What was shown on Google I / O 2018

    Yesterday, at 8 pm Moscow time, Sundar Pichai stepped on the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View and opened Google I / O 2018. The conference will last three days from May 8 to 10, but the main thing was announced from the stage during the traditional keynote speech. Android P learned gestures as in iOS 11 on iPhone X, Google Assistant now speaks six different voices and almost passes the Turing test, and the developers will distribute the ML Kit to implement machine learning in their applications.



    Google Assistant


    Assistant - the nail of the program. For two years since the announcement, he settled on 500 million different devices. In addition to smartphones, these are smart speakers, headphones, TVs and watches. It is integrated into 40 different car manufacturers and supports work with 5000+ home appliances such as dishwashers and ring tones.

    Now he was taught to speak in six different voices and understand several commands at once in one phrase. By the end of the year, Google Assistant will work in 80 countries and support 30 languages, including Russian. And yes, you no longer need to constantly say "OK, Google." That is, you can say: “Ok, Google, start an alarm at 7 am and remind you to buy yogurt when I’m near the supermarket.”


    Previously, from the Assistant, we were waiting primarily for a verbal response, from a clever speaker, for example. But on this I / O, Google showed several devices from the category of smart displays - this is essentially a smart column, only with a touchscreen. You can say, “Ok, Google, turn on Jimmy Kimmel,” and she will find his YouTube show and launch it. On the same device, according to Google, it is convenient to search for recipes. What is fundamentally the so-called "smart displays" differ from conventional tablets, is not very clear.



    In the US, Google Assistant was also taught pick-up and delivery and tied to popular networks: Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Dunkin 'Donuts, and others. Now in the States, you can talk to the Assistant and ask him to order a caramel latte to pick it up at a comfortable cafe.



    He will remember everything that you tell the Assistant and will gradually give hints and build a picture of the upcoming day, as Google Now did, only more precisely. All these chips will appear in the new version of Android in the summer of 2018.

    Google duplex


    On Google I / O, Sundar showed what the company called Google Duplex. All the developments of recent years have combined, and this allowed the Assistant to successfully conduct a telephone conversation with an unsuspecting person. At least that's what they said from the stage. If all these "uh ...", "hmm" and other purely human speech nuances in fact produced a neural network, it means that we are close to getting the computer to pass the Turing test. See for yourself:


    You ask the Assistant to book a table for you at a restaurant, and he in the background calls himself there and agrees about everything. By voice. It remains to wait until the virtual assistant is put on that end of the wire too.


    A full experiment with the participation of small business Google plans to hold a few weeks later. Assistants are planning to “put on the phone” so that he will answer customer calls.

    Android P


    The beta version of Android P will appear on May 8 and will be available on 11 smartphones:

    • Sony Xperia XZ2
    • Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S
    • Nokia 7 Plus
    • Oppo r15 pro
    • Vivo X21
    • Oneplus 6
    • Essential PH-1
    • Google Pixel / XL
    • Google Pixel 2/2 XL

    The new version of the OS revised the approach to navigation and gestures. In particular, they implemented a call to the list of open applications in the same way as in the iPhone X - with a swipe up from the bottom. The button for calling applications from the background was completely abandoned, and the Back button appears only if an application is open. In addition, the design of some interface elements will be updated in accordance with Material Design 2.

    Pichai told about several new features separately. For example, in Android P appeared “Dashboard”, where statistics of smartphone usage are displayed: how many times have you unblocked it in a day, how many notifications have you read.



    In the YouTube app settings for Android, you can choose a mode in which a reminder will appear from time to time that it’s time to pause if you watch video for a long time. In addition, notifications about new videos from channels to which you are subscribed can now be received as a daily digest, rather than separately.

    Family Link is a control panel for your children's devices that will help limit the time spent in front of the screen.

    Google News


    On Google I / O, Sundar Pichai talked about the rebirth of Google News. Now “News” is similar to Yandex. Dzen - it is an intelligent news aggregator that knows what you usually read and which resources you trust. It eliminates the unnecessary and displays five significant stories in the “For You” tab in the last few hours.



    Machine learning


    With the help of machine learning, new devices running Android can significantly save battery power, predicting which application you will launch next, with a probability of about 60%.

    But the main thing is that now the API for accessing such features of the smartphone as text recognition and faces on a photo or, for example, barcode scanning is now available to all developers thanks to the Machine Learning Kit. In addition, they said from the scene that developers will have access to Google’s cloud neural networks, but did not provide details.

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