Google details “trust tokens”, its alternative to third-party cookies for web browsers

Back in January 2020, Google had mentioned its intent to phase out third-party cookies from Google Chrome within the next two years. Initiatives like the Privacy Sandbox are believed to be the drivers of a healthy, ad-supported web that would render third-party cookies obsolete. While we are still far from reaching that goal, Google is now showcasing its proposed alternatives to third-party cookies: trust tokens.

A cookie, in the context of the Internet, is a piece of data that is stored on the user’s device when the user accesses a website. The cookie stores data related to the user’s interaction with the website, such as items added to a shopping cart, login data, form data, and much more. First-party cookies are cookies that are created by the visited website itself and are necessary for the website to track your activity as you move from page to page. Third-party cookies, on the other hand, are cookies that are created by a party other than the visited website or the user; these usually refer to cookies created by external content, such as advertisements. Since average users often have little or no control over the advertisements that providers can serve them, they inadvertently allow these ad providers to track and build the user’s profile based on their browsing history across websites that have ads from the same provider. For an ad provider, tracking the user is an important task as it allows them to serve users with ads that are more relevant to the user’s taste, and therefore, have a higher probability of attracting the user’s attention and interaction. While this goal sounds reasonable on the surface, in practice, third-party cookies have been used for much more nefarious purposes, trampling upon user privacy with little concern.

Unlike cookies, trust tokens are designed to authenticate a user without needing to know their identity. The idea behind a trust token is to differentiate between a user and a bot, and not to track every individual user. As Google mentions, the web ecosystem heavily relies on building trust signals to detect fraudulent or spammy actors, and this coarse segmentation is crucial for the ad-industry which receives a large amount of invalid, fraudulent traffic. Trust tokens are non-personalized and cannot be used to track users, but they are cryptographically signed, so they cannot be forged by bad actors either.

Google’s announcement does not go further into the workings of trust tokens, but there is an explainer document available if you are interested in further details and implementation. Trust tokens are available for testing by developers through the API. If all goes well, we should see them become popular on the web before Chrome’s migration away from third-party cookies.

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Source: Google Blog, Web.Dev
Story Via: The Verge

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The new Google Assistant will soon support German, French, Spanish, and Italian on the Pixel 4a/4

Today, Google lifted the veil on the Pixel 4a, the company’s second-ever mid-range Pixel smartphone. They also surprisingly teased the Pixel 4a 5G and the Pixel 5 for a fall launch. But new hardware isn’t all that Google announced today. The company also announced software updates to two of its nifty AI-powered features: Live Caption and the new Google Assistant. The former can now work over voice and video calls while the latter will soon work in 4 new European languages: German, French, Spanish, and Italian.

Back at Google I/O 2019, Google demonstrated a much faster version of its Google Assistant service. According to Google, the “new Google Assistant” processes speech at nearly zero latency, offers nearly real-time transcriptions, and works without a network connection. They accomplished this by trimming down 100GB of speech recognition and language understanding machine learning models to less than 0.5GB in size. The new Google Assistant experience also supports Continued Conversations and integrates with other Google apps on your device.

At launch, the new Google Assistant was only available on the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL in U.S. English and with personal Google accounts. However, Google has since expanded support to G Suite accounts, new English locales including Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Singapore, and the first foreign language: Japanese. With the Pixel 4a launch, however, Google announced that the new Google Assistant will be available in the aforementioned 4 European languages.

Introduced last year, the new Google Assistant is also available on Pixel 4a to help with multitasking across apps and getting things done quickly, like finding a photo or sending a text. You can now try out the new experience in German, French, Spanish and Italian, in addition to English, with more languages coming soon.

Google’s support page has been updated to reflect today’s announcement, with the notice that support for these 4 languages “will be available soon.” We’ll let you know when these new languages are added. Meanwhile, check out our Pixel 4a coverage to learn more about Google’s latest device.

Google Pixel 4 Forums ||| Google Pixel 4 XL Forums ||| Google Pixel 4a Forums

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Live Caption can transcribe phone calls on the Google Pixel 4a

At last year’s Google I/O, Google unveiled Live Caption, an accessibility feature that transcribes audio playing back on the device. Using Android’s AudioPlaybackCaptureConfiguration API, Live Caption captures audio from the device and runs it through three on-device machine learning models to generate captions from any English-language speech that’s recognized. The first devices to get support for Live Caption were the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, but Google later expanded support to the Pixel 2 and 2 XL, Pixel 3 and 3a series, Samsung Galaxy S20 series, OnePlus 7T series, OnePlus 8 series, the OnePlus Nord, and now, the new Pixel 4a. With the launch of the Google Pixel 4a, though, Live Caption gets its first functional upgrade: The ability to detect and transcribe speech over phone calls.

