The future and hardware is not one device – it’s the whole ecosystem

I dream of a gadget that can do it all. Instead, when I leave the office, I pack one or two phones, a portable battery, a laptop, a drink, a new product that I test and at least one pair of ears. The pouch is full of cables and adapters in the backpack. I usually do between two and four bearers on my body. I know my “gadget makimalistic” is life. But one day, the powers that will be convened and the company will decide on the following Muz to have Gizmo – one all-powerful device that will replace the phone.

Google seems to think so. At least, not based on what I witnessed on a last week’s passed Google event.

In a study in Brooklin, Google showed four phones, Smartwatch and a pair of ears. It is quite typical for launching products, but something about this year’s correction was different. It wasn’t just odd basic formator latent anxiety of a twins who attacks in each corner of each product. It was an unusual feeling that AI will not be a thing that tears the masonry gardens. They will strengthen them. Instead of simplifying the number of gadgets, we carry them, it could multiply.

The word “Vibra” survived this day, but in that strange Brooklyn TV Studio, I felt palpable vibration in the mobile computer. Especially with load-bearing services. Where think about bits and Internet discourse It is used to claim to be the bearing dead, the category is now set as an avant-garde for AI.

“The first 15 years of wearable bearing was much,” Collect data, quantified self. “There was a fitbit,” Sandeep Varaich explains, Google’s product leads for pixels. “They were episode data, and it quickly moves into continuously inspect because data passes only so far. It transitions from very generic to something very personal.”

You can see where this all goes. They generate data tonnes. Is much harder than it sounds to be found in a way of digesting and It maintains long-term engaged people. It is some kind of task to make theoretically good in it – which makes you see every fitness tracker and app on the market jump on the tape.

At the same time, as Varaich describes, are “only one device in our computer life that is guaranteed presence in the body”. Your phone can look like it was glued to your hand, but even can be behind at the table, shot in a purse or turned off in the show. If you want the finest, always available and assistant, it must know absolutely everything that needs to know about you. Is there a better way to do it than to be in You?

The problem with AI hardware is that we are in the spaghetti phase. No one knows what the winning formula is, so all every idea under the sun will throw yourself on the wall to the wall something Sticks. You have always listened to life guides that are intentional that you are another memory. Meta’s hypothesis is that multimodal smart glasses are platonic ideal Gateway to AI. Iine Ive and Altman himself can afford to be hyper vague about any project they work because anything They say that at this moment I can be true.

But to hear how google says, no one The form factor will rule the supreme.

“Every religion you have now is probably pretended,” says Rishi Chandra, Google VP Fitbit and Health, when I ask what factors google bet for twins. “There’s no doubt in my mind, there will be a new form factor that will exist. But I think it’s too early to make sure and moving so quickly to change it in the hardware.”

Instead, Chandra says Google relyes in the spaghetic care of everything. Some of these are openness to experiment. You just have to look at Android XR, her harmful smart cup platform, to see that. The second half is “maximize devices you already have.” The phone is a starting point. Smartwatch and ears are natural extensions, but full potential and hardware has yet to be unlocked. Hope, says Varaich, is it experimentation and maximizing, you ended up with a winning combination that has not yet been seen.

“The future will be a very diverse set of supplements that people can choose to do it for them, it is personalized for them, in their surroundings and what they care,” explains Chandra. “Our job is to do everything (together) that it doesn’t matter.”

Varaich agrees. Google, he says, that these total shifts are nice aligning with their ambient computing, the world where your devices are fading in the background, autonomously and proactively answers to your every need. (When you get into the room, for example, your Ai Lightburbs could move on to the McColic setting because you can only send a friend where you have a migraine.) But the ambient count will never be unlocked if there is only one all-powerful gadget. Will also fail whether these devices do not speak “the usual language. So why do you google pitch Greins not everyone would stick all together? If twins become The You must have AI, and above all is baked in Google Hardware – maybe so really make people stop worrying about green bubbles.

Some of this shift is that the smart phone is almost 20 years old. The gadget that once inspired awe, these days phones feel more like the Toyota Camri of Ferrari. Verizon CEO Hans Westberg said last year that “exciting times ended” And that many people hold their phones for three or more years. These numbers fluctuate depending on the region and demographic, but great technology has publicly recognized it People just don’t upgrade their phones as often as they used to be once.

Viewed from that lens, pushing towards and hardware begins to make sense. It just feels from syncing with what people tell me they want. Google managers tell me that the twin point (and even ai) is to facilitate the life of people, to give them back time. It is a noble search that seems to settle for exhaustion people feel more modern life. But even if I can see Google’s vision, even if I honestly see the value in the parts of it – it’s hard to square more gadgets with more AI deals with that existential fatigue.

Still, this is a bet that Google goes inside. Therefore, pixel is 10 and pixels that are viewed 4 as such opinion devices in the landscape of iterative updates. I would claim that we also see smart rings get wolf and why targets see the success of hardware with their smart glasses after years not to convince people to take care of Metavers. Anyone ask for the next story turns, and for now converges to AI loads. Many, many of them.