Ily smart home phone could create a new market – with some tweaking

Samsung, Apple, Google, and other manufacturers are starting to settle into the idea that the future trend of the home is smart, smart, smart. With the Internet of Things (IoT) connecting everything to the Web while giving these same things smarter capacities than society has ever seen, we’re sending the message that the current “dumb” state of home appliances is not enough. When you think about it, it doesn’t seem to make sense that we have smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs with internet connectivity, as well as Smart refrigerators, washers, and dryers – but few smart thermostats (Google’s Nest being the exception) or smart doorknobs. We even have desktop computers, portable laptops, and now smartwatches and smart fitness bands are the trend – but no overarching smart platform to handle all our smart devices. The Smart Home needs everything to be both smart and connected.

New York startup Insensi has an interesting addition to the ideal Smart Home prototype (just a concept, for now). The company has created Ily, a smart home phone that is more a tablet than a phone. Before I get into some analysis, let’s take a look at what the Ily has to offer.

The Ily has an 8-inch display with a 1024 x 768 screen resolution and does not have an internet browser with access to to the Google Play Store. The Ily can be used to place audio and video calls, send texts, and share photos. Tech sites claim that you can walk around the house making calls with the Ily and that it’s meant to be used as a home phone (though you can download the Ily app on either iOS or Android and stay in touch with friends and relatives who must also use the service). As for the calls, video chats, and music streaming, it appears to be a free experience from Insensi (who says that you need only pay for the hardware; the rest can be free, unless you want to have your own phone number and voicemail service set up.

Some say that the Ily is the perfect device for children, since parents must approve their child’s friend contacts, but it seems as though Insensi wants this “smart home phone” to appeal to families as a whole. It may very well accomplish its goal, with the video and audio calling and photo sharing capabilities.

The Ily smart home phone has its advantages

The Ily smart home phone wants to bring families together, use technology for good, and that’s commendable. The Ily phone is a home unit not intended to be used in the car or out at the coffeeshop, bookstore, or mall. That’s a win-win for Insensi’s product goal.

Next, the Ily home phone does have its “smart” capabilities. It can share photos, send texts, and place video and audio calls, not to mention access Spotify’s music streaming service (perhaps others). Insensi’s Ily can connect to your Wi-Fi network or your current “dumb” landline phone by plugging in the phone cable to the Ily device. These are all “wins” for a stationary product. Years ago, no one would’ve ever dreamed of a smart home phone with capabilities that place it way beyond the “dumb” landline phones many citizens in the US and worldwide still rely on for their home communication. Ily shows that in the “smart” mobile age in which we live, everything – including traditional home phones – need an upgrade and can get one if we’d take the time to implement smart capabilities.

Insensi says that it designed the Ily smart home phone to be used by ages 3 and 93 alike, catering to the younger and older citizens in our world who have extremely limited technical know-how.

The Ily Family Phone is safe for children because it lacks an internet browser. I know of a friend couple of mine whose parents just bought their child an inexpensive Android tablet. The problem with the free games they’ve downloaded from the Google Play Store, however, is that mobile ads exist all over the game setups, with the child tapping one ad and heading to the Google Play Store (to the frustration of parents). Installing an ad blocker of some kind is near impossible on Android because Google makes its money from ads, although Safari provides its own “Ad Block” web browser extension that does the job effectively. Lacking ad trouble, the Ily Family Phone already has its share of welcoming users.

The Ily smart home phone does have its drawbacks, however

I could go into the low screen resolution (1024 x 768) that the device offers, which is akin to that found on Google’s Nexus 7 (2012) tablet that had a 7-inch screen instead of the Ily’s 8-inch screen (which means the resolution will be even lower than that of the three-year-old Google tablet), but that’s irrelevant.

What is relevant with the Ily smart home phone that is a drawback pertains to first, the design. I understand the need for Insensi to craft a device that can be used by young and old alike, but I think a design change could help this endeavor. Think of the older-aged crowd that have relied on cordless phones for the last twenty or thirty years (if not longer). Why not craft an easy-to-use smart device with a touchscreen display and a design that mimics current cordless landline phones? After all, the cordless phone design is one that’s been popular for a number of years. In a design similar to the current phones that many older-aged citizens use, Insensi would appeal to the old-school sense while bringing the older crowd to adapt to a new tech experience. Insensi’s made a device that is certainly kid-friendly, but the device is so modern that it lacks appeal for the older crowd.

