Sega and Microsoft have announced a strategic alliance that explores ways for Sega to produce large-scale, global games in a next-generation development environment built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. The alliance forms a key part of Sega’s mid to long-term strategy, allowing it to move forward with its “Super Game” initiative to develop new and innovative titles focused on “global,” “online,” “community,” and “IP utilization.”
The companies have agreed upon the foundation for this alliance and will look to build further technological evolutions through mutual cooperation, with areas such as ‘network infrastructure and communication tools required for global online services’ being a key priority. And by shifting to a next-generation development platform, Sega can effectively adapt to diversifying work styles and potential infrastructural changes.
“With the world now more connected than ever following the widespread deployment of 5G and cloud services in recent years, consumers can more easily enjoy high-quality entertainment content at any time,” Sega said in a press release. “Within this highly connected environment, the ecosystem surrounding the games industry continues to evolve and expand as more sophisticated tools and technologies become available. As such, video games continue to grow as a major medium for gamers globally, with access to a vast range of gaming experiences and communities becoming more diverse and attainable. This proposed alliance represents SEGA looking ahead, and by working with Microsoft to anticipate such trends as they accelerate further in future, the goal is to optimize development processes and continue to bring high-quality experiences to players using Azure cloud technologies.”
Find comments from Sega and Microsoft below.
Yukio Sugino, President and COO, SEGA Corporation
“We are very pleased to announce today that we are considering a strategic alliance with Microsoft to help develop SEGA’s new ‘Super Game’ initiative as well as build a next-generation game development environment. By considering a strategic partnership with Microsoft, we seek to further advance our game development so that our titles can be enjoyed by fans all over the world; in this regard, we aim to build an alliance that utilizes both SEGA’s powerful game development capabilities and Microsoft’s cutting-edge technology and development environment.”
Sarah Bond, CVP, Microsoft Corporation
“SEGA has played such an iconic role in the gaming industry and has been a tremendous partner over the years. We look forward to working together as they explore new ways to create unique gaming experiences for the future using Microsoft cloud technologies. Together we will reimagine how games get built, hosted, and operated, with a goal of adding more value to players and SEGA alike.”
An investigation by The Financial Times found that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube lost around $9.85 billion in revenue following Apple’s changes to its privacy practices. Last year, Apple announced the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy that requires apps to ask permission to track users’ data. The policy went into effect in April, barring apps from tracking users if they opt out.
Facebook notably criticized the move with a full-page newspaper ad, and thanks to the FT’s report, now we know why company leaders were so frustrated. According to the report, Facebook lost the most money “in absolute terms” when compared to other social platforms due to its massive size. Meanwhile, Snap “fared the worst as a percentage of its business” because its advertising is mainly tied to smartphones, which makes sense for a product that doesn’t have a desktop version.
“Some of the platforms that were most impacted — but especially Facebook — have to rebuild their machinery from scratch as a result of ATT,” adtech consultant Eric Seufert told FT. “My belief is that it takes at least one year to build new infrastructure. New tools and frameworks need to be developed from scratch and tested extensively before being deployed to a high number of users.”
Apple’s new policy will force social platforms and other apps to get more creative with their advertising. Whether this means focusing on Android devices or investing in Apple’s advertising business — which nearly broke its own rules by quietly collecting user data in the same way third-party apps did — they’ll have to figure out another source of revenue that doesn’t involve tracking people on their iPhones.
As Apple continues to cull its catalog of Intel-powered Macs, it looks like the 21.5-inch iMac is finally being put out to pasture. Yet another causality of Apple’s shift to using its homegrown M1 processor in every product.
Apple quietly pulled the entry-level PC from Apple Store Online this week, Mac Rumors reports. In a statement to the outlet, Apple confirmed that the machine is being discontinued and will no longer be sold in Apple stores. According to archived data reviewed by 9 to 5 Mac, the 21.5-inch iMac’s listing appears to have been taken down sometime on Friday. Not that it was particularly easy to find in the first place, as the listing had apparently been buried on a relatively hard-to-find store page. Additionally, when you bring up the 21.5-inch iMac on Apple’s product comparison page, a “Buy” button no longer appears beneath an image of the product.
As for the PC itself, Apple sold the 21.5-inch iMac in a single configuration that, for just $1,099, got you a four-generation old, dual-core Intel processor, a 1080p display, and a terabyte of storage. Apple already dropped two other configurations, the options for 512GB and 1TB of SSD storage for the 21.5-inch iMac with 4K display, back in March.
The discontinuation comes just six months after Apple first showed off its M1-powered iMacs, which joined the ranks of product lines like the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac Mini that Apple has revamped with its new proprietary processor.
