How to Get the Galaxy S9 Transfer Feature on Any Phone
Samsung unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S9, this morning at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The phone has several new features, one of which is the ability to translate languages using the phone’s camera. The idea is that if you are traveling abroad to a place where your language skills are not up to par, you can point your phone’s camera at the sign and translate what is printed on it into something you understand a little better.
It’s a cool feature, of course, but it can also be accessed on any smartphone using Google Translate.
Google Translate is an iOS and Android app that translates one language to another. You can also get it (albeit with limited options) online .
For several years I lived in a building where most of the residents spoke Spanish as their primary language, and Translate was a lifesaver when it came to trying to speak multiple times. And that’s the only reason I was able to find the right train last December when I found myself in the countryside of France.
With it, you can enter what you want to say and translate it into the language of your interlocutor, or you both can just speak and get the translation (although sometimes this is not the most accurate).
The photo function has been available for some time now. It’s not exactly an accurate picture, but it was close enough that I could read a ton of menus written in Italian when I was traveling last fall.
Another thing I love about translation is that you can download languages to your device before you travel so you don’t have to go through the data trying to figure out how to find the bus stop.
It’s definitely a cool built-in feature in the S9, but if it was one of the few things that encouraged you to upgrade (it’s really a small jump from the S8), then you can get the same feature now, even on the iPhone.