Come comment on this article: Motorola Moto X4 officially launches, blurs line between mid-tier and flagship
Ever wanted to build an R2-D2 to call your own? You could drop a few million dollars to get all the screen-used parts/props… Or you could spend a few weeks in the shop bangin’ on scrap metal to build one from scratch. Or you could grab littleBit’s new Droid Inventor Kit and call it a day. It’s pint-sized and not quite as intense as the aforementioned options, but hey… Read More
Essential has a unique port around back on its debut Phone, which can handle data and power transfer, and which attaches to accessories via magnets. The first such accessory is Essential’s own 360 camera, which offers you an easy way to capture immersive images and video in a very small package. The Essential 360 camera is much smaller than most other consumer 360 cameras out there, and… Read More
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Come comment on this article: Western Digital announces new 400GB microSD card
Come comment on this article: Sony enters smart speaker market with Google Assistant powered device
Sony just announced a new camera called the RX0, but breaking from the trend of lower number = fancier camera, this one is a tiny device that combines an action-cam form factor with some traditional imaging prowess. It’s an unusual combination, yet somehow tempting. Read More
Apple just sent out invites for its annual iPhone event, which is taking place on September 12 at its new Cupertino HQ, at the Steve Jobs Theater it built there specifically to host special events. It’s expected that Apple will reveal a brand new iPhone with a nearly bezel-free design on the day. TechCrunch previously reported that the event would fall on this day, confirming… Read More
Full-color 3D printing at home has long been a wild-eyed dream of consumers and hobbyists alike. Thus far it’s been fun to print out little trinkets in a single color, but to create something more akin to a painted action figure would be a game-changer. And, thanks to inkject technology, we just might have reached that milestone. XYZprinting, the maker of the popular Da Vinci line of… Read More
DJI has upgraded its Mavic Pro and Phantom 4 Pro drone hardware, and added new software features to the tiny DJI Spark, its smallest consumer drone. At IFA 2017, DJI revealed the new Mavic Pro Platinum, which adds around 11 percent more flight time per charge, and 60 percent noise reduction. It also gets a platinum paint job. The Phantom 4 Pro Obsidian has a matte-gray finish (which is not… Read More
It seems like everyone these days has a multi-room speaker system – the latest entrant is Marshall, the amp maker that brought its signature style to portable consumer speakers in recent years. The speaker maker is introducing three new models today, each of which packs Wi-Fi connectivity and multi-room capabilities. The Acton, Stanmore and Woburn multi-room models go up in size from… Read More
SanDisk has a new record-breaking microSD coming to market, which will deliver so much storage you might be at a loss as to what to do with it all. The new 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card is the world’s highest capacity card of its type, and is ideally suited for use in Android smartphones that feature an expansion slot. Android’s most recent versions allow you to adopt… Read More
Everyone wants to get in on the wireless earbud rage and two firms just announced their entry into the market. Today at IFA 2017, B&O and Sony announced their first wireless earbuds that each compete in the space Apple made popular with the AirPods. Sound quality aside, these new earbuds have one thing over the AirPods: They don’t look like AirPods. The B&O Beoplay E8 sports a… Read More
If you still have a functional SNES console, or one of the myriad third-party devices that plays actual SNES cartridges, you probably want to rush out and pre-order this Street Fighter II SNES cartridge, which is a limited edition to celebrate Street Fighter’s 30th anniversary. The newly manufactured cartridges will number only 5,500 in total, including 4,500 in ‘Opaque Ryu… Read More
Ricoh has revealed a brand new version of its Theta 360-degree camera: The Theta V, which upgrades the video capture quality to 4K resolution, adds live streaming support, and immersive “surround” sound audio recording. It takes over as the flagship Ricoh 360 camera, adding some much-appreciated modernized touches to one of the oldest and best-loved lines of consumer 360 cameras… Read More
Garmin has three new wearable devices it’s debuting at IFA 2017, including the vivosmart GPS-enabled activity tracker, the vivomove HR hybrid touchscreen smartwatch and the vivoactive 3, a smartwatch with Garmin Pay, which supports Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards to enable mobile payments on the go. The Garmin vivoactive 3 includes GPS, a heartrate monitor, and battery life of… Read More
