I guess in reality I can't comment until I try a 13 Pro myself. I just don't take any of these reviewers words seriously. All I watch the videos for is to see the actual devices compared to others for colour purposes.As iPhone colour saturations always change year on year.
I personally don't agree that these upgrades are substantial. Battery, sure but we generally see companies always try and improve battery year on year, so for me that one is expected.
Camera. I'm not seeing a significant upgrade, so would need to try it myself. I've always liked iPhone cameras though as they're probably the most reliable. They snap photos very quickly and I find results are generally always useable.
But when it comes to zoom I think it's lacking still.
Your point about there being more pressure on Google though? I don't think Google cares too much otherwise they could have tried to get the release in line or before / just after the iPhone release. But we still don't know when it'll be. I do think they are trying harder than they have before though. The early advertising of a phone that hasn't even come out yet is quite telling and unusual for them.
Similarly I also don't think Apple care what Google do. Apple could release the exact same phone next year in new colours but this time with just an AoD as a single new feature, and people would flock to it.
If Apple did care about the competition I think they'd have done more with zoom lenses as Huawei and Samsung have both shown over the years what good results you can get with zoom lenses. Everyone at one stage was waiting for Apple to implement something and here we are with... A 3x telephoto.
I think Google just need a release not plagued with issues and let the device do the talking. I'm quite confident they will get it right. Famous last words...
When it comes to battery improvements, sure it's pretty common with processor and battery size increases to get a little better each each. But to improve by several hours of SOT is a giant leap.
As for the cameras, sure we'll have to see. I think them adding basically a preference selection based on the users personal taste is huge. It's basically a dynamic filter that will scale color based on whether you prefer iPhone colors, Samsung saturated colors, or Google's in between colors. That's pretty cool. And the cinema video mode looks pretty solid from the demos Ive seen but it remains to be seen how useful that is.
Where I think you're way off is saying Google doesn't care about Apple. That couldn't be further from the truth. It's clear that Google is trying to immitate Apple. They have been more years. OS creator making their own hardware and soc tailored to their OS....sound familiar? Apple is Googles only real competition in the smartphone world. Samsung is more of a competitive partner but they still benefit from Samsungs success as it's still their software. I don't think it's any coincidence that Google announced the hardware prior to Apples event. Releasing at the same time would have been idiotic. Apple would've overshadowed the Pixel 6 release and stolen their press coverage. It would have been a dumb move.
