In the coming months, Samsung Galaxy phone and tablet users will be able to easily add Matter-enabled devices to the SmartThings and Google Home ecosystems. Until now, smart homeowners have struggled to use their devices in various ecosystems. Samsung Electronics today announced a partnership with Google to take smart home interoperability to the next level.
Connecting devices across ecosystems often involved many steps through multiple apps to link accounts, which didn’t always work both ways. This meant that users had to remember which apps could control or automate a particular device. The multi-administrator capability of the Matter standard lays the groundwork for connecting devices directly to multiple applications and ecosystems, giving consumers more flexibility and choice. Samsung and Google build on multi-management, allowing users to seamlessly find, choose to connect and control Matter-enabled devices through the SmartThings or Google Home apps on Android. When users enter the SmartThings app, they will be aware of the Matter devices that have been set up with Google Home and have the option to easily onboard those devices to SmartThings, and vice versa.
Now, whether users want to control their smart home on their SmartThings app or on a Google Nest Hub, the devices will always be there. Users won’t have to manually add each of their devices one by one or worry about which ecosystem their device is set up in first. Samsung and Google’s Matter multi-manager feature will go live in the coming weeks.
