Danish luxury audio maker Bang & Olufsen announces the Beosound 1 and 2 are soon to become smart speakers-- September 2018 brings updated versions featuring Google Assistant built-in.
“We are on an exciting journey to bring the convenience of voice technology across the portfolio to our audience of design-conscious customers, who expect the highest standards in terms of sound and craftsmanship," the company says. "Considering that Beosound 2 with the Google Assistant is the most powerful and best sounding voice-enabled speaker on the market today, this first step marks a solid commitment to our customers.”
Designed by Torsten Valeur from David Lewis Designers, the Beosound 1 and 2 feature a conical aluminium body sitting on top of a subwoofer. At the slightly open top the speaker driver plays downwards into an acoustical lens, creating what B&O says is "an evenly distributed spherical sound profile." The smart versions also feature 5 microphones paired with acoustic echo-cancelling technology, ensuring all commands are heard.
According to unnamed "people familiar with the matter," the three handsets will offer "a wider range of prices, features and sizes." What they will not offer is a wholly new design since the launch marks an "S year," an Apple designation to iPhones featuring new internals inside a previous design. Instead, more "significant" changes will come around come next year.
First seen back at CES 2018, the latest version of the Sony robot puppy promises to be far more advanced than the original 1999 Aibo. The head, chin and back carry touch sensors, allowing it "feel" pets, 22 actuators drive movement and the nose houses a camera allowing it to recognise family members. OLED panels allow for more expressive eyes, while a camera on the back allow it to navigate to its charging station, Roomba-style (with a single charge powering up to 2 hours of robot dog use).
The event had Nvidia reveal three cards, the RTX 2070, 2080 and 2080 Ti. The company claims the RTX series offer hybrid capability able to deliver "6x more performance" than Pascal, allowing for 4K HDR gaming running at no less than 60 frames per second, even on advanced titles. To do so, the cards carry RT cores able to power real-time ray tracing (a means to accurately render the behaviour of light), an NGX "neural graphics framework" integrating AI in the graphics pieline and Turing shading architecture to boost overall performance.
Initially aimed at the Indian market, the F1 is clearly designed as a OnePlus 6 rival. It features a 6.18-inch 1080p display with an 18:7:9 aspect ratio, Qualcomm Adreno 630 GPU, 6/8GB RAM, 64/128/256GB storage, 20MP front-facing camera, rear-facing 12/5MP dual-camera array and a big 4000mAh battery, making it more advanced than other mid-tier Xiaomi devices such as the RedMi 6A.
