Google aims to change the definition of good photography with Pixel 4’s software-defined camera

Google’s new Pixel 4 camera offers a ton of new tricks to improve its photographic chops, and to emphasize the point, it had Professor Mark Levoy, who leads camera technology development at Google Research, up on stage to talk about the Pixel 4’s many improvements, including its new telephoto lens, updated Super Res Zoom technology and Live HDR+ preview.

Subject, Lighting, Lens, Software

Levoy started by addressing the oft-cited saying among photographers that what’s most important to a good photo is first subject, then lighting and followed after that by your hardware: ie., your lens and camera body. He said that he and his team believe that there’s a different equation at play now, which replaces that camera body component with something else: Software.

Lens is still important in the equation, he said, and the Pixel 4 represents that with the addition of a telephoto lens to the existing wide angle hardware lens it offers. Levoy also offered the opinion that a telephoto is more useful generally than a wide angle, clearly a dig at Apple’s addition of an ultra-wide angle hardware lens to its latest iPhone 11 Pro models.

In this context, that means Google’s celebrated “computational photography” approach to its Pixel camera tech, which handles a lot of the heavy lifting involved when it takes a photo from a small sensor, which tend to be bad, and turns that into something pretty amazing.

Levoy said that he calls their approach a “software-defined camera,” which most of the time just means capturing multiple photos, and combining data from each in order to produce a better, single final picture.

What’s new for Pixel 4

There are four new features for the Pixel 4 phone powered by computational photography, which include Live HDR with dual exposure controls, which shows you a real-time image of what the final photo will look like with the HDR treatment applied, instead of just giving you a very different looking final shot. It also bakes in exposure controls that allow you to adjust the highlights and shadows in the image on the fly, which is useful if you want bolder highlights or silhouettes from shadows, for instance.

Also new is “Learning-based white balance,” which addresses the tricky issue of getting your white balance correct. Levoy said that Google has been using this approach in white-balancing night sight photos since the introduction of that feature with Pixel 3, but now it’s bringing it to all photo modes. The result is cooler colors, and particularly in tricky lighting situations when whites tend to be incorrectly exposed as orange or yellow.

The new wide-range portrait mode makes use of info from both the dual-pixel imaging sensors that Pixel 4 uses, as well as the new second lens to derive more depth data and provide an expanded, more accurate portrait mode to separate the subject from the background. It now works  on large objects and portraits where the person in focus is standing further back, and it provides better bokeh shape (the shape of the defocused elements int eh background) and better definition of strands of hair and fur, which has always been tricky for software background blur.

Lastly, Night Sight mode gets overall improvements, as well as a new astral photography mode specifically for capturing the night sky and star fields. The astral mode provides great looking night sky images with exposure times that run multiple minutes, but all with automatic settings and computational algorithms that sort out issues like stars moving during that time.

Still more to come

Google wanted to emphasize the point that this is a camera that can overcome a lot of the problems faced typically by small sensors, and it brought out heavyweight photography legend Annie Lebowitz to do just that. She showed some of the photos she’s been capturing both with Pixel 3 and Pixel 4, and they did indeed look great, although the view from the feed doesn’t say quite as much as would print versions of the final photos.

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Levoy also said that they plan to improve the camera over time via software updates, so this is just the start for Pixel 4. Based on what we saw on stage, it definitely looks like a step-up from the already excellent Pixel 3, but we’ll need more time hand-on to see what it does compared to Apple’s much-improved iPhone 11 camera.

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Google’s Pixel 4 ships October 24, starting at $799

The rumors and leaks have been pretty relentless. In fact, over the past three days, the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL have gone up for preorder on at least two different sites. While it’s true that Google’s never been particularly great at keeping this stuff under wraps, this was pretty silly.

Anyway, the Pixel 4 is finally official, and it’s basically exactly what we were expecting from this year’s Google flagship. The device now features face unlock, another addition that brings Pixels in line with the competition, though Google claims it’s the fastest available. Using a new radar chip, the device is able to start the unlock when you reach for the phone and then fully unlock when it sees your face.

