In the drought of new Nest Hub updates, Google’s head of Home has confirmed that, yes, the Nest Hub is not dead, but there’s also no “explicit news” just yet.
Speaking on the latest episode of The Vergecast, Google Home chief Anish Kattukaran was asked about the future of the smart display. After all, Google announced a new smart speaker earlier this month for Gemini, but was relatively silent on smart displays.
If you were hoping for Kattukaran to outright confirm a new Nest Hub coming soon, you’d be disappointed. Before diving into the topic, Kattukaran directly says “we’re not sharing any explicit news about smart displays” yet, but his comments make it pretty clear new devices are in the pipeline.
He firstly said that “we’re definitely committed to smart displays” and that “you should definitely expect that we’ll have news to share there.” Speaking further on the topic, Kattukaran explained:
I think the reason I’m excited about this category is that you think about how all these LLM technologies are sort of converging, it does present itself as an incredible form factor to interact with something like Gemini for Home. If you think about the properties of a smart display — a microphone, which means audio in, a speaker, so audio out. It’s got a screen, which complements a voice modality, you can interact with it and visualize information…. As I see where Gemini for Home is going and Gemini more broadly, all of the things Google is investing in building, for me it feels like almost the ultimate form factor to be able to deliver a really great home experience. So, that’s why we are going to continue to invest in that category, so I think it’s going to be awesome.
Google launched its first Nest Hub smart display back in 2018, originally calling it the Home Hub, with a second-generation of the device launching in 2021. In between, the Nest Hub Max delivered a larger display, better speakers, and a built-in camera that doubled as a Nest Cam. All three of those smart displays are still supported today and will be getting Gemini features, but it’s also clear there’s room for something new at this point.
What would you want out of a new Nest Hub?
More on Google Home:
- Google is ‘committed to earning back your trust’ with Nest, Home, and Gemini
- When is Gemini for Home rolling out: Schedule, countries, & early access
- Is the Nest Hub still worth buying? [Video]
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