Google Lens updated with smart text selection and real-time lookup
It's a slow rollout, but the features are bound to land on your phone soon enough.
The new features Google showed off at I/O 2018 will soon land on your Android devices if they haven't yet. According to 9to5google, smart text selection, style match and real-time results have started rolling out to people's Lens cameras. The new features come with a redesign that rearranges Lens' elements a bit, along with a brand new menu marked "Tap on objects and text," showing you what objects the camera can identify. Among all the features we tested during I/O, we found smart text selection the most intriguing and useful: it gives you a way to quickly look up items in documents around you. You can simply point your camera at a menu, for instance, and tap on dish you don't recognize to know more about it.
Style match is a virtual shopping feature not unlike other AR shopping experiences. When you point your camera at an object, Lens will put a blue dot overlay on top of it, which you can click to display similar items you can buy -- check out the image above to see what we're saying. Finally, real-time results overlay information on objects on the screen before you even press the shutter button.
9to5google has confirmed that the features are now live on their OnePlus 6, but it looks like Google has decided on a slow rollout. We can't find them in our Photo app's Assistant yet -- that's where Lens lives in most Android phones -- but more and more people are reporting that they already have access to the three features on their devices.
[Image credit: 9to5google]
