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Comment by syncbehind | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the audio magic eraser feature will make it to older pixel phones. That and the best-shot one seemed very interesting.

It also seems very arbitrarily limited to the newer ones, 7/7pro seem like they should be more than capable of driving these features.

Is software limiting going to be the norm going forward for phones?

Because, I don't think this is worth upgrading from last years phones from a hardware basis.

Perhaps, we've reached a point in smartphones where the development cycles will be more iterative, instead of truly groundbreaking.

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I think we've been there for quite some time. iOS is also limiting certain features based on model like this. The new 15 has certain image processing features the 14 Pro doesn't get, even though they have the same SoC.

I couldn't find a comprehensive history of all the features that have debuted on a new phone and then been allowed on older phones, but it's fairly common. 2 examples are listed here: https://www.phonearena.com/news/pixel-6-series-gets-pixel-7-...

Yep, I expect most of these to make it to older pixels but probably not for a few months. There are some that probably require the newer Tensor G3 chip though, which can't be backported.

Not really, I have a Pixel 4a 5G that doesn't come with magic eraser but because I pay for Google One, they gave me access to it.

So I doubt there are really any limitations on the hardware themselves or that you absolutely need the new version. Google just paywalling the features.

I bet you all those will be available very soon for Google One subscribers.

Yes, but magic eraser is something that can be easily done off-device in the cloud. Real-time audio shaping cannot with introducing unacceptable latencies. There are no doubt some things they'll roll back to older Pixels, but they can't do everything new on this year's release without hardware.

The same thing happened with photo magic eraser, but it eventually was released for other devices.

They've already been limiting some of the "AI" image editing features to newer pixels (but installing the same app package on older phones works just fine).

Is that confirmed? Do you have any further sources on that? I am not questioning, just interested in learning more. I had kinda assumed that the new chips had new instructions that supported these features. Kinda lame if they are literally just gating them to new phones.

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