The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is the biggest electronics trade show in the world. Countless companies, big and small, descend on Las Vegas to showcase new and innovative products. Some may see the light of day, others may never be more than prototypes, leaving us wishing for a reality in which they exist.
Samsung has long been one of the major exhibitors at CES. It's the event where the company launches new TVs, monitors, home appliances and other consumer electronics products. This isn't an event where you'd see any of its new smartphones, tablets or other mobile devices. Those are exclusive to Samsung's own Unpacked events.
The company has used the CES stage to showcase some innovative products over the years. Back at CES 2020, just months before the world as we knew it changed, Samsung unveiled Ballie. It was a cute little rolling robot that gave off BB-8 vibes. Samsung demonstrated how Ballie could follow you around the home and help with tasks.
Samsung didn't say much about the tech inside, only that Ballie could help with tasks such as opening the smart blinds in the morning and controlling other smart home devices. The presentation saw Samsung’s H.S. Kim have the Ballie track and follow him around on stage and even roll right into his hands.
The device showed a lot of potential and it generated a lot of buzz at CES 2020 but then we heard nothing about it. It's been four years since and Samsung reintroduced Ballie at CES 2024. Even if we discount 2020 due to the pandemic, we didn't hear a single word out of Samsung about this rolling robot in the following years. It's as if Ballie ever existed.
That changed at CES this year as Samsung unveiled a redesigned Ballie. The robot has grown from its tennis ball-like size in 2020 to about the size of a bowling ball in 2024. That increase in size probably has something to do with the fact that Ballie now has a projector inside. The robot effectively functions as an interactive and autonomously rolling smart home that can manage your other smart home devices connected to SmartThings.
It can display information from all of the other smart home devices, even if those devices don't have a dedicated display. So it could project information like the house's air quality or stream video from the connected door bell, display events on the calendar, place phone calls, and even show what's inside your Samsung smart fridge. Ballie has been envisioned as a hub that brings together the entire smart home platform in an interactive robot that users can control using voice commands.
Ballie seems impressive but controlled demos aren't a proper yardstick to judge the robot. Even as Samsung showed off many demos during CES 2024, it didn't allow members of the press any hands-on time with Ballie. Every demo shown was carefully programmed and choreographed so it doesn't actually reveal the full picture about the robot's capabilities and limitations. Be that as it may, Ballie will only be truly impressive if it ever ends up shipping.
It's not uncommon for companies to make a big deal out of new products but never end up launching them. Apple did this with a wireless charger, Samsung's done it with the infamous Galaxy Home smart speaker that never got a public release. The risk is still very much there that despite announcing the Ballie twice in a span of four years, Samsung may end up not releasing it at all.
Once you get around the novelty of it, one has to consider what real world problems this robot is really solving. Much of what it does can already be done on your phone, with the exception of projecting stuff on the walls, but even that's best done using Samsung's excellent Freestyle projectors. Samsung could come to that realization also and may not take Ballie beyond a proof of concept.
That's just speculation, though. Samsung has said that Ballie will be released by the end of this year. That's a long time to go so we'll wait and see if Samsung continues to talk up Ballie in the interim, but as long as I remain unable to have one shipped to me by tomorrow, I'm skeptical about its future. Oh how I wouldn't love for Samsung to prove me wrong!
