Apple's long-awaited smart home push has arrived, and its centerpiece is the HomeView display. Billy Steele for Engadget got hands-on time with the device after this morning's official announcement. The HomeView combines a smart screen and speaker, delivering personalized information from your iPhone or iPad. It works with a range of smart home gadgets, including LG cameras, a door lock and a thermostat, plus a thermostat from Schneider Electric.
While it may look like an enlarged Apple Watch, the display functions as an in-home hub. It pulls from recently used apps on your iPhone or iPad and acts as the control center for smart home devices through the Home app. Live camera feeds, thermostat and lighting controls are accessible in just a few swipes. In brief demos, the screen responded quickly to swipes and taps, loading camera feeds as needed.
Siri AI is a major part of the experience. The assistant now draws on information from your iPhone, so you can ask it to play a song a friend texted you about, and it understands the request. One standout feature is recipe integration in Safari. Recipes formatted to Google's standards display their ingredients and directions on screen, with inline timer shortcuts you can set with a tap. You can also hand off recipes from an iPhone by holding it near the display.
The design looks every bit like an Apple product, with an aluminum frame around a 7-inch Liquid Retina display. The tabletop model's stand houses extra speakers, while the wall-mounted version relies on its two full-range drivers. Security is also strong: the display recognizes users and shows personalized screens, and it switches to guest mode until a recognized user is in front of it. Whether it will fulfill Apple's vision as an in-home control center remains to be seen, and Engadget expects to receive a review unit soon.
Source: Engadget · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing