Samsung Galaxy Home Bixby Smart Speaker HomePod-Rival Previewed

While the Galaxy Note 9 is the main focus of today's Samsung Unpacked event, the company still had a few surprises up its sleeve. In addition to revealing a new smartwatch, Samsung also announced a new product called Galaxy Home. This is the oft-discussed Bixby speaker that has been the subject of plenty of rumors since Bixby first arrived on the scene, and it looks like it's finally happening.

Unfortunately for us, today was essentially just a teaser for the Galaxy Home. Samsung's Ji Soo Yi didn't spend too long talking about the Galaxy Home today, saying that more about the device will be revealed at a later date. However, he did share a few key details that certainly have us interested to hear more about the device.

The Galaxy Home is equipped with six mid-to-high range speakers, which are positioned to "send sound in every direction," according to Yi. He also says that the speaker is outfitted with a subwoofer, so its clear this is intended to be used for in-home listening just as much as its intended to be a smart speaker that can compete with the likes of Alexa.

Galaxy Home will use two technologies from HARMAN: Natural Sound Processing and Soundsteer. The former attempts to provide a "realistic surround sound experience," while the latter allows the speaker to optimize playback depending on their position in the room. All you need to do is say "Hi Bixby, Soundsteer," to have the speaker direct sound your way, which seems pretty neat.

The presence of Bixby and Samsung SmartThings means that you'll be able to use Galaxy Home as a smart home hub, and it uses eight microphones for far-field voice recognition. That's all Samsung wanted to share today, but it says that we'll learn more at the Samsung Developer Conference in November. Hopefully it's then we'll hear about pricing and release information, so stay tuned.