Google hosted its annual developer conference this week, inside its very own Mountain View headquarters. And the reveals kept on coming. Here are the five most important announcements that Google made this week at Google I/O.
- Visual Positioning System
The new VPS Google plans on implementing works around visual recognition of your surroundings. Therefore, instead of triangulating your signal via satellites and sending it to your GPS, Google’s new VPS system will scan your surroundings and tell you where you are in a matter of seconds. The main advantage of VPS is that it can be way more precise, with an inaccuracy rate of just a few centimeters at its worst.
- Improved Google Home
This week at Google I/O, the tech giant promised to bring us a better Google Home system. Google is unsatisfied with how much Home is lagging even behind Amazon’s undoubtedly creepy Alexa.
- Clever Photo Tools
Taking photos is everyone’s passion nowadays, especially because our smartphone cameras are now as advanced as DSLRs even. And to make their Photos app even better in order to cater to our increasing demands for clever photo tools, Google is planning to improve how we share our photos by means of facial recognition.
- Google Lens
The Google Lens has been the centerpiece of the company’s keynote speech at I/O, but we won’t see it hitting markets to soon. However, it’s good to know that it’s in the making, and now we’re sure it’s going to be great.
- Independent Daydream Handset
Google is notorious for experimenting with virtual reality and augmented reality techniques. And these experiments are finally paying off, because Google has announced that their Daydream VR technology, which is similar to the Facebook-owned Oculus VR, will be available shortly on Samsung smartphones, as well as independently as a standalone device.