Hardware

A banner quarter for Xiaomi helped the Chinese mobile company snag the No. 2 spot in global smartphone shipments, according to newly posted Q2 numbers from research firm Canalys. It's pretty stunning growth for the company, up 83% year-over-year for the quarter and capturing 17% of the global m

A new challenger has emerged in the gaming hardware category. Game distribution giant Valve today announced the launch of Steam Deck, a $399 gaming portable designed to take PC games on the go. The handheld (which has echoes of several portable gaming rigs of years past) features a seven-inch scree

In our review last year, we called the Freewrite Traveler “outstanding, but expensive.” The latest version of Astrohaus' distraction-free word processing hardware tool does little to address the latter concern. In fact, the Ernest Hemingway Freewrite Signature Edition comes in at a full $30

When Microsoft announced this morning that it was releasing a cloud PC service called Windows 365, it got me thinking. While Windows 365 is about packaging a virtual Windows business desktop in a cloud context, if you think about the announcement in a different way, perhaps it could herald the begi

Earlier this year, Amazon launched Build It, a fun little program that lets customers preorder concept devices. Think about it like Indiegogo or Kickstarter, where the company will only actually make the product if enough people buy-in via preorder. Obviously Amazon has a significantly larger abili

The addition of MagSafe to the iPhone 12 line introduced all manner of fun avenues for accessory makers, but there's a strong case (so to speak) to be made that a snap-on battery pack might be the most useful of all. A number of third-parties (notably Anker and Mophie) have introduced their own

Hardware is hard. You can browse the archives of this site and come up with dozens of bold attempts to make new consumer electronics gadgets work — some of them very close to home. But, like all startups, most hardware companies run into the hard-core grind of turning atoms into something wor

Kobo’s Elipsa is the latest in the Amazon rival’s e-reading line, and it’s a big one. The 10.3-inch e-paper display brings it up to iPad dimensions and puts it in direct competition with the reMarkable and Boox’s e-reader tablets. It excels on reading experience, gets by on

Virtual reality did not turn into the ultimate office replacement telepresence machine during the pandemic — and it wasn’t for lack of trying — but some startups focused on employee training in VR have found added validation in the past year as professionals across industries were

UK-based smartphone subscription startup Raylo has tucked $11.5 mlion in Series A funding into its top pocket, led by Octopus Ventures. The equity round follows a debt raise last year — and brings Raylo’s total raised since being founded back in 2019 to $40M (in equity and debt). Its ro

Fittingly, we don't know a lot about Nothing. The young hardware startup has, however, done a stellar job building hype around precisely that fact. In the lead up to the July 27 launch of the company's first product, the Ear (1), the Nothing marketing machine has released information in dra

On July 27, hardware maker Nothing will debut its first product, wireless earbuds dubbed Ear (1). Despite releasing almost no tangible information about the product, the company has managed to generate substantial buzz around the launch — especially for an entry into the already-crowded wireless

This is your opportunity to get a glimpse of the future of iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. Apple just released the first public beta of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8. Those releases are the next major versions of the operating systems for the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Unlike developer betas, everyon

To train a robot to navigate a house, you either need to give it a lot of real time in a lot of real houses, or a lot of virtual time in a lot of virtual houses. The latter is definitely the better option, and Facebook and Matterport are working together to make thousands of virtual, interactive di