Gadgets
News, updates and reviews on the latest gadgets in tech. Coverage includes smartphones, wearables, laptops, drones and all of your consumer electronics needs.
Apple released VisionOS 1.1 on Thursday with the most notable feature being improved personas of users. Specifically, the new update improves hair and makeup appearance, neck and mouth representation, and…
Featured Article
Inside the weird and quirky world of building a startup behind a wall of tariffs
Think quick — how much does a top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro Max cost? If you said around $1,600, you’d be right, but only if you’re based in the U.S. In Turkey, the same phone will set you back almost $3,000. That gap introduces a fantastic opportunity for arbitrage — and a lively second-hand and refurbished…
Smart fitness ring maker Oura announced a partnership with Amazon today to sell its products through the e-commerce site. The company said that both its rings — Horizon in six…
Right to repair bill targeting parts pairing passes Oregon House
The Oregon House this week passed a right to repair bill by nearly a 3-to-1 margin at 42 votes to 13. If signed into law, the northwestern state wouldn’t be…
Consumer lapel mics are one of the more interesting consumer electronics trends of recent years. Prior to this, lavalier microphones and their ilk were largely the domain of professional film…
Apple announces new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models with M3 chip
Apple announced new MacBook Air models with 13-inch and 15-inch screen sizes with its own M3 chip. The 13-inch model starts at $1,099 ($100 less than the M2 Air model)…
Featured Article
MWC 2024: Everything announced so far, including Swayy’s app to tell friends where you’ll be next
The TechCrunch team is in Barcelona this week to bring you all the action going on at Mobile World Congress 2024.
In May 2019, Ultrahaptics and Leap Motion became Ultraleap (not to be confused with Magic Leap, which operates in the same space). It’s a name change representing the marriage of…
Sweanty’s wearable patch for athletes tracks salt loss to help them hydrate
Wearables are coming in an increasing array of shapes, form factors and guises these days as health and fitness tracking proliferates. Here at 4YFN at the MWC tradeshow we spotted…
Nothing isn’t one to be quiet about new releases. The London-based phone company’s media push largely relies on trickling out information about devices bit by bit. It’s been a solid…
Featured Article
HTC Vive became an enterprise product while you weren’t looking
A lot has changed at HTC in the decade since a small team broke off to form its mixed reality division. In fact, it’s a fundamentally different business in several meaningful ways. For one thing, you can’t call HTC a phone company any longer. Contrary to popular perception, the Taiwanese corporation does still produce handsets…
Lizcore’s sport tracking system is minimalist enough for indoor climbers to actually use
Lizcore, a sport tracking startup out of Barcelona, caught our eye on the 4YFN show floor at MWC this week. It’s done what this climber — frankly — thought impossible:…
Featured Article
Mobile OS maker Jolla is back and building an AI device
On the fringes of MWC, the world’s biggest mobile phone show, TechCrunch is getting a demo of a new kind of AI device. The small black box sitting in front of us on a table in a hotel lobby in Barcelona is designed to tap into the generative AI boom — making it another example…
Humane reveals first international market for the Ai Pin, partnering with South Korea’s SK Telecom
Hyped hardware startup Humane has announced plans for its first international market, inking a deal with South Korean carrier SK Telecom. The announcement comes shortly after the San Francisco-based company…
Featured Article
MWC 2024: Motorola’s Rollable Concept phone laughs at your silly foldable
[Cartoonishly exaggerated Crocodile Dundee accent] That’s not a foldable. This is a foldable. More specifically, it’s a foldable concept device from Lenovo/Motorola showcased on the floor at this year’s MWC. The company walked us through a demo of a device that’s another terrific example of its ability to get weird with design. The Rollable Concept…
The Ring Car Cam appears to be finished, doomed by an unclear target market
Once upon a time, gadgets knew what they were truly for. Toaster? Brown thy bread. Smartphone? Connect thy user. But the Ring Car Cam? Ever since its launch, it found…
Featured Article
Samsung centers sleep with its first smart ring
After a brief tease at the end of its big Galaxy S24 event earlier this month, Samsung officially debuted the Galaxy Ring this morning at MWC. The earlier announcement offered little more than an image and confirmation that the hardware giant is entering that emerging corner of the wearable tech space. Following the Unpacked presser,…
OnePlus’ Watch 2 gets 100 hours of battery thanks to a pair of chips and Wear OS tweaks
OnePlus’ first smartwatch was a lot of things. Unfortunately, particularly good or memorable weren’t among them. If you’re going to enter a category as established as the smartwatch, you’re going…
Featured Article
Why OnePlus waited three years to release a new smartwatch
OnePlus’ second smartwatch captured media interest this week, courtesy of its stated 100 hours of battery life. The device utilizes a clever dual-chip system, seamlessly switching from the Snapdragon W5 to the far more power-efficient BES 2700 MCU. If the device does its job correctly, users won’t notice the shift, beyond the extra battery life…
Xiaomi’s latest robot dog does backflips off skateboards, costs $3,000
When it was first unveiled in the summer of 2021, Xiaomi’s CyberDog design was best described as a more nightmarish version of Boston Dynamics’ Spot. I had to comb through…
Lenovo’s laptop concept is fully transparent, but the point isn’t entirely clear
Something I’ve always admired about Lenovo is the way the Chinese tech giant really lets its freak flag fly. In fact, visiting the company’s booth nestled in the way, way…
The back of your phone is useless. There. I said it. Sure, the cameras are back there, but what about all of that blank real estate monopolizing 90% of the…
Apple’s India iPhone business outpaces individual EU countries, Morgan Stanley says
Apple’s long-term bet on India is beginning to pay dividends. The company’s revenue in India jumped 42% year-on-year in 2023 to $8.7 billion, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note on…
Sony’s PS VR2 is getting compatibility, possibly by end of year
PlayStation VR often gets overlooked in conversations about mixed reality. These days, it seems all anyone wants to talk about is Apple Vision Pro versus Meta Quest. But Sony has…
Samphire Neuroscience is building a brain stimulating wearable for period pain
It’s a horrible truth that many women simply endure period pain every month — perhaps relying on painkillers or a hot water bottle to relieve stomach cramps. For others, menstrual…
OnePlus took a three-year ‘reflective pause’ before increasing its smartwatch battery
It’s 2024. All smartwatches should offer multiple days of battery life, full stop. As things stand now, there’s a jaw-droppingly wide range across the devices. I would go so far…
Featured Article
What we expect from MWC 2024
In a little over a week’s time (February 26-29) around 85,000 or so attendees will descend upon the Fira de Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2024. Over the past few years, the show has become arguably the most important mobile event of the year. Phone makers, telecoms and a variety of other tech vendors, journalists…
The road to the home robot is one fraught with peril. The number of success stories it’s delivered can be counted on a single hand. The reasons for this massive…
Featured Article
VR sickness happens. Here’s how to avoid and treat it.
Over the past week, a number of people have reported returning their Vision Pros for a number of reasons, including issues around headset comfort and sickness. Returns are par for the course with any nascent technology. No matter how polished a first-generation product is upon release, there’s a very real sense in which it serves…
Surprise! Mark Zuckerberg thinks Quest 3 is better than Vision Pro
Mark Zuckerberg tried Apple’s Vision Pro headset and his verdict is that the Meta Quest 3 is a better product. Shocking, right? In a video posted on his Instagram account,…