TL;DR
- House owners of the first-gen Nest Hub report current gadget failures, freezing up throughout the boot course of.
- Makes an attempt to manufacturing facility reset the {hardware} haven’t been profitable at restoring operation.
- It’s attainable a current firmware replace could play a function, but Google has but to verify something.
Replace, Could 16, 2025 (09:41 PM ET): We’ve heard again from Google, and the firm confirms that it’s conscious of those studies, and has a fix rolling out.
Google’s resolution is scheduled to hit all Nest Hub items by someday early subsequent week. For those who’re nonetheless experiencing a difficulty like the one we describe right here after that, Google asks that you simply follow up in its support thread to let the firm know.
Unique article, Could 16, 2025 (04:04 PM ET): How lengthy do you anticipate your gadgets to final? With one thing like a telephone, you’ve received the risk of bodily harm hanging over it mainly all the time, want to fret about its battery deciding to go all explosive on you, and had higher ensure that your producer is maintaining with safety updates to maintain hackers at bay. But for smart residence tech that plugs in, doesn’t depart the security of your own home, and has solely restricted entry to your accounts, is it actually that improper for shoppers to anticipate their gadgets to largely simply hold on working? A rising variety of Nest Hub customers are grumbling about that simply now, as a wave of failures seems to be hitting the smart show, and Google doesn’t appear to be doing a lot about it.
The Nest Hub debuted as the Google House Hub all the way again in 2018, and it’s been moderately effectively supported over the years, getting a main software program refresh because it moved to Fuchsia and persevering with to behave as an reasonably priced resolution for controlling your smart residence. But over the course of the previous week or so, we’ve been recognizing studies of first-gen Nest Hub fashions getting caught on their boot display, and failing to function. Hub proprietor Angela Hopkins received a thread operating in Google’s Nest Group, and Reddit customers like Gabi_Social have been reporting the identical points on the website’s Google House sub.
Affected items seem to hold on the Google “G” when booting, and makes an attempt to manufacturing facility reset the {hardware} appear to be fruitless. In that Reddit account, the proprietor contacted Google help for assist, solely to be turned away as a result of their Nest Hub guarantee was 4 years expired.
There are many completely different ways in which previous, no-longer-supported merchandise can die. If gadgets rely on connection to an exterior server, as an illustration, the firm operating it could ultimately resolve to energy issues down. And whereas it sucks when that occurs, at the least that’s a acutely aware resolution that impacts all customers equally. What Nest Hub customers are experiencing right here, nonetheless, has extra of the hallmarks of a firmware replace gone improper, which whereas equally ignoble, is a far more irritating way for a product to die.
On Google’s Nest firmware page, the firm reveals model 26.20250116.103.2900 as being the most up-to-date launch for the Nest Hub, and it seems this software program began heading out inside the previous month.
We’ve reached out to Google in the hopes of studying extra about what may presumably be inflicting these issues, and to see if there’s any way for house owners to get their smart shows operational once more. We’ll replace you with something we hear again.
