HTC Connect, powered by Blackfire, is shipping in the latest HTC smartphones, including the HTC Bolt, the HTC U Ultra, and the HTC U11. Today, we’ll take a closer look at the HTC U11, the newest smartphone on the HTC roster, and the first smartphone with “hands-free” Amazon Alexa built-in.
So how does “hands-free” Alexa work on the HTC U11? The same way an Alexa voice-activated speaker, like an Echo or Dot, does: simply set your phone’s microphone to the “Always-On” setting, and voila! You’ve got Alexa in your pocket! Just like an Amazon voice control speaker you may have at home, there’s no need to press any buttons to wake it up. Just say “Alexa,” and and she will respond. You can have her look up today’s weather, or even turn your house lights on – whatever your home Alexa can do, your HTC U11 Alexa can do it too.
As mentioned, the HTC U11 features HTC Connect, powered by Blackfire, which can stream any local or web-based music or video via Wifi from an HTC smartphone to any Blackfire powered stereo device or entertainment system – no matter the brand – by swiping up the home screen with three fingers. With HTC Connect, you can create a wireless 5.1 surround sound system or stream different music to multiple speakers at the same time. (Check out this easy guide to help you wirelessly stream music from your HTC U11 smartphone to Blackfire compliant speakers.) Setting up a wireless home entertainment system has never been easier.
The HTC U11 comes in sapphire, Silver, Black, and Red. Get yours here.
The “802.11” wireless standard (or what we call WiFi) was first published in the late 1990’s by the US Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) to allow device manufacturers to independently develop 2.4GHz (and later 5GHz) wireless products and ensure that they are forward compatible. Over the years, there have been advancements in the technology that have allowed faster data rates and improved reliability. Most devices designed with the earliest 802.11 standards are still compatible with the latest 802.11 routers – which is testament to how robustly the IEEE designed that original spec. This is a summary of how the standard has evolved:
802.11b – In 1999, the first mainstream consumer products (such as the Linksys BEFW11S4 router and the original Apple iBook) were designed with WiFi using the 2.4GHz frequency band and had a maximum data rate of 11M bits per second (Mb/s).
802.11g – By 2002, the IEEE released this faster specification that took advantage of improvements in chip performance to increase the maximum data rate to 54Mbps, and maintaining forward and backward compatibility with earlier 802.11b devices.
802.11n – In 2009, this specification integrated multiple signal technology (called “Multiple Input Multiple Output”, or MIMO) and also optional use of the 5GHz band. This increased the speed and range of WiFi and reached a maximum data rate of 300Mbps.
802.11ac – In 2013, the IEEE published this new dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) specification to optimize use of the frequency spectrum and signalling to allow up to 1300 Mbps at 5GHz plus another 450Mbps on the 2.4GHz band.
The Differences Between a 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wireless Network:
2.4GHz:
Supports most Wi-Fi devices
Better range
Less attenuation by walls and objects
Congested band due to Bluetooth, cellphones and lots of other non-standard wireless devices
5GHz:
Fastest data rates
Relatively uncongested frequency band (at the moment)
Not suitable for some devices due to antenna complexity, range limitations and power consumption
We live in a world driven by the applications on our smartphones and viral videos on the internet. Because of this, we expect to receive all the entertainment content we want, anywhere, at any time. We also expect our entertainment devices to be connected seamlessly for sharing. But in reality, connectivity in the home is far from perfect, especially when it comes to wireless, smart home entertainment systems. Rather than enjoying our entertainment content wherever we want in the home, we find ourselves stranded on “entertainment islands”: the smart TV you have in your living room is an island separate from the stereo system; the stereo system is separate from the blue tooth speakers; the PC is its own thing, and the kids’ rooms…well…let’s just say that’s something completely different as well.
Current solutions like video dongles (Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire) and multi room audio, such as Sonos, are great for individual use. However, combining these individual systems to work together to create a truly connected smart home is non trivial – it requires precise synchronization, low latency for lip sync and a general reliability over standard Wi-Fi, something that hasn’t been done – until now.
Blackfire Research is making the smart home smarter, achieving whole home connectivity by getting entertainment content and devices off their islands. With our revolutionary new protocol, The Blackfire Realtime Entertainment Distribution (RED) framework, smart home owners are able to mix and match devices – from multiple brands that are Blackfire enabled – to create a whole home entertainment system that sounds great and looks stunning, all over standard Wi-Fi. The Blackfire RED framework is superior to all other solutions and does what no other solution can: wirelessly stream both HD 5.1 audio and 4K video simultaneously across multiple devices and stream both audio and video content from any device to many devices throughout the home.
According to IT Pro Portal, analysts are predicting the average smart home in the year 2025 “will include 50 to 100 plus connected ‘things’, including appliances and lighting with a huge mesh of wireless sensors.” That’s a lot of devices that need to be connected, and that number will just continue to grow as more and more smart home products enter the market. With the growing number of smart home products, Wi-Fi is, and will continue to be, the glue that holds it all together. Currently, more than 75% of U.S. broadband households use Wi-Fi for connectivity” (Parks Associates), and Blackfire leverages standard Wi-Fi, a basic utility for many at this point, to achieve stunning, high-end results.
You’ve never seen anything like the Blackfire RED framework because it’s never been done before. Harman Kardon, Pioneer, and Onkyo have all began shipping Blackfire powered products in over 100 new products this year alone.
At Blackfire Research, we’re fired up. Join The Blackfire Revolution today.
According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, more and more electronic manufacturers in China, like Alibaba, are getting involved in the AI smart speaker market, fueling its growth and begging the question: are talking speakers just a passing tech fad or are they here to stay?
