• A designer working with NASA and agricultural experts has created a coffee that tastes like it was grown on Mars
• MA student Sarah Ali created the coffee as part of her 'Brew_Lab' project
• The project reflects on how climate change might affect the availability and composition of coffee

A designer working with experts at NASA and the UK’s Royal Botanical Society has produced a coffee that tastes like it was grown on Mars a hundred years from now.

The red planet-flavored Mars 2126 coffee — an ‘edible scent’ added to a regular cup of joe — is a product of Brew_Lab, a project by industrial designer Sarah Ali. The project is centered around a futuristic vending machine that brews coffee from three different dates in the future, based on climate projections.

Ali, 35, produced Brew_Lab to conclude her MA in Material Futures at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and exhibited the project at Milan Design Week in April 2026, as well as CSM's degree show which runs until June 21.

“This is very much a climate futures project” said Ali to TechRadar, “and the way I got to Mars was through the fact that if we keep on doing what we do now, our future in 100 years time might be that Earth won’t be able to facilitate all the things we need it to.”

“It’s a little bit speculative,” she continued, “but what I found really cool was that people at NASA were already testing what food and drink would be like on Mars. There’s a lot of investment in that space.”

The Arabica successors

As well as providing passers-by the chance to try a cup of Martian mud from 2126, the project also includes an edible scent designed to predict the taste of coffee grown in Sierra Leone in 2080. This uses the revived stenophylla species of coffee bean, which is more resilient to climate change than the industry-leading arabica bean.

The third and final flavor, Brazil 2027, is used to emphasize the frailty of the Arabica bean, with crop yields expected to fall by as much as 80% by 2050 (via University of Florida).

To design the scent profiles of each coffee, Ali used machine learning models fed by data from NASA’s Dr. Gioia Massa, and Kew Gardens’ Dr. Aaron Davis, a world- leading coffee expert.

“Dr. Davis has studied 127 different coffee species, of which only 7 to 12 are likely to survive into our future” adds Ali. Brew_Lab uses rare, hardy racemosa beans for its Martian brew, and Ali explained that NASA’s research on agriculture allowed her to factor in the effect of gravity on our perception of taste on the final product.

“I thought of Mars because it’s a very extreme scenario”, Ali said, “and the extreme scenarios allow us to really understand what’s happening. How do we think about things differently, to avoid that future or prepare for it.”

Still, it might take a few years yet for the best coffee makers to add a ‘Martian’ setting.

• A Chinese medtech firm has gained EU approval for its remote surgery robot
• Medbot’s Toumai system can now be moved and marketed freely in the European Union
• The approval comes after Toumai was used for the UK's first long-distance surgery

A Chinese medical technology firm has gained EU approval for its remote surgery robot following its use by a London surgeon to operate on a patient 1,500 miles away in Gibraltar.

Shanghai Microport MedBot’s Toumai is a three-part remote surgery system that allows doctors and surgeons to perform operations on the abdomen and pelvis.

The system is composed of a surgeon console, patient cart, and vision cart, with robotic ‘limbs’ allowing operators to perform operations. The system uses 5G connectivity to connect the surgeon console to the vision cart over long distances.

The approval follows Toumai’s successful use by a London surgeon to perform the UK’s first long-distance teleoperated surgery, a full prostate removal on a man with prostate cancer in Gibraltar.

Dr. Proskar Dasgupta performed the operation using the teleoperated system on 62-year old Paul Buxton in March 2026. Speaking to the BBC, Buxton said it was a “no-brainer” to take part in the experimental procedure and become “part of medical history”.

The robot will see you now

Gibraltar, a small UK territory just south of Spain, has a single hospital within its borders, meaning residents may need to travel 1,500 miles north to the UK for more complex procedures.

However, Toumai and remote surgery systems like it allow patients to be treated by experts without traveling to meet them. Dr. Dasgupta said to the BBC that he felt “almost as if I was there” while conducting Mr. Buxton’s procedure.

On June 22, Shanghai Microport MedBot announced that the Toumai robotic surgery system had received the CE Mark — an EU stamp of approval required to sell products in its common market

As South China Morning Post reports, this allows the system to be "moved and marketed" freely in the EU, meaning the company is free to offer Toumai to healthcare providers in any of the EU’s 27 member states.

This will be welcome news for MedBot, which made 73 per cent of its revenue from overseas sales in 2025, up from 20 per cent in 2023.

It's been another packed week of technology news, and TechRadar has been covering all of the stories that matter: the Prime Day deals, the Apple price hikes, new devices from Oura and Sonos, and plenty more besides.

If you haven't been able to check in regularly on our site, this weekly ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) round-up is here to get you up to speed. You can browse through the headlines that matter below, and click the links for the full articles.

Get yourself comfortable and review the past week below, and we'll be back again this time next week for another ICYMI summary.

7. We scoured the Prime Day deals

You may have noticed that it's been Amazon Prime Day this week — it's now spread across multiple days of course — and the TechRadar team has been busy searching across every Amazon category to bring you the best deals: we've found discounts on TVs, laptops, headphones, smartwatches, smart home gadgets, tablets, and plenty more besides.

No matter what you're in need of tech-wise at the moment, our US and UK round-up pages have a variety of deals that will fit, and a lot of these discounts are genuinely substantial — and many are still going. Together with the latest prices and links for each product, we've also included our expert tech advice in each case, so you know exactly why which offers are worth pursuing.

• Read more: We're tracking the best Prime Day tech deals live — 121 biggest discounts on Apple, Samsung, Kindle, Sony, and more

6. We reviewed the Oura Ring 5

The Oura Ring 5 is a substantial step up from its predecessor: it's slimmer, lighter, and more durable, as well as offering extra battery life — and according to our review, you might even forget you're wearing it. Oura has managed to refine the device's appearance so it looks like a normal piece of jewelry, even with the cutting-edge sensors inside it.

"It's easily the most stylish and accurate smart ring around," our review states, though it's not perfect, and there's that usual Oura subscription fee to consider if you want to access most of the tracking features. If you're wondering whether the Oura Ring 5 is the right wearable upgrade for you, then we'll tell you everything you need to know below.

• Read more: Oura Ring 5 review — a luxury smart ring for discreet everyday wellness tracking that's (almost) easy to forget you're wearing

5. Meta revealed its cheaper smart glasses

Meta has treated us to a bumper crop of new smart glasses, starting at $299 / £269 / AU$599 and developed in partnership with EssilorLuxottica. We've got all the details here, including how they feel to wear, and a rundown of the design and color variations you can pick from — you certainly can't complain that there isn't enough choice in this batch.

We've also got comments from Meta CTO and Head of Reality Labs Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth, who outlined the company's vision of a smart spec future, and said "it's pretty easy to make glasses that don’t look good, it turns out". That seems to be a humorous dig at some of Meta's rivals in the space, but see what you think of the new Meta Glasses range.

• Read more: 'Our goal is to reach every corner of the market': Meta CTO Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth on the new $299 EssilorLuxottica Meta Glasses

4. We reviewed the latest Sonos speaker

The Sonos Era 100 SL wireless speaker is more affordable than the Era 100 that launched before it, but as our detailed review will tell you, Sonos has been able to pull this off without making too many compromises. Most importantly, the quality of the sound doesn't drop even though the price does, so you still get a top-tier listening experience.

Our review takes you through every aspect of the Era 100 SL speaker, from how easy it is to set up initially, to the sort of performance you can expect from it — with London Grammar and DJ Shadow included in the artists whose music we used for testing — and there's praise for "quality sound", "great connectivity", and "iconic design" along the way.

• Read more: 'A better price for the same performance': I reviewed Sonos' cheaper Era 100 SL wireless speaker, and was shocked at how few concessions were made to make this a bargain

3. The Steam Machine got an official price tag

It's been a long wait for the Steam Machine, but we're nearly there, and now know that the starting price is set at $1,049 / £879 / AU$1,609, and we can thank the price inflation driven by the RAM crisis for that. If a Steam Machine is still within your budget, you'll be able to put in an order from June 29, more than seven months after it was first announced.

If you don't think that's good value, then we've put together a guide to building your own Steam Machine alternative below. You get full control over the budget and the specs of the components you choose, and it can be a lot of fun too (as we can say with confidence given the years of PC building experience on the TechRadar team).

• Read more: Disappointed by the Steam Machine’s official price? Build your own mini gaming PC instead with these deals

2. Apple revealed its painful price hikes

Speaking of the RAM crisis, it just hit Apple too: the company has racked up the pricing on many of its products, including iPads, MacBooks, and even the HomePod. The recently launched MacBook Neo, for example, now has a starting price of $699 rather than $599 in the US — a not inconsiderable rise of $100 or 17% in a single jump.

We've got all the details of how much more expensive each Apple gadget is now, with these price increases effective immediately on the official Apple Store. We've also got some ideas about where you can still find these Apple products at their original prices from third-party retailers — though you'll have to move fast to grab them.

• Read more: Apple just delivered the worst kind of news: price hikes across many of its major products (even the Neo) — and yes, RAM prices are to blame

1. GTA 6 pre-orders finally went live

After two substantial delays, GTA 6 is finally going to go on sale on November 19, and you can get your pre-orders in now for the PS5, the Xbox Series X, or the Xbox Series S. You've got a $79.99 / £69.99 Standard Edition and a $99.99 / £89.99 Ultimate Edition to choose between, and we've got links for you to all the top US and UK retailers right here.

We're also going to keep an eye out for any bundles that these stores are offering, meaning you can pick up the game and a console at the same time — so check back often if you're interested. It's exciting that pre-orders are now live for what could be the video game of the decade, and we only have five more months to count down until launch day.

• Read more: GTA 6 pre-orders live — bundles arrive, while almost all major US and UK retailers have stock

You could say Walt Disney Imagineering has been on a decades-long journey with audio-animatronics, which is essentially the tech underneath iconic characters at parks worldwide. What started with Tiki Birds has since grown to give us legendary looks at other characters, and in recent years, Walt Disney himself.

Just like the walking, talking Olaf roaming character, BDX Droids, or the Walt Disney animatronic, that innovation comes from a specific part of Walt Disney Imagineering, and that's the R&D (Research and Development) lab.

In late November of 2025, Imagineering gave us an early first look at next-generation audio-animatronic technology, one that could be expressive in brand-new ways due to the fact it was using front-based projection.

As Leslie Evans, Executive R&D Imagineer at Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, told me, "We're really going after more tools to just tell stories in an incredible way."

Now, just seven months later, that same system is debuting inside a Disney Park for the very first time, and TechRadar has the exclusive first look, as I was one of the first to see it in Imagineering's R&D lab.

This next-generation pirate is making its debut at Disneyland in the iconic Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which reopens Friday, June 26, 2026. For the first time, guests floating past the treasure-filled grotto will witness a pirate atop a pile of cursed gold transform from a flesh-and-blood pirate to a skeleton in mere seconds.

Choosing Pirates wasn't accidental — as Evans explained, the team was "looking for a figure where creatively we could do a great transformation," and ultimately landed on the conclusion that "this pirate transformation would be a great, great first place to do it." And considering it's a long-standing ride at the original Disney park filled with countless audio-animatronics, it makes sense that this next-generation technology is debuting there.

But let's roll it back from the ride itself and into Imagineering's fairly unassuming R&D lab in Glendale, California. I walked through a garage-like space with high ceilings and workstations, alongside generations of hydraulic animatronics — all the way through the A-1000 systems — before approaching a pirate figure elevated on scaffolding above a bank of workstations, Imagineers actively running it below. That staging is intentional — guests will look up at the figure from a boat, and the lab mirrors that sightline exactly.

The technology behind the illusion

That, in fact, was the new next-generation animatronic. At first glance, it reads almost deceptively simple. But as Evans explained, the ambition behind it runs deep. "How can we enable transformations that maybe previously are really challenging or in some cases impossible… I want characters that can blush, that can cry," she told me.

Unlike traditional Audio-Animatronics, which rely on complex mechanical systems for facial movement, this figure begins with a 3D-printed shell and almost no visible mechanical articulation in the face.

Instead, expression is driven almost entirely by a high-fidelity front-projected image mapped directly onto the character, and considering how far computer graphics and rendering have come, this dramatically expands what Imagineers can create with physical characters. Think of a person crying, laughing, grinning with emotion, and ultimately being more human.

What that process looks like up close is striking in its own right. During calibration, a blue and white mesh grid is projected across the entire figure — mapping the projection system precisely to every contour of the physical surface, from the brim of the hat down to the beads around the neck. It's a glimpse behind the curtain that makes the technology suddenly legible: this is how light becomes skin, or bone. Once that mapping is locked, the projected character snaps into place with a precision that's genuinely difficult to believe until you're standing in front of it.

With the installation at Pirates of the Caribbean, this next-gen audio animatronic system has various sensors that complete calibration daily, as well as the necessary compute system and projection tech, and redundancies for all of these. Considering it’s operating on a dark, water ride as well, there is a cooling system and a filtration system for the various components to keep them running day in and day out.

That simplicity, though, was deliberate — the result of rigorous testing. Evans and her team actually built and evaluated versions of this next-gen tech with individual facial features, including the nose, projecting onto them and asking a pointed question each time: "Is this adding anything? Is this extra bit of complexity getting us something from a creative standpoint?" If the answer was no, it got cut.

As Evans described it, "We started from that moment of 'let's test this, and we're only going to keep what we actually really need.'"

The nose didn't make it. The jaw did.

Disney's new blend of animatronics and game engines

Evans called it simply "a very exciting tool," and while she wouldn't be drawn on where it goes next beyond Pirates, that understatement might be the point.

That shift moves expressive detail out of mechanics and into real-time rendering — powered by a digital pipeline that connects Unreal Engine-based systems and animation tools. Evans talked about the moment those pieces converged. "When you really had animatronic technology, real-time game engines, and incredible CG assets all together… that's when we said, wait, we've really got something here," she said.

But getting there required pulling every discipline together. As Evans put it, "That's what's just absolutely magical about this team of people… when you bring them all together and say, 'this is the North Star, what are those key components that we need to go make it happen?'"

What that unlocks is a character capable of real-time visual transformation. Because the projection is dynamic, the character can shift emotional tone and surface detail in ways traditional animatronics simply can't — from subtle expressions like sadness or joy, to more dramatic changes that reshape how the character is perceived entirely. In Pirates, that means watching a single figure move between pirate and skeleton in real time, telling a fuller version of a story.

The physical system underneath is still there, but simplified. The body retains enough traditional mechanical motion to interact with the environment, while the face becomes a canvas for projection-driven expression. Redundant projection systems are also built in for reliability — essential for a high-throughput attraction like Pirates of the Caribbean.

And while Disney wouldn't go into full technical breakdowns, the compute setup running it sits closer in architecture to a high-end gaming PC than traditional show-control hardware. Though, as we’ve seen with Smugglers Run and Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin, the blur between ride systems and gaming is blurring.

Disney engineers even mapped the ride path physically inside the R&D lab to simulate what guests will see from the boat vehicles, ensuring the transformation reads correctly from multiple angles.

A platform, not just a pirate

Evans was clear about what drives all of it, telling me, "We want them to believe it's real… we're trying to make people feel."

She added, "We don't build technology for technology's sake. Everything is about telling a great story to our guests."

Proof that it works came not from the engineers who built it, but from the first people who hadn't. Evans described watching fresh audiences encounter the figure for the first time. "Our folks are standing in front of this character for minutes, just watching this cycling transformation happen over and over and over again, and are still kind of mesmerized by it. That's when we got that moment of going — yeah, I think we did something good," she said.

And I can echo that. After the first glance, I stood in front of it, walking around from different angles, watching this pirate cycle from human to skeleton after taking the bait from a gold coin. It drives a genuine reaction of joy — it's deeply impressive, and I look forward to seeing it running at Disneyland alongside the other animatronics that have defined that ride for decades.

It's a meshing of past, present, and future in terms of tech. And that's where things start to open up beyond Pirates. What Disney is building here is not a single animatronic, but a platform for bringing real-time characters with far more detailed expressions to physical environments and attractions in a very scalable way.

So if a pirate can transform from human to skeleton in real time, the question becomes what happens when that system reaches the rest of Disney's universe of characters. Pirates of the Caribbean is where guests will see it first — but if Imagineering's trajectory is any indication, it won't be the last.

Amazon’s Prime Day sale kicks off on June 23 — and it might be the last time we see big discounts on many tech products for a while, if some in the tech world are to be believed.

This includes Tim Cook who this week warned of price increases for Apple’s tech, as, he says, it’s now impossible for Apple to absorb the cost of the ongoing component crisis.

To catch up on Cook’s warning, and brighter news such as Commodore’s flip phone filling us with nostalgia, scroll down for our recap of the week’s biggest tech news.

7. Commodore’s flip phone took us back to 2004

Feeling nostalgic for flip phones and a simpler, pre-doomscrolling age? Commodore (yes, the latest incarnation of the classic computing giant) feels your pain, so it’s made a clamshell phone that’ll meet your retro needs while freeing your brain from smartphone addiction. Or that’s the idea, at least.

The Commodore Callback sits somewhere between a dumb phone and a modern Android flagship. It doesn’t work with social media apps, and has no touchscreen or web browser. But it does run most Android apps and has a 48MP rear camera, plus other flourishes like an “audiophile grade" DAC. Will it start a revolution? We’re not sure, but it’s definitely one of the most interesting phones of the year.

• Read more: ‘A speed bump for your mind’: Commodore’s retro-inspired flip phone could be the perfect way to break your smartphone addiction

6. GTA 6 got a trailer

This week Rockstar unveiled a new teaser for Grand Theft Auto 6 — and while we weren’t lucky enough to see new gameplay, we weren’t left wanting.

To an underscore of 80s synth and guitar we saw the game’s cover art come together. The vignette collage, similar to GTA 5’s art, is full of pink and purple hues which perfectly capture the Vice City vibes.

Rockstar also announced that preorders will go live on June 25, ahead of its release on November 19, 2026.

• Read more: New GTA 6 teaser officially reveals cover art — and it looks pretty slick

5. Microsoft dropped new Surface laptops

Not content to let Computex hog the computing announcement limelight, Microsoft debuted new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 processor.

The new Surface Laptop offers what Microsoft claims is up to 58% faster graphics performance over the previous generation of its notebook, and solid battery life of 20 hours for the smaller models, and 19 for the larger.

Meanwhile the Surface Pro 13-inch boasts a 53% graphics performance leap over its predecessor, with up to 15.5 hours of battery life, based on Microsoft's internal testing.

• Read more: Microsoft reveals new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop with big graphics upgrades from Snapdragon X2 CPUs

4. Sonos updated its app

A few months ago, we interviewed Sonos CEO Tom Conrad about the company’s app woes in its 2024 update, and he said that while they’d worked hard on fixing its technical issues, he still had big problems with its design and usability that he wanted to get to. This week, he announced the first changes coming to the app to improve its layout.

They include all kinds of things fans have been asking for since the 2024 redesign, including easier volume-changing options, the ability to customize your list of products, and options being organised using tabs the mirror standard iPhone and Android app design cues. The update is rolling out in a beta first, to make sure it all works before everyone else gets it…

• Read more: The Sonos app is finally getting its long-awaited improvements to volume control, player listings and content organization

3. The UK government had bad news for kids

Depending on your point of view, it perhaps wasn’t a great week for young social media fans in the UK — Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that, like Australia, the country would be banning apps such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat for under-16s from next year.

It won’t just be social media apps that are affected either — livestreaming for under-16s is also going to be banned, across all platforms. The government says the move will “give kids their childhood back”, but UK teens naturally aren’t very impressed, and neither are fans of the open internet. Expect this to be a piping hot topic for the rest of 2026.

• Read more: How will the UK's social media ban actually work? Here's the full list of affected apps — and 5 things you need to know

2. Android 17 rolled out

Android 17 began rolling out to compatible Pixel phones this week, and while Google’s flashy new Gemini Intelligence software isn’t among the available features just yet, there are plenty of neat new tools to try if you own a Google Pixel 6 or newer.

Chief among the new UI features are Bubbles, which lets you turn any app into a floating bubble that stays on top of other apps (useful for multitasking on large-screen devices), and Screen Reactions, which lets you capture your phone’s display and record yourself with the front-facing camera simultaneously.

My favourite Android 17 feature is foldable Gaming Mode, which adds a dynamic gamepad to one side of your foldable phone (so you can play it like a Nintendo DS — yes, really!); unfortunately, this one isn’t dropping until later in the year.

• Read more: 7 of the best Android 17 features available now — from Bubbles to Screen Reactions

1. Tim Cook warned of Apple price hikes

Against the backdrop of the RAM crisis and other component price hikes brought about by AI hype and supply chain disruptions, the affordable MacBook Neo was a breath of fresh air when it debuted — but outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook had some bad news for anyone hoping the good times might last a little longer.

Speaking with the Wall Street Journal Cook said: "Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable. We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable."

We don’t know when we'll see said price hikes, or how significant they'll be, but if you have your eye on Apple tech you might want to think about buying sooner rather than later — especially with Prime Day kicking off next week.

• Read more: Tim Cook just warned that 'price increases are unavoidable' for Apple products

If you're a fan of Pokémon, you've probably played your fair share of the many games out there, watched some of the anime, and maybe even checked out one or two of the movies. But if you'll want to do well in the following quiz, you'll need to prove your worth as a fan.

