for beginners in summary this is a device with a speaker and mic acts as a voice based search engine and much much more yes you need wifi and electricity for this to work no you do not need to switch on your phone every time phone phone wifi is just required once to conflgure and set up the device as the ui for this device is the app called google home who should buy people who are fluent in voice commands people who have a lot of android app based appliances aro