It's listening
This voice dictation demo shows how much better the Pixel is than the iPhone
AI smarts push Pixel ahead.
by Michael Allison
What you need to know
- The strengths of the Google Pixel line lies in the power of AI and machine learning.
- The onboard speech to text is so speedy, it outperforms much more powerful iPhones.
- Google has also released a recorder app for older Pixels.
Google's Pixels rarely compete on pure power, but machine learning and AI pick up the slack and push overall performance to a place where it can be compared with an often overhwleminlgy powerful iPhone. One area where this is most evident is Google's transcription speed when using speech-to-text on Pixels. It's fast, as this video reminded us today.
As you can see from the short video, Google's speech-to-text is powerful, speedy, and accurate, capturing speech almost as naturally as if it were a trained stenographer click-clacking away on their own time. It's something you can use somewhat confidently without any awkward pauses, unlike Apple's own effort.
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For what its worth, it isn't the only place you can see Google's excellent transcription prowess at work. All supported Pixels now have access to a Recorder app that can transcribe your recordings after the fact. It's useful in many scenarios from reporting to sitting in on lectures.
Writing a review in 2019, the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern said:
This is nuts. I'm speaking very fast right now. Not like auctioneer fast but fast. Yet the Google Pixel is transcribing all my words as I say them. Whoa it just inserted all the proper punctuation without me having to say it oh whoops it missed a comma and a period. Whatever. I forgive you and still love you Pixel. Even though your battery life should be better,
As the video above shows, all of that remains true in 2020 — even the battery life comment.
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