Google has announced its latest Pixel feature drop with a slew of new features and abilities to its smartphone lineup. The company has released a December 2020 update that brings brand-new functionalities like Adaptive Sound and other software features from the Pixel 5 to Pixel 3 and newer devices. The Adaptive Sound improves the sound quality of the phone’s speaker based on the surroundings.
Additionally, other features, which were earlier available to Pixel 5 owners, have also made their way to more Pixel owners. These include the Hold for Me feature that helps users save time when they’re put on hold by a business. Currently, this feature is available for Pixel owners in the US in English. “With the December update, even more, Pixel owners will get to experience our most recent updates, along with a few new surprises,” said Google in a blog post.
Google December Pixel Feature Drop
With the December 2020 update, Google is rolling out the previously-launched features on Pixel 5 to Pixel 3 and newer devices from the lineup. As said earlier, the Hold for Me ability is now coming to more Pixel owners, which allows users to hand over listening duties to the Google Assistant while a business has put their call on hold. According to Google, when Hold for Me is enabled, it saves up to eight minutes per call on average.
The latest feature drop also adds the Extreme Battery Saver mode to older Pixel models. This is also a feature of Pixel 5 that uses an aggressive method to prolong runtimes. It does this by reducing the functionality of the phone to the bare minimum while still keeping the phone usable. Extreme Battery Saver pauses all apps in the background, restricts notifications, throttles back the CPU, and trims the Pixel’s screen time to 30 seconds max.
Next, Duo group calls now support screen sharing — which previously existed for one-to-one calls only. However, it seems like there is a bandwidth issue in this feature. The company says that one needs to connect to either a Wi-Fi or a 5G connection to support it. Apart from this, December 2020 feature drop brings an upgrade to the Google Photos editor, adding new suggestions.
Other additional features include Adaptive Sound, new abilities to Google Lens, and a few additions to the home screen. The first one automatically adjusts the equalizer for audio quality depending on the surroundings. While, Google Lens gets new translation abilities for apps and websites.
On the other hand, Pixel owners get new icons, grid views, app shapes, and new wallpapers on their home screen. Further, Pixel phones can now detect songs playing in the surroundings and add them to the Now Playing list when the “Now Playing” option is turned on.
