Siri, where’s the remote?: Vishal Mathur explores controls of the future

Sleek, simple, even button-less. The evolving TV remote is digital minimalism at its best.

PREMIUM

The Apple TV 4K has a compact remote control with just seven buttons (including volume controls, pause, play, mute and enter) and a navigation trackpad.

In 2021, Apple went a step further and was granted a patent for one with no buttons at all. This model would allow users access via biometric authentication, and a single sensor would respond to touch and gestures, alongside voice commands. Gestures would probably include something like a single tap to pause / resume, double tap to return to a previous page, a swipe to control volume.

This is a remote of the future; there is no launch date yet. But across the board, buttons are vanishing. The Google Chromecast, Mi TV and OnePlus TV remotes all have between 13 and 15 buttons, including quick-access ones for popular streaming apps such as Netflix and YouTube. This is down from a peak of about 51 buttons, that was reached in the 2010s.

The Samsung Smart TVs of that period came with 49-button remotes. The Panasonic TV remotes from 2014 have 51 buttons each. There were buttons to shrink display size and separate buttons to zoom; a button for image display style and a separate panel for HDMI. There were also distinct buttons for each number from zero to nine.

Interestingly, the world’s first remote had just one button; actually, more of a trigger. In the 1950s, US-based Zenith Electronics started work on a device that would let company founder and chief Eugene F McDonald skip forward, mute sound, or change the channel on a TV set without leaving his seat.

In 1955, Zenith debuted its Flash-Matic. The design was a cross between a torch and the jet spray one uses today. It used a directional light source to strike at a sensor placed in each corner of the TV screen. Depending on which sensor the user directed the ray at, the channel was changed, or sound was muted.

The Flash-Matic marked the birth of binging, of the couch potato, and of that old chestnut elders still offer to younger people — “in our day…” (you know the rest).

Meanwhile, as TV sets became more complex, and more customisable, the number of buttons on the remote ballooned. In 2015, this started to change, with the arrival of streaming apps. New interfaces on smart TVs offered indexes, drop-down menus and on-screen keyboards; many buttons (including the individual number keys) were no longer necessary.

Some of today’s smaller, sleeker remote controls have also benefited from ejecting the bulky AA and AAA alkaline batteries once and for all. These have been replaced by nickel-cadmium and lithium-ion ones similar to those used in phones. One can just plug these remote into a wall socket, about once a month, to charge.

Connectivity with smart assistants is making new functionality possible too. Sony Bravia remotes, for instance, now have a locator feature. Ask Google Assistant to find the TV remote, and it will ping it and make it ring (the shriek is designed to be heard from deep between couch cushions).

Notable exceptions to the minimalisation trend include hybrid remote controls such as that of the Amazon Fire TV Stick, which is adding buttons so that users no longer need a separate device to control volume and other functions that relate to their TV. The newest remotes for the Fire TV Stick have 27 buttons, a number that has been rising steadily from an original tally of about 12.

Eventually, though, it’s possible that smart TVs won’t come with remotes at all. Companion apps are the most likely way forward. Amazon, Google, Mi and OnePlus already offer companion apps for their devices although these can occasionally be glitchy . It’s a trend that began in the audio space. Sonos, Bose and Sennheiser have, for years, designed home audio systems that don’t require a separate remote, and can be controlled instead via a smartphone app or voice-controlled smart assistants such as Alexa and Siri.

If the TV remote goes away, what’s next? Perhaps a future in which the TV itself is just a wireless monitor, and the smartphone is the remote control for even more of the controllable world.