Smart screens with Google Assistant are apparently the latest victim of Google’s pruning rage. In addition, third-party support has been closed.
It was tech blog 9to5Google that first noticed, but Google no longer supports so-called Smart Displays. Lenovo, JBL and LG, among others, have released smart screens in recent years that you could operate with Google Assistant, the voice assistant of the tech giant. However, this type of device is practically dead with the end of support.
The idea of a smart display was to put a voice assistant, such as Google itself in the Nest, on a screen. In addition to requesting timers and weather reports, you can also use them to make video calls and play videos or photo shows. Google’s Smart Display technology provided a simple user interface for the touch screen of such a device.
The product line was launched in 2017 and consisted of only a few devices, including the Lenovo Smart Display, and was intended to provide an answer to similar products from Amazon (the Echo Show) and the now-defunct Portal from Facebook/Meta.
A year after the first third parties came up with devices, Google itself launched a smart screen (the Nest Hub) with a different operating system than it imposed on third parties and at a much lower price. As a result, support for those third parties will now also expire. The devices will continue to work for some time but will no longer receive updates.