Ever since the original games were released in 1996, Pokémon has been an unstoppable cultural phenomenon — even grandparents would recognize a Pikachu or Pokéball. There are countless video games (who could forget Pokémon Go) as well as thousands of episodes of TV show, loads of movies and other media appearances; songs, manga, trading cards, the list goes on.

So there's a lot for fans of Pokémon to get their head around, and I hope you've made a good effort, because I'm about to test you on the franchise. We'll be asking questions about the various media that's been produced over the years, as well as names and numbers.

If you can't tell your Natu from your Eternatus, don't worry: this won't all be about specific Pokémon, but the entries in the media empire. But if you know what Pikachu looks like, that'll help.

We'll start with 10 easy questions, and then move into 10 medium ones, and finish with 10 difficult ones for the experts. So let's find out just how much you know:

Do you know your Graveler from your Grovyle? If you need to brush up on your Pokémon, let's get you some revision material:

If you like your movies — or TV shows, animations, theme parks, video games (the list goes on!) — then you're no doubt at least partially aware of the massive company that is Disney.

One of the biggest media conglomerates in the world, Disney has fingers in many pies, including on screens and in the real world. And it's beloved by fans, who queue up to visit its parks and watch new Disney+ movies at midnight on the day they release.

If you're one of those fans, you'll no doubt want to test just how much you really know about Disney. And luckily, you're about to get that opportunity, with this 30-question quiz.

We'll start with 10 easy questions, and then move into 10 medium ones, and finish with 10 difficult ones for the Disney experts. So let's find out just how much you know:

If you need to brush up on your Disney, perhaps a Disney+ subscription could help:

• Nothing's Carl Pei has bad news about the RAM crisis
• "Phone prices are going up and they’ll keep going up into next year.”
• He adds that seasonal sales might not be as useful as in previous years

The RAM crisis feels like one of those problems that might one day — ideally soon — be solved, and consumer tech would return to a more reasonable cost. Unfortunately, yet another industry expert — this time the CEO of Nothing, Carl Pei — says prices might be as good as they’ll get for a while. And that we’re better off acting fast to avoid disappointment.

In a post on social media, Pei explained that “Memory is now the most expensive component in a smartphone," adding that it “can account for more than 50% of the total hardware bill.” As a result, “phone prices are going up,” Pei says, “and they’ll keep going up into next year.”

His post ends saying, “If you've been waiting to upgrade a device, the best time was yesterday. The next best time is now. This year's sale season won't have the discounts people are used to.”

That might mean Black Friday — and the surrounding sales the end of the year brings — might not usher in the level of discounts we’re used to. As some older tech prices rise — like the recent hikes to the PS5, Steam Deck, and others — it’s possible end-of-year sales might only return gadgets to their pre-hike cost, or worse yet, offer a discount that falls short of that pre-hike level.

Pei’s warning echoes that of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who predicted at a recent event that the ongoing memory shortage is a crisis that'll last for "quite a few years", however an ex-Samsung boss — Kye-hyun Kyung, who was the head of Samsung's semiconductor business just a couple of years ago — predicts RAM costs may soften by late 2027, or early 2028, thanks to Chinese companies expanding the RAM output.

Additionally, Kyung noted that if the AI boom slows, investment and demand for RAM may stall, helping lower costs amid an influx of Chinese supply and a dip in demand.

When's the best time to buy new tech?

Of course, this is all speculation. While Chinese chips may be on the way it’s possible countries like the US may impose import bans or extreme tariffs to counter them (especially if they pose a risk to American companies like Nvidia), and it’s possible they won’t be as desirable as Kyung predicts if they can’t match the performance of their rivals — though for budget-friendly tech cheap and slightly worse chips would be better than nothing.

At the same time, Huang and Pei’s RAM crisis warnings come with baggage. Nvidia’ massive stock price gains are in part because RAM and other component prices used by AI are on the up, Huang doesn’t want companies waiting and hoping for a better deal, he wants them buying more Nvidia chips now out of fear costs will go up.

Similarly, Pei doesn’t want consumers waiting to buy tech when it’s on sale or when prices drop; he wants them to buy Nothing’s phones now to help the company recoup the higher costs it has paid to make the current lineup.

If you’re feeling strapped for cash but in need of a tech upgrade, the middle ground option might be to wait just a week. That’s because starting June 23, we’ll hit Prime Day and get a flavor for what this year’s sales could look like.

While Amazon has a proper event, other retailers around the world will slash prices to compete with the global shopping giant. Black Friday usually sees deeper discounts and more accessible deals that don’t require a Prime membership, but Prime Day — and whether it’s what we expected, worse than usual, or better than usual — should give us a hint at what Black Friday has in store.

Alternatively, it could offer you a prime sweet spot. Giving you a chance to buy tech now at a reduced rate before it climbs higher, as Pei and Huang predict.

Unfortunately, there’s no single right answer to this conundrum, given the many unknowns. Even beyond RAM, we’re seeing SSD prices rise, so even if one crisis ends, another could be in full swing, and if there is some kind of AI bubble pop, costs won’t drop instantly, as many companies have preordered their components to lock-in pricing and availability ahead of time — meaning inflated prices will stick around for a while even in the best-case scenario.

Hopefully, some light is coming at the end of this RAM crisis tunnel — I have my fingers crossed, but I’m not holding my breath.

8. We picked our favorite World Cup tech

Yes, the World Cup has officially kicked off, but it isn’t too late to fine-tune your setup. Far from it — with over a month of soccer to go, we’ve rounded up everything you need for a successful tournament at home.

From our dream watch party setup to soundbar upgrades and the best World Cup tech deals, you won’t be short of ways to upgrade your viewing experience. And once that’s all sorted, you can dive into our ultimate World Cup watching guide for the lowdown on how to catch every match, from anywhere in the world.

• Read the full story: The TechRadar guide to World Cup 2026

7. Ocarina of Time was reborn

Closing out gaming’s week-long celebration that is Summer Game Fest and the showcases surrounding it, Nintendo’s Direct showcased an exciting mix of trailers, which included a tease for a The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake on the Nintendo Switch 2.

Little has been revealed so far beyond child Link’s design, and hints at full voice acting as the Great Deku Tree is heard narrating the intro like he does at the beginning of the N64 game.

Perhaps best of all, the trailer ended with a release year: 2026. So we won’t be waiting too long to get this Zelda game in our hands and find out if this is the series’ Resident Evil 2 Remake moment, as many hope it will be.

• Read the full story: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is coming to the Nintendo Switch 2

6. Trump Phone not ‘made in America’

To probably no one’s surprise — after serious delays, changing promises, and accidentally doxxing its buyers — the Trump Mobile T1 phone has been taken apart by iFixit, and it turns out the “American-proud design” is just a gold-skinned HTC U24 Pro, aka a Taiwanese phone launched in 2024.

In fairness, it does boast a couple of tweaks. The design has been adapted with a new camera bump shape, and the battery is a little larger at 5,000mAh battery — up from 4,600mAh — though it only offers 30W charging rather than the HTC original’s 60W.

iFixit notes that markings on the phone say it’s “assembled in the USA”, which is notably different from being “made in America,” which comes with some very specific FCC requirements that the Trump Mobile phone ironically doesn’t seem to meet.

The teardown company puts it best: “against all expectations, the T1 is actually well priced when compared to the equivalently specced U24 Pro, and the only things you give up are the 60W fast charging and your dignity."

Read the full story: Trump Phone unmasked as a 'gold-painted HTC U24 Pro'

5. Valve abandoned physical gift cards

It’s bad news for PC gamers on Steam this week, as Valve announced it will no longer be restocking physical Steam gift cards. Why? Because scammers are taking advantage of consumers.

This isn’t exactly a new occurrence; Steam scams have been around for years. However, Valve clarifies it’s effectively been forced to end restocks of physical gift cards, as “scammers have adapted”, even after it has actively worked with retailers and law enforcement to foil scams.

Physical gift cards are an excellent gift option for the less gamer-savvy to give their PC gamer loved ones, and can be useful for parents to top up their child’s Steam account with funds without pairing a credit card to it. However, with them gone, digital Steam gift cards will be the only option, as soon as stock runs out across multiple retailers — and one can only hope that scammers don’t end up forcing Valve to restructure digital gift cards as well.

Read the full story: Valve is officially done with Steam physical gift cards

4. Philips launched a virtual skylight

Philips unveiled a new ceiling light dubbed the ‘Philips Skylight’, designed to mimic the effect of natural daylight for indoor use, blending advanced LED and Philips’ NatureConnect technologies. Starting at 499.99 euros (about $580 / £430), the ceiling light comes in four different models and will be available later this month in most regions. It’s coming to the US in September.

Each variant of the Philips Skylight comes with a slim ceiling profile for mounting, a remote control, five preset lighting scenes, and Philips’ Day Rhythm tool, which automatically adjusts color temperature and brightness throughout the day. But despite its slew of features, it’s not Philips Hue.

This means that, unfortunately, it doesn’t connect to Wi-Fi or work with Matter over Thread, so you can't integrate it into your existing smart home setup, and you’ll have to use the included remote to control it manually.

• Read the full story: Philips just launched a new ceiling light that looks like a skylight

3. Apple revealed some major software surprises

Siri AI (see no.1 below) was the undoubted star of Apple’s WWDC event this week, but the software showcase revealed hundreds of other upgrades for iPhones, Macs, Apple Watches and more. And not all of them went down well.

You can read our pick of the best features coming to iPhones in iOS 27, or the macOS 27 highlights below (in entry no.2). But there were some notable surprises too, including the next version of watchOS dropping support for some recent models and Apple controverisally embracing generative AI in Photos.

Apple also went very hard on boosting parental controls at the event — leaving us with a sense that it had one eye on child safety, and another on increasingly demanding government regulators.

• Read the full story: 17 things we learned at WWDC 2026 — Siri's getting a big AI makeover, Golden Gate is the next macOS, Liquid Glass is changing, and more

2. macOS 27 named Golden Gate

Tim Cook's final WWDC as Apple CEO gave us a glimpse of the future of its software, including the upcoming macOS 27 build — called Golden Gate. Unlike previous years, however, it’s not the most exciting.

There are Liquid Glass and other design tweaks that’ll make your Mac feel more usable, plus there’s a new and improved search to help you locate just about anything on your machine. There are also some performance enhancements, with apps said to feel more responsive, and of course, there’s the debut of Siri AI, more on that below.

While not the flashiest update, it’s a solid upgrade from the looks of things, though if you aren’t a fan of AI, it might feel like a downgrade.

• Read the full story: macOS 27 Golden Gate announced at WWDC 2026

1. Siri’s AI upgrade landed

It was a long time coming with at least one false start, but the new Siri that’s already in some people's hands, thanks to the iOS27 Dev Beta, which arrived with the WWDC Keynote, is the Siri Apple promised us in 2024 and more.

Sure, Apple is basically playing catch-up with OpenAI and Google, but in what may be looked back on later as one of the canniest moves in this AI race, Apple has adopted Google Gemini’s best models and crafted something new. Siri AI and the Apple Intelligence updates feel at once familiar and yet like a totally Apple experience. Yes, it even makes photo-realistic fake images.

• Read the full story: I tried Siri AI on the iPhone, Mac, and iPad

Test yourself on last week's biggest tech news

All caught up with this week’s tech news? Why not test yourself on last week’s seven biggest tech stories to see how good your memory is? Take the quiz below.

I have a reputation on the TechRadar team for being a certified Apple hater. Perhaps it's my staunch love for Android, or the fact that I can sometimes be a little harsh on the Silicon Valley megacorporation — though given it’s valued at over $4 trillion, I think my high expectations are perfectly valid.

Still, I dispute these accusations, especially as recently, my anti-Apple-ness has started to wane.

While I was a little skeptical of the MacBook Neo when it was announced, it’s now the laptop I recommend to anyone seeking an affordable productivity machine that's full of fun. Plus, as I expand my collection of Samsung ecosystem gadgets, I’m starting to understand the benefits of the walled-garden approach Apple has long since championed.

And ultimately, WWDC 2026 was the best consumer AI showcase I've seen... and I've unfortunately sat through a fair few in recent years.

In the most recent episode of the TechRadar Podcast, I even caught myself defending the new AI-bolstered Spatial Reframe tool against the rest of the panel — it was as if I had fallen into DC's Bizarro World.

In fact, if Apple keeps moving the way it does (and I can’t believe I’m writing this), I might soon start flying its flag.

Apple keeps taking Ws

While watching WWDC 2026, I realized Apple is ticking a lot of my technology boxes with the way it talks.

Its focus on keeping young people safe online — while also balancing parents’ ability to decide what their children are/aren’t ready for — is a tightrope no one else has walked with such detail. Plus, its continued push for privacy tools stands in clear contrast to some of the less-than-ideal approaches its rivals have taken at times.

I’m also a fan of Apple’s continued focus on spatial computing. Sure, the Vision Pro was imperfect, but the device and resulting software continue to see a surprising amount of support compared to other Apple failures (see: the HomePod). Plus, the Vision Pro's influence can be clearly felt in Apple's other devices — whether that's the design language of Liquid Glass, or the aforementioned Spatial Reframe tool which takes advantage of Apple's 2D to 3D image conversion tools.

I know a lot of folks weren't keen on Spatial Reframe, as was discussed in the podcast above, but if it can help some people save a couple of shots from their last vacation or make a one-off family photo look better, I don't see the harm.

With rumors of upcoming Apple smart glasses and a foldable iPhone — two device categories I can’t get enough of — I’m seriously prepared to consider a switch if Apple can maintain its current momentum.

I still love my Android tech, and realistically a total switch is unlikely given how embedded I am in non-Apple ecosystems, but to everyone out there who thinks I have a complete loathing of Apple, let this be a reminder that we tech reviewers are complex beings — and we can sometimes admit that Apple can do great things, even if it hurts a little to say.

The World Cup is the biggest sporting event of them all — and after a four-year wait it's back, back, back in all its glory.

The 2026 tournament takes place across three countries — the United States, Canada and Mexico — and is the biggest yet, with 48 teams competing to be crowned world champions.

It all kicks off on Thursday, 11 June with Mexico vs South Africa, and then takes in 104 games across more than a month, with the final taking place on July 19.

We'll be covering it all here at TechRadar, with guides to how to watch each game, tips on the best tech to level up your viewing experience and much, much more. Read on for the latest.

How to watch every game

World Cup 2026: Streaming guide to the tournament

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World Cup tech

Amazon Australia quietly announced the dates of its next Prime Day sale in Australia this week while simultaneously dropping the prices on items that were already discounted during its recently concluded Mid-Year Sale.

The prices last week — the Mid-Year Sale was June 1-7 — were already better than what we saw during the Big Smile Sale in March earlier this year, and that means there are a fair few choice items that are now at a record-low price.

• Shop all of today's Amazon deals

In fact, we thought the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (Gen 2) for AU$508 was an all-time low price, only for Amazon to drop it further and all four colour options are under AU$490 now. There are other premium Bose products that have dropped further in price this week, which includes the premium Bose SoundLink Max Bluetooth speaker as well.

Heck, even the Apple AirPods Pro 3 are cheaper now than during the Mid-Year Sale — just AU$329 compared to AU$369, but there's an eBay Plus-exclusive offer right now that drops them to AU$319... but you get the drift, right?

What I'm saying is: it bodes well for Prime Day in a few weeks. If we're already seeing some record discounts, surely Amazon will do one better in July, right? Well, we certainly hope so, but there are no guarantees. So my advice, if you missed out in the Mid-Year Sale, then grab one of these all-time low prices from Amazon right now. And a lot of the top deals that were already at their lowest prices are still hanging around.

If you're after more discounts, check out my live coverage of the best EOFY 2026 sales and deals, which includes some of these Amazon offers.

One of the biggest names in tech is Google, and that's no real surprise when you consider that its various technologies are used every single day by billions of people for various activities, from browsing the web to creating, editing and sharing content.

Originating as a simple search engine, Google now dominates the tech landscape, under the umbrella of its parent company Alphabet. If you're a tech fan, you're probably already well versed with the name.

But how well versed are you actually? Do you know the breadth of Google's portfolio, including all the gadgets and apps it makes? There's only one way to find out, and that's with this 15-question Google quiz.

Expect to go in-depth with Google products new and old, as well as its various services and the apps it owns. There'll be some easy questions first to warm you up, but then we're diving into some pretty tricky questions.

So let's check out how much of Googler you really are:

Now you know your Google, here are some of our favorite gadgets from the company. And if you're scrolling down here before doing the quiz, to find some answers; tough luck, there aren't any in this list!

We've been waiting a long, long time for Siri to get the AI glow-up it sorely needed, but at WWDC 2026, it finally happened: Siri AI is real.

That wasn't the only thing Apple announced at its annual developer conference, but it's fair to say that it was the main event, with more than half of the relatively short (only 75 minutes!) show dedicated to it.

Still, there were several other notable reveals both on stage and afterward. Here are the big things we learned.

1. Siri AI is the smarter, AI-powered Apple assistant we've been waiting for

It’s been a long two years, but we're nearly at the end of the winding road leading to Apple’s AI-powered, next-generation Siri — or at least we will be soon.

At WWDC 26, Craig Federighi ushered in Siri AI, an entirely next-generation personal assistant that delivers on what Apple originally set out to do at WWDC 2024, while adding some new tricks and a slightly updated look.

There’s a lot here to unpack — check out our first thoughts on the new Siri AI for more — but whatever you think of it, Siri AI is a big upgrade.

The assistant will now extend out from the Dynamic Island on the iPhone, creating a more integrated experience. Apple has also greatly expanded Siri’s world knowledge and contextual understanding, plus it's also multimodal: it can see what’s on your screen to gain broader context for a given request, and it can use your camera view as a set of eyes to help answer questions or respond to queries in real time.

That’s just scratching the surface. For instance, Siri’s voice has been updated to sound more expressive (see more on that below), and the assistant can now be customized to better suit your preferences.

Safe to say it took a while, but if you’ve already taken the leap and downloaded the Developer Beta, you can join the Siri AI waitlist now.

• READ MORE: Apple just gave 'Siri AI' its biggest upgrade ever — whether iPhone users asked for it or not

2. But Siri AI isn’t coming to the EU… because Apple says it needs to protect your privacy

The 27 EU countries won’t get Siri AI in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 because of the EU’s “extreme interpretation of the DMA [digital markets act]” that means that if it offers Siri AI’s features there that access your personal data (but process it on the device), it must also allow other AI tools on your iPhone to access your data too, but with no restriction on where that data goes (other than the EU’s data laws, of course).

Apple says it tried to create workarounds that balanced the EU’s aim for less lock-in with Apple’s aim of privacy, to no avail: “Apple designed a solution called Trusted System Agent — an intermediary that would allow virtual assistants to safely access the same features and capabilities as Siri AI for devices in the EU… The European Commission said no.”

• READ MORE: iOS 27 and Siri AI compatibility explained — confirmed device requirements for Apple's new software updates

3. You’d better buy a new device if you want the best version of Siri AI

The new Siri AI is going to quietly have two different flavors. The regular version is available on iPhone 15 Pro or later, iPad mini (A17 Pro) or later, iPad models with M1 or later, Mac with M1 or later, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Series 10 or later, Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, and Apple Watch SE 3.

However, Apple says that its “most powerful on-device model and the features it enables, like expressive voices and more advanced dictation”, are only available on super-new devices. That means iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPad (M4) or later with at least 12GB of memory, a Mac with an M3 or later with at least 12GB of memory, and Apple Vision Pro (M5).

All of this means that a lot of pretty recent and expensive devices are being left behind by Siri AI altogether, including the iPhone 17, iPhone 14 Pro, and the original Apple Watch Ultra. The brand-new MacBook Neo isn’t powerful enough for the best Siri model, either.

4. You can make Siri AI’s voice way less annoying…

…or more annoying, if you want! The point is that it’s now really customizable, in a way that rivals Alexa+ by letting you make your voice assistant your kind of vibe.

You can choose from five basic (and much more natural) voices, and then you can change the pace and expressivity within each of those voices.

Fast and simple expression for efficiency’s sake? No problem. Slower and more expressive because the kids like interacting with it? Go for it. It should help make you want to interact with Siri’s voice more — at least it would, if it were actually coming to Apple’s HomePod smart speakers…

5. Apple's also expanded its AI-powered photo editing chops

If you’re a fan of Clean Up in Apple Photos, you’re going to be pleased to know that Apple’s expanding its AI-powered photo tools… though it’s not a throw-anything-at-the-wall approach, as the design is that these tools respect the original photo.

Firstly, Clean Up will be faster and able to tackle larger removal jobs, and will sit alongside two new features. Extend will let you stretch the borders, and only the borders, of an exciting image. This can help you achieve a rule-of-thirds shot with a portrait or rebalance an image.

More intriguing is Spatial Reframe, which, with a pinch-to-zoom or a twist of your finger on the screen, lets you adjust a shot's perspective. It’s really neat, and the demo looks impressive, as it lets you adjust the camera's position after you’ve taken the shot.

6. All of which means that Apple’s changed its approach to AI and images

Before today’s upgrade to Siri AI and Apple Intelligence, Apple was pushing the line that its approach to AI images was unique. It told us it wanted to preserve the original moment when it came to photos, so it didn’t try to make any AI image generations or image edits look too realistic, and the images you could make with Image Playground looked like AI images, not real ones.

