Samsung Announces Galaxy Home Mini Smart Speaker Beta Program.

Samsung announced the Galaxy Home smart speaker powered by its Bixby digital assistant a year ago called the Galaxy Home but failed to ship it.

Similarly, yesterday  Samsung announced the upcoming Galaxy Home Mini will be entering into a beta testing program exclusively for South Korea market. This new Mini Speaker will be launch alongside the delayed larger Galaxy Home.

Samsung Galaxy Home Mini smart speaker design actually looks pretty nice. It does follow the Google Home and Amazon Echo Dot aesthetic quite a bit. Soft-touch fabric seems to dominate the bulbous little speaker. The speaker is a smaller version of the Samsung Galaxy Home, which promises smart connectivity through the Bixby voice assistant, and sound tuned by AKG along with better sound quality than competing options. It’s worth pointing out that the larger speaker doesn’t seem to have any beta program active.

The beta programme application is now open from August 28 up till September 1. It is open to 3,000 participants, and anyone who is currently a Samsung smartphone user living in South Korea can apply. if selected, will receive a Galaxy Home Mini for testing ahead of its market release.

The Mini Smart speaker ships AKG in-ear headphones with its high-end Galaxy phones. As well as, the four controls which look very much like those you’d find on Amazon’s Echo speaker. The Home Mini will use Bluetooth 4.2 to connect o other devices and will be powered via micro-USB. It will also have infrared and be able to connect to Samsung’s SmartThings smart home network, though it remains to be seen exactly how capable the product will be at acting as a smart hub.

There is also a rumour that the smaller Bixby speaker will have integration with Samsung’s Smart Things home automation platform, allowing users to control other smart gadgets with their voice.

It still remains unknown when Samsung might release its two smart speakers and how much they’ll cost. However, with this new step towards the introduction of the beta programme shows the launch of the two smart speaker is very near.