LG will reportedly have a few surprises up its sleeve at CES 2015, one of them being some new mobile features for its Music Flow wireless speaker system.
The company announced the new product in the lead-up to its Consumer Electronics Show 2015 presence.
"The flexibility and quality of the LG Music Flow Wi-Fi Series delivers a listening experience that goes beyond what conventional audio systems have been able to offer until now," said Byung-hoon Min, senior vice president and head of the CAV division at LG. "With Wi-Fi capability and high-fidelity audio output, our Music Flow Wi-Fi Series is the epitome of what a smart audio system should be capable of in the 21st century."
The company's new products include a battery-powered Wi-Fi portable speaker, three new speakers and three new soundbars. Each speaker can be used independently or in conjunction with the others to build a surround sound system. The speakers all work by connecting to the LG Music Flow app, which can, in turn, be connected to Spotify, Rhapsody and so on.
Many are comparing LG's Music Flow with other services such as Sonos, Play-Fi and so on. These systems all offer users the ability to connect multiple speakers to a mobile device without the need for cables.
LG, however, has one feature over these other services. It's called Auto Music Play and it essentially means music will automatically start playing when the user's smartphone is within one foot of a speaker. What this means is the user can simply set the device down next to a speaker without needing to load up an app or tell the device to start playing music.
"So you could be listening to music on your headphones on the subway ride home but the music will begin playing automatically from your living room Wi-Fi Sound Bar when you enter your living room," said the company in a release.
LG has not mentioned exactly how Auto Music Play works, whether devices have to be on the same Wi-Fi network or whether it will work on both iOS and Android. We do know that Music Flow itself will be available for both iOS and Android, however.
Another rather unique feature that LG is boasting is the ability to text commands to the speakers using the Line messaging app. The feature is called LG HomeChat, and essentially means that users can tell the speaker to "turn music off after one hour."
Details on pricing and availability will be announced at CES 2015.
