Google’s iconic event Made By Google, which was held in New York City, saw the launch of numerous interesting gadgets like new Pixel phones, wearables, laptops and nest devices for the home. The search engine giant also said that the products were designed with privacy in mind and were manufactured using recycled plastic.
In this article, we list down the launches from Made By Google and the technology behind it:
Nest WiFi
The Nest WiFi is a fusion of a router and a smart speaker which comes in a pack of two — Nest WiFi Router and WiFi Point. It has built-in support of Google Assistant, and the WiFi router includes a Qualcomm 400 series chipset to resolve the command of Google Assistant. It has improved performance and enables Google’s latest security features. Also, the microphone-enabled WiFi Point helps in extending the range of connectivity has a voice match feature which can recognise up to six unique voices along with multilingual support. The Nest WiFi Router and WiFi Point will be available, with Wi-Fi 5, on 4 November 2019.
Nest Mini
Google launched the second-generation version of Nest Mini yesterday. It is a smart speaker which has an integrated wall mount option. Nest Mini uses on-device machine learning techniques such as natural language understanding (NLU) and Speech Recognition. It includes a machine learning chip with up to 1 TeraOPS of computing to make responses on command.
Nest Aware
Next Aware combines the intelligent cameras called Nest Cams to provide intelligent alerts. With the existing plan, this year Google also unlocked another feature of the speaker. It includes on-device sound detection AI which detects critical sounds like smoke alarms, barking dogs, etc. send alert to the phone.
Pixelbook Go
For the Pixelbook Go, the researchers unveiled that this time they mostly focussed on enhancing the existing features rather than developing new ones. According to a blog post, the researchers mainly focused on stability, quality, and performance. Among the feature enhancements, one is the compatibility of Android applications on ChromeOS. It has been optimised for ARC++ (Android Runtime for Chrome). It is a compatibility layer which enables the app to run on the top of ChromeOS.
Talking about privacy, the researchers said that the Titan security chips in phones and laptops protect the on-device information like OS data, passwords, information from 3rd party app, etc. and one can also delete the Assistant data just by asking.
Pixel 4
Pixel 4 smartphones have faster than ever Google Assistant ability. The pixel device is built on a hybrid model which can respond to a number of requests in a comparatively fast time. The voice recording feature has a built-in speech recognition that helps in real-time transcribing. The camera has a built-in computational photography which also means a software-defined camera. In order to create more human interaction with technology like motion sensing. The Assistant is built with features like quick motion gestures and voice commands for more natural interactions.
Pixel Bud
According to the researchers, the Pixel Buds are like two floating computers. It has an integrated chip for on-device machine learning which makes the buds smarter and allows to automatically make adjustments to the volume based on the surrounding. The buds will be available in the market in spring 2020.
Stadia
Stadia is a new generation cloud gaming platform. The controller is also a cloud-based device and the interesting part here is that the shape of the controller is extracted from the handle of a knife which can be easily held. It will be available on November 19th, 2019.
Outlook
Looking at the big picture, all we can see that the tech giant Google is striving to make life easier every day, like for example, by integrating tiny radars in smartphones to make smooth gesture movements. It has set its goal for ambient computing.
One more interesting thing that we can notice from the event is that in each of the product launches, the researchers kept saying about the built-in privacy and security among the products. With the controversies that surround Apple’s Siri, Google has been leading the domain of smart assistants. For instance, it announced the intelligent option where a user can delete its assistant data without touching the device. The company has been indeed working hard on its natural language understanding (NLU) and Speech Recognition technology.
