Update: You will need to download the Philips Hue Gen 2 app from Google Play. This is a new app, and not an update to the original (which is now marked as Hue Gen. 1.
Philips has released a new official Hue lighting controller app on both iOS and Android. This latest release completely revamps the experience with a brand new UI. As well as much-needed design improvements, the Philips Hue app has also received some new functionality, making the release a welcomed one to pump some life back into the official app.
The design and layout refresh now organizes connected bulbs by room to make it even easier to quickly configure specific lights. You'll now be able to enter commands to control all the Hue lighting throughout your home at once. A handy addition is called "Routines", which is essentially a timer for Hue lighting that will toggle connected bulbs depending on the time of day. An example would be a wake-up routine that would gradually modify the color of bulbs to emulate a sunrise.
The color matching feature of the app has been upgraded to automatically pick out the five most vibrant colors from any provided sample and create a customized lighting setup. More than 16 million colors and every shade of white light can be selected from to create your perfect scenes. While it's possible to further tweak any given scene, it's a vastly improved system over what was previously available. Home & Away provides peace of mind by controlling lights automatically to turn them off when you're away from home and back on when you return.
Grab the Gen 2 controller from Google Play and let us know how you're getting on with 2.0 in the comments.
