Harman Kardon enters premium Google Assistant-powered speaker market with Citation 500

Harman Kardon isn’t a stranger in the smart speaker space but it just unveiled its first Google Assistant-powered one and it’s right in the premium segment of that market. The Citation 500 packs in 200W stereo speakers that supports 24-bit/96Khz high-definition audio streaming. The smart speaker comes with a small LCD display at the top of the bulky speaker to help with controlling playback. But since it is a Google Assistant speaker, it supports the usual voice commands. As 9to5Google points out, it isn’t clear yet if the display fully integrates with Assistant as it seems too small for any smart display functionality. But we should hear more about this soon as the speaker goes up for pre-order in Europe for £549 (around CA$920) and it’ll be showcased at IFA 2018.

Sonos promises to add Google Assistant support to its One speaker before the end of 2018

Sonos seems to have finally set a deadline for itself. The Verge reported that the company plans to bring Google Assistant to its Sonos One speaker before the end of the year. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence told The Verge that Sonos is “working as hard as we can and so is Google to get it ready” in time for the holiday season. The Sonos One already supports Amazon Alexa and even has AirPlay 2 functionality to support Apple users. And if we do get Assistant soon, it’ll make the speaker an even more attractive purchase.

Source: 9to5Google

Google Assistant music controls migrates out of Google Home, brings rewinding and forwarding to other devices

You may or may not be familiar with this feature but if you ask Google Assistant to control music on your Google Home, you can ask it to rewind or forward into specific parts of a song. (For example, “Rewind 45 seconds…”) That feature used to only be available on Google’s Home platform, but Google has finally brought this feature to its other platforms, including Android phones and tablets, Chromebooks, Android TV, and even Android Auto.

There are still things Google needs to finetune for this, though. As pointed out in Android Central’s story, Google Assistant has trouble recognizing a voice command when playing music on said device and won’t thus respond to the media command. App support is still a bit limited, too. Here’s to hoping Google develops this further to make handsfree media commands that much easier to use and more accessible to more users.

Google Assistant can now provide more information about the rain

Google is continuously updating both Assistant and by extension Google Home with more features. One of the newest thing the company seems to be testing out is related to the weather—or rain, to be specific. Previously, when you ask Google Assistant if it’s going to rain, it’ll give you a yes or no answer. Now, it’ll be able to provide more information. It can tell you when exactly it’ll rain and if there will be a break from it. A lot of Reddit users have confirmed that this feature is rolling out for some people and it is coming to Google Home users, too. Here’s to hoping this rolls out to more users.

Source: XDA Developers