We first spotted hints for this new feature back in April during a teardown of Device Personalization Services, the app responsible for Live Caption. The strings suggested that the user will be able to opt-in to transcribe audio during a phone call, and if they choose to do so, their use of the feature will be announced to others on the call. Once the feature is enabled, other parties on the call will hear the following: “Hi, the person you’re about to speak with has call captions turned on. They’ll see captions of what you say to help them listen along.” This will work for both voice and video calls and supports apps like Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more.

Google Pixel 4a Forums

Other than introducing the ability to transcribe phone calls, Google hasn’t announced any other improvements to Live Caption. It still only works with English-language speech and still doesn’t work with all kinds of media. However, it’s possible that Google will continue to add new features, and it’s likely that Google will continue to expand support to additional devices in the future. Google says that transcribing phone calls will become available for other Pixel devices with Live Caption first (specifically, the Pixel 2, Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 4) but it’ll likely roll out to the aforementioned non-Google devices that have the feature, but we don’t have exact confirmation on the availability or timeline. We’ll update this article once we find out, though.

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Google teases the Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 for a fall launch

Today, Google announced the Pixel 4a, the company’s second mid-range Pixel smartphone following last year’s Pixel 3a. Google was originally expected to launch the Pixel 4a back in May, but the company was forced to delay the phone’s launch by over 2 months due to COVID-19 and its supply chain disruptions. As a result, what was supposed to be a mid-year smartphone launch has landed much closer to Google’s fall release schedule. If Google keeps to its typical fall hardware launch schedule, then we should see the company unveil its next Pixel smartphones in just 2 months. Ahead of that launch, Google is now teasing the two smartphones they’re expected to show off this fall: the Google Pixel 4a 5G and the Google Pixel 5.

If those names seem strange to you, then let me briefly recap what we know so far. Before today, Google has always released two Pixel devices at every launch event: a regular model and a larger, XL model. The differences between the regular and XL model have typically come down to screen sizes, screen resolutions, display vendors, and battery capacities, while the SoCs, cameras, and software remain the same. The company broke that trend today by announcing a Pixel 4a but not a Pixel 4a “XL.” However, the Pixel 4a 5G model seems like it’ll be slightly larger than the Pixel 4a that was announced today. In fact, in the image shown below, the smaller phone on the left is the Pixel 5 while the larger phone on the right is the Pixel 4a 5G, according to leaker Ishan Agarwal. But the Pixel 4a 5G may not just be a larger Pixel 4a—recent leaks point to the device being closer to the Pixel 5 in terms of hardware.

Source: Google

Back in January, we discovered 3 code-names for new Pixel smartphones: sunfish, bramble, and redfin. We quickly confirmed that sunfish is the code-name for the Pixel 4a, but it wasn’t until last month that we confirmed the marketing names for bramble and redfin. Three different code findings confirm that bramble is the Google Pixel 4a 5G while redfin is the Google Pixel 5: the Google App, Google Camera 7.5, and an AOSP comment. The January code-name discoveries, as well as more code digging back in May, confirm that the Pixel 4a 5G and the Pixel 5 will be powered by the Qualcomm’s “sm7250” mobile platform, which means both devices will have either the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765, or the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G, or the Qualcomm Snapdragon 768G processor. All three of these SoCs support 5G connectivity thanks to the integrated Snapdragon X52 modem, but the new Google Pixel 4a with its Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 does not support 5G. That’s a big difference between all three devices right off the bat, not to mention that there will be a substantial difference in performance between them.

Apart from the difference in processors, we don’t know much else about the Pixel 4a 5G or Pixel 5. From the above image, it seems like the Pixel 5 has a brushed metal frame while the Pixel 4a 5G has a colored power button, at least in this presumed “Just Black” color. Google says the Pixel 4a 5G will cost $499 but they haven’t revealed pricing for the Pixel 5. However, a Google survey earlier revealed $699 as a potential price for the Pixel 5. Both devices will be available in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan and Australia. We expect that only redfin, AKA the Pixel 5, will support reverse wireless charging, but there could be other differentiators to justify this difference in price. Google is working on a bunch of new features in the Google Camera app, some of which could be exclusive to the Pixel 5. Once we get closer to Google’s fall hardware event, we’ll likely learn more about the Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5. After all, Google devices have an uncanny ability to show up in unexpected places.

