Russian Internet Giant Yandex Launches Its First Smartphone (venturebeat.com) 37
Russia's Yandex has launched its first ever smartphone as the company seeks to leverage its dominant position in apps and services into hardware sales. Yandex, which runs the most popular search engine in Russia, hopes its Yandex.Phone will bind users closer to its suite of products, from food delivery and taxi hailing apps to marketplace and music streaming platforms, as competition rises for online services. From a report: The Yandex.Phone is a 5.65-inch Android-powered phone that will cost 17,990 rubles ($270) when it goes on sale tomorrow. In terms of specifications, Yandex.Phone is a fairly mid-range device, sporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable storage, and a 16-megapixel / 5-megapixel dual rear camera.
In place of Google Assistant, which is standard on most Android phones, the company is also pushing its own intelligent assistant, Alice. This isn't the first piece of Yandex hardware to sport Alice since it was unveiled in 2017 -- earlier this year, Yandex launched a $160 smart speaker that also included the virtual assistant. It's not entirely clear what the default apps on the phone will be, but judging by the official photos it seems pretty clear Yandex is positioning its own services at the forefront of the device and favoring its own search engine. That said, Google's apps are also bundled.
In place of Google Assistant, which is standard on most Android phones, the company is also pushing its own intelligent assistant, Alice. This isn't the first piece of Yandex hardware to sport Alice since it was unveiled in 2017 -- earlier this year, Yandex launched a $160 smart speaker that also included the virtual assistant. It's not entirely clear what the default apps on the phone will be, but judging by the official photos it seems pretty clear Yandex is positioning its own services at the forefront of the device and favoring its own search engine. That said, Google's apps are also bundled.
Finally (Score:2, Funny)
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Alice is mostly useless, behaving more like a chat bot than a digital assistent.
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No, these have at least some uses like switching off the smart lights. Alice can't, but she can be sarcastic instead.
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(with mods....)
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Isn’t that called “White Rabbit”?
Not that I am old enough to remember, nosiree bob.
KGB phone? what could go wrong? (Score:1)
If you think NSA accessing Google/Facebook logs is scarier, think again.
Re:KGB phone? what could go wrong? (Score:4, Funny)
More options is always good. Now we have a choice of Russians or Chinese spying on us!
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More options is always good. Now we have a choice of Russians or Chinese spying on us!
Nah, I doubt it will sell in the West. At least, not without rebranding. But what do I know, we may one day see Alice here, we're all mad here.
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Now we have a choice of Russians or Chinese spying on us!
HEY! Don't forget about Australia! [slashdot.org]
Software is just as good as Hardware, I'll have you know. (Fuming...)
And the US's NSA? They're not part of the landscape, they ARE the landscape.
I've used Yandex, seems competent. (Score:2, Interesting)
I started using Yandex when it became obvious Google was biasing its results politically.
As far as U.S. politics is concerned it looks like Yandex was probably neutral. Unfortunately as a Russian search engine, even though I was using the English interface it gave way too many Russian language results so I've mostly abandoned it for DuckDuckGo and Ecosia.
Yandex, I have to say was solid and well made. I do believe there's more here than another "Fire Phone".
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Re:I've used Yandex, seems competent. (Score:4, Funny)
I started using Yandex when it became obvious Google was biasing its results politically.
Yes, Putin is the most unbiased man in the world. Every country should have media controlled specifically by his cronies. Those Western people know not how magnificent and non-duplicitous Putin is.
May Putin one day rule the world and we all live in perfect harmony.
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I'm responding because I had similar reason to start using Yandex, but I don't relate to why you stopped using it.
How is it so abnormal to have multilingual results when searching internet, a global multinational phenomena?
I have to imagine most of rest of world has similar experience re: overabundance of EN, so what is problem?
IME, vast majority of (2%) "Russian" Yandex results (I'm searching with Latin alphabet English terms, after all)
are merely Russian version of sites like Wiki, which is the result of
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It did seem to prefer Russian over English, even site versions, which I understand completely, they are offering a patch so I as an English speaker can use it, they are Russian at the core. I still use it some. I've often wondered how much it must suck to speak any language other than English and try to use the web. I know there's stuff out there for speakers of other languages, but English seems to be where it's at online.
I understand DDG used to be more of what you're describing, but it's got it's own
You listen to call, we listen too (Score:2)
For quality purposes this call may be recorded or monitored. You should try to be a quality person.
Alice??? (Score:1)
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This is probably the reason:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Alice (Score:3)
Alice is always one side of the alice->bob secure messaging.
In Russia.... (Score:2)
Our phones watch YOU!