Of course, a response to my criticism would be, “but what about the touchscreen? Touchscreens make such devices kid-friendly.” I agree; why not, however, create a phone/tablet hybrid that is both kid-friendly and has old-school appeal? Have a tablet-like setup for the base of the phone, and produce a receiver that mimics current “phone” icons on the smartphone desktop. Parents can take the receiver off at home to talk, then place it back on and activate video calling when they want to talk to their parents or the children’s grandparents and view the other party on the touchscreen. I think that a receiver should be incorporated into the experience because it happens to be one of the old-school hardware design components that would resonate with the older crowd.

Asus's FonePad design would complete the Insensi Ily Family Phone and give it an edge. 

Sticking with the area of design, I think that the phone/tablet hybrid should consist of a setup like the Asus FonePad that lets you dock your phone in the back of the tablet slate to 1) charge the phone and 2) power the on-screen tablet experience. If Insensi could make the Ily Family Phone something like the Asus FonePad with the phone/dock/charging experience, the company would have a winner on its hands.

I say this because most young families already have electronic devices such as Android tablets and Apple’s iPad – so they don’t really need the touchscreen experience of another tablet-like device. They also have free calling services such as Skype, so they wouldn’t need free calls and texts, either (since calls and texts are unlimited and free in the US on all top four carriers AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile). The device does have its kid-friendly appeal, and that’s likely to win parents who often get tired of passing their iPad Air to their children all the time.

Another suggestion for the Ily Family Phone is AM/FM radio. Again, the appeal to the older generations will dictate the success or failure of this device, and AM/FM radio capabilities that are built into the Ily will combine two needs (phone and radio) into one. Older generations could use the Ily for radio play when they’re not talking on the phone – and the Ily Family Phone could stop radio play when the person receives a call, and start radio play after the call is completed (without any help from the user). Spotify, with its internet music streaming service, is too complicated for most starting users. AM/FM radio provides an easy way to listen to music without the need to log in with a username and password (which will be hard for older persons to remember and keep close by).

Conclusion 

Insensi’s Ily Family Phone has promise, but the company should work on improving the design for the elderly crowd. If the goal is to connect both children and grandparents or older relatives, then there should be quite a bit of old-school appeal. After all, elderly individuals and older-aged relatives will have to be the target crowd for the Ily Family Phone to sell, seeing that most young adults and parents are trying to become a part of the new, space-age mobile phone experience.

For young parents, the key to the success of the Ily Family Phone will be convenient. Let’s say that the family in question is young and already owns iPhones. Such a family would not want to come home and fumble with a tablet that lacks a web browser when they can just pick up the iPad and surf the Web. Ily may need to create a family version aside of an adult version that provides full mobile capabilities, but even adding some sort of smartphone charging on the back of the Ily device would be enough to entice some parents. After all, they can talk to relatives and grandparents while their smartphone is charging…which means that they wouldn’t be free to fumble around with it and distract themselves while on video calls with family. Locking down the smartphone into the back charging dock would be a perfect way to charge the device and meet a need of young parents, all while nailing time with family. It’s the best of both worlds!

The Ily will compete in the minds of many young parents and families with current mobile devices like the iPad Air 2, Nexus 9, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, Tab A, and even the Note 10.1 2014 that are already on the market. Insensi must set its products apart from these well-known, highly-branded manufacturers, and taking an “Asus” route (as I’ve said above) will help in this endeavor.

Samsung has also patented a FonePad-like hardware design of its own, called the Galaxy Hit – so we’ll see if Samsung ever gets around to it. They make consumer products such as washers and dryers, so it wouldn’t be too farfetched to see them make a Tizen Family Phone that runs the company’s OS while giving older customers the few features they need to adopt it and throw out their old stereos and boom box immediately.

Visit the links below to learn more about Insensi.

http://www.insensi.com

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150623005274/en/Introducing-ILY-Family-Phone™#.VYvxG-v46fQ