Google’s currently testing its bespoke OS on its most recent smart speaker
We haven’t heard much in the way of news about smart speakers from Google lately — the last major development was the Google Home Max being discontinued in late 2020. We still haven’t seen anything about new hardware, but now, according to 9to5Google, Google’s latest Nest Audio speaker is due for a relatively major software update, albeit one you may not notice day to day.
9to5’s spotted a code change on the Fuchsia Gerritt that mentions testing Fuchsia OS on a device referred to as Prince, which is the internal name for the Nest Audio (after the late musician of the same name). While transitioning a device to an entirely new operating system sounds like a significant shift, it actually won’t change much of anything in how the speaker functions. The Nest Hub Max picked up a new Bluetooth menu when it made the switch from Cast OS to Fuchsia OS this summer, but that’s hardly exciting new functionality — and considering the Nest Audio doesn’t have a display, it probably won’t see any similar changes.
It does seem we’re about due for updated speaker hardware from Google. While it’s possible to pair two Nest Audio speakers together for stereo sound, even a single Google Home Max can produce more powerful audio than a pair of Google’s smaller speakers. If we were to take this news extremely optimistically, Google’s testing Fuchsia on audio-only devices could mean the company is gearing up for a brand-new speaker that runs Fuchsia from the get-go — but all we know for sure is that Google is looking into updating the existing Nest Audio speaker to run Fuchsia. Still, we can dream.
