Assume you know only English, and you meet a person who understands only Hindi. For a freewheeling conversation, all that you need is a phone with Google Translate app. Open the app, set the language, tap on the mike and speak into the phone. Just like a human translator would do, the app will render in Hindi what you speak in English.
Consider another scenario. You are heading to a place where you think the internet connectivity could be very poor. To save on data charges, search and save the location ahead of time. Give the location a name, so that you can find it easily later.
These are two of the many new features and improvements to products that Google has brought in for its users in India. The internet behemoth recently showcased them at a Google House event in Bengaluru.
Sandeep Menon, Google Country Marketing Director, said that in today’s mobile-first scenario, more and more people were getting their first internet experience on their phone rather than on a computer. There are six to seven million new mobile internet users every month. These improvisations have been done considering that we need access to data even when connectivity is poor or virtually nil, he said.
He also drove home the point that the mobile phone and many Google apps function as virtual assistants helping people go about their daily routine easily, irrespective of the type of phone you use or data plan you have.
Google Translate
Besides Hindi, the Google Translate app supports nine Indian languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. The speech output though is currently available only for English to Hindi and vice versa. For other languages, the translation is displayed in text format.
The app also solves the problem of figuring out signboards and menus. Tap the camera icon and focus on the words. When the camera button is tapped, the words are scanned. Select the words that needs to be translated.
“While more than half of the content on the internet is in English, only 20 per cent of the world’s population speaks English. Google Translate will hopefully knock down a few more language barriers, helping you communicate better and get the information you need,” said Mr Menon.
“As more people use the app, it will learn to understand better the Indian accent making the translations more and more accurate,” he said.
Google Maps
Besides landmark indications and voice navigation in Indian accent, Google Maps provides live traffic data in 34 cities, so that travellers can choose a less congested route. It also suggests which lane to say in or move to in 20 cities so that motorists don’t drive down the wrong road.
Google Transit
The Transit feature on Google Maps helps users find the public transport (like train, bus and metro rail) services in as many as 10 cities: Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune and Thane.
For either inter-city or intra-city travel, go to www.google.com/transit, key in the from and to locations, and click on ‘Get Directions’. Google will tell you the bus or train numbers, timings, and duration of travel.
The Schedule Explorer link gives more details like transit route and timings. Google recently added the Indian Railways schedules for 12,000 trains. Public transport companies can contact Google to include their schedules and routes into the Transit feature.
A search for parks, museums, etc will not only gives you the location, timing, phone numbers and reviews but in some cases even what times of the day they are mostly busy.
Google Photos
World over, around 1.8 billion photos, and 93 million selfies are being uploaded every day. Google Photos, which is now a standalone app, provides for unlimited free storage of high resolution photos photos and videos. Once the photos are backed up, even if they are deleted from the device, they will be there in the cloud, and are accessible even in the offline mode.
Sharing has also been made a lot easier. Create a link and put it on Facebook, Hangouts, WhatsApp, Twitter or email. While the recipient need not have the Photos app to see these images, he can easily the save the hi-res version on their photo library as well.
Photos can be searched for not only by date, but by using keywords like ‘landscape’, ‘sunset’, ‘beach’ etc.
YouTube
The offline mode allows you to watch videos in poor or no connectivity areas. For videos that offer this feature, tap on the ‘offline’ icon at the bottom right of the video frame and pick the video quality according to the phone’s storage capacity. The saved videos can be accessed for up to 48 hours from the Guide menu that toggles out of the upper left side of the app.
