Nest may have an updated thermostat on the way, if FCC filings are to be believed

Nest, the Alphabet company focused on building Internet of Things (IoT) products for the home that was acquired last year by Google for $3.2 billion, looks to be close to introducing an updated Nest Thermostat. That comes from an FCC regulatory filing first spotted yesterday by Business Insider.

Okay, I already know what you’re saying: Duh! Technology companies are always working on new iterations of their products, and Nest wouldn’t inexplicably stop updating its first product, the same one that thrust it into the spotlight. But we reported back in June that Nest was soon releasing a refreshed Nest Thermostat, Nest Protect smoke alarm, and Dropcam security camera. The latter two materialized along with a mobile app to control the whole Nest family of products from, and now the smart thermostat looks to be getting its update.

One thing to note is that the Nest documents that have passed through the FCC don’t actually tell us explicitly what the device in question is. Companies building any products with radios in them that they’d like to sell to customers in the United States must submit their products to the government regulatory agency for scrutinizing against its rules for how these devices may operate — like the radio wave strength their devices can release. Corporations can also, unfortunately for us, request tell-tale information be kept confidential so prying eyes like ours can’t see exactly what they’re up to, which is exactly what Nest has done.

What leads us to believe that it’s a thermostat, however, is the FCC product label, which all companies have to put on their device or in the software settings. In the picture Nest submitted of its placement of the label, we can see the device in question is puck-shaped, like all previous Nest Thermostats. Also, as Business Insider notes, the FCC ID for the new product matches that of the previous Nest Thermostat: ZQAT30, versus ZQAT20 on the previous model. The Nest Protect smoke alarm follows a different ID pattern, using AS instead of AT. ZQAS30 was the most recent iteration of the Nest Protect, while the first version was ZQAS10. The Nest Dropcam has an FCC ID of ZQANC11.

The Nest Thermostat did receive some updates at the same time as the company’s June unveiling of the updated smoke alarm and security camera, although they were limited to software-based improvements. It’s hard to say what hardware-based changes may come in the updated product when it is unveiled.