Apple Granted Patent for Apple Watch Wireless Charging and Band Storage Case

The United States Patent and Trademark Office today granted Apple a patent related to a “Case for wearable electronic device,” and it’s described as an accessory that would let users charge their Apple Watch while on the go while also storing a few extra bands (via Patently Apple). Similar to portable battery packs, or Apple’s own AirPods case, users would charge the Apple Watch case itself, and then when traveling they could place their Apple Watch within the case to recharge it.

In the patent’s images, the case appears rectangular in shape, with the left side housing two rows for two pairs of Apple Watch bands, while the right side has a cutout for the Apple Watch case. In this particular patent, users would have to remove the bands to charge the Apple Watch and then store them next to it. According to the patent, there would be an “attachment system” — magnets are suggested — so that bands of “different geometry” would all still be secure within the case.

The patent specifies that the case would be able to store bands “having multiple segments,” like Sport Bands, and bands “having a single segment,” like Milanese Loop.

Case 200 can be used, for example, as a travel case to store a wearable electronic device and one or more bands that can be used to secure the wearable electronic device to a user’s wrist. As shown in FIG. 2, case 200 is designed to hold a single wrist-worn electronic device 230 along with first and second bands 232 and 234 either one of which can be used to attach wrist-worn electronic device to a user’s wrist.

Each of bands 232 and 234 includes first and second band segments (e.g., segments 234a, 234b of band 234) that can be connected together by a clasp or other type of connector (e.g., clasp 116 shown in FIGS. 1A, 1B), and each band segment includes a lug (not labeled) at one end. Embodiments of the disclosure can store bands having multiple segments, such as bands 232, 234, as well as bands having a single segment.

Apple’s patent even suggests the case could charge a “smart band,” which would include some form of circuitry and have abilities that supplement the Apple Watch with additional sensors or extra battery. Smart bands have been unearthed previously in Apple patents dating back to 2016, as well as in rumors claiming knowledge of the company’s plans from spring 2017, but we have still yet to see such a product debut from Apple.

Some accessory makers have had trouble launching smart bands for Apple Watch, and in 2016 when Apple’s watchOS 2.0.1 update blocked off third-party band manufacturers from taking advantage of the accessory port to fuel the abilities of such bands, the “Reserve Strap” was left defunct.

In regards to today’s patent, it would otherwise appear to function similar to the Apple Watch’s existing induction charging puck, allowing users to simply place the wearable device inside the case’s cradle, close it to protect the screen, and charge it up before wearing it again. The patent doesn’t specifically divulge how many additional charges could be added onto the Apple Watch, but it does state that Apple has gone through a few embodiments of the case adding or removing additional band storage to make it slightly larger or smaller, apparently settling on storage for two bands in this iteration.

There are many portable third-party Apple Watch charging solutions on the market today, but some have downsides for users wanting to charge Apple Watch while traveling. Twelve South’s TimePorter case, for example, lets users store a few bands and the Apple Watch charging puck, but it charges the Apple Watch on the outside of the case, so it isn’t great for charging in a bag or suitcase.

As with any patent, Apple’s Apple Watch charging case may never become available for users to purchase, but it is interesting to see what the company is considering to launch alongside future generations of the Apple Watch.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 4Tag: patentBuyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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Apple Launching Pilot Program Allowing Repairs of Soon-to-Be Vintage Mid 2011 iMac in United States

Apple today internally announced it is launching a new pilot program that will permit Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers to continue offering repair service for 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac models released in mid 2011, despite the fact they will be classified as vintage starting next month.

The pilot program will be available in the United States only between March 1, 2018 and August 31, 2018, subject to parts availability from Apple, according to the company’s internal memo obtained by MacRumors. After the pilot ends, repairs will only be available in California and Turkey, as required by law.

Apple and Authorized Service Providers can usually repair an iMac’s display and hinge, logic board, graphics card, hard drive or SSD, power supply, and other components, although the exact availability of replacement parts remains to be seen. It’s unclear if RAM and storage upgrades will continue to be offered.

Apple typically offers repairs and replacement parts for a Mac until five years after it is no longer manufactured. Mid 2011 iMac models are now approaching this cutoff, as the last education-only configuration was discontinued in March 2013, but these machines will now remain eligible for service for an additional six months.

Apple didn’t specify if the pilot program will eventually expand to other vintage products, or whether it will be available outside of the United States.

