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The Google Assistant is busy making its way to a wide range of devices and platforms. Third-party speakers, Chromebooks and even your washing machine will soon offer an Assistant-enabled experience to users who are so inclined to do so.
One of the more intriguing devices that may soon carry the Assistant are the rumored “Bisto” headphones unearthed last month in a teardown of the Google App. Clearly, Google has been busy laying the groundwork for this new accessory option.
A recent finding from 9to5Google has revealed signs pointing to a much sooner release of Assistant-enabled headphones that we had anticipated. An APK teardown of the Google Assistant app for iOS gives us a look at an animated image depicting headphones equipped with an Assistant button.
So, here we have a “generic” set of headphones with an Assistant button along with thread instructing users to press and hold the button to interact with the Assistant. A closer look at the teardown has also revealed a new device name.
‘Baywolf’ was found inside the code for the Assistant app and could point to a third-party set of headphones that could be on the horizon. As Abner Li points out, the image of ‘Baywolf’ is much more detailed than the animated one from the original teardown.
While still a rendered drawing, the image definitely has similar characteristics to a number of current headphones on the market. More specifically, they bear a good resemblance to the QC35 Quiet Comfort headphones from Bose.
Now, this could possibly be a coincidence or just bad timing on Bose’s part but an “accidental” leak of an upgraded version of the QC35 headphones has begun to make its rounds. The new iteration looks almost identical to its predecessor with one small addition.
A Button.
It’s unclear, for now, if this is actually an Assistant button but it is the first time seeing a button on the left ear cup of a set of Bose headphones. It is possible that this will be a mappable button for a variable set of functions but it sure fits the bill of what we’ve been seeing rumored as of late.
A Nearing Release?
All of the information surrounding the Assistant-bearing headphones is currently being drawn from software breakdowns and we have yet to hear any solid information from Google or OEMs as to when we could see these products in the flesh.
However, Google also had a slight leak of their own that could be an indicator that Assistant headphones could be right around the corner. Google’s official support page that lists help for pretty much all of their products, temporarily listed “headphones” as one of the choices.
According to Abner’s report, the clicking the link only brought you back to the support home page but it’s clear that Google has something ready to go for this category.
This is just my gut speaking but I would almost wager that we will see the announcement of Assistant headphones at the rumored hardware event next month. Seeing that preparations for the devices are well into development, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see Google announce and even tip a hat to OEMs that will be releasing Assistant devices.
We shall see.
Sources: The Verge, 9to5Google
