Facebook to reportedly release an Echo Show competitor with facial recognition
Facebook wants you to video chat on its platform, so it’s taking on Amazon, Google, and Apple with hardware of its own.
The company will release Portal later this year, Cheddar learned in an exclusive report. It will be something like Amazon's Echo Show, a voice-controlled smart speaker with a screen.
Reports about the video chat device came out last year, but more details -- like the name "Portal" -- have now been revealed. It looks like a speaker patent discovered last year is part of the Portal project.
Cheddar reports that Portal will have a wide-angle lens with facial recognition that links to users' Facebook accounts.
Facebook would not confirm any details about Portal. A Facebook spokesperson said in an email, "We are not commenting on these speculative reports." The device will reportedly be announced at the F8 developers conference in May.
The device is reportedly part of Facebook's Building 8, its secretive R&D center for hardware projects. The division's boss, Regina Dugan, left in October.
Cheddar puts Portal's price at $499 and details Facebook's plan to sell the device online and in "pop-up" stores. That's significantly more expensive than Amazon's Echo devices, Google Home, and Apple's HomePod.
Looks like Facebook is getting serious about hardware after years of chatter. Let's hope Portal does better than the Facebook phone.
Topics Facebook
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
