Google announced its new smartphone, the Pixel 2, today, and while it was pretty much what everyone expected, the company’s answer to Apple‘s Airpods blew everyone away.
While they might look like a standard pair of earbuds, the Google Pixel Buds will actually translate spoken language in real time. In other words, they’ll let you have a conversation with someone who speaks a different language.
It works by using Google Translate, which is actually built into the Pixel. Once you have them on, all you need to do is tap the right earbud and ask Google to help you speak Spanish, or whatever language you’re trying to speak, and it’ll get right on it.
If someone standing nearby speaks in that language, the earbuds will pick it up and give the wearer the English translation. To speak back, you can hold down the right earbud, speak in English and the phone will play the translated message to the other person in their native tongue. It can do this with 40 languages.
It’s pretty speedy, too, playing the translation only a second or so after the person stops talking. The tech was demoed during Google’s keynote and it was pretty damn impressive. You can suss it out below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JTdPFSIk_I
Like Airpods, the Pixel Buds come with a case that charges them. They connect wirelessly via Bluetooth, but do have a wire that connects the two buds. There’s no word on an Australian price just yet, but they’re going for $US159, or roughly $AUD203.
You can even use them with an iPhone, but the Translate feature will only work on the Pixel. Google reckon they’ll play music for 24 hours on one charge. Not bloody bad.
You can pre-order them now, but they won’t be available until November.