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Google’s mid-range Pixel 4a smartphone announced at a price of $349

Following months of delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google has finally unveiled its 2020 mid-range Pixel smartphone, the Google Pixel 4a. We’ve been anticipating the launch of this device since it first leaked all the way back in December, and Google is finally ready to show off the device that’ll compete with the Apple iPhone SE and Samsung Galaxy A51 in the U.S. Here’s everything you need to know about the Google Pixel 4a and its specifications, features, pricing, and availability.

Google Pixel 4a Forums

Google Pixel 4a Specifications

Specification	Google Pixel 4a
Dimensions & Weight	144 x 69.4 x 8.2mm 143g
Display	5.81″ OLED display at 2340×1080 resolution 19.5:9 aspect ratio single hole-punch cutout 60Hz refresh rate Always on Display
CPU & GPU	Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 2 x ARM Cortex-A76 @ 2.2GHz 6 x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz Adreno 618 Fabricated on Samsung’s 8nm LPP process
RAM & Storage	6GB LPDDR4X + 128GB UFS 2.1
Battery & Charging	3,140mAh 18W USB Type-C Power Delivery
Security	Physical rear-mounted fingerprint scanner Titan M hardware security module
Rear Camera	Images: 12.2MP Sony IMX363, f/1.7 aperture lens, 1.4µm pixels, 77° field-of-view, Dual Pixel Phase Detection, OIS, EIS Videos: Up to 4K@30fps Slow-motion: Up to 1080p@120fps Dual LED flash
Front Camera	8MP Sony IMX355, f/2.0 aperture lens, 1.12µm pixels, 84° field-of-view, EIS, fixed focus
Ports	USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port 3.5mm headphone jack, 2 microphones Single nano-SIM card slot (+ eSIM)
Connectivity	Qualcomm Snapdragon X15 LTE modem Up to 800Mbps downloads Up to 150Mbps uploads NFC, GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, WiFi 2.4GHz + 5GHz 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2×2 MIMO, Bluetooth 5.1
Other Features	Now Playing, New Google Assistant, Live Caption, Google Recorder app, Personal Safety app Camera: Live HDR+, dual exposure controls, Night Sight with astrophotography, social share, Portrait Mode, Super Res Zoom
Android Version	Android 10 3 years of Android OS upgrades 3 years of monthly Android security patch updates

Features

Design

Google’s Pixel 4a has a polycarbonate unibody, which is expected for a mid-range phone at this price. The rear camera and dual-LED flash are contained within a square camera bump that slightly bulges out from the rear, very reminiscent of the Pixel 4. The 4a has a physical fingerprint scanner on the back and a mint-colored power button for the black color model. There’s an earpiece speaker grille on the top bezel and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the frame. At the bottom, you’ll find the USB Type-C port, a single bottom-firing speaker, and a grille for a microphone.

Display

The Pixel 4a is Google’s first Pixel device with a hole-punch display cutout. This cutout is located at the top-left and houses the single front-facing camera. Google made a bunch of wallpapers to go along with the hole-punch display, and you can check them out here.

The Pixel 4a’s display is flat but has rounded corners, and the bezels are much smaller than on the Pixel 3a and 3a XL. The display measures 5.81 inches diagonally and is an OLED panel at FHD+ (2340×1080) resolution at a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The refresh rate is a standard 60Hz rather than the 90Hz on the Pixel 4 series.

Camera

Google added 2 cameras to the Pixel 4a: one on the front and one on the back. The single camera on the rear is comprised of a 12.2MP Sony IMX363 image sensor with an f/1.7 aperture lens, 1.4µm pixel size, 77° field-of-view, Dual Pixel Phase Detection, OIS, and EIS support. The front-facing camera, embedded underneath the hole-punch cutout at the top left of the display, is comprised of an 8MP Sony IMX355 image sensor with an f/2.0 aperture fixed focus lens, 1.12µm pixel size, 84° field-of-view, and EIS support. For standard video capture, the Pixel 4a is capable of 4K resolution at 30fps from the rear and 1080p resolution at 30fps from the front. For slow-motion videos, the device is capable of 1080p resolution at 120fps.

