Several months after revealing the Galaxy Home, Samsung appears to have another smaller smart speaker on the way.
Recent FCC filing documents show a smaller Samsung smart speaker with a design that resembles its larger Galaxy Home cousin. The smart speaker features AKG branding on the front with buttons for volume and other controls. It also appears to feature a micro-USB port on the bottom of the device for charging.
The new Samsung smart speaker carries the model number SM-V310, which is similar to the Galaxy Home’s model number SM-V510. Aside from giving us a picture of the bowl-shaped device, not much else is known about it. The FCC filing does reveal that the speaker will support both WiFi and Bluetooth technology.
Pricing for the smaller Samsung Smart Speaker is currently unknown.
It’s sort of strange to see Samsung prepping another model of a smart speaker when the Galaxy Home hasn’t gone on sale yet. Samsung has missed multiple deadlines in regards to the Galaxy Home, which was first introduced alongside the Samsung Galaxy Note 9.
Back in February at the Samsung Unpacked event, Samsung let slip that they expected the speakers to launch in April. Now the South Korean company refuses to address any delay, saying it will launch in the “first half of 2019.” We’ve got about a month left before Samsung misses that deadline and pushes it into the second half of the year.
The Galaxy Home smart speaker is powered by Samsung’s own digital assistant called Bixby, but a recent survey shows that Bixby the least popular smart assistant in the United States. Only 4% of U.S. adults say they use Bixby, compared to 44% who say they use Siri, 30% for Google Assistant, and 17% for Alexa.
Samsung truly has an uphill battle to market these speakers. Samsung claims it has technology in its speakers that “intuitively moves a wave of sound directly towards you when asked.” Guess we’ll be waiting a bit longer to see just how accurate that statement is.