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Google Wireless Charger for Pixel 3, Pixel 3XL - White
What is a Google Home, really?
If
you think about it, the Google Home is just a way for Google’s virtual
assistant to express itself. Assistant can live in speakers and
headphones, smart displays and
smartwatches, but the core function of the Google Assistant is to always be there when you need it. That’s why the Google Home was made to blend into your home decor and that’s also why it looks like an air freshener.
A few days ago, Google introduced the Pixel Stand.
While it might look like any other wireless charging stand from the
outside, Google has cooked up some fresh ideas that lets its Assistant
exist in a new way, on a device it already inhabited.
So how does it work, and what’s so special about it, anyway? Read our full Google Pixel Stand review to find out.
A quick note: As Kris already mentioned, we are holding off on our Pixel 3 review for a few days. Stay tuned for the full review in a few days!
The basics, but better
Google’s new Pixel Stand is definitively Google. That’s to say, it’s
an object that blends into your home almost seamlessly, with a stark
white silicone body and colorful base. Unfortunately, this might not
work as well in more mixed decor. The Pixel Stand works best when you
forget it’s there, just like a Google Home. In Google’s vision of the
world, that would be a bright white room with color only being
introduced from accent pieces like paintings and trinkets. Google
designs their products for idealistic scenarios, and I wish they would
have offered the Stand in more than its one color — white.
The
Pixel Stand uses Google’s new fast wireless charging tech. That’s 10
watts of power being pumped into your Pixel through the air, and it also
works with cases — even the relatively thick Moment
case I’ve been rocking since launch. While it isn’t quite as fast as
USB Type-C quick charging through its included 18-watt fast charger,
Google has pulled some compelling tricks to keep your Pixel on its stand
longer than usual. More on that later.
Charge whatever you like, but the Pixel 3 will charge smarter.
This Stand uses the Qi charging standard,
so any device with Qi wireless charging capabilities will work just
fine with the charger, but the special features are reserved for the
Pixel 3. Because the Pixel Stand has two separate charging coils, you’re
able to set your device on it in either a portrait or landscape
orientation and still get a jump. Pretty nifty.
More than just charging
Google is charging
$71 for the Pixel stand,
and that’s kind of a lot of money. You can get hundreds of wireless
chargers for far cheaper than this first-party option, so Google had to
add something that made the Pixel Stand in particular worth your money.
In the end, Google did exactly what it did for image processing on the
Pixel 2 XL — it shifted some smarts onto a separate microprocessor.
Obviously, this microprocessor isn’t as complex as the Pixel Visual Core.
Instead of performing image recognition through machine learning, the
Pixel Stand’s microprocessor checks to see that your phone is actually a
Pixel 3, then stores a unique ID to pair it so it can recognize it
again later. It does this because the Stand can host multiple Pixels and
perform different actions based on how the user set it up to work on
that particular Stand. This is useful if you have multiple Pixel Stands,
like one at your bedside you use like a digital photo frame in Do Not
Disturb mode and one at your work desk you use as a clock. Unique
identifiers for each phone-stand combination are also useful if other
people in your home own a Pixel 3 as well.
The actions your phone
can trigger could be as simple as putting your phone into Do Not Disturb
mode while on the Pixel stand, or even telling your device to turn the
screen off if it detects darkness.
Many of the actions the Pixel Stand
enables play into Google’s Digital Wellbeing
initiative, and I think it’s a brilliant use of a wireless charger. The
Stand encourages you to leave your phone on the Stand while still
remaining useful.
In its default state, the Pixel Stand will show
the time alongside your notifications and a new interface for Google
Assistant. You can press the Assistant button to trigger voice actions,
but Google would prefer that you use the “Hey Google” hotword to start
talking instead. There’s a reason the Pixel 3 has front-facing speakers —
it transforms into a Google Home.
You can ask the Assistant to
tell you about your day, which will do things like read the news and let
you know when you should leave for work. You can also take advantage of
the Assistant’s Routines feature
to trigger other aspects of your smart home like starting up a smart
coffee maker or turning on your lights. Routines is an extremely
powerful feature, and it’s nice being able to automate things from the
comfort of your bed.
Another action Google has introduced with the Pixel Stand is Photo
Frame. This action uses your Pixel 3 as a digital frame of sorts,
parsing through your Google Photos albums much like the Chromecast
can do. It can also use some AI smarts to automatically select the best
images from your library, and it works shockingly well. I don’t have my
Photos library sorted at all, and it’s filled with random device photos
and screenshots from benchmarking phones. To my surprise, Photo Frame
mostly picked the photos I shot with my actual mirrorless camera, as
well as the best images I’ve shot with phones, and primarily showed me
images of people smiling.
