With every major tech giant such as Facebook, Samsung and Pinterest trying its luck with the camera, it’s safe to say camera is the new text, or that future lies in the camera tech. Few years back, camera on your smartphone was just used for taking pictures but after Google launched its standalone Goggles app, an image recognition app, things started to change gradually for the camera, but not until a few months back, when Samsung introduced Bixby Vision as part of its AI Bixby, everyone was left open-mouthed.
There was much Hulla-bulla about Bixby Vision, and when the majority of users were yet to experience the oomph of Bixby Vision, Google dropped a bomb on us in the form of Google Lens, which is Google Goggles on steroids.
Google announced Google Lens yesterday at its annual Google I/O developer conference. Shipping first to Google Assistant and Google Photos, Google Lens will eventually come to other products as well.
Also read: Google Assistant Tips and Tricks.
So, what’s the difference between Bixby Vision and Google Lens, well, read on.
Bixby Vision
When Samsung announced Bixby Vision as part of Samsung’s new AI, Bixby, we called Bixby Vision as the Samsung’s version of Google Goggles. Little did we know, Google was working on its own reformed version of Google Goggles in the form of Google Lens.
Also read: What Google Assistant and Apple Siri have to say about Samsung Bixby
That said, Bixby Vision, which uses the camera to recognize objects, joined hands with following five standalone apps to make it a success.
- Amazon for shopping
- Pinterest for similar images
- Foursquare for identifying places and landmarks
- Google Translate for translating text
- Vivino for Wine search.
Bixby Vision relies on these partnerships and when you use Bixby Vision, you will see their logo at the bottom.
Similar to Google Lens, which is built into Google Assistant, Bixby Vision is also built in the Bixby, so to launch Vision; you have to invoke Bixby first. Bixby Vision is also present in the Samsung camera i.e. you can launch Bixby Vision from camera app as well and utilize its functionality. Moreover, it also works for old photos in your Samsung gallery — you would see a Bixby Vision icon in these apps, tapping which would launch it. While for Google Lens, you need to launch Google Assistant, which is not bad either.
Also read: 7 Bixby features you should know
However, considering the fact that Samsung lacks the gigantic data treasure that Google is blessed with, Bixby Vision now doesn’t seem to impress much.
Google Lens
Tough times for Samsung, the poor thing just announced Bixby Vision a few months back and now Google stole the limelight with Google Lens.
Google Lens is a full-fledged search engine in the making, that uses the camera instead of text. It’s not a separate app like Google Goggles but built inside the Google Assistant and Google photos, as of now, and uses Google’s Deep Learning algorithm to do its job, which is really wonderful.
To use it, you need to start Google Assistant as you would normally do, and then point your camera towards an object such as flower and it will throw all the relevant details about the flower. Every camera app would work, regardless of whether you have a Samsung device, or that from LG, Huawei, Xiaomi or any other OEM on earth.
Also read: How to type in Google Assistant
Not only that, you can point your camera towards a concert billboard and Lens will help you book tickets for the concert and also show information about the band. Moreover, Google Lens will also help you in getting a restaurant’s timing and rating, without typing anything, just point your camera towards the restaurant board and you are good to go. However, the best part as of now happens to be the automatic login to the Wi-Fi network when you show Google Lens the Wi-Fi network name and password on the back of your router.
You can also say, Google Lens is Google reverse image search but for live products or real time products. However, it also works for the photos in your Google Photos.
Also read: How to do Google reverse image search on Android
We are assuming Google Lens will launch later this year and since it is part of Google Assistant, which is already available on the Android devices running Android Marshmallow and above, many would get to use it unlike Bixby Vision, which is restricted to Samsung S8 and S8+ for now.
Considering the amount of data Google has, we are pretty sure Google Lens has already killed Bixby Vision.
What do you think of Google Lens? Should Samsung really spend resources on Bixby and Bixby Vision when it can simply adopt Google Assistant and Google Lens? Shout it out in comments below.
