Author: News Room

The Matic is our favorite robot vacuum by a pretty comfortable margin. If you’ve been thinking about buying one, you may want to plan on doing it sooner than later. The company will raise its price by $250 on September 9th, going from $1,245 to $1,495. Matic told The Verge that the new price reflects its rising costs for memory and other components for the vacuum, which it says are now tenfold.Those who buy one directly from the company will get a year’s worth of replacement bags worth $96 at no extra cost. Each refill contains 12 bags, and they…

I know a vocal group of people who swear by the number pad on their keyboard. And yet, for years I haven’t cared about using one — until I put my hands on the Epomaker RT98. It’s a mechanical keyboard with a charming retro aesthetic, a fun CRT-like screen, VIA compatibility, a nice typing feel, and most importantly, a modular number pad that can be moved to either side. It’s a clever compromise in a budget friendly-ish board, allowing you to further customize your setup without losing the functionality of the coveted “tenkey.”But like many mechanical keyboards out there, it’s…

The Ikko MindOne Pro is delightfully small.I keep calling it a square phone, which isn’t quite right; the screen is square, but the phone itself is slightly rectangular. The camera flips up so you can use it for selfies — you can even open it partway to use as a stand or a kind of PopSocket. There’s a Clicks-style keyboard accessory that also adds a magnetic ring and a headphone jack. I tried so hard to like it, but this phone is a miss no matter how you look at it.I used it like a normal phone. I downloaded a…

Over the past week, a new fanworks movement has kicked off, with the aim to root out authors using generative AI. But the detection methods being implemented are questionable, and any fanfic writer could be caught in the crossfire.Broad distaste around the use of Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI tools has long been a thing in creative communities, including the world of fanfiction. Readers and writers have passed around tips for spotting supposedly AI-generated works, citing anything from em dashes to the broad concept of purple prose. But on June 29th, an anonymous X account called @heatedrivalryai promised a seemingly…

Apple’s September event is usually the fruit company’s biggest consumer hardware moment of the year, and the 2026 version looks set to follow that tradition with a new range of iPhones. Yet there may be some key differences this time around. The event should take place in the second week of the month if previous form is anything to go by and usually – though not always – Apple events are on a Tuesday. That means we are almost certainly looking at the event taking place on Tuesday 8 September. So what’s set to be different this year? Multiple reports…

AI is everywhere. And everyone has their line in the sand. They’ll say it’s OK to do ‘this’ thing, yet not ‘that’ thing, with AI. Naturally, what most people consider acceptable tends to be whatever helps them work more efficiently, but not anything that threatens their own livelihood. All of which feels a tad hypocritical – and none of this is leading anywhere good. When I was a youngling, science fiction was full of people loafing about while robots handled the drudge work. But we now live in an age where tech bros, having contributed precious little of cultural value…

Despite my initial skepticism, I’m now sold on wireless Qi chargers that add integrated fans to keep your phone cool while charging. I figured they’d be too loud, or too weak, or too gimmicky, but I’m a convert after spending a week with the new $59.99 Kuxiu D5 Qi2.2 charging dock. Its active cooling system has kept my phone from heating up, unlike every other Qi charger I’ve tried. Good thing, given my own history with an overheating phone.Last year I fried the logic board on my titanium iPhone 15 Pro. I was on a sweltering train and trying to…

The next Apple Watch redesign will include an overhaul of the band system, according to reports, potentially leading to compatibility issues with existing straps and loops. A known Weibo leaker ‘Instant Digital’ reckons a fresh approach is on the horizon for next year’s Apple Watch models. The leaker says that existing watchOS device owners should hold off on buying additional band options if they envision upgrading in 2027. “After three years of waiting, Apple Watch is finally about to make a big change,” the leaker writes in a machine translated series of posts. “You can now reduce the frequency of…

Apple is reportedly upping its production run for the forthcoming iPhone Ultra foldable phone, suggesting increased confidence in how many devices the company expects to shift out of the gate. According to a Nikkei report, Apple has increased its order to ten million phones, up from the 7 to 8 million it was projecting just a few short months ago. Even though 10 million would be a small percentage of iPhones sold per generation – 2025 estimates put the figure at close to 250 million units – it would be somewhat surprising to see Apple bag double digits in the…

The erasure of the OnePlus smartphone identity is well underway, with the parent company actively pushing consumers towards sister brand Oppo in some regions. Now it appears that further consolidation of brands is well underway with reports suggesting the OnePlus user interface for Android phones – called OxygenOS – is going to be discontinued entirely in favour of the Color OS that sits atop of the operating system on Oppo phones. The skins are pretty much interchangeable at this point, but it seems Chinese owner BBK Electronics is going the whole hog. Smartprix is reporting that a “sweeping consolidation” of…

Lego’s minicars are set to break new ground for the drivers’ parade ahead of the British Grand Prix this Sunday – each driver will have their own go-kart- based car to drive about. It’s quite different than the previous iteration of larger Lego cars that debuted in Miami last year where there was a car per team and there were two drivers in each car. Last time out, the drivers quickly seized upon the fact they could drive them like slow bumper cars. And since they were representative of the design of an F1 car there was a lot of…

The Fire HD 8 that launched in 2024 was the last new addition to Amazon’s budget-minded tablet lineup, but the company has quietly updated the Fire HD 10 that debuted the year before. In 2023 it was offered with multiple storage configurations that each came with 3GB of RAM, but the 32GB version now ships with 4GB of RAM, and a small price bump from $139.99 to $154.99.The Fire HD 10 with 64GB of storage still only comes with 3GB of RAM and the other specs for both tablets remain the same, including a 10.1-inch, 1,920 x 1,200 display, a…