Samsung rumored to be working on a second Galaxy Home smart speaker

We are still waiting for Samsung to release its promised smart speaker, the Galaxy Home. However, there are now rumors that Samsung may already be deep in development for a second smart speaker that could be smaller, and cheaper, than the Galaxy Home.

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According to SamMobile, via unnamed sources, this second smart speaker has the model number SM-V310, compared to the SM-V510 number that’s attached to the Galaxy Home. The report adds that this second speaker will have a black color. Other than that, we don’t have any information on the hardware specs for this second device, but the lower model number may indicate that it could be a smaller device than the Galaxy Home.

Samsung first announced the Galaxy Home in August as part of its Galaxy Note 9 press launch. We got to go hands-on with the speaker in November at the Samsung Developer Conference and it has some high-end features, including eight far-field microphones, Harman AKG speakers and a feature that will allow it to detect where you are in the room so it can send audio directly to you. It sounds like more like what you might find on Apple’s expensive HomePod than the cheaper Google Home or Amazon Echo. Of course, both the Galaxy Home and this rumored second speaker will use Samsung’s Bixby digital assistant for voice commands.

Hopefully, Samsung will use the 2019 CES trade show in early January to officially announce a launch date and price for the Galaxy Home, and it could also reveal this second speaker at the show as well.

Source: Android Zone

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Amazon reportedly making its own AI chips

• An anonymous source disclosed that Amazon is making its own AI-powered chips.
• These chips would be used in future Amazon hardware like the Echo to make response time faster.
• Moving away from third-party chips is a clear indication that Amazon is all-in on AI.

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Right now, when you ask Alexa a question on a piece of Amazon-branded hardware like the Amazon Echo or Echo Show, your question is whisked off into the cloud for processing. The internal hardware in an Echo device is not fast or powerful enough to handle the question on its own, so there’s a slight delay as your question is thrown to the cloud, answered, thrown back, and then finally made audible by Alexa.

But that limitation is poised to change soon. According to The Information, Amazon is creating its own artificial intelligence chips for future Echo devices that will be powerful enough to handle simple questions “in-house,” as it were. Questions like “What time is it?” wouldn’t require the cloud delay, as Alexa would be able to answer immediately.

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Amazon now joins Google in the chip-making game. With Google’s focus on Google Assistant and its line of Google Home devices, relying on third-party chips would eventually slow down progress. Google knows this, and heavily invested in making its own powerful cloud AI chips to get Google Assistant in anything it possibly can get into.

This desire to do everything in-house is no doubt a worry for larger chip makers like Intel and Nvidia. What we most likely will see is companies that rely on chip business to start making their own hardware, such as Intel’s drones and their prototype smart glasses.

Another example is Blink, a security camera manufacturer that was purchased by Amazon in December for an undisclosed amount. Blink was founded as Immedia Semiconductor, a chipmaker with a focus on low-power video compression. But the company started to put its own chips into video hardware after it had a hard time selling the chips alone. A successful Kickstarter campaign in 2016 put the company on Amazon’s radar, and now Blink (and their chip-making team of engineers) are under the Amazon umbrella.

Google’s and Amazon’s investments in the chip-making game make one thing clear: AI is a big deal, and you’re going to see it everywhere.

Source: Android Zone

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