Annually since 2016, Google has released a pair of flagship Pixel smartphones designed to showcase the very best of Android. This year was like any other with the debut of the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, which ship running Android 10. But what's unusual this time around is that the newest duo's hardware is perhaps just as compelling as their software. Gone is the two-tone rear cover that featured prominently on the original Pixel, Pixel 2, and Pixel 3 series, replaced with polished and grippy Corning Gorilla Glass 5. It's easier to grasp ahold of than that of the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, and it's more resistant to oily fingers and pocket lint. The Pixel 4 series is IP68 certified to withstand up to five feet of water for half an hour, which puts it on par with the outgoing Pixel 3 series. But both the Pixel 4 and the Pixel 4 XL are a good deal heavier than the Pixel 3 (5.71 The Pixel 4 series' frame is coated with a soft-touch material that's jet black on all three of the colorways -- Clearly White, Just Black, and the limited edition Oh So Orange. The haptics, which Google characterizes as "sharp and textured," feel great.

During a session at Google's I/O 2015 conference headlined by the Advanced Technologies and Projects Group (ATAP), engineers demoed what they called Project Soli, a novel gesture-recognition technology bound for handheld devices. The promise of the tech was that you could interact with things without actually touching them, which ostensibly would open up all manner of new ways of performing tasks. After a little over four years in development, it emerged in the Pixel 4 series as the gesture-detecting Motion Sense. So was it worth the wait? We used the Pixel 4 for a week to put Motion Sense through its paces.

Google unveiled a new Pixel smartphone and other hardware devices Tuesday, all aimed at getting people even more reliant on its artificial-intelligence services. NEW YORK – It's not the computers you can see that are going to matter most, it's the one you can't. At least, that's the argument Google made at their Made by Google hardware launch event here, as they unveiled a number of new products that provide intelligence or interactions in ways that blend in with the environment around us. The tech industry has been talking about this notion of "ambient computing" for some time, but it's taken advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, cloud-based services and wireless connectivity to start to make it real. To be clear, the kinds of things Google debuted at their event – from the widely expected Pixel 4 smartphone, to Pixel Bud earbuds, and updated versions of their Nest mini smart speaker (previously Google Home Mini) and Next WiFi (formerly Google WiFi) mesh routing system – have not reached cloak of invisibility-level powers. However, the refinements the company added to these products, in conjunction with the software advancements in Android and the Google Assistant, are making it easier to get access to the kinds of information we expect from our computing devices in more natural ways.

After intentionally leaking images of its own device last month, Google preannounced some the features coming to its Pixel 4 smartphone that's set to launch this fall. In a blog post and YouTube video posted Monday, the search giant revealed that the fourth-generation smartphone will have two new features: Face Unlock, which is a take on Apple's Face ID, and Motion Sense, which lets you control the phone using air gestures. Google's facial recognition comes almost two years since Apple first introduced the technology, which iOS customers use to unlock Apple devices and authenticate contactless payments using Apple Pay. Google is following Apple's example, revealing that the Pixel 4 will also use the face unlock tool for mobile payments. "Face unlock works in almost any orientation – even if you're holding it upside down – and you can use it for secure payments and app authentication, too," Google said in a blog post.