Samsung Announces the “Galaxy Home” Smart Speaker and more

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This morning, Samsung had a product announcement keynote where they announced several new consumer products.

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Samsung Galaxy Home:

The company has officially entered into the smart speaker market with this announcement. The device is based on Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant, and has eight far-field microphones. Speaker technology comes courtesy of Samsung’s AKG, and the device will have a built-in SmartThings hub to connect smarthome accessories.

Little else has been revealed so far, but a partnership with Spotify should make the latter’s music easier to move between Samsung devices. An unusual design touch is that the base is supported by three metal legs — most smartspeakers, such as Apple’s HomePod, sit directly on a surface.

More details will be announced at a developers’ conference in November.

Galaxy Note 9:

The U.S. version of the new phone has a faster Snapdragon 845 processor, a 6.4-inch 2960×1400 OLED display, and louder AKG speakers. Other improvements include a larger, “all-day” 4,000 milliamp-hour battery, and an upgraded S Pen with Bluetooth support. The stylus can be used to do things like trigger photos, control slideshows, and play and pause videos.

The phone also supports Samsung’s desktop-style DeX mode without a separate dock. Further making it a potential desktop replacement is an option of 128 or 512 gigabytes of internal storage, which can be supplemented by an upcoming 512-gigabyte micro SD card to hit 1 terabyte of space.

The Note 9 is otherwise a modest evolution of last year’s Note8, including previous features such as USB-C, dual rear cameras, a headphone jack, and a front-facing iris scanner. Samsung has however responded to complaints and moved the fingerprint reader from the side of the rear camera module to below it, making it easier to reach while reducing accidental lens smudges.

The phone’s “Intelligent Camera” has the same specifications as the Note 8, but can alert people to flaws in images such as closed eyes, and will automatically optimize output in many cases based on scene and object detection.

The product should launch Aug. 24 in four colors, with preorders starting Aug. 10. The 128-gigabyte model will cost $999, while the 512-gigabyte version will be $1,249.

For more information about these products, go to http://www.samsung.com/