Radar also gives the device gesture recognition, via Motion Sense The concept is similar to what you’ll find on other Android handsets, but it’s significantly more sophisticated, distinguishing accidental gestures from intentional ones Use these, this can do things like skipping songs, turn the screen on and wave to your animated Pikachu wallpaper (actual example). All of the processing is done on device and users can turn it off for privacy.

The 4 maintains the familiar Active Edge squeeze, which launches a newly upgraded Google Assistant. As rumored, there’s a new recording app, which is capable of transcribing conversations in real-time. From the demo, at least, the feature is pretty impressive, with a more accurate transcript than I’ve seen from most AI software. Interestingly, it all works on-device, meaning that you can use it in airplane mode — and that that conversations aren’t automatically uploaded to the cloud.

The company finally embracing a multi-camera set up on the back of the device. Google had been one of the few holdouts on that front, instead insisting that its AI/ML was perfectly capable of producing shots as good as any multi-camera setup.

And while it’s true Google’s managed to get a pretty solid camera with this combo, the Pixel 4 gets a pair of cameras on the back, in the iPhone 11-esque square camera array. There’s a wide angle and telephoto14- and 16-megapixel on the back. That, when coupled with the computational photography Google has been pushing for a number of years now ought to make this a solid competitor. 

The camera utilizes a combination of optical and digital zoom (Super-res Zoom) to take some pretty impressive close up shots. It also looks to be pretty impressive on low light shots, improving on earlier Night Sight offerings. Live HDR+, meanwhile, is able to approximate final HDR shots in real time to give users a better idea of what the final photo will look like.

Dual Exposure controls, meanwhile, give users more direct controls over brightness and shadow, and thus more control over HDR. White balance gets a bump using AI training. Learning based light balance is adopted from Night Sight and now available on all photos to get more realistic shots. Night Sight gets a bump as well, and is now capable of taking better shots of things like a starry sky using long exposure times.

Machine learning is also being used to calculate depth in real-time, so users can get a broader depth of field with subjects at different distances. Oh, and Annie Leibovitz is a fan, apparently. Arguably the world’s most famous photographer has been taking the phone for a spin, shooting an impressive series of portraits on the new handset. The results are pretty stunning — and very iconically hers.

“What’s great about the camera phone,” Leibovitz said, “it’s a brand new language, and it’s really great this is for everyone to use.”

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As with its predecessors, the Pixel 4 comes in both a standard and XL version, at 5.7 (full HD+) and 6.3 inches (Quad HD+), respectively. The Pixel 4 XL got an A+ from Display Mate, according to the company, thanks in part to the addition of a 90MHZ refresh rate.

The handset is up for pre-order, starting at $799. It starts shipping October 24 in Just Black, Clearly White and the new/limited edition Oh So Orange.

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Here’s everything Google just announced at the Made By Google 2019 event

 

Google held its annual “Made By Google” hardware event this morning in New York City, where they launched all sorts of new gear back to back to back.

Didn’t have time to watch the whole stream, but still want to know the bulletpoints of what’s new? We’ve got you covered.

Stadia Launch

Stadia, Google’s cloud video game streaming service, will launch on November 19th.

Pixel Buds

Google went back to the drawing board with its answer to the AirPods. Shipping sometime in “Spring 2020”, the new Pixel Buds will cost $179. Google says the battery should last about 5 hours per charge, with the familiar floss-style charging case packing an additional 24 hours worth of charge. On-board microphones will adapt the sound based on your environment, and help to cancel out background noise like wind.

Pixelbook Go

It’s been a while since Google shipped a higher-end Chrome OS laptop — but with Pixelbook Go, they’re taking another swing at it. It’s got a 13.3″ display, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 256GB of storage, with the company promising around 12 hours of battery life. It’ll weigh roughly 2lbs, with a base model that’ll cost $649.

