Just last month, we saw Pizza Hut at Safra Punggol get its first humanoid robot employee to their staff. And before that, we posed questions to the human-like Nadine at last year’s Human+: The Future of Our Species exhibition. Skynet, much? Probably not. Be that as it may, Google has finally brought in their lauded smart speakers, the Google Home and Home Mini powered by Google Assistant, to Singapore. And yes, it can speak and understand Singlish.
This brings the total number of products that the tech heavyweight has brought to six, together with the newly launched Google Store. It’s clear that Singapore is quickly becoming an integral part of their strategy to break into the region, especially after releasing the Google Wifi, Google Pixel 2 XL smartphone and Pixel Buds, all within the last five months of 2017.
Unless you’ve already begun to invest in smart devices for your home, it’s probably not going to be a life-changing experience for you per se. For example, if you have a couple of Nanoleaf light panels at home, you can activate it by simply asking Siri—if you’re on an iPhone—to “turn the light on”. Similarly with Home and Home Mini, you’ll be able to control your devices around your home using simple voice commands.
But more than that, Home and Home Mini is a great assistant at home, especially if you prefer to get help or look for things without actually using your hands. You can ask for the top news stories of the day, a rendang recipe, the fastest route to Zouk from home, listen to songs through Spotify, watch YouTube videos or, if you have Chromecast on TV, ask it to play the lastest episode of The Crown on Netflix. You could even ask you to tell you a Singaporean joke.
And that’s really just scratching the surface. There’s so much more it can do, like distinguish voices of up to six people, manage your day like an actual assistant, retrieve your travel itinerary… you get our drift.
You can get your very own Google Home or Google Home Mini starting Apr 20 at any StarHub, Courts and Challenger outlets across Singapore or online via Hachi.tech and the Google Store for $189 and $79 respectively.