This is all pretty much par for the course for Apple. Even before it started phasing out its Intel-powered machines and shifting over to the M1 processor, the tech giant has a history of keeping its legacy Macs and other outdated product lines available for a while before quietly axing them without offering any explanation. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment and will update this blog should we hear back.
Apple’s lineup of Intel-based iMacs isn’t completely dead yet, though. For now, you can still get a 27-inch iMac in a couple of different configurations, but how long those will remain available is anyone’s guess. Rumor has it Apple is planning to roll out a revamped 27-inch iMac Pro with a mini-LED display and the latest M1 Pro and M1 Max chips as soon as the first half of 2022.
Meta — formerly known as Facebook — has now acquired virtual reality fitness developer Supernatural.
While financial details of the new deal have not been disclosed, the VR fitness subscription service will join Meta completely, with all staff members in the startup being offered roles in Meta. Supernatural’s CEO Chris Milk will also be joining, pointing out that the acquisition will give his firm “more resources to expand.” The company itself provides services similar to those of Peloton, using VR to provide training sessions to those at home.
“Our larger hope is that we can bring in a whole new type of audience into virtual reality that might not have been interested in it for the use case it has been promoted for thus far,” explained Milk earlier last year.
The new acquisition comes shortly after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the role fitness will play within the expansion of its VR division during its Meta Connect conference earlier this week. The company will also be launching workout accessories created to be used in tandem with the Meta Quest headset sometime next year.
Elsewhere in the tech world, TikTok is testing a new feature that allows viewers to send tips to content creators.
Google Home, the companion app for Google’s smart home products, is changing the way users interact with photos on the app and on Nest Hub devices. 9to5Google first noticed the changes, which include a revamped Photo Frame settings menu.
Now, when you use Google Home to change the displayed album while your Nest Hub is idle, you’ll see a carousel-style UI that gives you the option to choose from curated groups of photos, categorized as “Select family & friends,” “Recent highlights,” and “Favorites,” 9to5Google reports. Scroll past that, and you’ll be able to see all the albums that you’ve created.
A preview window appears at the bottom of the page, and you can swipe through the preview carousel to see how your pictures will look when displayed on your Nest Hub. 9to5Google also notes that the time and weather are displayed at the bottom-left corner of the preview window on iOS, but only the photo appears on Android.
In addition to the new Photo Frame settings, 9to5Google also reports that the Nest Hub may be getting a new clock face option that includes the beloved Weather Frog. Also known as Froggy, the character first became available on the Nest Hub as a display option that shows the time, along with an animated depiction of the current weather conditions.
9to5Google found that there’s a new option in the Photo Frame menu, called Google Weather Frog, and its description on the app implies you’ll be able to display Froggy alongside weather conditions and your photos. The feature appears to be unfinished, so it remains unclear just how Froggy might interact with your photos once it’s officially released.
After a two-year hiatus, the Los Angeles Auto Show is returning in November to the Los Angeles Convention Center, promising the sort of global product reveals, press announcements and consumer tire-kicking that has characterized traditional auto shows over the last few decades.
It’ll be fascinating to see whether the show now named AutoMobility LA-LA Auto Show regains some lost traction for this highly threatened form of automotive marketing — or underscores why auto shows have become so endangered, on the brink of becoming irrelevant and even extinct.
The L.A. show is putting on a game face in advance, promising to bring to America’s top car-buying market news announcement by “legacy” automakers including Hyundai, Kia, Porsche and Subaru as well as by all-new, Southern California-based brands Fisker and Mullen Automotive. The show also announced that Vietnam’s first global automaker, VinFast, will launch its brand and products there.
After a two-day period of news conferences and press reveals, the L.A. show will open its one million square feet of indoor and outdoors space to the general public, with the hope that local consumers have been champing at the bit to be able to slam doors and look under the hoods of real instead of virtual sheetmetal. Also, electric-vehicle makes and the overall battery-powered proposition will have a shot at wowing potential buyers in America’s prime EV market.
“Our fans are eager to get back out in-person and reignite what’s become a November tradition in Los Angeles,” said Terri Toennies, president of AutoMobility LA and the LA Auto Show, in a press release.
But the L.A. show in truth will be fighting uphill against a recent deterioration in the basic appeal of traditional auto exhibitions — not so much to consumers, but to the automakers and suppliers who for many years have shelled out millions of dollars to purchase the shows’ unmatched platforms for press attention in advance of the admittance of the car-buying public.
