This feature seems entirely pointless, especially for this device (which should just be called the Pixel Fold 2).
Since the device is basically square (resolution 2,076 x 2,152) why would you not just rotate 90 degrees to change the side by side to top bottom like we can today?
There are cameras and physical buttons that you might want to use on the phone, and the fold might make it nicer to hold in one orientation. Also, the limitation exists because splitting the apps across the shorter side can make very awkward layouts, at least on small phone screens - no such problem with a square. I see no reason not to have the option of both layouts no matter its physical orientation.
I've never used a foldable though, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Utilizing the otherwise quiet month of August gives Google a chance to show off new AI ideas on Pixel ahead of Apple’s next iPhones which, now, look to be packed with “Apple Intelligence.”
Writing it off as a fad is rather ignorant. Sure there’s a lot of hype and bullshit surrounding AI, but it already has strong use cases and earns a profit for the companies involved. It’s still the early years for the tech too, so it is reasonable to expect it to improve in the coming years, both in terms of accuracy and performance.
I’m sitting here really hoping that models hit a plateau in capabilities soon. Continuing to get smaller/more efficient would be great, but if the capabilities of our best models would plateau for a bit and give society time to adjust to the impact I would be very happy.
We’re already seeing a slight leveling off compared to what we had previously. Right now there is a strong focus on optimization, getting models that can run on-device without losing too much quality. This will both help make LLMs sustainable financially and energy-wise, as well as mitigate the privacy and security concerns inherent to the first wave of cloud-based LLMs.
It’s certainly not moving as fast as their promises (what ever does), and perhaps has slowed, but for me at least it’s too early to call a plateau. Perhaps someone who works in the field or follows more closely can provide a better characterization, though.
Saying it's not a fad is rather ignorant. Sure it has practical uses but it's also being shoved into literally everything, even if purely by name, with little to no actual improvement.
I don’t disagree with the idea that AI is being shoved into software without much purpose or thought, but that’s got little to do with whether it is here to stay or not. It’s here to stay for its many practical uses, be it new personal assistants like what Apple has shown off with Siri, text summarization like what is being added to browsers, rephrasing/tone checking like what is being added to office software, or code completion and debugging like what is being added to code editors. These applications have proved their worth, and even if some applications are just because hype, these applications are here to stay.
It's something similar like the dotcom crash where everyone and their mother is looking to capitalize on The Next Big Thing™ which will then crash spectacularly but will leave a host of survivors that'll be the next big companies.
Where? Apple and Microsoft are the only ones I've seen offering on-device AI. It's been proven that Google is lying about this on several occasions. Mostly with their photo editor.
Gemini Nano. It's in Pixel Recorder and Gboard but multimodal capabilities are coming soon. It's very limited to a couple phones and not many companies outside of Google have access, but it has been used in production since last year.
Apple does not have on device AI in production today. Microsoft's "Copilot+PCs" launched less than 2 weeks ago, but are significantly more powerful machines.
Yes, there aren't many intensive mobile games. But the games that push the hardware have a very large playerbase ie. Genshin impact, Fortnite. So for mobile games this will be a valuable feature if it is implemented well. This won't help with PC games on mobile because frame gen needs games to reach a certain FPS threshold before being useful. It can't make a 15 FPS game playable. All PC gaming on Android benchmarks I have seen focus on older games, not new AAA.
I have so many working phones that have not received security updates for a long time. It is a shame, as I need a second phone and they are perfectly suitable but I worry about how safe they are to use.
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