Now, with the new Apple Intelligence features, Apple seems to have abandoned that approach entirely, and with new features such as the Extend, Clean Up, and Spatial Reframing described above, it's letting you make AI enhancements to images that look very real indeed. Image Playground now also features the ability to create realistic images.

So why the switch? Well, maybe that now that Apple has had longer to get user feedback, it has realized that this is what people actually want from AI images, or maybe it’s that until it switched to its new Gemini-powered foundation models for its AI, it really didn’t have the ability to deliver this level of realism. Either way, it's a big change in approach.

7. Siri AI in Vision Pro gives us a glimpse of what Apple AI Glasses could be

One of the most interesting examples of using Siri AI was in Vision Pro, where the user could look at a floating virtual browser window with a shopping site and ask a question about how a product would fit into their life, and the system knew what they were looking at and could give a totally context-aware answer.

It’s thanks to the eye-tracking camera in the Vision Pro, and it’s easy to see this as being the long-term goal for the much-fabled Apple Glasses. Cameras on smart glasses right now see so many things at once; it’s not an elegant system to just ask a question about what you’re facing — you could actually be looking at 20 different things.

Combining cameras on the outside of the glasses with eye detection would mean that your eyes become a way of directing the AI to one specific thing — literally, your focus becomes the software’s focus.

We’re a long way from moving it out of goggles and into glasses, but it’s easy to see that this is the future… maybe.

8. The next macOS is… Golden Gate

Seeing what Apple’s crack marketing team comes up with as a name for the next version of macOS is now something we look forward to annually, and after a bit of a runaround between the team and Craig Federighi — including some excellent visuals— we finally learned that macOS 27 is called macOS 27 Golden Gate.

It will arrive with some changes to Liquid Glass, mainly a slider to adjust the overall transparency level (more on this below). This is good news, especially since on the Mac it could be a bit hit-or-miss in macOS 26.

As with the other platforms, Apple is also taking the opportunity to fine-tune a bunch of macOS features under the hood to make it feel a bit smoother. And as the name hints, there’s a really nice new wallpaper on the horizon. Lastly, Siri AI will be supported here on Macs — or at least those that can support it, of course.

• READ MORE: macOS 27 Golden Gate announced at WWDC 2026 — here's everything you need to know

9. Search on Apple devices is about to get much better

Apple's on-device search is getting a major overhaul for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, with a fully revamped experience in Spotlight, Photos, and Mail that should make it far easier to find what you're looking for.

The key, Apple says, is the 'device index' — essentially Apple's catalog of everything on your device, whether in Photos, Mail, or saved somewhere. This index has been made "more stable, more efficient and more comprehensive of content both old and new," Apple says, and that in turn should mean you get better results when you search — and that you get them more quickly.

It's a quality-of-life improvement rather than a big update, sure, but it's the kind of thing that Apple has traditionally excelled at getting right, so it's no bad thing in our eyes.

10. macOS 27 is the end for Intel Macs

As you might expect, Macs with Intel chips won't support Siri AI — but there's worse news still for owners of those devices: Apple confirmed that macOS Golden Gate is the first version of the software to work only on Apple Silicon.

Yes, it’s the end of an era for sure, with the announcement meaning that the clock is officially ticking down for the many, much-loved Intel Macs out there.

Apple will keep updating previous versions of macOS for a while with core security updates and basic maintenance, and macOS 26 in particular will get quite a few releases along these lines — but this will be it for new features, and we can expect Intel versions of software to stop being supported in many cases, too.

• READ MORE: Apple quietly kills off support for Intel Macs and MacBooks

11. AirPods are finally getting an EQ

It seems incredible that we’ve never been able to tinker with AirPods’ sound profile, given that they’re approaching 10 years old as a product. But a custom AirPods EQ is finally coming as an option in iOS 27.

You’ll be able to use a super-simple interface to adjust the frequencies, with a waveform on the screen, and you can play a song right from that interface as you’re changing things to hear instant results.

• READ MORE: AirPods are finally getting a custom EQ in iOS 27, this is not a drill!

12. Apple admitted it got it wrong on Liquid Glass (sort of)

Apple was very proud of itself when it launched its Liquid Glass design update last year, using superlatives such as "delightful", "elegant," and "beautiful" to describe it. Well, exactly a year later, it seems it wasn't quite so elegant or beautiful after all.

That's because iOS 27 and Apple’s other software updates will introduce a new slider that lets you adjust how transparent the Liquid Glass elements are, from completely clear to fully opaque.

Now, Apple didn’t actually say it had got it wrong the first time round with Liquid Glass; obviously not. Instead, it said that all users are different, and so it was offering the slider so that people could choose what worked best for them. But come on — a fully opaque Liquid Glass is not Liquid Glass. It's, I don't know… solid perspex or something. Still, if it makes iOS easier to use, then we won't complain.

• READ MORE: 7 new iPhone features coming to your phone in iOS 27 — from the new Siri AI to big Liquid Glass upgrades

13. Apple is taking online safety very seriously

Apple took a surprisingly large chunk of time out of its presentation to focus on parental controls, highlighting new tools that allow parents to manage which apps children can access, how long they can spend on different apps, and encouraging app developers to adopt tools it has developed to help keep kids safe online.

It also showcased new tools to protect children from messages from strangers and from explicit content, and Apple placed such importance on the topic that Tim Cook even used his closing remarks to discuss it yet again.

These announcements come in the wake of governments all over the world focusing on legislation designed to protect minors online, with this segment feeling like Apple proving it’s ready to proactively respond to parents' concerns rather than waiting to get pushed by laws.

14. Apple's Password app is about to get better still

Apple might be using its next-generation of Apple Intelligence to power one of the most useful features ever, and it will likely make you switch to the Passwords app if it works as promised.

It’s already a safe haven for all your usernames and passwords, and when the time comes to change the latter, the app easily creates a new one. It will even warn you when it might be time to update, for instance, if your password appears in a data breach.

Now, though, with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, the Passwords app will actually handle the step of changing the password for you on whatever service it’s for. We’ll need to see exactly how this works, but I've been dreaming of this for years.

15. tvOS is getting some small changes

Apple didn’t really mention tvOS in its keynote, but there are some changes coming to the Apple TV 4K. These include a bunch of speed improvements — including when launching apps, using Control Center, and connecting over AirPlay — plus a few smart home upgrades, including Thread 1.4 and on-device processing of HomeKit security camera footage.

There will also be a redesigned Podcasts app, support for Hi-Res Lossless in Apple Music (previously limited to the Lossless tier), and the ability to use AI to auto-generate subtitles for shows that don’t have them, which is one feature we’ve been hoping for for a few years.

Notably lacking from the list? Siri AI. It seems like it would be really useful, enabling you to ask all kinds of questions about movies you’ve seen, where you know an actor from, what kind of show you watch next… but there are rumors that a new Apple TV 4K is coming later this year. Perhaps that will have a beefier processor capable of running the new and smarter assistant.

16. But Home is missing out almost entirely (again)

Apple made a few soft-touch improvements to Apple Home, with grouped event notifications, searchable AI-generated summaries for security camera footage, and improvements to Shortcuts — but that was about it.

Did we get Siri AI for Home? We did not. Were we surprised? We were not. And unless we get new hardware in September, it seems unlikely we'll see any genuinely worthwhile updates to the platform now.

• READ MORE: Siri AI’s new voice customization could have trumped Alexa+, but scant HomeOS updates stall the win for Apple

17. Tim Cook signed off as CEO, but without much screen time

This was Tim Cook's final WWDC as CEO — and presumably his final Apple event, given that John Ternus will have taken over by September. It was therefore a little strange that he spent so little time on screen, with Craig Federighi and a cast of a thousand (just about) Apple employees instead taking us through the updates to Siri and iOS.

Nor did Ternus appear; this is perhaps not surprising, given that he's a hardware guy, but all the same, it felt like Apple missed an opportunity to mark the end of one era and the beginning of the next.

Again, there was plenty of that kind of thing around Apple's 50th birthday earlier this year, and maybe Cook (and Ternus) didn't want to take the focus away from Siri AI. And let's face it, he's always been more content to let Apple's devices and software do the talking, rather than hogging the limelight himself. Either way, it is the end of an era — and one that Ternus will have a tough job to surpass when it comes to success.

Apple's opening WWDC 2026 keynote has been and gone, and boy, did we hear a lot about iOS 27, macOS 27 (or more specifically, macOS Golden Gate), and the rest of Apple's upcoming software upgrades.

Leading the charge were announcements surrounding Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, which will seemingly make your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch as capable as rival products from Google and Samsung from an AI perspective.

Siri, specifically, will be more conversational, detailed, and engaging, and will no longer hand off your query to third-party AI providers like ChatGPT (that is, if you ignore the fact that Siri AI is powered by Google's Gemini model).

Elsewhere, Apple announced a host of productivity, security, and creativity upgrades coming to devices across its portfolio — even the Apple Vision Pro got a mention — and many of its new software packages are available to try in beta.

Below, I've rounded up the key news from WWDC 2026, and stay tuned to TechRadar for more analysis as the dust settles on Apple's major announcements.

Jump to the live updates here

WWDC 2026 — key news

• 17 things we learned at WWDC 2026 — Siri's getting a big AI makeover, Golden Gate is the next macOS, Liquid Glass is changing, and more
• 7 new iPhone features coming to your phone in iOS 27 — from the new Siri AI to big Liquid Glass upgrades
• Apple's new, AI-powered Siri is finally here — here are the biggest upgrades coming with Siri AI
• Apple just gave 'Siri AI' its biggest upgrade ever — whether iPhone users asked for it or not
• iOS 27 and Siri AI compatibility explained — confirmed device requirements for Apple's new software updates
• macOS 27 Golden Gate announced at WWDC 2026 — here's everything you need to know
• How to download the iOS 27 developer beta
• How to download the macOS 27 Golden Gate developer beta
• Apple quietly kills off support for Intel Macs and MacBooks
• Apple just quietly dropped 6 current-gen watches from supporting the upgrade, including Ultra and SE models — here is the full list
• AirPods are finally getting a custom EQ in iOS 27, this is not a drill!
• Siri AI’s new voice customization could have trumped Alexa+, but scant HomeOS updates stall the win for Apple

WWDC 2026 — how to re-watch

You can re-watch Apple's WWDC 2026 keynote via Apple’s YouTube page or via the embedded video above.

Live updates

Welcome to our WWDC 2026 live blog! Stick with us throughout the day for our pre-event coverage of Apple's big software showcase.

A look back at WWDCs past

What better way to count down to WWDC 2026 than with a visual look back at the WWDCs that came before? TechRadar's Mark Wilson has put together a visual retrospective of the 25 biggest moments from previous WWDCs, including the announcement of Mac OS X, Apple's switch from Power PC to Intel, and the launch of the iPhone 4.

TechRadar's editor-at-large, Lance Ulanoff, has touched down in California and— wait a minute, is that Apple CEO-to-be John Ternus? If you're reading this, Lance, let us know if he gave you any pre-show hints about what to expect from WWDC 2026.

More than just Siri

Of course, Siri 2.0 will be just one part of iOS 27, so what else are we hoping to see in Apple's next iPhone-focused software package?

Elsewhere on TechRadar, we've detailed 5 things we want iOS 27 to fix at WWDC 2026, from the iOS keyboard to Liquid Glass glitches.

What can Siri tell us about WWDC 2026?

If you were to ask Siri right now what to expect from WWDC 2026, you'd be met with a response that sums up the whole issue with Apple's voice assistant.

"Do you want me to use ChatGPT to answer that?" No surprises there.

If Apple can cut out the middle man and deliver a Siri that doesn't so explicitly rely on external AI to function, it'll be a win for everyone involved. TechRadar's editor-at-large, Lance Ulanoff, dug into this topic in a separate article over the weekend.

What to expect for iPad at WWDC 2026

Will we see new hardware at WWDC 2026, and more specifically, new iPads? Well, we can’t say for sure, but we do have a fairly good idea of what to expect (and not expect).

Sadly, the answer to that question is probably 'no' — for two reasons. The first is obvious — WWDC is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, with the key word there being ‘developers’, meaning that the focus is on software, not hardware.

Second, in recent years, Apple has tended to unveil its new tablets either early in the year, or towards the end of the year. Mid-year launches are rare. And this year, we did indeed see an early-year launch, with the iPad Air (2026) landing back in March. That was only a few months ago, so it would seem odd for Apple to launch another model so soon.

Still, we're expecting to hear plenty from Apple regarding iPadOS 27 today — here's the full breakdown on what to expect for iPad at WWDC 2026.

As for how Siri 2.0 might actually work in iOS 27, rumors suggest Apple could roll out a dedicated chat app for its voice assistant, as well as integrate Siri into the Dynamic Island.

Specifically, when you activate Siri with a wake word or the side button, a Siri animation will reportedly appear in the Dynamic Island. Then, once you’ve asked it something, a transparent results card will be displayed. If you need to go deeper than those initial results, you can swipe on the card to bring up a chat interface that apparently looks similar to an iMessage chat.

Hopefully, we'll see this rumored Siri interface in action today at WWDC 2026.

Which Apple era do you belong in?

Are you a longtime Apple user? If so, which Apple era do you belong in? Take our quiz to find out.

Don't expect a Liquid Glass-level redesign

As for what we're expecting to see in iOS 27 besides a major Siri revamp, rumors suggest Apple could add the ability to use natural language to create shortcuts in the Shortcuts app, as well as a new ‘Create a Pass’ option for Apple Wallet.

Other leaks point to tweaks to the look of Apple’s controversial Liquid Glass interface, design changes for the Camera and Weather apps, and improvements to autocorrect.

Don't expect a Liquid Glass-level design overhaul this year, then, but as mentioned, we're expecting to see Apple make experience-improving tweaks to the iPhone's transparent UI.

It looks like TechRadar's editor-at-large, Lance Ulanoff, is waking up to a clear morning in Cupertino, California (by my calculations, the local time is 6am PT).

Hang on, here's an even better pic...

And we've had our first "Good morning!" from Tim Cook, too.

The Apple CEO just tweeted a video of himself — and friends of the company including Harrison Ford, Jimmy Fallon, and Whoopi Goldberg — saying those exact words. Might today be the last time we hear a Tim Cook "Good morning!" on an Apple stage? With John Ternus stepping into the role of Apple CEO in September, it's certainly possible.

Coming bright up

Let's take a look at the official event invite for WWDC 2026. The official tagline reads "Coming bright up," and Apple's developer website is awash with references to glowing light ("Glow all out" and "A glowing giveaway," for instance). You may remember that Apple added an edge-to-edge glow to Siri in iOS 18.1 — yes, almost two years ago — and we're pretty confident that this is what Apple is teasing again here (albeit for an updated, genuinely usable version of Siri).

One other thing that's worth mentioning: as much as we're expecting Apple to right the wrongs of Siri at WWDC 2026, rumors suggest the company will still add a 'beta' label to its new voice assistant, and there may even be a waitlist of some sort before you can actually try it. Apple did the same thing with the launch of Apple Intelligence in 2024, suggesting that Siri 2.0 might still not be a finished product (despite being much better than Siri as it exists now).

Lance has touched down in Apple Park, and things are looking 'bright'.

Annual 'Lance at WWDC' selfie just dropped:

What about MacOS?

Let's pivot to MacBook for a moment. With MacOS 27, Apple looks set to introduce a “slight redesign” to the Liquid Glass-based UI, bringing fixes for “shadows and transparency quirks,” according to Bloomberg's resident Apple expert Mark Gurman.

However, “Liquid Glass itself isn’t going away,” Gurman insists: “The goal is more of a cleanup and refinement effort aligned with the company’s wider push to polish its software this year.”

This fits with the design rumors we've heard about iOS 27 and iPadsOS 27, too — so, Siri notwithstanding, 2026 looks set to be a year of small tweaks, rather than big swings.

Media pass secured

Behold, the official Apple pins from WWDC 2026:

Lil’ Finder Guy is definitely the best of the four.

With less than two hours to go until kick-off, it looks like Lance is doing laps around Apple Par— oh no wait, he's just finding his seat.

Survey says... Siri!

Early results for our 'What are you most excited to see at WWDC 2026?' poll suggest Siri 2.0 is the most hotly anticipated announcement of the day, closely followed by iOS 27 more generally. That makes sense, since more people use iPhones than, say, iPads or MacBooks, and Apple hasn't been discreet about marketing today's event as a Siri-focused showcase.

To see the current results of our poll, simply cast your vote below.

Apple Park is starting to fill up.

A reminder that today's event is due to start at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST (or 3am AEST on June 9), and you can tune in via the video link at the top of the page.

Here's what the TechRadar team is most excited to see at today's event:

Marc McLaren, Global Editor in Chief: I'm excited to see how Apple reclaims the narrative around AI. There are very few areas of tech where it's ever been so far behind its rivals and ended up looking a little out of touch, so if it has big things in store on this front, that's massive news. And if it doesn't… well, that's massive news too.

Jacob Krol, US Managing Editor, News: I'm really keen to see new Siri come to fruition after two years, but also how Apple positions it as helpful for everyday folks, and the features it decides to spotlight (will they be the same as originally promised?). It'll also be interesting to see whether Gemini or Google gets even a very tiny mention (I doubt it), and how Apple describes generative edit features for Photos.

Mark Wilson, UK Managing Editor, News: I’m looking forward to the new ‘Siri’ mode in the Camera app — I’ve been getting tired of Android getting all the cool visual search tricks like proper ‘Circle to Search’. And that sounds genuinely useful, assuming it’s not all smoke and mirrors again.

Matt Hanson, Managing Editor, Core Tech: I'd like Liquid Glass to look nicer in macOS 27.

Matt Evans, Senior Fitness & Wearables Editor: I'm excited to see how Tim Cook handles the baton-passing to John Ternus

Tim Coleman, Cameras Editor: More pics of Lance shaking hands with important people.

I'm with you there, Tim.

Interestingly, both the Apple Developer Portal and Apple Store website are still operating as normal, with just over half an hour to go until WWDC 2026 kicks off. Apple typically closes both sites for maintenance ahead of keynotes like WWDC, so we're expecting them to shutter imminently.

In other words, if you want to buy an iPhone from Apple directly, you've probably got about 30 seconds to do so...

We're ready and waiting (it looks like there are still some seats available, guys).

We're just about 30 minutes away from the start of WWDC 26, and I'm curious whether we'll see John Ternus join Tim Cook and Craig Federighi on stage at Apple Park before the pre-recorded presentation begins.

Typically, the latter two appear in front of the big screen at Apple Park to offer a few words before the event video kicks off, but considering Ternus was out mingling with attendees last night — including TechRadar's own Editor-at-Large Lance Ulanoff — it feels like perfect timing for the CEO-to-be to step into this emcee role.

Either way, we'll find out soon enough.

If you're wondering what Apple might call macOS 27, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman isn't convinced that Big Bear, Redwood, or Tiburon are the chosen monikers.

And just like that, Apple's beta page is down, teasing "We'll be back."

10 minutes to go. There's no music on Apple's live stream yet — at this point during Google I/O 2026, Google was torturing us with some AI-generated EDM — but the silence has got me wondering whether we'll see some sort of skit featuring Craig Federighi to kick things off.

The 'number of people in the waiting room' ticker is steadily heading north. It's now at 90,000...

The Apple stewards are wrangling the last few attendees...

Here's a quick prediction/hope/dream from TechRadar's Managing Editor, Social & Engagement, Josie Watson:

"I'm betting on this finally being the year Apple gets its act together and delivers a competitive smart home service. With competition hotting up from Google Home and Alexa, a newly bolstered Siri with widgets and better Shortcuts could be the missing ingredient. Except that'll probably mean we need all-new, more powerful HomePods, too..."

And we're off! There's the music...

Tim Cook walks onto the Apple Park green to Harry Styles' "Ready, Stready, Go!"

Was that the last "Good morning!" we'll ever hear from Tim Cook...

Confirmation that we'll be hearing about Siri today... surprise!

Craig Federighi teases upcoming announcements regarding platform improvements, trust and safety, and Apple Intelligence and Siri.

Side note: Federighi's hair really is magnificent, isn't it?

The first big reveal of the day: macOS 27 is... macOS Golden Gate!

Here's Stacey Ford to talk about upcoming macOS upgrades. She says Apple has made macOS "faster, smoother, and even easier to use."

Can yo count all the upgrades in the image above?

Liquid Glass will now diffuse content behind it much more effectively, and Apple is adding a new slider in Settings to adjust Liquid Glass. It's about time.

Every window on macOS will now have the same corner radius, and Apple has also added Liquid Glass effects to app icons.

I mean, that does look pretty cool actually.

Some more eye-catching stats: iPhone and iPad apps will launch up to 30% faster, new photos will appear 70% faster, photos will transfer over AirDrop 80% faster, and file browsing is up to 5x faster. Impressive stuff.

Hang on, did Apple just say... iPhone 11?!

iOS 27 will be available on every iPhone since Apple's 2019 flagship, which matches the minimum software requirements of iOS 26.

Finally, Search is getting some much-needed TLC.

Apple has rebuilt Search from the ground up; iOS 27 and macOS 27 will index your entire data library, so you can better search for photos and emails. Huzzah!