Related Roundup: iMacTags: Genius Bar, vintage and obsolete, AASPBuyer’s Guide: iMac (Caution)
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Mining Bitcoin in the cloud is like renting a money printer and yes, it’s bizarre

Photo: hashflare

Cloud mining, or remote cryptocurrency mining, is a contentious topic. Using a remote server to mine currency for you seems perfect for people who don’t have the money or time to set up a home operation, but it also seems a bit too good to be true. If a cloud mining company just mined Bitcoin itself, wouldn’t it make more money?

To find the answer to some of these concerns, and to learn more about cloud mining in general, we reached out to HashFlare’s head of public relations, Edgar Bers.

Digital Trends: What is cloud mining?

Edgar Bers: Cloud mining is using hashing power to make calculations […] remotely. Like you would do when you render something. You may buy a cloud service that uses video cards to render something, or when you create a website and you need a web server where you put the files where you use for your website, you store them somewhere remotely. Cloud mining is kind of the same way.

Many people see cloud mining as a sure fire way to make money. Do you consider HashFlare as an investment system?

“For god’s sake, we are not an investment platform.”

We don’t feel that HashFlare an investment platform. You may consider it so because you put money in one end and get money out the other, but for us it’s just hosting a service. We host hardware, you purchase hashing power and you mine [with] it. We don’t care what you mine, what you do, we legally just provide you with rent of equipment and that’s it for us.

Many people say that cloud mining is a form of making profit and capital gain. We have never promised any profit, and we cannot, because it is not for us to say what is the Bitcoin price or Bitcoin difficulty, especially now after the rally where bitcoin grew as high as 20k and now it’s just over 10 and may fall over (it did) […] There is a lot of “fud” in the cryptomarket, a lot of speculation. For god’s sake, we are not an investment platform.

This is not a market you want to offer investment options in. If you want to mine, you want this risk, here is how to buy the equipment. It’s already connected, if you want it, here you go.

Edgar Bers (Photo: hashflare)

Editor’s Note: Edgar did later state later that all HashFlare users do make a profit of some kind. “At the end of the day, every contract resulted in a positive dollar profit,” Bers said. “However, simply holding money in BTC is practically the same in terms of dollar profit. Especially if you get in at the right price.”

HashFlare hasn’t always been a cloud mining company. How did it begin?

HashFlare started in 2013. We were developing and selling hardware for mining Bitcoins, but soon we realized that shipping equipment is not really the best way to go. You can never be sure about delivery, that the equipment won’t be broken when it arrives. The second thing is trust, when you pay a lot of money, $2,000, $3,000 and must wait a month or two, you start to get nervous if it will arrive in time. It also incurs other problems like shipment costs. You may order a miner from us, it will cost $2,500 dollars, but at the border control you have to pay extra tax, because you’re importing electronics or machinery.

“[We have to] wake up at night if something shutdowns overnight.”

After that we decided that we should probably think of another way to sell the hardware, and it was back then we developed the remote mining platform.

At that time, when we tried to push that model to the public [though], we got more questions about how to use the system than actual orders and purchasing the cloud mining and hashrate. So we had to rethink it again, and after the third bubble, we ended up with HashFlare.

Cloud mining isn’t like owning the hardware yourself, or buying cryptocurrency on an exchange. How does it work?

There is mining equipment that stays in the datacenter. It mines, it does the operation, it mines Bitcoin. Bitcoin comes to our, so to say, central wallet. It’s not an individual customer’s wallet. It’s a central wallet that’s cold. We keep it private and secure so that no one can hack it. If you have a contract with us, it means that you have a certain amount of hashing power which equals to certain amount of cryptocurrency mined per, for example, day. In order for that equipment to mine, we have to provide electricity, the network, we have to get rid of the dust, we have to create the ventilation systems, manage everything. [We have to] wake up at night if something shutdowns overnight, electricity cuts off – maintenance work, technical operations. These operations are part of the maintenance fee.

#bitcoin #ethereum

A post shared by HashCoins/HashFlare (@hashflare.io) on Oct 3, 2016 at 5:10am PDT

In HashFlare you have your user account. There you have this number for how much hash power you have, what’s your balance, and so on. That’s just a number though. It’s not real Bitcoins, it’s just a number that you have. The Bitcoins are kept in our cold storage. Once you request a withdrawal, the money is sent from our cold storage to the wallet that you put into our system.

