this, Google showed me stuff like Spotify, Telegram, Instagram and Netflix, which were already sitting on the screen right above it. The good news is, you can choose not to enable this row and it’s not on by default.

There are some other small changes coming in Android 11 that will likely be more fruitful over time. For example, a new on-device visual cortex better identifies elements on the screen so those who use voice controls can navigate the interface more easily. It also works when you’re looking at your open apps and hit the “Select” option at the bottom — Google will highlight pictures, icons and texts on the screen and you can tap each one to share or save it or even use Lens to get more information.

Android Auto now works wirelessly to connect phones with compatible cars (though as a New Yorker with no vehicle I couldn’t test that). Also, new 5G app support means developers can check if you’re on a fast connection and bump up resolution for video streams or download higher quality game assets. 

Basically everything else should be taken with at least a small grain of salt. That said, it sounds like, for starters, the Pixel 5 is going to skip on a high-end chipset and instead rock a more modest Snapdragon 765G. And, unlike some of the more extreme phones in recent memory, the Pixel 5 will come with “only” 8GB of RAM. Now, that is more than enough power for your average user. Plus, Google has proven time and again that through smart software optimization it can squeeze great performance out of lesser devices. 

But more importantly, the 765G is cheaper than a Snapdragon 865 and 12GB of RAM. Almost $100 cheaper as of January. And building on that, it sounds like we’re getting just one Pixel 5 this year. No XL variant. Just one model that will come with a 6-inch OLED — which is smack in the middle of the 6.3 inch screen of the Pixel 4 XL and the 5.8 inch screen on the Pixel 4A. Also like with the Pixel 4A, by streamlining the product line Google can shave down it’s production costs even further, and hopefully pass those savings on to you — the consumer.

See, while modest specs and limited variants might be boring, it also means that Google will probably be able to undercut the competition by hundreds of dollars. Remember when the Nexus was the crown jewel of Google’s burgeoning smartphone empire? It was a flagship caliber phone for about half the price of other phones. Now, it’s highly doubtful that the Pixel 5 will cost just $500. But $700 seems within the realm of possibility. 

Reddit

Google is even supposedly going back to the well by bringing back the fingerprint reader. Putting aside for a moment the fact that Face Unlock was never particularly good. It’s especially important now to have a backup method for unlocking your phone. Trust me. Even if you get a mask printed with your face on it, it’s not going to work. In fact, it seems like that Soli radar sensor is gone completely. 

The only thing missing is the return of the headphone jack but, I’ve begrudgingly accepted that is a lost cause at this point. 

What else? Google is probably sticking with just two cameras on the back. But this year ditching the telephoto in favor of a wide angle lens. And it’s joining the rest of the smartphone world by embracing the hole punch camera on the front. Goodbye giant bezels and weird notches — the Pixel line is going bezel-less…ish. 

Perhaps the most exciting thing about he Pixel 5 is the rumor that the battery will be 4,000mAh — and those are hardly uncommon. Compared to the anemic 2,800mAh in the Pixel 4 that’s positively enormous. And combined with that less power-hungry processor we could be talking about battery life in days, instead of hours.

Again, though: These are not breakthroughs. They’re minor tweaks to address minor annoyances and in some ways playing catch-up with the rest of the industry. 

But you know what — give me a boring but affordable phone with enough power to handle Evernote and some light video editing and I’m good. I don’t need a 120HZ screen or console quality 3D graphics. I need to be able to reliably unlock my phone in a supermarket to check my shopping list, without being chased out by a mob of angry people hurling produce. And, when the time comes to upgrade, I need to be able to buy a new phone without having to worry about making my mortgage payment that month.

After leaving Google in March, Marc Levoy, the imaging expert who helped create some of the Pixel lineup’s most important computational photography features, has landed at Adobe. In an email, the Photoshop-maker said Levoy will “spearhead company-wide technology initiatives focused on computational photography and emerging products, centered on the concept of a universal camera app.”

Precisely what that universal camera app will entail Adobe hasn’t said yet. However, the company notes Levoy will work with its Photoshop Camera, Adobe Research, Sensei and Digital Imaging teams. As The Verge notes, Adobe’s Photoshop Camera and Lightroom apps already include camera functionality. It’s possible a universal camera app could be something that’s available on both Android and iOS devices.  

Developers will have to enable Bubbles for you to start seeing more apps work with this. We’ve reached out to Telegram and WhatsApp to see if they plan to support this feature, and the latter declined to comment. Telegram has yet to respond, while Google says Messages support is coming soon.

Whether you favor Telegram, WhatsApp, Messages, Instagram, Facebook Messenger or any of the plethora of chat apps available today, it can be a drag to stay on top of all the people trying to contact you. The Android 11 beta features an area in the notifications shade that consolidates all your messages so you can address alerts that need a response before attending to your Instagram likes or Twitter hearts. If you can’t reply immediately, you can also set a reminder to get to it later. I like having all my conversations organized neatly at the top, but there are other things also taking up space in the notification shade like media controls that might make this less like Marie Kondo-ing and more like cluttering. 

