Leak: Teenage Engineering is building a BlueTooth Speaker
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Teenage Engineering OB-4 · Source: Japan Radio Test
Teenage Engineering OB-4 · Source: Japan Radio Test
Teenage Engineering OB-4 · Source: Japan Radio Test
Teenage Engineering told us they have a new magical device that they’ll tease us about until the end of September. But a leaked report tells us it’s a Bluetooth Speaker called the OB-4.
OB-4
I quite like a bit of teasing and a build-up to a release so this sort of leak gives me no joy but we have it so here it is. It’s a document from Japanese Radio Test Report that’s required before such items can be sold in Japan. Previous to this we knew that it was a new magical electronic device that Teenage Engineering had been developing for something like 6 years. They said it was something for the outdoors which suggested that it was portable. The image from the Instagram post had a pixelated area which could be the size of a Bluetooth speaker.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CEcHs8cFbah/
I had hoped that due to the lengthy development time it could the successor to the OP-1 synthesizer. Especially when the next tease arrived with a PCB that was about the right sort of shape.
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They also confirmed the name would be “XX-4” and so it looks like they are definitely talking about the device in the Radio Test document. The report doesn’t really tell us anything about the functions of the device other than it has a Bluetooth antenna and speakers. But we do have a load of pictures. It looks a bit like an old transistor radio with a carry handle and some kind of wiggly wire that might have something to do with the handle. It has a couple of knobs, something that might be an input or headphone output. It looks rather fabulous in black and those twin speakers could make it a decent stereo speaker. But of course, these test style images don’t do it any favours. Follow the link below for more images of the OB-4 and its internal electronics.
Six years to develop a Bluetooth speaker? There are a lot of Bluetooth speakers out there already and the problem with this report is that it gives no indication of what this thing can do. We’re sort of left wondering why Teenage Engineering believes this to be so magical when it appears to be useful but hardly innovative. However, we know nothing about it at this point and there could be all sorts of magical ingredients that will make this special.
We’ll have to wait until the end of the month to find out.
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