Gadgets

It’s been a tough few years for Berlin-based femtech hardware startup Inne which came out of stealth R&D in the fall of 2019, shortly before COVID-19 hit Europe. By January 2020, founder and CEO Eirini Rapti tells us she was busy making final inspections ahead of the launch of its debut product — a connected

Microsoft’s Imagine Cup is something I look forward to every year. The students and young entrepreneurs who submit their extremely early-stage projects to this global competition are like the seeds of future startups and potentially world-changing projects. This year’s winner, V Bionic, created a robotic glove to help patients with neurological damage recover faster at

If I were to make a list of things that I didn’t think needed to get smarter, bike pedals would be somewhere near the top of the list. And yet, when Redshift Sports showed me its shiny (literally!) new pedals, I had one of those “omg this makes so much sense” moments. In a nutshell,

I tried out the brand new Withings ScanWatch about six months ago, and concluded that it was a great smartwatch for people who prioritize their health over wearing a tiny iPhone-like device on their wrists. Today, the French company announced a classier-looking version of the same watch, borrowing design language from dive watches of yore.

Hardware, as the saying goes, is hard; but there remains an opportunity for startups that focus on specific niches to build viable businesses. In the latest example, reMarkable, the Oslo, Norway-based maker of a simple and slick $299 e-paper tablet of the same name, says that it has passed 1 million devices sold since 2017

Apple has released a bevy of new accessibility features for iPhone, Apple Watch, and Mac, including a universal live captioning tool, improved visual and auditory detection modes, and iOS access to WatchOS apps. The new capabilities will arrive “later this year” as updates roll out to various platforms. The most widely applicable tool is probably

A long, long time ago, before the iPod, MP3 players were badly designed devices with insufficient storage. The market was ripe for a change, and Steve Jobs, who had returned to Apple four years prior, was ready to give it to us. On October 23, 2001 the company released its first music player with a

The last thing we need in this world is more guns. But we’re getting them whether we like it or not, so wouldn’t it be nice if those guns had safety mechanisms like our phones, making them impossible for anyone but their owners to use? That’s what Biofire is building, and it has raised $17

Offering a sneak preview of the Pixel 7 wasn’t enough, so Google’s really leaning in. Today at I/O, the company announced that it’s returning to the tablet business with a new device set for, get this, a 2023 launch. “Normally we wouldn’t tease a new product before it’s ready,” said Google’s hardware chief Rick Osterloh,

If you’ve always wanted Giancarlo Esposito — the actor playing the meth-slinging Los Pollos Hermanos boss Gustavo Fring from “Breaking Bad” — to guide you through your choice of music, ho boy does Sonos have a treat for you. Esposito lent his voice to a Sonos speaker near you, alongside its long-awaited voice control feature

Most of the time no one has to think about how the mobile networks we all rely on work. But it won’t surprise many to hear that, as is often the case with infrastructure, some pieces are the latest tech and others haven’t changed in decades. Eridan is a well-funded startup aiming to replace one

DJI has just introduced a new drone — its most capable ever to squeak under the 250 gram limit that keeps operators free from a whole host of headaches and restrictions for flight (note that local laws and rules still do apply — being small doesn’t mean you can do anything you want). The DJI

Last October marked 20 years of the iPod. It’s a remarkable run in the cutthroat, always-iterating world of consumer electronics. And while it’s undoubtedly true that life hasn’t been particularly for the music player in a product lineup that includes various iPhones and iPads, the beloved music player has somehow managed to hang on. That

If drones are to take over any of the numerous tasks they are supposed to, they’re going to have to get a lot smarter — and learn to work together. In a demonstration of both of these things, Chinese researchers show off a swarm of drones collectively navigating a dense forest they’ve never encountered. We’ve

Boston- and San Francisco-based Mode Designs may not be a mainstream brand, but the company has made quite a name for itself in the mechanical keyboard world in recent years. The company’s previous releases, the high-end custom Mode Eighty tenkeyless (TKL), which you can easily configure to cost over $600 — without keycaps and switches

