Despite the fact that Google introduced the Pixel Buds 2 last year, it only mastered to release them on sale now. The reasons for such a delay were not named in the company, but, most likely, its banal unavailability influenced the timing of the launch of the new product. Maybe the developers couldn't get the right and left headphones to work in sync, or maybe they were just working on expanding their functionality. After all, in order to simply create headphones without wires, you don't need a lot of intelligence, but making something unique and unlike the products of competitors is much more difficult.
Google headphones will soon learn some cool new tricks
Google plans to teach the Pixel Buds 2 tricks that it hasn't seen in any headphones yet, not even wireless ones. The Pixel Buds app has a new feature to recognize various sounds specific to specific events, with the ability to subsequently alert the user. These are mainly sounds of a critical nature: fire siren, alarms, crying, dog barking, knocking on the door, doorbell. In short, all those sounds, ignoring which can be life-threatening.
Recognition of sounds in headphones
Pixel Buds 2 will be able to recognize critical sounds and alert the user about them
This function will work as follows. A built-in microphone system will capture ambient sounds in real time and interpret them so that they can be directed directly to the user's ear if necessary. It may seem like it will take a lot of power, which will have a negative impact on the autonomy of the headphones. However, by its nature, this function is very close to Active Noise Cancellation technology, which detects external noise and, to suppress them, creates an equivalent anti-noise. Therefore, even if the battery life of the Pixel Buds 2 is reduced, it will not be much.
A similar function is currently being implemented Apple, which plans to make it part of Universal Access in iOS 14. However, there it is intended for users with hearing impairments. It is assumed that thanks to it iPhone it will be able to capture critical sounds, and then visually notify the user about it, for example, by displaying a bright and noticeable notification from afar. Thus, Apple hopes to save lives of people who may not hear very important sounds for survival.
Why Google is better Apple
For once, Google has done something better than Apple
In my opinion, Google's implementation, which decided to provide the headphone recognition function, is much more applicable in practice. Still, when we listen to music, especially with plug-in headphones, external sounds do not pass into our ears. Because of this, there is a risk of not hearing an alarm, a baby crying or a doorbell – after all, silicone ear pads, coupled with an active noise reduction, create an almost complete vacuum and prevent the passage of external noise, putting either the listener or his loved ones at risk.
When Google releases an update for the Pixel Buds 2 with support for sound recognition, it hasn't been reported. At the moment, the Pixel Buds application contains only mentions of the innovation, given in the form of lines of program code. There are no buttons to activate or design notifications for triggered sounds yet. This means that the development is at one of the early stages, and therefore it is clearly worth waiting for the release of the innovation not earlier than summer, or even autumn.