Deadly competition has come to auto shows like the U.S. marquee events in L.A., Detroit, New York and Chicago in two forms. First, as an adjunct to Silicon Valley’s invasion of the automobile through EVs and autonomous vehicles, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas boldly elbowed into auto shows’ space by amping up its focus on car-related technologies over the last few years. Affected but unbowed by the pandemic and planning a lot of auto-related announcements and content, the annual CES will be staged again in early January, 2022.
At the same time, auto brands have been worrying about the end of the industry’s several-year strong run of increasing sales and wringing their hands about marketing expenses. Increasingly, they can stage their own in-person reveals with a handpicked audience of influencers — or just launch new products online and via social media and avoid the huge expense of staging an extravaganza at L.A. or other auto shows.
The Detroit auto show, known as the North American International Auto Show, seems to have gotten the worst of this turn of events, which of course also has included the stultifying effects of covid. The last traditional NAIAS, annually staged in January, was in early 2019. Show officials saw the writing on the wall for 2020 and planned to move NAIAS to the summer, capitalizing on better weather and taking advantage of auto-related venues and interests all around metro Detroit instead of just in the downtown convention center.
The pandemic scotched those plans, and NAIAS finally ended up scheduling a vastly scaled-down outside event for last September called Motor Bella, in Pontiac, Michigan. Torrential rains for two days ruined that event.
But even before thunderstorms doused Motor Bella, Toyota’s marketing plan around the crucial launch of its all-new 2022 Toyota Tundra spoke volumes about the fate of today’s auto shows. Instead of choosing to take the wraps off the model at Motor Bella, the L.A. show or any other physical auto exhibition, Toyota figuratively unveiled the new Tundra to the American public on September 19 during a telecast of the National Football League’s Sunday Night Football, with a 60-second commercial titled “Born from Invincible.” Only a few days later was Tundra scheduled to make its “auto-show debut” in Michigan at Motor Bella.
“This spot served as our reveal opportunity, in the absence of a traditional auto show due to covid,” Lisa Materazzo, head of marketing for Toyota, told me. “Like many other OEMs, we’re considering how we introduce new vehicles to the marketplace. It gave us the opportunity to be creative [in the ad] as well.
“The moment we’re pulling the silk off a vehicle and revealing it to the world was different this year, and it actually made for a unique and innovative and engaging way.”
Apple's new 2021 MacBook Pro is now out in the wild and details pertaining to the new models keep on pouring in. Externally, the new machines not only look great but bolster productivity through various peripherals. However, Apple has also made numerous changes on the inside that allows for better thermals and battery. Now, iFixit has released the full teardown video of the 2021 MacBook Pro that highlights several important aspects.
We have previously covered a teaser teardown of the new 2021 MacBook Pro models that highlighted iPhone-like battery pull tabs. iFixit reveals in its teardown that the new models are easier to open compared to previous models. As mentioned earlier, Apple is using pull tabs for battery replacement rather than gluing them to the chassis. Nonetheless, repairing would still not be that simple due to the fact that the speaker system is situated close to the batteries. Moreover, the battery tabs can be accessed once you have removed the trackpad.
In addition to the changes, the fans are no bigger as well compared to the previous-gen MacBook Pro models. Since the overall design is now thicker, it gives more room for the speakers for better sound. While the battery is smaller than before with 99.6W, the new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips deliver enhanced battery life. The display cable is updated in order to avoid "Flexgate" which was present in the past MacBook Pro models.
As for repairs, all the USB-C ports, MagSafe port, and headphone jack are modular. However, the SDcard slot and the HDMI port are soldered on the logic board which is a downside when it comes to the 2021 MacBook Pro repairability. Henceforth, iFixit has given the new 2021 MacBook Pro a repairability score of 4 out of 10 in its teardown of the machine. This also has to do with the pentalobe screws, the proprietary component support, and more.
You can check out the full teardown of the 14-inch MacBook Pro which is similar to the 16-inch MacBook Pro. This is all for now, folks. Share your views with us in the comments section below.
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CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - Two people were taken into custody by law enforcement officials after allegedly stealing a car and then leading officers on a chase.
Quintin Vincent Green, 31, of Oneida, Wisc., and Nancy Marie Moreno, 37, of Sheboygan, Wisc., were arrested by the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office. Charges were not yet specified by officials, but they said that multiple felony and misdemeanor charges were pending.
At around 8:53 a.m. on Saturday, October 30, the sheriff’s office received a report of a vehicle that was stolen near Farmersburg. The initial report said that a red car was present at the time that the vehicle was stolen, and that both were seen driving south on Iowa Highway 13.
Deputies said that they located the two vehicles near the intersection of 230th Street and Highway 13, but they refused to pull over. Instead, the vehicles allegedly led deputies on a chase.