Meet Pixy, Snap’s little flying companion. Pixy is a mini drone that can act as a camera sidekick when you can’t ask someone to take a video of you. It’s yellow, it’s cute and it’ll be available in the U.S. and in France for $229.99. “Today, we’re taking the power and magic of the Snap

As humanity prepares to return to the Moon (“to stay,” as they remind us constantly), there’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built to make sure astronauts are safe and productive on the lunar surface. Without GPS, navigation and mapping is a lot harder — and NASA is working with lidar company Aeva

Cultivated meat, grown in a bioreactor rather than out on the range, might be one of the big food trends of the decade. But it’s relying on tech built around multiplying yeast and bacteria cells, not animal tissue — and Unicorn Biotechnologies wants to change that with new equipment created with mass food production in

European Union lawmakers have taken a step closer to agreeing rules to standardize how a range of mobile gadgetry is charged. Today MEPs in the European Parliament’s internal market and consumer protection (IMCO) committee adopted their position on a Commission proposal announced last fall, ahead of a full vote by the parliament next month to

Everyone thought it was a little bonkers when Panic announced that they would be making a monochrome handheld gaming machine with a sort of subscription model where you can’t choose the games you get. DOA, right? Well, the preorders sold out so perhaps not. And fortunately, Playdate is a fun, weird and promising device that’s

Luis Severino cupped the glove around his ear in frustration. The Yankee Stadium two-strike Death Star siren was blaring over the PA, the announcers reasoned. The pitcher signaled frustration with a new piece of technology that’s quickly been rolled out on baseball’s biggest stage. Manager Aaron Boone walked out to the mound, handing Severino a

A growing number of people are looking for ways to live more sustainably amid increasing concerns over the environment and what we humans keep doing to pollute it. Today, a startup called Grover that has built a business around one aspect of that — enticing people to buy and eventually discard less consumer electronics such

China’s augmented reality startup Nreal is on a roll. The company, which hopes to bring AR to the masses by making bright-color, lightweight smart glasses, has just received $60 million in a Series C extension round, bringing its total funding in the last 12 months to a handsome $200 million. The new investment is led by

If you’ve never picked a raspberry, well, first of all that’s too bad, because a fresh raspberry is a beautiful thing. But second, and more immediately relevant in this case, you would not know that there is a technique to it that, surprisingly, robots aren’t super good at because they tend to be… crushy. But

The race is certainly on in the electrification of boating … even if everyone is jockeying for position before the market materializes. Flux Marine is joining the likes of Pure and Zin in trying to convert some of our waterways’ gas-guzzling outboards to cleaner, quieter battery powered ones, and the company just raised $15.5 million

Meet the Devialet Dione, a brand new speaker from high-end speaker manufacturer Devialet. With this new product, the company is entering a new market — home cinema sound systems. The Devialet Dione is an all-in-one soundbar compatible with Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 and it costs $2,400 (€2,190). “We are at the high end of the market

Figuring out what’s going on in the brain is generally considered to be somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible. One major challenge is that the best ways to do so are room-sized machines relegated to hospitals — but brain.space is hoping that its portable, powerful, and most importantly user-friendly EEG helmet (plus $8.5M in funding)

Twenty years ago, getting a human genome sequenced was a billion-dollar, international project. Today, you can get your dog’s genome sequenced by the end of the month for a few bucks. It speaks to the speed with which genetics has permeated our lives, but despite massive improvements to the technology, the process can still be

The first DJI Mavic turned the world of consumer drones on its head when it was released back in late-2016. The compact, foldable design launched a million copy cats around the world — including a number under the drone giant’s own umbrella. Compact certainly isn’t the first word that comes to mind in the enterprise

Mining is one of the oldest industries out there, but it has increasingly embraced high-tech methods as demand has increased. Plotlogic uses hyperspectral imaging, a technique generally found in labs and satellites, to add a new layer of data and automation to these crucial but often dated operations. Hyperspectral imagery is basically a photo that