APK teardown reveals more details on Google’s Assistant-powered headphones
It was recently rumored that Google was working on Google Assistant-powered headphones with the codename Bisto. The information was derived from a teardown of a recent Google app APK, which contained strings relating to such a product.
These headphones would, seemingly, act like an in-ear version of Google Home — responding to voice commands and providing information at one’s request. Following this earlier news, Android Police has now taken a closer look at the Google v7.10 beta app and unearthed further details of what we could expect from Google’s upcoming headphones.
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Possibly the biggest news is that Google may not just produce headphones itself, but make it possible for third-party manufacturers to develop similar Assistant-powered headphones too. The Bisto software would seemingly be customizable to support the individual designs of these products, so we could also see devices like mono Bluetooth earpieces as well as luxury headphones, coming in at a range of price points (something like what’s going on with the Android Wear ecosystem).
Reportedly, Bisto headphones will also be able read out your notifications, giving you access to the information on your phone (to which they would have to be paired with). It seems like these will be prioritized/intelligent to some degree — so if you’re getting fifty useless notifications per day it won’t read them all out, but just the latest or most important. Apparently, it may also be able to read out full messages from certain apps (like Allo) and their sender.
Other Bisto tidbits include possible voice calling functionality, for regular phone calls and those from supported apps, as well as the ability to read out the current battery level of the headphones — something sorely missing from many other Bluetooth headphones.
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Based on the information at hand, it’s possible that Bisto could be ready for launch alongside the Pixel 2 devices in the next couple of months, but Google is yet to officially comment on any of those rumored products.
To check out our original Google Bisto coverage, hit the link.
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