Flic – The “World’s Smartest Button” reviewed

Flic is a wireless smart button which, once paired with your smartphone, can perform a multitude of tasks assigned to either a single click, a double click or a click and hold of the button.

Something I have talked about here before is how some smart devices often perform worse than the device they replace. Take smart bulbs for instance. You can set them to come on at different times of the day by themselves or to turn on when a sensor picks up motion, which is great, but if you want to turn them on outside of one of these routines you need to do so via an app on your phone. For smart bulbs to work the switch on the wall needs to be left on all the time. So if you use the switch on the wall to turn off a bulb the smart functions stop working. That’s something that is often forgotten. The smart functions are great but the traditional functions can become cumbersome as a result.

Philips picked up on this some time back and introduced a stand alone switch to control its Hue range of smart bulbs. It works well but is limited to Hue bulbs and this is where Flic have found their niche. A button that can be used to control many of your smart devices and much more beyond that.

Design

I’m an absolute sucker for the retro design of the Flic. The font they’ve used to emboss the logo reminds me of a time gone by while the soft touch rubber and satisfying click just makes me want to keep pressing it. (To satisfy that need Flic have included their own version of Flappy Bird which you can play by pressing the button over and over again just at the right moment!)

The Flic is powered by a small watch battery which they claim will last at least a year or more. There are two ways of attaching the Flic to something. There’s a “stick” option and a “clip” option. The stick option utilises a reusable adhesive material to stick the button to most surfaces. The back of the button can also be removed and replaced with a clip.

Setup

Setup is really straightforward. You install the Flic app which is available for Android and iOS. Make sure you have your Bluetooth turned on and follow the in-app pairing procedure which basically consists of pressing the button so the app sees each button. You then give each a name to finish.

Once you pair one of the buttons with the Flic app, you can set about adding tasks to a single click, a double click or a click and hold of the button. Multiple tasks can be added to each action. So for example you could set a single click to turn off all your lights, set your thermostat to away mode and arm your alarm as you walk out the door. You could set a double click to turn the lights back on, set the heating to 20 degrees and start playing one of your playlists on your Sonos speakers.

Day to Day use

Out of the box the Flic app works with about 30 services or apps natively. What I mean by natively is that if you press the Flic button, the app can interact with the desired service directly and execute the action. For everything else though, Flic relies on If This Then That (IFTTT).

Flic are adding more partners all the time which is great (e.g. Volvo & Runkeeper in the last couple of weeks). We would really like to see more services working directly from the app rather than having to go via IFTTT and we’ll get into more about why below. There really is a huge amount of potential here though considering how many devices in our lives are now connected.

I have a Flic stuck to the desk next to my iMac which I use to play & pause our Sonos system. I have another at the door which switches everything to away mode before I leave and also sets the lights to go into a security routine. They really are useful for performing multiple tasks like this with minimal input. You don’t need to take your phone out and launch multiple apps to perform all of the tasks.

Beyond the physical world there are a lot of different software options available such as launching apps on your phone, setting an alarm, finding your phone, taking a selfie and posting it to Twitter or to launch a certain website in your browser to list just a few. Something that Flic have also pointed out quite a lot is that the device can used as a personal safety device allowing you to send out a distress message to a chosen contact which includes your GPS location.

It’s very simple to setup or adjust what each click does and only takes a couple of clicks from within the app. It’s not all roses though and I have encountered some issues along the way. Before I go into those issues, it’s worth pointing out that the issues I’ve experienced were more limitations of the services Flic relies on to perform some tasks rather than issues with the button itself.

We are huge fans of IFTTT. It is a service that was way ahead of its time and allows multiple smart devices or services to cross communicate. Without it many services would be next to useless but what it is not designed for is speed. There is an inherent latency when you use IFTTT which makes it unsuitable for some tasks.

So let me give you an example of what I am talking about. The Flic app works with certain Belkin Wemo devices such as their smart plugs from within the app but it doesn’t work with the Wemo Smart Bulbs. To control those bulbs you have to turn to IFTTT.  Obviously with lights you expect them to come on instantly once you have called for them. With Flic though, once you press the button it communicates with your smartphone via bluetooth, the Flic app then sends a request to the IFTTT servers, the IFTTT servers then issue a command to your Wemo Link device in your home, the Wemo Link device then sends the command to bulb. This introduces what can only be described as latency. It also introduces multiple failure points. It only takes one issue with any of the stops along the way to prevent your light from turning on or to even just delay them turning on.

Basically what that equates to is sometimes the lights come on and sometimes they don’t. The problem is further compounded by the limitations of iOS. Apple are not big fans of apps running in the background which is a bit of a problem for an app that could be called upon to work at anytime. If you kill the Flic app on your iPhone the button loses all of it’s capability.

That may all seem negative but it’s not. It just means you have to be conscious of the limitations to begin with and you need to use actions that are not expected to be delivered instantly when it comes to IFTTT. Beyond that being able to use IFTTT opens up a whole load of possibilities and without doubt is a positive inclusion rather than a negative.

For the other actions that are completed directly by Flic, everything works very well. I used the Belkin Wemo bulbs above as an example as they require you to use IFTTT, but Flic also works with LIFX and Philips Hue bulbs without the need for the third party service.

Conclusion

The Flic smart button is a cool device and it has great potential. As more and more services are added its usefulness will only increase and it will be interesting to see how far they can take it. If you currently use IFTTT, have a lot of connected devices in your life or just like the idea of being able to perform multiple tasks via one click, the Flic smart button is something you should check out further.

The buttons are available to purchase directly from Flic.io and a pack of 4 buttons currently retails for $99.