Smart knobs have a short and not very illustrious history, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t cool. That, at least, appears to be the thinking at Logitech, which has just added a smart knob (or dial if you’d rather) to its newest wireless keyboard. The Crown, they call it — and the keyboard it sits on is The Craft. Read More
Libratone, a Danish maker of snazzy high end wireless speakers, has announced its existing Zipp and Zipp Mini speakers will get support for Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant via a free app update, slated to arrive this fall. Read More
When Google Home was unveiled, many people immediately noted the smart speaker’s striking resemblance to a home fragrance diffuser. Now there’s a smart home fragrance diffuser that looks like a smart speaker. Pium, a self-described “next-generation smart diffuser,” is currently participating in Samsung Electronic’s Creative Square incubator program. Visitors to… Read More
Launching a product and company from scratch is hard, as fresh-faced entrepreneurs and Kickstarter successes often learn to their chagrin. And it turns out even heavy hitters like Andy Rubin and his mobile startup Essential have unpleasant lessons to learn — in this case, about how even a small detail like a mailing list configuration can put your entire company at risk. Read More
Have you ever wanted to print an animated image? Well now you (almost) can. A maker named Abhishek Singh has created an instant camera that outputs a little box that contains a Raspberry Pi connect to a PiTFT screen. When you take a picture the camera transmits a short video to the screen which the plays it over and over again until you take another picture. The entire project is hand-designed… Read More
Come comment on this article: Samsung updates Gear IconX wireless, cord-free earbuds
Soft robots are a major area of research right now, but the general paradigm seems to be that you pump something (a muscle or tube) full of something else (air, fluid) causing it to change its shape. But a robot from Swiss roboticists does the opposite: its little muscles tense when the air in them is removed. It’s cool — but it also looks kind of gross. Read More
Come comment on this article: Ultra Mobile is the next to offer buy-in-bulk prepaid plans
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Come comment on this article: Misfit Vapor gets delayed until October
Come comment on this article: Samsung’s Gear Sport is a rugged smartwatch with a fitness focus
Come comment on this article: The Gear Fit 2 Pro is Samsung’s dive into serious health-based wearables
Come comment on this article: New Google Assistant speakers from Anker, Panasonic, and Mobvoi debuts at IFA 2017
Come comment on this article: Acer announces a new 15-inch Chromebook with stellar battery life
Come comment on this article: An all-screen BlackBerry phone with water resistance will launch in October
Google is hoping to catch up with Alexa’s reach by putting its Assistant on a wide range of third-party hardware. At IFA, Google announced that it’s going to be putting the Assistant on partner speakers, appliances, connected cameras, and much more. That’s likely to be good for both the voice-powered assistant market, as well as for Google’s ability to use its service… Read More
The home button is headed to the trash bin if a report by Bloomberg is to be believed. According to the report, Apple is ditching the button to make room for a larger screen in one version of the next iPhone. Instead of a home button, users will perform actions using on-screen gesture controls involving a sort of dock of icons. If true this would be the biggest change in iPhone design since… Read More
Come comment on this article: Snag a discount on the OnePlus 5, if you’re a student
We don’t do a lot of Kickstarter posts because the outcomes of crowdfunding campaigns, especially hardware ones, are notoriously unpredictable. But it’s with an easy conscience that I recommend Lomography’s new instant film camera; I backed the company’s last one, the Automat, and it’s been fantastic. This one looks similarly fun, and shoots in a larger format. Read More
A handful of tech companies have just been given Emmy awards for a variety of behind-the-scenes accomplishments. Yeah, I didn’t know it was a thing either! Well, I kind of knew. They just don’t play it up a lot. But it’s still a little weird to see Apple win one for Siri, Microsoft win one for Skype, and… Comcast win one for its X1 remote. Really?! Read More
Two years ago, Ember launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to build a mug that keeps hot drinks and iced drinks cool. Contributors gave the company nearly $362,000. Fast forward and the five-year-old startup has now raised just north of $24 million altogether, including a $13 million Series C round that it quietly closed last week. The individual investors supporting the company… Read More
