When we talk about who’s dominating the Android market, Google certainly has a good spot on the race. On Wednesday, the company announced its new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones at its event in San Francisco. Something is clear: all that the American multinational technology company is offering seems very promising.
However, the new Google smartphones seem to come a little bit late this year —comparing to its other two big celebrated competitors: Samsung, which released its Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus earlier this year, and Apple, which just announced last month its amazing iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X.
If we talk about the total smartphone market, Google’s rank is not very good. Google owns just 1 percent of the US market as of today. Meanwhile, Apple owns 14 percent, while Samsung owns an impressive 21 percent. Still, Google’s phones have received very good reviews, and many costumers feel entirely attached to its phones.
Google’s new smartphones: Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL
The Google Pixel 2 won’t have headphone jacks. The phone is composed of a 5-inches organic light emitting diode display (OLED) — twice better than the iPhone 8, according to the company. The Pixel 2 XL has a 6-inch thinner, more flexible, plastic screen — rather than a glass, OLED display. It also has a higher screen resolution of .538 pixels per inch.
Both Google Pixel 2 phones come with an amazing 12.2-megapixel back camera and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera. Both are better than the new iPhone cameras.
Unfortunately, people will have to connect them in order to charge the battery and unlock the phone without facial or fingerprint recognition — unlike the iPhone X.
The Pixel 2 will cost $649, $50 less than the iPhone 8. The Pixel 2 XL’s price is $849. Both phones have 64 Gigabytes of memory. They will be released on Oct. 19, but are already available for pre-order.
The amazing Google Pixel Buds
Google also announced new Home speakers and new different ways to connect them to the smart home. It also presented a new laptop, and a body camera. All of these are just updates actually, as the company already offered these devices before Wednesday. However, something very new that’s impressing most Google fans is the upcoming wireless headphones: the Google Pixel Buds.
If you compare them to Apple’s Air Pods, recently launched this year, there are a lot of similar things. However, Google came up with something never seen before: the headphones will be able to translate in real time any sentence in about 40 languages. This could represent a huge change for world communication, opening new doors to unimaginable places.
To talk in another language —Italian, for example— the headphones’ owner will only have to say “Help me with Italian.” When the Google Pixel Buds “hear” the other person’s words, it will translate them to the user’s language. And when the user answers the other-language speaker back, it will also translate its words into a more appropriate response.
The Google Pixel Buds are wireless headphones designed to use with the company’s new Pixel 2 handset. This means that, once the user already connects the headphones to the phone, it can manage them and send commands to the Google Assistant on the Pixel 2 by just tapping the right earpiece. This would let the person play music, make phone calls, ask for directions, and more. The Google Pixel Buds will cost $160.
Source: Engadget