If you are into your audio, then there is a fairly good chance that you own a Bluetooth speaker. One which your smartphone or Bluetooth-enabled device can connect to and stream all of your favorite audio content to. Likewise, if you are this sort of consumer then there is a good chance you own a JBL-branded Bluetooth speaker or at least, are aware of the various JBL Bluetooth speaker options that are available. Like the JBL Xtreme, the Pulse 2 or the Charge 3 for instance.
All of these speakers do come packing their own selling points and generally speaking represent some of the best that JBL has to offer for the average Bluetooth speaker consumer and today JBL has announced that these speakers, along with their future ones will be getting a fairly nice feature bump. According to the details from JBL, how you will control their speakers has just significantly gotten much easier as they will now come with Google Now support and integration. Which means you can control the speakers by simply issuing voice commands. By using the speaker’s ‘Multifunction Button’, users will be able to now activate Google Now support and this will then allow the user to change the song, make calls, change the volume or just about anything else you can do using Google Now and voice commands. Essentially, omitting the need to use the smartphone once the device has established a connection to the Bluetooth speaker.
As mentioned, this is a feature which is coming to future JBL speakers as an already-included feature. However, this is also one which is backwards-compatible with a limited number of already-available JBL speakers, including the JBL Xtreme, Pulse 2, Charge 3, and the Flip 3. Although these models will need to have their firmware updated to make use of the new Google Now support. This can be done by applying the firmware update through the JBL Connect App which is available through the Google Play Store. The Google Play listing for the JBL Connect App does already seem to be reflecting the update and so if you already have the app installed, making sure you have applied the latest update should see the feature going live. If you do own one of these speakers and have yet to download the app, now might be the time to do so.