I currently use two types of Coway products, number of air purifiers and a water purifier. Neither of them particularly need to have IoT features, but recently Coway decided to sprinkle the smarts onto their new products. It does have its advantages. For instance, Coway water purifiers with built-in ice makers traditionally had light sensor to only make ice during day time. With IoT, Coway’s IoCare app can actually trigger when the ice maker function will kick in. There are still buttons on the appliances, so the app is technically secondary.

The problem I have with Coway’s approach with IoT is its limited interoperability. For example, one might want to pause all the air purifiers temporarily while all the windows are open to ventilate. There are cheap window sensors that can be hooked up to IoT network, but as far as I am aware, existing IoCare app does not integrate any of the devices to other networks or protocols. They are IoT devices in name only.

Coway, possibly to better cater to ever growing IoT crowds, has released a new app called IoCare+. The existing app certainly does a fine job of warning the users it will be depreciated, but the new app is nowhere near prepared. For starters, even though they use the same account, none of the devices carry over to the new app. And for an app that has a due date to meet, — IoCare app will shut down on September 1, 2025 — the older devices cannot be registered on a new one yet. It’s hardly a smart migration.

To make matters worse, Coway’s documentation on the transition is all over the place. On the notice only available to US region-set smartphones, it says the account and data will be transferred but not the device. But the new app redirected me back to the old app when I attempted to register my devices. On the FAQ page, it fails to mention whether existing products that are not supported will be added in the near future, or will it be simply depreciated. On the App Store page for the new IoCare+ app, it details the list of products the new app supports; and for the older devices, it directs users to download IoCare app instead, the one which has halted new device registration as of June 30.

I did hear some of the horror stories behind Internet-connected devices or app-driven devices, but I never thought it would happen during an active development. Most suspected cases I heard are rooted in the fact that manufacturers are not interested in long term software support. It does seem as though Coway has interest in creating IoT devices, or at least IoT lookalikes; so it baffles me as to why the notice of the migration on the old app completely contradicts on what the new app says.

The other nitpick I have with the app is its malfunctioning region lock. For the life of me, I don’t see why an IoT app should have a region lock when an app can actively detect the device. The new app seems to filter out non-US devices from pairing, and the only fix is temporarily changing the region of the smartphone to South Korea. There is no reason to rely on smartphone’s region settings to weed out devices. Again, the bizarre notice to migrate only appears on smartphones set to US. Region locks are generally just an open invitation to disasters, especially anything internet-based.