Samsung Rolls Out SmartThings Hub Firmware With Matter 1.6

Samsung has begun rolling out its 62.x hub firmware in beta, updating SmartThings to Matter 1.6 and introducing changes to how Thread networks are managed.

Thread management is the more consequential half. Platform hubs have historically each formed their own Thread network, which is what produced the parallel-mesh problem that Thread 1.4 addresses at the specification level. A platform reworking how it handles those networks is a signal that the ecosystem side of the fix is arriving alongside the standard, rather than years behind it as has often been the pattern.

For households already running SmartThings, the practical advice is the ordinary advice for beta firmware on infrastructure: a hub is the component whose failure takes everything else with it, so there is a good case for letting a beta run for a few weeks in other people's homes first.