A survey conducted by GfK earlier last year revealed some interesting findings. 83% of respondents admitted that at home, they typically used smartphones more than laptops (75%), computers (54%) and gaming consoles (34%). The survey also showed that 89% of those surveyed used smartphones to control several home products and services.
Remote apps are becoming popular. People across the world are increasingly using their phones to control a variety of devices and appliances at home. This blog enlists a few apps that enable your phone to control your home devices and prove that smartphones are indeed the new remotes.
Anymote
Anymote offers a wide remote-control coverage with its compatibility with more than 9,00,000 different devices.
One of the most innovative features in Anymote is intelligent single-touch control enabled by macros. Macros are actually chain commands that can control several appliances at a given moment. Besides, it allows you to automate commands so that you can operate devices without even interacting with them. These features share some similarity with Peel’s control grouping. Anymote also has voice-control capabilities. If you have the Amazon Echo at home, you can ask Alexa to send commands to any device.
The app offers a high-quality and user-friendly interface and lets you customize controls, position, color, text etc. according to your liking.
If you choose its paid version, you get benefits like unlimited remote integration, backup, and personalized customer support.
Compatible with over 4,00,000 devices, Peel remote control can control all smart devices. It can group controls of different remotes and send multiple commands with a single tap. Not a lot of remote apps offer such smart home automation features.
The Peel TV remote also helps browse programmes by categories, genres, trending, and recent watches. It even records your viewing behavior and offers intelligent recommendations, saving a lot of time on navigation. You can also schedule a watchlist on the app for up to a week in advance. Its intelligent voice-recognition can capture the context of your voice commands and pick up hints to trigger controls of the devices according to that.
Peel remote for Android phones is certainly most popular in the remote-control domain which offers a graphic-rich interface further optimized for tablets. Peel remote has IR as well as Wi-fi capabilities.
SURE Universal Remote App
SURE’s predominant area of functioning is TV. One of the unique features of this app is that it can control media streaming hardware as well as send local files on it. This means you can use SURE to send and stream image, audio and video files from phone to TV and media players and vice versa. It uses IR technology, voice-recognition, and Wi-fi network (through separate hardware) to support over a million devices.
Another interesting advantage that SURE offers are its back-up capability.
One of the most helpful benefits the app offers is back-up. So, if you change your phone which has your device configured, you can utilize the backed-up settings and don’t have to go through the reconfiguration process.
MI Remote
Despite what the name suggests, in addition to Xiaomi phones, MI Remote can support all smartphones that have an IR-emitter. However, it delivers the most if you’re using Xiaomi’s proprietary products.
It’s compatible with a lot of devices including TVs, set-top boxes, media players, ACs etc. In the absence of an IR-emitter in your phone, the app lets you smart TV accept commands over standard Wi-Fi protocols.
Like SURE, MI remote app is more focused on home entertainment and TV. It can store all the information on your favourite TV shows and makes your browsing easier. It also allows you to watch shows on your phone when you’re not in front of the TV.
Asmart Remote IR
Asmart provides users with an easy way of managing and controlling several devices at home. It lets you create different rooms for a specific set of devices in each room. And switching from one room to the other is smooth. Thus, you triggering controls for multiple devices simultaneously is a cakewalk.
Although Asmart Remote IR app runs only on infrared technology at present, it supports all leading brands of home electronics and a wide range of devices and appliances. It comes pre-installed in select smartphones.
Unified TV
Although it’s only compatible with a limited number of smartphones that have an IR-blaster, Unified TV doesn’t fail to impress if you are looking for a simple remote app with simple features. The app is compatible with over 80 types of TVs, set-top boxes, gaming consoles, media players etc. This saves you from having to create a unique profile for each device and your home entertainment experience is hassle-free.
While Unified TV app isn’t free, it’s almost free. You only have to spend $1 to download this app, which makes it much more economical than paid versions of most of the remote apps out there.
Manything
A little different from the other apps on this list, Manything is an interesting app for iOS which is equipped with smart motions sensors. It can transform your iPhone or iPad into a security vivint camera which you can use to keep an eye around your house. The sensors can turn on other devices according to customer settings in case there is a motion alert.
Manything has its own IFTTT which it uses to integrate with various web services and home appliances. Additionally, if you want the camera to detect specific areas of the premises, you can adjust its settings accordingly.
The app lets you see the recorded videos remotely and share them using common communication channels easily.
Conclusion
A mobile phone is the most common device today. Over time, its role only has expanded and thus its intervention in our lives continues to grow. Moreover, as newer apps arrive in app stores, they enable mobile phones to assume even more responsibilities. Remote apps are an excellent example of this.
If you haven’t used a remote app before, you may want to use one or the other from this list. Irrespective of which one you choose, what’s sure is your remote-controlling experience is going to change for good, for the better.
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