When there is smoke there is fire, the adage says, and the recently published product page for the Cortana-powered speaker from Harman Kardon showed that the company was almost ready to announce the new appliance. Well, the company just did it in a press release, and we finally have more details about the hardware and all the features enabled by Microsoft’s digital assistant.
“Invoke, with Cortana, is a voice-activated speaker that can play your favorite music, manage calendars and activities, set reminders, check traffic, deliver the latest news and much more,” explains the company in the press release. “With Skype integration, you can make calls to cellphones, landlines and other Skype-enabled devices. You can also control your smart home devices using voice to do things like turn out the lights or control the temperature.”
The company confirmed that the Invoke will be available in two colours, Pearl Silver (white) and Graphite (black). The speaker will offer 360 degree sound and go in tandem with seven microphones to make sure that Cortana can hear your voice in noisy environments. Last but not least, consumers will have to set up the Invoke speaker by using the Cortana app on Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, iOS or Android.
“This is our next step in bringing Cortana to even more devices to help users be more productive wherever they are,” said Jordi Ribas, CVP, AI Products at Microsoft in the press release. The Invoke will be available in the US at select retailers and Microsoft Stores in fall 2017, but there is still no word on pricing yet. You can get more details about the intelligent speaker on the official product page.
