What exactly do these meters do that's so 'smart'?
More accurate bills? Not true. However the company obtains the readings they should be able to calculate bills every bit as accurately. An individual bill may be incorrect if readings aren't supplied on an occasion but it should be corrected as soon as they are.
More detailed information? Probably, but what are you going to do with it? Surely you use electrical appliances as and when you need them, not for fun. So knowing that your oven, kettle and immersion heater use a lot of electricity isn't going to stop you cooking the dinner, making some coffee or having a bath.
Quote: 'Live historical usage history . . . helping you reduce usage and save money'. How? with only two rates if you're lucky - day and night - the same on every day of the year you don't have much opportunity to move your energy usage around. The only way you save is to switch stuff off; you don't need historical data to tell you that.
No more giving meter readings? Not exactly a major task. More important to the company is that automatic readings from the 'smart' meter save them the expense of sending round a meter reader every now and then. No real benefit to the consumer.
Seriously, these meters don't actually do anything significantly new or beneficial for the consumer - unless you enjoy watching largely useless information on the free in-home display.
Why are we not being offered the true smart meters that have been around for more than twenty years? Programmable meters that can, for example, switch between six or more charging rates at different times of the day and on different days, like weekends, so that you can be offered cheap electricity when demand is low. Then you're genuinely empowered to save money by, where practical, using energy-hungry appliances at times of the day or days of the week when you know the rate is low.
Genuine smart meters offer numerous other benefits and definitely do enable consumers to save money and contribute towards reducing overall power consumption. On the other hand, as far as I can see, the gimmicks on offer in the UK do nothing of the sort, but are simply a con allowing the energy companies to pretend they are doing something for the benefit of consumers. Illusion instead of action.
Sorry, I don't see the point.