Review: Google Pixel XL

 

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla 

Exploding Note7’s have left a crater-sized void in the market and users looking for options can definitely consider a Pixel XL. It’s large, has the killer camera and specs combo, and it’s a Pure Google device. That’s great for consumers with $899 burning a hole in their pocket, but what about the rest of us?

Ambitious, bold, and aiming for the big guns in the smartphone flagship market, Google’s Pixel XL and its smaller brother, the Google Pixel, aim to give consumers the Google phone that they have always wanted but which the earlier Nexus devices may have failed to deliver. 

Pixel represents a brand new chapter for Google as an end-to-end creator of consumer products. The Pixel extends the Made by Google ethos, which is to deliver high-quality devices that serve as the best containers for Google’s technology. This idea has been percolating with the expensive and premium Chromebook Pixel, the similarly costly and ambitious Pixel C 2-in-1, and now is encapsulated in the Pixel family of phones as well as in Google’s Home and Wi-Fi focused devices.

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Video: See the Google Pixel's electronic image stabilization

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The new Google Pixel and Pixel XL boast the best cameras on any smartphone and while they have a notable 12.3 megapixel camera, these phones omitted optical image stabilization in favour of a computational solution that uses the built-in gyroscope to at 200 times a second to determine exactly how the camera is moving, even accounting for the rolling shutter and even avoiding the jello effect and rolling shutter seen in other forms of stabilization.

I was very impressed at what the Pixel XL could do in terms of grabbing stable video. You can see I shot video from a moving car, which is usually a nightmare scenario for any type of camera and often means it isn't even worth shooting video. I also shot video while walking and moving around in various conditions and as you can see the video isn't just usable, it is clear and generally vibration free. During the October 4 launch of the Pixel and Pixel XL, Google's VP Product Management Brian Rakowski mentioned the company's imaging and photography engineers spent a whole year working on the camera stack and the result is impressive.

Apple’s newest hire looks to address Siri’s shortcomings

Looks like Apple want to make sure Siri keeps up with its competition. The tech company has hired Carnegie Mellon University Professor Russ Salakhutdinov to head its team working on artificial intelligence, which is considered a big part of the industry’s future. And if this is your line of work, Salakhutdinov is even hiring people for his team. He’ll also remain as a professor at Carnegie Mellon. One of latest researches involve work on how to better derive context behind the questions people pose. If applied to Apple’s tech, that can come quite handy and perhaps put them back in the running in the virtual assistant space.

Excited about joining Apple as a director of AI research in addition to my work at CMU. Apply to work with my teamhttps://t.co/U2hQl2GdhA

— Russ Salakhutdinov (@rsalakhu) October 17, 2016

 

Source: Recode

Fitbit releases fix for Charge 2 distance tracking issue

Fitbit has admitted to two software issues with the Charge 2 that cause it to incorrectly display the distance it tracks. According to Fitbit one of the issues is related to the Connected GPS and when it’s used with a few modes like wall, hike, or interval. The other is when using multi-sport tracking for run and treadmill activities. The company says they have already fixed the issue through a free software upgrade.

"These software errors caused the tracker to occasionally calculate stats like pace and distance with less precision than we expect from our products," a spokesperson for Fitbit told The Verge via email.