Apple and LG smart home leaks reveal a lock, a thermostat and a very un-Apple badge
Leaked renders of a smart lock, thermostat and temperature sensor give us our first proper look at what Apple and LG have been building together, just days before Apple’s big home reveal.
For the best part of a decade, Apple’s smart home strategy has felt like a lovely house with a beautiful front door and almost no furniture inside. HomeKit has been around since 2014. The HomePod mini hasn’t had a proper update since 2020. And while Amazon and Google spent years filling our kitchens and hallways with Echo Shows and Nest Hubs, Apple mostly let other people’s gadgets do the talking.
That looks set to change next week. Thanks to a fresh batch of leaked images, we now have a much clearer idea of what the furniture will look like. Spoiler: some of it has someone else’s name on it.
What just leaked
Earlier this week, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple has been working with LG on a range of smart home gadgets, including a video doorbell and a thermostat. Days later, the well-connected leaker pdfu followed up with renders of three of those devices (a smart deadbolt lock, a smart thermostat and a small temperature sensor) along with a surprising amount of detail on their settings and features.
The biggest surprise is the branding. None of the three products carries an obvious Apple logo. Instead, each has a discreet LG mark, usually tucked on top rather than splashed across the front. According to the reports, this first wave of hardware will launch under LG’s name, not Apple’s.
The smart deadbolt lock
The lock is the most fleshed out of the three. Its party trick is a rotating keypad, and pdfu says it ships with a swivel pin that limits how far it turns, so it won’t clatter into a nearby wall when you swing the door open. That’s exactly the sort of small, considered detail we’d hope for from anything Apple has a hand in, and it’s something cheaper locks routinely forget about.
Dig into the settings and you’ll find options for a touchpad light ring, a door-left-open alarm and lock sound volume. On the feature front it covers auto-unlock, tap-to-unlock, emergency power and master codes. None of that will make Yale lose sleep on its own, as it’s pretty much the standard checklist for a modern smart lock. What we’re really curious about is how it talks to the rest of the Apple ecosystem, especially if Apple’s long-rumoured Face ID doorbell turns up to unlock it as you walk up the path.
It comes with two physical keys and fits 60.3mm and 69.9mm brackets (2.375in and 2.75in). And here’s our first note of caution for UK readers. Those are the standard backset sizes for American-style deadbolts, and most British front doors use euro cylinder or mortice locks instead. Unless LG has a separate version planned for our market, this one could be a US-first product, or a fiddly DIY job to fit over here.
The smart thermostat
The leak is thinner on the thermostat, but what we do know is promising. Settings reportedly include a far-sight display, a humidity readout, brightness and language, plus calibrated temperature and a temperature offset option. That last one is handy if your thermostat happens to live in a draughty hallway or right above a radiator, as so many do.
Design-wise, it’s round. That puts it closer to Google’s Nest thermostat than most of its rivals, which tend to favour a squarish shape with softened corners. Whether that’s a cheeky nod at Google or simply LG’s own design language, it’s a confident look.
The big unknown for us in the UK is compatibility. Thermostats are notoriously regional, and a product designed around American heating and air conditioning won’t necessarily play nicely with a British combi boiler. Tado, Hive and Nest have spent years tailoring their kit to UK homes, so LG will need more than good looks to compete here.
The temperature sensor
The smallest gadget might be the cleverest. It’s a little white disc that tracks both temperature and humidity, with a magnetic back so it can cling to metal surfaces. For everywhere else, LG throws in a metal plate you can stick to a wall or shelf. It runs on a replaceable battery and will nudge you when that battery needs swapping.
On its own, a sensor isn’t thrilling. Paired with the thermostat, it gets much more interesting. Room sensors are what let a smart heating system work out that the bedroom is freezing while the living room is toasty, and adjust accordingly. If Apple and LG are thinking about comfort across the entire home rather than one thermostat on one wall, that’s a smart move.
What else is on the way
These three devices aren’t the whole story. According to Gurman, Apple and LG are also working on a video doorbell and three security cameras: indoor, outdoor and floodlight. That’s a direct shot at Ring, Arlo and Nest.
It also ties up a thread that’s been dangling for a while. For years, Gurman has reported that Apple wanted a doorbell with facial recognition that could unlock a connected deadbolt when it spots someone who lives there, and that it was considering teaming up with a lock maker to offer a complete package from day one. LG looks like the answer to that riddle, albeit a much broader partnership than anyone expected.
The HomePad and 13 October
All of this lands just days before what’s shaping up to be Apple’s biggest home announcement yet. Bloomberg reports that Apple plans to kick off its long-delayed smart home push on Tuesday 13 October, and Gurman has since said there’ll be an event that day. We don’t yet know whether that means a full keynote or something more low-key.
The star should be the device everyone is calling the HomePad (internally it’s codenamed J490). It’s reportedly a roughly 6-inch square display about as thin as an iPhone, designed to stand on a worktop or mount on a wall, with a light around its edge that wakes up when you approach. Apple apparently expects people to buy several and dot them around the house, using them to control thermostats and locks, make FaceTime calls, act as an intercom, play music and cycle through iCloud photos.
Alongside it, Apple is expected to launch a new HomePod mini, its first update since 2020, and a new Apple TV 4K, the first since 2022. Both are said to be built around the new Siri, which Bloomberg says now runs on large language models developed with Google’s help. That rebuilt Siri is the reason this hardware has taken so long. Apple originally targeted 2024 for the home display, and Siri’s repeated delays dragged everything else back with it.
Why the LG badge matters
At first glance, letting LG put its name on these products feels like an odd call for a company as fiercely protective of its brand as Apple. We actually think it’s rather shrewd.
Locks, thermostats and cameras are messy categories. They need installing, they vary wildly from country to country, they come with regulatory headaches and, when they fail, they fail in ways that make headlines. A smart lock that glitches and leaves someone stranded on their doorstep is a far bigger problem with an Apple logo on it. Let LG front the hardware and Apple gets a showcase for its platform without betting its reputation on every hinge and battery.
There’s precedent, too. Apple has backed the Matter standard and leaned on outside brands to fill out HomeKit for years. Bloomberg has also reported that Apple is revamping HomeKit with new categories of connected products and working with other manufacturers on devices built for its Siri-powered home platform. LG may simply be the first, and biggest, name on that list.
The flip side is that it slightly waters down the dream of a fully Apple-designed home. If you were hoping for an Apple-branded thermostat with the polish of an Apple Watch, this isn’t quite it. Not yet, anyway.
Our take
We’ve waited a long time for Apple to take the smart home seriously, and these leaks suggest it finally is. The lock’s swivel pin and the sensor’s magnetic back hint at a level of care plenty of rival products lack, and splitting the job between Apple’s software and LG’s hardware is a sensible way to get a full ecosystem out of the door quickly.
But we do have questions. Pricing is a complete mystery, and anything Apple-adjacent rarely comes cheap. UK availability is another worry, especially for a lock built around American door hardware and a thermostat that will need to cope with British boilers. And the whole thing hinges on the new Siri being genuinely good, because a smart home is only as clever as the assistant running it.
We’ll know a lot more on Tuesday. If Apple nails the HomePad, these LG gadgets could be the first pieces of the most joined-up smart home Apple has ever offered. If it doesn’t, they’re just some very nicely designed locks and thermostats with a rather lovely rotating keypad.
