The launch of the Samsung Galaxy Home has been rather stop-start since the Bixby-controlled smart speaker was first announced in August 2018 – but now we might have a release date to look forward to. Sort of...
Speaking to the Korea Herald, Kim Hyun-suk, one of Samsung's co-CEOs and the President of the Consumer Electronics division, said that the company is aiming for a "mid-second half of the year" launch.
If that sounds confusing, "other Samsung executives" told the Herald to "expect a Q3 rollout", according to Phone Arena.
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The Samsung Galaxy Home was initially slated for an April 2019 release, but as the month came and went, it became clear that the spaceship-looking rival to the Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod and Google Home wouldn't be landing anytime soon.
A focus on audio
Even if the Galaxy Home does arrive in the next few months, we still don't know which territories it will be available in – it was rumored last year that the Bixby-controlled smart speaker would come to "China, Korea, and the US ahead of other markets", but it's unclear whether Samsung will stick to that rollout strategy.
As Phone Arena points out, a Q3 release date could coincide with the expected August launch of the Galaxy Note 10.
We got a brief first look at the speaker in August 2018, which sports a rather odd shape, like the bulb of a flower resting on three silver pegs that act as a stand.
Right now, not much is known about the audio quality on the Samsung Galaxy Home, but we do know it's powered by Harman's AKG audio, and contains eight microphones for far-field voice recognition, so you can talk to Samsung's voice assistant Bixby from across the room.
At the launch, Samsung revealed it had teamed up with Spotify to help you seamlessly switch from one device to another without skipping a beat on your music.
The feature is enabled through the Samsung Smart Things app and allows you to walk into your home listening to Spotify on your Samsung phone and automatically connect it to your speaker or smart TV the second you walk into the room.
Whether we will actually get to see these features in action before the end of this year remains to be seen – after all, Samsung doesn't have a great record for meeting its release dates so far.
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Via Phone Arena
