Polk Audio

by Bayle Emlein

Polk Audio presented their Polk Assist smart speaker

at Pepcom’s spring Digital Experience extravaganza.

Having more than 45 years of sound engineering and

design, Polk Audio maintained the lead in hi-performance

audio with the Polk Assist Smart Speaker. The voice-

controlled smart speaker features built-in Google Assistant

for music streaming and control of smart home devices.

The Polk Assist speaker is one of the first smart speakers

built on certified Android Things System-on-Modules (SoMs),

which benefits from regular feature and security updates

from Google.

With Chromecast built into Polk Assist, users can group

multiple Chromecast - enabled speakers and sound bars

for effortless multiroom playback from compatible audio

apps including Pandora™, TuneIn™, Google Play Music™,

iHeartRadio™, and Spotify.

Set-up and control are optimized. Users plug in the Polk

Assist and download the free Google Home app in the App

Store for either iOS or Google Play for Android, and the Polk

Assist smart speaker is ready to provide a premium audio

experience, hands-free. Google Search, scheduling, setting

timers, making calls, and controlling smart home devices are

equally available.

The Polk Assist smart speaker looks as good as it sounds.

Available in midnight black and cool gray, the compact speaker

fits in most spaces and complements any decor.

Lenovo Smart Dsplay

Lenovo will start shipping the first Google Assistant

smart display this weekend, marking the birth of a new

range of products that could eventually include some of

Echo Show's staunchest rivals. Similar to what Echo

Show does, Google's smart displays will give you a way

o interact with the tech giant's voice assistant in a visual

way. We first met the new devices at CES this year, where

we were impressed with their ability to instantly display

maps and send them to your phone when you ask for

directions. Certainly beats listening and trying to visualize

Them.

Here's another instance where a smart display can be

much easier to use than a smart speaker: Assistant will

also provide a step-by-step visual aid for recipes you look

up that you can follow on screen. Plus, the device can

present a visual summary of the weather, give you a way

to create and manage to-do lists and show you audio tracks

you can listen to instead of randomly playing a tune. If you're

a visual person, this new category will definitely sound more

enticing than smart speakers.

And what good is a Google display for if you can't play You-

Tube on it? You can ask Assistant to stream cooking videos,

make-up tutorials and anything else you want to watch hands-

free. If you've never subscribed to YouTube Premium in the

past, you'll get three months free with your purchase. The

display can also stream live or recorded YouTube TV shows,

YouTube Music, HBO Now, Google Play Music, Spotify and

Pandora. If you want to video call a friend on a screen bigger

than your phone, simply invoke Duo on the device -- say "Hey

Google, call [friend's name]." And in case you never had a Home

speaker to begin with, you can use the display to listen to

podcasts and audiobooks, as well.

Lenovo's Google-powered smart display will be available in

two sizes and colors, though all of them come with a 10-watt

speaker. The smaller 8-inch HD model will set you back $200,

while the 10-inch full HD one will cost you $250. If they don't

have the looks or the features that can convince you to shell

out a couple of hundred bucks, you can always wait for the

next models from Google's other partners, including JBL and

LG. Make sure to check out our review to decide for yourself.

LG Profits

South Korean tech giant LG Electronics Inc. said Thursday

its second-quarter net profit fell 36.6 percent from a year

earlier and that its mobile business remained in the red.

Net profit came to 326.5 billion won (US$291 million) in the

April-June period, compared with 514.9 billion won posted

in the same three month period in 2017, the company said

in a regulatory filing.

Operating profit came to 771 billion won in the second

quarter, up 16.1 percent from a year earlier.

Sales edged up 3.2 percent to reach 15 trillion won, LG

Added.

The second-quarter report was slightly below the market's

consensus. South Korea's 16 brokerage houses expected

LG Electronics to post an operating profit of 8.3 trillion won,

along with sales of 15 trillion won, according to Yonhap

Infomax.

Qualcomm 5G

Qualcomm has solved a big problem for a certain

variation of 5G: getting the chips small enough to fit in

handheld devices.

On Monday, Qualcomm unveiled its new QTM052

millimeter wave and QPM56xx sub-6GHz radio frequency

antenna module families. They work alongside the

company's Snapdragon X50 5G to bring superfast network

speeds to smartphones . The modules will let phone makers

cover the gamut of 5G airwaves, including the shorter-range

but faster millimeter wave spectrum and the more reliable but

slower sub-6GHz airwaves.

The modules will show up in mobile hotspots later this year

and in smartphones in the first half of 2019. The potential peak

download speed could be up to 5Gbps for the millimeter wave

variant, though the more realistic speed you'll see in phones is

closer to 1.4Gbps, Qualcomm said. That's much faster than today's

4G, which is about 70Mbps, and even faster than the sub-6GHz's

expected speeds of 400Mbps to 500Mbps, the company noted.

