Sonos has hinted at Google assistant coming to its smart speaker Sonos ONE in time for the lucrative Christmas period. In an interview with online magazine The Verge, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence commented it was;

“Coming later this year [2018]”

When pushed for an exact date about Christmas he commented;

“We’re working as hard as we can and so is Google to get it ready for that time”

This is welcome news to Sonos One owners who from day one have been promised a Google Assistant integration ’coming soon’.

It would also mean a big boost for Sonos just in time for Christmas 2018 where there is a lot of competition in the smart speaker gift market.

This would also mean Sonos is the first smart speaker to be ‘assistant independent’ and allow the user to ask either Alexa or Google when it wanted. Maybe one day even Microsoft Cortana or Apple Siri will join the party.

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Facebook is not having an easy time now with trust being an all-time low – thanks to their recent data scandal where Cambridge Analytica illegally obtained over 50 million users data without their permission.

As part of that the #DeleteFacebook movement is gaining momentum with high profile companies (Tesla, Space X, Playboy etc.) deciding to take the bold step and delete their Facebook accounts. As well as high profile users like Will Ferrell.

This is very bad timing for Facebook as they were due to launch a new smart speaker at their F8 developer conference in May. The speaker was rumoured to be a competitor to the Amazon Echo Show, featuring a screen and camera.

The speaker was also supposed to launch new voice assistant, competing with Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana and Siri.

However, with all the new privacy concerns Facebook has decided to delay the launch.

We really don’t blame them!

A lot of people have concerns over tech like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant ‘always listening’.  Yet enough have trust in Amazon and Google to buy and use them.

If Facebook was always listening there would be greater concern as to what it would do with the data and more importantly who would have access to it.

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British design experts Studio 19 this week announced a new smart speaker, Solo EQ, on crowd platform Indiegogo.

The speaker looks pretty impressive, standing 3 ft tall and being made out of stainless steel and powered coated in Spay Grey or Gold.

Sound wise it looks like it packs a punch with 200 watts and featuring a patented Dual Pressure Air Compression (DPAC) super-bass technology and Enhanced 360° Optimized Sound to create a fully immersive audio experience

The clever bit is it features their own proprietary AWSM – Advanced Wave Sound Method, this  restores compressed audio back to its original clean pre-compressed sound. Making it perfect for streamed audio!
To top it off it features a EQ on the top of the speaker allowing you manually adjust to suit the music.

The speaker is battery powered and can last 8 hours, meaning you can take it with you. Connectivity wise its smart and connects to:

• Bluetooth
• WiFi
• Aux
• HDMI

It also has multi-room functionality via its app, watch out Sonos and Alexa!

Early Bird Indiegogo backers can buy get a Solo EQ for $379 / £276 with estimated delivery in 10 – 12 weeks. Although as always with Indiegogo these timescales can change as the product is created.

We are pretty excited by this, especially the AWSM tech,  and as soon as we can get our hands on one to review we will update you!

For more information visit: Indiegogo

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