Gadgets

For fifty-four years, big and small hardware manufacturers that hoped to reach their target audiences rolled out new products at the Consumer Electronics Show. The first CES event in June 1967 drew 17,500 attendees, where many in the crowd were absolutely dazzled by GE’s new 24-pound color television. In the intervening decades, the conference grew

French startup Back Market has raised another mega round of funding. In May, the company raised a $335 million Series D round. Today, the company is announcing a $510 million Series E round, which values the company at $5.7 billion. If you’re not familiar with Back Market, the company operates a marketplace of refurbished electronics

As a journalist and investor, I’m always a little suspicious of single-product, super-niche companies; there are just so many things that can go wrong, and one of the ways that direct-to-consumer brands do well is having the ability to cross-sell to its customers. Morphée was one of those brands, starting with its frankly ludicrously over-designed

Working from home has been my normal for more than a decade, but it’s getting a bit stale. Time to spice it up — with some of CES 2022’s hottest items, all of which definitely kind of exist. First off let’s upgrade these dinky twin 27-inch Dells I’ve been attempting to work on for the

US medical device maker, Abbott, is moving into making general purpose consumer biosensing wearables. The company has been making continuous glucose monitor (CGM) hardware for diabetes management for years (since 2014) — but in a healthtech keynote at CES yesterday, Abbott’s chairman and CEO, Robert B Ford, announced it’s developing a new line of consumer

Long gone are the days when CES actually stood for “Consumer Electronics Show” — the CTA has seen to that in its various small print. I recommend you check out our recent best of CES 2012 story for a look back on the days when things like smartphones took center stage at the event. Mobile

For four weeks during 2021, this TechCrunch reporter took the plunge and tested a “metabolic fitness” service from Bangalore-based startup Ultrahuman. The tracker program, branded Cyborg, uses arm-mounted medical grade hardware to get a real-time read-out of your blood glucose — using that dynamic data-point to power a quantified health service that scores what you

After fitting some of its cars with comfy lounge chairs at CES 2020, BMW today unveiled the next step in its in-car entertainment story: a 31-inch 8K smart TV with support for Amazon’s Fire TV service (with a country-specific streaming service for China in the works, too). This new 32:9 “My Mode Theatre” screen for

No one wants to be the maintenance worker who has to hike through half a mile of damp hallways just to check the pressure gauge on a valve somewhere. LiLz makes it possible to keep an eye on such inconvenient physical interfaces remotely with a clever and practical application of machine learning. The Japanese (specifically

Putting solar panels on the roof is increasingly realistic for the average homeowner, but they tend to be specialized, aftermarket affairs or else whole-roof replacements. GAF Energy, a division of the roofing giant, claims its new solar shingles are simple enough to install that no special equipment or knowledge is required, making home renewable energy

On a congested sidewalk next to a busy mall in Shenzhen, a 20-something woman uses a smartphone app to order a milk tea on Meituan, a major food delivery company. In under ten minutes, the pearl-white drink arrives, not on the back of one of the city’s ubiquitous delivery bikes, but descending from the cloudy

As nostalgia goes, the Fisher-Price Chatter phone doesn’t disappoint. The classic retro kids toy was given a modern revamp for the holiday season with the new release for adults which, unlike the original toy designed for kids, can make and receive calls over Bluetooth using a nearby smartphone. The Chatter — despite a working rotary

Ameelio, a nonprofit startup that intends to replace inmate-paid video calling in prisons with a free service, is making inroads against the companies that have dominated the space for decades. With 9 facilities in Iowa up and running and talks progressing with dozens more ahead of a planned 2022 launch, the company may soon usher

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2021 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’ve got lots of them. Check back from now until the end of December for more!  Less than two weeks left until Christmas! Got your shopping done? No? Yeaaaah me neither. Want to buy someone a great gadget but don’t want to break

The US government will place eight Chinese companies including drone manufacturer DJI on an investment blocklist for alleged involvement in surveillance of Uyghur Muslims, the Financial Times has reported. The firms will reportedly be put on the Treasure department’s “Chinese military-industrial complex companies” list on Tuesday, meaning US citizens will be barred from making any