In case you missed it during that feature announcement flurry, iOS 27 will add a status slider for iMessages.

We're moving swiftly on to the Trust & Safety portion of Apple's briefing.

Starting this year, parents will be able to create upgraded Child accounts in iOS. They'll be able to approve which apps their children can download, which websites they can view, who their children can talk to, and how long they can spend on their iPhone or iPad.

In iOS 27, Time Allowances work like Screen Time limits, but are informed by paediatric research, and can be amended to suit different times of day.

Craig Federighi: "We're giving parents powerful, easy-to-use tools to help manage what kids can see and who they can talk to." This is good stuff from Apple.

And here we go with the AI portion of today's keynote.

"Today, we're taking a big step forward with Apple Intelligence."

Gemini mentioned!

Apple has acknowledged its partnership with Google; Gemini models will underpin Apple's upcoming Apple Intelligence features.

Apple believes that companies already investing heavily in AI should "turn the potential of advanced technology into helpful and intuitive products for everyone."

Is that a spot of shade-throwing?

Apple announces Siri AI.

"We've rebuilt Siri with powerful AI at the core," the company says. "Siri is a profoundly more capable assistant, and it's more conversational."

There's a dedicated Siri app, and it'll live predominantly within your iPhone's Dynamic Island.

Apple is showing off its new Siri AI platform by having a conversation about an upcoming Suki Waterhouse gig. This new voice assistant is contextually aware and capable of analysing what's appearing on your iPhone screen at any given time.

Essentially, Siri AI will reduce the need to jump between apps manually. It can search through core iPhone apps like Photos, Maps, and Mail to better answer your query.

Incidentally, Apple is also launching new Siri voices — you'll be able to adjust pace and expressivity based on your preferences.

An important side note there: these Siri AI upgrades extend to CarPlay and AirPods.

I'm not seeing much here that's downright groundbreaking versus comparable assistants like Gemini, but it does seem as if Apple has caught up to the competition with Siri AI.

Here's a look at Siri AI on macOS. Rather than being embedded in the Dynamic Island (which doesn't exist on MacBooks), it'll form part of Spotlight. You can expand Siri queries into dedicated macOS windows, and a new Siri field will appear when right-clicking on files.

We're now getting a look at the dedicated Siri app, which will store your (private) conversational history across your devices. In typical Apple fashion, you can start chatting to Siri on iPhone, move to iPad, and finish the conversation on Mac.

Siri mode in the iPhone's camera app looks like the Visual Intelligence feature that was promised two years ago. Touch the shutter button to let Siri see what you see, and you'll be able to ask contextual questions about your surroundings.

Automatic Proofreading! That's a useful new Apple Intelligence feature. Essentially, you won't have to take action when your iPhone, iPad, or Mac highlights a writing error.

Here's another look at that Siri assistant pop-up on Mac:

Oh, this is nice. Apple Intelligence can automatically organize your Safari tabs into categories.

I hope TechRadar's Global Editor in Chief, Marc McLaren, is watching...

Here's a major Passwords app update: now, you can automatically update eligible accounts to strong passwords, saving you the hassle of changing those passwords manually. Apple Intelligence will also go ahead and re-sign you into accounts with those changed passwords.

Ooo, this is good too: if you're on a phone call and are asked for details regarding a booking or reservation (say, if you're speaking to an airline regarding a flight), Apple Intelligence will surface those details into the phone call interface, so you don't have to navigate away from the call. If it works, that's huge.

Apple is now revealing a big Shortcuts app upgrade that we were hoping and praying for.

Essentially, you can now build Shortcuts with natural language prompts, so you don't have to wade through the complex process of building Shortcuts yourself.

Again, if it works, this could be huge for the accessibility of the feature, which launched way back in 2018.

In iOS 27, Image Playground really feels like what it should have been when it first launched.

For starters, you can now make an image in pretty much any style, including much more realistic ones. It's also being integrated across nearly all platforms, and you can make images in pretty much any size. We'll need to see how it stacks up, but this Apple Intelligence launch feature now looks genuinely usable.

An important note there: Siri AI won't be available in the EU on iOS and iPadOS. That's a lot of customers.

Behold, the (very) big list of Apple Intelligence features coming to iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate:

It's interesting that we haven't heard from (or even seen!) CEO-to-be John Ternus during this WWDC 2026 keynote. He is a hardware man, I suppose.

iOS 27, iPad OS 27, macOS Golden Gate, and the rest of Apple's next major software packages will arrive in Fall this year — for those new to this, that means 'in September, alongside the iPhone 18 Pro.'

And that's a wrap on Apple's opening keynote for WWDC 2026.

Stay tuned for our breakdown of all the announcements, and I'm working on a handy 'key announcements' list as I type this, so you don't have to wade through my previous 100 posts.

The WWDC 2026 compatibility conundrum

I've just published an explainer on the device requirements for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and Siri AI. To enjoy the full version of the latter — specifically, features like expressive voices and more advanced dictation — you'll need to own an iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, or an iPhone Air.

Frustratingly for many, Siri AI also won't be available in the European Union (EU) or China at launch.

Here's Apple's statement on the matter: "Unfortunately, due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple will not be able to ship Siri AI in the European Union with the release of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. Over the past several months, EU regulators did not accept any of Apple’s proposed solutions to bring Siri AI to the EU while safely supporting other virtual assistants."

Yikes.

We’re now days away from WWDC 2026 — Apple’s major software showcase of the year. There we expect to (finally) see the new and improved Siri alongside some major software upgrades, stretching from iOS to macOS.

But this week was arguably just as momentous in the world of tech. Scroll down and you’ll see we’ve rounded up the seven most important tech stories of the past seven days, from Sony’s State of Play showcase to everything we saw at Taiwan's Computex, the world's biggest computing show.

Before you catch up with this week’s tech news, why not test yourself on last week’s eight biggest tech stories to see how good your memory is? Take the quiz below, or scroll on for the biggest tech news of the week...

7. Sony's State of Play lit our gaming fires

Gaming’s nouveau-E3, aka Summer Games Fest, has had various festivities this week ahead of the main showcase. One of which was Sony’s latest State of Play.

Thanks to Sony we got a better look at Marvel’s Wolverine in all of its goryness, a new trailer and a demo for incredible sword fight (and potential GOTY) Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and to top it all off a sneak peek at the next God of War title: Laufey.

We’re writing this up ahead of Summer Game Fest’s main event (it was last night if you’re reading this Saturday morning) but be sure to check out our SGF coverage over on TRG.

6. Lego’s new Pokémon sets left us thunder-shocked

This week Lego’s Smart Play sets evolved with 12 new Pokémon builds that we instantly fell in love with. The biggest win here — besides the incredibly well designed ‘mons (there’s 20 in all) — is that these sets don’t feel like they need the Smart Brick.

Sure Pikachu’s treehouse has several awesome Smart brick integrations that allow you to catch, train, feed and rest your critter as if the electric mouse were alive, but the physical play features enable all of this while the Smart brick just enhances things.

The same is true for each of the other builds, and they feel like a serious improvement over what came from the Star Wars Smart Play sets just a handful of months ago.

• Read the full story: I spent 3 hours with Lego’s new Pokémon Smart Play sets — they solve the Smart Brick’s biggest problems

5. Polaroid launched the 'world's smallest' instant camera

There's been a big trend in miniature cameras recently, and following in their slipstream is the latest version of the Polaroid Go — an instant camera that's designed for anyone who wants a big hit of nostalgia from a small, affordable snapper.

The Go 3 doesn't reinvent the series, adding a stronger flash, sharper lens and even smaller dimensions (Polaroid claims it's the 'world's smallest' instant model). But it might just be the ultimate summer festival camera, coming in a range of bold colors (white, black, teal blue, ice blue or purple) and costing $89.99 / £79.99 (around AU$150).

Just remember to leave some spare change for extra 'Go' film — the little 2.6 x 2.1-inch prints cost around $21.99 / £18.99 / AU$40 per 16-shot roll, so use them wisely.

• Read the full story: Polaroid just launched the ‘world’s smallest instant camera’

4. The Sonos Beam got a new rival

WiiM has been quietly positing itself as the answer to “What would happen if we built a Sonos ecosystem but without the app that made fans turn their backs?” for quite some time now. The remarkable WiiM Sound wireless speaker launched last year, and now the firm has released its first soundbar.

The new WiiM Bar (for that is its name) is essentially a direct rival to the Sonos Beam (2nd Gen) in terms of pricing and how the company wants you to use it, but it's bigger, beefier and has real upfiring drivers for Dolby Atmos — which Sonos' Beam lacks.

It also features automatic room correction, multi-room grouping, support for over 20 streaming services and, unusually, a glass-covered 2.1-inch touch display on the front. An odd choice when the last thing you want is an illuminated visual distraction right near your TV screen when settling down for movie night?

We spoke to WiiM's CEO, Dr Lifeng Zhao, about it all (good news! You can turn it off while watching movies or shows) and he's confident users will find it valuable for music streaming when not watching TV — which is how a lot of people use their soundbar, you know…

• Read the full story: WiiM's first soundbar is the same price as the Sonos Beam, but it's bigger, beefier and has real upfiring drivers

3. Android fans got a big June upgrade

iPhone fans are patiently waiting for the software gifts that’ll be revealed at WWDC 2026 on Monday, but Android owners got some new toys to unwrap this week — courtesy of a generous June feature drop.

The biggest upgrade is arguably Fake Call Detection for foiling pesky scammers. The downside is that it’s limited to Pixels (and select non-Pixel devices), but there were new features for most other Android phones, too.

These include wider AirDrop support and Google Photos Wardrobe, a new way to track your clothes and combine them into outfits. We’ll try not to take that as a dig at our fashion sense thanks, Google.

• Read more: 7 new Android features coming to your phone in June — including fake call detection and Google Photos wardrobe

2. We picked our favorite tech from Computex

Each year the Computex computing show highlights some incredible computers, and that was no different this year.

The biggest news camera from Nvidia (see below), but there’s so much else to talk about. Dell revived the XPS line with the latest Dell XPS 13 model being billed as a direct competitor to the MacBook Neo. Acer was also chasing the Neo’s popularity, while MSI showcased a beautiful, but not overly affordable MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic that was a sight to behold.

Though but doesn’t hold a candle to the creative builds we also saw — which included PCs made to look like Matrix robots, a miniature science lab, and a giant mechanized arm.

• Read our full Computex coverage

1. Nvidia’s RTX Spark took on Apple’s M5

Computex 2026 was full of several huge announcements for PC users, but none was bigger than Nvidia's introduction of the new RTX Spark. This is an Arm-based chip packed with 20 CPU cores and 6,144 CUDA cores based on Blackwell architecture — and an integrated GPU that is said to be equivalent to an RTX 5070 GPU, which is great for gaming.

It’s best suited for, well, Arm-based laptops, which are known for their exceptional battery life, and Team Green has effectively green-lit its rivalry with Apple and its successful M-series chips (which are also Arm-based).

Nvidia, Microsoft, and Arm all lauded the RTX Spark as a ‘new era of computing’, and while that is the case for laptops, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang has also made it clear that the chip won’t be used for handhelds — which will undoubtedly disappoint some gaming enthusiasts. Still, this is undoubtedly destined to be one of the biggest computing moments of 2026.

• Read the full story: Nvidia just unveiled its RTX Spark Arm 'superchip'

• The main focus of WWDC will be on Siri and other major AI updates
• iOS 27 could introduce changes designed for the iPhone Fold
• Apple may preview a new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini

When Tim Cook delivered his first WWDC opening speech back in 2012, Siri kicked things off with a joke: "How many developers does it take to change a light bulb? None, that’s a hardware problem."

If Apple opens this year's keynote with Siri again, let's hope it has some fresh material because the Apple Intelligence features it originally promised for iOS 26.4 are now expected to arrive with iOS 27, making this WWDC a crucial moment for Apple's AI ambitions.

Of course, given the broader transition underway at Apple, the stakes are even higher for this year's WWDC to truly deliver. With John Ternus set to take over on September 1, which is also around the same time Apple is expected to unveil its first foldable iPhone, iOS 27 will need to do more than simply add AI features.

As usual, we're also expecting various updates to be announced for iPadOS 27, macOS 27, tvOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27. And while WWDC is traditionally a software-focused event, there are rumors of a new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini, both of which could receive an early preview ahead of a potential launch later this year.

There's also the possibility (like we joked about on the TechRadar podcast below) that Cook pulls a scene straight from The Wolf of Wall Street and announces he's not leaving after all. That would certainly be one more thing...

A smarter Siri

Apple's WWDC 2026 invite strongly hints at major Siri AI upgrades, which is no big surprise given that many of us have been waiting months for the more personal, AI-powered Siri first showcased last year.

At this point, it's almost a given that Siri will get the glow-up we've been waiting for, making it smarter and more useful across a range of applications. Based on reports from Bloomberg's Apple tipster Mark Gurman, we're also expecting Siri to get chatbot-like capabilities and a dedicated app with iOS 27. It's rumored to largely live within the Dynamic Island at the top of your iPhone.

If those speculations prove accurate, that would put Siri front and center of everything you do on your device, making this the biggest announcement we're expecting to hear next week, especially since Apple seemingly threw in the towel on Apple Intelligence by inking a deal with Google to let Siri run on Gemini.

In fact, this upcoming WWDC may be Apple's last chance to fix Siri and deliver the AI we were promised — no pressure then, Cook.

New Apple Intelligence features

Aside from the rumored upgrades Apple Intelligence will bring to Siri, like the ability to keep track of tasks, see what you're looking at on your phone, and work across all your apps, there's also been talk of several other new AI features planned to be added across Apple's operating systems.

Gurman, again, has been the main source for these tips, most recently suggesting that the image-generating capabilities of Apple Intelligence will be "getting a big boost this year". That suggests a big update is planned for the Photos app, which could also include new AI-powered image editing features.

Earlier this year, Gurman also noted that Apple's Writing Tools feature could get an AI boost to help users with spelling and grammar, as well as with building Shortcuts with AI by letting users more easily create automations across their iPhone, iPad, and Mac using conversational prompts.

An iOS 27 tune-up

Numerous Apple apps are reportedly primed for big changes with the arrival of iOS 27. From the Camera and Weather apps to Safari and Wallet, Gurman has suggested there could be several major upgrades.

Underpinning many of the changes will be the new AI feature, Visual Intelligence, which will be deployed across core iOS apps to enable more 'agentic' automations on your phone.

Of course, there's also the possibility that we get our first glimpse of how iOS 27 might support an iPhone Fold, which was speculated to launch in September but might be delayed until next year if the latest round of reports are true. It's expected to run on iOS 27, despite some considering it to support iPadOS 27.

There could also be some good news for those with non-Apple devices, as Gurman has reported that iOS 27 might relax its streaming protocols to be more open to third-party apps. That could mean that you might have the option to set, say, Google Cast as your default setting for broadcasting video and audio.

OS 27-wide changes

Considering that iOS 27 is rumored to be a much more scaled-back overhaul than what we got last year, many of us — just like MacRumors has reported — are expecting an update more along the lines of the Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which, if you recall, was solely focused on improving performance.

If that's true, it could mean we hear less about new features and more about underlying quality improvements that support the integration of Apple Intelligence across Apple's ecosystem.

One of the more minor improvements we're expecting is to Liquid Glass, which could get a new system-wide slider to adjust the opacity strength, although we likely won't see any major design changes.

Gurman has also hinted at new AirPods features, suggesting that Apple will "revamp" the controls and settings of its wireless earbuds to be "more functional, better organized and more streamlined" — but don't expect a new dedicated app like the Apple Watch has (it's more likely Siri will get a standalone app instead).

A new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini

Even though WWDC is primarily a software-focused event, there's the possibility that we could see a preview of the rumored new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini before they potentially launch later this year.

There have been rumors circling of a new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini launching since last year, and with Gurman confirming that both are "nearly ready to go" in his newsletter on Sunday, it would make sense to showcase a revamped Siri running on new devices.

Less likely, but still possible, is the chance that we get an update about Apple's upcoming desktop lineup, including the M5 Mac mini, the M5 Ultra Mac Studio and M5 iMacs, which have been delayed due to production challenges and global supply chain shortages.

Which rumored WWDC 2026 announcement are you most hopeful to see? Let us know by voting in the poll below or leaving a comment. We'll be covering the keynote in a live blog, so make sure to check back in with us for more.

Yesterday, I spent several hours playing with the brand-new Lego Pokémon Smart Play sets, and it was the most fun I’ve had in ages, and the August 1 launch date cannot come soon enough.

However, for the short period of time when I remembered I’m an adult journalist with a job to do, I had the chance to sit down with some members of the design team to chat about the sets, starting with the most striking improvement: they feel like Lego builds with Smart Play enhancements rather than being dependent on the new technology.

That’s unlike the first-wave of Smart Brick sets, which didn’t feel complete unless you had the brick charged up and in place.

“We're glad you picked up on that. We’ve been working on these sets for a few years, so for us it doesn’t feel quick. Our challenge is always to find what story we can tell, and also see how children play with these sets, then figuring out how to bring that to physical play and seeing where the Smart Brick can enhance the experience.

“For example, in the Pikachu’s Training House set, you can throw a pokéball at the target to catch him — the grass opens up, and it’s fun on its own — but we can enhance that with a Smart Brick by having the pokémon react and play a celebration effect. It’s good play at its core and we are making it even better.”

As the team explained, they spent a lot of time watching how kids played with the sets and used that to inspire aspects like how battling should work — you'll notice it's quite similar to children having their action figures interact by crashing into each other. And also using the Smart Brick to answer the one request every kid had, "They all wanted the Pokémon to come to life, so we focused on how we can do that with the Smart Brick."

The designs are also superb. Some of this is helped by the minting of new pieces — such as the eye pieces used by Cubone, Lapras, and Mewtwo — but also the teams working with The Pokémon Company to ensure every ‘mon looks like its in-game counterpart.

“We’d get very detailed feedback. Can you make the neck longer? Can you shorten the arms a bit? Can you make sure it has three claws on each hand? But that means the final models truly capture the essence of the Pokémon.”

This capturing of its essence includes my favorite of the designs — Garchomp. I love the pokémon in the games, but the build is so well done for me because, unlike most of the models which have smoother finishes, Garchomp’s Lego build is very bricky — with rough studs all over — to match his in-game ability: Rough Skin.

It’s a very nice touch, and the sets are full of these — one of the designers pointed out several easter eggs hidden in the builds, including that the Trophy included with Garchomp and Umbreon is made to look like Cynthia’s hair accessories (the Champion of Sinnoh, and one of the series’ most formidable foes).

Though while all the sets are great, there's undoubtedly a best-in-show, and we want you to help us decide! Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the poll below, and we'll try to make sure it's featured in our Lego Pokémon Smart Play review when that's published.

Can't decide? Scroll down for the full 12-set collection.

The full Pokémon Smart Play collection

Not sure how to vote in our poll? No worries, below I’ve written down some details (and personal thoughts) on all 12 of the builds. I’ve seen them all in person and spent several hours playing with them all, so I have firsthand knowledge of what they look and feel like.

I know which one I think is best, but there’s no one right answer. And whichever you like you’ll also find links to preorder them from Lego.com ahead of their August 1 launch.

All-in-one sets

Smart Play compatible

• Eclipsa Video is a new HDR standard heading to phones first
• Experts from Google, Apple, and NBCUniversal are involved
• For now, it won't be competing directly against Dolby Vision or HDR10+

There's yet another HDR (High Dynamic Range) standard for displays to know about, developed by experts from Apple, Google, and NBCUniversal — and it looks set to provide some open-source (and license-free) competition for Dolby Vision, albeit on phones and laptops rather than TVs.

It's called Eclipsa Video, and, as FlatpanelsHD reports, it was announced without much fanfare. It's a companion to Eclipsa Audio, which launched in 2025, and is being pushed specifically by Google — though the SMPTE 2094-50 technical standard it's based on was also developed with help from Apple and NBCUniversal.

One of the key goals is to fix a major HDR pain point: HDR is designed to balance highlights, shadows, and contrast so that nothing gets lost, but device screens all have different brightness limits. That means HDR signaling can get confused, leading to a less-than-ideal viewing experience.

That shouldn't happen with Eclipsa Video. The standard includes metadata protocols for reporting to the video what the limits of the viewing device are, so that the HDR can be tailored accordingly. "The video you're watching looks exactly the way the creator intended," Google's Roshan Baliga said last month.

The upcoming Dolby Vision 2 standard, meanwhile, aims to tackle the same exact problem, while adding numerous other upgrades. Particularly on cheaper, less capable televisions, you should get better results from HDR, provided both the TV and the content provider support the standard.

Coming to phones first

Support for Eclipsa Video will be required at both the hardware and software level, with the initial focus on phones, as per the official press release. Approved devices are expected to start showing up this year — and given Apple's involvement in the underlying spec, that leaves us wondering whether the iPhone 18 Pro might be first in line.

The press release promises "stellar video performance on compatible smartphones, laptops, desktops and more," and it's perhaps telling that TVs aren't mentioned — perhaps the intention isn't to disrupt the current dominance of the Dolby Vision and HDR10+ standards on bigger screens, or at least not right away.

