Software is where Google excels, and this phone offers more features than we could test in a couple of days. Google Photos app offers extensive editing features as mentioned, and the existing features have been greatly improved. For example, the Photo Unblur feature now offers near-natural results in most photos. However, we wouldn’t call these perfect just yet.
Our favourite feature, if we need to pick one, would be the Audio Magic Eraser, which separates the audio into voice, natural sounds, wind, traffic etc and allows you to erase or control the levels of disturbance. We found this highly effective, though we couldn’t test it under all possible scenarios. Google Assistant can now perform much more useful tasks than before. Live translate feature can be a great help when you feel helpless at a place that speaks an unknown foreign language. The feature could easily translate when the microphones are closer to you but faltered when it is at a distance. Other similar features include Read Aloud, which reads what is on your screen. We should add here that many of these features require an active internet connection since the processing is done on the server.
Then there are a few new apps like the Magnifier, Thermometer, and a redesigned Fitbit app. The Magnifier lets you read tiny text such as instructions on a medicine blister. The thermometer app allows you to find the temperature of objects like cookware, coffee etc. However, you can’t use it to find if your child has a fever, how hot your neighbour is, or how frigid your wife has gone. Without a clinical use, we can’t think of a possible use case scenario. We guess Passepartout would have benefited from this while preparing his master’s shaving water.