One of the many considerations we will have should we decide at last to colonize another planet is where we’ll live. Should we bring inflatable habitats? Should we ship girders and metal sheets? Or should we 3D print the structures right there on the planet in question? Two universities’ early efforts to do so earned them a combined $400,000 at a NASA competition held last week. Read More
Come comment on this article: Google introduces new Play Protect certification for Android devices
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Come comment on this article: New Motorola video tries to sell their ShatterShield tech on Moto Z2 Force
Come comment on this article: YouTube rolls out its new look with a brand new icon
Come comment on this article: Samsung confirms it’ll launch a new wearable at IFA 2017
Amazon this morning announced a new feature for its Echo devices called “multi-room music,” which allows owners with more than one Echo to control where their music is played, or even sync it across a group of Echo devices using voice commands. For example, you’ll be able to tell Alexa to play your music in the living room, play music upstairs or downstairs, or even just… Read More
Come comment on this article: Lenovo Tab 4 10: Productivity and entertainment on a budget
Sonos is almost certainly going to throw its hat in the smart speaker ring on October 4, when it’s hosting an event in NYC. We know about its forthcoming voice-enabled speaker because such a device was filed with the FCC, and the filing describes a speaker with voice control and far field microphones capable of picking up voice commands in a big room and filtering out background noise.… Read More
Uber’s engineering blog has just posted an interesting piece on the company’s web-based tool for exploring and visualizing data from self-driving car research. It’s a smart look at an impressive platform, and definitely has nothing to do with a long piece published last week lauding a similar platform in use by one of Uber’s most serious rivals, Waymo. Read More
We’ve mostly moved past the point where our internet of things devices leak private information to anyone watching via unsecured connections, but that doesn’t mean you can stop being afraid. Never, ever stop being afraid. To top up your paranoia reserves, a new study finds that internet providers can, if they so choose, monitor all kinds of things from your smart home’s… Read More
Engineer Julio Vazquez wanted to help his friend Rami Wehbe play the Nintendo Switch after he lost the use of his right hand due to a cerebrovascular accident. Wehbe couldn’t play Breath Of The Wild with the Joy-Con controllers because he needed both hands to manage the two sticks. Vazquez built a few simple prototype solutions and settled on a modular system that lets him play the game… Read More
If you like to keep on top of the latest display tech, you’re probably familiar with Ray Soneira’s exhaustive testing of the screens on the newest smartphones and other devices. His latest target is the Galaxy Note 8, and it turns out Samsung’s phablet sports the best screen they’ve ever seen on a phone. Read More
NASA is in the business of giving small-time scientists and engineers opportunities: its small business grants, open data initiatives, and other efforts are meant to empower the high school kid or hobbyist who could be the next Werner Von Braun. But in the Cube Quest Challenge, for the first time ever, NASA will is enabling amateur spacecraft builders to participate in a mission to deep space. Read More
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DJI wants security researchers to turn their attention to its software and drones and will pay for discovered bugs or exploits. Called The DJI Threat Identification Reward Program, the program aims to create a formal line of communication between researchers and hackers to the drone maker. The company will pay between $100 and $30,000 for qualifying bugs, “depending on the potential… Read More
Come comment on this article: Codenames leak for the Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro
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Come comment on this article: Fitbit Ionic launches as company’s entry in smartwatch space
Athelas is launching a low-cost, blood diagnostics device today made for testing certain diseases like the flu, bacterial infections and cancer in the comfort of your home. Tanay Tandon founded the startup in 2014 at the tender age of 17 to develop a smartphone device that could detect malaria through blood samples. That idea proved difficult but the idea of ease and mobility stuck with… Read More
The Insta360 brand has quickly become known for consumer 360 photography products, and the new Insta360 One is its latest device designed for mobile immersive imaging. The new Insta360 One offers 4K video resolution, and 24 MP stills, as well as the ability to work in a completely standalone mode, remotely with your phone as a Bluetooth controller, and plugged in directly to your iPhone using… Read More
