Huawei announced its first ever smart speaker – the Huawei AI Cube with Alexa built-in at the IFA 2018 event in Berlin. The brand’s entry to the smart speaker market will see it battle Google’s Home speakers, Apple’s HomePod and other Alexa powered speakers – the Amazon Echo line-up.
With Alexa built-in, the Huawei AI Cube allows the users to play music, control smart home devices and access to thousand of skills. It comes with a SIM card slot and doubles as a router with support for both 4G LTE (Cat. 6) speeds and 802.11ac dual-band (2.4GHz/5GHz) Wi-Fi chip.
The speaker has a 15W mono speaker, 400ml sound cavity, aluminum diaphragm, rounded bass, four microphones with far-field voice recognition to listen to commands and Huawei’s Histen technology for better sound quality. While it is similar to the Google Home speaker in shape, it is slightly longer (measures 116 mm x 116 mm x 218 mm) and weighs about 900 grams.
Where sound meets synergy, the #HuaweiAICube. A powerful speaker in a smart environment. #ExperienceSmarter #HuaweiIFA2018 #IFABerlin #IFA18 pic.twitter.com/iJj2qk4hJU
— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) August 31, 2018
The Huawei AI Cube supports three different languages – English, French and German, and will hit the stores in Europe towards the end of the year.
Huawei also took the opportunity to launch the Huawei Locator at the IFA. Designed for kids, pets, luggages and valuables in mind, the pebble-shaped smart tracker is equipped with four major GNSS standards (namely GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Beidou), global roaming and the 600mAh battery on-board lasts up to 15 days of use or 60 days of standby on a single charge.
It is also dust and water resistant (IP68), pairs with Bluetooth LE and there is also a SOS button to raise alarm when necessary.
