Matter 1.2 support goes live alongside a raft of app improvements
Samsung has beaten Amazon, Apple and Google to the punch for Matter 1.2 support.
That means that the likes refrigerators, room air conditioners, dishwashers, laundry washers, robotic vacuums, smoke & carbon monoxide alarms, air quality sensors, air purifiers and fans could all be, in theory, added to Matter via a SmartThings system.
I say “in theory” because there’s not a great wave of products from those categories that have been Matter certified yet; the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra is probably the highest profile Matter device from a very small list.
Matter 1.2 was announced way back in October last year, and we’ve also seen Matter 1.3 land in May, with a bunch of new device categories in the mix too – so it’s good that some progress seems to be finally happening.
Guide: Add Matter devices to SmartThings
Aside from the updated Matter support, SmartThings also revealed a few key upgrades for the app and its ecosystem; the most notable of which is a new Hub Manager tool, which will let you choose a primary hub and use secondary hubs to serve as backups in case the primary hub goes offline.
That makes more sense now given Samsung is basically stuffing a SmartThings hub into anything with a plug, including the likes of fridges, TVs, soundbars and computer monitors.
Further updates include a new feature whereby you can share SmartThings routines with contacts using QR codes, enhanced energy monitoring skills and a new Device Control feature for Galaxy phone users to create handy SmartThings dashboards and widgets.
