In a First, Amazon Launches a Battery-powered Portable Echo Speaker in India (techcrunch.com) 25
After launching nearly a dozen Echo speaker models in India in two years, Amazon said on Wednesday it is adding a new variant to the mix that addresses one of the most requested features from customers in the nation: Portability. From a report: The e-commerce giant today unveiled the Echo Input Portable Smart Speaker Edition, a new variant in the lineup that includes a built-in battery. The 4,800mAh enclosed battery will offer up to 10 hours of continuous music playing or up to 11 hours of stand-by life, the company said. "Portability has been one of the most requested features in India," said Miriam Daniel, VP of Alexa Devices. "You want to be able to carry Alexa with you from room to room within your homes. So we have designed something just for you."
Nice (Score:1)
What a world we live in!
Re:Nice (Score:4, Funny)
someone has to do the spyful...
might as well be amazon.
they're on a downward turn in most aspects. in a way, I hope they do crash and burn. they have become too powerful.
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Let's see, they had their most profitable year ever, Echo sales are through the roof, they had the biggest Cyber Monday in history, AWS is the 800-pound gorilla of the cloud industry, launching Amazon Air and their own delivery services are proving to be the correct decisions, HQ2's build-out is under way, they were named one of the most-desired employers by LinkedIn again, yep, sure sounds like they're on a downward spiral. They should implode any day now. /s
Really? (Score:2)
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There's another detail that will blow your mind: people are buying these devices with their own money, willingly!
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Yeah, why can't people just listen to their cassette player and be content, who the hell would actually want to stream music? And why would anyone ever leave the room where music is playing? That's just weird. /s
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Quite frankly I'm surprised that they live in more then one room.
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Next up: robotic 'digital assistants' that automatically follow you around (for the same reasons), and an Amazon smartphone with Alexa embedded in the firmware, so it even works with the rest of the phone turned off.
20 years from now: surgically embedded Alexa in your head, wired directly into your brain, so not on
memory hole for the Echo Tap is deep (Score:2)
Amazon swiftly dropped support for thr Tap, it had major hardware issues they refused to confess to, now they pretend it never existed.
Which is why this isn't called the Tap2.
Amazon TAP was first (Score:2)
I've been using the rechargeable amazon tap for years. I like it a lot, especially because it is not an active listener. You have to tap it to ask Alexa for something.
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Re: Amazon TAP was first (Score:2)
"Is it a passive listener tho"
It isn't listening until you press the microphone button and ask for something. You can't just say "Alexa do something" from across the room.
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"Is it a passive listener tho"
It isn't listening until you press the microphone button and ask for something. You can't just say "Alexa do something" from across the room.
So it won't upload everything it recorded in the last hour until you press the button to ask for something?
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That's not even possible. Not allowed in the firmware.
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That's not even possible. Not allowed in the firmware.
So the device has no internal memory at all and it's a direct real-time pipe to AWS?
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Hardware = memory, CPU, PCB board, speakers, microphone, etc.
Firmware = Operating system and drivers for the device.
The firmware recorded a short buffer after the button was pressed, in case the request had to be resubmitted to AWS. There were no allowances to record "for the last hour", you would have had to flash it with an entirely new firmware to allow that. While I'm sure it's possible Amazon didn't publish the source code for the firmware so you'd have to start from scratch. A frack of a lot of wo
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Hardware = memory, CPU, PCB board, speakers, microphone, etc.
Firmware = Operating system and drivers for the device.
The firmware recorded a short buffer after the button was pressed, in case the request had to be resubmitted to AWS. There were no allowances to record "for the last hour", you would have had to flash it with an entirely new firmware to allow that. While I'm sure it's possible Amazon didn't publish the source code for the firmware so you'd have to start from scratch. A frack of a lot of work just to try to snoop on your boring conversations with the cat.
As someone else posted any ideas about the 10 hours continuous streaming vs 11 hours of "standby" ? If Amazon didn't publish the source then how do you know there are no allowances? And finally, not trying to be a dick but have they posted how much internal memory the device has?
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There are a number of tear-downs of all the Echo devices on the Internet, here's a random one on the Tap.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardow... [ifixit.com]
If Amazon didn't publish the source then how do you know there are no allowances?
Because it would be stupid. They said that it doesn't record, they know that people are going to tear them down and the competition is going to reverse engineer the software. If "the most customer-centric company on Earth" (and yes, people do talk like that at Amazon, I work there and have
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Face it, your conversations aren't that interesting to people who aren't actually involved in them.
MmMmmMMmmMmMmmm...
They said that it doesn't record
/quote
Yes. Continue.
10 hours vs 11 hours? (Score:2)
10 hours vs 11 hours doesn't seem to make sense to me. What the heck does it do on standby to use almost as much as playing music which requires mechanical energy?
The 4,800mAh enclosed battery will offer up to 10 hours of continuous music playing or up to 11 hours of stand-by life
Why not use a phone? (Score:2)
Everyone already carries a phone that can run the app interface for the alexa service, why have a separate gadget? Do people not know about the app? It seems wasteful and irresponsible to make these devices which can only be used for the service.
Order #3,576,804,631 (Score:2)