The driver of the allegedly stolen vehicle attempted to elude deputies until they reached Elkader and attempted to flee on foot. The red car drove to an area on Crystal Road, east of Strawberry Point, before coming to a stop.
Speeds on the pursuit allegedly exceeded 85 mph, according to deputies.
The Strawberry Point Police, Iowa State Patrol, Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, Buchanan County Sheriff’s Office, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Delaware County Sheriff’s Office, and Elkader Police Department assisted in the emergency response.
An investigation into the matter is ongoing. Green and Moreno are being held at the Clayton County Jail.
Copyright 2021 KCRG. All rights reserved.
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This may be one of your best chances of scoring a smart speaker or e-reader before the holiday rush. Amazon is selling multiple recent Echo devices (plus a Kindle reader) at very low prices. To start, the fourth-generation Echo speaker is on sale for just $60 (usually $100), or the same as its Prime Day pricing. You can also buy the new Echo Show 5 for an all-time low of $55 (normally $85), while its larger Echo Show 8 counterpart has dropped to $100 (typically $130).
Buy Echo (4th-Gen) on Amazon - $60 Buy Echo Show 5 on Amazon - $55 Buy Echo Show 8 on Amazon - $100You might also appreciate the Kindle deal if you're a book lover. Amazon is selling the standard Kindle (with ads) for just $50 — that's $40 below its official sticker, and even better than the Prime Day price. You'll get a similar discount on the ad-free version, which sells for $70. Either price drop makes the Kindle an easy choice if you prefer to wind down with a digital book at the end of the day.
The Echo devices are safe choices. The fourth-gen Echo sounds great for the money and boasts a memorable design along with Alexa's healthy ecosystems for smart home devices and skills. The newer Echo Show 5 and 8, meanwhile, build on that Alexa know-how with visuals. The Show 5 fits best as a bedside clock, while the 8 works well for video calls or as a family hub in the kitchen or living room. The main hiccups are simply the interface and streaming app selections — Google has a slight edge in both departments, but that might not matter much if you're mainly using voice commands or checking the news and weather.
Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by visiting our deals homepage and following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter.
Consumer Reports spent a year on an investigative report into auto loans. The magazine's findings aren't exactly surprising to any car enthusiast — a frightening number of people are overcharged for car loans. But while we enthusiasts know this in our hearts, CR has the juicy, juicy data to back it up.
CR gathered its information on almost 858,000 loans from 17 lenders, as well as borrower data including credit scores, income and employment status. These were obtained from mandatory filings submitted to the the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2019 and 2020 detailing asset-backed securities, which are car loans bundled into an asset investors can buy into. Obviously there are more than 858,000 outstanding car loans in the country, but CR could only look at the loans that required public disclosure.
To put the sample size in context, an Experian report from February of 2021 put total U.S. auto loan debt at $1.37 trillion and the average auto loan balance at $19,865. Multiplying CR's 858,000 borrowers by $20,000 gives us $17.1 billion — about 1.2% of the total outstanding debt. On top of the raw data, CR said it examined "thousands of pages of regulatory filings, court records, trade publications, industry reports, financial records, public documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and [interviewed] more than 90 federal and state regulators, advocacy organizations, consumers, lawyers, legal experts, academics, and industry groups."
Along with longer loans being the norm, CR said the average monthly payment is nearly $600, when 10 years ago it was about $450. Around 8 million Americans are more than 90 days late on those payments. And a regrettable number of loans start off badly, with CR saying 46% of the loans in the data it reviewed were underwater from the get-go, to the tune of $4,000 on average.
Buyers with the same credit scores would get charged wildly different interest rates, with "dealers and lenders setting interest rates based on what they think they can get away with." This was true even for people with prime and super-prime credit scores, the latter starting at 720 and above. It was also regardless of buyer race and ethnicity since that information isn't included in the SEC filings.
CR said around 21,000 borrowers in its data set with credit scores higher than 720 were paying off loans with APRs of 10% or more. Two California buyers, each with a prime credit score and each trying to buy a 2017 Chevrolet Trax, financed through GM Financial. One buyer got a loan with a 4.9% APR, the other a loan with a 14.1% APR.
A 2018 Toyota Camry buyer in Maryland, whose "sterling credit" would normally merit a 4.5% APR, instead accepted a six-year loan at 19%. If the buyer had paid off the loan, they would have spent $59,000 on the Camry by the end of 2025. Instead, the car was repossessed.
The issue has occasionally put dealers and lenders at odds with one another. For buyers in the data set, lenders verified income just 4% of the time, which was more often than they verified employment. When the banks don't do their diligence about a buyer's loan worthiness, such as verifying income or employment, the dealer can end up with skyrocketing repossessions. In one case in South Carolina, the lending bank even went after the dealership for the bad loans; the dealer then in turn sued the bank.