New Nest Aware

Nest Aware (which lets you add cloud recording to your Nest cameras) used to cost a few bucks per device. Now it’s a flat fee, regardless of how many cameras you’ve got. $6 per month gets you 30 days of “event” history (read: just the bits of video where things are actually happening), while $12 per month gets you 60 days of event history and 10 days of 24/7 video history.

Nest Aware also now lets you put your Nest Minis/Nest Hubs into a security-centric listening mode, with the smart speakers listening for things like smoke alarms and dogs barking and sending you notifications accordingly.

They’ll switch to the new tier structure in “early 2020”.

Nest WiFi

As rumored over the past few weeks, Google is mashing up the concepts of its Google Wifi mesh router with its Google Home speakers, voltroning them into Nest WiFi — a router/smart speaker hybrid. They’ll ship starting on November 4th; a two pack will cost $269, with a three pack going for $349.

New Nest Mini

The Google Home Mini is now the “Nest Mini” — and a bit has changed beyond the name. It’s now wall mountable without any adapters, with a speaker that Google says offers up double the bass. Its got a new machine learning chip on board for faster responses, and more microphones to work better in louder environments. It’ll ship on October 22nd for $49.

Pixel 4

After an endless series of leaks, the next generation of Pixel — Google’s flagship Android phone — is officially official. The Pixel 4 will come in at 5.7″ with a 2,800mAh battery, while the Pixel XL 4 comes in at 6.3″ with a 3,700mAh battery. They’re both running on the Snapdragon 855 chipset with 6GB of RAM. They’ve both got “Project Soli” radar chips inside, allowing you to do things like switch songs, snooze alarms, or silence calls by waving your hand over the phone without actually touching it.

The main focus here for Google is the cameras, with the company leaning hard into the idea of using machine-learning and AI-centric software to improve photos — things like dual exposure controls, AI-driven “learning” white balance, and an improved Night Sight mode that can handle taking photos of star-lit nights. Both phones have two cameras on the back (12.2 megapixel f/1.7 main camera and a 16 megapixel f/2.4 telephoto lens) and one on the front (8 megapixels).

It’ll ship starting October 24th, starting at $799.

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Google Pixel 4, Pixel 4 XL not launching in India

The Google Pixel 4 and Pixel XL smartphones, that Google just unveiled at a press conference in New York, won’t launch in India, one of the company’s most important overseas markets, the Android-maker said on Tuesday.

The bottleneck lies with Project Soli, a radar-based motion-sensing technology baked into the new Pixel smartphones that relies on using certain frequency bandwidth — 60GHz mmWave. The company failed to secure permission from the local authority in India to use this frequency range, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. You may remember that in the U.S., the FCC approved the commercial usage of Soli earlier this year.

“Google has a wide range of products that we make available in different regions around the world. We determine availability based on a variety of factors, including local trends, and product features. We decided not to make Pixel 4 available in India. We remain committed to our current Pixel phones and look forward to bringing future Pixel devices to India,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

The radar sensors on the new Pixel smartphones enable a number of human interactions, Sabrina Ellis, VP of Product Management at Google, said at the event. “For instance, Pixel 4 has the fastest secure face unlock on a smartphone, because the process starts before you have even picked up the smartphone,” she claimed. “Motion sense prepares the camera when you reach for your Pixel 4, so you don’t need to tap the screen,” she added.

The radar sensor also enables other applications such as rejecting a call by just gesturing at the phone, Ellis said.

This is the first time Google has had to skip the launch of a phone in India, the second largest smartphone market and where all the Nexus and Pixel smartphones have launched a few days after their global unveiling.

Not launching the new Pixel smartphones won’t really hurt the company… at least financially speaking. The Pixel smartphones have failed to receive any substantial acceptance in the Indian marker, especially as their prices increased over the years.

Even as 99% of smartphones shipped in India last year ran Android mobile operating system, the vast majority of handsets carried a price tag of $200 or lower, research firm Counterpoint told TechCrunch.

