Any way you look at it, Android is in the lead. Google has shipped actual AI features on phones. And I don’t mean a silly AI image generator or a tool to rewrite your email like Shakespeare. I mean stuff that’s actually useful: putting six different events from an email on my calendar in one fell swoop, or asking my AI to find something in my email. These things exist on Android, and Google’s annual Pixel launch event on Wednesday, where it will unveil its new Pixel 10 phones, will no doubt underscore that fact.
But now comes the real question: does anybody care?
Google’s early teaser ads for the Pixel 10 make it pretty clear how the company will be positioning these devices, with a direct jab at Apple: they have real AI, not just a promise to deliver. And that’s fair; any way you look at it, Apple has spectacularly dropped the ball while Google and Android are running laps around the iPhone with Gemini. Apple has yet to ship a functional AI assistant; Google’s has been around long enough that it just trickled down to its smartwatch OS.
This is all very obvious to people like me, and probably you, who pay attention to mobile tech and track new phone launches like a sport. But do the normies care? People like my friends, who have no idea which model iPhone they have, will they care? I’m not so sure.
When’s the last time you heard someone say, “Let me just ask Gemini real quick”? Never, probably? I mean, unless you work at Google, in which case you don’t count. The people I know who have been early adopters of AI tools are more likely to use ChatGPT or Claude. If they want AI on their phones, they’ve downloaded one of those apps to their iPhones. They’re not wondering why Siri isn’t running large language models yet. They’re perfectly happy opening ChatGPT and asking for mattress recommendations that way.
Google’s mobile operating system stands apart from iOS in more ways than AI, too. While Apple’s iOS shifts to a sleeker, future-looking visual style, Android is embracing bold shapes and bright colors. It’s growing on me the more I use the Android 16 beta on last year’s Pixel phone. And while I don’t find iOS 26 too offensive, it definitely has its share of haters.
Maybe now’s the right time for Android to make some big bets and present itself as something different from the iPhone. Is the Pixel 10 going to win over a lot of iPhone owners frustrated with Siri’s lack of AI smarts? Will a new color palate convince the youth to ditch their iPhones? I doubt it. But if there’s a time to try and emphasize Android as a wholly different experience from iOS, now’s as good as any. And if all this is just buying time until smart glasses become our primary means of interacting with our mobile computers, well, Google seems to have a decent head start there, too.
