Philips seems to have accidentally leaked an image of an unreleased Hue lamp on its own social media pages, before the post was quickly taken down. Does it suggest something is coming soon, or was it simply a mistake?
The image in question showed a floor lamp with a ring-shaped light perched at the top of its tall stand. The light seemingly shines out in two different colors: a subtle colored ring on one side, with a wide, dispersed colored light on the other. At the bottom is a foot-operated switch, presumably for turning the lamp on and off.
The leaked lamp was first spotted by Hueblog on Philips Italia’s Instagram page as part of a post advertising a 25% discount to “brighten up your 2024.” However, at the time of writing, the post is nowhere to be found, indicating that Philips has since taken it down.
That lends weight to the idea that this could be a product that's about to launch, especially give the references to a 2024 sale, with the Instagram post perhaps being published a touch too early by an overzealous social media manager. Yet things aren’t quite that straightforward, and there’s another possible explanation for what happened.
We’ve seen this before
Interestingly, this is not the first time we’ve seen this product doing the rounds. A seemingly identical device, called the Philips Hue White Ambience Semeru Floor Lamp, was first spotted in 2019, although for one reason or another it never went on sale.
According to HomeKit News, this was to have a lifespan of up to 25,000 hours and provide 350 lumens of brightness, while its color temperature would range from 2,200K to 6,500K, and would likely be controlled from the Philips Hue app.
As far as we can see, that leaves us with two main possibilities for this lamp. Either Philips is planning to release it, and accidentally published its social media post too early; or the lamp isn't going be launched, and its picture was accidentally included in the Instagram post by someone who didn’t realize it was a product that was previously abandoned.
We should find out in due course which of these scenarios is correct; for now, we’re left with an ephemeral lamp that has once again vanished into the night, leaving a faint afterglow of mystery.