We mine it, we store it, then we pay it, and we take out the maintenance fee for mining, storing electricity, and everything.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, are quite a volatile commodity. The last months of 2017 saw huge swings in value. How do such rises and falls affect your business?

Obviously when the Bitcoin price is rising, we see a lot of new customers buying. When the Bitcoin price is falling, we see an influx of blame coming towards us. Since we are working in quite a young market and most of them see us as a money generation source, they think they just throw money into their screen and the next day they are millionaires. That’s fine, I’m not here to teach people, I’m just here to show them what’s happening at our end.

Our business model is not really damaged, we are not suffering from Bitcoin fluctuations because we have been working for over four years. We don’t spend all the cash that we earn. We have money to pay for our support people that we accumulate before crisis, like prices lowering, Bitcoin difficulty not lowering.

Some governments and financial bodies, especially in countries like China, have instigated regulation or blocks on the use or trade of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Are you concerned about such regulation affecting your business?

We are not providing Bitcoin mining, we are providing hashing power for rent. That’s it. If they said you are not allowed to do that, under that regulation services that provide hashing power to video rendering would also be damaged. That’s why we think that would never happen.

“Bitcoin is not really good for money laundering because it’s pseudo anonymous.”

We are most concerned about regulations that affect keeping hardware and consuming electricity. Because regulations are applied to the bottleneck where the trading for money is happening. Cryptocurrency exchanges, they get the first hit as they are the point in the community that allow for you to pay for something – to take money, to exchange money, that’s a regulated practice. You need to have KYC (Know Your Customer) there. I think we are also going to need to have a KYC procedure. I don’t know 100 percent, but I think considering what’s happening, we will one day need to know every customer who is giving us money and getting cryptocurrency from their mining […] to make sure that there is no money laundering involved.

[However] just half a year ago, the FCA in the UK, said that Bitcoin is not really good for money laundering because it’s pseudo anonymous. You have wallet numbers, all transactions are on the Blockchain, there are blacklists of wallets. If you have bitcoins that are associated with blacklisted wallet address, from half year ago, your bitcoins might be seized if you tried to withdraw them in fiat.

There are a lot of schills, scammers and hackers in the world of cryptocurrency. Some would suggest that cloud mining itself is a scam. What do you say to those people?

Everyone at every corner, every regulator, every government, especially every banker, they love to say that Bitcoin is a scam. If you are investing in Bitcoin, next year you’re going to lose all your money. Guess who’s going to earn that money? I bet bankers have Bitcoins, they just don’t tell anyone.

Bank of America Now Considers Crypto a Business Risk https://t.co/Jf9p0GESFQ pic.twitter.com/9WZRvBukZK

— CoinDesk (@coindesk) February 23, 2018

That’s probably the reason we must be so accurate when we say what we are doing, because it’s all about how it’s perceived. If you take money for charity that’s a good thing, but if you just take money and spend it on yourself, that’s technically charity, but you’re not helping anyone. It’s a game of terms of how you name things how you present them not just to customers but also to regulators.

Even when we say what kind of return on investment (ROI) you can expect, we always mention that all these calculations are made using open source calculators and these numbers are valid on the date of calculations. The next day you see an email from us saying that there is a new ROI you need to follow the links and recalculate to be sure. The volatility of this market practically doesn’t allow you to become an investment provider. You cannot be sure of anything.

Some people have wondered why cloud mining companies like Hashflare don’t just mine for themselves. Surely you would make more money if you didn’t share the profit with your customers?

If you consider hosting, electricity, rent – if we could pay for everything, for all the commodities that are required to mine, if we could pay in Bitcoins, then it wouldn’t be a problem. We would be mining just for ourselves, but we have people to maintain this system. We have to pay rent for the datacenters, we have to pay to our support agents. Even I am here because I receive a salary or else I would work somewhere else. To generate money that could be used for our day to day operations, you need classical funds like Dollars and Euros. So that’s why we sell it.

“I bet bankers have Bitcoins, they just don’t tell anyone.”

Obviously, we mine for ourselves as well, using the hardware that is not sold. Because whenever you buy hardware form HashFlare, there is no red signal somewhere. We don’t run with the miner and connect it. It’s already there, it’s already mining. We just reallocate the profits.

What does Hashflare have planned for the future?

Hashflare 2.0. Another thing is we are thinking of maybe adding more cryptocurrencies for mining, but the problem is there are no cryptocurrencies to add that are worth adding. There is Bitcoin Cash, but it’s not really Bitcoin, it’s not really cash.