How exactly this fits into the current landscape isn't clear, and right now we don't have many details to go on. The Eclipsa Video standard is actually being put under the control of the HDR10+ consortium, which has confirmed that future devices can be certified for both HDR10+ and Eclipsa Video.

That suggests we're looking at something that complements rather than competes with the HDR10+ standard, at least for smaller screens, though HDR10+ will remain its own separate entity too.

As for Dolby Vision and Dolby Vision 2, given the backing that Apple has historically given to Dolby Vision, and that the NBCUniversal-owned Peacock streaming service has already announced it's supporting the upcoming Dolby Vision 2, Dolby might not have too much to worry about... yet.

The most fun I’ve had at work for some time is when Josie and I got to build the Lego Smart Brick Darth Vader TIE Fighter set for our YouTube channel. Well, it was… as now that’s been replaced by the hours I spent playing the brand-new Lego Pokémon sets today — all 12 of them — as they’re everything I could want as a long-term fan of both, and they're a true evolution (pun intended) of the Lego Smart Play system.

My favorite improvement: you could forget these sets are at all Smart Play compatible.

This isn’t meant as a slight against the Smart Brick — I think the techno block is an incredibly fun play feature — but my biggest criticism of the original Star Wars batch is that they feel incomplete without the brick. Darth Vader’s TIE fighter literally has a giant open space at the back for the Smart Brick, and even with it in place, the set feels a little more open than a spaceship should be.

Here, Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Garchomp, and the gang are complete models without the Smart Brick; perfect blocky action figures to pose and battle with. But lift off their belly, and you’ll expose a Smart Play tile that, with a charged-up block, will help to bring these critters to life.

Further, the sets are jam-packed with play features enhanced by smart features, but aren’t dependent on them.

Smart Play's improvements have left me thunder-shocked!

The all-in-one Pikachu’s Training House couldn’t be a clearer showcase of this. With the electric mouse, you’ll experience the full Pokémon cycle. He starts out hiding in the tall grass, waiting for you to throw a pokéball at him — which you do by hitting a target, which makes the grass fall back, and, with a Smart Brick, plays a successful tune.

With your new partner, you can then touch the training tile to begin getting Pikachu ready for battle. In training mode, Pikachu and all other 19 Pokémon in this lineup can grow their strength by hitting targets, practicing moves, and generally preparing for battle (activated by your movements as you shake them about).

When they next take a breather, you’ll complete the training and, if you both worked hard enough, you’ll hear Pikachu level up. You can then prepare him a sandwich in the kitchen to reward his hard work, before folding down his bed so Pikachu can take a well-deserved rest (complete with sleeping noises).

With a second Smart Brick and Pokémon, you can also engage in a battle — just make sure to remember your type matchups, and to consider the inherent strength of each ‘mon. Even with training, Mewtwo might be a tough foe for your mouse.

As an all-in-one set, Pikachu’s Training House is a little pricier at $69.99 / £59.99/ AU$129.99, but seeing it in action with all of its smart and non-smart play features, this feels like a very reasonable price.

Though if you are on a budget there are simpler yet still delightful options like Berry Bash with Bulbasaur and Bidoof ($19.99 / £17.99 / AU$34.99), Trainer's Buggy Adventure with Squirtle ($29.99 / £24.99 / AU$54.99) and you’ll also find pricier sets with more pieces like my favorite: the Umbreon vs. Garchomp Championship Battle ($79.99 / £69.99 / $139.99). The trophy is designed to look like Cynthia’s hair, I’ve been told.

All 12 of the new sets will launch on August 1 at Lego.com and are up for preorder right now.

As we draw towards the end of another week, it's time to look back at the stories that shaped the technology landscape over the last seven days — collected here for your convenience in our regular In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) round-up.

A lot has happened, as is always the case. The Pope weighed in on the pros and cons of AI, we looked at new gadgets from Oura and GoPro, Sony showed off its latest TVs, and Fitbit users were less than happy at being forced to use the Google Health app.

Make yourself comfortable and join us as we take a tour through those stories and more. Once you've fully caught up, you'll be ready for whatever the next week brings.

8. Oura revealed ‘the world’s smallest smart ring’

After much anticipation, the Oura Ring 5 is here, ready to claim the title of being the best smart ring on the market. Compared to the previous model, the new wearable is smaller, lighter, and more durable, while also offering extra battery life — you should be able to go for a week between charges (in our tests, the previous Oura Ring 4 lasted around six days).

There's a lot more to talk about with this new device, too, including the redesigned portable charging case, real-time activity tracking, expanded support for women's hormonal and reproductive health, and the ability to add lab results, such as blood test results, to your profile. We've got all the details here, including the price (which has gone up).

• Read the full story: Oura just unveiled 'the world’s smallest smart ring', the Oura Ring 5 — and members are going to love these 7 upgrades

7. We spent a long weekend with GoPro Mission 1 Pro

The GoPro Mission 1 Pro is a camera that GoPro is hoping will appeal to more serious filmmakers and creatives (hence the Pro in the name), and those with more to spend: it comes with a 1-inch sensor that's capable of recording in up to 8K video resolution, and a rugged design that keeps the camera waterproof up depths of to 66 feet (about 20 meters).

But is it actually any good? To find out, TechRadar's intrepid Senior Staff Writer Hamish Hector took the camera on a long weekend of adventures, exposing it to high May temperatures, sandy beaches, a paddling trip, and more. The verdict is that this is a GoPro that mostly impresses, though several limitations are worth noting.

• Read the full story: I spent a long weekend with the GoPro Mission 1 Pro — it survived heat, sea, sand and a couple of drops, but you need to respect its limits

6. The Jony Ive-designed electric Ferrari got a roasting

The newly unveiled Ferrari Luce is the first electric car from the luxury sports car manufacturer, and it's been designed in partnership with LoveFrom, the company headed by Jony Ive, formerly head of design at Apple. The big reveal of the car has led to a wave of responses online and off, and the majority of them are... not particularly positive.

Various commenters have compared the Luce to a Waymo robotaxi, suggested the design is "worse than I could have ever imagined", and concluded that "Ferrari have absolutely and completely lost their minds." Ouch. Don't take their words for it, though — have a look at the aesthetics of the Luce for yourself (even if it's unlikely that you can afford it).

• Read the full story: 'Somehow worse than I could ever have imagined': the new Ferrari Luce EV is getting a brutal reception, but legendary Apple designer Jony Ive has defended his choices — and there's one key decision most people agree with

5. The Pope warned us all about AI ‘dehumanization’

AI is the biggest talking point in tech at the moment, and Pope Leo XIV has now joined the chat. The Pontiff shared his thoughts on AI as part of his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas — an encyclical, a formal document published by the Vatican and traditionally used to address major moral or social issues, in case you were wondering.

It's a long document, but if you want the short version, the Pope reckons that AI threatens to create "new forms of dehumanization", and that its "opaque algorithms" are a worry for humanity and social justice. There are references to the Tower of Babel here, and a warning that AI could be the next folly to lead to disaster for humankind and our faith.

• Read the full story: The Pope just warned AI could create 'new forms of dehumanization' — and his message feels aimed straight at Big Tech

4. Meta started ‘the end of social media as we know it’

Social media platforms aren't particularly pleasant places to be a lot of the time, so how do you feel about paying extra for them? Meta has announced that it's rolling out monthly subscription options for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — though at the moment, we haven't heard much in the way of details about what you get in return for your money.

Whatever the new plans involve, TechRadar's Editor at Large, Lance Ulanoff, thinks it's a bad idea and that we should expect more and more features to become paywalled as time goes on.

Might end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp eventually become a WhatsApp Plus extra, for example? Or could we see restrictions on free users in terms of posting limits?

• Read our full hands-on preview: Meta's subscription plans are the tip of a terrible pay-to-engage iceberg and may be the beginning of the end for social media as we know it

3. We reviewed ‘the most immersive Bond game in years’

When it comes to Bond video games, everyone thinks immediately of GoldenEye, and then... there's not much else of note really. It looks like that's going to change with the launch of 007 First Light from IO Interactive, which has been acclaimed by reviewers and gamers alike for bringing a high-quality, engaging experience to the Bond universe.

In our own review, which you can get to below, TechRadar Senior Editor Amelia Schwanke says: "007 First Light is perhaps the closest a game has ever come to making me feel like I’m starring in a Bond film... this stylish origin story still feels like a triumphant return for the most iconic secret agent." The game is out now, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

• Read the full review: 007 First Light delivers a blockbuster Bond origin story packed with spycraft, stealth and explosive action set pieces

2. Google outraged Fitbit fans again with new Health app

The Google Health app is now replacing the Fitbit app on Android and iOS, and the Fitbit community isn't happy about it: the new app has been described as "atrocious", "clunky", and "unbelievably bad" across the internet, and there are widespread complaints about fitness data being logged incorrectly and Google's AI coach being less than helpful.

There's no going back, unfortunately, for those who much preferred the design and the flow of the now-replaced Fitbit app. Google has said it will be working on fixing bugs and adding new features to the Google Health app over the coming weeks, but it will take time for these negative user sentiments to be turned around.

• Read the full story: Google Health is getting heat for being 'unbelievably bad' after replacing the Fitbit app — but Google says fixes are coming

1. We finally saw Sony’s first 'True RGB' TV in action

The arrival of new Sony TVs is always worth celebrating, and we've been taking a close-up look at the new Sony Bravia 9 II, Bravia 8 II, and Bravia 7 II models. These are the first 'True RGB' televisions from Sony, making use of an RGB mini-LED backlight: the tech promises an upgrade over mini-LED, through the way that the LCD backlight can adjust its colors.

There's a lot more to know about these TV sets, too, including pricing, which you'll find in the article below. Color range and viewing angles have been improved, as has the anti-reflective technology, and HDR performance is significantly better as well. We've also had time to check out the impressive Sony Bravia Theatre Trio speakers.

• Read the full story: I saw Sony's first 'True RGB' TV in action compared to a studio monitor and Sony's best OLED TV — and based on early measurements, Sony might finally bring 'reference' HDR performance to your home

And why not test yourself on last week’s seven biggest tech stories to see how well you were paying attention? Take the quiz below.

• A new lithium extraction process has been developed at MIT
• It's cheaper and more eco-friendly than current techniques
• The innovation could shift the extraction industry away from China

Lithium-ion batteries power most of our tech devices, from the best phones to the best drones, so the element lithium is in demand. Now, scientists working at MIT have come up with a new way to extract it from rock, which is cheaper and more eco-friendly than the techniques currently used.

The new process was actually inspired by a bathroom renovation carried out by one of the research team, Materials Science and Engineering professor Yet-Ming Chiang. His DIY project led him to a glass etching cream that could 'eat away' at the glass surface and turn clear glass blocks translucent.

Spodumene, the most abundant lithium-bearing mineral, is mostly made up of silica, just like glass. With the glass etching cream in mind, the scientists developed an innovative liquid solution for dissolving the silica in spodumene, then developed new techniques for refining the lithium and aluminum also present in the rock.

The process is notable in a number of ways: it works at room temperature, it's about half the cost of current extraction techniques, the liquid solution can be repeatedly reused, and the leftover waste can be repurposed into useful materials.

'You can change the lithium market'

"We believe this approach is the lowest-energy, lowest-cost way of getting lithium not only out of hard rock, but period," says Chiang. "That’s what's motivating us to scale this. It will enable the energy transition through batteries that use lithium."

It also has the potential to shift the global landscape in terms of lithium production. China currently dominates the global lithium refining industry, but there's also an abundance of the element in the US, Europe, and Australia — the problem is getting it out of the rocks its encased inside in a usable form.

At the moment, extracting lithium requires heating rocks to over 1,000 degrees Celsius, which uses a considerable amount of energy. The rest of the rock has to be discarded after the extraction process too. China has historically been willing to put up with the financial and environmental cost, and benefits from operating at vast scales.

"Our central thesis is if you can find an easier way to crack the rock, get lithium out, and make battery-grade lithium salts, you can change the lithium market," says chemist Camden Hunt, one of the researchers who worked on the project.

• ABC has been asked to apply for broadcast license renewals early
• The Disney-owned network says the FCC is exerting undue pressure
• ABC shows such as Jimmy Kimmel Live have criticized the White House

A war of words has broken out between the Disney-owned ABC network and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US, after the FCC demanded that the network file its broadcast license renewal applications early.

How early? Well, the licenses aren't expiring until 2028, and four months ahead of time is the usual schedule. In this case, the FCC has requested them a full two years in advance, claiming that ABC's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies are under investigation.

ABC has now filed the necessary applications, for eight of its local TV stations, while blasting the request as "a threat to the First Amendment" (as per Deadline). In ABC's view, bringing the renewal process forward is punishment for anti-government and anti-Trump opinions expressed on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live and The View.

You might remember Jimmy Kimmel was taken off air last year over comments made in the wake of the Charlie Kirk shooting, under pressure from the FCC, before being brought back. He's recently been critical of Donald and Melania Trump again, something that the US President has taken notice of and commented on publicly.

'Power and coercion'

"It is an extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion directed at disfavored editorial voices which sends a clear warning to every broadcaster in America," ABC said in a filing with the FCC, as it submitted its renewals "under protest".

As the renewals have now been submitted, it gives the FCC the right to publicly comment on them, and to designate them for a hearing if the regulator deems it necessary. As the licenses can't be approved any earlier than 30 days before their expiry, it means ABC will be under greater scrutiny for the next two years.

"Disney and its ABC stations are the latest victims of this administration's campaign of censorship and control," said FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the FCC. "I am glad to see them expose the FCC's actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press."

However, the FCC has defended its actions. "The Commission will continue to analyze ownership structures to ensure that they are responsive to the needs of their local communities and are providing them with diverse viewpoints reflective of the information needs of those communities," said the FCC in a statement, rejecting that the move was a denial of free speech.

• Valve just announced a Steam Deck price hike
• It'll go up by over 40% in the US, and over 30% elsewhere
• No hardware changes are coming with the price increase

Price hikes, even for older gadgets, are standard practice in 2026. None, though, warrants as loud a ‘WTF’ as Valve saying its Steam Deck OLEDs are going to cost close to 50% more in some regions, with smaller but still major price hikes landing elsewhere.

Per a blog post announcement where Valve revealed the handhelds are back in stock, it also dropped the pricing bomb. The $549 / £479 / AU$899 512GB model will now set you back $789 / £649 / AU$1,199 — representing a $240 / £170 / AU$300 increase or a 43% increase in the US (and closer to 35% in the UK and Australia).

Meanwhile, the 1TB OLED Steam Deck will cost $949 / £779 / AU$1,429. That’s a $300 / £210 / AU$380 increase on its former cost of $649 / £569 / AU$1,049 — representing a 46% price hike in the US and 36% elsewhere.

Notably, these price hikes don’t come with any hardware upgrades. Instead, Valve explains they’ve been introduced to "reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole.” The component prices specifically blamed are “rising memory and storage costs.”

A warning of more to come?

If you’re after a handheld run, don’t walk, to grab one before further price hikes arrive.

This Valve announcement follows similarly catastrophic hikes from Lenovo back in April. We saw the Lenovo Legion Go 2 Ryzen Z2 Extreme 2TB jump up over $1,000 to $2,849.99 (from $1,479.99). Meanwhile, the 1TB model rose $650 to $1,999.99. The less high-end AMD Ryzen Z2 16GB RAM model also saw a hike to $1,499.99 — up from $1,099.99.

Outside of Australia, where the PC handheld rose in price in February, the Asus Rog Xbox Ally X has so far dodged serious hikes, though that will probably change soon.

I’ve been loving this Asus x Xbox PC handheld, and I predominantly use it for Steam games. I have it set up so that Steam’s Big Picture mode boots up as soon as my handheld switches on to better mimic the simplicity of the Steam Deck, and I’ve found the console comfortable to play for as long as the battery can last — which is a decent number of hours even for chunkier AAA titles.

So far in 2026, it’s been where I’ve enjoyed Resident Evil 9, Slay The Spire II, Zero Parades for Dead Spies, and 007: First Light among plenty of others, and while the meatier games don’t run as beautifully as they do on my static gaming rig, they still look solid and play very well — especially after a few visual settings tweaks.

An alternative approaches?

Alternatively, you could nab a different kind of handheld: the Nintendo Switch 2.

It’s not a PC gaming machine and lacks the incredible breadth of the Steam catalog, but it does have three key advantages over PC handhelds.

First, you get access to Nintendo exclusives like the Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon series. Yes, console exclusivity is frustrating, but it does give Nintendo an edge for fans of its franchises.

Secondly, and more importantly, I’ve found the Switch 2 is perfect for co-op. The Joy-Con pair you get with every console can be used together for single player, or as individual controllers for many couch co-op adventures, whether it’s a competitive brawl in Smash Ultimate, racing through Mario Kart: World, or teaming up in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. You can play co-op games on PC handhelds, but both players will need a console, making it a much pricier endeavor.

Thirdly, crucially, the Switch 2 costs a lot less but still packs a punch. It comes in at $449.99 / £395.99 / AU$699.95 and has yet to incur a price hike. That said, one is coming in a few months.

We know this because Nintendo itself has warned that the console will go up by $50 in the US on September 1, 2026. A UK and Australian price increase is yet to be formally confirmed by Nintendo, though it is likely its cost will increase there too.

So you have a little longer to decide on a Nintendo console, but when it comes to the PC handheld market, I’d act sooner rather than later if you’re desperate to nab one — or risk some serious disappointment when, not if, prices get hiked for the few remaining machines yet to see one.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin may have become the technology industry's forgotten men since stepping back from the limelight in the last few years. Their impact on innovation, within Google in particular, is momentous — and has been underpinned by a specific philosophy that shaped so many ventures courtesy of the Moonshot Factory.

Reaching for new heights

Moonshot is often used to describe the efforts to achieve a highly ambitious, but not entirely impossible, challenge and has its origins in the space race in the mid-20th century. Larry Page, writing in the foreword for American investor John Doerr's 2018 book What Matters, outlined the principle that drove so much achievement at Google.

Use of a similar phrasing can be first traced to American author Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote "shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars", and, of course, Page has applied his own twist – but the meaning remains the same.

The comment speaks to committing to one's ambitions with the intention of success, where failure still means achieving something that is conventionally seen as difficult to accomplish in the first instance.

Page, at the time, was Alphabet's serving CEO but was scaling back his public profile before announcing he would step back completely in December 2019.

Breakneck innovation

Page's comment speaks to committing to one's ambitions with the intention of success, where failure still means reaching a great height conventionally seen as hard to accomplish.

There is no organization that embodies these values more suitably than Google's own X, the Moonshot Factory. Founded in 2010, it's been at the heart of some of the most exciting projects the industry has seen.

Among the most successful projects include the Waymo, self-driving car technology venture which is growing from strength to strength, as well as more unusual projects like Malta, in which energy in the form of molten salt and chilled liquid is stored in giant tanks.

• The UK government's online safety consultation just ended
• This, and comments from officials, suggest we'll see new rules soon for under-16s
• A ban might not be coming, but some features could be restricted

The UK government is expected to announce some kind of social media crackdown for young people in the next few weeks — after Prime Minister Kier Starmer said on Tuesday he would act “very, very quickly” following a consultation with the public and with families; however, it’s being reported that it might not be a full ban for under-16s.

According to a report from The Times (behind a paywall), various experts and social media companies themselves are expecting a ban on addictive features, such as infinite scroll or video autoplay.

The logic here seems to be that in places where full-on social media bans are in effect (such as Australia), many under 16s have found ways to circumvent restrictions — or they’ve been pushed to less regulated online spaces that are either ignoring or haven’t been included in the ban. So instead of stopping access, you’d make the sites less addictive and safer by banning specific features.

Below, I’ve outlined the 8 measures and bans we might see implemented by the UK government. Other options are possible, though there are several that have been floated by online safety advocates, social media companies themselves, and those involved in UK politics — so I expect we’ll see some combination of these introduced when the UK’s social media crackdown commences.

Infinite scroll and auto play

These two features are often used by social media companies and other platforms to encourage more engagement with content, so I’ve grouped them together.

Infinite scroll allows you to scroll infinitely — that is, no matter how many TikTok videos you swipe through or how far down the Instagram page you go, there is always more to see and consume. Autoplay is also self-explanatory; videos in your feed will automatically start playing as you scroll by — either with audio or silently with subtitles. This feature hopes to hook you on content that you might have moved past, as once it starts, you get a little bit invested in what you’re watching.

Infinite scroll was a key complaint of a Californian ruling, which declared some social media platforms addictive, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of the first to go under any UK government rulings.

Alerts and push notifications

Another pair of tools that encourage social media usage, alerts and push notifications are the dings and pop-ups you see telling you you just got a DM, that your post got a comment, or that a content creator you have favorited just posted something.

They aim to take you away from whatever else you’re doing and pull you back to the social media platform.

This could be tackled at an app-level, or it could also be handled at a device level — forcing iPhones and Android devices to block app notifications for accounts linked to minors. We’ll have to see which method, if any, the UK Government chooses.

Likes and comments

These interactive engagement tools are another one that could be taken away for accounts belonging to users under 16, possibly taking away these options from posts made by young people, and/or removing their ability to like and comment.

While likes and comments are a mainstay of social media platforms, they can have consequences. Bad actors can use these features to harass the poster or to build up a rapport with the poster that could later be exploited.

