Samsung is reportedly working on the Galaxy Home Mini 2 – a new entry in its mysterious stop-start smart speaker lineup.
If the name Samsung Galaxy Home Mini isn’t ringing any bells for you, and you're wondering why there's a '2', then you’re not alone – the original Home Mini was only available in South Korea with purchases of the Galaxy S20 phone, while the regular Galaxy Home smart device was announced in 2018 but never actually launched.
Despite this, Samsung is having another crack at the smart speaker game according to leaker Max Jambor, who recently tweeted “Galaxy Home Mini 2 (SM-V320) isn't too far away anymore.”
In a follow-up tweet, Jambor added “In other words: production started” indicating that an announcement could be coming sometime this year.
Adding further fuel to the fire, the website SamMobile reported late last year that its sources had told them a new Galaxy Home Mini was in the works.
While we should always take rumors with a pinch of salt, the fact that we've now seen multiple reports suggests that we can indeed expect a new smart speaker from Samsung – but what might it look like?
So far there aren’t many detailed leaks, but we can hazard a few predictions.
While it’s easy to imagine that the Galaxy Home Mini 2 will take cues from its South Korea-exclusive predecessor, which looked like a more spherical Google Nest Mini and relied on the Bixby assistant, we believe that a new Samsung speaker would also incorporate a screen, but not like those on the Google Nest Hub or Amazon Show.
Instead, we think it would be a folding display like the one we reported on back in September 2021. At the time we discussed a video from the South Korean IMID expo that showed a Samsung-made prototype for a smart speaker with a flexible OLED screen.
The unfurling design would allow the device to morph between a sleek compact speaker and a more bulky gadget with a screen able to display an array of useful information and offer video playback.
In its more compact form the curved display would still show some information, like the time and weather, and a Galaxy Home Mini 2 could also include touch controls.
This isn’t just wild speculation either – the SamMobile report on the Galaxy Home Mini 2 rumors also mentioned that the speaker is believed to come with a display of some kind.
We’ll likely have to wait a while longer before knowing for certain what – if anything – Samsung has in store for us, but we are excited to see if its third attempt at a smart speaker is more successful than what’s come before.
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