Home by Essential Promises a Smarter Home
Andy Rubin, the co-founder of Android, has turned his attention to the kitchen counter and the smart home. Alongside with the Essential Phone, Andy Rubin debuted the Essential Home last month. Essential Home is a countertop smart speaker that has a lot in common with the Amazon Echo and the Google Home.
Works Like Echo, But is Still Different.
With the Essential Home, you will be able to give commands with your voice to search the internet for info, play music, and control your smart home, just like the Echo. Unlike the two existing smart speakers, the Essential Home has a screen and will offer full touch controls in addition to voice controls. You will also be able to interact with the Essential Home just by looking at it.
Just Tap it or Glance It.
With the promise of a smarter home, Essential Home wanted to move beyond automation and opaque devices and blinking lights. They have been working on an experience for home that feels natural and freeing. The basic idea behind Essential Home is that technology is supportive, and proactive enough to be helpful, without forcing you to ask or type a question. It is in your environment. You can tap or glance at it, but it never intrudes or takes you away from the things that are important to you.
It Takes a Note of Everything.
Home can take note of your routines and let you know when something feels off or if a light is left on. Essential Home can play your favorite music. When you start a conversation it will adjust the volume downward so you don’t have to talk over it. When you’re getting ready in the morning, Essential Home can show how long you have until you need to leave and even blink the lights when it is time. The best part about Essential Home is that you would not require an app for doing all these activities.
Beautiful Display.
The Essential Home has a round auto-display that beautifully blends into any home environment while providing seamless access to multiple types of information and services. You just need to ask, tap or glance to activate. Essential Home can talk to your devices over your in-home network whenever possible to limit sending data to the cloud.
Ambient OS.
The brains behind the Essential Home is the Ambient OS. The new and existing devices are automatically are automatically introduced to the Ambient OS. It also helps set them up in no time.
Ambient OS provides a set of services and abstractions. These allow the development and execution of applications that run in the context of your home. With Ambient OS, your home is the computer. It is well aware of the physical layout of your home. It is also aware of the people that live in it, services relevant to both your home and the people within, and devices.
Ambient OS is the API to your home. It enables the creation of applications that extend the reach of a single device. You can setup a timer and have the lights in the livingroom flash when it goes off. With the help of Ambient OS API, developers will have access to available devices, services, and home information and can use these resources as the building blocks of their applications.
No Price Available Yet.
In addition to the Home, Rubin’s new venture announced a phone as well. There has been no further announcements relating to the price and availability of the Essential Home.
Dhruvil is a Writer & Marketeer for Nimblechapps, joined in December 2014, based out of Sydney, Australia. He has worked briefly as a Branding and Digital Marketing Manager before moving to Australia. At Nimblechapps, he worked on Social Media Marketing, Branding, Email Marketing and Blogging. Dhruvil studies Business at University of Western Sydney, and also handles Operations for the company in Australia.