Come comment on this article: BlackBerry continues metamorphosis with BlackBerry Secure licensing
It looks like Sonos is nearing the release of a speaker that has a built-in voice control assistant. According to an FCC filing found by Dave Zatz, the company is seeking to get approval from the US government to sell a speaker that sports “integrated voice control functionality with far field microphones” and “multiple voice platforms.” It’s impossible to say… Read More
The GameBoy Pocket remains one of the best-designed pieces of mobile gaming kit ever in my opinion, which is why I was intrigued by the BittBoy, a new third-party portable console that clearly owes a lot of inspiration to the GameBoy. The tiny handheld packs a library of “300” games built-in, controls that will feel familiar to any Nintendo fan, a battery you can recharge via… Read More
Keep your dogs close but your kitties closer, is I think the expression. Maybe. Whatever it is, pets are important to people. And keeping a close watch on them even when you’re not located in the same place has become increasingly possible thanks to the broad proliferation of tech like Wi-Fi connected cameras. Petcube Bites is one of those cameras, but it’s also a treat… Read More
The Defense Department’s research arm has officially kicked off its effort to create a modular computing framework, with pieces pulled from a mix-‘n-match set of “chiplets.” Producing something this weird will take a village, the agency suggested — in fact, “an enormous village rife with innovators.” DARPA did always have a way with words. Read More
Come comment on this article: The Essential Phone is finally shipping out
Everyone who’s flown around a drone (or UAV, or multirotor, or what have you) knows that they’re a lot of fun. But they’re being used all over the world for more serious purposes — after all, an autonomous flying vehicle is a great place to start for all kinds of applications, from delivery to archaeology. Here’s a sampling of what drones are getting up to across… Read More
The Essential Phone started arriving in the hands of media and reviewers just last week, and as of today it’s now also shipping out to its first customers. Essential announced the news via its Twitter account, and told early buyers to keep an eye out for tracking info sent out via email. We're beginning to ship Essential Phone! Please look out for an e-mail today with tracking info.… Read More
CarPlay and Android Auto can only really be described as what you’d call a ‘slow burn.’ They both debuted quite a few years ago, but getting access to them via first-party infotainment systems didn’t happen with the pace early adopters might be accustomed to. Luckily, a variety of third-party aftermarket in-car audio and infotainment decks offer an option for those… Read More
The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is nearly here, with general availability set for September 15 and pre-orders on now. The smartphone was revealed with much fanfare during an event in NYC on Thursday, and Samsung drew particular attention to its new optically stabilized dual-camera system and improved S Pen stylus as the features that set it apart from the similar Galaxy S8 and S8+. The Note… Read More
Come comment on this article: HTC courting investors and buyers interested in possible deal
Come comment on this article: HTC confirms Android Oreo for HTC U11, U Ultra and 10
Google’s next-generation Pixel devices could arrive in a little over a month, according to prolific (and often accurate) leak source Evan Blass. The Pixel 2 (or whatever they end up being called) will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 836 mobile system-on-a-chip, Blass claims, and based on previous rumors, these devices look like a solid follow-up to Google’s debut premium… Read More
If you believe the hype, homes in the US are already lousy with speakers containing embodied AI — the most high profile being Amazon’s Echo, in its various incarnations, whose Alexa voice assistant can be commanded to do things like play music, answer trivia questions or tap into third party apps. But the truth is… Read More
Come comment on this article: The Xperia XZ1 clearly belongs to Sony, just look at this leaked press render
Come comment on this article: On-again, off-again Samsung Bixby home assistant device back on
Essential’s Toronto launch party was your standard tech industry launch gathering – with one key exception: Lining one wall was a series of three booths, demonstrating the Essential Phone’s camera tech, design process and hardware engineering respectively, and each was staffed by people who actually did the work. Read More
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