Google has finally launched more colors for its second-generation Pixel Buds, nearly four months since the true wireless headphones launched. In addition to “clearly white,” you can now buy the Pixel Buds in “oh so orange,” “quite mint,” and “almost black.”
The second-generation Pixel Buds launched on April 27th, but they were only available in white at the time, despite Google also announcing the other three colors when the Pixel Buds were revealed in October.
Google is rolling out an update today that promises to make them even smarter than they were. This is a bundle of four new tools and one experimental feature that starts rolling out to all Pixel Buds today. Once you get the updated software, you’ll be able to deactivate touch controls, see your earbuds’ last location on a map and use things like bass boost, sharing detection and transcribe mode for translated speech.
The most interesting of these changes is a new Transcribe mode that builds on the existing translate feature in conversation mode. That’s been around since the original Pixel Buds from 2017 that allowed you to ask the Assistant to “help me speak French,” for example. You could hold down a button in the Translate app or press down on a bud to listen to what the other person is saying, and when you let go Google will send the converted speech to your phone or ear. When you speak, the Assistant will translate what you said to your desired language and play it over your phone for your friend.
With today’s update, Google’s transcribe mode will read the translated speech into your ear as the person is talking so you can keep up and “understand the gist of what’s being said during longer listening experiences.” This is launching for French, German, Italian and Spanish speakers to translate words spoken in English first, and according to Google it works best in a “quiet environment where one person is speaking at a time.” To activate the feature, you can say “Hey Google, help me understand English” in one of the four supported languages, and you can also see a transcript on your phone to follow along if you wish.
If you haven’t received the update, search for Google Pixel Buds in the Play Store to see if you can manually trigger it. For more help, check out Google’s page with more information.
