Few hours ago in a Samsung Community Forum, a Moderator made it known that Samsung would be discontinuing SmartThings support for their own Smart TVs. This information came about as a result of the Moderator’s answer to a community member’s question regarding the availability of SmartThings on Samsung’s Smart TVs.
Apart from dropping this information, no further details were provided nor was a reason given. However, the Moderator made it clear that Samsung was disabling the service with no intentions of bringing it back.
The obvious effect of the new development is that if you own a Samsung Smart TV, you will no longer be able to control it through the SmartThings platform.
Here’s a brief history of Samsung and SmartThings partnership. Samsung acquired the SmartThings startup in 2014, about two years after it was founded. The initial plan was to adopt SmartThings as Samsung’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform. SmartThings allowed users to control smart home devices through a smart application. By 2016, Samsung had updated its Smart TVs, so they could support it. So, you could be at work and switch off the TV at home so your kids could get on with their homework.
Well, that will no longer be the case judging from the information given by the Moderator on the Samsung Community Forum. While the Moderator didn’t go into details as to the reason for discontinuation, it was made clear that Samsung has not ditched the SmartThings platform, it will only stop its support on her Smart TVs. The actual date for discontinuation is yet to be communicated.
Perhaps, the reason for this decision could be related to the firmware updates sent to the Samsung un55ks8500 2016 TV model, that has been unable to work properly since 2016. Despite the different four updates that have been tried.
So, will users of Samsung TVs no longer be able to access IoT functions? Fortunately, there’s an alternative. Samsung Connect allows anyone with a Samsung TV to link their devices.
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