Lenovo already rolling out ‘Home View’ and other Google Home Hub features to its Smart Displays

Ben Schoon | Oct 23 2018 - 7:38 am PT

Google confirmed a couple of weeks ago that the new features available on the Google Home Hub would be rolling out to all Assistant smart displays. No timeline was provided on that, but the Lenovo Smart Display (in both sizes) is already starting to roll out the functionality.

Confirmed on the company’s forums this week, Lenovo Smart Display, in both its 8-inch and 10-inch sizes, is already being updated with the latest features. The update will roll out over the next few weeks to all users.

This update provides several handy new features, but the most notable by far is that of Home View which gives an easy interface for controlling all smart home devices from one central location. Multi-room audio groups, Google Photos Live Albums, and more will all also be available. JBL has yet to reveal when the Link View will get this update, but it will presumably be soon given Lenovo’s quick turnaround.

Starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks you will start to see these features coming to the Lenovo Smart Display:

Major updates to your Smart Display:

Previewed at our recent Made by Google event, these new features will roll out to the entire family of Smart Displays over the next few weeks:

With multi-room audio, you can add your Smart Display to a speaker group and play music throughout the house.

With Live Albums from Google Photos, your Ambient Mode will always show off the best photos of your favorite people and pets without you having to curate them. It will also make sure to pick your best photos, so that receipts, screenshots, duplicates, and blurry or sensitive photos will not appear on your Smart Display.

With Nest Hello Doorbell, your Smart Display will now show who is at the door when someone rings, and allows you to send quick responses.

With Home View, you can see and control all of your smart home devicesin a single dashboard by swiping down from the top edge of your Smart Display.

Your Google Assistant can now also control many popular media and entertainment devices, including TVs (Hisense, Philips, Sharp,Sony, Vizio, Xiaomi), set top boxes (Dish, Foxtel, Nvidia Shield, Sling, Vodafone), speakers (Denon), smart remotes (Logitech Harmony) with many more coming soon from Caavo, LG, Panasonic, Roku®, Telus, and Telstra. Enjoy universal controls to power devices on and off, adjust playback/volume, and browse a visual channel guide—all by touch or by voice on your Smart Display.