One of the crucial takeaways here is the glaring need for consumer education. While the lenders that would go on record told CR buyers have options when it comes to financing, which is incontestably true, a large number of buyers are not aware of (and thus have not been informed about) their options or simply don't have the time or resources to properly research them. Car buyers are irrationally focused on the car's purchase price or the monthly payment, not how much they'll pay through the life of the loan. For some reason, many in the data set expect the dealer to do the best for the buyer.
How often do you suppose that actually happened?
Look no further than the fact that, per CR, at least 80% of car financing is arranged through dealers, who are legally allowed to mark up a lender's APR by 1%-2%. Paul Metrey, an SVP at the National Automobile Dealers Association, told CR "there is no financial incentive for dealers to present longer-term or more expensive credit options to consumers." But it seems absurd to us to think that GM Financial wouldn't find a way to reward a GM dealer who goosed a loan for an extra 2%. It's hard to turn down free money.
Head over CR to check out the entire story. It's long, but it should be required reading for everyone getting a loan from any lender to buy any kind of vehicle.
Warhol said, "Art is what you can get away with." So is auto financing.
In this Google Pixel 6 Pro vs. iPhone 13 Pro Max face-off, we’ll break down how these two big phones stack up. It’s quite an interesting race in more ways than one, especially when it comes to cameras. The Pixel 6 Pro is the best phone Google has ever made, and it’s certainly one of the best Android phones you can buy right now.
But the Pixel 6 Pro is taking on a big challenge by squaring off against the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Apple’s biggest phone remains a heavyweight among the best camera phones, and it’s got the best-performing mobile silicon in the form of the A15 Bionic processor.
The iPhone 13 Pro max is certainly a challenging opponent to go up against. Not only is it a powerful camera phone, but it’s got a bright and beautiful display and stellar battery life. Despite a tired design, the latest big iPhone is definitely the phone to beat. Google has a lot of ground to cover to come even close.
This face-off will pit Google and Apple’s best against each other in a battle for supremacy. There can only be one winner.
| Pixel 6 Pro | iPhone 13 Pro Max | |
| Starting price | $899 | $1,099 |
| Screen size | 6.71-inch OLED (3120 x 1440) | 6.7-inch OLED (2778 x 1284) |
| Refresh rate | 10-120Hz | 10-120Hz |
| CPU | Tensor | A15 Bionic |
| RAM | 12GB | 6GB |
| Storage | 128GB, 256GB, 512GB | 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB |
| Rear cameras | 50MP (f/1.85) main, 12MP (f/2.2) ultrawide, 48MP (f/3.5) telephoto with 4x optical zoom | 12MP (f/1.5) main, 12MP (f/1.8) ultrawide, 12MP (f/2.8) telephoto with 3x optical zoom |
| Front camera | 11MP (f/2.2) | 12MP (f/2.2) |
| Water resistance | IP68 up to 1.5 m | IP68 up to 6 m |
| Battery size | 5,000 mAh | N/A |
| Battery life (Hrs:Mins) | 7:49 (Adaptive) / 7:55 (60Hz) | 12:16 |
| Size | 6.5 x 3.0 x 0.4 inches | 6.3 x 3.1 x 0.3 inches |
| Weight | 7.4 ounces | 8.5 ounces |
Simply put, Google wins out over the iPhone 13 Pro Max in this category. The Pixel 6 Pro starts at $200 less than the iPhone 13 Pro Max while offering competitive features. You also get the same 128GB of storage in the $899 Pixel 6 Pro as you do in the $1,099 iPhone 13 Pro Max.
Both phones offer 256GB for an extra $100, but the 512GB Pixel 6 Pro is only a $200 markup on the base price; the 512 iPhone 13 Pro Max costs $300 more than the 128GB version. Apple fans can also get a crazy 1TB config for an eye-watering $1,599.
There’s a lot to be said for a flagship costing less than $1,000. When it comes down to it, the Pixel 6 Pro offers such a great experience for the money.
Winner: Pixel 6 Pro
In terms of design, the Pixel 6 Pro is a huge step away from Pixels of old. The whole phone looks and feels premium, and there’s the new camera bar that spans the width of the phone. The camera patch, the square in the corner, that we’ve grown accustomed to since Google added multiple lenses, is gone. It’s unclear whether the Pixel A series will keep the spartan design it has now, or if Google will revamp those phones, too.