Banning this aspect would allow younger users to still engage with social media by posting, but in a more bubbled and hopefully safer environment.

Personalised content recommendations

A.k.a. the algorithm: the platform’s software that analyses your watch time, likes, comments, scrolling habits, everything it can to find out what you want to see and feed it to you.

This feature being banned would make social media platforms much less appealing, as your feed won’t be tailored to your interests. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing if the goal is to reduce time spent online, and it could help prevent the wave of young users spiralling into shadier online sects as the algorithm simply feeds you content it thinks you’ll engage with, not necessarily content you should be seeing.

Device-level age verification

So far, the measures we might see aren’t ones most platforms are pushing for; instead, they’ve argued for age restrictions to be brought at a device-level, which would see Apple and Google on the hook for checking the age of phone users and then tailoring their app access accordingly.

While it passes the buck to some extent, the advantages it offers are that it should help limit cases where there’s a disparity between what limits are imposed on social media platforms, and for users, it’s less likely that their private data could leak, as they’re only sharing it with one or two companies rather than every platform where they create an account.

A VPN ban

This idea has been floated a few times, including by the UK’s House of Lords back in December 2025.

It’s certainly still a possibility we’ll see a ban for under-16s, though a wider ban seems a lot less likely. One of our VPN experts, Chiara Castro, has gone through all of the arguments against a VPN in another in-depth story, so check those out, but one of the reasons for limiting VPN access is that they allow users to avoid geo-locked restrictions, as they can spoof their location. Until restrictions are applied more globally, governments may feel VPNs are a loophole they need to close.

This week, we were treated to Google AI updates galore at Google I/O 2026, and Apple announced the date of its own software showcase keynote: WWDC 2026.

To catch up on all this and more, scroll down to read our highlights of the biggest tech news stories of the week.

But before you go, you might want to test yourself on our tech news quiz…

7. The Trump Phone saga got worse

Last week, we reported on what was hopefully the end of the T1 Trump Phone’s saga: it is being shipped out to customers. Though this week we have terrible news, and that’s the personal data of seemingly everyone who bought one has been leaked, thanks to a security exploit on the Trump Mobile website.

This includes names, addresses, and “everything short of credit card number,” said YouTuber Coffeezilla via his Voidzilla sidechannel (who was one of the people affected by the leak).

This leak also seemingly revealed that only around 30,000 orders have actually been placed for the T1 Phone, and only from roughly 10,000 distinct customers, which is a far cry from the previous estimates of around 590,000.

• Read the full story: Trump Mobile seems to be leaking customer information

6. Apple set a WWDC date

Knowing when Apple will hold WWDC and knowing the exact day and time of the keynote are two different things. One is a signal to mark your calendar and make travel plans, the other (that keynote) is a trigger for deep rumination about all Apple will say and do. Now that we know it’s June 8 at 10AM PST, we’ve been pondering that big Google Gemini-backed Siri reveal, platform updates galore, a folding tease (please), and Tim Cook’s CEO swan song. What a wild day it will be.

• Read the full story: A glowing WWDC invite might hint at the next-gen Siri

5. Nvidia gave up on gamers?

Nvidia has seen incredible growth thanks to the AI boom — turns out making the metaphorical mining tool in the AI gold rush (with its processors being an essential component for data centers that power the largest models) makes you a killing. However, its latest investor call announced not only a record-breaking quarter, but also that it’ll be grouping how it reports sales for GPUs bought by gamers with those bought for robotics, automotive, and telecoms needs.

This change in strategy lines up with the rumor that we won't see any new GPUs from Nvidia this year at all, as it seems Team Green is turning its back on PC gamers somewhat.

The move to bury graphics sales in Nvidia's financial reports feels like another step on this path of marginalizing the GeForce family. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but it does feel somewhat ominous.

• Read the full story: Nvidia doesn't seem to care about gaming GPUs any more

4. We played Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced

After going hands-on with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced at a Ubisoft preview event in Paris last month, we can safely say that this is a remake done extremely well. It has all the makings of a fabulously refreshed experience, taking one of the best games in the series, giving it a boost mechanically and a glow-up aesthetically, and still ensuring the right balance of the original’s spirit with some game-enhancing modernizations.

Combat has been overhauled to be much more action-oriented, and while there’s a clear influence of recent games in the series like Assassin’s Creed Mirage here, it still retains that flow, style, and piratical action that made Edward Kenway such a joy to take on in combat all those years ago. The world of the Caribbean in the Golden Age of Piracy looks absolutely breathtaking, controls have been tightened, exploration feels more organic and natural, and there are even big changes to those pesky and annoying insta-fail stealth missions.

We didn’t get to see much of the brand-new content that’s been made for Resynced, but we’re excited to dive back in and devour everything the original had, and more, all over again when the game releases on July 9.

• Read our full hands-on preview: Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced perfectly captures the spirit of the original

3. We tested Sony’s expensive headphones

Sony has launched its most expensive wireless headphones to date, the Sony 1000X The Collexion. The idea here is to take the technology of the super-popular WH-1000XM6, power it up even further with a next-gen processor and new advanced audio transducer design, and then add its most comfortable and premium physical design on top of that. Has it worked? Well, in our Sony 1000X The Collexion review, we had high praise for their more spacious and detailed sound, and their absolutely supreme levels of comfort and beautiful metal finish. So are they worth their steep $649 / £550 price? Well, that’s a bit more contentious…

• Read the full review: Are Sony’s priciest wireless headphones worth it?

2. Google I/O delivered Android XR… kinda

We’ve known since last year that 2026 will be Google's year of the smart glasses, and at I/O we finally saw that promise in all its glory as Samsung unveiled a pair of pairs from Gentle Monster and Warby Parker. Attendees also got to experience Xreal’s Project Aura glasses.

As expected, they’re essential Ray-Ban Meta glasses but powered by Google Gemini — though that’s not necessarily a bad thing given the popularity of Meta’s specs.

The only catch? We didn’t get prices or release dates for any of this tech, though Samsung did promise its glasses would land in the “Fall” (so either September, October, or November).

• Read the full story: We saw the first Samsung Android XR glasses at Google I/O

1. Google I/O brought AI galore

Google I/O 2026 kicked off this week, and if you were worried/hoping (delete as appropriate) that artificial intelligence (AI) was a passing craze, think again. The software giant revealed incoming Gemini-powered upgrades for Search, Android, Google Docs, online shopping, and even YouTube (yes, really) at its annual developer conference, meaning AI is likely to touch your life one way or another, sooner rather than later.

In fact, Google is so confident about the all-encompassing nature of its new software tools that the company used an iPhone (not a Pixel) to demo Gemini Spark at Google I/O. Was that a warning shot to Apple, or an olive branch? Maybe we’ll find out at WWDC…

• Read the full story: Gemini is becoming impossible to avoid

• TechRadar readers voted on what they were excited to see at Google I/O
• Two thirds had their wishes fulfilled, but a couple were missed
• There were no updates about the next Google Home speaker or Googlebook

Before CEO Sundar Pichai had even took to the stage at Google I/O 2026, excitement levels were already climbing for what might be announced, launched or demoed at the developer's conference.

According to the results of a poll about which of the five most rumored Google products and services TechRadar readers were excited to see at the keynote, 73% saw what they wanted, with the Android XR Smart Glasses being launched, a personal AI agent unveiled and various Gemini Intelligence demos.

But despite rumors floating around about the upcoming Google Home speaker and already announced Googlebook being potentially demoed to showcase more of the AI use cases being rolled out, there was no mention of either of these.

You can see the results of the poll below — just note that majority of votes came via our TechRadar WhatsApp Channel (if you're not already following us on the messaging app, then make sure to for the latest news, polls and reviews).

Which Google I/O announcements were the most hyped?

Google made 100 announcements at I/O, but the most notable to consumers were the raft of new Gemini-powered features coming to its products and services, which was already largely expected going by the results of the poll.

Given that nearly every company is now working with AI (to be clear, I don't mean the theoretical version of the word, but machine learning, learning language models (LLMs) and automations), it's not too surprising that this was the focus for most of the two-hour keynote.

We'd already seen Gemini Intelligence revealed at the Android Show a week earlier, so the unveiling of Google's 24/7 personal AI agent, Gemini Spark, was already high up on the list of tech fans — not least because there had been rumors of an always-on assistant called Remy in the making.

Despite expectations around an AI agent being announced, the single most anticipated tech reveal from Google I/O based on our polls was the Android XR smart glasses, which had a total of 303 votes from readers. We'd already seen a lot about these new wearables from testing prototypes, making their arrival (quite frankly) overdue and slightly disappointing because Google forgot to tell us when they’ll release or how much they’ll cost.

What about the next Google Home speaker and Googlebooks?

Now, what about the quarter of respondents that were excited to hear more details about the new class of laptops "designed for Gemini Intelligence" called Googlebooks and the next Google Home speaker?

Neither product made an appearance during the showcase, despite both already being announced. But then again, Google I/O does tend to be about software developments rather than hardware — although, we did get our first look at Samsung's Android XR smart glasses.

There's a chance that we could hear more about these products at the next 'Made By Google' hardware event, which took place in August last year. That's more likely for the Googlebooks, as that would perfectly align with Google saying they will arrive sometime "in the fall".

On the other hand, with the new flagship Google Home speaker meant to launch sometime in the next week or so, based on the last update we got about it, it's not entirely clear when we'll hear more about its pricing and availability.

We'll be on the hunt for any news about the Google Home speaker and Googlebooks, so make sure to follow us on Google News to see all the latest. In the meantime, let us know which new Google tools you're most excited to try out by voting in the poll below.

• Google announced Verify AI at Google I/O 2026
• It allows Gemini to identify if and how content was altered by AI
• Verify AI is being supported by Nvidia, OpenAI, and others

A year ago AI content was very easy to pick out from a lineup — now it’s approaching impossible. Thankfully, Google I/O 2026 has showcased a possible solution: Verify AI.

Google has already rolled out an AI detector in Gemini which relies on invisible-to-the-naked-eye watermarks in Google-made content (from the likes of Veo and Nano Banana) to determine if something is AI-made or not. Now this tool will be coming to its Circle to Search tool so you can more easily scan content you see in your day-to-day using your Android phone or Chrome browser.

It’s not just coming to more places, this AI detection is getting a boost too. Across its AI products Google says it’s adding “quantum credentials verification” with support for C2PA and SynthID. Practically, this means that when you now feed an image into Gemini’s AI detection tool you’ll get a much more specific breakdown of where it came from and how it was edited (if at all).

So if it was originally a picture taken with a camera but later edited with AI — such as adding a party hat and shades to your puppy on his birthday — Gemini will tell you this context, or it could say if an image was entirely created by AI. Though I should note the AI won’t be able to say exactly how a photo was altered, just if it was changed by AI at all.

Perhaps most importantly, Google says it’s collaborating with various other companies in the AI space — including Nvidia and OpenAI — to bring these verification credentials to content created by tools across the industry.

This means Google’s tools won’t just recognize its own AI content, but images and videos created by a wide variety of AI sources.

An endless back and forth

This is certainly news to celebrate. AI-generated content is making it harder and harder to believe what you see online across all aspects of our lives.

On the more extreme end, you have people creating fake videos to disparage public figures or create public outrage with footage of events that never happened, but I’ve also found online shopping is getting harder — I’ve been browsing sites like Etsy to pick up some last-minute items for my upcoming wedding (like a cake topper and guest book) and so many of the listings seem to show AI images that are impossible to trust.

My hope is that we don't soon see the rise of tools that can crack Google’s AI detection, scrub away the hidden watermarks, and once again obscure the origin of AI-made images and videos. With promises of “quantum credentials verification,” I’m hoping this will be a tough nut for bad actors to crack, but we’ll have to wait and see how this game of cat and mouse progresses.

• Samsung's first XR glasses are here... kinda
• Gentle Monster and Warby Parker are behind the designs
• The glasses are launching later this year

Samsung has lifted the lid on its premium Android XR glasses at Google I/O 2026, and some familiar fashion brands have lent a hand — with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster offering their eyewear design expertise.

But these glasses aren’t just eye candy; first and foremost they’re a smart companion to your phone. They’ll offer various assistive features, including navigation, summarized notification readouts, real-time audio translation, and the ability to translate text on signs amongst other AI tools. You can also use them to capture first-person photos and videos.

You can use all these features even when your phone is in your pocket. The glasses boast cameras, speakers, and microphones, with the AI tasks being handled via a connection with your phone.

If you think these sound a lot like the Meta Ray-Ban glasses then you’re not wrong — the Warby Parker design even looks a bit like my smart Wayfarers — but there are a couple of key factors that will help these specs stand out from the competition (not just Meta, but other brands like Rokid and Even Realities).

First, their on-board smarts are backed by Google Gemini. Google has done a lot to boost its AI’s capabilities over the past few years, and while Meta hasn’t fallen asleep at wheel by any stretch Google’s bot is generally seen as the more proficient helper.

A big edge Gemini has is that it can natively integrate with the Android ecosystem of apps, such as your calendar and email, where Meta has to build connections with individual apps, and doesn’t offer the same seamless support.

Second, they’re being billed as “a companion device to a mobile phone” by Samsung and Google. While Meta’s tech is currently also a smartphone companion to some extent, it’s clear that the company's goal is a dedicated Meta device that replaces your phone, while Samsung and Google want their glasses to be more like smartwatches, augmenting the smartphone experience.

Right now this distinction isn’t all that clear, but we might see it materialize in meaningful ways when these new specs launch — such as through them relying on on-phone AI rather than cloud computing to offer a privacy advantage over their main rivals.

That said, Meta has the most important advantage right now: you can actually buy its glasses. Google, Samsung, Gentle Monster and Warby Parker remained tight-lipped when it came to pricing and release dates. We only know that the glasses will land in “the fall” in the US (so September through November), with additional entails to be revealed “in the coming months.”

A fashion focus

While this tease, rather than a full-on launch, puts a slight dampener on my excitement, one other exciting aspect comes via Gentle Monster and Warby Parker — with these companies suggesting that they understand technology isn’t the only important factor — these specs need to look good too.

Discussing the Samsung XR announcement, Founder and CEO of Gentle Monster, Hankook Kim, said “Intelligent eyewear should feel as emotionally expressive as it is technologically advanced.” He added “Our vision was to merge fashion and technology in a way that feels bold, beautiful and human, bringing Gentle Monster’s disruptive design identity into a new era of intelligent eyewear with Samsung and Google.”

Dave Gilboa, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Warby Parker said, “Eyewear is deeply personal, which is why every detail matters when integrating advanced technology into frames people wear every day.”

This rings true with the brands' respective designs. While a little more ‘basic’, I could see myself wearing the Warby Parker shapes every day, and despite me not personally loving the Gentle Monster glasses, I love what the bold designs signal — that these glasses are designed to appeal to a wide range of audiences.

We’re still missing some key details about Samsung's glasses, but today’s showcase has given me a lot to get excited about — for Android XR, and for glasses as a whole.

The future of football is being decided six floors underground at FIFA's headquarters in Zurich.

Past the meditation suite made from Afghan onyx and the congress room that could pass for the United Nations Assembly Hall, Lenovo technology is being infused into every layer of the beautiful game in time for this summer's World Cup.

I was the only UK journalist on a rare behind-the-scenes foray into FIFA's inner sanctum, where offside calls, tactical analysis, and the fans' view of the action are being overhauled by AI ahead of kick-off. Here's what's coming.

The VAR makeover

VAR's grey stick figures are finished. All 1,200 players at this year's tournament are being individually 3D scanned before a ball is kicked to produce a photorealistic digital twin — accurate to the millimeter — for faster, more precise offside calls.

Under the current system, a 6ft 5in Erling Haaland and a 5ft 7in Lionel Messi appear the same height. "Our mind is leading us to think: if it doesn't look real, it's probably not that adherent to the context," says Dr. Valerio Rizzo, the Lenovo neuroscientist who built the system.

"For the referee, they are human beings, and their brain is like one of the fans. They see that scene. They don't perceive the reality of that illustration, and maybe they can be biased as well."

Rizzo opens a presentation with a reference to Permutation City, Greg Egan's 1994 novel about digitizing human beings into a simulation. "This is like something that nowadays seems all the time closer and closer," he says.

The AI-enabled avatars are created with 3D Gaussian Splatting, where photographs are converted into clouds of trainable particles whose position, color, and rotation are optimized until they match reality exactly.

With three million data points per player and sub-centimeter accuracy, "It's not a default puppet, it's not a random shape," says Rizzo. "It's the actual body of the player. The chest size is the chest size. The foot length is the foot length of the player."

When I ask how much more accurate offside decisions will be, his answer is characteristically direct: "It's more accurate, it's more precise, it's more realistic. You can make up your own assumption."

A segmentation AI strips clothing from the body post-scan so jersey colour, squad number and boots can all be changed without reworking the underlying geometry. Hair is captured as individual particle strands rather than a single mesh. Micro-movements, such as fingers, are fixed algorithmically.

Then comes my turn. The photo capture system is part airport scanner, part Noughties music video, when every rapper wanted to be filmed with a fisheye lens. Covers go over my feet, and I step into a cylindrical white booth plastered floor to ceiling in what look like giant QR codes. Arms out, middle finger pointing downward to a height marker, it’s impossible not to feel like Cristiano Ronaldo.

Then 36 4K cameras fire simultaneously, and it's over in seconds.

Around 20 minutes later, I show up as a ghostly white mesh. Hit ‘texture’, and my face, my kit, even my tattoos are rendered with unnerving accuracy, like someone has put a mini me in a glass case.

Every World Cup player will go through this same process during their mandatory FIFA media day, with 28 portable rigs travelling between all 48 team base camps from June 4 to June 13.

ChatGPT for coaches

From the scanning booth, I move to a conference suite full of screens for a first look at Football AI Pro, a generative AI tactics tool giving every competing nation the same analytical capability.

All 48 nations, from Germany to Curaçao (which has a population of just 156,000 and is the smallest nation ever to qualify for the World Cup), get it free.

It starts like ChatGPT. You type a direct question in plain English, Spanish, Arabic, or Chinese, and it responds like a human. Then you go deeper, and it plays like Football Manager on steroids.

The live demonstration uses the PSG vs. Chelsea match from the Club World Cup. A single question returns nine attempts on goal, with heatmaps, pass maps, 3D reconstructions from the goalkeeper's perspective, and downloadable coaching clips, all generated in seconds.

"In elite football," says Alvaro Perez, Lenovo's senior product manager for the system, "the difference between a question and a decision is often the difference between winning or losing."

The tool is built on “FIFA's Football Language”, a knowledge graph standardizing every event in a match. "The big teams can come with an army of analysts, and analysis takes a lot of time and effort," says Perez. "FIFA wants to democratize things so the federations with fewer resources get the same insights."

Once enough World Cup match data exists, Football AI Pro can even analyse penalty takers and goalkeepers ahead of a shootout.

Despite similarities to large language models like ChatGPT or Claude, Lenovo claims the football-specific knowledge has been built from scratch with FIFA, though the system does use some underlying LLM architecture from as-yet-unnamed external providers. "If there is no solid answer," says Perez, "then it will reply: sorry, we cannot find the right data to provide this type of information." It will not guess.

The machine behind it all

Supporting all of this is the most complex technology deployment in sporting history.

Over 17,000 Lenovo devices and 30,000 total assets are pre-configured at hubs in North Carolina, Toronto, and Mexico City across 16 stadiums and all FIFA venues across three countries. Open the laptop, and the right application is already there.

"Think of them as an empty shell," says Myles Spittle, Lenovo's services delivery lead for FIFA. "You might get a 10-minute window at a loading bay. There are security dogs, there's a whole host of things to consider." NSA and Secret Service protocols apply if the President attends.

A Technical Command Centre in Miami with a 60-foot LED wall monitors everything simultaneously. After the final whistle, engineers have five days to decommission everything, followed by two weeks' leave. The stress level, says Spittle, makes that break from work non-negotiable.

For the first time, viewers will also get a genuinely immersive, stabilized first-person view from on the pitch in real time.

Referee View uses the same gyroscopic stabilization found on F1 helmet cams and is processed live in under two seconds, for broadcasts worldwide. The players had better behave themselves.

As for FIFA’s tech partner, they say 'form is temporary, class is permanent' in football, but Lenovo won’t have the luxury of having an off day. "The World Cup doesn't get delayed by two weeks," says Spittle. "You either deliver, or you don't. And don't isn't an option."

The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off on June 11.

This week was a big one for software as we got official (and unofficial) teases for the next iteration of Android and iOS.

We also heard that the seemingly ill-fated Trump Phone might actually be coming after all, though we wouldn't be surprised if it gets delayed again by the time you're reading this.

Before you catch up with this week’s tech news, why not test yourself on last week’s seven biggest tech stories to see how well you were paying attention? Take the quiz below.

7. The Trump phone has landed?

Last week, we highlighted reports that the Trump Phone looked to have cemented itself in the vaporware category — with its new terms of service suggesting that a device may never actually ship, and that preorders don’t guarantee you a product. That now seems to have changed as the company announced "Phones start shipping this week!!!”

Now, until devices are in the hands of the people who bought one you’ll forgive us for remaining skeptical — the device’s release date has been shifted a few times now, and some people with preorders have been told shipping deadlines previously that have then been missed.

