We all probably encountered the idea of smart homes in science fiction movies before. And, for some time now, Samsung has been making this dream a reality. They have been introducing intelligent objects that you can control via your smartphone like smart lights, smart fridges or multifunctional products that just make sense and enable new possibilities like Freestyle. However, they have presented something a bit controversial at recent CES – a smart home dashboard.
The Samsung Home Hub is designed to be a central place for a household to control Samsung devices and monitor the home through smart devices. The portable touchscreen tablet has Samsung’s Bixby assistant and will use AI to anticipate what you might need. It has two microphones and two speakers for hearing notifications and giving voice commands. Based on the company’s information so far, it appears to run Android. There is no pricing available or Europ release date, but it is scheduled to launch in Korea in March and globally after that.
“The problem with shoehorning existing tablets like the iPad into the role of a smart home dashboard is they’re designed as personal devices. A dedicated tablet for the home needs different software and a different approach.” – Article from the Verge states. I personally can’t entirely agree that using a personal device is a problem and think that using a separate device as a controller would be less convenient than using a smartphone. The SmartThings app, for example, allows you to set and check every device from your smartphone, which I think is the best option for controlling your smart home for now. Nevertheless, this Samsung dashboard seems like a cool gadget for Samsung’s intelligent devices users.
Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/4/22865808/samsung-smartthings-smart-home-hub-dashboard-ces2022
https://www.samsung.com/us/smartthings/