Google's Latest Pixel Drop Adds Messaging Tricks And Tweaks

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Google’s latest Pixel Drop brings a messaging-minded bundle of updates—some to make text banter more fun, others to make it less risky.

This software update, now rolling out to most Pixel phones, begins with a Remix feature for Google’s Messages app, which allows you to recreate an image shared in a chat using AI. It runs on Google’s Nano Banana image-generation model and is coming first to users with RCS enabled on Pixel phones in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, and New Zealand.

A second component builds on the scam-detection feature that Google shipped in March, adding “Likely Scam” warnings to new-message notifications from third-party chat apps such as Discord and Telegram.

A third makes the VIPs feature that Google added in Android 16 a little more useful by prioritizing notifications of messages from the friends and family you designate as very important. Google also updates the Contacts widget for VIPs to display relevant critical alerts, such as those related to a natural disaster occurring near them.

This update can bring a respite from message overload for Pixel users. (Credit: Google)

All three of these additions work on phones as old as the 2021 Pixel 6 series, while two others require newer models. That’s not always the case with Pixel Drops, which Google regularly ships as a treat for owners of its Pixel devices; one shipped last October confined most of its features to the latest phones.

A new, AI-powered notification-summaries feature will attempt to sum up lengthy text threads. Your results may vary. I, for one, am skeptical of this tool’s ability to boil down the sometimes-bizarre banter of the group chat I’m on for a long-running Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

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This feature, which appears to be the same one that surfaced in a beta of Android 16, requires Pixel 9-series or newer phones; the Pixel 9a, with hardware insufficient to run some of Google’s on-device AI tools, doesn’t make the cut.

For some reason, a low-power mode for Google Maps, which simplifies the layout to show only the most driving-relevant information, is confined to the Pixel 10 series.

One last part of this Pixel Drop is open to phones going back to Pixel 6, the oldest phones in Google’s line to get operating-system updates. But it doesn’t add new features or options, just a new look: “theme packs” based on the flick Wicked: For Good, which Google says bring “wallpapers, icons, system sounds and GIFs inspired by the film.”