Rumor: Google will release small version of Home speaker this fall

According to a new rumor, Google is working on a smaller version of its Home speaker. It should come out this fall. Competitor Amazon previously released a smaller and cheaper version of its Echo speaker called the Echo Dot.

The smaller speaker should appear this fall, writes the usually reliable Android Police based on an anonymous source at Google. Android Police often has reliable insider information about new products and services from the search giant. It is unknown what the price of the new product should be.

The smaller speaker is probably a cheaper version. Amazon’s Echo Dot is focused on enabling voice commands in the home at a lower price and in a smaller housing. This would put less emphasis on playing music. Apple went the other way with its HomePod and makes a more expensive speaker, with the emphasis on playing music.

In addition to the speaker, Google would also be working on a ‘Chromebook Pixel’, a new laptop with Chrome OS. It would be the first since 2015. Google released the Pixel C Android tablet in late 2015 and is said to have planned a laptop last year with Andromeda, the scrapped merger of Android and Chrome OS. Now that that’s gone, many references have appeared in the Chrome OS source code to the Eve, a laptop with Google Assistant integration.

Last year, the American company held an event at the beginning of October where it presented its new Pixel phones and the Home speaker. It goes without saying that Google will repeat that and plan an event this fall to show its new hardware. There have also been rumors about the new Pixel phones for months. Google presented Android 8.0 on Monday evening, but did not release anything about successors for the Pixels.

Google Home next to Amazon Echo