
Soli Radar-Based Perception and Interaction in Pixel 4 - theafh
https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/03/soli-radar-based-perception-and.html
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reissbaker
The tradeoff of putting a giant bezel on top of the phone in order to support
being able to take a tiny number of actions in a few apps by waving your hands
instead of touching your phone was... Probably not the right tradeoff. How
often do you use your phone without, y'know, also holding it in your hand, and
thus being able to touch it? And if they hadn't shipped Soli in the 4, I
wonder if they would've saved enough manufacturing $$ to put an ultrawide
camera in to compete with the iPhone 11...

From the current leaks it sounds like Soli isn't going to make it into the
Pixel 4a; I'm curious whether it makes it into the 5 (and TBH hope it doesn't,
unless they can figure out how to not make it take up a huge amount of bezel
space).

Soli makes a lot of sense for the Google/Nest Home line of products, where you
rarely are close enough to touch them. But for your phone? I just don't get
it, and it seems like few people find it useful. I'm pretty surprised it
shipped and would be very curious to learn how that happened, since it seems
to have negatively impacted the product pretty heavily.

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Grazester
The Pixel 4a is a budget pixel. Of course it's not going to get Solo as for
the Pixel 5...that remains to be seen since this is Google

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reissbaker
Yeah, it's just interesting that in many ways it seems like the "budget Pixel"
will actually be superior to the non-budget version: a bezel-less design (at
least, according to many of the current leaks) because they aren't shipping
the generally-pointless Soli hardware, and likely much improved battery life
because they aren't shipping a 90hz screen (that the Pixel 4 couldn't handle
anyway and has had to keep software-locked to 60hz half the time just to make
it through the day on a single charge). The outdated, lopsided design and the
anemic battery life were two of the most-disliked features in critic reviews
of the 4; interesting that the 4a will basically be a better version of the 4,
with the exception of missing the telephoto camera and (probably) lack of
waterproofing.

Responding to critical feedback is a good and sensible thing to do. But
ideally you would be able to get feedback on large issues internally, without
needing the market to reject your product (Pixel 4 sales have been reported to
be quite low): Soli seems so clearly useless, and caused such obvious product
design tradeoffs, that I'm curious what led to it shipping in the first place.
Was it an exec who was excited about Soli pushing it through? Was there a
design/engineering communication breakdown? Would be very interesting to be a
fly on the wall in the retro.

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MyelinatedT
Maybe I'm an outlier here but I love my Pixel 4! Battery life isn't great, but
the 90Hz screen is amazing and I definitely wouldn't go back to 60Hz if you
paid me.

Aside from that, the Pixel 3a doesn't have wireless charging, so if that also
applies to the 4a it's a total deal-breaker for me. And I really enjoy the
performance of the Snapdragon 855 - especially with 90Hz forced at all times
and animations tweaked to run at 2x speed, it's extremely noticeable how fast
this phone is.

Not saying the Pixel 4a won't be a good phone, but the 4 is definitely better
for premium features imo.

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gundmc
I have a Pixel 4, so far this feature has been near useless. At times it's
nice to reach towards my phone and wake up the always-on display to see what
notifications are present but that's about it. Song changing, etc feels
gimmicky and impractical.

Overall, it feels like this is a tech demo lacking a killer app.

~~~
77ko
Can confirm, despite the recent updates, the gestures are gimmicky and
sometimes activate when not needed e.g song skips to the next one when
reaching to pick up the phone.

The only truly useful thing is waking up the phone on detecting motion nearby,
which could probably be done with a much simpler sensor.

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aftbit
Is there any way to access the "raw" sensor data from the Soli device in a
Pixel 4, even with root? As far as I can tell, the best an Android developer
can access is some pre-calculated gestures. I'd like to play with using this
for other applications, not just snoozing my alarm more easily.

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J5892
I don't think there is.

It would be a cool thing to play around with, and I wish they would make it
available. The problem is the raw data isn't likely to be very useful without
using ML to filter out false positives for any gestures you want to implement.

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melling
Motion sense could be used in a lot of applications.

I’d like to use an ATM without touching anything.

The coronavirus scare should open up markets.

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tootie
Soli is supposedly very accurate for minute movements and is very small and
low-powered allowing it to be embedded in a phone, but this kind of tech has
existed for a while. The Leap Motion comes in a really small, embeddable
package and works over USB and can track hand movements quite accurately. It's
been around for 10 years and was recently acquired by a haptics company. It's
never managed to go mainstream or find any real applications outside of niche
gaming.

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MegaButts
> The Leap Motion comes in a really small, embeddable package and works over
> USB and can track hand movements quite accurately.

I've never tried one, but everyone I know that did said it was so bad they
stopped using it after maybe 10 minutes of frustration.

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tootie
"So bad" depends on what they were trying to do. If they were trying to
observe skeletal tracking of their fingers, then they should be pretty happy.
If they were trying to use it in place of a mouse or something, then it
probably sucked because no one has solved the UX for one of these things which
is my point. The Soli is even better than the Leap at tracking fingers, but
exactly what good is that?

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specto
Cool but completely useless on my phone.

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jfengel
I think that's the point. They want you to buy theirs.

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namanyayg
Since I first saw the Soli demo video some years ago, I have been waiting to
buy a small physical hackable version of the product.

Adding it to a phone seems like an unintelligent move -- maybe they should
release a smart watch (if they know how)?

Guess I will have to wait at least a few years more.

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Causality1
What is the point of putting motion sense in a device that spends its entire
life either in your hand or within arm's reach? They stuck a kinect in a phone
but won't give us a damn headphone jack?

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oh_sigh
> Motion Sense additionally detects when you're near your phone and when you
> reach for it, allowing your Pixel to be more helpful by anticipating your
> actions, such as by priming the camera to provide a seamless face unlock
> experience, politely lowering the volume of a ringing alarm as you reach to
> dismiss it, or turning off the display to save power when you’re no longer
> near the device.

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Causality1
There is no way in hell it has the kind of viewing angle to pick up my hand
more than a fraction of a second before I touch the phone. Not that it
matters, since the camera and the accelerometer can do all those things
already.

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skykooler
I am reminded of the radio in the book "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy",
where things had gotten to the point that you merely had to wave at it to
change the channel.

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fulafel
Could this be used as an input method in games or music apps?

Touchscreens are such crap to use.

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jascii
I'd much rather have a device with a keyboard..

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exabrial
I wish the Palm Pre would have taken off. Loved the keyboard layout; it was
extremely well thought out

