Google has bought a company that’s developing a way to make smartphone screens double-up as speakers. It could mean slimmer phones or longer battery life. The buyout of Redux actually happened last year but has only just been made public. It involves technology that works in two contrasting ways, the first being to vibrate the […]
Vivo has made the first phone with a fingerprint sensor built directly into the display. While it brings some practical benefit, the solution itself is a clever use of technology. While fingerprint unlocks are relatively common now, they usually come at the expense of screen size. It’s not simply a case of effectively lopping off […]
A demo of a drone that carries passengers – or as some cynics call it, a helicopter – had to be cancelled because of light rain. The makers say the problem is only with the demo model and the real thing will cope with poor weather. The SureFly can carry two passengers and in its […]
Whatever the trend for the latest gadgets at the annual CES event in Vegas, there’ll always be room for humongous televisions. Though that’s only just literally the case with Samsung’s star prototype: a 146” television screen. Dubbed “The Wall”, there’s no promise of it showing up as a consumer model during 2018: instead it’s currently […]
Google researchers say they can fool image recognition tools by distracting them with shiny stickers. It’s an alternative to trying to disguise the object the system is looking for. This isn’t the same approach as a recent experiment that used carefully placed modifications to make one thing look like another, including 3D-printing replica turtles that […]
A Roomba robot vacuum will soon be able to map the Wi-Fi coverage in your home. It’s an official feature that makes an existing hack a little easier to use. The idea itself isn’t particularly new as a few folk had figured out it’s a slightly more efficient way to track coverage around a home […]
Addiction to video games is a mental health condition according to the World Health Organization. It’s going to add it to an official list used for both diagnosis and statistics. The condition “gaming disorder” is scheduled to be part of the 11th version of the International Classification of Diseases, which is being updated for the […]
Apple says it will offer reduced price battery replacements for iPhones immediately. It had previously said the move — a response to revelations about a slowdown designed to prevent unwanted phone shutdowns — would come at the end of the month. The offer affects out-of-warranty models from the iPhone 6 or later and is good […]
Apple has a 40 percent chance of buying Netflix in 2018 according to one pair of market analysts. While the number is somewhat arbitrary, by the analysts’ logic it might now be a better than even chance. The prediction comes from Asiya Merchant and Jim Suva of Citi, who listed the chances of several possible […]
It’s that time of year again when we look back at some of the news stories we’ve covered in 2017 and update you on later developments. We round up the year starting in September when Google announced Chrome would let users block websites (on a domain-by-domain basis) from autoplaying videos with sound. That’s now been […]