Samsung has just concluded the Galaxy Note 10 Unpacked event in New York. The event was without any surprises as all the devices shown today have been leaked extensively before their announcement. Some updates about the Galaxy Fold and the Galaxy Home would have been nice, but the company decided to keep them off the event.
It has been more than a year since Samsung first spoke about the Galaxy Home – its Bixby-powered smart speaker. Technically, this is not the company’s first smart speaker as its subsidiary Harman has released a few speakers with Alexa and Google Assistant integration in the past. However, the Galaxy Home is the first Bixby-powered speaker in the market and the first smart speaker with Samsung branding.
The Galaxy Home was supposed to launch earlier this year, but that didn’t happen due to unknown reasons. The device is certainly not abandoned as we can confirm the company is actively developing software for it and for the rumored Galaxy Home Mini as well. IFA 2019 is not far away, and there is a chance that the Galaxy Home will make an appearance there if Samsung has plans to launch it this year.
Samsung’s Bixby AI platform was late to the market and continues to lag behind rivals despite all the improvements. The platform can get better only if more customers use it, and that is possible only when there are compelling reasons to use the service. This is a chicken and egg problem with no easy way out. While the Galaxy Home may not be able to solve this on its own, it will at least increase the chances if Samsung can integrate it meaningfully with its other devices.
Update – In a statement to The Verge, a Samsung spokesperson has said that they are “continuing to refine and enhance the Galaxy Home prior to launch” and will have more to share soon. As we had confirmed earlier, Samsung is still developing software for both the Galaxy Home and Galaxy Home Mini, with the latest builds carrying firmware version V510XXU1ASH2 for the former and V310XXU1ASH2 for the latter, respectively.
