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Google's new lineup of phones and gadgets: A quick glance
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google is taking a page from Apple's playbook by making a bigger push to build its own hardware. Rick Osterloh, head of Google's new hardware group, said that in doing so, Google can take full advantage of capabilities it's designing with artificial intelligence and machine learning. Apple has long designed both iPhone hardware and the iOS operating-system software that runs on it. Now, Google is doing the same with the upcoming Pixel phones running Google's Android system. The Pixel is one of several gadgets Google announced Tuesday in San Francisco.
Intel looks beyond x86, puts 64-bit ARM processor in new FPGA chip
It seems like the chip war between Intel and ARM is slowly winding down, at least for the time being. Intel for decades has doggedly sworn by chips based on its homegrown x86 architecture, but the company is putting a 64-bit ARM processor in its new Stratix 10 FPGA (field-programmable gate array), which was announced on Tuesday. The FPGA -- based on Altera technology -- can be reprogrammed to do a wide variety of server or network tasks. It can also run algorithms for machine learning. In a larger context, the chip points to a long-term strategy of Intel thinking beyond x86 and warming up to other architectures as it looks to shed its reliance on PCs.
Google Goes All-In On Hardware With 'Pixel' Phone, Home Assistant, VR Headset
Google CEO Sundar Pichai talks about the Google Assistant, which will power the company's new line of smartphones and a voice-activated speaker. Google CEO Sundar Pichai talks about the Google Assistant, which will power the company's new line of smartphones and a voice-activated speaker. Google's products are everywhere: maps, Gmail, the Chrome browser, the Chromecast video/audio system, the Android mobile operating system, YouTube, Waze. But the company has been far less successful at selling things rather than software. Earlier this year, Google scrapped the project to build a modular phone; its Nexus phones and tablets are laggards of the industry; and we'll never forget the crash-and-burn of Google Glass.
Here's everything you missed at Tuesday's Google event
Google's product announcement in San Francisco Tuesday centered on the company's answer to Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri: Google Assistant. SEE ALSO: Pixel is here: Follow Google's event live The tech behemoth announced a slew of new products that integrate with the artificial intelligence technology, the most noteworthy of which is the first Google flagship phone, the Pixel. "When I look ahead at where computing is headed it's clear to me that we are evolving from a mobile first to an AI first world," Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, told the audience at the start of the presentation. Another big trend was the Internet of Things. For the first time, Google presented a comprehensive hardware catalog that could reasonably be used in unison to power a complete smart home.
Google Home is set to battle Amazon's Echo for voice control of the smart home
OK Google, it's time to take aim at Alexa. Google has announced that consumers can now preorder its Google Home digital assistant for 129, with a ship date of November 4. First revealed at Google I/O in May, Google Home will compete with Amazon's surprisingly popular Echo product line for voice-activated control of the smart home. The price tag is attractive, and it has some features the Echo doesn't, but Google still has a lot of work to do to catch Amazon. Like the Echo, Google Home can recognize natural language and answer simple questions when it detects a "wake" word ("OK Google" for the Google Home, "Alexa" for the Echo). Google has a leg up on Amazon in this regard, as it arguably has the world's best search engine, and the company has been working on speech recognition for many years longer than Amazon.
5G will need small cells, so Nokia is sending in the drones
If you want 5G, there's a good chance you'll need a small cell nearby to deliver it. Putting up that cell may be hard because of a host of problems, but Nokia Bell Labs thinks it can solve some of them with drones and tiny solar panels. Nokia's F-Cell is an experimental LTE small cell that doesn't need any wires. It gets power from solar panels on its surface and communicates with the carrier's core network over a high-speed wireless connection. No one even needs to climb up on a roof to install it: The company recently delivered an F-Cell to the roof of one of its buildings in Sunnyvale, California, using a drone.
The 5 Biggest Announcements Google Just Made
Google had plenty to announce during its event on Tuesday, including the debut of two new smartphones, the introduction of its first virtual reality headset, and more details about its Home smart speaker. Google's new smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL, are the first handsets to be designed and engineered in-house by the company. This is evident in the phone's design, which has a slicker, more premium glass and aluminum build than Google's previous Nexus phones. The Pixel devices are available in three colors and are available for preorder immediately. Google is flaunting the phones' improved camera and embedded intelligent assistant as their main draw. Google unveiled its smartphone virtual reality platform, Daydream, in May.
Google Assistant is star of Google's hardware unveil
Google CEO Sundar Pichai is betting on Google Assistant. SAN FRANCISCO -- The star of Google's splashy launch event in San Francisco was the one with the speaking part: The super-smart digital helper Assistant whose task is to maintain the Internet giant's tight grip on consumers and their wallets as their attention shifts to smartphones and Internet-connected devices. Assistant will create a "two-way conversation between our users and Google," CEO Sundar Pichai said at a splashy launch event in San Francisco. It's a major transition from the days of typing a query into the Google search engine, allowing the Internet giant to show lucrative ads.
Machine learning hits the cloud -- and more businesses
"Computing that can think" has been an IT battle cry for the last 30 years, but the price of artificial intelligence has been out of reach for most enterprises. Enter the cloud -- along with its cost efficiency -- and perhaps a revised business case for thinking machines. Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft are all on board, and they each have some kind of practical AI offering. In the context of business, artificial intelligence is called "machine learning" -- that's the best way to explain it in boardrooms. Machine learning can determine patterns, think about how those patterns are emerging, and even get better at predicting patterns before they emerge.