Or at least that's one idea
Samsung’s Bixby smart speaker has been in gestation for a long while, with the company itself acknowledging its existence, but we might have a look at what it could look – or at least function – like.
A new patent filed by Samsung, and spotted by LetsGoDigital (via Phone Arena), reveals a design for a speaker with a lot more personality than anything that’s come thus far. The speaker is made of two spherical parts, with the top one behaving like an Exorcist-style rotating head that faces the direction of sound, allowing it to better hear commands.
The illustration even gives it a couple of what look like eyes, adding to the robot-esque feel. More intriguing are the features: the speaker would be able to recognize faces (again making use of that rotating head), which it would match to their voice to confirm their identity. Smart speakers are already learning to differentiate users with voice recognition, but adding a visual element would make this more foolproof. Meanwhile seven microphones would give the Bixby speaker a pretty sharp sense of hearing.
It’s also a bit of a multimedia whizz, this robot. Samsung describes a small touch-sensitive display that could also display text, photos and videos. Just look at this really buff dude sending a selfie to the Bixby speaker. What a guy.
The speaker could even recognize the Samsung S Pen’s hover input, a feature found in Samsung’s Galaxy Note smartphones.
It all comes together for a much more dexterous, smarter speaker than anything else out there – but one that’s sadly just a concept for now. Last we heard, Samsung was planning to get its Bixby speaker out in the wild in the second half of 2018 which, for all you calendar fans, is almost here. Back at MWC, Samsung’s head of mobile operations, DJ Koh, suggested we’ll be getting a “premium” device – not Samsung’s answer to the Echo Dot, basically.
