Sony's Xperia Ear is a discreet personal assistant

Today at IFA 2016, Sony has been dishing out the details on its strange sounding Xperia Ear. The earpiece was originally shown off as a concept back at MWC this year, but we now know that the little device will be Sony’s entry into the personal assistant space.

Sony’s Xperia Ear provides users with voice interaction through a companion smartphone app.The two are paired and share functions over Bluetooth, and it does a lot more than just take voice calls. Messages, notifications, navigation directions, music, calendar events, and weather conditions, are just some of the examples that can be spoken directly into the wearer’s ear.

Along with sending notifications to the wearer, the earpiece also contains a microphone that can be used for voice interactions, such as asking questions or issuing voice commands to the companion app, much like Google Now. There seems to be quite a lot of cross-over between the earpiece and current smartwatch features. Although it will be interesting to see how consumers get on without any sort of display.

The Xperia Ear will be available to purchase in select market sometime in November 2016. Sony hasn’t announced anything about the price or market availability yet.