Google To Debut Pixel 4 Phone At Oct. Launch Event

Google has scheduled a press event for Oct. 15 in New York City, where it’s expected to debut the Pixel 4 phone.

According to CNBC, the invite says the tech giant will unveil a “few new things” at the event. Last year, the company debuted the Google Home Hub and the Google Pixel Slate tablet, as well as the Pixel 3 lineup.

Back in July, Google announced in a video tweet that the Pixel 4 smartphone doesn’t need hands to operate it. Instead, people can use their faces to unlock the phone and hand gestures for other commands through the use of a new technology called Soli.

The motion-sensing radar that is located at the top of the Pixel 4 leverages the same technology that is used to detect planes and other large objects. Soli senses small motions around the phone using software algorithms in conjunction with the hardware sensor, and it can recognize gestures and detect when people are nearby. It allows users to skip songs, snooze alarms and silence phone calls simply by waving a hand.

The phone, which is expected to be released this fall, opens when it is picked up. The face unlock technology uses image data that is never saved or shared with other Google services, and the Pixel 4 can be used for secure payments and app authentication.

In March, Google also released its new voice recognition app for the Pixel, which works entirely offline. While voice recognition on smartphones is nothing new, there is always a slight delay when virtual assistants — such as Siri, Alexa and Google — respond to a user’s query. That happens because the data from the user’s voice has to travel from their phone to the service provider’s servers, where it is then analyzed and sent back.

However, Google’s new technology is an end-to-end speech recognizer, compact enough to be kept on a phone.