TL;DR
- House owners of the first-gen Nest Hub report latest system failures, freezing up in the course of the boot course of.
- Makes an attempt to manufacturing unit reset the {hardware} haven’t been profitable at restoring operation.
- It’s attainable a latest firmware replace might play a task, however Google has but to verify something.
Replace, Could 16, 2025 (09:41 PM ET): We’ve heard again from Google, and the corporate confirms that it’s conscious of those studies, and has a repair rolling out.
Google’s answer is scheduled to hit all Nest Hub models by someday early subsequent week. In case you’re nonetheless experiencing a problem just like the one we describe right here after that, Google asks that you just observe up in its help thread to let the corporate know.
Unique article, Could 16, 2025 (04:04 PM ET): How lengthy do you anticipate your units to final? With one thing like a telephone, you’ve acquired the specter of bodily injury hanging over it principally on a regular basis, want to fret about its battery deciding to go all explosive on you, and had higher ensure your producer is maintaining with safety updates to maintain hackers at bay. However for sensible residence tech that plugs in, doesn’t go away the protection of your home, and has solely restricted entry to your accounts, is it actually that fallacious for customers to anticipate their units to largely simply carry 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 sensible show, and Google doesn’t appear to be doing a lot about it.
The Nest Hub debuted because the Google Dwelling Hub all the best way again in 2018, and it’s been moderately effectively supported over time, getting a significant software program refresh because it moved to Fuchsia and persevering with to behave as an reasonably priced answer for controlling your sensible residence. However 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 screen, and failing to function. Hub proprietor Angela Hopkins acquired a thread operating in Google’s Nest Neighborhood, and Reddit customers like Gabi_Social have been reporting the identical points on the location’s Google Dwelling sub.
Affected models seem to hold on the Google “G” when booting, and makes an attempt to manufacturing unit 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 outdated, no-longer-supported merchandise can die. If units depend on connection to an exterior server, as an example, the corporate operating it might ultimately resolve to energy issues down. And whereas it sucks when that occurs, a minimum of that’s a aware determination that impacts all customers equally. What Nest Hub customers are experiencing right here, nevertheless, has extra of the hallmarks of a firmware replace gone fallacious, which whereas equally ignoble, is a way more irritating approach for a product to die.
On Google’s Nest firmware web page, the corporate reveals model 26.20250116.103.2900 as being the latest launch for the Nest Hub, and it seems this software program began heading out inside the previous month.
We’ve reached out to Google within the hopes of studying extra about what may probably be inflicting these issues, and to see if there’s any approach for house owners to get their sensible shows operational once more. We’ll replace you with something we hear again.