Google does not plan to update third - party overbold video display in the future . If you own any of the Lenovo , JBL , or LG - made chic displays that have amount out over the past five years , it ’s time to consider alternatives for your Google smart rest home . Another reason to be mistrustful of being aGoogle early adoptive parent .
The reveal comes from9to5Google , which identify this unluckily listed caveat in an officialGoogle support articlefor gain couple phone call ( RIP ) on a smart display :
significant : Google no longer furnish software update for these third - party Smart Displays : Lenovo Smart Display ( 7″ , 8″ & 10″ ) , JBL Link View and LG Xboom AI ThinQ WK9 Smart Display . This could impact the timbre of video recording calls and meetings .
Photo: Sam Rutherford
This suck ! These displays may technically be third - political party , but Google itself usher in these smart displays when it first debut the Assistant on screen , and pitch them as the way to interact with it . Initially , the fellowship contribute its smart rest home foray with smart speakers like theGoogle Homein 2016 . Then in 2018 , it partnered with Lenovo to launch its first muckle of impudent displays : the Smart Display 8 andSmart Display 10 . They arrived at a clip when Amazon ’s Alexa was the only digital helper with a screen — useful in answer questions , helping you through complicated recipes , and displaying casted content .
The kicker for me is that Lenovo ’s smart display are still useful , particularly for play medicine . The 10 - inch Lenovo Smart Display , which currently sit on my kitchen counter , has dual 2 - inch , 10 - watt speakers . And the 7 - column inch Lenovo Smart Display , released a yr later , has dual 5W stereo verbaliser , which my Thomas Kyd uses to rock out to her favorite song in her room . These utterer are corking for pulsate multi - elbow room audio frequency — even after Google had tochange howit works because of theSonos opinion . But even though the computer hardware still work , it ’s bound to become e - waste as updates leave behind it behind .
Despite being so young , the writing was admittedly on the wall for these third - company devices , but only for those who were paying close attention . The Lenovo - made smart gimmick and the other two options from JBL and LG ranAndroid Things , which was Google ’s original push for interoperability between its touch base devices during the Internet of thing thunder . But Google shifted its focus away from developing for Android Things around 2019 , and killed it in 2021 . When it afterward introduce the Nest Hub Max andsecond - gen Nest Hub , they were more focussed on slumber and health rather than positioned as pure overbold home controllers .
Still , view how long Google ’s been supporting later - gen Nest security department camera , I thought it ’d be fine to hold out a while longer .
The veridical nail in the coffin here , preventing legacy support even as the society move to a different strategy , is believably that Nest machine prevail a somewhat different operating system from third - party smart display . They featureGoogle ’s Fuschia OS , which never got announced publicly but has been making the rounds throughout the Android blogs and other developer - centric spaces over the last couple of years .
Whatever the reason for these gadget going the way of life of the Dodo , they ’re a bully lesson of why it ’s bring forth harder to evoke that phratry buy into any young Google - supported gadget if there ’s no guaranty the company will endure it longsighted - condition ( RIP Stadia ) . Those third - company smart display seemed like a sure bet when they came out , and they even helped Googleincrease its grocery store sharerelative to Amazon and Facebook’sPortal devices(those have also been vote out off for consumer use ) , though only by about 6%—maybe that ’s why Google did n’t see the point of continuing to offer computer software bread and butter .
I reach out to Google for a more official reason of what ’s occur here and will update you when I hear back . For now , I call for to figure out what to do with this Lenovo ironware peppered throughout my menage — I also have twoSmart Clocksand rely on them to awaken up every break of day .
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