Google's product strategy changed a lot in 2016—the Nexus line is gone, and all hardware has been united under the Rick Osterloh. In general, Google seems to be taking a more measured approach to all its products and services now. My work (and therefore much of my life) revolves around Google's products, particularly Android. It's a good time to be a Google nerd. Here are my favorite Google and Android things of 2016.

Google Pixel

I've used Nexus phones for as long as they've existed, and now they don't anymore. I think I'm okay with that because the Pixel is the best phone Google has ever made—it's actually the best Android phone you can buy right now, in my opinion. There are things I could complain about like the high price or lack of water-resistant design, but it's overall such a compelling phone that I recommend it to people wholeheartedly.

The Pixel has a Snapdragon 821 SoC, 4GB of RAM, and 32/128GB of storage. It's specced very well, but it's also very well-optimized. The Pixel is without a doubt the fastest Android phone I've ever used. What's more, it stays fast. I've been using it most of the time since it came out, and there's no discernable drop in speed. I also love that there's a small version of the phone that doesn't make a million compromises simply because phablets tend to sell better. The 5-inch Pixel is every bit as fast as the 5.5-inch XL.

The Pixel also finally nails the camera. This is one place that Google always had trouble with the Nexus phones. Even the Nexus 6P, which had a very good camera, wasn't best-in-class because of its sluggish performance. The Pixel snaps photos quickly, accurately, and it's easy to access. Just a double-press of the home button and the camera is open and ready to take a photo instantly.

Google has worked out so many of the little kinks in Android over the last couple years, and the Pixel puts it all on display. I can leave my phone sitting overnight without plugging it in, and the battery barely drains at all. The quick settings are fully customizable and extensible via apps too. Oh, and the fingerprint security it great. Apps are finally taking advantage of that, and the Pixel has a fantastic sensor—rear-facing, the way it should be. Then there's Google Assistant, which is smart and useful, but I like it more in Home. I'll get to that in a minute.

Look, the Pixel isn't perfect, but I think it's the best Android device you can get. The price is high, but it's commensurate with the quality. Thankfully, Google has opted to offer interest-free financing on the phones, which puts the $650+ price tag in reach of more people.

Google Home

I don't use voice commands on my phone too much, partially because I don't want to be that guy talking to his phone in public. It just strikes me as weird. Google Home puts Assistant in my office, which I do find quite useful. It helps that the microphones are incredible. It's across the room and I don't have to shout.

Home is basically the embodiment of Assistant, Google's attempt to get its AI into your living space. It plugs into smart home devices and Google services. This can be very useful if you're deep into Google's ecosystem. I like being able to tell Home to play music, which it can do on its own speaker or on any of the Chromecast targets I have in the house. It also recently gained the ability to cast and control Netflix, which I've been using a lot.

In addition to writing about Android, I spend a great deal of time covering topics in science. That involves looking up various factoids and figures. That usually means stopping the writing process and doing a quick search. With Home, I can just ask Google about stuff like that. For example, I'm not likely to remember the exact date Curiosity landed on mars, but if I want to incorporate that into an article, I can just say, "OK Google, when did Curiosity land on Mars?" Google knows this, so Google Home tells me. It's really slick. I love it for converting units too. That's something that also comes up a lot.

Google is adding more smart home services to Home, as well as general web services. The web services (like Alexa skills) are a bit clunky and there's virtually no discoverability. That's a bummer, but I like Home a lot overall.

Google PhotoScan

Google talks a big game when it comes to AI and machine learning, and we're finally getting to a place where we actually see the benefit of these advances in consumer products. One of the most obvious for me has been Google PhotoScan. This app came out a few weeks ago at a perfect time for me. We recently got a cache of old family photo albums from my wife's family. PhotoScan makes digitizing photos really easy.

A desktop scanner is traditionally the best way to create digital versions of photos. It eliminates glare and perspective distortion that you'd get just taking a photo of a photo, but I've never used a desktop scanner that wasn't a huge pain in the butt. The software is bad, they're slow, and they still make mistakes. PhotoScan isn't perfect, but it's damn close.

PhotoScan uses your phone's camera, but it doesn't just snap a photo of a photo. You take a framing image, then the app generates four points in the viewfinder in different areas of the photo. Simply hover the viewfinder over each point until the progress bar fills up, and you're done. Each photo takes about 10-15 seconds.

The app uses machine learning to take all the visual data it acquired and eliminate glare. Then, it splits up each section of the photo into smaller segments and applies transformations to ensure everything fits together without distortion. Everything you scan can be uploaded seamlessly to Google Photos for safekeeping. It's slick, and it's making my life much easier at the moment.

Google Keep

Keep has been around for a few years, but I've noticed my usage has really skyrocketed in the last year or so. I used to use Evernote, but that service has gotten so cluttered over time, and now there are sync limits that push you toward a premium plan. I feel like Keep is an underappreciated product with a lot of features that aren't widely known. It does everything I need a note app to do.

I use Keep to stay on top of all the projects I'm working on (including Tested). Features and reviews for each site are listed so I can tell at a glance what I need to get done. It's also how I track all the apps I'm considering for the weekly roundups. I have checklists and notes for tons of work and personal things, and it was actually getting a little crowded. The addition of pinned notes recently has made the app easier to use, though. Google added shared notes about a year ago as well, which has been hugely useful.

Whenever I meet someone in a business setting and end up with their card, I don't even bother to keep track of it. I just take a picture in Keep and toss it (or give it back). Keep can extract all the text from the card and make it searchable. Keep even plugs into Google Docs (which I use extensively) to create documents from your notes in a few taps.

These are by no means all the Google products and features I like, just the ones I feel have had a particularly big impact on my productivity in 2016. Who knows what 2017 will bring? There's always something big brewing in the Googleplex.