MacBook Pro Performance Probems

Apple has been catching heat over the performance

of its new MacBook Pro laptops, but the company is

hoping its new software update will help cool off outraged

power users.

After reports of heat issues leading to throttled

performance, Apple has determined that a simple software

bug was to blame, and has released what it hopes is a

quick fix. In our initial testing, the MacOS update appears

to correct the up-and-down CPU throttling, and we're

continuing to run additional tests.  

“Following extensive performance testing under numerous

workloads, we've identified that there is a missing digital

key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management

system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy

thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro," an Apple spokes-

person tells CNET. "A bug fix is included in today's MacOS

High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is

Recommended.

"We apologize to any customer who has experienced less

than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers

can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70 percent

faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to

2x faster, as shown in the performance results on our website."

Walmart Partners

In its effort to boost the appeal of its website with lifestyle

imagery, Walmart is adding influencer content to its website.

All influencer content appears below product images and

the product information on each page, and is different

depending on the product. On Walmart.com’s product page

for Bigelow Green Tea, a visitor can find images from bloggers’

sites of cakes, muffins and cookies baked using Bigelow Tea,

followed by three recipes visitors can download or view to make

themselves. Meanwhile, on the product page for Schwarzkopf

göt2b hair color, are images of influencers posing with the hair

olor or using the company’s other hairspray product.

The integration began in June and so far has resulted in 30

executions with Mondelez, Henkel and Bigelow, have built out

their Walmart.com product pages with influencer content, with

more on the way. These influencers include Atsuna Matsui, a

beauty influencer with nearly 500,000 followers on Instagram,

Nicole Weisman, who has nearly 150,000 followers on Instagram

@curvestocontour and lifestyle blogger Abril who runs the blog

The Color Palette.

Walmart, facing pressure from Amazon, is doing everything in

its to power to stay competitive. In May it redesigned its website

to feature more lifestyle content. Having a strong influencer

strategy is another way to do so. Amazon has tried and so far has

failed, at developing its own influencer play. Agency buyers have

stated that Spark, Amazon’s social feed where influencers are

meant to post honest reviews of products bought from Amazon.com,

has not caught on with brands or influencers. One influencer Digiday

interviewed said the platform hasn’t taken off because there was no

“return on investment.”

Whim App

The last few years have seen greater changes to urban

mobility than in most of the last century, the design of

which was largely influenced by the automobile. The vast

majority of these changes, adopted to varying degrees,

comes as a result of the smartphone and its ability to be

used for low-cost transportation platforms. This powerful

computer, which we now carry in our pockets, means people

in need of transport can be connected to others with spare

capacity, to locate a dockless bike or scooter on a map, to

offer or monitor routes based on traffic conditions, to buy

bus or train tickets, and a growing list of possibilities.

Recent years have seen applications such as Uber, Cabify,

Lyft, Didi and many others increase the availability of vehicles,

creating many more mobility options, and which still represent

a tiny change compared to what will happen when technologies

such as electric and autonomous-driving vehicles are introduced.

Automotive giants such as Daimler and BMW, and soon

Volkswagen, keen to improve its image after the dieselgate,

have signed on to this trend, flooding our cities with fleets of

vehicles ready to be driven at any time through an app.

In addition, the number of bike sharing programs around

the world has doubled since 2014, with a 20-fold increase

in the number of bicycles available in cities from Spain to

China. The new mobility companies have entered this

segment through acquisitions that foreshadow important

mergers and deployments, in the same way that has happened

with electric scooters, which began with several startups, which

have grown into unicorns thanks to an investment frenzy, and

now continues with the emergence of these mobility monsters,

generating what some have dubbed the “scooter economy”

based on the idea of “everything as a service.”

Mobility in cities will evolve into a service we use as needed:

transportation or mobility as a service, eliminating the idea of

owning an expensive, underutilized asset that contaminates

the air and has become the biggest problem in the vast majority

of cities around the world. But for all this to happen we need a

smoother transition; we cannot be expected to install 10 or 20

apps to manage the mobility options our cities offer, along with

public transport which also plays a fundamental role in getting

around our cities and that, thanks to successive waves of innovation,

will continue to do so in the future.

Samsung Bixby

Samsung hasn’t yet managed to shake the lackluster

reputation of its Bixby digital assistant, especially when

compared against rivals Google Assistant, Alexa, and

even Siri. But the company is apparently pressing on

with the idea of putting Bixby into a smart speaker that

will resemble the Echo, Google Home, and Apple’s

HomePod in concept.

The Wall Street Journal’s report on a foldable smartphone

from Samsung also offers some new information on the

speaker project. Samsung is expected to announce its

device within the next month. If true, the likely launch target

would be August 9th, which is Samsung’s Unpacked event

for the Galaxy Note 9. It seems the company is planning

some other surprises, based on this report. The rumored

price? $300.

Samsung has already directly confirmed that it’s developing

such a speaker. A new Galaxy Watch smartwatch could also

be unveiled at the Note event.