Parents can rejoice as Google lens can now help solve that dreaded maths equation for kids

Google has announced a couple of new features that it will be rolling out across its services for Indian users. These include four new language features that will help users interact with Google and will help the search giant better understand user queries in different languages. The company also announced its new language model called MuRIL (Multilingual Representations of Indian Languages) that handles users queries in 16 Indian languages along with English. 

When your kid has a math problem, rise to the equation. Nidhi Gupta, Sr. Product Manager, Google India, talks about how you can help your kids with math by using Lens on Google Search at #L10n: A #GoogleForIndia Event. Tune in now  https://t.co/wHMPTokz8C. pic.twitter.com/Dvahj3JhgA

— Google India (@GoogleIndia) December 17, 2020

During the recently concluded L10n event, Google also announced a new Google lens feature that will help kids solve mathematical equations. Google lens allows users to understand the world around them by using the camera or a picture. Google claims that more people in India use Google Lens than any other country in the world as over 3 billion words have been translated with Lens in 2020.

To help students and in turn parents, Google is now introducing the new Lens feature that will help in completing the homework and supports both Hindi and English languages. This may come in really handy at the time when your kid asks you about quadratic equations, logarithms, fractions or Pythagoras theorem, stuff you thought you would never have to remember again. 

Having said that, the new Google Lens functionality lets users take a picture of the maths problem using the camera and shows a step-by-step procedure to solve it in Hindi or English. A new Homework tab is being added to Google Lens that will help parents and students solve complex maths problems by giving them explainers and even video results with different methods to approach it.

The new feature can be accessed from the Search bar in the Google app. Users just need to create a picture of the maths problem by using the camera and the app with turn the homework question into a query. Based on how it understands the equation, Google will display step-by-step results on guides and different methods to solve the problem and even videos to help students understand the equation in a better way.

Google has also introduced some more languages features for Indian users and you can read more about that announcement here.

 

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You can now get Google Search results in four new Indian languages- Bangla, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu

Google has announced a slew of new features that will enhance how it understands and processes Indian languages. Stemming from its aim to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, Google at the L10n event announced four new language features that will be rolling out across its services to help for better understanding of regional languages in India. 

Google Research India has also unveiled a new multi-lingual language model that was developed in India to help understand the various nuances in different languages used across the country. The new language model called MuRIL (Multi-lingual Representations of Indian Languages) uses a text-to-text approach and is capable of handling queries from different languages. It currently supports 16 Indian languages along with English.

One of the major difference with MuRIL over previous models is that it has been optimized to understand and process many Indian regional languages for its scripts, dialects and more. Google says the new language model is smarter at understanding the sentiment of a statement and can classify it better. For instance, on the previous language model, “Achha hua account bandh nahi hua” would have been detected and interpreted as a negative meaning sentence but MuRIL is correctly able to identify it as a positive statement. 

“We hope MuRIL will be the next big evolution for Indian language understanding, forming a better foundation for researchers, students, startups, and anyone else interested in building Indian language technologies, and we can’t wait to see the many ways the ecosystem puts it to use,” Google said. MuRIL has been released as an open-source language model that can be used by others for free.

Google Maps now supports 9 Indian languages

Google had previously allowed users to change the language of the Assistant and Discover to Indian languages for better understanding. The company says that over 50 per cent of all content that is viewed on Google Discover in India is in one of the regional languages. Additionally, one-third of Assistant users in India prefer to use it in their native tongue and since its launch, “queries in Indian languages have doubled.”

The company is now expanding the same feature to Maps where users in India can now change the default language of the navigation app to one of the nine languages. These include Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bangla, Kannada, Malayalam and Punjabi. Users can change the Maps language by going to the Settings and selecting App language from the list of options.

Google Search to display results in local languages

Google has also announced that Search will now display results in local languages wherever available, even if the user searches in English. In order to better serve bilingual or multi-lingual users who often face difficulties in typing in their native script, Google will now show Search results in a regional language they prefer even if the query is typed in English.

Google will be rolling out the new feature over the next month and with support for five languages-- Hindi, Bangla, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu.

Toggle between English and native language results

Google had earlier released a feature that allowed users to switch between English and Hindi search results by simply tapping a button. With this, users could see Search results in their preferred language even when the query was typed in English. Since the introduction of the English to Hindi tab on Search, Google has witnessed over 10X growth in Hindi queries originating from India. 

The latest update to the Search language adds four new Indian languages including Tamil, Telugu, Bangla and Marathi along with Hindi. Users who speak either of these languages can now toggle a button to check out search results in their native language.

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The PS5 could launch in India in January but may not be available across the entire country

For a lot of PlayStation fans in India, the launch or should we say, lack of a launch date has truly soured the promise and excitement of the next generation of consoles. As we reported earlier, Sony India has made no announcements regarding the launch of the PS5 in India and even released a social media statement stating the same and asking fans to be patient. But as a new report from the Mako Reactor states, we could be seeing the launch of the PS5 in India, sometime in January. 

After reaching out to multiple Sony Centres across the country, The Mako Reactor found out that they were accepting pre-orders before the end of December to prepare for a January release window in India. Sony has apparently informed these Centres that they will be informed soon of the developments. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you’re looking to purchase the PS5 online, you may have a hard time doing that as supply will be limited to Metro cities first with other areas slowly receiving the PS5 after two weeks. So do be wary when the PS5 does come out in India. We would advise you guys to wait for a bit so that whenever you want to purchase the PS5, you can do so without any hassles. 

