At its devices event in October last year, Google showcased its Home as a central means of controlling all the smart products that exists in one's home, such as the Philips Hue light or Nest thermostats. Soon users will not need to have a Google Home, with an impending update giving Pixel phones accesses to smart home device.

This Home Control, as found in the settings tab of the latest version of Google Assistant, will now let the smartphone facilitate what Google Home once did. There are a few provisos though, with Android Police discovering that the system only works with a specific set of software running on your Pixel phone.

The smartphones were running Android 7.1.2, featured Google Services 10.2.98 and the beta version of Google Assistant 6.12.19. At the moment, it is said to understand a handful of the voice commands found on the Google Home platform, but more control is believed to be on the way.