Gadgets

TVs this year will ship with a new feature called “filmmaker mode,” but unlike the last dozen things the display industry has tried to foist on consumers, this one actually matters. It doesn’t magically turn your living room into a movie theater, but it’s an important step in that direction. This new setting arose out

France’s competition watchdog DGCCRF announced earlier today that Apple will pay a $27.4 million (€25 million) fine due to an iOS update that capped performance of aging devices. The company will also have to display a statement on its website for a month. A couple of years ago, Apple released an iOS update (10.2.1 and

Controlling your smart home gadgets from your phone or by voice isn’t exactly a chore, but after setting up a bunch of smart lights, a Wi-Fi lock, thermostat and a few more smart devices, I came to miss the ability to control at least some of them with a physical switch. Add to that the

U.S. consumers aren’t adopting voice-based shopping as quickly as expected, according to a new report today from eMarketer. While consumers have been happy to bring smart speakers into their home, they continue to use them more often for simple commands — like playing music or getting information, for example — not for making purchases. However,

The cameras on our phones are getting good enough that it’s becoming hard to justify having a dedicated picture-taking device. Fujifilm’s X100 series has always made one of the strongest cases for it, however, and the latest iteration makes it more convincing than ever. I reviewed the original X100 back in 2011, and the series

Big changes ahead for BlackBerry and TCL at a time when the smartphone market continues to see slowing growth. The two announced today that they would end their four-year brand licensing and tech support partnership in August 2020, with TCL ceasing to make new models of BlackBerry handsets after then, but continuing to support models that

NASA has awarded Maxar an estimated $142 million contract to demonstrate in-orbit spacecraft refueling and assembly of new components using a custom robotic platform in space. The space infrastructure dexterous robot, or SPIDER, program will be part of NASA’s Restore-L mission to demonstrate automation of proposed orbital tasks like reconfiguring or repairing a satellite or

On the same day that a Mississippi family is suing Amazon -owned smart camera maker Ring for not doing enough to prevent hackers from spying on their kids, the company has rolled out its previously announced “control center,” which it hopes will make you forget about its verifiably “awful” security practices. In a blog post

Animal-like, four-legged robots have been a crowd pleaser since Boston Dynamics’ BigDog, and Stanford’s Doggo shows how the technology can be made open source, accessible, and educational. Doggo’s creators will bring the diminutive robot, plus its smaller and larger siblings Pupper and Woofer, to TC Sessions: Robotics+AI on March 3. P.S. Early bird ticket sales

Google’s Nest is testing a new feature that will alert you to potential HVAC issues and even help you book an HVAC professional to fix it, thanks to a partnership with Handy. The company says the HVAC alerts are only available in select cities during the testing period. If you’re in one of the supported

I need a new phone. A big chunk of my time on the iPhone was spent taking pictures, so I’m heavily basing the next smartphone on its camera capabilities. After playing around with the Pixel 4 for Brian’s review, I’m considering switching teams. Price-wise, it would make sense to compare the iPhone 11 with the

Apple’s much-awaited online store in India will be operational starting Q3 this year, a little longer than previously expected, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The iPhone-maker said in August last year that it was “eager to serve [customers of India] online and in-store with the same experience and care that Apple customers

Growing up with blindness or low vision can be difficult for kids, not just because they can’t read the same books or play the same games as their sighted peers; Vision is also a big part of social interaction and conversation. This Microsoft research project uses augmented reality to help kids with vision impairment “see”

Try as they might, even the most advanced roboticists on Earth struggle to recreate the effortless elegance and efficiency with which birds fly through the air. The “PigeonBot” from Stanford researchers takes a step toward changing that by investigating and demonstrating the unique qualities of feathered flight. On a superficial level, PigeonBot looks a bit,

Xiaomi said today it is spinning off POCO, a sub-smartphone brand it created in 2018, as a standalone company that will now run independently of the Chinese electronics giant and make its own market strategy. The move comes months after a top POCO executive — Jai Mani, a former Googler — and some other founding

