Hardware

The Kindle turned 15 this month. It's been a strange ride for Amazon's first hardware device. CEO Andy Jassy gave the e-reader a rare bit of love in last year's shareholder letter, noting: Our first foray into devices was the Kindle, released in 2007. It was not the most sophisticated i

According to Corning in-house research, “84% of consumers across three of the largest smartphone markets – China, India, and the United States — cite durability as the number one purchasing consideration behind brand itself.” I suspect that things like battery life and camera rank prett

India surpassed North America to take the top global spot in the smartwatch market in the quarter that ended in September, according to a report from market research player Counterpoint. The festival sales and proliferation of affordable smartwatches helped grow the local market by 171% year-on-yea

This time two years ago, I changed up my annual gift guide feature’s focus from travel to working from home. After all, very few of us were doing much traveling at the time. I planned to switch back as the world reopened; it's clear now, however, that for many of us, there is no going bac

Abby started its journey selling 120 or so of its “All-In-One Smart Hydroponic Grow Box” on Kickstarter, with a relatively modest $100,000 raised on the crowdfunding platform. The device promises to help you make growing your favorite plants more or less foolproof, especially if your &#

The last few years have been a major accelerator for the robotics industry at large, but warehouse robotics may be the biggest winner of all. Stay at home orders fueled adoption in the early days of the pandemic, as some retailers stayed open after being labeled “essential businesses.” Even aft

Oceanic+, developed by Huish Outdoors, made a splash at this year’s Apple Fall Event in September, when Apple pulled a surprise new watch out of its proverbial hat, the Apple Watch Ultra. One of the surprises was that the $800 watch is rated for recreational scuba diving, enabling owners to t

At a time when China’s zero-COVID policy continues to interrupt offline work and face-to-face interactions, Dominic Penaloza, the former head of innovation and technology at WeWork China, is introducing a bold idea — on-demand work booths placed in public locations — and has manag

Biologically inspired soft robots make a lot of sense in a lot of different scenarios, but as with any class of technology, they have their limitations. Among other things, these compliant structures can struggle to move at the same speed as their more rigid counterparts. To help speed up swimming,

TSMC founder Morris Chang said today that the semiconductor giant and Apple supplier will build 3-nanometer chips at its factory in Arizona, though final plans are not ready yet. The factory is currently under construction, with plans to begin production in 2024. During a press conference in Taipei

I spent last week in Boston, meeting with several of the area's top automation startups. Soft Robotics — based in nearby Bedford, Massachusetts — is one of those names that comes up a lot. As the concept of soft robotics grippers have increasingly come into vogue, the company of the

What surprised me most on returning to Boston* for the first time since the onset of the pandemic was just how clustered things are. I'm not a great scheduler and I don't know the city's geography particularly well, but after two days spent meeting with more than a dozen startups, it sl

A legal dispute over robotic patents is devolving into a war of words, as Ghost Robotics fires back against Boston Dynamics. The Philadelphia firm calls the suit both “obstructive and baseless” in a statement sent to technewss. It notes, in part, Ghost Robotics' success has not gone un

Quadruped robot developers like Boston Dynamics have taken great pains to develop systems capable of traversing all manner of terrain. For the right price, you can pick up a robotic dog that can take a kick, get back up and get back on its way. A team comprised of researchers at Carnegie Mellon and