The Samsung Magbee smartspeaker could be launched at IFA 2018

Samsung's smart speaker has been in the news for quite some time now. While we hear rumors about the Korean electronics giant working on its smart speaker powered by Bixby since last year, it's only now that these rumors have begun to take a concrete form. And the latest reports suggest that Samsung could unveil its smart speaker sooner than expected.

According to a bunch of applications filed by Samsung in the United States and Europe, the company's smart speaker could be called "Magbee", which as Sam Mobile points out the short form of the magnetic beetle.

While the patent as such discloses nothing about the smart speaker other than the name, rumors about the alleged device have a lot to say. For starters, the smart speaker will be powered by the Samsung Bixby 2.0 virtual assistant and it is likely to feature a bowl-shaped design with multiple speakers positioned in different directions.

In addition, users will be able to read audio on multiple Magbee smart speakers simultaneously and control the volume of each speaker individually – a feature that is similar to Google Home. Another interesting feature of Magbee is a feature called "sound shifting". What this feature will do, is that it will allow users to manually select the direction in which the sound is to be played, says Sam Mobile. However, there is no clarity on how the speaker will detect which side of the room the user's smartphone is in the room. Rumor has it that Samsung could use Wi-Fi radiation or infrared sensors for the same.

come with some kind of gesture-based functions with allowing users to choose their favorite music streaming service.

Regarding Bixby, it would seem to work in a similar way to that on smartphones. Users can say "Hi Bixby" to wake up the smart speaker and control a set of tasks such as finding weather updates or setting alarm.

Another important feature that can make its way to Magbee is the call feature. . The word is that users will be able to make calls using the smart speaker via Bixby. The speaker will connect to the user's smartphone via Bluetooth and users will be able to make calls as in the case of Google Home and Amazon Echo devices.

ALSO READ : Now you can ask Google Assistant to phone you using the Duo application

As for the date launch, the Korean electronics giant is expected to show the device on August 9 alongside Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Note 9. If this is not the case, the company is likely to reveal the device at the IFA 2018.