Winners and Losers: Sonos launches new speaker, and Google ruins the Pixel surprise

September is hotting up to be the busiest month in the tech world so far this year.

Apple has confirmed it will be hosting its annual iPhone event this Tuesday, while in the following week Microsoft looks set to launch a new lineup of laptops and Amazon gears up to unveil new smart home gadgets. 

With so many big tech events on the horizon, this week has been fairly sparse on big news. But that hasn’t stopped us crowning the winners and losers of the tech world this week.

Winner: Sonos

Few tech companies have the same level of consistency as speaker-designer Sonos, as it’s launched banger after banger over the years.

This week, Sonos announced a new speaker called the Move 2. This is a portable speaker that can play tunes outdoors without fear of going kaput from the odd tumble.  

We were big fans of the original, awarding it a 4.5 out of 5 rating in our review. Sonos has seemingly made the on-the-go speaker even better, with the company claiming to have upgraded the battery life from 11 hours to a remarkable 24 hours, allowing you to literally party all day. 

Other improvements include the addition of a USB-C line-in to charge your phone, new touch controls and boosted connectivity with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0. Sonos has upped the price of the Move 2 by £50/$50 to reflect these features, however. 

We’ll have to wait until we’re able to test the Sonos Move 2 before being able to recommend it, but it’s still great to see Sonos being proactive in upgrading its range of excellent speakers. 

Loser: Google

Google may be one of the richest tech companies in the world, but it still hasn’t cracked the art of secrecy.

Last week, Google accidentally posted a photo of the upcoming Pixel 8 Pro on its official website before the phone had been officially announced. And then earlier this week, we reported that Google had added 3D renders of the Pixel 8 Pro to its own Pixel Simulator site, allowing the public to see every single angle of the unannounced phone. 

Google has since scrambled to regain control of the narrative, officially providing a sneak peek of the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Watch 2 a month before the official launch event. This was a great move to steal attention away from the leakers, but in turn, has ruined the surprise of the October event. 

Launch events are becoming more of a fanfare spectacle by the year in the tech industry, with Apple setting the tempo and having millions of people tune in to get their first glimpse of the next iPhone. This is a great way to build hype for a new product ahead of the pre-order window. 

With Google confirming that it will be hosting its own event in October, it looks like the company wants to replicate Apple’s hype model. However, major leaks will undermine these events, with most of the phone’s features and specs already available to the public. 

This isn’t the first time Google has ruined the surprise of an upcoming Pixel phone. It seems to be becoming a yearly habit, which will no doubt frustrate Pixel fans looking forward to the launch event. If Google wants its yearly Pixel events to get the same stature as Apple’s iPhone showcase, it’s going to need to plug up those leaks.