Samsung's ball-shaped robot is starting to look like vaporware. Ballie, as the company named it, was first announced nearly six years ago and is supposed to go on sale before the end of the summer. However, it was MIA at IFA 2025, and the clock is ticking fast. Will it miss its deadline? Or worse? It's hard to tell, but here's a quick recap of the Ballie story so far and why I worry that it might become another canceled product.

As of this writing, it's impossible not to wonder if Ballie will share the same fate as the Galaxy Home — Samsung's Bixby-powered smart speaker that never materialized beyond trade shows and a limited testing program in Korea. The similarities are there and hard to ignore.

Assuming you have never heard of it, Ballie is a rolling, ball-shaped smart home robot that's supposed to fill the role of an AI smart home companion.

It's equipped with object recognition hardware and a projector. It can inform you of your schedule, shopping lists, Samsung Health statistics, and more, and can project all this information on the wall or floor through its tiny projector. It can even entertain pets using this hardware.

Ballie is a voice-activated device that works with the SmartThings platform, and according to an update earlier this year, it's even supposed to have Gemini AI integration.

The problem is that none of this has materialized in a commercial product just yet. Ballie is (or was) supposed to go on sale in the USA and Korea this summer. However, its story so far is much more complicated.

Where and when it all began

The original Ballie concept was unveiled at the beginning of 2020 at CES in Las Vegas. It was smaller and had a fundamentally different design.

The original Ballie was probably too small and ambitious. It was never released and was technically replaced by a new model a few years later.

The original model already got canned years ago

Samsung scrapped the original Ballie and unveiled a redesigned model at CES 2024. This version continued to make appearances at various trade shows and was heavily demoed by Samsung.

Samsung promised a 2025 launch for the redesigned Ballie

At CES 2025, Samsung said we will finally be able to buy Ballie this year. And a few months later, Samsung reiterated that Ballie will launch this summer in two select markets: Korea and the USA.

Technically speaking, the summer season is supposed to end on September 22, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. So, as of this writing, there's still a remote chance that Samsung will meet its summer deadline.

However, we are in Berlin at IFA 2025 as we speak, and Ballie has no presence at the trade show. Considering previous reports stating that Ballie is ready for the market while Samsung isn't, the robot's future feels more uncertain than ever.

As some of you might recall, the Galaxy Home was a Bixby-enabled smart speaker that Samsung unveiled at various trade shows for years before quietly cancelling the project.

At one point, Samsung scrapped the Galaxy Home and replaced it with the Galaxy Home Mini. Later on, Samsung may have even started developing a Galaxy Home Mini 2.

Needless to say, nothing came of these projects. Sounds familiar? Samsung's smart speaker perfectly embodied the term “vaporware.” It was advertised and even delivered to select testers in Korea.

But despite these efforts, the Galaxy Home never became a commercial product. And in the end, Samsung seems to have forgotten all about it.

As the end of the summer draws near without any sign of Ballie at IFA 2025 or in the USA, the ball-shaped robot is beginning to tell a Galaxy Home-like story. I fear that Ballie will share the same fate and get canceled before release.

Technically speaking, there's still a bit of time left, and Samsung might surprise us. But I, for one, am no longer holding my breath. Ballie's absence at IFA 2025 is worrying to say the least. Even if the robot hasn't been canceled, it sure looks like it might get delayed again.

We'll keep you up to speed if we find out more.