Like many people, I have an elderly one Intelligent Things a hub hanging around, powering one or two older sharp devices. But I recently opened the SmartThings app for the first time in years and discovered that Samsung was making some moves in the background – and it looks like there will be more of them. If Samsung’s presentation on CES 2024 On Monday, everything indicated that the company was betting heavily on SmartThings in the future.
SmartThings was first, but it hasn’t been at the top for a while
In the beginning, if you wanted to be part of the Internet of Things, it was you had buy what SmartThings was selling. It was then an independent company that sold the SmartThings hub along with branded sensors and bulbs, but it soon discontinued its own devices to focus on being a multi-functional hub for the growing sharp device market and eventually became acquired by Samsung. Since then, Apple, Amazon and Google have developed their own voice hubs and assistants that have become market-leading sharp home hubs. SmartThings no longer has the market share or usability of the huge three.
All along, Samsung has certainly been churning out sharp tech, including a whole world of connected devices and sharp TVs, and a wireless speaker system that competed with Sonos but was always under the Samsung banner. However, at CES, Samsung showed us an aspirational but fully realized SmartThings solution that has the potential to challenge the status quo.
Forget about separate sharp displays – that’s what your TV is for
Samsung has thought carefully about the devices that the entire family already centers around: the refrigerator and the TV. (Which, coincidentally, Samsung already produces). Samsung’s TV lineup is already packed with sharp features, but the latest TVs will now be your everyday digital hub, offering a highly customizable experience that you can treat like any other display hub. Exploit it to control connected devices, monitor automation, and receive up-to-date news and alerts about the sharp ecosystem in your home.
They added a voice assistant, bixby, which seems necessary to truly compete with Apple, Amazon and Google. I’ve been testing the recent Samsung TV for a month. While I don’t think Bixby is ready for launch yet (it’s so sensitive that it reacted to TV dialogue and I had to turn it off), it’s definitely a move in the right direction.
Observing these devices will be a completely different experience for most people, as they will step into a 3D model of the home that can visualize where each sensor, lightweight, device, animal, and person is at any given time. (Samsung Galaxy already makes wearables for most members of your family, and the recent SmartTag2 will monitor your pet’s location and health and report when your pup has an elevated heart rate.)
AND Really connected to the house
Samsung already has Family Hub, a graphical interface, in its refrigerators; they too will get an improved version of SmartThings, layering artificial intelligence on their sets of devices. In the case of the fridge, it will now be able to tell you what food you have run out of and facilitate you refill it.
Samsung has introduced AI improvements to laundry with the Samsung Bespoke AI All-In-One Laundry Combo and Laundry Hub, which uses recent technology to better identify what is being washed and how to do it efficiently, and even aims to cause so that your clothes release less microplastics from their clothes. In the kitchen, AI will monitor water vibrations in cooking pots on induction hobs and induction cookers to make subtle changes to settings and can remind you if you’ve left the oven door open.
The recent Bespoke Jet AI robot vacuum cleaner will troll the floor in your home, and in addition to vacuuming and mopping, it will also facilitate create a detailed map of your surroundings. (I was impressed with the wireless Jet AI that I reviewed last month, and I hope this floor robot will do as well.)
Ballie is an AI assistant that walks around your home
Ball is the culmination of Samsung’s investment in artificial intelligence: a physical robot AI assistant. It’s an appropriate name for a bowling ball-shaped robot that certainly wasn’t the only robot at CES. This isn’t even the first time we’ve featured Balli; he’s just received some upgrades since we last saw him.
Yes, Ballie is basically an wise hub – answering your requests, making calls, and cracking the occasional joke – but these AI bots promise to do much more. Ballie projects a video on the floor in front of you, whether it’s a video to keep your pet occupied or a video demonstration of someone preparing gnocchi that you’re trying to get right. Because it rides around the house, Ballie is meant to be part of the family, greeting you and interacting with your children and pets, and anticipating your needs. For now, however, Ballie remains an aspirational product – no price or release date has been revealed.
Will 2024 be the year of SmartThings?
In many ways, Samsung is well-positioned to dominate the connected home market; has all the elements like no other brand: a prospering mobile ecosystem within the Galaxy brand, a well-developed consumer computing division and relationship with Microsoft, a fully developed device market share, a stellar reputation in the TV market, and arguably a center that still sits in everyone’s home a passionate enthusiast of sharp technologies.