The iPhone 13 Pro Max looks much the same as its predecessor, except with a smaller notch and a bigger camera hump. But the squared-off edges, which I really don’t find ergonomic, remain — this is especially relevant because the phone is a wide 3.1 inches. The iPhone 13 Pro Max overall feels like a very safe design, like Apple didn’t want to take too many chances with this iteration of its smartphones.
Both phones are IP68-certified, but the iPhone 13 Pro Max wins out with a deeper rating, 6 meters versus the Pixel’s 1.5 meters. Both are rated for 30 minutes underwater.
It’s hard to call a winner here because both phones feel and look great. The camera humps, whether the square patch on the iPhone or the bar on the Pixel, do interfere with some game controllers like the Razer Kishi, so you may want to opt for something like the Xbox One controller if you’re going to play controller-supported games on either phone.
But we have to crown a winner and that’s the iPhone 13 Pro Max by a slim margin because of its stronger water resistance.
Winner: iPhone 13 Pro Max
The Pixel 6 Pro sports a 6.7-inch QHD+ OLED display with a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate. The iPhone 13 Pro Max also has a 6.7-inch OLED screen, only with a 2778 x 1284 resolution. It does have a dynamic display that scales up to 120Hz or down to 10Hz.
Both displays are great with excellent colors and brightness, but the iPhone 13 Pro Max takes a significant lead on the latter element, hitting a max of 1,038 nits of brightness in our testing. The Pixel 6 Pro managed 842 nits, which is noticeably dimmer in direct sunlight.
For the sRGB spectrum, the Pixel 6 Pro managed to reproduce 104% while the iPhone 13 Pro Max got up to 110%. And with the more challenging DCI-P3, the Pixel reached 74% while the iPhone got a slightly better 77%. Colors are more accurate on Apple’s phone, with the iPhone 13 Pro Max beating the Pixel with its 0.21 Delta-E score. The Pixel came in at 0.3. (Numbers closer to zero are more accurate.)
In practice, both phones have remarkably similar displays aside from the brightness. Whether playing games or watching videos, either screen is great to look at. However, brightness is very important and the iPhone 13 Pro Max’s amazing 1,000-plus nits earns it a victory over the Pixel 6 Pro.
Winner: iPhone 13 Pro Max
Both the Pixel 6 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max rock triple rear cameras. Google went with a new 50MP main sensor that supposedly lets in up to 150% more light than the Pixel 5 did. The ultrawide camera sits at 12MP and the 48MP telephoto pairs with a 4x optical zoom lens. The iPhone uses a tri-12MP setup with 3x optical zoom on the telephoto camera. Around front is a 12MP selfie cam, compared to the 11MP ultrawide front camera on the Pixel 6 Pro.
This is where the two phones are closest to each other. Google and Apple are the kings of smartphone photography, besting everyone else in the industry. And with the AI smarts of Tensor and the upgraded Neural Engine in the iPhone 13 Pro Max’s processor, the computational photography on display here is just incredible.
The Pixel 6 Pro has a trick up its sleeve, Magic Eraser. This effectively removes photobombers and superfluous elements from your photos. The Pixel will recommend things to remove, or you can select things on your own. The feature’s not perfect, but wow is it amazing. But with that in mind, let’s take a look at how these cameras compare.
In this photo of the pumpkins, the differences between the two photos is slight, but you can see that the iPhone 13 Pro Max’s picture looks a tad more saturated. You can see this in the scarecrow’s shirt and background in those blues and reds, plus the red building in the back. The Pixel 6 Pro’s image almost looks washed out in comparison, but this comes down to differences in post-processing. I personally prefer the iPhone’s picture here.
Heading indoors to this produce stand, the Pixel’s shot is brighter and compensates better for the harsh lighting above. The iPhone warmed things up a bit too much in response to the cool lighting, and the image is overall dimmer than the Pixel’s. I think Google’s phone wins here.
In this ultrawide landscape shot, the Pixel has a clear advantage when it comes to brightness. The scene looks better lit thanks to the sun off to the left. That said, the iPhone captures more of the landscape due to its wider field of view. The greenish tones to the water look a bit better in the Pixel’s image, but this is, as we’ve seen thus far, a very close race. I have to call a tie here on the ultrawide test.
In these portraits of Mark Spoonauer, both phones took different approaches to the final images. The Pixel zoomed out a bit while the iPhone brought things in a little closer to focus on Mark’s face. Both phones had to compensate for the direct sunlight on the subject and both did very well, even if the Pixel compensated better in my opinion. The blur radii are very artistic, too. I think either portrait is great, but I prefer the color tones in the Pixel’s image.
