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Saturday, April 14, 2018

Google wants to turn your phone into a Sonos-style multi-room speaker system

Linking multiple phone speakers together in sync.


Who doesn't love listening to their favorite songs through the tinny speakers of a smartphone, eh? Everyone, right? No? Oh. Well, you may want to plug your ears up then before hearing of the latest audio patent coming out of Google's labs.

The Android king is exploring the potential of linking up multiple smartphone speakers in sync, turning them into a mini multi-room audio system, like a mobile Sonos.

The patent describes a method of creating a small mesh network around devices in close proximity, allowing them to keep their audio in sync, with one handset acting as a master controller.

Mobile Musicality

Now, while we jest at the relative ineffectiveness of smartphone speakers, you can't knock the inventiveness of the patent here. 

If achieved, it'd be quite the feat to have multiple devices, potentially from different manufacturers, all keeping in sync wirelessly. For those times when a party situation presents itself, but a speaker just isn't available, being able to boost the volume through your friend's handsets could fill the gap nicely.

And then there's the potential to integrate it with Google's Cast system, increasingly built into TVs speakers and of course the Google Chromecast dongle. Suddenly, every audio-outputting device in your house becomes a potential multi-room unit.


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