Smart speaker manufacturer Sonos clarified its stance when it comes to old devices that are no longer supported. The company faced some criticisms after its original announcement. Sonos now says that you’ll be able to create two separate Sonos systems so that your newer devices stay up to date. If you use a Zone Player,

Samsung, which once led the smartphone market in India, slid to the third position in the quarter that ended in December even as the South Korean giant continues to make major bets on the rare handset market that is still growing. According to research firm Counterpoint, Chinese firm Vivo surpassed Samsung to become the second biggest

It seems like every company making lidar has a new and clever approach, but Baraja takes the cake. Its method is not only elegant and powerful, but fundamentally avoids many issues that nag other lidar technologies. But it’ll need more than smart tech to make headway in this complex and evolving industry. To understand how

Lidar sensors are likely to be essential to autonomous vehicles, but if there are none of the latter, how can you make money with the former? Among the industry executives I spoke with, the outlook is optimistic as they unhitch their wagons from the sputtering star of self-driving cars. As it turns out, a few

Samsung, which once led India’s smartphone market, is investing $500 million in its India operations to set up a manufacturing plant on the outskirts of New Delhi to produce displays. The company disclosed the investment and its plan in a filing to the local regulator earlier this month. The South Korean giant said the plant

Smart speaker manufacturer Sonos has announced that the company is going to drop support for some of its products. Sonos stopped selling these devices a few years ago. While nothing lasts forever, dropping support is going to have a lot of implications and shows once again that the connected home isn’t as future-proof as expected.

If robots are to help out in places like hospitals and phone repair shops, they’re going to need a light touch. And what’s lighter than not touching at all? Researchers have created a gripper that uses ultrasonics to suspend an object in midair, potentially making it suitable for the most delicate tasks. It’s done with

Farming is one of the oldest professions, but today those amber waves of grain (and soy) are a test bed for sophisticated robotic solutions to problems farmers have had for millennia. Learn about the cutting edge (sometimes literally) of agricultural robots at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI on March 3 with the founders of Traptic, Pyka, and

Delta is keynoting CES today and launching a slew of updates to its digital services. Its competitors don’t want to be left behind, of course, so it’s probably no surprise that American Airlines also made a small but nifty tech announcement today. In partnership with Google, American will start trialing Google Nest Hubs and the

One of the new products unveiled at CES this year is a new kind of home security system – one that includes drones to patrol your property, along with sensors designed to mimic garden light and a central processor to bring it all together. Sunflower Labs debuted their new Sunflower Home Awareness System, which includes

Gaming — with its huge demands on bandwidth, graphics and overall processing power — is likely to be one of the big use cases for 5G networking in the future, and today one of the big players in consumer gaming hardware showed off a 5G router that underscores that trend. Razer, the consumer electronics upstart

Ring is now a major player when it comes to consumer video doorbells, security cameras — and privacy protection. Amazon acquired the company and promotes its devices heavily on its e-commerce websites. Ring has even become a cultural phenomenon with viral videos being shared on social networks and the RingTV section on the company’s website.

OrCam is expanding its product lineup with new devices that tackle new use cases. OrCam’s best known device is the OrCam MyEye 2 — a tiny device for people with visual impairment that you clip on your glasses to help you navigate the world around you. At CES, OrCam announced that the MyEye 2 is getting

Assa Abloy, the world’s largest lock maker and the parent company of August Home and Yale, announced some new products at CES this week. The company didn’t talk about doorbell cameras at all — it could be related to recent Ring’s controversies. As a well-known brand when it comes to smart lock in the U.S.,

As renewable energy and energy efficiency continue to make gains among cost-conscious consumers, more companies are looking at ways to give customers better ways to manage the electricity coming into their homes. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Schneider Electric unveiled its pitch to homeowners looking for a better power management system with