Earlier this month, home improvement store Lowe's announced it was shutting down its ecosystem of 'Iris' smart home devices. In addition to giving some Iris device owners prepaid Visa cards, Lowe's is working with Samsung to ensure the company's SmartThings hub supports as many Iris devices as possible.
If you're a former Iris user looking to replace your unsupported devices, or if you just want to deck your home out in smart stuff, Samsung has a decent promotion right now.
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Smart light bulbs are great, but you have to give up the use of your wall switch — if the switch is powered off, the smart bulb stops functioning. One solution is an in-wall smart switch, but if you live in an apartment or other rented property, you might not be able to replace fixtures or change electrical systems. If so, smart home company Third Reality has the product for you — the RealitySwitch Plus.
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Pre-Black Friday sales continue to trickle out a full week ahead of the day itself, and Samsung is the latest to publish its own preview for upcoming discounts. The variety covers everything from wearables to TVs and even smart home gadgets(and we're happy to tell you about them, too), but the promotions that have us most excited are for the company's latest Note and Galaxy-series phones. Starting on the 18th you can get a Note 9 for $800 unlocked, and a Galaxy S9 and S9+ for $520 and $640, respectively.
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Despite how much I love my Shield TV and how often we use it in my household for streaming videos and playing games, I can't help but scratch my head a little at what NVIDIA is doing here. The company is rehashing its streaming box for the umpteenth time with another bundle and no price incentive to make anyone want to jump on board.
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You probably have a Wi-Fi router, and you might have a smart home hub of some sort as well. Why not make those devices the same thing? That's Samsung's latest router, which it calls the SmartThings Wifi. This replaces Samsung's old Home Connect router with SmartThings integration. This time, Samsung's system has Mesh networking thanks to a partnership with Plume.
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For those of you who are looking to get into the smart home game, Amazon has something in store. The retailer is currently offering its 2nd-gen Echo, a Samsung SmartThings hub, and two Element smart lightbulbs for just $114.99, which is over $100 less than the bundle's regular price.
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We've known for a while that Samsung is consolidating its 40+ smart home apps into the SmartThings app, and the company confirmed yesterday that the revamped app is coming next month. Now it appears the Samsung Connect application, which is one of many being folded into SmartThings, has itself been rebranded to SmartThings. That's not confusing at all.
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Samsung's smart home ecosystem has become rather confusing over the years. Samsung Connect, Samsung Smart Home, and SmartThings all have overlapping functionality - resulting in a horrible user experience and a confusing mess for everyone.
Samsung previously announced it would finally consolidate "more than 40 apps" into the SmartThings application in Q1 2018. Today at Mobile World Congress, the company announced a more exact date.
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Samsung unveiled its first Family Hub fridge back in 2016, and the concept of a 'smart refrigerator' hasn't become any less ridiculous since then. Still, the company made a sequel last year, so people must be buying them. The third-generation model was unveiled at CES, along with an insane 146-inch TV that Samsung calls 'The Wall.'
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Bixby is Samsung's home-grown virtual assistant that debuted on the Galaxy S8. It's still far behind Google Assistant in terms of functionality and language support, but Samsung has mostly continued to stick with it (they finally allowed users to disable the button a few months ago). According to a new report from Bloomberg, Samsung is working on a Bixby-powered smart speaker, and it's coming in the first half of next year.
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