Easier device and media controls

One of the things that would take up room in the Quick Settings area above your list of notifications is a new persistent media player. In this beta version, you’d have to first enable developer options (by repeatedly hitting the Build number at the bottom of the About Phone page), then enabling the “Media resumption” setting. If you don’t do this, media controls will look the same as they did in Android 10. 

Screenshot by Cherlynn Low

After I activated the feature, a small widget about the size of 3×2 Quick Settings icons appeared, offering buttons for play/pause, next and previous track. This is a smart way for Google to offer easy access to these controls without taking up space in the alerts list below, though it doesn’t display album art the way the notification-based controls do. I’m impressed that Google managed to keep the same six shortcuts in the Quick Settings panel, which previously was a single row of icons, by expanding to two lanes and squeezing the original set of options to the right. This way, it managed to place this media widget to the left for more controls. If you’d rather a simpler interface, you can disable Media resumption.

In Android 11, you’ll see more settings pop up when you long-press the power button. In addition to shortcuts for Google Pay, Emergency information, shutting down and restarting like before, the page will also show your connected devices. I had to make sure my Google Home app was installed first, and after I did, all my synced lights showed up. My smart speakers, displays and clocks didn’t, though. Google told Engadget that not all devices on the Home app currently show up, and that “we’re working on adding support for more devices.”

Each light had an individual tile, while the first tile of the grid controlled all of them — you can rearrange this order if you prefer. I only have about five devices connected so this page was fairly manageable, but I imagine it’d get unwieldy if you have more than ten connected. Tapping the “All lights” tile once turned them all on at 8 percent, which is similar to one of my preset routines. My coworker Chris Velazco had his lights turned all the way up to 100 percent when he did this, so it’s clear our experience varied. We’ve reached out to Google to clarify how this works and will update when we hear back. I couldn’t find a way to add other settings though, like turning them to 50 percent after the 8 percent level, so I’ll probably still rely on my Google Home for my preset lighting profiles.

Google is also adding a Safety Check tool that lets you schedule a check-in from the app at a later time. So say you’re attending a peaceful protest (or a solo hike or run) — you can set a check for three hours later. If you don’t respond at the scheduled time, the app will alert your emergency contacts.

Google

Another update that could come in useful in fraught situations is the new integration between the Recorder app and Google services like Assistant and Docs. When you need to start a voice note in a hurry, you can now just tell your device “Hey Google, start recording my meeting.” You can also use this to look for transcripts by asking “Hey Google, show me transcripts about dogs.” When you need to share a transcript with someone, you can now export it to Google Docs. Since the Recorder app performs its transcriptions on-device, instead of relying on cloud processing like similar services like Otter.ai, its documents used to be hard to access as they were saved to the app on your phone. This update should make it easier to copy and paste quotes for use in articles or even when dictating project proposals.

We always welcome features that can squeeze more juice out of our phones, especially given the Pixels’ notoriously short battery lives. With this update, Google is enhancing its existing Adaptive Battery feature, which learns your favorite apps to cut power consumption by those you rarely use. The new version on Pixel 2 and newer devices will predict when you’ll run out of battery and further reduce background activity so get even more runtime.

When it’s finally time to rest, the new Bedtime feature should help. It’s a page in the Clock app that lets you set your daily sleep and wake times, and displays information like upcoming calendar events and what apps you typically stay up past your bedtime to use. You can have the Pixel play you calming sounds before you go to bed and limit interruptions overnight. A sunrise alarm feature lets you wake up to a track of your choice or a gradually brightening display.

Google

The rollout appears to be slated for the immediate future, though the company said in a statement that users should check out the Pixel forum to see when these updates will land on their phones.

When we reviewed the Pixel 3a XL we gave it a score of 88 for its reliable performance, great camera and improved battery life. It packs a 3,700 mAh battery, which isn’t the largest smartphone battery, but it makes the Pixel 3a XL the longest-lasting Pixel we’ve tested. The camera uses the same computational photography features Google pioneered for the Pixel 3, and there is a headphone jack.

Overall, the device offers the best features found in Pixel smartphones, but at a significantly lower price. Fortunately, none of the compromises made to control the cost feel like compromises. The biggest drawbacks are that the device isn’t water resistant, and its screen isn’t quite as crips as the 3XL’s.

Best Buy is also selling the Pixel 3a XL at a discount. If you activate the device immediately, it costs $330. If not, the price goes up to $380. So, if you want more flexibility around how and when you activate the phone, the B&H deal is the way to go. For $350, you’ll get the device and be able to choose between the major US cell phone companies.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the changes with Android Police, saying its online store has sold out its entire inventory of Pixel 3 devices. The only phones you can find now are the 5.7-inch Pixel 4 for $799 and the $899 Pixel 4 XL.

The Pixel 3 and 3 XL were key phones for Google, introducing its new camera technology like Night Sight, Top Shot and Photobooth. Despite a few flaws, it produced the best smartphone photos around when it launched in 2017. While these devices have effectively been put out to pasture, users should still get Android updates for the foreseeable future.