Some of Google’s ‘Bisto’ wearables may have the form of traditional over-the-ear headphones, a recent teardown of the latest version of one of Google’s apps suggested. Originally uncovered in April, the name Bisto was first presumed to denote a single device but was later implied to be a new category of products that the Mountain View, California-based tech giant has in the works and is also planning to promote it with third-party original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in an effort to create a new ecosystem encompassing various Internet of Things (IoT) devices with one common denominator – the Google Assistant. The rumored Google Assistant-enabled headphones that the Alphabet-owned company is supposedly developing may also be a Bisto device, and the aforementioned teardown revealed one possible method of communicating with such a product – a push-to-talk button.
The GIF animation that can be seen below was pulled directly from the assets of the 1.0.9006 build of the Google Assistant iOS app and seems to be designed as a tutorial for future owners of a Google Assistant-enabled pair of headphones. One of the device’s earcups is depicted as having a physical button which users can push to talk to the Google Assistant, with the code of Google’s app specifically referencing other products of this type and their own buttons for activating the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) companion. Users are expected to hold the button for the entirety of the time they’re speaking, the code suggests, without mentioning any alternative means of communicating with the Google Assistant on a pair of headphones. In overall, the solution seems to be positioning itself as a comprehensive framework for smart headphones, much like Android Wear was designed as an ecosystem for smartwatches and fitness bands made by a variety of OEMs.
It’s still unclear whether Google has plans to unveil a first-party pair of headphones with Google Assistant support this year but if it does, such a product might be launched simultaneously with the upcoming Pixel 2 smartphone lineup which is rumored to be officially announced on October 5. Apart from two new handsets, the Internet giant is also said to be working on a smaller version of the Google Home speaker which will presumably seek to compete with Amazon’s Echo Dot offerings and may also debut in early October.