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Google Pixel 4, Pixel 4 XL not launching in India

The Google Pixel 4 and Pixel XL smartphones, that Google just unveiled at a press conference in New York, won’t launch in India, one of the company’s most important overseas markets, the Android-maker said on Tuesday.

The bottleneck lies with Project Soli, a radar-based motion-sensing technology baked into the new Pixel smartphones that relies on using certain frequency bandwidth — 60GHz mmWave. The company failed to secure permission from the local authority in India to use this frequency range, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. You may remember that in the U.S., the FCC approved the commercial usage of Soli earlier this year.

“Google has a wide range of products that we make available in different regions around the world. We determine availability based on a variety of factors, including local trends, and product features. We decided not to make Pixel 4 available in India. We remain committed to our current Pixel phones and look forward to bringing future Pixel devices to India,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

The radar sensors on the new Pixel smartphones enable a number of human interactions, Sabrina Ellis, VP of Product Management at Google, said at the event. “For instance, Pixel 4 has the fastest secure face unlock on a smartphone, because the process starts before you have even picked up the smartphone,” she claimed. “Motion sense prepares the camera when you reach for your Pixel 4, so you don’t need to tap the screen,” she added.

The radar sensor also enables other applications such as rejecting a call by just gesturing at the phone, Ellis said.

This is the first time Google has had to skip the launch of a phone in India, the second largest smartphone market and where all the Nexus and Pixel smartphones have launched a few days after their global unveiling.

Not launching the new Pixel smartphones won’t really hurt the company… at least financially speaking. The Pixel smartphones have failed to receive any substantial acceptance in the Indian marker, especially as their prices increased over the years.

Even as 99% of smartphones shipped in India last year ran Android mobile operating system, the vast majority of handsets carried a price tag of $200 or lower, research firm Counterpoint told TechCrunch.

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Google overhauls Nest Aware cloud recording plan

Google is updating the Nest Mini today, the device formerly known as Google Home Mini. And the company used this opportunity to announce an update to its home awareness product, Nest Aware.

If you have Nest security cameras, you can subscribe to a Nest Aware plan. It currently costs $5 a month for 5-day video history, $10 per month for 10-day history and $30 per month for 30-day history. All plans include continuous recording, intelligence alerts, clips and more.

But it can get complicated when you have multiple cameras. Additional cameras require their own subscription plan, but those additional plans are a bit cheaper.

Google is going to simplify all that with plans that cover your whole home. New plans will cost $6 per month for 30-day event history and $12 per month for 60-day event history as well as 10-day 24/7 video history.

As you can see, you now have to pay $12 per month for continuous recording as the basic plan doesn’t include continuous recording anymore. But if you have 8 cameras, you’ll only have to play for a single subscription.

New plans will roll out in early 2020 with the option to switch to the new plans.

And now, Nest Mini and Nest Hubs integrate with Nest Aware. For instance, when your non-connected smoke detector is triggered by a fire, your Nest Mini will notice the alarm and send you a push notification.

You can listen live to confirm that it is a smoke alarm. You can confirm the alarm and the Home app then calls 911 or your local emergency service directly.

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How we can eliminate child sexual abuse material from the internet | Julie Cordua

How we can eliminate child sexual abuse material from the internet | Julie Cordua

Social entrepreneur Julie Cordua works on a problem that isn't easy to talk about: the sexual abuse of children in images and videos on the internet. At Thorn, she's building technology to connect the dots between the tech industry, law enforcement and government -- so we can swiftly end the viral distribution of abuse material and rescue children faster. Learn more about how this scalable solution could help dismantle the communities normalizing child sexual abuse around the world today. (This ambitious plan is part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

Google overhauls Nest Aware cloud recording plan

Google is updating the Nest Mini today, the device formerly known as Google Home Mini. And the company used this opportunity to announce an update to its home awareness product, Nest Aware.

