The Samsung Galaxy Home just got a new shipping window: Q3 2019. This is according to Samsung’s CEO Hyun-suk Kim. In an interview with The Korea Herald, Kim noted that it should begin shipping in the third quarter, which would put it about a year beyond when it was announced.
Galaxy Home is a smart speaker from Samsung, that is going to have Bixby running inside, instead of something like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. Bixby is Samsung’s own personal assistant that it has been pushing on its smartphones for a few years now. But it’s mostly just a bad version of Apple’s Siri.
Samsung wants the Google Home to be the centerpiece of its customers’ home. Being able to connect to customers smartphones, appliances and much more. It would be able to control everything in your home – as long as you have Samsung appliances. This isn’t much different than what Google is doing with the (now) Nest Home stuff, and Amazon with its Echo products.
If the Galaxy Home does indeed launch in the third quarter of 2019, it wouldn’t be too crazy to expect to see it at Unpacked with the Galaxy Note10. After all, Samsung hasn’t really talked much about the product. It was announced with the Galaxy Note9 last year, but Samsung was pretty quiet on specifics, and didn’t even let the media touch or see it. Of course, IFA is also during that time, so Samsung could have a launch event in Berlin for the Galaxy Home. Typically, the company will introduce its new wearables during that trade show, but last year it did not even hold a press conference.
Samsung is rumored to already be working on a smaller version of the Galaxy Home – the Galaxy Home Mini – and we have even seen it pass through different certifications. The Galaxy Home, from what we saw on stage during Unpacked last year, appears to be a pretty large smart speaker. So offering up a smaller one, is a good idea. And it’ll likely sell better.
Besides controlling your entire home with your voice, using Bixby and Galaxy Home, Samsung also is touting the impressive sound quality from this speaker. Samsung acquired HARMAN a couple of years ago and have been using AKG to tune its smartphone speakers and including AKG headphones in the box with those smartphones. Now AKG is the one in charge of tuning the speakers inside the Galaxy Home. Samsung wants you to use the Galaxy Home as your home speaker system, instead of a more expensive home stereo system.
The Galaxy Home does have some promise, but after seeing the many, many delays of the product, one has to wonder whether it will ever ship. Perhaps, Samsung has finally heard of all the criticism towards Bixby from its customers and the product will get shelved until Bixby is more usable. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see, the third quarter starts on July 1 and ends on September 30. So it’ll be interesting to see if it does ship during that time.