It houses Samsung’s own virtual assistant, doubles as a smart home hub, and can be used to pump out your favourite tunes.
Samsung has announced its first entry into the smart speaker arena, with the introduction of Galaxy Home.
This Bixby-powered device is meant to compete with Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Apple HomePod. It houses Samsung’s own virtual assistant, doubles as a smart home hub, and can be used to pump out your favourite tunes. Unfortunately, Samsung was light on details when unveiling the speaker at its Galaxy Note 9 event, but if you still want to learn everything you can about it, you’ve come to the right place. Samsung Galaxy Note 9 price and pre-order info: Check out the latest deals Samsung Galaxy Watch official, several days battery on a single charge Samsung Galaxy Note 9 specs, release date, news and features Fortnite for Android confirmed, Samsung Galaxy phones first invited to beta It’s official! Samsung Galaxy Note 9 debuts with new S Pen tricks Samsung Galaxy Home: Design
There’s no escaping the fact that Galaxy Home looks like a Google Home or Apple HomePod, but with legs. It has a texturised fabric cover in black and three silver spikes coming out the bottom. But it’s supposedly on the heavier side, so it shouldn’t tip over too easily. You’ll notice it has ruberised buttons, indicator lights in the form of a subtle grey ring at the top (not unlike Echo), and even the AKG logo glows.
That’s right. This is powered by Harman’s AKG audio. While on stage, Samsung said it will “make music sound amazing”. But it’s not a speaker you can lug around with you while on the go, as it’s tethered by a power cable. There are no exact dimensions available yet, or details about its materials. We got the feeling Samsung isn’t ready to fully show off this thing, as the unit it “demoed” was more or less a dummy.
Samsung just kind of brought this thing out to be like, “It’s here. This is our speaker, and it’s coming soon.” But it left it at that. Samsung Galaxy Home: Features Samsung Hardware
Galaxy Home is designed to deliver surround sound-level audio. It features six built-in speakers and a subwoofer. It also has eight far-field microphones for detecting voice input. Apart from that, there just isn’t a lot of information available. Samsung Smart Home
Samsung did confirm, however, that Galaxy Home will double as a Samsung SmartThings hub for smart home control. So, that’s cool. Samsung Bixby
The flat top has control buttons on it for skipping tracks and changing the volume. And there’s no aux input. But, like most smart speakers, you can start listening to music on your phone and easily send it over to the Galaxy Home. You can also control music with Bixby. Samsung spent a lot of time talking about Bixby, which isn’t as well received as, say, Google Assistant, but Samsung still wants to make it a thing.
You’ll be able to say “Hi, Bixby” to access Samsung’s assistant and ask it many of the same things you can already do on Samsung’s phones. Samsung Music
Amazon Echo has Amazon Music. Apple has Apple Music. And Google has YouTube Music. But Samsung is going to ride on Spotify. It has a long-term partnership with the company, and plans to add Spotify to not only Galaxy Home but also many of its other products, even fridges. Samsung Galaxy Home: Release date
Samsung isn’t ready to launch the speaker yet. It said we’d learn more at a developer conference it has scheduled for early November. Samsung Galaxy Home: Price
Again, this isn’t yet known. For comparison, the Apple HomePod costs $349 in the US, while Google Home Max costs $399. Amazon, meanwhile, charges just $150 for its souped-up Amazon Echo Plus. If we had to guess, Samsung will launch this speaker in the $350 range.
