Google Pixel 2 launch event – perhaps the last big smartphone launch of year – has started, bringing us the successor to the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL. To be launched at an event in San Francisco, California, the upcoming smartphones are rumoured to be named the Google Pixel 2and the Google Pixel 2 XL. The two phones will take on the likes of iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, Samsung Galaxy Note 8, and LG V30, among others. Apart from the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, Google is also expected to launch the Home Mini smart speaker and Pixelbook at the event.
Despite the heavy leaks, there are still some questions to be answered. On the software side, we know very little so far. Google used the launch of the first Pixel to emphasise its technological prowess, tying both the Google Assistant and the Google Camera to the phone as exclusives for a few months. Will there be similar software-level advances in the Pixel 2? Or is the company focusing on hardware for the time being, and leaving the software advances to its Android team and I/O event?
We’re off, as Google chief executive Sundar Pichai enters the stage. He begins by noting the terror attack in Las Vegas, and the suffering caused by the three Atlantic hurricanes that have hit the US over the past few weeks, before moving on to Google’s ongoing shift from being a mobile-first to AI-first company.
He cites examples like mapping 5,000km of roads in Lagos, Nigeria, using machine learning technologies to read road names and house numbers from street view images; using Google Maps data to predict parking spaces in San Francisco; or AI-powered machine translation to do millions of translations a day.
“This is why we’re excited about the shift to an AI-first world,” Pichai says. “At a higher level, it should be about computers adapting to people, not the other way round.”
He thinks this will happen in four ways: AI will become conversational, it will become ambient and always on, it will be “thoughtfully contextual”, and it will constantly learn and adapt.That last point “applies to things like security and privacy, as well.” Currently, he says, we focus too much on giving users options about security and privacy, but a good AI system will learn to treat a doctor’s appointment differently from a work meeting.
All this talk about how Google is AI first, not mobile first, may seem odd immediately before the company launches two new phones. But I think it will all make sense…
And so Pichai introduces the new triumvirate for Google’s products: “AI + software + hardware”. Most may think of Google as strong on software and weak on hardware, but this framing pretty clearly wants us to see the company as super strong on the first two, making up for a (perceived) weakness in the last two.
But for now, back to some (very) detailed looks at Google’s AI technology. Pichai introduces AutoML, a new tech that the company has built to make the process of creating and training AI easier. It’s made image classification and object recognition quicker, more efficient and more accurate, he says
One final look at where Pichai wants to go, sharing a cute pic of some child baseball players chatting through Google Translate – he wants to improve it, so they can do it without needing to look at their phones – before he leaves the stage, to bring on Rick Osterloh, the company’s SVP of Hardware.
Osterloh opens the real product keynote, noting the purchase of HTC’s hardware wing, before launching into a video detailing the company’s successes over the past year: Google Home, Pixel, the 4K Chromecast, Daydream VR, and more It’s all very much pumping music and #influencers, and I’m a bit overwhelmed
Osterloh says the Google wifi is the #1 selling mesh wifi router in the US, which is nice but it’s still a route, and he says 100m new answers have been added to the Home since it launched.
With a slight nod at the supply issues – you frequently couldn’t buy a Pixel for love nor money – he turns to the future. “The competitive field for smartphones is levelling off,” he says. “It’s going to be tougher and tougher for people to develop new and exciting products each year, because that’s no longer the timetable for big leaps forward in hardware alone”.
“Smartphones might be reaching parity in their specs, but we’re seeing huge breakthroughs in the kinds of experiences we’re able to deliver to users.”
We’re being set up for a phone with, perhaps, underwhelming hardware but Google-style top-class AI, by the sound of it. Osterloh gives the example of the Google Home, which has two mics compared to the four, six or eight you find on competitors, but still manages the same standard of voice recognition through leveraging machine learning.
“Radically helpful” is the tagline for today’s event it seems. “Everything is designed for you, to keep the tech in the background and out of the way… Our products are constantly getting faster and more helpful the more you interact with them, thanks to machine learning.”
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