If you use public transport to commute every day, you must be familiar with the difficulty in using your smartphone while stuffed with hundreds of others in the train or bus. Most of the time, the only interface between you and your smartphone is your headphone/earphone and if it has a button, then that becomes the only control interface to your phone. Google has identified this as a potential interface to access notifications or information that involves Google Assistant.
Starting with the Bose QC 35 II, Google has made available its Assistant to your ear by simply putting it on your headphone’s button. If you have the QC 35 II headphone, you need to connect it to your smartphone and follow the instructions in the Google Assistant app. Once the setup is done, all you need to do is press and hold the action button to trigger the Assistant and command it do things that you want it to do.
Now, Google has made some specific actions for the headphone version of the Assistant so that it assists the user when reaching the phone is pretty difficult. Here are some activities that you can expect the Assistant to do while you are using your headphones:
- The Assistant can read out your messages and notifications that you allow it to notify about.
- You can command the Assistant to play your favourite playlist or skip to the next track, you can also listen to the latest news updates or the weather forecast.
- You can ask the Assistant to call any contact by just using your voice. Therefore, bid goodbye to the tedious process of taking out the phone and going through multiple windows to make a call while someone is pushing you to get on the train.
Google has made the feature available to the Google Assistant app on both Android and iOS. Right now, it’s only limited to the Bose headphone but once it rolls out to more models, it will surely change the way we use our smartphones while commuting.