This comparison between the two phones’ night modes certainly surprised me. Right away, the Pixel’s picture using Night Sight is brighter. The plant on the left is fully visible, as are the pumpkins and flowers in the foreground. The shadows remain deep, but they don’t overpower anything else in the photo, unlike the iPhone’s shot. That one is very dark, with the pink flowers on the left almost invisible.
The two selfies are quite different. The Pixel’s image has softer colors, but sharp focus on my face. It does make my hair look a bit darker than it actually is. Meanwhile, the iPhone’s selfie is brighter, but my face looks a bit too smooth. The colors look off, though, with an overall yellow-green tinge to the final image — the Pixel’s colors are more natural. But I think the iPhone’s overall brightness gives it the win here.
The Pixel 6 Pro features Motion Mode, which includes Action Pan and Long Exposure, and it’s great for those long exposure shots to create artistic photos that perfectly express movement. Action Pan focuses on a moving subject and blurs the background, while Long Exposure adds blur to moving objects within the scene. You can see the former above, with Action Pan on and off as this blue SUV drives by.
Similarly, here’s Long Exposure turned on and off. It’s a pretty cool and artistic effect, as you can see in this photo of a running fountain.
Here’s a gallery of the different iPhone 13 Pro Max Photographic Styles in different scenes. They’re definitely cool for giving your photos a unique look, but like the Pixel’s Motion Mode and many other photography gimmicks, they seem situational.
The Pixel 6 Pro’s performance in the night mode, inside shot, and portrait photos, plus the 4x optical zoom, give it the win in this camera face-off. Plus, the powerful Magic Eraser and the fun but questionably useful Motion Mode provide Pixel users with options for artsy pictures.
The iPhone 13 Pro Max is not a bad camera phone, though. In fact, it trades blows with the Pixel 6 Pro more often than not, but in our tests here, the Pixel wins out with better colors, lighting compensation, and useful features — the iPhone’s Photographic Styles are neat, but they pale in comparison to Magic Eraser, which is truly novel.
Winner: Pixel 6 Pro
Apple has long led the way on smartphone performance with its A series processors. These chips are incredible in benchmarks and tests, and that has remained true this year with the A15 Bionic in the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
But Google did something interesting this year. It ditched Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 800 series and went with its own homegrown chip. Called Tensor, this system-on-chip has opened up many possibilities for AI and machine learning applications on a smartphone. And based on our Pixel 6 benchmarks, it holds its own against the Snapdragon 888 that powers many of the best Android phones like the Galaxy S21 Ultra and OnePlus 9 Pro.
Tensor even puts up a good fight against the A15 Bionic, though Apple still maintains its lead in every regard. In Geekbench 5, for example, Apple managed 4,549 and 1,720 in multicore and single-core, respectively. The Pixel 6 Pro clocked in at 2,760 and 1,027, quite a bit lower than Apple.
But in our Adobe Premiere Rush test, where a phone transcodes a 4K clip to 1080p as quickly as possible, Tensor gained a bit more ground. The iPhone 13 Pro Max still has the record with 25 seconds, but the Pixel 6 Pro turned in a very respectable 48 seconds. For reference, the Snapdragon 888 phones we’ve run the test hover around 1 minute.
In the 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited gaming benchmark, the Google Pixel 6 Pro averaged 40 frames per second. Again, the iPhone 13 Pro Max beat it with a 68 fps average, but the Pixel beat out other Android phones in this test.
Google’s Tensor performed admirably considering it’s a first-generation product. But the A15 Bionic handily beats it in every test, so the iPhone 13 Pro Max wins here.
Winner: iPhone 13 Pro Max
While we don’t have speed comparisons between the PIxel 6 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max, we do have some opinions to offer. Apple went with the latest Qualcomm X60 5G modem this year, which offers many efficiency gains over the X55 from 2020 (that the iPhone 12 used). This has helped the iPhone 13 Pro Max’s battery life.
Google, meanwhile, appears to have gone with an older Samsung 5123 5G modem, which is roughly equivalent to the Qualcomm X55. We believe this choice is partially to blame for the poor battery life results that we’ll get to in just a minute.
5G on the Pixel 6 Pro is a bit of a crapshoot, since the unlocked model doesn’t have mmWave support. You can get a SKU with support for the faster-but-limited 5G standard, but you need to buy it from AT&T or Verizon directly, and you’ll pay a premium for it. The iPhone 13 Pro Max, however, works with all 5G standards in the US out of the box without having to worry about a carrier-specific model.
It’s a small victory, but the iPhone 13 Pro Max wins out with its easier-to-understand 5G support. And if we’re correct, its 5G modem is just better than the Pixel 6 Pro’s.
