Samsung announces new Smart Home service for a better connected home

The Android @ Home initiatives Google set forth at I/O a couple of years ago may have never come to solid fruition, but one OEM is taking it upon themselves to bring that vision to everyone’s living home. That OEM is Samsung, who has announced their new Smart Home Service.

Smart Home Service makes home automation easy, as it provides one app to control ALL the things. Whether those “things” are washing machines and driers, refrigerators and TVs, or a multimedia set-top box, you’ll be able to control it all from your smartphone or tablet. Here’s a full list of things the Smart Home will work with:

• 2014 Q9000 Air Conditioner (Korea)
• 2014 W9000 Bubbleshot washing machine (Korea)
• All 2014 Samsung Smart TVs (Korea and US)
• Smartphones with Android 4.0 or higher (Korea and US)
• Samsung Smart French Door Refrigerator (US)
• Samsung Smart Front Loading Washing Machine (US)
• Smart Bulb Light Bulbs and Smart Ovens coming second half of 2014

Some of these products will adhere to a central “goodnight” command that could do things like set the temperature to comfortable sleeping levels, make sure the oven is turned off, dim or turn off the lights and more. Samsung is also leveraging their latest Gear 2 for the service, as they will soon offer an application for the smart watch that lets you control all these things from your wrist.

Whether at home, at work, or out and about, people can use the app on their smartphone or wearable device to check the status of home appliances; for example, they can fully control the washer and select the correct wash settings for the laundry to be ready just when they arrive at home.

Having to be completely wired into Samsung’s ecosystem to take advantage of all this, but it shouldn’t be a deal breaker if you’ve been waiting for an easy smart home solution like this.

In that same breath, this might be the kick in the pants other manufacturers need to accelerate their progress in bringing connected home services. It’s a side of the market we thought we’d be seeing a lot more of after Google announced Android @ Home, but no significant movement has been made on that front up until this point.

Despite Google’s apparent lack of initiative in the public eye, they do still show signs of wanting to help move this sector of consumer technology forward. Their recent acquisition of Nest — a company who makes smart thermostats and CO2 monitors — certainly shows their ambition for the market is ripe, though we still don’t know what Google’s long term plan for Nest is going to be just yet. Subsequent reports suggest they have more in mind for the company than just thermostats.

Let’s just hope Samsung’s latest announcements (and actual movement on said announcements) will be enough to inspire other manufacturers to get on the ball.

[via Samsung]