Article for context:https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23870522/iphone-15-pro-max-thread-smartphones (Ik that I am talking about multiple companies when I refer to android companies but many singular companies make more innovations in the phone space compared to apple)
There's a new protocol for smart home devices called Matter, that let's them work across ecosystems (so for example smart lights set up with Google Home could be controlled through Apple HomeKit via Matter). Thread is part of how Matter devices communicate with each other (instead of e.g. WiFi or Bluetooth). The new iPhones can directly use Thread instead of needing another devices to act as a bridge to "translate" the commands
A fairly niche addition, but definitely not useless. And a big plus for those into smart home stuff
I think it's more useful than those glyphs on the nothing phone. They're just a gimmick to sell a mediocre mid-end phone
Eh not really if you're actually using mesh networked smart home devices that run on zigbee/thread/wave/matter or whatever you're using some kind of controller with one of those radios in it. Using your phone as the only controller basically means you'd only be able to control/talk to those devices when your phone is on and at home, so forget any kind of automations if you're not around. If you already have a controller, it's most certainly networked so having a matter radio in your phone is basically pointless.
Yeah it is a wierd flex I've been trying to wrap my head around.
I'm kind of wondering if this move is just a data grab. Matter gives controllers a lot of insight into how smart products are used. Only iPhone in the house is for your teen so they don't have that "dreaded" green text? As soon as you let them on your Matter network as a controller they now know when you turn your lights on and off, lock your doors, etc.
Thing is, this doesn't (or at least shouldn't) require a Thread radio. A controller on the phone can still get this info so long as one border router exists in the Thread PAN on the same network as the phone.
Everything is encrypted in Matter so you would have to be a controller to get any good data. With that, I doubt its just for passively farming packets over the air.
I guess it could be used to control devices remotely during a network outage if one person with an iPhone is home since its a local only protocol.
The radios are cheap enough that I guess they could be just throwing it in there without a great use case to generate buzz. Cost of radios is a drop in the bucket for most marketing budgets.
Head scratcher for sure.
Notably the homepod mini had thread radios and could act as a thread router as one of the earliest devices out there, might be that apple is going to push harder for this and has plans for it's own thread enabled Smart Home products.
Huh. Did a little reading and it honestly does sound pretty useful. I'm not crazy about the corporate sponsorship of the consortium but there's a lot of open source licensing to promote adoption so it's not all bad. Neat. I could get behind doing a couple little custom home automation projects using that kind of network.