LG puts Google Assistant in its own touchscreen-equipped speaker

Google Assistant's fingerprints are all over the CES 2018 show floor, but it's especially easy to see on a few new Android Things-powered devices. This LG ThinQ Google Assistant Touch Screen Speaker is one of them, and like Lenovo's Smart Display, it's built on a Qualcomm Home Hub Platform. On the show floor, it smoothly scrolled through demo applications popping up info in ways we're used to seeing on our phones or through Android Auto. So far all the demonstrations only include Google apps like Duo, Maps, Music, Photos and YouTube -- currently MIA on Amazon's Echo Show -- so we'll be watching carefully to see how the device's capabilities expand as developers dig into Android Things, which leans on existing tools to create new apps for these devices. According to Qualcomm, this more powerful version of its platform (SDA624) can drive a Full HD display, capture 4K video and support Tensor Flow for on-device machine learning.