San Francisco – Google introduced Tuesday its smartphone Pixel. This is the first time Google designed both the software and the hardware of a cell phone, making the company a direct adversary for the tech giant Apple.

The search engine company also introduced the Google Assistant, an artificial intelligence feature found in the Pixel smartphone. Google next goal is to build a personal Google for each person using artificial intelligence. Google is known for providing software to Samsung, LG Electronics, and Lenovo. But now, with its new cellphone and a different focus, Google is entering the highly competitive market of smartphones.

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Google Pixel and Pixel XL. Image Credit: pocket-lint.com

Pixel was designed from the software to the materials of the device’s case to guarantee the company’s vision.

The company explained that due to the artificial intelligence advent, it has to make sure no other company changed or modified their software when creating a new phone. Google wants to innovate with AI and to guarantee that, they want to be in front of the new race. And to be in the race, Google had to be the only company involved in the design of Pixel and its new feature, the Google Assistant.

The artificial intelligence feature in the Pixel is the Google Assistant. The software can be used to plan a night out or answer many other questions regarding nearby restaurants, routes or reservations in another type of establishments.

For Sundar Pichai, Google’s executive, artificial intelligence is in its best time to invest and research. Artificial intelligence is now where the creation of the personal computer, the World Wide Web, and the invention of smartphones was a few years ago.

Pixel is the first smartphone built with the Google Assistant, although there are already other Google products with the feature, including a Wi-Fi router, a Chromecast device for streaming high-resolution video and a virtual reality headset.

Artificial intelligence means computers that can understand what people is saying and also computers with the ability to answer pertinent information to help the user. Google intends to build a personal Google for each user using the Google Assistant, according to Pichai.

Pixel allowed Google to create a device as Google has always intended, stated Rick Osterloh, Google’s senior vice president of hardware.

When announcing the Pixel, Osterloh made clear that Google’s smartphone is competing with the iPhone. The senior vice president said Pixel does not have an “unsightly camera bump,” referring to the iPhone’s rear camera that sticks out of the case.

Google compares its new phone with the iPhone in a commercial, where it says the Pixel has a “satisfyingly, not new” headphone jack. The comment comes from Apple’s latest iPhone does not have a headphone jack and users need to purchase an adapter to get to listen their iPhone content.

The commercial describing the Pixel says Google’s smartphone is the first of its kind and has a battery that charges 7 hours in 15 minutes. It has “the highest rated smartphone camera ever,” and was design for VR experiences. On the technical aspects, it has Qualcomm Snapdragon 821, 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 4, a 64 Bit Quad-Core Processor and 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, in an all unibody metal phone.  

Source: The New York Times