What do you think the future holds for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

Regulations didn’t kill stock markets 100 years ago. Didn’t kill the mortgage market 10 years ago. Regulations are not to kill, but to save people from losing funds. At the end of the day, non-professional investors are still going to lose money, because the hype is too much, everything is too much right now.

It really feels like the whales are trying to shake the weak hands who are going to sell [right now] to have this small drop. Cryptocurrency business will hit one trillion capitalization this year, that’s for sure. And in order for that to happen, huge capital has to get in.

More than 85 percent of Bitcoin is in 0.5 percent of wallets. You can imagine what the distribution rate is here. I am more than sure the same distribution is within any market. If that’s true, then well, we’re going to see these whales come in. When they do, when they come in, we’re going to see capitalization grow by a lot.

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Qualcomm fills in the blanks, unveils Snapdragon 700 series platforms

Qualcomm has decided to fill in the gaps in its Snapdragon lineup with its 700-series platforms.

If you’re using a flagship Android phone, you likely have an 800-series Snapdragon processor. If you’re using a mid-range phone, chances are your Snapdragon chip starts with a 6. If you’re rocking an entry-level phone, it’s probably a 200- or 400-series Snapdragon.

Today, Qualcomm is going odd, announcing a Snapdragon 700 series, cribbing a number of features from its high-end Snapdragon 800s without the eye-watering prices.

The announcement doesn’t specify any particular platform names — the series encompasses multiple chips being sourced to manufacturers later this year, for debut late 2018 or early 2019 — but the company says that the chips will have twice the AI performance as the top-tier 600-series chip, the Snapdragon 660, while retaining most of the Spectra ISP, Hexagon DSP, Kryo CPUs, Adreno GPUs and ultra-fast LTE connectivity of the 800 series.

Qualcomm says all chips in the Snapdragon 700 series will offer “up to 30% improvements in power efficiency, and better performance and battery life across numerous applications
compared to the Snapdragon 660 Mobile Platform,” and be capable of charging using the company’s proprietary Quick Charge 4 tech.

Here’s how much the Galaxy S9 and S9+ could cost in India

If a recent leak is any indication, the Galaxy S9 series will start off at ₹62,500 ($965) in India.

Samsung has kicked off pre-bookings of the Galaxy S9 and S9+ yesterday in India, and both phones are slated to make their debut in the country sometime next month. What Samsung didn’t reveal is the pricing, but a new leak gives us an early look at the price points of the Galaxy S9 and S9+.

According to 91Mobiles, the 64GB variant of the Galaxy S9 will be priced at ₹62,500, with the 256GB version set to retail for ₹71,000. The Galaxy S9+, meanwhile, is set to start off at ₹70,000, and the 256GB model slated to launch at ₹79,000. Here’s the breakdown of the Galaxy S9 and S9+ pricing in India:

Galaxy S9/S9+ price in India:

• 64GB Galaxy S9: ₹62,500 ($965)
• 256GB Galaxy S9: ₹71,000 ($1,095)
• 64GB Galaxy S9+: ₹70,000 ($1,080)
• 256GB Galaxy S9+: ₹79,000 ($1,215)

The caveat here is that the aforementioned prices are the Maximum Retail Price; and therefore the selling price will be slightly lower. Last year’s Galaxy S8 and S8+ launched at ₹57,900 and ₹64,900 respectively, and the Galaxy S9 series will likely retail for somewhere between last year’s flagships and the quoted MRP.

As is always the case with a flagship launch, Samsung will incentivize the Galaxy S9 and S9+ with launch-day offers, and it looks like interested customers will be able to pick up the Galaxy S9 for as low as ₹56,900:

• 64GB Galaxy S9: ₹56,900 ($875)
• 256GB Galaxy S9: ₹64,900 ($1,000)
• 64GB Galaxy S9+: ₹63,900 ($985)
• 256GB Galaxy S9+: ₹71,900 ($1,105)

Thankfully, Samsung is making three color variants of the Galaxy S9 and S9+ — Midnight Black, Lilac Purple, and Coral Blue — available at launch, although the Midnight Black is the only variant that offers 256GB of storage. With the phones rumored to launch sometime next month, we should get more details on official pricing and availability information in the coming weeks.

Already figured out which phone to get? Head to Samsung India’s store from the link below to be the first to pick up the Galaxy S9 and S9+ in India.