We write ICYMI on Friday, so it’s very possible that by the time you read this on Saturday morning, the Trump phone situation will have shifted yet again, but hopefully, this is the end of the Trump Phone saga. Though we can’t shake the feeling, this might merely be the close of act one.

• Read the full story: The long-promised Trump Mobile Phone is slated to arrive in consumers' hands this week

6. Philips made TV immersion cheaper

Smart lighting doesn’t just come with added convenience; it can also be a home entertainment immersion booster with gadgets like the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box 8K — though if you’re after something more budget-friendly, Philips just debuted a non-Hue sync box.

The Philips Smart Lighting HDMI Sync Box 2.1 comes in two sizes — one for 55 to 65-inch TVs, and one for 75 to 85-inch TVs — and, instead of working with the HUE system, it integrates with WiZ-branded tech.

At under half the launch cost, this lightning solution could be perfect for the more budget-conscious amongst you who still want the immersion factor offered by TV sync tech once it starts rolling out in June.

• Read the full-story: Sync your lights with your TV for a lot less cash

5. Claude cracked a crypto wallet

A Bitcoin owner who believed he had permanently lost access to nearly $400,000 worth of cryptocurrency says Anthropic’s Claude AI helped recover the funds after more than a decade. The user had originally bought 5 Bitcoin when the cryptocurrency was worth around $250 each, but later changed the wallet password while in college and forgot it. After years of failed attempts — including trying trillions of password combinations — the owner uploaded files from an old computer into Claude as a final attempt.

It was able to locate an older wallet backup file that existed before the password change happened. Combined with an old mnemonic phrase the user had recently rediscovered, the recovered wallet file finally allowed access to the Bitcoin again.

• Read the full story: Claude AI helped a Bitcoin owner recover nearly $400,000

4. The Insta 360 Go 3S went Retro

This week, we saw the wackiest camera kit of 2026 so far: a Retro bundle of the Go 3S.

The action cam is ideal for when you need something tiny — it can slot in just about any small space, much easier than its rivals — but this kit makes it resemble an old Polaroid. You’ll get a viewfinder dock to help you compose shots (it doubles as a selfie mirror), but no LCD screen.

If you want a more modern feel and easier composition, the camera can still be paired with a smartphone via the Insta360 app.

The Go 3S Retro Bundle costs $300 / £279 / AU$470 for the 64GB version or $320 / £299 / AU$500 for the 128GB version. The latter feels like the obvious pick — you'll want as much internal storage as you can get because there's no card slot.

• Read the full-story: Insta360 reveals one of the wackiest camera kits for 2026

3. Ninja’s Slushi got twice as nice

What’s better than one Ninja Slushi? How about two side-by-side so that you can make dual-flavored, multicolored iced drinks at home? This week, Ninja released the Slushi Twist, which makes two different types of slush at the same time, then dispenses them in an attractive swirled pattern. Having two freezing chambers means it has a much larger capacity than the original Slushi, making it perfect for parties.

The Slushi Twist is on sale now in the US for $399.99, and although we don’t have international release dates yet, I’m sure it won’t be too long before it’s available worldwide. It certainly proved popular, and the first batch of stock sold out within hours. Don’t worry, though, you can sign up on Ninja’s website to be notified when more arrive.

• Read the full-story: Ninja doubles the freezing fun with the new Ninja Slushi Twist

2. iOS 27 was teased

Siri 2.0 has been a long (long!) time coming, but Apple’s revamped voice assistant finally looks set to debut in iOS 27 – and this week, we got a better idea of what it might actually look like.

According to Bloomberg’s resident Apple tipster Mark Gurman, Siri 2.0 will largely live within the Dynamic Island and display transparent results cards in response to your queries. If you need to go deeper into a query, you’ll be able to swipe that results card to bring up an iMessage-like chat interface, and there will also be a dedicated Siri app, where you can access your conversation history or upload images and documents.

Other rumored iOS 27 features include an updated, AI-powered Spotlight Search tool and a redesigned Image Playground app, so it sounds like Apple could finally be about to take its seat at the AI table.

• Read the full-story: Siri 2.0 could arrive with iOS 27

1. Android 17 was showcased

Just a week before Google I/O kicks off, the Android team dedicated an entire show to debuting new features set to drop with Android 17, a boatload of Gemini integrations, and an entirely new platform.

In terms of Android 17 is set to bring a lot, including a new take on curbing screen time and easing phone addiction called Pause Point. Rather than just locking you out of an app, it might show photos or suggest a breathing exercise. There's also an easy way to film screen recordings with your own talking head in the corner, which might be really handy for content creators.

Gemini Intelligence is set to make AI even more useful and helpful across a whole barrage of tasks, and honestly, it sounds pretty close to what Apple promised with Apple Intelligence. This new suite of AI functionality that's integrated at the system level of the OS will also be found on forthcoming Googlebooks. Essentially, these new laptops run a combination of Android and ChromeOS. And while this is a ton, it's likely we'll hear even more about it at Google I/O.

• Read the full-story: 7 best Android 17 upgrades announced at The Android Show

Some of the biggest tech product releases come from Samsung, which always draws heads with its range of phones, earbuds, watches, computers, appliances — the list goes on.

Here at TechRadar, we're always waxing lyrical about the best Samsung phones or the best Samsung TVs, but do you know the company's tech as well as we do? There's only one way to find out, and that's with this 15-question Samsung gadget quiz.

We're about to ask you questions on various Samsung products, including its physical hardware, the software you use on its devices, and even some harder questions about where else you might see the company's logo.

So let's check out how much of a Samsung stan you really are:

Now you know your Samsung, here are some of our favorite gadgets from the company:

If there's one tech giant that comes to mind when you talk about productivity and workplace software, it's Microsoft. The Bill Gates-created company has been a titan of tech for decades now.

But how well do you actually know the brand, what it offers, and what gadgets and services have been left by the wayside? We're going to find out. with this 15-question Microsoft quiz that'll wrack your brains.

I hope you've been following all the Microsoft coverage because some of these questions will be easy, and some of them feasible to get, but there are a couple of hard ones too. We'll be asking questions about Microsoft's classic software, its Xbox gaming division, the Office 365 apps it offers, and more.

So let's check out how much of a Microsoft expert you really are:

Decided you need to brush up your Microsoft, now that you've done the quiz? Here are a few of its varied offerings:

It's one of the world's most profitable tech companies, but how well do you really know Amazon? I don't just mean whether you know how to one-click order, but do you know what you're ordering?

This 15-question Amazon quiz will test your knowledge of the Jeff Bezos-founded company's entire scope, so you can see how smart you really are. We'll be asking about the company's brands and services, as well as its products.

I hope you've been keeping up to date with our Amazon coverage because we'll be asking about dates, about features, about gadget names and perhaps even Prime Video. And yes, I've been intentionally not naming which facets of Amazon we'll be asking about, because even saying the names might give some answers away.

So let's check out how much of an Amazon expert you really are:

Most Amazon services are tied to Prime membership. And if you're not already subscribed, getting on board will be the first step to brushing up:

We're always looking for ways to help our readers save money at TechRadar — and now our sister site Tom's Guide has launched an exciting new initiative "to help you upgrade your life for less".

Meet the Tom's Guide Savings Squad: an expert team with a mission to provide the best purchasing advice for you and your budget, and to reach you wherever you are.

So, what can you expect? Well, you'll get top-tier suggestions for the best deals currently available, expert tips for how to save cash, buying guides to help you spend your money wisely and much, much more. For instance…

• Savings Squad Shop: Shop expertly curated editors picks in an easy-to-browse format, and enjoy additional savings with vouchers and coupon codes.
• Value Verified: The TG team buys the most popular value-priced products and tests them.
• Deal Detective: Deals Editor in Chief Louis Ramirez shares his personal expert advice to help you save more.
• Flex for Less: Shining a light on the low-cost alternatives to premium devices such as the Apple Watch.
• Click to Unsubscribe: Thinking of cancelling a streaming subscription? Tom's Guide will help you decide which to say goodbye to.

As well as having a dedicated section on the Tom's Guide website, Savings Squad content will be front and center on the brand's YouTube, Instagram and TikTok channels. Plus there'll also be a weekly newsletter, bringing you the best Savings Squad content right to your inbox.

The Savings Squad features Tom’s Guide’s world-class deals team, including deals editor in chief Louis Ramirez and editors Olivia Halevy and Millie-Davis Williams, plus a score of other experts covering computing, phones, fitness, home, streaming and more.

And this is just the start — the brand also has big plans for major sales events such as Prime Day and Black Friday, so expect to hear more about it soon. In the meantime, you can find out more about the Savings Squad on Tom's Guide.

This week, Apple announced it's set to pay out millions to iPhone users over its Siri AI promises, and Google unveiled a different kind of Fitbit.

To catch up on all that and more, scroll down to read our recap of the week's seven biggest tech news stories.

Before you catch up with this week’s tech news, why not test yourself on last week’s eight biggest stories to see how well you were paying attention? Take the quiz below.

7. Google’s $3 ChromeOS USB sold out

Last month, Google and Back Market announced a USB stick that could convert many old laptops into a basic Chromebook in a matter of minutes.

This week, the drive sold out, though a fresh batch of ChromeOS converters should be available soon.

The reason you might want to switch is ChromeOS is much less demanding than Windows and macOS. Sure, it has some limitations when it comes to app selection, but if it means you can use your aged laptop instead of needing to buy a new one, that’s a major win.

So if you’re looking to revamp your old machine, take a look at ChromeOS Flex.

• Read the full story: Google's $3 USB stick for revamping old laptops with ChromeOS Flex has sold out

6. Third time's the charm for Star Fox?

Japanese gaming giant Nintendo shocked us all with the sudden reveal of a new Star Fox for Switch 2... kind of. Simply titled Star Fox, the upcoming game is actually a remake of Star Fox 64, which originally released for Nintendo 64 back in 1997.

That game was already remade for both Nintendo 3DS (as Star Fox 64 3D) and Wii U (with Star Fox Zero), and many fans were expecting a wholly new entry to come next.

Still, it looks impressive with cutting-edge graphics, new character designs, and an exclusive competitive online battle mode. That's on top of support for a wealth of Switch 2 features like GameShare and GameChat, not to mention Joy-Con 2 mouse controls.

• Read the full story: Star Fox 64 is getting yet another remake

5. Google I/O-themed Android Show announced

Ahead of Google I/O — the company’s annual developer conference — we’ll be getting The Android Show: I/O Edition, which should give us a good look at what’s in store for Android 17.

Last year, for reference, the Android Show included a look at Google’s Material 3 Expressive interface redesign, along with Gemini Live, Gemini across new devices like watches and TVs, and new safety and security tools.

This year, we’re expecting The Android Show to showcase features such as a new Liquid Glass-like look, App Lock, and a motion assist feature to help cut down your motion sickness.

• Read the full story: 5 Android 17 features that could be announced at Google's pre-I/O Android reveal

4. Vine came back?!

Vine spearheaded short-form video content in the 2010s, and it’s coming back as a new platform called Divine, which is being funded by the co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey — the same guy who killed it in 2017.

As well as hosting a nostalgic catalog of over 500,000 of some of its most famous six-second videos, Divine won’t rely on a singular algorithm and will allow you to select how content reaches you through four options: Home feed, Discovery, Trending, and Hashtag feed.

But nostalgia is just one of the platform’s aims, and it’s also taking a stance against AI-generated content by implementing a series of measures, including a user reporting system, machine-learning detection, and human-in-the-loop (HITL) techniques to ensure that you only view content created by humans.

Divine is invite-only for now, but the platform has plans for a wider expansion in the coming months.

• Read the full story: Vine is coming back, and it’s being relaunched by the guy who killed it

3. We reviewed the LG C6 OLED TV

We released our LG C6 review, and the TV earned the full five stars. Not only does it carry across everything we loved about its predecessor, the LG C5, but it delivers some great upgrades. The C6 comes with a new, faster processor, the Alpha 11 AI Gen 3, which is also used in the flagship LG G6 OLED. The C6 also delivers better color accuracy and has received a nice brightness boost compared to the C5.

Its overall picture quality is excellent, it's a phenomenal gaming TV, and its webOS smart TV is one of the best around. The C6 has easily set the benchmark for OLED TVs in 2026. Our review was for the 65-inch model, which uses the standard WOLED panel. We’re hoping to review one of the Primary RGB Tandem OLED models (the 48, 77, and 83-inch models) later this year.

• Read the full story: I tested the LG C6 over two weeks

2. Google Fitbit Air flew in

We've got a new Fitbit! The much-teased Google Fitbit Air has broken cover, and it's a cheap screenless Fitbit to challenge the likes of Whoop in the "focus wearable" space. It's pretty simple, as trackers go — a straightforward data collection PPG sensor with a gyroscope, temperature sensor, and so on, with a choice of bands and all the information available in-app.

But it's the app that makes this interesting: Fitbit is rebranding as Google Health, and the Fitbit Premium subscription has morphed into a comprehensive AI fitness coach. This is a mandatory change, even for existing Premium users, with the update rolling out over the next few weeks.

• Read the full story: The Google Fitbit Air finally breaks cover

1. Apple paid for its AI troubles

Apple’s delayed Siri features have caused plenty of headaches for iPhone owners, and now Apple is set to pay for its AI issues, literally. That’s because this week we heard details of a class action lawsuit it had settled in December, in which it has agreed to pay customers a portion of $250 million — and you could be owed up to $95 per device.

The case claimed that Apple had promoted “AI capabilities that did not exist at the time, do not exist now, and will not exist for two or more years.” It also alleged that Apple’s Siri advertisements “saturated the internet, television, and other airwaves to cultivate a clear and reasonable consumer expectation that these transformative features would be available upon the iPhone's release.”

To make a claim, you’ll need to be able to prove you bought a qualifying device once Apple starts inviting claims (which should happen within 45 days of May 5).

• Read the full story: Delayed Siri features have cost Apple a massive $250 million

• Y-zipper is a 3D-printed three-sized zipper
• Is flexible when unzipped but rigid when zipped up
• The 40-year-old concept was brought to light by researchers using software and a 3D printer

Let's make zippers interesting again. Right now, they're just part of your coat, pants, or fashionable bag, but what if a zipper could serve as the framework for a cast on your broken leg, or help you construct a tent in one minute? That's the kind of zipper we could all get behind, and apparently, it exists as something called Y-zipper.

Y-zipper is the real-world realization of a 40-year-old design dream. Forty years ago, former Polaroid engineer and current MIT professor William Freedman, PhD, envisioned a three-sided zipper. It would be like a traditional zipper in that it would have pieces that interlock to form a strong bond, but by adding a third side and zipping them together, it could create a potentially rigid structure that could be unzipped to return to a flexible form.

According to a report in MIT's News Journal, though, Dr. Freeman's design was rejected in 1985 by a prestigious design competition.

In the intervening years, new materials and 3D printing arrived, making it possible to create an automated assembly and revive the Y-zipper idea.

A second chance for this innovative Y-zipper

In a project led by MIT postdoc and CSAIL researcher Jiaji Li, they created a 3D printable version of the Y-zipper. Each zipper begins as a design on the computer where Li and his team connect triangular and zippable primatives, bending and curving them however they want.

Once they have a Y-zipper's rigid design, they break it down into three printable flat zipper panels. Then they print them out, peel them off the print table, and use a custom-designed slider to weave them together. The three sections are each fed into one of three slots, and like the slider on your traditional zipper, as you pull the three pieces through this slider, they lock together and come out as a rigid shape on the other side. That shape can be a rod, a curve, or even a corkscrew (it all depends on how each side was printed and the angles contained within). When you move the pieces back through the slider or reverse the slider, the three pieces cascade apart as

It looks cool, but there are even sexier, more practical applications.

In an MIT-produced video, we see how the team designed a Y-zipper hand brace. They started on the computer with CAD software, creating a rigid shape that would curve around the hand, and, in the application, pulled it apart into three flat zipper pieces that would eventually fit together.

On the 3D-printer, they printed one flat section on a fabric glove, which, when worn, was still completely flexible. The researchers then used a small slider to zip together the two remaining sides. The resulting Y-zipper is a glove with a rigid brace. Just imagine how this could be used on, say, a full cast for a broken leg.

In another part of the video, a small robot has four Y-zipper legs that slide in and out, allowing it to walk under obstacles. Inside the robot, four sliders let the flexible portions coil back into the robot's body.

Lastly, the Y-zipper is used as the frame for a tent. The four flexible sides are sewn onto the four seams, and when the two sides are zipped onto the spines, each one becomes firm and fully supports the tent frame. And if you're particularly lazy, you can apparently attach a small actuator to the slider, and it will zip up the sections for you. In the video, this reduced the time it takes to raise the tent to one minute. Just imagine all the time you'll have to light a campfire.

The team is still working on mass-producing the materials and production, but it seems quite likely that someday we'll see Y-zippers everywhere, except maybe on your fly.

Whether it's rocket car launches, the reveal of the most gaudy phones you’ve ever seen, or a fingerprint-scanning smart fridge debut, Dreame Next was full of surprises — but the most exciting for me was easily the appearance of Steve Wozniak. It turns out he’s among the few people who adore the iPhone Air.

Starting with his thoughts on the latest Apple phones, Wozniak mentioned also loving his iPhone 17 Pro Max — though he calls the orange color model the Trump phone, given it shares the US president’s complexion — but for him, as he waved the iPhone Air he pulled from his jacket pocket to the crowd, the improbably slim device wins out.

Because “it invokes an emotion” with its unique aesthetics that feel infused with human passion.

For Wozniak, this human element is what matters most: “Human beings are more important than the technology.”

And the only way for a company to focus on this human element over all else, in Wozniak’s mind, is if engineers — the people who possess the know-how and passion to conjure designs that people want to use, and to love — are leading the charge at the highest levels.

While he didn’t directly mention Apple’s current situation beyond the iPhone Air endorsement, I couldn’t help but feel his constant references to the importance of engineers in leadership positions was an endorsement of the incoming Apple CEO, John Ternus.

An instrumental figure in Apple’s hardware for the past couple of decades, even heading up its hardware engineering division, Ternus could bring the engineer’s ability to “lead design with their hearts” that Wozniak lauded.

"It doesn’t have a heart”

As you might expect, the Apple co-founder was therefore less than ecstatic about AI, calling his relationship with the tech “a complicated one.”

“Every time computer technology increases it allows the human user to do more than they did before,” he discussed, “It can give me some good ideas, but I do not like the mistakes it makes because it’s too easy to believe the fake stuff.”

AI talks with such confidence that its errors are sometimes easy to ignore, and it also lacks the human flair that only a real emotional person can deliver — “AI can do valuable things, but it doesn’t have a heart.”

Wozniak admitted that AGI — artificial general intelligence that’s as smart as a human — could theoretically have that heart and emotion, but as he put it: “I don’t believe we’ll hit AGI.”

He explained that when he went back to college to finally get a degree after dropping out a decade earlier we majored in psychology. He worked with people attempting to model the human brain and saw how they struggled to understand even small sections of it. “Engineers worked out the only way to build a human brain takes nine months” — a line the hosts didn’t immediately clock was a gag.

In case he’s wrong about AGI, and the technology overthrows us as the dominant force on the planet and takes us on as pets, Wozniak also jokingly said he’s started to feed his dogs fillet steaks — “That’s how I’d want to be treated,” he said.

The death of PCs? Not likely

Looking ahead to what is next, if it isn’t AGI, Steve Wozniak admitted that it’s impossible to be certain, but he expects the next decade to hold more of the same — but better.

That means better phones, better computers, better tech, but not one product cannibalizing another — pushing back on the Dreame Next host’s ponderings that smartphones will finally replace PCs, saying, “I don’t really believe that.”

“Look at cars, once we hit a good plateau it can kinda stay the same for a very long time,” he said. Wozniak added that phones and PCs have plateaued in their respective niches, and he doesn't expect one to start cannibalizing the other, especially because phones get better, so do PCs at an equal rate.

That doesn’t mean we should get complacent, though. “You’ve got to believe you can improve the technology of the day,” that’s how Apple got started and keeps growing, “Look at what you have got today. How can you make it better? Improve it, improve it, keep taking steps towards the eventual great future.”

Every week we like to showcase the biggest stories on the TechRadar website over the previous seven days in our 'In Case You Missed It' (ICYMI) round-up — both to help you catch up with the news, and also because we're proud of our work.

Once again, it's been a really busy week in technology: we've got stories here covering new phones from Motorola, electric helicopters, Taylor Swift taking on AI, robots playing table tennis, the new Steam Controller, and more besides.

In short, there's something for everyone here. Settle down and buckle up: these are the major stories that mattered on TechRadar this week.

8. We were terrified by the first Resident Evil trailer

Weapons director Zach Cregger is turning his attention to the Resident Evil movie franchise, describing his upcoming flick (premiering on September 18) as a "reinvention" of the series — one that isn't tied to any of the video games or video game characters (a tactic that has worked well enough for the Prime Video TV show based on Fallout).

The first trailer for the film has now arrived — and it's a pretty terrifying affair. We won't spoil any of the beats for you, but you can watch the teaser yourself via the link below, and we're more hopeful for the future of Resident Evil on the big screen than we have been in a while (the least said about Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the better really).

