The upcoming Samsung Galaxy Home smart speaker is not out yet, but we’ve heard rumors that the company has been hard at work ahead of its presumed 2019 launch. The Galaxy Home made an appearance as part of a Bixby Routines demo at Mobile World Congress, and the device has gained some fun new tricks.
Bixby Routines are customized if-this-then-that commands that let you control a group of devices and actions with a single command. Currently exclusive to the Galaxy S10+, several preset options are available for optimizing your phone by turning on battery saver and night mode. But on the Galaxy Home, routines will be tailored to things that make sense in your house, such as turning on the lights when you say, “Hi Bixby, I’m home.”
Setting moods is another example. You can already use Bixby to turn on lighting, your Samsung television, and other smart devices, but routines will let you control all of them at once just by saying something like, “Bixby I’m ready to meditate.” On the S10, phrases and actions are all customizable via the Bixby tab in the Advanced section of Settings, but Samsung hasn’t said whether a Galaxy phone will be required to operate Galaxy Home as Apple does with its HomePod.
Capabilities also extended to televisions. With Samsung’s new line of 2019 sets, your Galaxy Home will be able to show weather and movie selections, just by asking. You can also use it to ping a phone that had gone missing, clean a suit with an Air Dresser, find a local restaurant, and answer calls.
As far as the device itself, the speaker’s funky tripod design has been refined a bit, with a wood-grain option for the legs in addition to the standard silver. The voice was also different than the default Stephanie voice on Galaxy phones, so Samsung may be looking to differentiate the experience on the devices. Users will be able to customize Galaxy Home with the same four voices, however.
We still don’t know a ship date for the Galaxy home, but it’s suggested that we might get an April launch.
