Philips Hue app could soon get a big Bluetooth upgrade
If you use the Philips Hue bridge to connect all of your Hue devices, you know just how much cool stuff you can do usingthe main Philips Hue mobile app. But if you skipped buying the bridge and went the Bluetooth-only route, right now Phillips makes you use different software to control your lights. This could be about to change, however, as Bluetooth connectivity might soon be baked right into the primary app.
Philips Hue (owned bySignify) actually provides a second app —Philips Hue Bluetooth— to control lights in an environment with no bridge. That’s right — the company has completely separate apps to control and configure its smart devices, depending on their connection type (bridge vs. Bluetooth). But now it looks like this insanity may soon be ending.
The Hue development team is reportedly incorporating Bluetooth capabilities right into the main app beginning with the update to version 4.11, according to a post atHueblog.com. Whether this results in the Bluetooth-specific app being retired remains to be seen, but there are certainly advantages to combining the two apps into one.
For Signify, a single, unified app would result in only one code base to maintain, meaning only one app to publish for each supported platform. Furthermore, features available on both Bluetooth and bridged devices would no longer require updates to two separate apps.
For you, the consumer, there would be only one Philips Hue app to download, reducing potential confusion. Also, if you decided to expand from Bluetooth to bridged devices, you’d be used to using the app already installed on your phone, and wouldn’t need to start from scratch with an entirely different one.
It remains to be seen exactly what Bluetooth functionality in the main Hue app might ultimately look like, and if all the features of the existing Philips Hue Bluetooth app will be moved over, but we’ll keep our eyes on future updates to the apps to find out.
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