-Googlicious.
So delicious.
-What's happening?
Brian Tong here and welcome to Googlicious.
It's all the Google that we can pack inside of a show each week and there's a lot of it.
Let's get to the show and the Nexus 5 is officially here even though we already know pretty much what it looks like, smells like and tastes like.
So, let's check out CNET's first look of Google's flagship phone.
-Powerful, stylish and yes,
once again, very affordable.
Google's flagship phone of the season is finally here.
Hello, everybody.
I'm Lynn La from CNET.
And today, we're gonna check out the Unlocked Nexus 5. At 4.95 inches, the 5 has the biggest screen of all past Nexus handsets.
The display features 445 pixels per inch and like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One, it has a 1920 by 1080 pixel resolution.
Images and videos are bright and vivid and looked razor sharp.
Now, even though
the display is bigger, the device is still comfortable to hold and pocketable.
In fact, it's actually thinner and lighter than the previous Nexus 4. Inside this handset is a powerful 2.26 gigahertz Snapdragon 800 processor from Qualcomm.
This is the same blazingly fast CPU featured in the LG G2.
With this processor, the Nexus 5 is a beast of a handset especially when you consider that both the GS4 and the HTC One are speed demons themselves and run Snapdragon 600 processors.
The 5
also has a non-removable 2.3 ampere-hour battery.
As a Google branded device, the handset will get OS updates as they roll in.
And not surprisingly, it runs the latest mobile OS Android 4.4 KitKat.
KitKat comes with a number of new features.
You can move entire homescreens now and there's a deeper more seamless integration with Google Voice Search.
Okay Google.
What's today's weather?
-Today's forecast for San Francisco is 20 degrees in
clear.
-Google also brings new features to the handset's cameras, which by the way included 8 and 1.3-megapixel shooter.
For instance, it has optical image stabilization which cuts down motion blur that may result from an unsteady hand.
And there's HDR plus which fuses together several exposures and shots to make one ideal pitcher.
Despite having all these components though, the Nexus 5 is still very affordable.
The 16 and 32-gig models cost $349 and $399 respectively.
For an unlock phone
of this caliber that's an incredibly competitive price point.
Not only would Android purests find this attractive, but just anyone looking for a solid handset as well.
-Thanks for that, Lynn.
Now, Google is always up to something and smartwatch rumors have been hitting up.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the G-man and women have Google's own watch ready that could go into production within months.
Supporting previous reports, Google Now, the voice assistant that powers Google Glass will be at the heart and the report adds that the working reduce the power consumption of the device.
2014, it's the year of wearables and tech and we're still waiting to see a concept that makes tech worth wearing.
Google Now is the foundation of this, looks like the best idea so far.
On to Google Glass, it keeps evolving and the team posted on their Google Plus page that the hardware will get an update later this year.
A new mono earbud has been added for better sound outside and the revision will also make glass compatible with new lines of sunglasses and prescription frames.
Now, explores will get their choice of colors if they're interested in swapping to the new unit and the exchange program
looks to startup sometime in November.
And it looks like glass will still take sometime to figure itself out in the public space.
A California women was recently ticketed for wearing Google Glass while driving.
Cecilia Abadie was ticketed and told the law states, "Do not drive a vehicle equipped with a video monitor if the monitor is visible to the driver and displays anything other than vehicle information, global mapping displays, external media player, MP3s or satellite radio information." This might come down to what was actually
been displayed on glass at the times she was ticketed but in other public spaces, some bars and workplaces have already banned glass and the UK indicated they planned to make it illegal to wear while driving.
Now, Google also recently had a morning with Google Plus event where they tallied 540 million active users of the service, still nothing close to Facebook's 1 billion in change but Plus isn't nearly as annoying.
Now, they're announcing new features, the biggest one being the integration of SMS into the Hangout tab
which is expected for Android 4.4 KitKat.
Hangout also gets location sharing and allows to click a small icon before posting and most importantly, really important stuff, there's support for animated GIFs as well.
You'll also be able to schedule Hangouts on air and promote it with a dedicated watch page.
The video experience has been improved with fixes that also enhance webcam lighting and a bunch of new photo and video features like auto awesome movie that cuts a bunch of your related video clips and put some together for you in a fun presentation.
And check this
out.
Google Motorola is partnering with Phoneblok's creator Dave Hakkens, who set the internet on fire with his modular smartphone concept that allows you to swap out different smartphone components by fitting them to a base motherboard as needed or desired.
Really, just below your mind, amazing idea.
Now, Motorola is going to call it Project Ara, they want the phone to be open source and they say they wanna do for a hardware what Android has done for software, creating a vibrant third party developer ecosystem.
Motorola will presumably build the main
endoskeleton of the product and third party developers will be able to build and release their own modules for the phone.
Now, to Motorola's backing, this is really a platform that we're gonna see happen and it's really exciting to see how this all comes together in the end.
All right.
That's gonna do it for this week's show.
What do you think about Project Ara?
E-mail us at googlicious@cnet.com or tweet me @BrianTong and we'll throw in a few of your comments next week.
I'm Brian Tong, thanks so much for watching all the Google goodness this week and we'll see you next time for another taste of Googlicious.
-Googlicious.
