Google is slowly ruining one of the best reasons to buy a Pixel

The shift from Snapdragon processors to Google’s in-house Tensor chips inside Pixel phones brought a big advantage for Google. Vertical integration gave Google more control over the entire hardware and software experience, much like Apple has maintained all along.

We started to see the benefits of this deep integration when Google was quick to bring features introduced on newer Pixels to older models. It was a win-win situation, especially for older Pixel generations, where users would get access to newer features without being forced to upgrade. It was the biggest perk of owning a Pixel — that it would remain future-proof for a long time.

However, we have seen a shift recently with the arrival of the Pixel 9 and 10 series phones, which flips that long-standing notion of longevity on its head.

The pre-Pixel 8 goodness

Pixel Feature Drops were a solid addition to the entire Pixel experience, because they brought all the new goodness even to older Pixels every few months. That was true until the Pixel 8 series came out. A lot of the features that the Pixel 8 lineup got as exclusives were soon brought over to the previous generation Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 phones — sometimes within just a few weeks.

Circle to Search and Magic Editor are the biggest examples of those golden days. Google quickly brought these perks to older phones without needing any hardware upgrades. Heck, Magic Eraser was introduced with the Pixel 6 series, the first Tensor-powered Pixel phone, and later trickled down to even Snapdragon-powered phones like the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4.

Those golden days meant that sticking with your Pixel phone for more than a couple of years didn’t mean you were stuck with older features. Google continuously updated these devices, keeping them relevant and keeping users happy.

The Pixel 9 lockdown

But there has been a very decisive shift ever since the release of the Pixel 9. Both the Pixel 9 and the Pixel 10 come with a plethora of handy features that make use of AI to deliver sheer convenience, be it through Magic Cue or the Pixel Screenshots app. Despite the Pixel 10 being out for a good half year and the Pixel 9 for even longer, not a single one of these new features has made its way to older Pixels yet.

Magic Cue is perhaps the biggest feature I would have liked to see on older devices. Even newer camera features like Add Me and Auto Frame haven’t made it down. Then, there are also a lot of AI-driven tools, such as Call Notes (a limited version with text-only output is available on some older phones) and Pixel Studio, that Google has been rigidly gatekeeping.

But all these features have one thing in common.

Google may be hamstrung here

Identity is a clear priority for Google at this point. Differentiating its products from other brands is critical, but making newer models more appealing than older ones is even more important for keeping the business afloat. If you look at the approach through a business lens, it makes sense to reserve features for newer phones for longer. However, that’s only one side of the story — there are also real technical reasons why Google may not be able to port them over easily.

If you look closely, the features that made it to older Pixels were mostly software layers on top of existing capabilities and could run off the cloud. That’s why they trickled down much more quickly. But with Google’s growing insistence on running everything offline using your phone’s hardware, these AI features are increasingly getting hardware-dependent. They need a more powerful neural engine on the SoC, and they need that 16GB of RAM to work efficiently.

Take Magic Cue, for example. It doesn’t show up based on a single input — it requires context and historical data about you to process information in real time, like surfacing your boarding pass while you’re on a call with the airline. If your Pixel were to rely on the cloud for that, the latency and delayed response would make the feature useless.

The same goes for Call Notes, which has to work in real time during a call — whether to summarize it or detect if you’re dealing with a scam and alert you in time. These time-sensitive features require on-device models, and delegating them to the cloud would defeat the purpose.

Offline processing also helps Google make a case for a more privacy-conscious smartphone, where your data isn’t constantly sent to the cloud in the name of AI. Since everything stays on-device, you’re in better control, and that works in Google’s favor too.

Could there be a middle ground?

It’s fair to say that while Google is prioritizing hardware, it could still bring some of these features to older phones if it really wanted to. For example, the Try It On feature on Pixel 10 models has little reason to remain exclusive; it could work from the cloud. Or the Pixel Screenshots app could be brought to at least the Pixel 8 series, which already runs Gemini AI models locally.

That’s exactly what my hope rests on. We’ve already seen Google bring Gemini Nano to the Pixel 8 after initially suggesting that only the Pro sibling could handle it. That shows Google can relax these boundaries when it wants to — and I hope its engineers are at work in the background to make these features work on older Pixel models.

If Google allowed users to opt into cloud processing (with a clear understanding of latency and privacy trade-offs), it could bring at least some of these features over. As long as the core experience isn’t compromised, features like image generation in Pixel Studio don’t strictly need to run on-device all the time.

A hybrid approach could work here: on device wherever required and cloud where acceptable. Even if the experience isn’t ideal, users would still get access to features that would otherwise remain locked away. And that alone would go a long way in bringing back the old charm of owning a Pixel phone.