In the US, tech giants, Amazon and Google, dominate the AI smart speaker space with their Alexa-enabled Echo and Echo Dot; and the Google Assistant-powered Google Home, respectively. As the Wall Street Journal notes: “tech giants [and] consumer electronics makers…all see voice-activated products as the gateway to a future where platforms animated by artificial intelligence will power homes, cars and offices. To some, this first wave in the AI revolution already looks frothy.” And that sentiment is seen played out in Apple’s recently announcedSiri-enabled smart speaker, HomePod. A late addition to the fray, the HomePod will be available to consumers by December 2017, and it’s capabilities are an indication that it’s entering a rapidly maturing market.
The HomePod’s positioning is geared more towards smart acoustics than smart AI. Yes, users can control the speaker via Siri voice activation, but the majority of the speaker’s smart functions are audio or music related. One reason for investing heavily in smart acoustics is because, so far, smart speakers don’t sound that great. To differentiate themselves from the pack, Apple is attempting to offer an alternative smart speaker for audiophiles, music enthusiasts and Apple loyalists. Will this positioning work? Perhaps. But the fact remains – the HomePod is merely a lateral move in terms of smart home advancement.
For a new technology, innovation in the smart speaker sphere has been fairly stagnant (for more on this, read my previous blog post “A Clear Path for Voice Control”), and many people who were looking to Apple as a game changer in the field were left mostly underwhelmed by the unveiling of HomePod. Therefore, the direction Apple took with it’s smart speaker only adds to the feeling that the smart speaker bubble is about ready to burst, since we’re still getting variations of “more of the same.”
Amazon, on the other hand, has spent this year rolling out AI smart devices that are not just music speakers, though this fragmentation of the Smart-AI market is already looking too niche for sustained growth. Products such as the Amazon Echo Show (an Echo with video capabilities) and the Amazon Echo Look (an Echo with a camera so you can take pictures of your outfits to log in your “virtual closet” and get fashion advice from “experts”) seem more like placeholder products than fully thought-through use-cases. Amazon knows that the design and UI of the Show are flawed (for example, there’s no way to decline a video call, so friends or relatives with a Show can pop into yours at any moment), and Amazon knows that the Look is about as useful as, what’s it called? Oh yeah, a mirror. But Amazon also knows that AI technology is in a moment of stasis, and between now and the next major smart home breakthrough, they are doing everything they can to keep the ball rolling (and capture an exuberant amount of data about its customers).
So, are AI smart speakers just a fad? Is the bubble about to burst? Perhaps the answer to that is a soft “no.” As smart speakers stand today, the use cases for it are fairly narrow, but that doesn’t mean more smart home innovation won’t branch out from it, as many see the smart speaker as playing a pivotal role in the future smart home. There’s a lot that can be done with an AI smart speaker in the future, but the technology needs to catch up to the possibilities.
Over the past few years, consumers have started to recognize the convenience and cost-saving benefits of smart home technologies, but adoption has been slow, especially compared to the amount of investment money being poured into the industry. According to Business Insider, “the smart home market is stuck in the ‘chasm’ of the technology adoption curve, in which it is struggling to surpass the early-adopter phase and move to the mass-market phase of adoption.” But what’s the largest barrier to mass market smart home adoption? Is it high prices? Cybersecurity? Limited demand? Nope, it’s not any of those. Rather, research has found that the largest barrier to smart home adoption is…interoperability (a fancy word for how devices work together and communicate with each other).
At the moment, consumers view the smart home as fragmented, and many aren’t willing to invest in any smart home devices until all the kinks are worked out. In an insightful article posted to IoT Agenda, analyst Jessica Groopman sees the current state of the smart home as “just a bunch of smart endpoints” which ultimately is hurting the smart home industry:
The very design of connected products requires interoperability in terms of connectivity, communications and integration protocols. Products should be simple to connect. Period. Despite the reality of a painful lack of standards across devices and industries, the need to equip physical products with connectivity and communications flexibility sets both an immediate and long-term value proposition in place (IoT Agenda).
When smart home companies invest in interoperability, the users win. As Groopman notes: “open integration and interoperability is really about curating a customer-first relationship.” In a previous blog post, I responded to CNBC Technology Product Editor, Todd Haselton, and his irritation that smart home products don’t work together. This sentiment is being felt by consumers across the globe, causing it to be the single greatest barrier to smart home adoption:
Currently, there are many networks, standards, and devices being used to connect the smart home, creating interoperability problems and making it confusing for the consumer to set up and control multiple devices. Until interoperability is solved, consumers will have difficulty choosing smart home devices and systems (Business Insider).
Wouldn’t it be great if everyone just learned to get along? At Blackfire Research, interoperability is our game. A few years back, founder and CEO, Ravi Rajapakse, became frustrated – much like Haselton, Groopman, and countless other smart home gadget enthusiasts – when he realized that there was no seamless way to transfer and share entertainment media throughout his own home. The culmination of 10 years of research is a revolutionary new protocol, The Blackfire Realtime Entertainment Distribution (RED) framework, which can stream 5.1 audio channels and 4K video, simultaneously, across multiple devices – all over the standard WiFi you already have. As well as connecting smart home devices like light bulbs, thermostats and door locks, Blackfire also works as a bridge between your smart home and your entertainment systems – with precise synchronization, low latency for lip sync, and overall reliability. Because, as the research shows, that is exactly what smart home owners want – to be able to mix and match devices that can all work together, while having their music and movies available to them anywhere in the home.
At Blackfire Research, we’re ahead of the curve: we know what smart home owners want and what technological barriers need to be crossed to make smart home adoption mainstream. That’s why all Blackfire enabled products are interoperable cross brands, so you don’t have to worry about your smart devices not working together. Look for our logo on select Harman/Kardon, Onkyo, Pioneer,Integra and HTC devices.
