Facebook upgrades the Portal family
Facebook introduced its new range of Portal devices yesterday including a direct upgrade to last year’s model, a mini version, and an intriguing webcam-like variant, the Portal TV.
Facebook released the original Portal smart displays in November 2018, featuring 10.1-inch (Portal) and 15.6-inch (Portal Plus) models. The Portal included clever motion tracking algorithms, allowing its camera to pan and zoom to follow a person as they moved, but it was met with hefty criticism.
While it was a nice prospect from a technical standpoint, reviewers voiced significant concerns over privacy. Almost one year later, has Facebook managed to quash the complaints? Let’s have a look at what the new Portals offer.
Portal and Portal Mini
- These products evoke the same idea as the original: smart displays allowing for video calling to family and friends via Facebook Messenger, as well as music playback, photo viewing, and more, with integrated Amazon Alexa support.
- Like its direct predecessor, the new Portal has a 10-inch display, but it’s undergone a redesign. It’s sleeker, squarer, and it has ditched the large speaker grill.
- The Portal Mini houses the same design but it comes in at 8 inches.
- These models benefit from WhatsApp calling integration, so you’re no longer tied strictly to your Facebook contacts for video chat.
- The Portal family is also heading to new markets: you’ll find them in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, and France this time around, as well as the US and Canada.
- The “Hey Portal” digital assistant is only supported in English, though.
- As for privacy, you can disable both the camera and microphone with a button press or slider switch. You can also physically block the camera lens with a sliding cover.
- “For added security, Smart Camera and Smart Sound use AI technology that runs locally on Portal, not on Facebook servers,” said Facebook.
- The Portal and Portal Mini start shipping October 15, and they cost $179 and $129 respectively. You can also take advantage of a bundle offer which will net you $50 off if you buy any two Portal units together.
What’s this about Portal TV?
- Certainly the most interesting new Portal revealed was the Portal TV.
- This set-top-box-clip-on-video-camera-TV-attachment-thing feels like a whole new product category.
- It sits in front of or on top of your existing TV to turn it into a Facebook Portal via HDMI connection.
- This brings the smart functionality and sweet motion-tracking camera capabilities to the big screen, along with additional features.
- For example, the Portal TV’s “Watch Together” function allows you and another Portal TV owner to watch the same content (it supports Amazon Prime video) while video calling.
- This works via picture-in-picture, putting the person you are calling in a box on-screen next to the video.
- There’s a nice overview of all the products in this TechCrunch video (YouTube).
- The Portal TV costs $149 and it’s set to ship November 5.
Time to welcome Facebook into the home?
- In an ever more globalized world — where friends and family can sometimes live continents away — it feels like there is a place for these kinds of devices.
- In the case of Portal TV especially, I imagine watching TV series with distant friends or family could be a lot of fun.
- Nailing the integration and getting this to work well in practice is another matter, though.
- As is trust.
- Folks are still wary about Facebook’s living room invasion (rightly so) and Facebook has already confirmed humans transcribed some original Portal audio recordings (Bloomberg).
- The company said it will offer the chance to opt-out of this transcribing on new and existing portal products soon.
- But the question remains: can we trust Facebook-owned cameras and microphones in our homes?
- As long as the products do their job well — as long as they're fun — I think that question will become less and less prevalent in people’s minds.
- In other words, I expect this could turn out to be quite a successful venture for the social media giant.
For more on the Facebook Portal, including now live U.S. pre-orders, visit the official website.
Round Up:
🤳 Instagram will restrict who can see posts about cosmetic procedures, weight loss products (The Verge). An Instagram spokesperson said the company aims to “reduce the pressure that people can sometimes feel as a result of social media.”
📱 Huawei Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro launch today: here’s how to watch the live event (Android Authority). The leaks suggest we’re in for a treat; tune-in from 08:00 ET.
🏎 Lamborghini’s crazy looking hybrid is more interesting under the hood (Engadget). This looks all kinds of fine, but if you’re more keen on a vehicle you might can actually buy, here's every electric vehicle on sale in the US for 2020 and its range (CNET).
🎲 And in a second automobile story today: Truck carrying gaming dice spills onto highway, rolls a perfect 756,000 (Kotaku). I guess that’s one way to try and get Free Parking.
📺 AT&T explores parting ways with DirecTV (Wall Street Journal).
🔬 A huge experiment has 'weighed' the tiny neutrino, a particle that passes right through matter (Gizmodo). It’s the culmination of 18 years of planning and construction.
🕹 Apple Arcade launches today, here’s the full list of games (CNET).
🗺 You can soon hide your tracks in Google Maps thanks to incognito mode (Android Authority).
🌂 It was my umbrella that locked us out of the WeWork (Vice). The man behind the story that broke the internet speaks out.
🌚 A lunar space elevator is actually feasible and inexpensive, scientists find (Observer). But it wouldn't be a human-carrying elevator with a button that says “moon,” sadly.
👋 If you want to see six tech products I use every day plus mini reviews of them, I wrote about it recently here (Android Authority).
Throwback Thursday
Happy birthday to the emoticon! :D
- Today marks the 37th birthday of the emoji’s older brother, the emoticon.
- Computer scientist Professor Scott Fahlman is credited with the first use of the text emoticon, posting on a Carnegie Mellon bulletin board on September 19, 1982 (Time).
- Apparently, jokes made on the messaging boards were being misinterpreted, so Fahlman suggested adding :-) or :-( to them make the meaning clearer.
- It caught on, and before long, emoticons were being used in email (and later text messages) to fill in for the lack of expression found in face-to-face communication.
- My favorite emoticon? It would have to be :|
- We often use that one in England to denote an extreme state of joy... ;)
Thanks for reading, until tomorrow!
Scott Adam Gordon, Editor.