Samsung Electronics announced that its new line of SmartThings products are available to purchase in the UK, with the new Starter Kit, upgraded Hub and sensors available both in store and online at Curry’s PC World as well as online at Samsung.com

The Samsung SmartThings Starter Kit has everything you need to monitor, control and secure your home from anywhere. Once you’ve set up your Starter Kit, SmartThings allows you to add any of the hundreds of compatible smart devices to enhance your home.

The Samsung SmartThings Starter Kit contains:

• a SmartThings Hub to connect with smart sensors, lights, locks, cameras and more
• a SmartThings Multi Sensor to monitor whether doors, windows, drawers or your garage are open or closed
• a SmartThings Motion Sensor to monitor movement in your home
• a SmartThings Presence Sensor to know when people, pets and cars arrive or leave home
• a SmartThings Power Outlet to control lights, electronics and small appliances

The new Samsung SmartThings Hub is equipped with a powerful processor that enables video monitoring, a battery backup that lasts up to 10 hours in case of a power outage, and a local app engine for optimised performance and the ability to operate without an Internet connection. The collection of small Samsung SmartThings sensors have been designed with a sleek, contemporary look.

The Hub’s video monitoring capability, launching in beta and compatible with select Samsung and D-Link cameras, is unique in that it allows people to improve peace of mind while maintaining their privacy. A livestream can be accessed at any time, but video is only captured and stored when an unexpected event, such as motion by the front door, is detected. With this new feature, SmartThings is introducing a solution called Smart Home Monitor, which provides unified access and control against intrusion, smoke and fire, leaks and floods, and other common household issues by delivering real-time text alerts and video clip notifications from multiple cameras to the user or select contacts via the SmartThings app. Intelligent buffering enables video clip recording to start prior to the event so users can see what caused the incident.

With the free Samsung SmartThings app, you can receive important notifications about what’s happening at home, control your smart devices with a simple tap and choreograph your home to react to your unique preferences. The app is available for download from today for Android and iOS.

Pricing for the Samsung SmartThings Starter Kit, as well as individual elements of the Starter Kit which can be bought separately, is as follows:

• Samsung SmartThings Starter Kit: £199
• SmartThings Multi Sensor: £30
• SmartThings Motion Sensor: £30
• SmartThings Presence Sensor: £30
• SmartThings Power Outlet: £45
• SmartThings Moisture Sensor (not sold as part of Starter Kit): £30

For more information, please visit www.samsung.com/uk/smartthings

About SmartThings

SmartThings is the easiest way to turn a home into a smart home, bringing users peace of mind, savings, and convenience. As an open platform with a thriving ecosystem, SmartThings also brings users freedom of choice in devices and limitless possibilities. Since SmartThings was acquired by Samsung in August 2014, the team has tripled in size, tripled developer activity from a community of over 10,000, and has one of the largest ecosystems of compatible devices. SmartThings is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA and operates independently as a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics.

Starting April 1, content from Samsung Tomorrow, the official global blog of Samsung Electronics, will be available on Google Play Newsstand. Google Play Newsstand offers new and premium content from a broad range of newspapers, magazines and blogs from around the world in one easy-to-use app. We expect this to help more users gain easier access to Samsung Tomorrow’s articles, interviews, videos, photo galleries and infographics which cover the company’s latest products, events and announcements.

[How to use Newsstand]

Just log in to the Newsstand app (available on Google Play), search for Samsung Tomorrow, and then click the plus sign to add it to your home screen content feed.

After downloading the Google Play Newsstand app from Google Play, open the app and search for “Samsung Tomorrow.”

Once it’s added, you’ll be able to find Samsung Newsroom in the My Library tab.

Once this is done, you will then be able to find Samsung Tomorrow under ‘My Library’. This will help you get the latest Samsung content on your screen when you are catching up with the news over your morning coffee.

Click on the plus sign to add Samsung Tomorrow to My Library.

* This is not an April Fools’ prank. We’re serious. Try it out.