Samsung’s new Family Hub 2.0 comes in the form of a smart refrigerator that can even tell you what is in the fridge and when to pick the kids up from school. It is probably not fair when the fridge is technically smarter than you but that portends the future when the Smart Home will make your life all that easier.
From a tech angle, it is a 21.5” LED touch screen panel driven by a Tizen operating system that manages up to five family member’s food, cooking, calendar, artistic, music, video, and memo needs – with a tsunami of additional function apps to follow.
From a fridge angle, Family Hub 2.0 will appear on 3-Door, 4-Door French, and 4-Door Flex models (not all will come to Australia). These are amazing fridges with independent compressors, ice and water, adjustable function areas and more.
The Family Hub received the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Innovation Award for the second year in a row – for the Family Hub 1.0 in 2016 and again this year 2017, in the home appliances and software/UI categories.
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It will allow family members to share photos, handwrite memos, post memos remotely, and view calendar updates. It has S Voice recognition technology – and an ever-increasing range of commands from shopping lists to weather, and to “control other unspecified apps”. Its initial partner applications include Grubhub, Glympse, Nomiku, Ring, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. In Australia, it will have a Woolworth’s food ordering and delivery app.
Each family member has an avatar, their own personal calendar, and space and will use the hub in different ways. The providore will like the remote viewing of what is in the fridge including being able to tag use-by dates. This lends itself to shopping lists, and even finding recipes using what you have in the fridge. It is smart enough to do remote grocery ordering down the track. Kids may simply scrawl messages to avoid communicating directly with adults. Cooks will use the recipe, music or TV streaming. And it can be all accessed via a smartphone app.
It has Bluetooth (connect external devices like speakers although it has a creditable built-in speaker). It can receive via Wi-Di/Wi-Fi, TV casting and music streaming, and act as a controller for other smart appliances like a new smart built-in cooking line with products ranging from built-in double and single wall ovens, gas, induction, and electric cooktops, range hoods, dishwashers, and microwaves. These smart appliances connect to Wi-Fi, giving users the ability to start, control, and turn their kitchen equipment on or off remotely.
Comment
Yesterday I posted an overview of Samsung’s Regional Forum 2017. The strong message was that all Samsung’s home appliances will be smart and the fridge – Family Hub 2.0 is just the start. A spokesman said that it would eventually talk to a range of devices like locks, security cameras, thermostsats and more.
I also wrote about the new QLED TVs and in a similar vein they are smart enabled and will talk to other Samsung smart devices.
Samsung’s strategy is clever – use Wi-Fi, open standards, smartphone apps and build an ecosystem of its branded appliances in every home. Soon the choice will be to buy either a Samsung or compatible smart appliance or a dumb one that may not talk to other appliances. Very clever Samsung.
The writer attended Samsung’s regional forum for Southeast Asia and Oceania as a guest of the company.