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Allison Johnson

Allison Johnson

Allison reviews smartphones and covers wireless carriers for The Verge. Previously, she wrote about digital cameras and mobile photography at DPReview. She's a small phone enthusiast, home barista in training, and a roller derby retiree. You can find her on Threads most hours of the day at @allisonjo1.

Gadgets

HMD’s Barbie flip phone goes extremely hard

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European iPhones are more fun now

An iPhone used to be an iPhone no matter where you used it. That’s not the case anymore.

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Allison Johnson
Maybe AI was a bad idea after all.

I got Pixel Studio, Google’s AI image generation tool on the Pixel 9, to come up with some questionable things. But they’re nothing like what the folks over at Digital Trends got out of it, which feature popular cartoon characters firing AK47s, drunk driving, and donning Nazi uniforms. Google seems to have clamped down on some of these, but oof, not a good look.


I tried Google's new Pixel Studio app, and it's a mess | Digital Trends

[Digital Trends]

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Verge Score

Google Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL review: AI all over the place

The AI is inconsistent, but the hardware is oh so good.

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Google

Google’s AI ‘Reimagine’ tool helped us add wrecks, disasters, and corpses to our photos

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The AI photo editing era is here, and it’s every person for themselves

We’re all going to learn how comfortable we are in the AI photo era — and it’s going to happen real fast.

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Google

Google Meet’s latest update includes a new UI and in-call messaging

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Allison Johnson
Take us to the demo sandbox, Rick.

“Everything we’ve shown you is launching in the next few weeks.” Osterloh is wrapping things up and tells us that Project Astra is going to live in Gemini Live. Apps will integrate with Gemini Live, too, and he tells us to “stay tuned.”


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Allison Johnson
“Let’s talk live.”

We’re getting a live demo of the Buds Pro 2 and Gemini Live, which led into an awkward introduction for YouTuber Mark Rober.


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Allison Johnson
New chip alert!

Google Tensor A1 is inside the new Pixel Buds Pro 2 to handle processing for noise cancellation. The buds are smaller and lighter, too, and they’re the first earbuds to let you access Gemini directly.