The list of discontinued smart home devices keeps growing

A growing number of once-popular smart home products have been discontinued or lost manufacturer support in recent years, a trend chronicled in "The Stepback," a weekly newsletter from The Verge that examines the state of connected devices.

The newsletter, which arrives in subscribers' inboxes on Sundays, has increasingly turned its attention to what it describes as a "graveyard" of smart home gadgets — devices that promised convenience and automation but were later shut down, abandoned by their manufacturers, or rendered unusable when supporting cloud services were switched off.

A decade of promises

The trend traces back roughly a decade, to an early wave of connected home devices that arrived promising to modernize everyday appliances and routines. Since then, a number of these products have failed to remain viable long-term, leaving early adopters with hardware that no longer functions as intended.

The pattern highlights a recurring tension in the smart home industry: devices that depend on manufacturer-run servers or apps can become obsolete not because the hardware itself fails, but because the company behind it discontinues the software or service that makes the device work.

The newsletter's ongoing coverage of the issue reflects broader consumer concerns about the durability and long-term reliability of connected home technology.