It was only a matter of time before someone decides to stick a huge touchscreen display onto its fridges, and it appears Samsung has done exactly that with its latest smart refrigerator. Samsung will be unveiling the smart fridge at CES 2016 in a few days, and although its launch event hasn’t started yet, Samsung has already posted up official press images of the fridge on its Flickr feed in Korean.
There’s not a lot yet known about the fridge, but the first thing you’ll notice from the photos is as if someone photoshopped an Android screen onto one of its doors. A closer look shows a few standard Android capacitive buttons right below it, including two new buttons on the sides. Here’s a close up on the capacitive buttons on the touchscreen:
These images on Flickr merely show off the fridge itself, and not the software that appears on the display. However, those present at the CES show floors, such as The Verge, would already see giant banners of this fridge on the main hallway. From these banners, it can be confirmed that it will be called the Family Hub Refrigerator, and as its name implies, it appears Samsung is trying to turn the fridge into a hub of sorts. Besides displaying the time, calendar, and weather information, the fridge also sports several features previous Samsung refrigerators had, such as creating their own shopping lists, control music playback on Pandora, as well as leave Post-it-style reminders. Seeing that there’s a mic on/off toggle, it is likely that users will soon be speaking to their fridges as well.
It is likely that the fridge will be powered by some platform – though given Samsung’s development on Tizen, this fridge may not actually be running Android. Interestingly, there’s also a screen that shows “Groceries by MasterCard” where users can “Browse & Buy”, indicating that users could soon shop for groceries directly from the fridge. It wouldn’t be too far fetched, as features such as these would be perfectly in tune with Samsung’s Internet of Things vision – as it is, previous fridges already have features that reminds you of expiration dates of the things you put inside the fridge.
Samsung will officially announce the Family Hub Refrigerator in two days, when CES 2016 officially kicks off, with more information on the software as well as pricing and availability. I guess it won’t be long now until users can finally command their fridge by saying “Hi, fridge”.
(Source: The Verge)
