September’s biggest gadget news might have been the arrival of the iPhone Duo, but Apple’s first foldable is by no means the only new arrival worth your attention this month.
While we aim to cover as much gadget news as we can in our news section, it’s not possible to dedicate individual articles to every single one, so anything else we think it’s worth knowing about ends up here.
Think of it as your one-stop shop for all the best gadget news you might have missed – and it starts with a phone that has a very special screen (but not because it folds in half).
TCL P80 Ultra
Mobile phones used to be covered in buttons, but then the touchscreen came along and made most of them redundant. It’s somewhat ironic, then, that the 6.83in display on TCL’s P80 Ultra (from €549) has an entire button dedicated to it.
Press the Nxtpaper Key and you can switch from a standard OLED to a couple of different Kindle-esque modes: Max Ink, which goes full monochrome, simplifies the interface and disables notifications so you can really get your nose stuck into an ebook, and Paper, which adds a splash of colour but still keeps things easy on the eye.
TCL has made phones with Nxtpaper screens before, but this is the first time it’s been combined with OLED tech, so when you switch back to normal you get 1.5K resolution, 3200 nits of peak brightness and a maximum 120Hz refresh rate.
You’ll find three cameras on the back: a 50MP telephoto, a 50MP main one, and an 8MP ultrawide. The front is home to a 32MP selfie snapper. The P80 Ultra is rated IP68 so it’ll fend off water and dust like a champ, but if you want an extra level of protection there’s a case included in the box.
Its MediaTek Dimensity 7400 Elite processor and 8GB of RAM put the P80 Ultra below the best when it comes to pure muscle, but it should still cope with most things you throw at it, while the 5800mAh battery will last for days on end if you keep it in Max Ink mode. Surely that pushes all of your buttons?
Smeg AFC01
It’s hard to imagine a country as rich in culinary history as Italy being particularly enamoured by the air fryer, a kitchen appliance that does most of its best work with beige food. But that hasn’t stopped Smeg, which has its HQ in Reggio Emilia, from adding some much-needed class to something that often looks like it was designed by the same people who make Wi-Fi routers.
The AFC01 (£200) has just two cooking modes – Crispy and Juicy+Crispy, which adds steam to proceedings – but the 7.3-litre capacity is plenty for making those all-important family meals. Just don’t try and do anything weird like cook pasta in it or you’ll never be welcome in the land of Ferrari, fashion and farfalle again.
HoverAir Versa
If you’ve ever encountered a free-range influencer using one of those handheld gimbal cameras to record their latest inane dispatch from planet Vacuous, it can be very tempting to snatch the thing from their hands and see if it flies – and if they’ve got a HoverAir Versa (from $469) it just might.
In handheld mode the Versa has a 1.64in OLED touchscreen that you can use to frame your shots before recording 4K footage to its 64GB of onboard memory, but if you decide a different perspective is required it comes with a clip-on Flight Kit that turns it into a tiny self-piloting drone. With the Flight Kit attached the Versa weighs just 230g (or 163g without it), but you’ll still need to register with the CAA and pass the Flyer ID test in order to legally take to the skies.
It takes off from (and lands back in) the palm of your hand, plus there are gesture controls that you can use to trigger a shot or make it return to you. But most of the hard work is handled by the 10 autonomous flight modes, including 360º tracking shots, bird’s–eye views, and Hitchcock-style dolly zooms, so you don’t have to worry that your pilot skills will let you down and it’ll end up stuck in a tree.
Behind the lens is a 1/1.3in sensor that offers 17.5 stops of dynamic range, so the footage you get from it should look pretty sweet, even when things get a bit gloomy.
In the standard follow mode it can reach speeds of up to 36km/h, so there shouldn’t be much chance of it getting left behind, but the battery only gives you 14 minutes of flight, so it won’t stay in the air for long. In handheld shooting mode it’ll last up to three hours – plenty for even the most self-indulgent vlog.
Sekonda Smart Ring
Buying cheap jewellery is normally just a good way of turning your finger the colour of the Incredible Hulk, but despite costing a fraction of many big-name smart rings Sekonda’s still has the necessary sensors to track your heart rate (and its variability), blood oxygen, sleep quality, and skin temperature.
The battery lasts up to a week and there are no features locked behind a subscription, so you can access everything without having to pay extra. The Sekonda Smart Ring (£80) is made from stainless steel so the only thing that’ll turn you green is if somebody makes you angry, but that fact that it can also pick up on stress signals means you should be able to stop that before you start smashing up Aldi.
Lenco Orbita-360
Lenco’s Orbita-360 (£230/€250) might look like a kettlebell, but it’s far more interested in giving your ears a workout than your arms.
At 3.6kg it’s towards the bottom of the scale when it comes to gym weights, but the ones you lift there don’t have four 1.7in full-range drivers, a 4in subwoofer and two passive radiators inside.
Connect your phone over Bluetooth and you can use its maximum output of 120W (60W RMS) to give you some extra motivation when you’re pumping iron. And with a 4800mAh battery that lasts up to 13 hours it’ll be able to keep pushing long after you’ve thrown in the towel.
The four main drivers are also arranged in such a way that it should always sound the same even if you’re doing circuits around it, and Auracast tech lets you wirelessly connect it to other similarly equipped speakers if one just isn’t enough.
The aluminium handle is mainly just for moving it around but there’s no real reason why you couldn’t use it for a few goblet squats, Romanian deadlifts or inverted beefcake blasts (see if you can spot which one of those we made-up). It’s also got an IPX6 rating, so it shouldn’t mind too much if a few drops of sweat land on it, plus there are built-in lights that can synchronise to the beat of your tunes.
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