See at Samsung India

Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+

• Hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+
• Galaxy S9 and S9+: Everything you need to know!
• Complete Galaxy S9 and S9+ specs
• Galaxy S9 vs. iPhone X: Metal and glass sandwiches
• Galaxy S9 vs. Google Pixel 2: Which should you buy?
• Join our Galaxy S9 forums

Will you get the Galaxy S9 or stick with the Note 8?

Samsung’s biggest competitor is itself.

For the past couple days, there’s been nonstop coverage surrounding Samsung’s new Galaxy S9 – and rightfully so. The phone is gorgeous, its physically changing aperture is a technological marvel, and the new power of the Snapdragon 845 should make the user experience better than ever before.

It’s no surprise that the Galaxy S9 is a pretty, feature-packed phone, and while a lot of folks will likely be picking one up as soon as pre-orders open March 2, the reaction to the phone is more of a mixed bag coming from current Galaxy Note 8 owners.

Many of our members in the Android Central forums proudly carry the Note 8 as their daily driver, and this is what they have to say about the newly announced S9.

Iva_LadyDiCaprio98
02-25-2018 08:17 PM

“

Definitely not interested. My Note8 will do just fine for the next couple of years

Reply

Victor Hernandez Jr
02-25-2018 09:01 PM

“

Definitely upgrading, note 8 glitches too much

Reply

cwbcpa
02-25-2018 09:18 PM

“

Note 8. I like my S-Pen and the functions that come with the Note. The S9+ looks like a great phone and I will look forward to those improvements coming to the Note 9.

Reply

digitalbreak
02-25-2018 10:45 PM

“

Unless you are someone who changes phone often, then I don’t see the point to get a S9+ if you already have a Note 8.

Of course that said, if you still want the S9+, get it for these reasons:

1) I am a camera geek and love variable apertures
2) I take a lot of night shots and my Note 8 sucks at that
3) I hate the finger print location in my Note 8
4) I WANT THE NEW ANIMOJIS, excuse me,…

Reply

If you’ve got a Galaxy Note 8, we’d now like to hear from you – Are you going to ditch your Note for the S9?

Join the conversation in the forums!

Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+

• Hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+
• Galaxy S9 and S9+: Everything you need to know!
• Complete Galaxy S9 and S9+ specs
• Galaxy S9 vs. iPhone X: Metal and glass sandwiches
• Galaxy S9 vs. Google Pixel 2: Which should you buy?
• Join our Galaxy S9 forums

Snapdragon 700 brings AI acceleration to lower-cost phones

There’s long been a conspicuous feature gap between Qualcomm’s mobile processors: You typically have to choose between a do-it-all beast like the Snapdragon 845 or settle for the good-enough features of midrange parts like the Snapdragon 600 series. The company is trying to bridge that divide today. It’s introducing the Snapdragon 700 series, which promises some of the features from the 800 line without the pricey hardware. It’s providing only a handful of details as we write this, but they’ll give you an idea of what to expect.

Most notably, the 700 range will include the 800’s AI Engine and Spectra image processing. If you’re using an AI-savvy device or thrive on mobile photography, you could have the same experience as someone toting the latest flagship phone. Qualcomm is also promising recent (if expected) additions like Bluetooth 5.0 and Quick Charge 4.0 support, as well as new variants on its Kryo CPU cores and Adreno graphics. You can expect as much as a 30 percent power-efficiency boost over a Snapdragon 660, Qualcomm said, in addition to unspecified speed advantages.

It’s likely to take several months before you find the new Snapdragon in shipping hardware. Samples don’t reach Qualcomm’s clients until sometime in the first half of 2018, and it’ll take longer than that for manufacturers to build chips into finished products. When the 700 series does arrive, though, it should spark a shift in the Android phone market. You may see more in-between devices that outperform typical midrange smartphones, but don’t carry the stratospheric prices associated with the latest flagships.

Catch up on the latest news from MWC 2018 right here.

Source: Qualcomm

The Morning After: Sony’s new A7 III

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

MWC 2018 is in full swing, and we have a whole new list of phones to pore over, including Sony’s Xperia XZ2 and the first cellphone with a cryptocurrency wallet.

Sony’s fastest, strangest flagship phone yet.Hands-on with the Sony Xperia XZ2

And its Compact sibling.

It’s getting smarter.Google Assistant can launch specific tasks in Android apps

Google has announced some new updates for its AI helper at MWC. Along with support for seven new languages (16 in total), it lets voice commands connect to specific actions within apps on your phone. Also, it’s smart enough to ask for your location mid-conversation if it needs that information to do something like order a pizza. Finally, if you’re in an app that you use regularly, then it can cut out the intro process.

