I’ve been looking forward to the release of the Pixel 4 for a while, so I made sure to watch the Made By Google live stream today to see the cool features. And I found a new item that’s pretty fascinating along the way.
It wasn’t Google Stadia. I’m sure the live streaming tech is nice, but if people haven’t learned from the Google Reader shutdown debacle, they never will. If Google loses interest, you’ll lose access to all your games. It wasn’t Google Nest. Why is this still a brand, anyway? It should have been subsumed into Google Home already. And it definitely, definitely wasn’t the Google Pixelbook Go. At least the price is a bit lower than the first Pixelbook, but not enough to make much of a difference.
It was the Pixel Buds that caught me by surprise. Earphones that translates languages in real time? Fascinating. Sounds like tech I saw previously in the Google Glass road show. I’ll be taking a look at them later.
The Pixel 4 demo was pretty interesting. It has a motion sensor which allows for more human-centered phone reactions. If you pick up the phone while an alarm is running, it softens the alarm as your hand approaches the phone, as it recognizes that you are about to turn the alarm off. You can wave above it to move to the next song in a playlist. Night Sight is still awesome, and it can do astral photography now. It looks pretty dope. Most importantly, the Pixel 4 is going to be sold by all major US carriers, so it can be presented as an option at all stores now.
I’m looking forward to seeing the reception of the general public to this new phone, now that they have an option of really getting one.