If you’re really interested in the PS5, you can actually check out our first impressions of the console, right here. 

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An iPhone actually survived a drop from an airplane

Everyone has dropped their phone at some point of time, but not everyone does it from an airplane! Well, for this particular Brazilian filmmaker, it was just that. Ernesto Galiotto was flying in an airplane above a beach in Rio De Janerio, and decided to capture a picture and took out his Apple iPhone 6 from his pocket. He lost his grip on the phone and dropped it out of the window. 

As anyone would expect, the phone would not have survived the fall, but to everyone’s surprise, the phone not only survived the drop but also recorded the footage while being dropped, and in almost 30 seconds it landed on the beach. As reported by G1, it was still beaming its location on Find my iPhone and was located in the middle of the beach.

Ernesto stated, “I had faith that I would recover it. I thought, ‘If it didn’t fall in the water, we’ll find it. For a few meters I could have hit a person — and, at that height I was flying, 2,000 feet, it was going to be a tragedy, can you imagine? But it wasn’t a tragedy, it had many emotions.” 

You can check out the footage over here. One of the more surprising facts is that it was an iPhone 6s, which did not have the latest shatterproof protection that the newer models possess. 

Here is one such video of the iPhone 12 Pro being dropped from a certain height from a drone and comes away unscathed without any major damage to the phone. 

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A new audio only mode has been spotted on the Netflix mobile app

Netflix recommends you to watch its programs on big screens but it keeps updating its mobile app to bring more features to the smaller screens as well. It seems like the last report asserting an 'audio only' mode coming to the Netflix app was correct and it is closing its release.

In the last week of October, XDA Developers spotted the 'audio only' feature in the Netflix mobile app. Now, it seems like the first few subscribers have got the feature as part of the server-side rollout. Folks at Android Police have shared the screenshots of the first look of this feature appearing inside the app.

As per the screenshots shared by Android Police, we can see a 'Video Off/On' button along with other controls like scrub bar backward, forward, play, pause, screen lock, speed, brightness, cast and more.

Tapping on 'Video Off' turns audio-only mode where the visuals go blank, and you only see the control options over a black screen. While all the other options make sense, brightness control doesn't make any sense when you are not watching anything on the screen. The report does not tell whether one can lock the screen while listening to the audio or not. 

There's also a new 'Audio Only' option in the settings as well. It lets users choose when you want to use the mode: 'Always On', 'Headphones' or 'External Speakers', and 'Off'.

For those who're thinking Netflix without visuals makes no sense, you're partially right. It may not sound as useful as it is on YouTube, but one can always enjoy sitcoms, stand-up comedy and similar content with just the audio. If not that, those with vision impairment can also make use of the feature. This will not only save the battery but also a lot of data. This could also see Netflix venture into the podcast market. 

The official release date of the feature is not known yet. Apart from this feature, Netflix found to be testing a sleep timer option to the streaming app so that the service shuts off on its own rather than playing till your device’s battery runs out.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Xbox Series X Review: Still Flawed, but a Step Forward

Our Xbox Cyberpunk 2077 review looks at the game’s performance on Xbox One X and Xbox Series X, where it lacks (the resolution and fps), and why Cyberpunk 2077 is a game for the chosen few.

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Oppo Reno 5 Pro+ spotted on TENAA revealing key specifications ahead of launch

Oppo Reno 5 Pro+ has been spotted in a listing on TENAA that reveals the phone’s key specifications. The company unveiled the Reno 5 series on December 11 with the Reno 5 and Reno 5 Pro while the Reno 5 Pro+ is expected to be announced on December 24. Oppo had teased the launch of the Reno 5 Pro+ during the Reno 5 announcement but there is no official word on the exact date of the launch yet. Interestingly, Oppo has also teased the launch of the Reno 5 series in India but is yet to reveal any details.

The Reno 5 Pro+ has been spotted in a listing on the website of Chinese regulatory authority TENAA, revealing key specifications of the upcoming phone and confirming some speculations. While the name of the chipset is not mentioned in the listing, the core clock speed is mentioned as 2.8GHz which is likely to be the Snapdragon 865 processor under the hood as rumoured previously.

Some of the other known features include the rear camera setup which has been confirmed to have four-camera array and support for 65W fast charging. Here’s a brief look at the leaked specifications of the Reno 5 Pro+. 

Oppo Reno 5 Pro+ leaked specifications

The Oppo Reno 5 Pro+ is expected to feature a 6.55-inch Full HD+ (2400 x 1080 pixels) resolution display that uses an AMOLED panel. The screen has a 90Hz refresh rate, a punch-hole cutout for the selfie camera and is topped with a layer of Gorilla Glass for added protection. The phone has an aluminium-glass construction that measures 8 millimetres in thickness and weighs 184 grams.

It is expected to be powered by the Snapdragon 865 processor and could be paired with upto 12GB RAM and 256GB storage options to choose from. It is likely running on Android 11 based ColorOS 11.1 out-of-the-box.

The Reno 5 Pro+ is rumoured to have four cameras on the back that consists of a primary 50MP camera with OIS, a 13MP telephoto lens with optical zoom, a 16MP ultra-wide-angle camera with 120-degree field-of-view and a 2MP macro camera. On the front, there is expected to be a 32MP selfie camera housed within the notch cutout.

The phone uses an in-screen fingerprint reader and is equipped with a 4,400mAh battery that supports 65W fast charging out-of-the-box.

 

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