While the Google Pixel 4a may not have the most impressive camera hardware at this price point, it should more than make up for the hardware with the excellent Google Camera software. Google has brought many of the best Google Camera features to the Pixel 4a, including Live HDR+, dual exposure controls, Night Sight with astrophotography, Social Share, Portrait Mode, and Super Res Zoom. Here’s a brief summary of each feature:

• Live HDR+: With this feature, HDR is applied to the viewfinder so the image you see before taking the photo should match the image you see after pressing the shutter button. What you see is what you get.
• Dual exposure controls: Two sliders let you adjust the overall brightness of the scene and shadows independently.
• Night Sight with astrophotography: Take impressive low-light photos with this handheld long-exposure mode, and if you have a tripod, you can take even longer exposures for beautiful photos of the starry sky.
• Social Share: Quickly share your photos with your favorite social media and messaging apps straight from the Google Camera app.
• Portrait Mode: Apply a bokeh effect to photos of people and pets
• Super Res Zoom: Merges many frames directly onto a higher resolution photo, resulting in higher quality digital zoom.

While last year’s Pixel 3a also had two cameras with the same megapixel counts, the Pixel 4a improves upon it with the addition of features like Super Res Zoom, Live HDR+, dual exposure controls, and faster image processing thanks to the superior ISP. Here are some camera samples showing off what the Pixel 4a is capable of.

Performance

Powering the Google Pixel 4a is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 system-on-chip. The Snapdragon 730 features an octa-core CPU in a 2+6 cluster configuration; 2 ARM Cortex-A76 CPU cores clocked at up to 2.2GHz for high-performance are joined by 6 ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores clocked at up to 1.8GHz for efficiency. The GPU is Qualcomm’s Adreno 618. This chip is fabricated on Samsung’s 8nm LPP process. Google paired the Snapdragon 730 with 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage.

Overall, these are big upgrades from last year’s Pixel 3a, which had the 10nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 with 2 x ARM Cortex-A75 + 6 x ARM Cortex-A55 cores, the Adreno 615 GPU, 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM, and 64GB of eMMC 5.1 storage. An early performance review pitted the Pixel 4a against the Pixel 4, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 3 XL, in case you’re wondering how the new device compares.

Power

Google boasts “up to 24 hours” of battery life on the Pixel 4a with a “mix of talk, data, standby and use of other features, with always-on display off.” This is made possible with the 3,140mAh battery, the power-efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon 730, and the relatively small 5.81″ display. None of the components in the Google Pixel 4a are particularly power-hungry, so the 3,140mAh battery should be more than enough to get most people through the day.

To top up the battery, the Pixel 4a supports 18W USB Power Delivery from the USB Type-C port. The device does not support wireless charging, however.

Software

The Google Pixel 4a runs the cleanest build of Android you’ll find on any commercial device. It runs Android 10 out-of-the-box with many of Google’s software enhancements and apps on top. For example, it supports Google’s Now Playing feature for ambient song recognition, the new Google Assistant for faster on-device recognition, Live Caption that now works in phone calls, the Google Recorder app for transcribing lectures and interviews, the Personal Safety app to alert your friends and family of emergencies, an Always-on Display, and more. What’s missing is Google’s Active Edge feature, a feature that lets you squeeze the phone’s frame to invoke the Google Assistant or silence timers/alarms.

Google promises the Pixel 4a will get Pixel Feature Drops alongside the other Pixel devices. That means more new features will be added every couple of months. In addition, Google promises 3 years of Android OS upgrades for the Pixel 4a, so you’re guaranteed to get updates to Android 11, Android 12, and Android 13. You’ll also get 3 years of monthly Android security patch updates, too. Speaking of security, the Pixel 4a has Google’s Titan M, a discrete hardware security module that’ll eventually let you store your driver’s license on your phone and access it when there’s not enough battery left to boot up Android.

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Google Pixel 4a Pricing & Availability

Currently, the Google Pixel 4a is available in only a single color: Just Black. However, Google is also selling its signature Fabric cases, which are machine-washable, soft-to-touch fabric cases made from over 70% recycled materials. The cases are available in Basically Black, Blue Confetti, and Static Grey.

