Samsung has announced an early access program with exclusive partners to test the upcoming smart home standard Matter with the first Matter-compatible products from manufacturers in combination with Samsung SmartThings and devices to verify.
Given the expectations of Matter, Samsung has accelerated development and intends to continue investing heavily in the standard, which Samsung believes will be the de facto – will become the smart home standard around the world.
Partners testing Matter's integration with the SmartThings platforms include Aeotec, Aqara, Eve Systems, Leedarson, Nanoleaf, Netatmo, Sengled, Wemo, WiZ, and Yale. Samsung is one of the founding members of the Connectivity Standard Alliance, an association of numerous manufacturers for the development of the manufacturer-independent and cross-manufacturer smart home standard, which is intended to simplify the use of different smart home devices by making all Matter-enabled devices interoperable and can be used with any software. In the meantime, however, the standard has had to be postponed several times, and a start at the end of 2022 is currently planned.
Fast mass dissemination through early tests
In Samsung's early access program, manufacturers can test their devices and their interaction and set them up and connect them using the SmartThings app. In this way, Samsung wants to ensure that the standard can spread quickly when Matter is launched and that it can be used via SmartThings without any problems. This is also one of the reasons why Matter was last postponed. In addition to the number of supported devices that will then be available, the stability and code quality should first be increased further.
Refrigerator becomes a SmartThings hub Hub
Samsung announced at the annual Samsung Developer Conference that Samsung Galaxy devices, TVs and Family Hub devices such as refrigerators can also function as SmartThings hubs in the future, eliminating the need for a separate smart home hub to set up and connect Matter-enabled devices.