At Google's launch of new kit this week in San Francisco, Rick Osterloh, senior vice president of hardware, said a brave thing. And he was absolutely right.
"The playing field for hardware components is levelling off," he said. "And I don't envy those of you who have to write reviews for a bunch of smartphones with very similar specs. Megapixels in the camera, processor speed, modem throughput, battery life, display quality... These core features are table stakes now... To be honest, it's going to be tougher and tougher for people to develop new, exciting products each year, because that's no longer the timetable for big leaps in hardware alone."
In short, at the launch of Google's latest and greatest smartphone, the Pixel 2, Osterloh has come right out and stated that smartphones are reaching parity, that flagship handsets are getting to be pretty much the same. And they are. Which possibly explains why the announcement at the event that really took my interest was buried right at the end of the 105-minute presentation: Pixel Buds.
With this parity of hardware in mind, Google is betting that the union of hardware, software and AI will ensure its products will best the competition – and the Pixel Buds exemplify this new approach.
These £159 earbuds, available from 22 November, have touch controls to call upon Google Assistant with just a tap, much in the same way you can already do with Apple's AirPods. In fact, all the audio controls are located on a touchpad on the right earbud, so there are no buttons hanging on the cord. Swipe forward or backward to control volume, tap to play or pause your music. After five hours of use, charging is done by placing them back in a pocket-sized charging case that gives a total of 24 hours of listening time.
But the hard sell for these buds is that they can translate between languages "in real time" using Google Translate on the Pixel phone (note that these will only work with the Pixel).
"It’s like you’ve got your own personal translator with you everywhere you go," says the Google press release. All you supposedly need do is hold down on the right earbud and tell Google Assistant what language you want to "speak". As you talk, the Pixel phone’s speaker then plays the translation in the desired tongue out loud. When the other person replies, you hear the translation through the Pixel Buds. What's more, it works in 40 languages.
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This is impressive. Well, sort of. While it might seem that we have got a step closer to Star Trek's fabled universal translator, if you haven't already used Google Translate (and if you haven't, you really should) you should know that the app can already do this function anyway. Place the phone down and it will live translate conversations to varying degrees of accuracy, spitting out the decoded speech via the phone's speakers.
So, what has changed here? Is the translation more accurate somehow? Is it performed at greater speed so that it really does feel like a live conversation rather than a series of statements interspersed with awkward silences as you both wait for the cloud to do its magic and send down the reply? We'll have to wait and see, of course.
The main difference, according to Google, is that when using the Buds the Bluetooth audio is rerouted so that it appears in the right place (either in the headphones or out the Pixel's speaker) depending on who is speaking.
At the very least, these will be a slightly better way for Google users to better access the Assistant on the move, asking it to play music, make a call or get directions and so on. But I'm hoping for a lot more than that. Google has certainly sold the Buds as being capable of greater things, and there may be a backlash if they over-promise and under-deliver here.
One thing is for sure: headphones are going to be a key area for manufacturers as a means of establishing the dominance of their own AI assistant and getting it piped directly into you lugholes. Already you have to favour own-brand headphones if you want the very best performance with some handsets (AirPods with iPhones, for example - though, unlike PixelBuds, they will work with other phones). You can also expect a lot more tie-ins with third-party brands coming, too - just like Bose has announced Google Assistant integration for its QC35s.
Remember, too, this year IBM announced that its voice recognition software has finally reached human parity, i.e. less than 5 per cent error - just the same rate that humans misunderstand each other when conversing. And IBM isn't going to stop there, of course. It plans to drop this percentage even further.
As we inexorably move away from screen-based interaction to voice interaction with smartphones or smart devices, people won't care as much how their phone looks – we may get to a stage where it will never leave their pocket. It is all going to be about the helpful, understanding digital assistant. This is the new battleground, and the war has only just begun.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
