Samsung’s 2020 flagship smartphone lineup is out.
As could be easily predicted, the Korean company went all out to spec its latest devices with the latest in tech trends: 5G network connectivity, as many cameras as it could fit on their backs that can zoom tens (heck, even hundreds) of times, bigger displays… name them.
On the software front, the company is taking a big step building upon the features unique to the Galaxy S20 family courtesy of its new and updated hardware to add on to the software features it has rolled out over the last few months to its existing smartphone line up as One UI 2.0.
Samsung’s Galaxy S20, S20 Plus and S20 Ultra are the first devices not made by Google that will be rocking Live Captions.
Announced last year as a key Android 10 feature, Live Captions have only been made available on Google’s Pixel smartphones.
Now, as per the presentation made at last night’s unveiling of the Galaxy S20 by Google’s senior vice president of platforms and ecosystems, Hiroshi Lockheimer, it’s stepping out of Google’s garden and out into the wild.
Live Captions is one of the three features and aspects of Android (in Android 10) that Lockheimer was out to showcase that are supported in Samsung’s newest devices. The others being ready support for 5G networks and 5G capable devices and foldable devices like the Galaxy Z Flip, the other device that was the centre of attention last night.
How Live Captions works is simple: it transcribes and provides captions for any video and audio content that one is playing on their device.
By taking advantage of on-device machine learning (which means that no user data has to be sent to remote servers to facilitate the efficiency of the functionality), Live Captions comes in handy when one is out and about and still doesn’t want to miss anything that’s trending, no matter the noise in their surroundings.
As a key accessibility feature, it is even more useful to those that have some form (or total) impairment when it comes to hearing.
The feature is available on the Galaxy S20 devices right out of the box.
