Philips has confirmed that a faulty firmware update left some Hue Bridge Pro smart home hubs completely inoperable, and is offering free replacement devices to affected owners regardless of warranty status. The company said fewer than 100 Hue Bridge Pro devices worldwide have been impacted by the issue.
Users began reporting that their Bridge Pro hubs were being bricked after installing firmware update 2071353020, which was released in June and described by Philips at the time as containing several small improvements to the hub’s performance. Affected devices stopped responding entirely, showing only a solid red status light with no way to recover functionality through a standard reset. A Signify spokesperson, representing the parent company behind the Philips Hue brand, told technology outlet Ars Technica that the issue occurred only under a very specific software update scenario, in which owners had disabled automatic updates, remained on an older firmware version for an extended period, and then manually installed the update after it had already been cached on the Bridge device for more than 10 days.
Philips said anyone affected by the issue can contact its support team to arrange a replacement, with the company confirming devices would be swapped free of charge regardless of whether the original unit remained under warranty. The gesture is a notable one given the Bridge Pro’s price point, which had already risen significantly for customers in some markets earlier this year. However, the replacement process comes with a significant catch, since the Hue Bridge Pro has no built in backup or restore functionality, meaning a replacement unit arrives completely blank. Affected owners must manually re-add and reconfigure every light, switch, sensor, scene, schedule, and third party integration from scratch, a process that can be especially time consuming given the Bridge Pro’s ability to support up to 150 lights and 50 accessories in a single household setup.
Philips said it has already begun rolling out a corrective firmware update intended to prevent any additional Bridge Pro devices from encountering the same problem, with the new version reportedly also adding support for new hardware accessories such as wired wall switch modules alongside its bug fixes. In the meantime, the company has advised users who have disabled automatic updates to avoid manually installing new firmware until the corrective update has been fully rolled out. The incident has renewed long standing criticism from Hue’s user community over the platform’s continued lack of a backup and restore feature, an issue users and reviewers have raised with the company for years, particularly as smart home setups have grown more complex and time consuming to reconfigure from scratch following hardware failures.
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