XDA: The LG Velvet supports Google’s Live Caption for automatic media captions

dimanche 6 septembre 2020

The LG Velvet supports Google’s Live Caption for automatic media captions

The LG Velvet is one of the few Android smartphones to support Google’s Live Caption, an accessibility feature for the hearing impaired.

With the number of people who have “disabling hearing loss” predicted to reach more than 900 million by 2050, it’s crucial that technology companies take steps to make their devices more accessible. Google is an excellent example of a technology company that is coming up with innovative solutions to support people with hearing loss, having unveiled Live Caption during its I/O conference last year.

Live Caption transcribes and adds captions to videos, audio messages, podcasts, and other media that is played back on an Android smartphone in real-time. And because inferencing is done by on-device machine learning models, the feature can be used offline, too. “It happens in real time and completely on-device, so it works even if you don’t have cell data or Wi-Fi, and the captions always stay private and never leave your phone,” explains Google in this blog post. “The captions won’t get in the way of whatever you’re looking at because you can position them anywhere on the screen. If you want to see more text, simply double tap to expand the caption box.”

Since launching last year, the feature has only been available on a handful of smartphones. It first appeared on the Pixel 4, but can now be used on other Pixel phones, the OnePlus 7T series, the OnePlus 8 series, the OnePlus Nord, the Samsung Galaxy S20 series, and the Galaxy Note 20 series. However, we noticed that Live Caption is also available on the LG Velvet, a fact we weren’t aware of at launch and which has not been widely publicized. For what it’s worth, LG’s product page for the device in multiple regions does state that it supports the feature, but this seems to have flown under the radar.

To get Live Caption up and running on your LG Velvet, all you need to do is head into your settings and go into the sound page. Here, you’ll find an option for “Live Caption” – clicking on this will bring up different options for the feature.