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The Galaxy Home isn’t dead: Samsung says it’s working to ‘refine and enhance’ Bixby smart speaker

The Galaxy Home isn’t dead: Samsung says it’s working to ‘refine and enhance’ Bixby smart speaker

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It’s been a year since the Galaxy Home was first announced

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Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

It’s been a year since Samsung announced its Galaxy Home smart speaker with Bixby on board, and the device was a total no-show at yesterday’s Unpacked event. But Samsung has confirmed that the project isn’t canceled. “We’re continuing to refine and enhance the Galaxy Home prior to launch, and look forward to sharing more with Galaxy fans soon,” a spokesperson told The Verge by email.

The company had initially aimed to ship the Galaxy Home in April. That didn’t happen, and Samsung’s latest stated goal was sometime in the third quarter of 2019. FCC filings have also revealed a second, considerably smaller Galaxy Home speaker that the company hasn’t yet even formally announced.

Samsung has said the Galaxy Home outputs 360-degree sound and is tuned by the company’s AKG division. It runs the Bixby voice assistant — Samsung’s alternative to Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri — and can serve as a hub for smart home gadgets that connect to Samsung’s SmartThings platform.

But clearly the company has run into signifiant challenges during the development process: it shouldn't take this long to ship a speaker, and the Home’s absence at yesterday’s keynote was glaring. We’re reaching the point where the Galaxy Home is starting to give off AirPower vibes. Apple announced AirPower before fully understanding how difficult it would be to make. The circumstances here are much different, but Samsung faces strong and well-established competition in the smart speaker category from Amazon, Google, Sonos, Apple, and others. We still have no idea how Bixby will fare in this setting compared to how it performs on Samsung’s phones.

Samsung has yet to reveal what the Galaxy Home will cost when it eventually does make it to retail shelves.