If you have Nest security cameras, you can subscribe to a Nest Aware plan. It currently costs $5 a month for 5-day video history, $10 per month for 10-day history and $30 per month for 30-day history. All plans include continuous recording, intelligence alerts, clips and more.

But it can get complicated when you have multiple cameras. Additional cameras require their own subscription plan, but those additional plans are a bit cheaper.

Google is going to simplify all that with plans that cover your whole home. New plans will cost $6 per month for 30-day event history and $12 per month for 60-day event history as well as 10-day 24/7 video history.

As you can see, you now have to pay $12 per month for continuous recording as the basic plan doesn’t include continuous recording anymore. But if you have 8 cameras, you’ll only have to play for a single subscription.

New plans will roll out in early 2020 with the option to switch to the new plans.

And now, Nest Mini and Nest Hubs integrate with Nest Aware. For instance, when your non-connected smoke detector is triggered by a fire, your Nest Mini will notice the alarm and send you a push notification.

You can listen live to confirm that it is a smoke alarm. You can confirm the alarm and the Home app then calls 911 or your local emergency service directly.

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Google’s Pixel 4 is official

The rumors and leaks have been pretty relentless. In fact, over the past three days, the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL have gone up for preorder on at least two different sites. While it’s true that Google’s never been particularly great at keeping this stuff under wraps, this was pretty silly.

Anyway, the Pixel 4 is finally official, and it’s basically exactly what we were expecting from this year’s Google flagship. The device now features face unlock, another addition that brings Pixels in line with the competition, though Google claims it’s the fastest available. Using a new radar chip, the device is able to start the unlock when you reach for the phone and then fully unlock when it sees your face.

Radar also gives the device gesture recognition, via Motion Sense The concept is similar to what you’ll find on other Android handsets, but it’s significantly more sophisticated, distinguishing accidental gestures from intentional ones Use these, this can do things like skipping songs, turn the screen on and wave to your animated Pikachu wallpaper (actual example). All of the processing is done on device and users can turn it off for privacy.

The 4 maintains the familiar Active Edge squeeze, which launches a newly upgraded Google Assistant. As rumored, there’s a new recording app, which is capable of transcribing conversations in real-time. From the demo, at least, the feature is pretty impressive, with a more accurate transcript than I’ve seen from most AI software. Interestingly, it all works on-device, meaning that you can use it in airplane mode — and that that conversations aren’t automatically uploaded to the cloud.

The company finally embracing a multi-camera set up on the back of the device. Google had been one of the few holdouts on that front, instead insisting that its AI/ML was perfectly capable of producing shots as good as any multi-camera setup.

And while it’s true Google’s managed to get a pretty solid camera with this combo, the Pixel 4 gets a pair of cameras on the back, in the iPhone 11-esque square camera array. There’s a wide angle and telephoto14- and 16-megapixel on the back. That, when coupled with the computational photography Google has been pushing for a number of years now ought to make this a solid competitor. 

The camera utilizes a combination of optical and digital zoom (Super-res Zoom) to take some pretty impressive close up shots. It also looks to be pretty impressive on low light shots, improving on earlier Night Sight offerings. Live HDR+, meanwhile, is able to approximate final HDR shots in real time to give users a better idea of what the final photo will look like

As with its predecessors, the Pixel 4 comes in both a standard and XL version, at 5.7 (full HD+) and 6.3 inches (Quad HD+), respectively. The Pixel 4 XL got an A+ from Display Mate, according to the company, thanks in part to the addition of a 90MHZ refresh rate.

The handset is up for pre-order, starting at $799. It starts shipping October 24 in Just Black, Clearly White and the new/limited edition Oh So Orange.

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Google launches Nest Wifi mesh router and extender with built-in Google Assistant

Today at its Google hardware event, Google introduced new mesh routers called Nest Wifi. This is a successor tot he Google Wifi product it introduced a couple of years ago, but with a number of improvements. The new Nest Wifi consists of two types of devices, one a router that plugs into your modem, and one ‘point’ amplifies the signal and extends the network, and it’s more powerful so you only need these two things.

