The announcements include the Note 9, the Galaxy Watch, the Galaxy Home smart speaker and a new partnership with Spotify
South-Korea based tech giant Samsung unveiled a string of products and announcements during its annual Unpacked 2018 event held in New York City on Thursday.
The most awaited unveiling was the Note 9. The phone features a 6.4 inch screen, a 4,000 mAh battery and a Bluetooth-compatible S Pen, but will be shipped with Android 8.1 and not the latest Android 9 Pie.
Samsung’s voice assistant Bixby has also been updated to Bixby 2.0 for the Note 9. This update gives new features to Bixby, such as booking Uber rides, search for events nearby, make reservations at restaurants and much more. The phone will also support Google Assistant for users who are not familiar with Bixby.
It is powered by a Snapdragon 845 processor, has dual 12 megapixel cameras and starts at $999 for the 6GB RAM and 128GB variant. The phone is available for pre-order on Samsung’s online store and will start shipping on August 24.
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The other product is the Galaxy Home smart speaker, powered by Bixby. Samsung’s answer to Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home has six speakers built into it, eight far-field microphones and a subwoofer. The user can simply activate it by saying ‘Hey Bixby’ out loud, and can task the speaker with basic chores, like setting an alarm, a reminder, making a call, playing music and much more.
No details about availability and price were revealed, but Samsung said more information will be out in November. The Galaxy Home could face substantial competition from its many rivals.
Another product is the Galaxy Watch which comes with hardened Gorilla DX+ glass, a high-res AMOLED touch display, LTE connectivity and the Tizen 4.0 operating system. Samsung claims that users will be able to use the watch for days on a single charge and it can be worn even while swimming. It also includes features to monitor heart rate and track a user’s sleep cycle.
The watch is available for purchase on Samsung’s website at $330 and $350 for the 42mm and 46mm display respectively, and in three colour variants.
The most important announcement of the event is the new partnership between Samsung and music streaming major Spotify. The app can now be set as the default music player on a Samsung smartphone and can also be linked to Bixby. Users will be able to stream music from Spotify even if they do not have an account with the app.
This announcement is significant as it marks Samsung’s departure from using Google Play Music as its default music service.
