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Huawei AI Cube: An Alexa-powered smart speaker with 4G modem

Huawei AI Cube: An Alexa-powered smart speaker with 4G modem

Sep 01, 2018
04:53 pm

What's the story

Marking its entry in the smart speaker space, Chinese giant Huawei unveiled its AI Cube smart speaker on Friday. The speaker is powered by Amazon Alexa, and surprisingly, also packs a 4G modem, thereby possibly making it the first smart speaker to boast Wi-Fi router capabilities. The only thing that's upsetting is that the AI Cube isn't a cube. Seriously, it's cylindrical. Here's a sneak peek.

Twitter Post

The AI Cube, launched at IFA 2018, isn't a cube

Speaker

As an Alexa-powered speaker, the AI Cube promises competent performance

Despite its name, the sleek AI Cube looks pretty similar to the Google-home'>Google Home smart speaker, and comes with all of Alexa's functionalities. The speaker sports a 400ml sound cavity and an aluminium diaphragm. While you shouldn't expect eargasmic sound output, Huawei has promised solid sound on the low-ends and mid-ranges. Coupled with Huawei's proprietary Histen technology, the speaker promises competent performance.

4G modem

The AI Cube's stand-out feature is its 4G modem

Notably, the AI Cube's stand-out feature is its 4G modem. Last year, CNBC had reported that Huawei was looking to integrate voice assistants with its routers, so we should have seen it coming. Anyway, the AI Cube supports LTE download speeds of up to 300Mbps and is capable of working on 2.4GHz and 5GHz channels. Data transmission speeds on LAN can reach 1,200Mbps.

Pricing, availability

Not many details about pricing and availability

With 4G data costs going down, the addition of a 4G modem will add a lot of value to people who have ditched landline-based broadband connections for LTE-based alternatives. Additionally, networking technology has long been Huawei's strongest forte. It's expected to debut in Europe during the holiday season. Release dates for China and the US are unknown. Pricing details are also obscured for now.