The unifying smart home standard that isn't yet unifying
All new technologies deserve a bit of breathing room when they first hit the real world.
In the case of Matter, that breathing room perhaps deserves to be extended… you tell me another tech alliance that has managed to get Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung and a huge collective of other big brands all signing from the same hymn sheet.
However, five months on from the rollout of Matter 1.0, everything is a bit of a mess.
That hymn sheet has been scribbled on, folded, torn and parts tossed away, and we’ve now got a situation where all the major players are still singing the Matter song, but in their own key, at different times and often with vastly different words.
Matter was exciting because it was supposed to make the smart home a simpler place. And, given time, I still have high hopes that it might… but right now it’s hard for even an ultra smart home nerd like myself to keep up with what works and what doesn’t.
The thing about Matter is that it is complicated. Try explaining to your pals in the bar that it’s not actually a new communication technology, merely an application layer that sits upon a bunch of existing protocols.
The plan was though, that those complications were meant to be eliminated before they reached the consumer. If a smart home device that you buy has the Matter sticker on the box then it was just meant to work. No hubs, no extra apps, no hassle.
But that is far from the case as Matter stands now.
First there was the messy launch. When the tech world turned its attention to the Matter 1.0 announcement in Amsterdam last November, it expected to see the big players proudly exclaiming that Matter was ready and that a bunch of new devices would be hitting the shops with that stick-man-bikini-bottoms logo on the box.
That’s sort of what we got, but with a heck of lot of sidenotes and caveats thrown in.
Amazon was the first to muddy the waters during its keynote presentation in Amsterdam, when it was revealed that both iOS and Thread won’t be part of its initial Alexa and Matter integration.
Speaking to The Ambient after the keynote, Chris DeCenzo, Amazon’s Senior Principal Engineer, told us that Amazon didn’t feel that Thread was ready to play its part in a major smart home ecosystem.
“The whole decision around Thread is there’s more tooling required and there’s more integration between us and the other partners needed for us to make sure that this is a smooth experience for customers,” DeCenzo explained.
Amazon did announce in January at CES that both Thread and iOS for Matter was part of the plan but ‘coming soon’ is still very much the official word.
What that means for you, if you go out and buy, say, the new Nanoleaf Essentials bulbs that are Matter certified and you live in an Alexa household, then you won’t be able to add them to your Matter system as they work over Thread.
You will probably be able to soon but you can’t now and that’s an issue. Matter was/is supposed to ‘just work’.
In August last year we spoke with Michele Turner, senior director of the Google Smart Home Ecosystem. And she was clear on why Matter was initially delayed.
“The reason that we delayed was because we want to make sure that when it launches, and when it’s in people’s homes, it has to work flawlessly. It can’t be halfway there.”
It can’t be but yet it is.
Let’s not lay the blame solely at Amazon’s door though. Apple and Google have been guilty in making that Matter launch more complicated than it really needs to be.
Starting with Apple and, if you own an iPhone and use iOS apps to control your smart home – whether you’re an Alexa or a Google Home – getting Matter devices synced up in anything but the native Home app isn’t yet on offer; the Alexa and Google Home iOS apps won’t let you add Matter devices as it stands.
Even if you do get some Matter devices singing and dancing within your Apple Home you might find you won’t be getting everything you hoped for though.
Take for example those new Matter Nanoleaf smart lights and you won’t be able to use Apple’s Adaptive Lighting features as you can with the older, non-Matter, Nanoleaf smart lights. Adaptive Lighting is HomeKit only for now.
On the Google-side, native Android apps won’t connect to your Apple Matter controllers like a HomePod or an Apple TV.
Samsung, with SmartThings, is performing slightly better here but it’s also far from the “flawless” experience we were hoping for.
SmartThings, like Alexa, doesn’t allow for Matter bridging devices at the moment, meaning platforms like Hue won’t be compatible.
I say won’t because we’re still waiting for Hue to actually push Matter live to its bridges. It was announced this week that Hue won’t be launching Matter in Q1 as planned because it need to “focus on convincing quality to meet our customers’ expectations.”
Sticking with Hue and it’s another example of where Matter, which was supposed to be complication-free for the user, is a bit complicated.
Hue, alongside brands like Aqara and Tuya, isn’t actually updating its devices to be Matter certified but is instead flashing Matter to its bridges and hubs to then bring the child devices inside a Matter system.
Despite the promise of no extra hubs and Matter controllers being built into existing devices such as smart speakers and displays, you’re still going to need those extra slabs of plastic and silicone in place for a lot of smart home brands.
George Yianni, the head of technology for Philips Hue, told us that there will always be a need for a dedicated hub, even with Matter controllers being ubiquitous in many smart home user’s homes already.
“We need to have a central point for managing our integrations, and to manage the lighting across a room or a house,” he told us.
Talking of the Matter controllers and even that seemingly hassle-free element of Matter comes with some hassle.
It’s great that Matter controllers are already present in a lot of the most popular smart home devices already in people’s homes – think Echo speakers, Nest hubs, HomePods, Apple TVs, SmartThings hubs – but it’s also unfortunate that these controllers are not Thread border routers in all cases.
Take for example the Apple TV models currently on show. The 2021 model is both a Matter controller and a Thread border router, as is the 128GB version of the 2022 model. But the 2022 64GB version is just a Matter controller; there’s no Thread action.
Plus, there are devices – like Eero routers and Nanoleaf controllers – that are Thread border routers but not Matter controllers.
It’s just all a bit… messy.
This doesn’t all mean that Matter dead in the water; far from it.
But it does explain why brands are worried about testing that water. So far we’ve only really seen a few dedicated Matter launches from the likes of TP-Link, Nanoleaf and Eve.
Most brands are willing to offer up a comprehensive list of Matter devices that are coming soon, but there’s nothing concrete about those launch dates.
Matter needs the backbone in place first. It launched too early. It should have delayed again and waited until all of the hardware and software from Google, Apple, Amazon and Samsung was 100% ready.
It should have “worked flawlessly” at launch as Michele Turner told us. Instead, it feels a bit “halfway there” as she said it couldn’t be.
And it’s somewhat of an uphill struggle from here.
