The impending launch of the Pixel 3 next month will see one of the most leaked phones of 2018 finally made official, and while we know essentially everything about them from a hardware perspective, we’re still getting some new bits of information about the software. A new feature that the Pixel 3 will bring to the table is real-time Google Lens results in the camera app.
The leak comes courtesy of Ishan Agarwal on Twitter, who has been posting tidbits from a Pixel 3 phone in possession of a ‘colleague’. We saw the release of the Pixel 3 Wallpapers app overnight, allowing you to install the new live wallpapers from the phone. There’s more to come though with a look at some ‘Pixel Tips’ videos found on the phone, showing new features for users such as ‘Active Edge’, ‘Now Playing’ and more which are ‘old’ for most Pixel users, but then there’s a demo of real-time scanning in the Google Camera app.
In the video he posted (and then removed) the video shows the camera app which recognises an email address from a business card in real-time, in which a popup notification shows up allowing the user to tap to open Gmail with a new email ready to send. The ability of Lens to recognise an email isn’t new, it’s that the function is built-in to the camera app rather than requiring the user to switch to Google Lens, or call it from Assistant.
The implementation of real-time results in the Camera app is a big step for aiding user adoption, removing barriers to use or remembering to load an app to perform a function. The ‘it just works’ nature of the feature could be the step that it requires to see broader adoption – a step that their ‘Google Now On Tap’ feature never really took.
We’re now two weeks out from the Made By Google event that’s taking place in New York on October 9th. We’ll be tuning in to the live stream at 2am on the morning of October 10th, to find out everything about the phone that Google has to announce.
Do you use Google Lens now? Would real-time results make you use it more?
