3 ms·

The translation stuff seems to all be handled by your phone, so what is it about these specifically that makes them required for this type of functionality? I'

• syphilis2 9y ago
  I think what completes the puzzle is that the Pixel 2 phone omits a headphone jack. Without a headphone jack wireless earbuds are required. Normally wireless earbuds would be superfluous, so they're introduced with a use case that highlights their advantages. That's to say, I don't believe the Pixel Buds are necessary at all for real time translation. But I think they're presented with the real time translation to give people some positive and cool imagery to associate with the earbuds. It's advertising as far as I can tell.
  • djrogers 9y ago
    So any old bluetooth headset will work, or have they artificially limited it to pixel buds?
    • CamelCaseName 9y ago
      Only Pixel Buds will work. You can read this comment chain by someone who worked on the project to learn more about why they made that decision: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404395
  • scott_karana 9y ago
    Why is this Google Translate an advantage that's exclusive to Bluetooth headsets? (Other than their choosing it to be so, of course. ;)
• dlubarov 9y ago
  I worked on this feature and commented on why we didn't support other headsets here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918