Google is also introducing a new feature called Sunrise Alarm. This uses the OLED
display on your Pixel 3 to slowly raise the brightness of the screen
with a solid color, ambiently waking your body even if it doesn’t jolt
you awake. The process starts 15 minutes before your actual alarm is set
to go off, and if you’re lucky, it might help you wake up without the
need for a loud and annoying alarm clock. If you do reach the point
where your actual alarm goes off, you should be more prepared to wake up
and feel better during the morning — at least in theory. This feature
hasn’t launched yet, but we’re excited to test it out as soon as it hits
devices later this month.
Why it’s amazing
From the outside, the Pixel Stand looks like
a wireless charger with a few extra features. When you combine those
features with the power of Google’s Assistant, you start to see where
this accessory brings a massive amount of value.
Google doesn’t care about its hardware
as much as it cares about making the Assistant a part of your life. The
more vessels the Assistant can live in the better, and Google is
developing more innovative ways to get the Assistant into the products
we use on a daily basis.
The whole point of the Assistant is to exist all around you. Whether that’s through a Google Home, Google Assistant-enabled headphones, a Smart Display, or even your phone, Google wants you to have access to the Assistant wherever you are. Why are Google Home Mini and Google Home Hub so affordable? Google wants the Assistant to be in every room of your home.
For better or worse, your phone is now a Google Home.
In
this vein, the Pixel Stand transforms your phone into a Google Home.
Sure, you can technically call on the Assistant from your phone wherever
you are, but Google wants to encourage you to use the Assistant instead
of your screen. It does this with the promise of rapid charging your
phone for when you need to leave the house, and the extra
functionalities like Photo Frame encourage you to leave your phone on
your stand and rely on your voice to make searches. Google is pushing us
into a voice-first world.
The Pixel Stand is also an enormous
push in Google’s Digital Wellbeing feature. With the functionality the
Pixel Stand promises, users are encouraged to dock their device on the
stand when they get home and leave it there until it helps them wake up
more naturally in the morning. Instead of stressful messages and
notifications, you’re greeted by memories which are automatically chosen
from your messy Google Photos library. Google wants us to live in a
world where we don’t use our phone at all while we’re at home, and
that’s a reality I would be incredibly excited to live in. Of course, in
this idealistic worldview it’s only Google services that deserve a
pass.
In the end, it comes down to thinking of our phones as
utilities. Sure, they can be sources of entertainment when we’re not
doing much else, but apps have shifted from mindless games to being
primarily used for work. Slack alone is installed on over 10 million
devices worldwide, and hearing that hair-raising ping just as you’re
settling down to relax is something we could all live without.
Google’s best accessory ever… if you’re willing to pay for it
The
Pixel Stand may not seem like much, but I think it’s the best accessory
Google has ever made (I consider the Chromecast a full product, not so
much an accessory). In classic Google fashion, its core purpose is a
symbiotic relationship, drastically increasing the number of voice
queries while at the same time helping you remove yourself from the
screen you’re glued to 50 percent of the day. Google knows ad revenue
won’t last forever, and it has been rapidly trying to get users
onboarded to using voice as their primary method of interacting with
computers.
$79 is a bit of a hefty price to pay, and I am honestly
a little surprised that Google didn’t price this more aggressively.
There’s no way the hardware costs anywhere close to $79 to produce, and
the value of onboarding a customer onto Google Assistant is a big win
for Google. I’d like to see Google sell bundle deals that reduce the
price of the Pixel Stand when ordering a Pixel 3, but we’ve yet to see
any such bundle hit the Google store. Carriers do bundles like this
fairly regularly though, and it’s possible we’ll see something concrete
as we approach the holiday season.
If you don’t mind the $71 price tag, the Pixel Stand is one of the
coolest accessories you can buy for your new Google Pixel 3. I want one
for the sole reason that it removes me from my phone while I’m at home,
and I think anyone could benefit from that in 2018.
| Specs |
| Power output |
10w |
| Standard |
Qi |
| Dimensions (phone size maximum) |
3.6″ x 4.1″ |
| Weight |
160g (5.6oz) |
| Cable included? |
Yes |
| AC adapter included? |
Yes |
