Coming Soon: A Touch Screen Google Home

Google has been working towards establishing themselves as a major player in the world of AI and smart devices. Smart speakers are among one of their biggest projects. However, this is a market dominated by Amazon with their Amazon Echo powered by Alexa. Google competes against Amazon’s Echo series of devices with the Google Home. Earlier this month the company launched two new Google Home devices – Google Home Mini and Max. They are now working on a touch screen Google Home device.

This will basically be the same Google Home smart speaker but with a touch screen display on top of it. This device has now been spotted in lines of code in the Google app. The touch screen Google Home device has been in development since early September and has been codenamed Manhattan.

Interestingly, another code-name has been spotted in the Google app where the company keeps referencing ‘Quartz’ which is either the new codename for the device, or a software component which will interact with the touch screen acting as an interface between the user and the touch screen Google Home device. Quartz operates over voice commands – it appears that Quartz is more of a kitchen-friendly component as it contains recipes too.

Amazon Echo Show: the touch screen Google Home device will compete with it.

This touch screen Google Home device comes with various functions which were spotted in the Google app: These functions are notifications, interactive timers, weather forecasts, YouTube video playback, a basic web browser, photo galleries, Google Maps with business listings, a customizable home screen, and more. On another interesting note, Quartz features 32 different icons for detailing the weather conditions.

The bigger question now is – when will we actually get to see this touch screen Google Home device. Reports from Tech Crunch indicate that this Google Home device that will compete with Amazon Echo Show will release sometime in 2018, possibly going as late as mid-2018 but not beyond that.

Source: Tech Crunch