Bluetooth update for Google Home speaker out accidentally

At the Google I/O 2017, an annual developer festival held in California, the company announced Bluetooth streaming will be available on Home. 

“Even though Bluetooth is as old as the hills in tech years, it still took some time to get this feature ready. It’s rolling out now and you might already have it on your Google Home,” tech website Android Police said on Friday. 

The update does not appear to be widely available and Google hasn’t announced yet when it will be releasing Bluetooth support for the Google Home. When the update does roll out for real, users will be able to use it as a Bluetooth speaker. The new addition of Bluetooth will work with Home for music streaming and allow it to be used as a speaker even without Wi-Fi. 

In a bid to improve viewer’s experience, on-demand streaming website Netflix has announced that it is adding Dolby Atmos surround sound technology, which delivers captivating sound that places and moves audio anywhere in the room, to its original content. 

However, to experience this service, a user must also have a device that provides Dolby Atmos streaming support, which is currently available on Microsoft’s Xbox One, One S and LG’s OLED TVs released in 2017. “Over time, we plan to add support to more devices, making the experience more accessible to Netflix members everywhere,” Greg Peters, Chief Product Officer at Netflix, said in a statement. 

The Dolby Atmos support on Netflix will begin with Okja, a critically-acclaimed film directed by Bong Joon Ho, that made its recent debut at the Cannes Film Festival. Dolby Atmos support will also be available for select Netflix titles, including Blame!, Death Note and Bright.

Samsung announced on Sunday that on July 7 it will release in South Korea a refurbished version of Galaxy Note 7, which was recalled last year after several cases of these handsets catching fire. A total of 400,000 units of the refurbished smartphone, named the Galaxy Note 7 Fan Edition, will go on sale at around $600, according to a company statement. Samsung was forced to suspend the production and sales of the Galaxy Note 7 due to repeated incidents of the devices blowing up, caused by a manufacturing fault in the battery, Efe news reported. 

The fiasco led to the company incurring operating losses of around 6.1 trillion won ($5.2 billion). The redesigned Galaxy Note will have completely updated software as well as a lower-capacity battery compared to the original model after attempts to develop a long-lasting but small battery were found to be partly to blame for the phones catching fire. 

Following the smartphone’s recall last year, Samsung received a large number of petitions from environment groups asking it to repair and reuse the 4.3 million Note 7 handsets that had been produced. Samsung Galaxy Note 8, successor to the Note 7, is expected to launch in August in New York.