Gadgets

Jamie Siminoff has been busy. The Ring founder quietly exited the advisor role he took back in March after exiting the brand’s CEO role. He had been at Amazon since its 2018 acquisition of the firm. Turns out he’s sold yet another startup — this time one you’ve never heard of. The clunkily named Honest

Google long ago abandoned the pretense of surprise about the Pixel line. There’s an extent to which you can point the finger at the hardware rumor industrial complex. But at the end of the day, the company was always going to take matters into its own hands and announce its most anticipated hardware device a

Dutch social enterprise Fairphone is best known for its mission to build ethical smartphones via a brand that promises fairer wages for supply chain workers and design choices that encourage consumers to cherish and repair the hardware rather than toss last year’s model thanks to modularity and a web shop selling replacement (and upgradeable) spare

Who says compact cameras are dead? Well, the market does, actually; the mobile phone has all but killed off the category altogether, so it’s interesting to see Canon take another stab at the market. The PowerShot series of cameras today gained its newest family member, the V10. The main question this product has to overcome

I’m back in the South Bay this week, banging away at an introduction in the hotel lobby a few minutes before our crew heads to Shoreline for Google I/O. There’s a guy behind in a business suit and sockless loafers, taking a loud business meeting on his AirPods. It’s good to be home. I’ve got

The kooky geniuses at Teenage Engineering are back with a new gadget that is guaranteed to make you salivate until its price tag smacks you back to reality. The maker of drool-worthy synthesizers just announced the TP-7, a teeny portable recorder that features a “motorized tape reel,” which spins as it captures audio and also

It’s that moment you’ve been waiting for all year: Google I/O keynote day! Google kicks off its developer conference each year with a rapid-fire stream of announcements, including many unveilings of recent things it’s been working on. Brian already kicked us off by sharing what we are expecting. We know you don’t always have time

This week, ten-year-old drone company ACSL announced plans to enter the U.S. commercial drone market. The firm has already taken a sizable bite out of the market in its native Japan, with a certification from the country’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, as well as a deal to provide disaster support for the

Look, I’m not going to sit here and pretend like the entire world didn’t know this was happening next week, but is a bit of theatrics too much to ask? Google learned a few years back that the best way to juice a product hype cycle is to “leak” the thing yourself, and here here

Worldwide, about one in six people live with a disability. Whether through injury or illness, disability can manifest itself as an impediment to mobility. There have been fantastic advancements in communication and operational technologies, but there’s always room for improvement, and Augmental, an MIT Media Lab spinoff, thinks that it might be on to something

The prospect of contacting a satellite to send a text or contact emergency services may soon be an effortless reality as startups move from proof of concept to actual product. Canadians on the Rogers network, which just inked a deal with Lynk, will get direct satellite-phone connections across the country; and not to be outdone,

If you find smartphone notifications annoying enough already thanks to their skill at exploiting the full range of distraction options available, whether dropping a banner from above or sprinkling pox-like red balls over your homescreen icons so as to lodge like grit in the eye, you should prepare yourself for even less subtle demands bubbling

Colorado’s governor signed a refreshingly straightforward “right-to-repair” bill into law this afternoon, requiring companies to provide resources like parts, firmware and manuals for devices that they previously kept secret and proprietary even if an owner wanted to do the repairs themselves. Colorado’s “Consumer Repair Bill of Rights Act” is one of many such bills that

DJI has spent the last several years doubling down on its imagining prowess — tripling down as it were, in this case. Makes sense. Aside from the underlying fun of flying these things around, all of the most immediate consumer/prosumer applications revolve around picture taking and video. The new Mavic 3 Pro embraces the prosumer

It’s been a whirlwind few years for Oura. The hardware-maker rode the early days of the pandemic to the top of the wearable ranks, establishing itself as the top smart ring maker by a mile. With the promise of detecting early COVID warning signals, the company struck up brand partnerships with some of the world’s

