The Sony Xperia Ear, Sony's own version of a personal assistant announced back in February during the Mobile World Congress and made available Nov. 18 in Japan, will arrive in U.S. shelves Dec. 13.
Sony Xperia Ear
The Xperia Ear is a tiny, voice-activated earpiece that can send messages, search for information, check your personal calendar and perform a whole lot of other tasks. The Xperia Ear is by some measure similar to Google Assistant and Apple's own Siri-enabled wireless earbuds called the AirPods.
The Xperia Ear can be paired to the user's phone through Bluetooth and NFC, and can be controlled using a custom Android app.
Once integrated, the Xperia Ear offers hands-free voice commands so you can tack it onto your ear and proceed to bark orders. You can command it to search for directions, set the alarm, quickly look up Wikipedia, read out notifications or check the weather.
While we're far from a fully voice-enabled world not unlike Spike Jonze's fictional milieu in the film Her, the Xperia X does exhibit some pretty nifty new methods of input, chief of which is intuitive motion controls that work by setting up the Xperia Ear to perform a specific command at the tilt or nod of the wearer's head. We haven't seen how well this works yet, so hold your hype accordingly.
Xperia Ear Pricing And Availability
Once the Xperia Ear hits the United States, you'll be able to initially purchase one from Amazon, B&H, Abt, Fry's and several other retailers will make it available shortly after.
The Xperia Ear will only be offered in black for $199, which is an admittedly sizable bulk of dollars just for a tiny earpiece, though if Sony delivers on its promise, $199 may be money well spent for a proper hands-free digital assistant, though how cutting-edge it is compared with other similar virtual assistants such as Siri, Cortana or Alexa has yet to be determined.
With the flurry of smartwatches being churned out at a rapid pace from a bevy of manufacturers, it's unclear whether voice-activated wireless earbuds can carve its own place in the competitive marathon of wearable technology. Who knows? Google might soon release its own hands-free voice-enabled earpiece, which makes sense if you think about it, since Google Assistant is the smartest AI assistant to date.
Do you want a hands-free virtual assistant experience in the future? How soon do you think will we reach that point? Feel free to share us your thoughts in the comments section below!
