Author: News Room
The new Fairphone 6 is smaller and more modular than older models in the series, but it’s just as repairable. The phone picked up a perfect score in iFixit’s teardown test, despite no longer offering tool-free battery replacements.It helps that the only tool you do need — throughout the phone — is a T5 Torx screwdriver, and only seven screws sit between you and a battery swap. Fairphone itself has shown you can get from shutdown to reboot with a new cell in just two minutes, so it’s still a simple swap. The company says that the screws are required…
After two sell-out collaborations, Zenith and Time+Tide have dropped the final instalment in their surf-inspired trilogy – and it’s a sun-bleached stunner. Meet the Defy Skyline Skeleton White Surfer Ceramic, a limited edition of just 100 pieces that swaps moody titanium for something fresher: full white ceramic. Like its “Night Surfer” predecessors, this is a skeletonised version of Zenith’s boldest sports watch, with the same sharp lines and distinctive star-shaped bridges. But this time, it’s in a more summery variant. The 41mm case is ultra-light and scratch-resistant, with 100m water resistance and a screw-down crown – so yes, you can…
The sweeping layoffs announced by Microsoft this week have been especially hard on its gaming studios, but one Xbox executive has a solution to “help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss”: seek advice from AI chatbots. In a now-deleted LinkedIn post captured by Aftermath, Xbox Game Studios’ Matt Turnbull said that he would be “remiss in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the circumstances.” The circumstances here being a slew of game cancellations, services being shuttered, studio closures, and job cuts across key Xbox divisions as Microsoft lays off as many…
After releasing the Phone 3a and 3a Pro budget smartphones earlier this year, Nothing has shown off its latest handset. With a starting price of $799/£799, Nothing is putting this device in flagship territory, and it looks like it comes with the chops to match. The new smartphone is available to pre-order from today, and will begin shipping out to customers later this month. Nothing’s Phone 3 looks a little different from its predecessors. The circular glyph matrix takes pride of place at the rear, next to an asymmetrical three-camera setup that’s very like-it-or-hate-it. The white on black LEDs can…
Ploopy has announced another desktop accessory called the Ploopy Knob that can function like a control dial for adjusting volume, scrolling documents, or scrubbing through media on a computer. The Canadian company isn’t exactly a household name like Logitech, but Ploopy’s open-source peripherals offer a lot of customizability, and like its mouse and trackballs, you can customize the look of the Knob by 3D-printing your own hardware.The Ploopy Knob is available now through the company’s website for $49.99 CAD (around $37). Unlike many of the company’s other products, which can be purchased as cheaper DIY kits you build yourself, the…
Editor’s note: Amazon Prime Day kicks off on July 8th; however, if you want to get a head start on your online shopping, we’ve rounded up the best early Prime Day deals you can already get.Some people rarely lose things. Wallets are always exactly where they’re supposed to be, keys never go missing, and remotes never slip between the couch cushions. And then there’s the rest of us — the folks who can’t ever seem to find the thing that was right there a few seconds ago. For us, there are Bluetooth trackers.Bluetooth trackers have been around for a long…
Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 7 has been given the thinner, sleeker glow-up we expected, if leaked hands-on photos are any indication. The trio of images posted by leaker @Jukanlosreve seemingly show what the next-gen Galaxy foldable will look like in the real world from a few different angles.The new photographs mostly line up with what we’ve seen in previous renders, including the larger, slimmer chassis that’s reported to be around 4.5mm thick when open. That’s slimmer than its 5.6mm Galaxy Z Fold 6 predecessor and allows it to better compete against some of the slimmest foldables on the market…
I walked into Blackdot’s tattoo studio in Austin’s east side on a sweltering May afternoon. After shaking my sweat-soaked hand, founder and CEO Joel Pennington led me up into an office building and opened the door to a small, three-room space. Critics have unflatteringly compared the studio to a sterile hospital room — a comparison not entirely without merit. In a corner room, the machine I had come here to see loomed: a humming, fridge-sized device reminiscent of an old X-ray unit. Blackdot calls it the world’s first “automatic tattooing device.”The space was filled with signs of the path traveled…
Bicycle phone mounts have been a regular part of my life in bike-obsessed Amsterdam ever since 2008, when I got my first phone with built-in GPS and turn-by-turn navigation. I’ve used dozens of mounts since, until they were either lost, broken, or stolen, or something better emerged.I could have saved a ton of money and annoyance had the $49.95 Loop Micro Mount been available all those years ago.For the last few weeks, I’ve been testing the ultra-compact Micro Mount. It took all of three minutes to unbox and screw into my bike’s stem cap. Then it just sits there discreetly,…
One name is popping up a lot across tech startup social media right now, and you might’ve heard it: Soham Parekh. On X, people are joking that Parekh is single-handedly holding up all modern digital infrastructure, while others are posting memes about him working in front of a dozen different monitors or filling in for the thousands of people that Microsoft just laid off.From what social media posts suggest, Parekh is actually a software engineer who seems to have interviewed at dozens of tech startups over the years, while also juggling multiple jobs at the same time. Several startups had…
A Freedom of Information Act request has produced letters that the US Department of Justice sent to Google, Apple, Amazon, and several other companies in order to assuage their concerns about breaking a law that banned US web services from working with TikTok.The documents — obtained by Zhaocheng Anthony Tan, a Google shareholder who sued for their release earlier this year — show Attorney General Pam Bondi and her predecessor Acting Attorney General James McHenry III promising to release companies from responsibility for violating the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which required US companies to ban TikTok…
Latest smartphone releases Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge The new wave of ‘thin’ phones is surely on the way, now that Samsung has unleashed its debut effort. The S25 Edge is a svelte 5.8mm thick and weighs just 163g – impressive figures given it has a huge 6.7in screen, and a powerful snapdragon 8 Elite chipset underneath. Samsung had to compromise somewhere, so you get two rear cameras instead of three – but the lead is a 200MP unit capable of clean and colourful snaps. The battery is the biggest weak point, struggling to last all day on a single charge.…