Aside from Google’s own, there are plenty of third-party smart displays out there, made by manufacturers such as Lenovo, LG, and JBL. If you have one, though, there’s some bad news.
Google has quietly updated some support pages with a notice on support for software updates for a handful of third-party Google Assistant displays. It says that the company won’t provide updates anymore for the Lenovo Smart Display (in 7, 8 and 10-inch sizes), the JBL Link View, and the LG Xboom AI ThinQ WK9. That might not be a huge problem now, but it could become a problem as the software on these devices gets older.
These devices were released between 2018 and 2019, which isn’t that old in terms of smart home products — the original Google Home from 2016 is still alive. In addition, these devices were running Android Things at launch, which is, by this point, a deprecated operating system. Google’s own Nest Assistant displays ran the Cast platform at launch and are currently moving to use Google’s home-grown Fuchsia operating system. It could be that Google isn’t willing to keep supporting these devices anymore.
It should be noted that the Lenovo Smart Clock, also launched in 2019, doesn’t look like it has been killed off just yet. Then again, this review by 9to5Google from that era notes that the software was “built by the same team that crafted what you’d find on the likes of the Nest Hub,” so our Android Things theory seems right on the money.
If you have one of these smart displays, you might want to replace it, either with a first-party Nest display or with something else — perhaps an Alexa device?
Source: Google
Via: 9to5Google
