What’s perhaps worse though is that Google and Apple aren’t doing much to highlight the limited availability of these features. When announcing the Pixel 8 line and iOS 17, Google and Apple shouted about the updates to Call Screen and the new Live Translate feature, but you’d have to look in the small print to learn that most of the world doesn’t actually have access to them.
Or, if you're looking at Google's or Apple's sites for your region then these features may not be mentioned at all. That's fair enough, except that the announcement and inevitably most of the online coverage did mention such features, so people will understandably be expecting them to be included.
And sometimes they are mentioned. The official overview of the Pixel 8 Pro on Google's UK store for example currently mentions a feature that the small print then says is US-exclusive. If that's not misleading, I don't know what is.
And yes, these are US companies and they announced these features on US soil, but they’re selling their phones globally, and in vast numbers. So it’s important to offer an equal product and service everywhere, as much as possible. Or at the very least to make it crystal clear to buyers what they will and won’t actually get.
