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This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest phones, smartwatches, apps, and other gizmos that swear they’re going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here.
Imagine you’re minding your business on a high-speed train hurtling at 186mph through northern Italy. You know you’re close to the end of a two-hour trip from Firenze Santa Maria Novella to Venezia Santa Lucia station, but the timer you set on your smartwatch has 25 minutes left. All of a sudden, your family is in a tizzy. We’re about to miss our stop! We have to get off now!
Amid the pandemonium, a lone Chinese grandma is pulling at your sweater sleeve, half-shouting questions in Mandarin as the overhead announcement blares the name of the station stop in Italian. Ahead of you, your mother-in-law keeps pushing the open-door button. The door won’t open. Your father-in-law and sister-in-law are stuck on the platform, gawping through the window as the train starts pulling out of the station. The Chinese grandma starts panicking for real.
The family is split. Half of us got off at the wrong stop — though it’s unclear which. None of us knows where we are or how long it is until the next stop.
So what do you do?
The Pocketalk (white) and Timekettle T1 are dedicated translation devices.
This is not a hypothetical. It’s how I spent my Saturday two weeks ago. It’s the exact sort of anxiety-inducing situation that makes people hesitant to explore countries where they don’t speak the language. When I moved alone to Tokyo in 2006, before modern smartphones, before Google Translate was remotely reliable, I cried countless times trying to do normal things like rent an apartment or order a pizza. My main resources were a 17-pound laptop and a Nintendo DS with a dictionary cartridge.
In 2025, I had no shortage of AI-powered, real-time translation gadgets and apps that promised to make a family vacation to Italy and Switzerland easy-peasy.
I downloaded the Google Translate and Apple Translate apps on my phone. I also packed two standalone AI translation devices: the Pocketalk and the TimeKettle T1. The Pocketalk and TimeKettle are handheld translators with cellular connections and cameras. They work well offline, can translate signs in photos, and free up your phone to do other things.
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