Missed you at CES.FCC Chairman Ajit Pai talks 5G and net neutrality repeal

During an MWC 2018 event, titled “The Future of the Industry: Transatlantic Digital Policy and Regulation,” Pai discussed his plans for 5G connectivity and, of course, his decision to repeal net neutrality in the US. He said that, despite public perception on the moves he’s made since taking over the FCC as part of President Trump’s administration, the internet will remain open and free and that “no one gets a pass.”

New plan.Fitbit plans a family of smartwatches in 2018

To answer the question of what it needs to succeed, Fitbit is planning to roll out some new smartwatches this year. The company revealed that during its earnings report Monday, saying it will also push into subscription services. Hopefully a follow up (or two) to the Iconic does the trick — Fitbit lost $277 million last year.

710 shots per charge.Sony’s $2,000 A7 III camera adds 4K video

Following the recently refreshed A7R III, last night Sony announced its “basic” model update with the A7 III mirrorless camera. This time around it’s packing a 24.2 MP sensor, internal 4K HDR video capability (downscaled from 6K) and what Sony says is the longest rated battery life of any mirrorless camera thanks to its Z series battery. It will cost $2,000 when it goes on sale in April.

Just a little.Huawei made a Porsche slightly autonomous with a smartphone

To showcase the company’s AI push (read: remind everyone it’s really into this neural-processing gig), Huawei used its Mate 10 Pro smartphone as a lightweight autonomous car brain, inside a Porsche, right outside FC Barcelona’s stadium. Of course Mat Smith went for a ride.

But wait, there’s more…

• I found a Gemini PDA running Sailfish OS, and it was wild
• Tesla’s electric trucks may be more cost-effective than expected
• BlackBerry thinks shipping 850,000 KEYOne phones is a success
• The Big Picture: Bitcoin miners turn Quebec’s cheap energy into cold cash
• Michael B. Jordan burns all the books in ‘Fahrenheit 451’ trailer

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AiFi replicates Amazon Go’s checkout-free shopping in any store

Bricks-and-mortar shopping could be about to change forever. Amazon pioneered the automated convenience store with its newly-opened Go supermarket, and now computer vision company AiFi is introducing the first scalable, checkout-free system for stores outside of Amazon’s sphere of influence. The technology has the potential to turn enormous retail spaces and small mom-and-pop operations alike into shopping environments of the future, allowing customers to “grab and go” without the hassle of physically checking out.

The system works in largely the same way as Amazon’s, with sophisticated camera technology, AI algorithms and sensors. The difference is its scalability — it doesn’t require any major retrofitting, which makes it a feasible option for almost all stores. Plus, it offers store owners useful understanding into shopping behavior and gestures. This, according to AiFi CEO Steve Gu, makes things “easier for shoppers and [gives] more insights and real-time statistics for stores so they can better serve their customers and manage overall operations.” Gu says the pilot will roll out in one large store, “orders of magnitude bigger than the Amazon Go store” at the end of this year, with more stores to follow. And then it might be time to say goodbye to checkout small talk forever.

Samsung Says ‘Bixby 2.0’ Smart Speaker Will Feature Multi-User Voice Recognition

Samsung has announced at the Mobile World Congress that version 2.0 of its Bixby voice assistant will launch with the Galaxy Note 9 and come with support for recognizing individual voices (via ZDNet).

Samsung mobile chief D J Koh said that Bixby 2.0 is being tested by approximately 800 partners and is helping the company to develop a “wider scope of voice assistant features”, one of which is the ability to recognize individual voices on devices supporting multiple users.

Development of the feature makes sense given Samsung’s plans to launch a television set with built-in Bixby next month, as well as a Bixby-enabled smart speaker set for release in the second half of 2018.

Amazon’s Echo devices and Google’s Home smart speakers already include voice matching settings which let multiple users access personalized services, however Apple’s HomePod lacks such a feature.

For Siri commands that interact with user-specific information, only the Apple ID account holder who sets up the HomePod speaker is able to use the additional functionality, and Apple hasn’t revealed any plans to bring multi-user voice recognition to its Siri virtual assistant anytime soon.

Related Roundup: HomePodTags: Samsung, BixbyBuyer’s Guide: HomePod (Buy Now)
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