Google is warning Google Wifi users that it'll be axing the app they use to control and monitor the mesh networking system, part of a push to condense smart home and IoT control into a single place. The current Google Wifi app will be deprecated, Google confirmed today in an email to users, with its role taken over by the Google Home app instead.
Google has finally found an application worthy of its fiendishly clever Soli chip, and quite frankly it's wasted in a smart display. Or more accurately, the Nest Hub 2nd Gen may be a great showcase for what Soli, the short-range radar, is capable of with Sleep Sensing, but I can't help but wish Google had just made a standalone sensor instead.
Google is hoping you'll like the new, second-generation Nest Hub enough that you'll take it into the bedroom, with the third outing for its Soli sensor promising sleep tracking without anything on your wrist. Still $100, the new smart display aims to replace your old clock-radio and give some fresh insight into how restful your night was, though when the lights go out there are still some questions to be answered.
Google has revealed its new second-generation Nest Hub, speeding up the Assistant, improving audio performance, and adding a new Sleep Sensing feature. The smart display still has a 7-inch touchscreen and a fabric-covered body, and still leaves out a camera for those with privacy in mind, but Google has added in a Soli motion sensor to make things interesting in the bedroom.
At its very early Unpacked 2021 event last week, Samsung didn't just announce a new Galaxy S21 smartphone, Galaxy Buds Pro earbuds, and Galaxy Smart Tag trackers. It also announced a collaboration that made sense but few probably expected would ever happen. Samsung revealed that it was nurturing a closer relationship with Google, even in areas where they have competing products, bridging the gap between Samsung's SmartThings IoT platform and Google's Nest-branded devices and Android Auto car platform.
Some might question the need or use of a smart display, just as many have questioned the sense of a smart speaker in the first place. Given how we almost always have our smartphones stuck to our hands, it almost feels redundant to have another display in the house. There are, of course, some things that are better or are only possible using smart displays, like these new features that are landing on the Nest Hub and other Google Assistant smart displays.
For all their usefulness, at least for a certain class of people, smart speakers and especially smart displays are often unwelcome in the sanctuary that is the bedroom. Despite assurances from companies, some people are still very wary of smart speakers accidentally picking up private conversations or smart displays with cameras seeing something very personal. It seems that Google will try to make its case again with a new Nest Hub that will feature sleep tracking courtesy of Project Soli.
It looks like Google may be gearing up to launch another smart display, possibly a Nest Hub model joining its existing Hub and Hub Max offerings. The hints surfaced in some FCC documents, which don't reveal exactly what we can expect but do drop enough indications to give us a pretty good idea about what Google is working on.
If you got a new Amazon Echo Dot for Christmas, consider turning it off. Chances are you got the device as a gift, opened it immediately, and got to work asking about the weather, movie facts, and told it to sing a song. If you're like me, chances are you then sat the device on a shelf and forgot about it. It's probably still powered up and listening to you right now.
As powerful and as magical smart home products may seem, we have yet to achieve a level of reliability to make them truly foolproof. Sometimes, even something as simple as an Internet outage can render a product useless. Even more problematic, however, is when those problems come via software updates that should be fixing bugs or adding features instead. That's exactly what some owners of the Nest x Yale Lock experienced just recently, though, to be fair, those are pretty much the expected risks of being part of the Nest Hub Max's Preview Program.
It might be hard to believe but smart speakers have been in the market for more than half a decade now. Amazon launched the Echo, which was then seen as an oddity, in late 2014 and Google followed it up with the Home speaker two years later. Google would eventually expand that into a new line of "Home" branded smart speakers but now that will just be a footnote of history as the last of its kind, the Google Home Max, as officially sold out and has been discontinued.
As previously promised, Google has added support for Zoom on its Nest Hub Max smart display, enabling users to fire up video calls with a single voice message. The new support joins video calling with Meet and Duo, expanding the number of people you can contact using the product. The addition has arrived in time for the holidays.