If you believe in FCC regulatory filings, and honestly who doesn’t, then start believing that there is a new Nest Thermostat on the horizon. The story was surprisingly first reported by Business Insider in what may be their first piece of investigative journalism to date.
The smoking gun in this case is the image to the right which was submitted along with the FCC filing to show the labeling they plan to place on the back of the upcoming mystery product. The FCC ID shown is ZQAT30, which on its own means nothing, but the existing Nest Thermost’s FCC ID is ZQAT20. This would appear to indicate that the device in the filing is an updated version of the Thermostat.
In comparison, the current Nest Protect ID is ZQAS30, and the previous version’s ID was ZQAS10. This has lead most people to assume that the assumption about versioning above is correct. I for one would love to know what the FCC ID of the first version of the Nest Thermostat was, or why the Nest Protect seems to have skipped from version one to version three.
It’s hard to say what hardware features Nest may have planned for a refresh of the thermostat. The differences between the original and the current version were fairly negligible. The current version offers more wiring choices than the original, the control ring is thinner and cleaner, and the current version has sensors hidden behind the black sensor window. They both run the same software, and it’s likely any new version will have to run the same version of software as the current Nest. The long and short is that I wouldn’t be deterred from buying one today over waiting a few months for a new one.