Google Pixel 3 review: Phone's smarts shine through its AI-driven camera

Apple and Samsung typically show off glitzy hardware innovations — dual-lens cameras; bigger screens — to mesmerize millions into buying their new smartphones. Google has taken a different approach: It wants to sell people on better software.

That was abundantly clear with the Pixel 3, the search giant’s latest smartphone, with software features powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. When you take a blurry photo, for example, the Pixel’s camera software can capture a series of alternate images and look for a clearer shot. When you get a call from an unknown number, you can use a screening tool to determine if it is a robocall. (I recommend using this feature with caution — more on that later.)

“The phone is powered by A.I. so that we let Pixel do really useful, delightful things,” said Mario Queiroz, Google’s vice president of Pixel hardware. “The phone doesn’t get in the way. Things just happen for you.”

The Pixel 3, which will be available on Thursday, is a modest piece of hardware otherwise. It comes in two screen sizes — 5.5 inches and 6.3 inches — that are slightly smaller than phones from Apple and Samsung. The smaller Pixel costs $799; the larger one is $899.

Syksa SmartLED review: A smart bulb for home that works with Amazon Alexa

A future world with household appliances or devices connected to the internet and operated remotely is not a sci-fi writer’s imagination. We already are living in a world where you can control some devices using your laptop or mobile phone. This is known as the Internet of things in which devices are added to a network and they can be controlled through the internet.

It has not become very common in India yet but smart bulbs are now starting to change things. Imagine switching a bulb on or off using your mobile phone or speaking to another device and asking it to do this for you. What’s more you can even change the colour of the light that the bulb emits using your mobile phone or another device.

That basically is what Syska SmartLED light is all about. It is a 7W LED bulb priced at Rs 1,600 which you can link to your home wifi and then convert your regular living room into a smart room.

All you need are a home wifi connection, a bulb holder (B22) and a mobile phone. Install Syska Smart Home app on your smartphone and then follow the simple steps provided to link your phone to the bulb and viola, you have light on your hands. Operation is fairly straightforward. The company claims that the bulb has millions of colours that it can emit. You can also change the brightness of the lamp using your mobile phone.

Google is betting big on cloud services to woo Indian companies

In the face of rising competition from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, global tech giant Google is betting big on its cloud services to woo 44 million small and medium enterprises (SMEs), more than 20,000 start-ups and hundreds of major companies.

Google’s cloud customers in India include Ashok Leyland, goibibo.com, Hero MotoCorp, Policybazaar.com, Quikr, Yaatra, SBI Cards, Hike Messenger, Vistara and ShareChat.

The company, which currently has three data centres in Mumbai, is on an expansion spree.

Knowing that the demand is set to increase from the fintech sector in over the next couple of months as banks and non-banking financial institutions hurry to meet Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) directive to bring financial data back to India, the company is hoping for a rise in demand.

The tech giant is pitching its artificial intelligence and machine learning laden cloud service as an easy to use and secure option, which it claims is better than competition.

Oppo F7 review: Notch screen-based smartphone designed for selfie admirers

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo, known for its selfie-centric devices, has become one of the first companies to introduce a notch screen-based Android device in India by launching the Oppo F7. The smartphone’s key features centre around its ultra-wide notch-based screen, a 25-megapixel selfie camera and artificial intelligence-backed scene optimisation.

The Oppo F7 seems to pack some punch on the specification sheet, especially with its 6GB RAM and 128GB storage in the top-end version. However, this selfie-centric smartphone delivers primarily on the imaging front more than any other aspect.

Business Standard reviewed the Oppo F7 on several parameters to test its overall capabilities, and here are our observations:

The Oppo F7 packs a 6.22-inch fullHD+ screen in a glass-metal-glass sandwiched design. It feels light in hand, and its compact body, measuring almost equal to the conventional 5.5-inch 16:9 aspect ratio screen-based smartphones, is comfortable to hold and operate.

HomePod is no match for Alexa. Is Apple losing the smart speaker plot?

The war for your digital home is waging. Apple has finally followed Amazon, Google and Microsoft by launching a smart speaker with a voice-controlled artificial intelligence assistant. Yet even though the “HomePod” is another technological marvel, there’s a chance Apple is already losing the battle.

The competition isn’t just through the sound quality of the speaker – but the other things that users can do with it. The most common requests to AI personal assistants such as Apple’s Siri are reportedly to play music, read the weather forecast and set timers or reminders.

But the capabilities of these assistants are increasing at lightning speed. This doesn’t just rely on the sophistication of the artificial intelligence involved but also what other technology the assistant can link to. And given Apple’s tendency to reject open connections to other company’s systems, it may find it has some serious catching up to do.

Google, Amazon ahead of Apple in artificial intelligence race: Fortune

Essentially a hardware-focused firm, Apple is falling behind in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race with Google and Amazon racing ahead while embracing the open-source and collaborative approach in the emerging field of AI, Fortune reported.

According to Mohanbir Sawhney, McCormick Foundation professor of technology at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, sheets of glass are simply no longer the most fertile ground for innovation.

"That means Apple urgently needs to shift its focus and investment to AI-driven technologies, as part of a broader effort to create the kind of ecosystem Amazon and Google are building quickly," Sawhney wrote in Fortune.

According to him, Apple has reached its peak with "super premium" iPhone X and "does not represent the beginning of the next 10 years of the smartphone, as Apple claims".

Apple launched the iPhone X globally on Friday.
Players pursue innovation along a vector of differentiation until the vector runs out of steam.
"When that happens, the focus of innovation shifts to a different vector and new market leaders emerge. We have seen this pattern several times in mobile phone innovation over the past three decades," Sawhney said.

The vector of differentiation is now shifting from hardware to AI and AI-based software and agents.
"As AI-driven phones like Google's Pixel 2 and virtual agents like Amazon Echo proliferateaToday's smartphones will likely recede into the background," he stressed.