Today is Earth Day, and to appreciate and celebrate it, Samsung has announced the beta of its Galaxy Upcycling at Home program in countries such as the U.S, UK, and Korea. The program was first announced at CES 2021, and it allows anyone with older Samsung Galaxy smartphones to repurpose their phones using the SmartThings app instead of just tossing them or selling them.
Galaxy Upcycling at Home is One of the Most Ambitious Projects by Samsung
As per Jaeyeon Jung, VP & Head of the SmartThings team, Galaxy Upcycling at Home can actually open a world of possibilities and essentially allow everyone to turn their home into a smart home.
The program transforms Galaxy devices into SmartThings devices and demonstrates the power of our intelligent IoT platform to broaden the possibilities of what users can do with their old phones. Through Galaxy Upcycling at Home, users will have access to the complete SmartThings ecosystem, enabling them to explore broader updates and features without having to purchase a new device.
One of the Galaxy Upcycle uses at Home program is to let you turn your old device into a sound sensor. The Galaxy smartphone will be able to detect and distinguish various sounds and save them and send them to the user’s smartphone. This can work for various sounds like dogs barking, knocks at the door, and a baby crying. This means that you can use your old Galaxy Smartphone as a baby monitor.
Additionally, Galaxy Upcycling at Home can also allow you to use your device as a light sensor. This means if the device senses that it has gotten dark, it can automatically turn on your lights or your TV if you have connected them to the SmartThings ecosystem.
At the moment, you have the Galaxy S, Note and Z series smartphones starting from 2018 that are supported. This means that the support goes back to the Galaxy S9 and all the released flagships. Of course, the Galaxy Upcycling at Home will only keep adding more devices as it becomes an even more prominent feature.
It is also important to know that since the upcycled devices are going to work continuously, they are getting some battery optimizations, so they do not stop functioning in the middle of the day. If you want to find the instructions on how to get started, you can go to your SmartThings app on your phone and head over to Notices to get all the information.
Samsung has been a big advocate of upcycling for some time now, and it is taking another step in the right direction. We only wish that this approach becomes more prominent as we are headed into the future, and more companies follow suit.
The post Galaxy Upcycling at Home Allows You to Use Old Samsung Phones as IoT Devices by Furqan Shahid appeared first on Wccftech.
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