What is Matter? At least we think that is what some of you might be asking before anything else. It is an Internet of Things (IoT) thing. It is, in our opinion from our research, the future of connected devices.
There are plenty of in-depth explanations out there about what Matter is and why it will be a good thing for universal connected devices. We are not going in-depth, but we do need to explain Matter a little bit.
Matter is a standard for IoT hardware developed by Connectivity Standards Alliance. The Alliance is a sort of collaboration and standardized guidelines to all things IoT, connected, and smart home. Collaborators include Google, Samsung, Apple, and Amazon. In short, they aim to make all IoT and connected devices universally available to every person no matter what device they own. For example, you should be able to connect to a Samsung washing machine even if you do not have Smart Things on your Apple iPhone or Google Pixel. Your Samsung TV should also be able to control that new Amazon light bulb you just bought for your smart home ecosystem.
Matter is rather new though, and not every device is compatible with it yet. While there are new smart home products that comes with Matter compatibility, it is the older stuff that needs some attention. For example, Amazon’s various Echo devices.
A month after Amazon announced that they have committed to add Matter compatibility to their Alexa compatible devices, they delivered with 17 of their existing products including their plugs, switches, and bulbs. This is only Amazon’s first wave of Matter compatibility update though, and they are bringing the update to their most popular devices first. They added that they will roll out Matter update to other devices later.
There is a small caveat with the new Matter compatibility from Amazon though. While it now works with Matter, you still must have an Android smartphone and you can only connect to the devices via WiFi. That also means that if you have an Apple iPhone and an Amazon Echo device, you still might not be able to access Alexa via your iPhone. The Echo devices that works with Matter now are the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Generation Echo Dots, the Echo Show 8 (2021), Echo Show 10 (3rd Generation), Echo Show 5 (2021), Echo Show 15, v3 Echo, Echo Input, and Echo Fex. More information on Amazon’s Alexa ready Matter compatible devices can be found on their developer blog.