The reality is that millions of Indian consumers continue to purchase Apple products despite feeling like second-tier customers. Manish Singh 7 hours Apple is making headlines this week as it opens its first retail store in India, a significant milestone roughly 25 years after entering the South Asian market. CEO Tim Cook is visiting the

When you think Canon, you might think cameras, scanners, printers and such. At CES this year, the company did a stride toward the softer side of tech, taking a broader view of what imaging means. Today, the VR calling software the company showed off back in January is available to you — if you have

At a certain point, the market will, indeed, stabilize. It has to. Demand for new smartphones has been consistently down for some time now, but the phones themselves are, obviously, here to stay. This is how we arrive at surveys that suggest people would give up shampooing or lose a finger rather than go without

India’s smartphone exports have more than doubled, reaching over $11 billion in the fiscal year that ended in March, according to trade data examined by the industry body India Cellular and Electronics Association and government officials, underscoring the South Asian market’s growing ambition to become a global hardware manufacturing hub. Smartphone exports of $11.2 billion

Nearly two decades after Apple entered India, the iPhone-maker is ready to open its first set of retail stores in the South Asian market. Apple will open Apple BKC, its Mumbai store, on April 18, and its Delhi outlet Apple Saket on April 20, the company said in a statement Tuesday. Apple has long explored

After a nice spike during the first two years of the pandemic, global PC shipments continued to drop for a fourth consecutive quarter. Analyst firm IDC’s latest figure has Q1 down 29% from the same time last year. Canalys paints an even more troubling picture for the industry, with a full 33% drop. A disappointing

Apple has devised a pocket-sized companion that (hypothetically) does it all: music, videos AND books, sans the nagging smartphone or clumsy smartwatch. Cupertino, you’re so close. In a patent application published recently by the U.S. Patent Office, Apple sketched out such a device, a headphone-case-meets-pocket-computer with a touchscreen display and the prerequisite guts for flicking

Apple is gearing up to open its first retail store in India to the public later this month, roughly two decades after the company began selling products and services in the South Asian nation that has grown to become the second largest internet market. The iPhone-maker on Wednesday shared the barricade of its first retail

Have you ever wanted an iPhone case that looks like a pair of Crocs? You know, the ugly-but-comfy slip-on shoes covered in holes that you can optionally decorate with colorful push-pins? You haven’t? Well, apparently some designer at smartphone case maker Casetify saw a pair of Crocs and thought to themselves, wow, that would make

Sonos has two new speakers going on sale Tuesday, March 28, and they’re both significant new models that occupy a couple of key spots in the overall Sonos line-up: The Era 100 is essentially the replacement for the Sonos One, arguably the ‘default’ starter speaker for anyone looking to build out a Sonos system. The

Framework is one of a few companies leading the charge against disposable electronics, in particular laptops. It just showed off some new models, but also a unique case that you can slot your old parts into to form a new (old) desktop or home media PC. After reviewing last year’s Framework 13 and finding it

The European Commission has laid out another piece of its Circular Economy Action Plan today — adopting a proposal to set common EU rules which are intended to make it easier for consumers to get faulty products repaired. The “right to repair” measures are aimed at reducing e-waste by preventing repairable products from being prematurely

After 25 years of extremely detailed reviews of digital cameras and accessories, the irreplaceable DPReview is being shut down by Amazon as the company proceeds with a new round of layoffs. DPReview was founded in 1998 in England, and bought by Amazon in 2010, which relocated the team to Seattle to be closer to its

There’s no shortage of startups attempting to put drones to work. There is, however, a longstanding question around the efficacy of such plans. Drones — especially the smaller variety — are impressive pieces of technology, but their functionality is relatively limited. A small quadcopter probably isn’t going to prune your trees or walk your dog

For many people around the world, braille is their primary language for reading books and articles, and digital braille readers are an important part of that. The newest and fanciest yet is the Monarch, a multipurpose device that uses the startup Dot’s tactile display technology. The Monarch is a collaboration between HumanWare and the American