Great news to Google fans in the U.K. Apparently, Google's smart speaker (aka Google Home) will soon be hitting the UK market by the end of June.
According to an article at CNET, consumers in the U.K. will be able to buy Google's smartphone speaker starting in June. This was confirmed by the company to BBC News on Tuesday at the 2017 Mobile World Congress event. Regarding its price tag, the device itself retails at $130 in the U.S. which roughly translates to £105.
The Google Home's Specifications
To know more about Google's smart speaker, it features 3.79 inches in diameter, 5.62 inches in height and 477 grams in weight. For its supported audio formats, it supports HE-AAC, LC-AAC+, MP3, Vorbis, WAV (LPCM) and FLAC with support for high-resolution streams. For wireless network, it supports 802.11b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz/5Ghz) Wi-Fi for high-performance streaming.
For speakers, it supports a high excursion speaker with 2" driver + dual 2" passive radiators delivers clear highs and rich bass, and far-field voice recognition supports hands-free use. For power, it supports 16.5V and 2A included. For power adaptor, it supports 100-240V-1.1A 50-60Hz.
For ports and connections, it has Micro-USB port (for service only) and DC power jack support. And lastly for the operating systems, it supports Android 4.2 (and higher) and iOS 8.0 (and higher).
The smart speaker itself uses a digital assistant called Google Assistant that is capable of searching the web, checking calendar dates, control the user's smart home and play music. To summon it or begin a conversation, the user must say "OK Google," or "Hey Google." Furthermore, conversational commands can be followed up as well. For example, the user can say, "Hey Google, play (name of the song)." Then follow it up with, "OK Google, what album is this from?" Then finally add, "Hey Google, play the album."
Other News About Google
Among other announcements by Google, Rich Osterloh, Google's senior VP for hardware has revealed that it won't be launching any own-branded laptops under the Pixel branding, meaning there will be no Chromebook Pixel 3. However, it doesn't mean that the company is backing away from laptops, because it will still be producing like the Samsung Chromebook Pro. Osterloh also even mentioned that Google has the number two market share both in the U.S. and in the U.K.
