Meet The New Gadget From Facebook, Portal

Facebook never fails to surprise you, indeed. Just after the huge mess of data leak of 90M users, Facebook came up with its new video calling gadget, Portal.

Facebook Portal is a peer to peer video calling hardware, having a 12-megapixel camera on the front. And an HD display which is big enough. It uses onboard Artificial Intelligence, to smoothen the experience of premium video calling and normal calling, and to stay ahead in the game.

Now you can sit back at your living room and enjoy video calling with any of your Facebook friends, or calling them, doesn’t necessarily mean they also need to have Portal.

Let’s get an overview

Portal comes with two basic variants. One with a 1080p screen which also rotates its screen with a gentle push. And another with a 720p screen with a non-rotational screen.

Facebook is also selling a Portal bundle which includes both of the variants, especially for families having Grandparents and children’s who lives apart across the globe. And this bundle comes with a huge discount.

So you can buy a Portal for you and buy a Portal for your grandparents, and cut the thousands of miles between you two just with a few taps on the screen.

As long as one has Facebook messenger on their devices, you can call them from your Portal. Be it a video call or voice call. The fun part is, when the Portal is Idle it shows up photos from your Facebook library. So as an added bonus you get a live digital photo frame too.

You can also connect the Portal with Spotify and play all your songs. Portal is meant to be your friend to never let you feel lonely. You can also play videos from the Facebook watch, a totally different segment for videos on Facebook.

You can simply say “Hey Portal” like Alexa or any other services, followed by the name of the person to make the call to, and within a second the call will start to initiate in front of your eyes.

There is a plastic clip which covers the camera to make sure of your privacy and safety. The portal almost works like other service providers like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant.

Always stay on focus

The lens of the Portal has a 140° view which is almost the same as a GoPro. It is wide enough to capture your whole living room in the screen, however, if the lens senses any person in front, it automatically crops out the background and zooms in on the figure, and it is done in a way that a cinematographer does in a film, beautifully.

Another interesting feature is you walk around anywhere in the room, or move, the camera will always sense you and focus you only, regardless of the background.

Though it is argued that every piece of this device should come with physical buttons for safety needs, but also the Portal doesn’t fail to surprise at all. It is an extremely well-built gadget to cut the distance and never let you feel lonely, ever.