The Google Pixel 4a goes on sale in the U.S. for $349. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon, Google Fi, the Google Store, and Best Buy with an arrival date of August 20th, 2020. It’s also available on through U.S. Cellular and Verizon in the U.S. Internationally, the Pixel 4a will be available in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Japan, and Canada. In India, the device will go on sale in October, though Google has not mentioned any particular date or pricing for that matter.

Google is offering 3 months of YouTube Premium, Google Play Pass, and Google One (100GB/month) for Pixel 4a purchases. These offers are only available for users who purchase and activate a Pixel 4a by April 30, 2020, at 2:30 AM EST. For more details on these offers, check out this page.

Google Pixel 4a Product Page ||| Google Pixel 4a Forums

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The Google Pixel 4a is already available for pre-order on Amazon USA

The Google Pixel 4a has been one of Google’s most leaked smartphones, with a performance review, camera review, and hands-on already available long before the official launch. And that was a high bar to clear as most of Google’s smartphones have not exactly been best-kept secrets either. We are just a few hours away from Google’s event where they are expected to announce the PIxel 4a, but as it turns out, the device is already available for pre-order from Amazon.com in the USA.

The Pixel 4a is available in a bundle for the phone as well as the case for $389. Amazon USA says that the device will be released on August 20, 2020, which means that that is the earliest you can expect to lay your hands on the device. Previous rumors suggested a lower price tag, but keep in mind that this listing is for the bundle and not just for the phone itself, so the phone is likely to be priced lower.

You can wait for Google to officially unveil its product in the next few hours and provide definitive details on pricing and availability. Or, if you just can’t wait, you can go right ahead and preorder the phone using the affiliate link provided below:

Pre-order Google Pixel 4a plus Case on Amazon USA (affiliate link)

The tip that we received mentioned that you could add the bundle and then remove the case from your cart. However, when we attempted the same for ourselves, removing the case removes the whole bundle. So for now, you may have to buy the phone with the case included. Note that the variant available for pre-order in this bundle is the 128GB storage variant.

Pixel 4a XDA Forums

Rumored Google Pixel 4a Specifications:

• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 730
• GPU: Adreno 618
• RAM: 6GB
• Internal storage: 64GB(?), 128GB UFS 2.1
• Display: Single hole-punch 5.81-inch display, 2,340 x 1,080 resolution, 443 dpi, 60Hz refresh rate
• Rear camera: 12.2 MP Sony IMX363, f/1.73 aperture, 1.4µm pixels, OIS, EIS, LED flash, 4K video recording, Autofocus
• Front camera: 8.0 MP Sony IMX355, f/2.0 aperture, 1.14µm pixels, EIS, Fixed focus
• Connectivity: 4G, Dual SIM, GPS, WiFi 5, Bluetooth, GLONASS
• Ports: USB Type-C, 3.5mm headphone jack
• Security: Rear fingerprint sensor
• Battery: 3,080 mAh
• Software: Android 10

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Thanks to XDA Senior Member Uh60m Pilot for the tip!

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Turn Your Laptop Into a Three-Screen Workstation With Mobile Pixels TRIO — Now 16% off

For many tasks, using more than one monitor can really improve your productivity. It’s pretty easy to set up multiple displays at your desk. But what about when you’re working on the go? The Mobile Pixels TRIO is a brilliant laptop accessory that adds extra screen space to your laptop. It’s super portable, easy to use, and currently just $214.99 at the XDA Developers Depot.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/JxJzpQEl7Y4

Writers, developers, stock traders, entrepreneurs, students — many of us could benefit from a little extra screen space. Being able to switch your focus by moving your head is much better than skipping between virtual spaces.

With the Mobile Pixels TRIO, you can create the ultimate multi-display workflow wherever you go. To get started, you simply clip the screen onto the side of your laptop and connect them via USB.

Each display offers crisp 1080p pictures with adjustable brightness, and the supplied clip provides freedom of movement. This means you can find the perfect angle, and even flip it around for presentations. TRIO is compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome devices, and you can connect two extra displays at the same time.

It’s easy to see how the TRIO raised $1,452,559 on Indiegogo, and it’s now 16% off MSRP at $214.99. You can also grab the larger TRIO MAX for 15” and 16” laptops for $269.99 (was $319).

 

Mobile Pixels TRIO: Portable Dual Screen Laptop Monitor – $214.99

See Deal

Prices subject to change 

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