Winner: iPhone 13 Pro Max
The Pixel 6 Pro has the biggest battery we’ve ever seen in a Pixel, coming in at 5,000 mAh. Unfortunately, there is some breakdown in the pipeline because the phone’s battery life isn’t all that impressive in our testing. In fact, to get the most out of the phone, you should disable 5G because we saw a noticeable improvement when we did that.
We don’t know the exact capacity of the iPhone 13 Pro Max’s battery in milliamp-hours — Apple doesn’t disclose that data — but we know that Apple upped the size this year. This has resulted in an impressive result in the Tom’s Guide battery life test.
In our test, we task a phone to endlessly reload web pages over a cellular connection at 150 nits of brightness. Most flagship phones nowadays last around 10 hours, with the iPhone 13 Pro Max handily topping that figure at 12 hours and 16 minutes. That places Apple’s phone on the best phone battery life list.
Sadly, the Pixel 6 Pro won’t be joining it there. Google’s phone turned in a very disappointing 7 hours at 49 minutes in the dynamic refresh rate mode.
In practice, the Pixel’s battery life is not bad at all. For our test, we disable all adaptive battery settings if we can, but when I use the Pixel 6 Pro normally (with adaptive battery enabled), I regularly get through a heavy day of use with plenty of battery left.
As for charging, the Pixel 6 Pro supports 30W wired, 23W with the new Pixel Stand, and 12W with a standard Qi charger. The iPhone 13 Pro Max comes in at a lower 20W wired, 15W via MagSafe, and a measly 7.5W with a Qi charger. Neither phone ships with a charger.
But we can only crown a winner based on hard data, and because of that, the iPhone 13 Pro Max is the clear winner here with nearly four and a half more hours on the battery life test. Maybe Google can tweak how Tensor sips at the battery in the future, but that doesn’t matter right now.
Winner: iPhone 13 Pro Max
Both the Pixel 6 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max are the showcases for the newest versions of their respective operating systems. The Pixel comes with Android 12, a wholly redesigned update with a focus on personalization and privacy. iOS 15 on the iPhone 13 Pro Max also makes a stand on privacy and tweaks many core apps like FaceTime, Photos, Notes, Maps, and more. Plus, there’s the new Focus mode, which helps you filter out notifications based on what you’re doing (sleeping, working, driving, etc).
The Pixel 6 Pro has serious Assistant upgrades. It can show you wait time estimates based on historical data. Call Screen is still an industry-leading feature where Assistant can screen calls for you to weed out robocallers. Assistant now responds to more natural language, letting you clear text or decline calls with a simple command. This is also readily apparent in voice dictation — voice typing has never been more accurate than it is on the Pixel 6 Pro. You can also point your phone at a sign in a foreign language and get a near instantaneous translation to your own language.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to crown a winner here because both phones have incredibly good software. We’re left with another Android vs. iOS debate, but the Pixel simply has more useful features this year with all of the Assistant upgrades. Google is flexing the strength of Tensor and its AI smarts and the iPhone 13 Pro Max just doesn’t live up to what the Pixel’s software offers. So the Pixel wins this one, but just barely.
Winner: Pixel 6 Pro
| Pixel 6 Pro | iPhone 13 Pro Max | |
| Price (10 points) | 9 | 7 |
| Design (10 points) | 9 | 10 |
| Display (15 points) | 13 | 15 |
| Cameras (20 points) | 20 | 19 |
| Performance (15 points) | 12 | 15 |
| 5G (5 points) | 3 | 5 |
| Battery life (15 points) | 10 | 14 |
| Software (10 points) | 10 | 9 |
| Overall (100 points) | 86 | 94 |
This is a close race, but the iPhone 13 Pro Max wins by several points. It comes down to the Pixel 6 Pro’s extremely poor battery life test result. The iPhone inched ahead with its stronger performance and 5G support that isn’t a headache to sort out. While it can’t match the Pixel on price, the iPhone kept close in the other areas where the Pixel won out.
Tensor is a first-gen product, so here’s to hoping that Google can further close the gap with Apple in the coming years. And whatever Google needs to do to sort out Pixel battery life problems (which has been an issue for a long time now), it needed to happen before the Pixel 6 launched. Disabling 5G to eke out more life isn’t really an acceptable option, even if 5G in the US is still a letdown.
The Pixel 6 Pro is the best Pixel I’ve ever used and even as recently as 2020, I never would have guessed that Google could hold its own so well against Apple’s best. The Pixel 5, after all, was a device of middling appeal that sold itself on its cameras. But the Pixel 6 Pro is a truly premium experience.
But only one phone can walk away the winner and that’s the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Maybe next year, Google.
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