Jordan O'BrienEssential is a brand new company that you’ve probably never heard of until today. Despite its infancy, Essential is already set to transform the smart home market, and that’s largely thanks to the knowledge brought to the company by its founder, Andy Rubin, the co-creator of Android.
Since Andy founded Android, it has become the most dominant mobile operating system in the world. There are now over two billion devices running some form of Android, and that number continues to grow. While it launched as a smartphone OS, it has since diversified into wearables, tablets, and the smart home – with initiatives such as Android Things.
Andy Rubin left Android back in 2013, eventually exiting Google completely in 2014. That’s because his latest venture, Essential, is all set to change the world once again. How does it plan to do so? Well, its first suite of products include a unique, modular smartphone, a new way of controlling the home, and a smart speaker to take on the Amazon Echo.
Meet Ambient OS
One of the most exciting products being introduced by Essential is its new Ambient OS. That’s because it’s a new operating system for the smart homes of the future, reacting to a user’s wish, while maintaining a sense of privacy and ensuring that most commands are dealt with locally.
Ambient OS has been designed as If This Then That (IFTTT) on steroids, and that’s because Essential has equipped it with vital knowledge – such as the layout of a consumer’s home, how many people live there and what devices are installed. Essential says that Ambient OS ‘activates’ a user’s home, with the applications simply working as recipes to perform functions. That means the apps running on Ambient OS will do things such as turning off all the devices when the door is locked.
IFTTT is very similar in this respect, allowing users to create recipes to tie together their smart home devices and internet services. For example using IFTTT one could ensure that the light temperature corresponds with the actual temperature, the hotter it gets, the warmer the light. This is very similar to how Ambient OS will work, although while IFTTT relies heavily on the cloud, Ambient OS will run all this logic on the Essential Home device – an Echo-like smart speaker.
Alongside running commands locally, Ambient OS will be incredibly privacy focused. That means all user data will be stored locally, and users won’t need to worry about companies snooping on their control requests. This is a problem that has faced both Amazon and Google, with the two internet giants having been criticised for storing all voice searches in the cloud. Users also worry about how their data is used with these two giants, with Google having recently played ads alongside its daily update, while Amazon is consistently trying to understand a consumer’s shopping habits.
In addition to privacy concerns, Ambient OS is also designed to be unobtrusive. While Google is working on proactive assistance, alerting users to traffic problems or important breaking news stories, Ambient OS will give users complete control over what they want their smart home to do. That includes the OS only ‘suggesting’ smart home actions, letting users to enable them one-by-one, instead of simply discovering all available devices and connecting to them.
While Ambient OS is comparable to the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, it’s actually drastically different. That’s because it’ll have an actual user interface with it designed to sit on a small circular screen that adorns the Essential Home. Little else is known about the design or the OS in general, other than what Essential has showed off thus far – with the company promising further details in the future. It’s expected that Ambient OS will be a major competitor to the likes of Apple’s HomeKit, however.
Essential Home
While Ambient OS will be the assistant that controls the smart home of the future, Essential Home will be the device of choice for users wanting to interact with it. That’s because it’ll be the only smart speaker on the market to ship with the new smart home OS.
Essential Home is the latest in a long line of Amazon Echo competitors, although it’ll have more than just Amazon’s speaker to compete with. That’s because Microsoft and Apple are expected to launch their own smart speakers this year, and Google already launched its Home speaker last year. That will put Andy Rubin’s latest product in direct competition with his former employer.
Despite Essential Home competing with Google and Amazon, it is concentrating predominantly on smart home control – rather than getting involved in the whole search engine wars. Google has pretty much dominated the whole question and answer portion of the smart speaker, entirely thanks to its Knowledge Graph, which means Essential is hoping to best it in the smart home arena.
That’s not to say that the Essential Home won’t be able to answer general interest questions, it’s just that it’s priorities are elsewhere. The speaker will also be able to set timers and reminders, much like its other competitors.
Essential isn’t saying how it plans to best its competitors, although it says that it won’t take the Nest approach by anticipating a user’s needs. Instead it will simply suggest what the user wants, allowing them to decide whether they want to go ahead. This approach is perfect for privacy advocates, who don’t mind losing a bit of the magic involved with a proactive assistant that anticipates and acts without a user’s interference.
In order to win the smart home battle, Essential Home will have to work with all the big names in the smart home industry. At the moment, the company isn’t saying who it’s working with – although it’ll have a battle on its hands, given Amazon already works with the majority of them, while Google is consistently adding new names to its list. Ambient OS wants to take on IFTTT too, which is also set to be a considerable challenge, with IFTTT boasting more than 20 million recipes.
Essential is thus far keeping everything under wraps, but it’s likely that the company will announce something concrete in the near future. Consumers are already wondering what the price of privacy will be set at, while there’s also no word on a release date or specifications for the Essential Home.