The passion displayed here (and other threads) is one of the things that keeps me excited about SmartThings and the future. But you guys are too funny sometimes.
We are releasing the next generation hub (v2) in a matter of weeks and people act like this is Duke Nukem Forever. More amusing is the idea that it will be a silver bullet for all the platform woes. Sure things will run locally, but that local app engine IS essentially the cloud service running on the hub. If anything this complicates the architecture. All events will still be sent to the cloud so that notifications and things can be sent to your phone, wherever you are.
You can quote me, but I think most current customers should NOT upgrade unless you really want video streaming. There will not be a migration tool at launch so if you have 50+ devices connected you are tearing that down and building it up again. There are likely going to be a few other disappointments with the impending hub v2 release. Will it be better than v1? Yes. Worth upgrading right out of the gate? I wouldn’t.