↓ THINGS COME APART
/A P H O T O G R A P H B Y T O D D MCLELLAN/50 April 2019 _ PopularMechanics.comPRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE
INPUT
The Portal is an unassuming device:
It is a 15.6-inch screen (1) mounted
on a base (9) that has speakers on the
bottom and a camera on top. When you
take it out of the box, you set it down,
pivot the screen on its hinge (6) to
your preferred orientation—portrait
or landscape—and plug it in.
Part of the screen assembly is a layer
of indium tin oxide, a clear, conductive
material. The screen constantly moni-
tors capacitance, a measure of charge,
along a grid of rows and columns; when
you touch the screen your body creates
a path to ground, affecting the capac-
itance at that point. The scanning
process detects this and generates an
X,Y coordinate of the location to know
where you’ve tapped. Which, at least at
first, w ill be on an on-screen keyboard,
which you’ll use to get on Wi-Fi and log
in to your Facebook account.DISASSEMBLY REPORTFacebook Portal+
NOTES: In Infinite Jest, his prescient 1996 novel, David Foster Wallace discussed
the rapid rise and fall, within the book’s world, of “videophony,” which
turned out to add a kind of social pressure that telephony never did: “Good
old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that
the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also
permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention
to her.” Fourteen years later, thanks to FaceTime, the depth of this insight was
clear to pretty much everyone with an iPhone: It was kind of a drag to have to
give undivided attention to the person you were talking to. (And Wallace hadn’t
even considered how much it sucked to hold your phone up the whole time.) Now,
along comes Facebook’s Portal, a video phone that sits on your counter or desk
looking like a big touch screen and little else. You place calls over the Messenger
app—which you can do by voice command if your hands are full—and by using
A.I., a high-definition camera, and a comprehensive array of microphones,
Portal keeps you at the center of the call. It follows you whether you’re pacing
around, cooking dinner, or tidying up; it’s not just hands-free—it’s effortless.
The person you’re talking to feels like she’s getting all of your attention, and you
don’t have to do any of the work. Maybe videophony has a future.NUMBER
OF PARTS:115
MODEL:
FACEBOOK
PORTAL+PRODUCED:
CHINATIME TO
DISASSEMBLE:
3 HOURS,
7 MINUTES
CALLING
Tap a Facebook friend to call them
and the Portal rings. When a call con-
nects, the processor (7) powers A.I.
that locates you, puts you in focus, and
keeps you there with pans and zooms.
Except the camera (4) never moves:
It has a high-definition, extreme
wide-angle lens (140 degrees), so its
field of view is quite large, and the A.I.
works within that frame as a kind of
virtual cameraman. When it zooms, it’s
dynamically cropping; when it pans,
it’s employing the Ken Burns effect.
The Portal’s four-mic array (3)—
two in the front, two in the back—
listens as you talk. Your voice reaches
each mic at slightly different times,
allowing the device to triangulate your
location (and it uses this technique on
other sounds, too). This improves the
call audio quality; it also feeds into
the A.I., to help it accurately track you.
PRIVACY
The Por ta l is ver y good at ma king your
friends feel like they’re in the room
with you. And its speaker system,
with two forward-facing high-end
drivers (11) that help your ear focus
on it and a bass driver (10) for depth,
gives it presence in your home. But
suppose there’s someone watching you
with the Portal who isn’t your friend?
Given Facebook’s recent troubles, this
isn’t an idle concern. For this reason,
there’s a privacy button (2) on top of
the device. Press it and an LED turns
red, indicating that the camera and
mics are off. If that’s not enough, it
also comes with a plastic sleeve (5)
that physically covers the lens,
making it impossible for the camera
to watch you. And if that’s still not
enough, when you’re not using it, you
can always pull the plug (8).
—Kevin Dupzyk