Chinese smartphone giant Oppo revealed its first in-house chipset at its annual innovation event hosted in Shenzhen on Tuesday. The MariSilicon X chip announced — named after the Mariana Trench — is a neural processing unit that aims to boost photo and video performance through machine learning. The move adds Oppo to a list of smartphone

Candela makes an unusual style of watercraft called a hydrofoiling boat, which glides above the sea on fins for a smoother, more efficient ride — doubly unusual, in fact, in that it is electrically propelled. The company has raised $24M to accelerate production of its existing small craft and a larger commercial one, in pursuit

Berlin-based smartphone-as-a-service provider, Everphone, has topped up with $65 million in a Series C equity raise in addition to taking $135M in debt financing — for a total raise of $200M. The latest tranche of funding is led by German private equity investor, Cadence Growth Capital (CGC), which is now Everphone’s biggest shareholder. Deutsche Telekom,

Francois Nguyen Contributor Francois Nguyen, executive design director of product design at frog, is responsible for ensuring high standards of design excellence. With hybrid models taking off across many aspects of society, it’s clear that though they offer incredible flexibility, the boundary lines between work and personal life are becoming increasingly blurred and emotionally draining. Ritual has always been

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2021 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’ve got lots of them. Looking for our other guides? Find them here! As we wade into the second pandemic-era holiday season, there’s no better time to throw yourself headlong into a new hobby. Or that’s what you should tell your loved ones

Snapdragon’s G3x is Qualcomm’s fantastically exciting bid to embrace the gaming market — a brand new reach for the manufacturer, which introduces powerful GPUs, 5G-enabled connectivity, the ability to power external screens, immersive audio capabilities, haptic feedback and a slew of other features that handheld gaming manufacturers have had to cobble together from other sources.

Architecture and construction have always been, rather quietly, at the bleeding edge of tech and materials trends. It’s no surprise, then, especially at a renowned technical university like ETH Zurich, to find a project utilizing AI and robotics in a new approach to these arts. The automated design and construction they are experimenting with show

Tobii is bringing its eye-tracking tech to the iPad with TD Pilot, a case meant to turn Apple’s tablet into a powerful all-in-one tool for people with physical impairments. Equipped with TD Pilot, users can launch and use apps, type quickly, and speak with a synthetic voice using nothing but their gaze. iPadOS 15 brought

Cognixion, a startup designing an intuitive brain-monitoring headset and interface for people with physical disabilities, has raised a $12M A round to pursue its accessibility ambitions. Armed with this funding, it should be able to complete the long list of requirements necessary for any medical or assistive device to be made widely available. The company,

If you had “my shower head needs a small turbine, a Bluetooth connection, an app and a fine-spray mist” on your 2021 bingo card, congratulations, you win the prize. The prize is knowing that Hai exists — and this fine news story, which will tell you all about how the company raised $6 million to

Belkin has a new 3-in-1 wireless charger that’s tailor made for iPhone and Apple Watch owners, and that also provides MagSafe 15W charging speeds for iPhone 12 and 13, along with fast charging for the latest Apple Watch 7 series. Belikin also introduce a new standalone portable fast charger for Apple Watch that includes an

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2021 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’ve got lots of them. We’re just starting to roll out this year’s gift guides, so check back from now until the end of December for more!  For this year’s STEM toy gift guide we’ve split out our recommendations by age for easier

Audio processing startup Mimi promises to make a personalized hearing profile for you, meaning that you can hear well without having to crank the volume up too loudly. This both helps prevent hearing loss, and it helps people who’ve already suffered some hearing loss to be able to hear their content better without having to

The latest pair of e-readers from Kobo provide a modest but noticeable upgrade to the display, stylus support, and Bluetooth for listening to audiobooks, but take a step down in build quality from the admirable Forma. But the new capabilities may be worth the upgrade, and the Libra 2 especially makes for an attractive little

Microsoft is making its play for the new shape of classrooms with a pared-down version of Windows 11 and a set of inexpensive laptops from the Surface brand and several other manufacturers. It’s clear they’ve got Google’s popular Chromebooks in their sights, and their partners seem to be hedging their bets as well. Before all