If, for some reason, you’re attached enough to Samsung’s virtual assistant Bixby to want it living in a smart speaker, then your wish has finally been granted. Assuming you live in South Korea and also fancy dropping a hell of a lot of money on a Samsung Galaxy S20 that is.
Tizenhelp has spotted that the Galaxy Home Mini is being advertised as a pre-order bonus for South Koreans looking to get hold of the Galaxy S20 on launch. All interested parties need to do is pop in a pre-order for the phone between February 14 and February 26, and they’ll get the cute little smart speaker delivered to them.
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It’s been a very long road to market for Samsung, with the Galaxy Home originally being announced back in August 2018 alongside the Note 9. Since then, there hasn’t been a peep, but rumours suggested the Galaxy Home Mini would actually beat the full-size version to market, and that seems to be the case.
It’s not a total surprise that the Galaxy Home Mini is alive and well. Over the weekend, XDA-Developers’ Max Weinbach tweeted footage of Bixby’s home away from home, along with details of the kind of thing the speaker will be able to do.
The Galaxy Home Mini only has 2.4ghz WiFi. No 5ghz. pic.twitter.com/L5BaeoU2ci
— Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) February 9, 2020
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Alongside the usual smart speaker functions like chatting about the weather and playing music, the leak suggests that it includes a built-in IR blaster, meaning that the Galaxy Mini could control TVs in the same way Amazon’s Fire TV Cube does.
It’s a mystery that Samsung didn’t see fit to mention the device once during Tuesday’s Unpacked event, given it’s clearly so close to release. Weinbach’s leaks show the companion app with English language enabled – and two different voices to choose from in the form of Lisa and Stephanie – so it’s obviously nearly ready to go, even if for now it appears to be stuck as a pre-order bonus in Korea…
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
