Sadly, not everything we buy these days is designed to last forever and this especially applies to the world of consumer tech. It’s hard to keep the shelf life of products going when they require constant maintenance and attention to keep them updated for support and security. Eventually, you have to know when to pull the cord and move on. Some may think of this as the never-ending wheel of forcing consumers to upgrade all the time, but realistically, how long can any company afford to support a product without charging for those updates?
Coming next month, the first-generation model of the Philips Hue Bridge will be one of those products that will be retired. Replaced by the Hue Bridge 2, Philips feels that the first-gen version is no longer worthy of future support. It’s been on the market for nearly 8 years, making it a well-supported product compared to other tech items you find falling out of date much quicker (smartphones, to name a popular category).
Support will be ended on April 30 (2020), so you will have to get your hands on the Gen 2 model if you’d like to continue using their online services and getting updates (including security patches). The bridge will still be usable locally on your network via the app, so it won’t be a requirement for everyone at first. However, with IoT being constantly under attack, it would benefit you to upgrade just for the security patches alone.
To determine which model you have, look at the image above. If your bridge looks like the one of the left (round), then you have the old model that is being discontinued and need to buy into the latest version (second-gen) to keep the updates and online functions rolling. If yours looks like the one on the right (square), then you are good to go and have nothing to worry about.