It’s available to pre-order, and will ship on November 4. It comes in a 2-pack or a 3-pack variant, for $249 or $349 respectively, and will be available in eight countries at launch.

Google says that Nest Wifi offers 2x better speed than Google Wifi, with up to 25% better coverage. That’s from the two-piece system, which Google says is probably enough to cover the same space as the three-puck Google Wifi original system.

The hardware is designed to be placed out in the open – Google paid attention to design here to make sure it looks good enough to keep it where it’ll work best to provide signal. And the ‘point’ has a built-in speaker and microphone array, with onboard Google Assistant support, making it double as a smart speaker – which really does add to the overall value in terms of what you’re getting for the money.

Like Google Wifi, it offers simple set-up, parental and guest controls, as well as “seamless setup” for smart home devices rom within the Google Home app.

Interestingly, Google said that Google Wifi has been the top-selling mesh Wifi system in both the U.S. and Canada since its launch, so it’s clearly seeing a lot of success in this category. The company was also quick to point out that it has provided 15 updates to the original hardware since its launch, adding new features and improving performance, so expect a similar slew of post-purchase updates for Nest Wifi, too.

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Google Home Mini is now Nest Mini

Google this morning unveiled the long awaited follow up to the Home Mini. The latest version of the company’s wildly popular entry-level smart speaker has been rebranded the Nest Home Mini, in keeping with the branding refresh of its smart home offerings. The new version of the device looks a lot like its predecessor, but features a number of internal upgrades.

Chief among the changes are improved sound and built-in machine learning that lets the device adapt power based on usage. The new version of the Mini smart speaker also doubles as an intercom and a conferencing speaker, so users can call the device directly, using Duo.

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The most fun addition here, however, is the wall mount. With it, users can move the device from the shelf to the wall, giving it a greater flexibility for in-home placement. The Nest Mini’s familiar fabric covering is made using recycled bottles, as noted earlier in today’s event, in keeping with the company’s increased focus on sustainability.

The new Mini arrives October 22, priced at tempting $49 — same as its briskly selling predecessor. Seems like a pretty safe bet that Google will sell a ton more of these things at that price point Along with the new Mini, Google’s also adding smart speaker functionality into the new Nest Wifi, which arrives early next month.

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Google launches the $649 Pixelbook Go Chromebook

At its annual hardware event, Google today announced the launch of the Pixelbook Go, the latest iteration of its first-party Chromebook lineup. Starting at $649, the Pixelbook Go marks a return to the standard laptop format after last year’s Pixelbook with a 180-degree hinge and the Pixel Slate 2-in-1.

The Go will come with a 16:9 13.3-inch touch screen and either an HD or 4K display, two USB-C ports, a built-in Titan-C security chip, up to 16GB of RAM and up to 256GB of storage. It’s powered by Intel Core CPUs, starting with an m3 chip at the low end and an i7 at the top end. Available colors are black and “just pink” and pre-orders start now, but only for the black version. “Just pink” is coming soon.

It has a rippled bottom, “that’s easy to grip” and a “Hush Keys,” which are supposedly quieter than the keys on previous Pixelbooks. Talking about quiet, the Go also has far-field microphones for all your “Hey Google” needs.

“We wanted to create a thin and light laptop. That was really fast, and also have it last all day. And of course, we wanted it to look and feel beautiful,” Google’s Ivy Ross said in today’s announcement. Ross also stressed that the Pixelbook Go has a larger battery, yet is still lighter, thanks to its magnesium body. 

Unlike Microsoft, with its Surface line, Google’s laptops always seemed more like aspirational devices that defined the high end of the Chromebook spectrum. At $649, the Pixelbook Go is clearly more affordable than many of Google’s previous efforts in this area and the company clearly hopes to sell a few more of them.

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