• Read the full-story: The first Resident Evil movie trailer from Weapons director Zach Cregger is finally here — and it looks like the horror video game series is getting the adaptation it deserves

7. New York City's first electric air taxi took off

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the new all-electric Joby Air Taxi, which is currently being tested in the skies of New York city — and TechRadar was there to watch the first demo. With its eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) technology, the flying machine has the potential to transform the way that New Yorkers get around their urban environment.

Able to climb and land like helicopters, and switch to a more airplane-like mode in between, these air taxis have been a long time coming (an early prototype was tested three years ago). With regulatory clearance now on the way and pilots in place, we've got a transportation system that's much quieter and eco-friendly than existing options.

• Read the full-story: I watched a Joby electric Air Taxi take off and land in New York City, and now I can't wait for our Uber of the skies future

6. A handy YouTube Premium feature came to free users

YouTube has rolled out a treat for free users who aren't yet on a premium subscription: anyone can now activate picture-in-picture mode for YouTube on their phone, anywhere in the world (this was previously available for US users, but it's now available globally). Just start a video, then head back to your phone's home screen to choose another app.

It means you can keep your DIY tutorial videos, lo-fi chill-out mixes or celebrity interviews rolling while you get other stuff done on your phone. It's a welcome boost for YouTubers on the free tier, as Google has been pushing YouTube Premium and Premium Lite quite a bit lately — not least through an excessive number of ads playing around videos.

• Read the full-story: One of the best YouTube Premium features is finally coming to non-paying users

5. Sony's table tennis robot blew our minds

Robotics technology continues to improve and impress, and the mind boggles when it comes to what these machines will be able to do in 10 or 20 years. For now, the AI-powered robots that are part of the Sony Project Ace scheme have been beating some of the best players in the world at table tennis — a game that requires a lot of speed and dexterity.

These bots were shown mastering ball speeds of up to 70mph (plus plenty of spin), in a new video, and there are implications way beyond competing at sports. The systems put in place to track ball and bat movements here will be useful in many other areas too — helping robots to adjust on the fly whenever they're met with unpredictable scenarios.

• Read the full story: 'It totally blew my mind': Sony's Project Ace robot beat elite table tennis players and marks a major robotics turning point

4. Taylor Swift took on the AI deepfakes

AI-made music is on the rise, and Taylor Swift is one of the flesh-and-blood artists taking a stand: she's filed three trademark applications to protect her identity, and to make sure AI models can't produce deepfakes based on her likeness or her tunes. If the applications are approved, it gives Swift some useful legal protection against any AI-based mimicry.

Given Taylor Swift's profile, it's difficult to imagine any AI prompter would get away with trying to rip off her creative output, but smaller artists aren't as well protected. We know that AI music is flooding the music streaming platforms at the moment, and those platforms are still playing catch-up when it comes to working out how to deal with it.

• Read the full story: Taylor Swift is taking legal action against the rising threat of AI misuse — here’s why the singer has filed trademark applications to protect her identity

3. Android fans started a Google protest

Changes are coming to Android, and many users aren't happy: Google is pushing ahead with plans to get developers to verify their identities, which doesn't sit right for those who choose Android because of its claims to be an open platform. It means Google will be able to more effectively block apps on the Play Store from developers who aren't verified.

Disgruntled users have now set up a 'Keep Android Open' campaign online, arguing that the changes give Google the power to block apps it simply doesn't like (or that governments tell them not to include). One privacy advocate has gone as far as labeling Google's mobile OS 'Darth Android' because of the restrictions being applied in the coming months.

• Read the full story: 'Your phone is about to stop being yours': anger brewing among Android fans as major Google app change draws near

2. We tested the Valve Steam Controller

We've given the shiny new 2026 refresh of the Steam Controller a thorough testing, and the good news is that the improvements are real and noticeable: this is a significantly more polished and user-friendly device than its rather lackluster predecessor was. If you're in the market for a gamepad upgrade, this could be the controller you're looking for.

Available for $99 / £85 / AU$149 from May 4, the Steam Controller (2026) is available direct from Steam, and is designed to work with games for PC, Mac, and mobile — either from the Steam Store or otherwise. With great battery life and a solid feel, it's almost great enough to make us forget about the long time we've been waiting for the Steam Deck 2.

• Read the full story: I'm a PC gamer of over 30 years, and the Valve Steam Controller (2026) is now one of my favorite gamepads since Sega dropped out of the console wars

1. Motorola gave us some impressive new foldables

We got news on no fewer than five new products from Motorola this week: three clamshell foldables, plus US availability updates on the Razr Fold and Moto Buds 2 Plus. The highlight is perhaps the Motorola Razr Ultra 2026, offering a 7-inch foldable screen, three 50MP cameras, and a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset running everything very capably.

Follow the link below for all the details on all of these gadgets, including the new silicon-carbon battery technology being used in the Razr Fold and the Razr Ultra 2026. The tech allows higher capacity batteries to fit into the same physical space, and as it rolls out to more manufacturers it has the potential to make a substantial difference to battery life.

• Read the full-story: Motorola just dropped 5 new products, including the Samsung Galaxy-rivaling Razr Ultra 2026 series and Razr Fold

• A new installation at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie features robot dogs with hyper-realistic silicone heads
• Some of tech's biggest figureheads, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, are depicted
• They also "poop" out printed images captured with integrated cameras and augmented with customized AI

If you've not already seen videos of American Artist Beeple (Mike Winkelmann)'s "Regular Animals" art piece, you're likely suffering from a severe lack of context and confusion at this headline.

The installation, currently housed at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, features free-roaming robot dogs with hyper-realistic silicone heads, some of which are sculpted in the image of renowned tech figures such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Others depict famed artists like Pablo Picasso or Andy Warhol; all individuals with, in one way or another, unique perspectives on the world.

It's those perspectives that form the backbone of Winkelmann's work, as the Unitree Go2 robot dogs will "poop" out printed images as they autonomously roam around the hall. These images are captured by integrated cameras and processed by AI, producing printouts that reflect each robodog persona's perspective.

Is it crude? Perhaps, but the installation and dark humor have certainly been a conversation starter in and out of the tech sphere.

In this latest project of viral fame, Beeple poses a question that perhaps more of us should be asking: Should our worldview be governed by tech and the powerful figures who control it?

It's an especially pertinent question in the post-AI world we live in, wherein lax regulations, extraordinary market disruption, and a race to the finish all converge, leaving in their wake a mess of questionable ethics and environmental impact.

It's also something we briefly discussed in the latest episode of the TechRadar Podcast, specifically relating to a recent New Yorker profile on Sam Altman and the backlash that followed, where my colleague Hamish Hector noted the growing public consciousness — and controversy — around figures like Altman.

"It plays into this bigger realization that these figures at the very top of the AI sphere, like Sam Altman for OpenAI, Elon Musk for Grok, and Mark Zuckerberg for Meta, that maybe we should be interested in what these people are like and how they behave," he explains.

Watch the latest podcast episode below from 42:56 to hear our recap on the current discourse around AI ethics, bias and the perspectives of the tech execs leading the conversation.

That message is very much so the stated intention for Winkelmann, who told the Associated Press, “In the past, our view of the world was shaped in part by how artists saw the world. How Picasso painted changed how we saw the world, how Warhol talked about consumerism, pop culture, that changed how he saw those things.”

He continues, explaining that in today's climate, our collective worldview is shaped by billionaires in tech who control the narrative with powerful algorithms.

“That's an immense amount of power that I don’t think we’ve fully understood, especially because when they want to make a change, they don’t need to lobby the U.N. They don’t need to get something through Congress or the EU, they just wake up and change these algorithms.”

Beeple's no stranger to the juncture between tech and art; he's fronteired movements like artwork-a-day trends with his long-running project Everydays, which has seen him create and publish a new digital artwork daily since 2007. His work also helped launch the art marketplace for NFTs, and even previously gave away the photos taken by his robot dogs to audience members during an earlier appearance at the Art Basel 2025 event, some of which included QR codes that gave access to free NFTs of Beeple's digital art.

Whether or not you agree that the installation is "art" aside, it's a surprisingly poignant message for a project that consists of pricey robot dogs in uncannily accurate silicon masks pooping out AI slop.

• A new NBC News survey reveals a nostalgia for the past
• 47% of respondents want to go back to previous years
• Dissatisfaction with modern tech and apps is a major driver

Dissatisfaction with modern technology and its trappings — including AI, subscriptions, data tracking, and algorithm-driven apps — is having an impact, with nearly half of Gen Z adults in the US (aged 18-29) would rather live in the past than the present day.

This is from an NBC News survey of 3,009 people in the Gen Z bracket, who were quizzed on issues covering climate change and gun policy to personal finances and religion. The data showed 14% wanting to live 50 or more years in the past, with 33% percent keen to live less than 50 years in the past, given the choice.

In contrast, 38% were happy living in the present, 5% wanted to live less than 50 years into the future, and 10% wanted to live 50 or more years in the future. While the survey itself didn't cover tech in any great depth, some of the respondents NBC News spoke to individually highlighted tech issues as reasons for wanting to travel back in time.

These respondents mentioned the ubiquity of smartphones, the lack of "personal experience", and social media as some of the downsides of modern tech, while one survey participant bemoaned "so, so much internet" and all the "bullcrap" that goes along with it as a reason for wanting to roll back the years.

'Nostalgic for the past'

Discomfort with modern technology shapes Gen Z's desire to live in the past from r/technology

NBC News also spoke to nostalgia researcher and existential psychologist Clay Routledge, who pointed to a feeling of being controlled by phones and technology as a driving force behind a feeling of being "more nostalgic for the past".

Further reactions to the survey on Reddit included a host of extra complaints: constant subscriptions, products that are worse and don't last as long, spying on users, "hurtful algorithms", tech addiction, advertising, and AI all get cited, alongside nostalgia for tech that was simpler to operate and easier to repair.

However, it's notable that most people don't want to go too far back: the 1990s and early 2000s seems to be the sweet spot, when advances in technology still seemed exciting and beneficial to the human race in general. For reference, the first iPod launched in 2001, and we got the first iPhone in 2007.

One of the tech topics that was included in the survey was AI, and opinion on it was quite evenly divided: around half the respondents were "anxious" or "concerned" about AI, particularly in terms of what it might mean for their careers, with the rest of the respondents either "not worried" or "optimistic".

This week, we celebrated Earth Day with our annual Sustainability Week coverage. We covered sustainable phone battery designs, exciting EV developments, and plenty more.

We also saw the biggest Apple news in years: Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO.

To catch up on all this and more, scroll down for our picks for the week's seven biggest tech news stories, starting with our attempt to build a PC with AI...

7. We built a PC using AI

Building a PC can be a daunting task. You have to find parts that can achieve your gaming needs, put them all together, and somehow stick to a budget in the middle of a RAM and component cost crisis.

So this week, we built a PC planned by AI to see if it could help some complete PC-building newbies put together a great rig — with ChatGPT and Gemini offering part-buying advice as well as building instructions to assemble our dream PC.

Spoiler alert: our computing editor Matt Hanson had to lend a hand with some real expertise.

• Read the full-story: I followed ChatGPT's PC-building instructions, and all I got was a huge headache

6. We hosted Sustainability week 2026

It's a hard ask to make the tech industry more sustainable; from hardware manufacturing to energy usage and e-waste, there's a mountain of challenges to overcome. That's why, just in time for Earth Day 2026, it's TechRadar Sustainability Week once again!

This year, we've covered everything from exciting new EV technology to the circularity-focused Framework's new Linux laptop to an exclusive look at Fairphone's latest Impact report. It's not all about hardware; software like Bottle It Back is helping to profile AI water waste, and Steam is running its Earth Appreciation Festival to mark the occasion.

• Read the full-story: It’s TechRadar sustainability week

5. The EU wants replaceable batteries

Phone repairability has been a major focus of the European Union over the past few years, and new rules are set to land in 2027, which include requiring phone batteries to be easy to remove and replace — meaning you have to be able to take them out without specialized tools, unless they’re included in the box.

While these rules technically affect only the EU, the manufacturing changes they’d likely necessitate could force these repairability rules on other regions for many products. Kinda like how the EU’s USB-C requirements saw many global brands adopt the charging standard all over the world.

This isn’t just smartphones either. Tablets, consoles like the Switch 2, and smart glasses would be impacted. The only devices not affected are those with batteries that can maintain an 80% capacity level after 1,000 cycles — which, interestingly, includes iPhones from the iPhone 15 and later, so Apple fans may find their tech doesn’t look any different next year when the rules come into play.

• Read the full-story: The EU requires phone makers to fit 'readily removable' batteries from next year

4. ChatGPT’s new image generator went viral

It was another big week for ChatGPT upgrades, with OpenAI announcing its new GPT-5.5 model just days after its Images 2.0 upgrade flooded social media with AI-generated posters and comics.

It was the latter that really caught the imagination, mainly thanks to its ability to accurately generate images containing text — traditionally a big AI weakness. Instead, Images 2.0 has reasoning powers that make it a much better personal art editor, even if it still isn’t clear what you can actually do with the results.

• Read the full story: 'Not just generating images. It’s thinking' — ChatGPT Images 2.0 could fundamentally change how you make AI images

3. A robot broke the human half-marathon record

Humanoid robots hit another worrying milestone this week — at the Beijing half marathon, the aptly-named Honor Lightning flew past the human world record for the distance, clocking 50 minutes and 26 seconds for the 13.1-mile / 21.1km course.

That’s almost seven minutes quicker than the record set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo last month. To be fair, the Lightning robot does have a custom liquid-cooling system and long 0.95m legs to help it eat up the tarmac. And winning medals isn’t its ultimate goal, with the aim being to train humanoids for places like disaster zones where their sprinting speed will be a much more welcome sight.

• Read the full story: Humanoid robot beats human world record for the first time at the Beijing half marathon — but some are still stumbling at the starting line

2. Spotify turned 20 — and gave us the gossip on its early days

Yes, Spotify is now 20 years old, launching in the same year as Taylor Swift’s debut album. That’s so long ago, it’s easy to forget what the music world was actually like back then — so we sat down with Sten Garmark, Spotify’s Global Head of Consumer Experience, to get the inside track on the streaming giant’s early days.

“The music industry was in free-fall, and it was kind of a dire time,” Sten told us, before explaining how the shareable playlist became the addictive hook that eventually drew millions to Spotify. If you want to open the streaming service’s hood and take a peek under its algorithms, our exclusive chat is well worth a read.

• Read the full story: 'It ultimately made people realize that music was worth paying for': Spotify's Sten Garmark on how the streaming giant created an entirely new business model, and its mission to convince users that 'there was something better than free'

1. Tim Cook stepped down as Apple’s CEO

In what was easily Apple’s biggest non-product news in more than a decade, Apple announced a major leadership transition: Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO in September, and Apple Hardware lead John Ternus will take over.

The choice is not surprising (there have been whispers that Ternus was the guy for a while), but the timing is. This comes just weeks after Apple celebrated its 50th birthday and Cook told anyone who would listen that he was sticking around for a long time. Perhaps staying on as Executive Chairman lets Cook tell the truth on both counts: he’s leaving one job to take on a new Apple role. How involved he’ll be remains to be seen.

• Read the full-story: John Ternus will become new Apple CEO

• Renewables now account for more of the world's electricity than coal
• They represent 33.8% of electricity generation compared to 33% for coal
• Solar is a key driver here, as it met 75% of the growth in global electricity demand

Renewable energy became the main source of electricity for the world over the course of 2025, finally overtaking coal in this respect, according to a new study.

A report from CarbonBrief carried the revelation made by a think tank called Ember. Based on Ember's calculations in its latest global electricity review, coal-fueled electricity generation dropped by 0.2% last year to 33%, while renewables maintained a steady upward trajectory to edge past coal, hitting 33.8%.

Wind and solar power catered for 99% of the growth in electricity demand last year (solar represented the majority of that – 75% of it, in fact). The International Energy Agency separately said in its Global Energy Review 2026 report that "the absolute increase of solar PV generation in 2025 is the largest ever observed for any source".

In the past, we have seen the share of fossil fuel generation drop year-on-year, but that was driven by economic crises or the pandemic, whereas this is the first time a move to clean power has caused coal usage to drop.

Apparently, record solar generation, with a 30% year-on-year increase, was the key factor driving renewable energy to take the top spot from coal. Note that this is coal power alone, which is being compared to renewables for electricity generation (as opposed to including other fossil fuels, such as gas, which are considered separately).

Analysis: EV and solar highlights – and the looming threat on the horizon

Clearly, this is good news, and Ember's report makes an interesting point about electric vehicles (EVs) being a "structural driver of electricity demand growth", accounting for some 8% of the rise in global electricity demand last year.

EVs totaled 66TWh of growth last year compared to 36TWh in 2024, so that's a large jump, with EV sales now comprising over 25% of the car market across the globe, the thinktank notes.

With the rising cost of fuel, I wouldn't bet against seeing bigger leaps, and a recent report in the UK pointed to EVs experiencing year-on-year growth in sales of 24.2% in March (where diesel and petrol vehicles were down by 6.1% and 11.4% respectively).

EVs aside, solar is singled out as the key driver of renewables by Ember: "The accelerating build-out of solar power is increasingly taking place alongside battery storage deployment, enabling the next paradigm shift – from daytime solar to anytime solar."

As battery costs have fallen 'sharply' over the past two years – by 20% in 2024, and 45% last year, we're told – deployment was up 46%, and the "world installed enough battery capacity to shift 14% of the new solar generation in 2025 from midday to other hours of the day."

The strides forward made with solar don't just apply to traditional large-panel arrays, but increasingly to gadgets that harness power from the sun. Such as this solar-powered Windows 11 laptop, or a smart lock with a mini solar panel, which was showcased a few months back at CES 2026. Solar-driven home security cameras are becoming much more commonplace, too, offering key advantages in terms of ditching wiring.

These are very small increments of solar usage, true, but they all add up on top of the progress that's clearly being made in this arena.

The potential blot on the landscape amid this positive renewables news is the threat posed by AI-driven data center construction – and the power demands therein – and how they'll be met. This is a danger that's being taken seriously, and over in the US, a recent development is that Maine has even passed new laws effectively banning the construction of sprawling data centers in certain areas.

I’ve never felt the need to own the latest tech. In fact, I was still using an iPhone 7 when I joined TechRadar in 2023, because I never really bought into the upgrade cycle (honestly, you probably don’t need a new phone every one to two years).

That changed quickly (perks of the job), but my general approach hasn’t. I still try to keep my personal tech to a minimum — well, as much as that’s possible when you write about gadgets for a living. Admittedly, my idea of ‘minimal’ probably isn’t the same as most people’s, though, so a bit of context helps.

Looking at the UN Trade and Development data (referenced by Staista), the average person owned 9.4 devices in Western Europe and 13 in the US in 2023. Those figures have likely climbed since then, but even a conservative estimate would put them closer to 11 and 16 today, respectively.

That makes me feel a whole lot better about myself because my current tally of tech (not including accessories like a MagSafe charger and portable mouse) is 17. That includes larger tech appliances like my robovac and coffee machine, but not devices I use that aren’t technically mine, like my work MacBook Pro 16-inch and partner’s Xbox Series X.

Tallying my unused tech that I keep thinking I’ll use again

On top of that, I’ve also got a growing pile of gadgets tucked away in drawers and cupboards. From a thrifted Cambridge Audio amp and speakers to my trusty Canon DSLR (which I refuse to part with), this collection has quietly built up over the 12 years I’ve lived in London.

Not counting my old Nintendo 64 and iPod Classic stored back home, I found 11 unused gadgets, which roughly equate to a new device almost every year. That’s actually right in line with a survey by musicMagpie, which found UK households have up to 11 unused devices lying around.

And yes, I did use all of them at some point. There was the brief phase when I thought I’d become a travel vlogger and bought a DJI Osmo Plus, and the phase when I purchased the Instax Mini Link 2 to save money on photo prints. Like most tech, they made sense at the time, but have since been abandoned.

For whatever reason, whether it’s a new law that restricts drones weighing over 250g or simply a much-needed upgrade, I’ve deserted these once-loved gadgets — and I know I’m not alone. MPB, an online marketplace for used camera gear, found that there’s more than £1 trillion worth of unused tech in UK, EU, and US homes.

All the ways I considered responsibly getting rid of my unused tech

Armed with my box of gadgets to go, I set about looking into the best ways to finally get rid of my overload of gear that I’d been hanging onto because I might one day use it again. Of course, it’s not as simple as throwing it in the bin, especially because e-waste contains harmful materials. Despite this, according to the Geneva Environment Network, only around 20% is properly recycled globally.

As a first port of call, I started by looking into resale and trade-in options — hey, with trade tariffs and a RAM chip crunch driving up the cost of tech, it makes sense to jump on the secondhand market, right? But with most of my devices over five years old, their value had dropped significantly. Quotes from resale platforms and trade-in programs like Swappa, Amazon Trade-In, and BackMarket were minimal and often insufficient to justify the effort.

Outside of repurposing the old tech, that left two realistic options: pass them on to someone who’ll actually use them or recycle them properly. Thankfully, recycling has become easier in the UK thanks to new rules that require large retailers to offer free drop-off points for small electronics and to collect larger appliances, making it far more convenient than visiting your local waste collection center.

Off the back of these new circular-economy recycling rules, manufacturers have also launched more recycling and trade-in programs in the past year. The most recent was Insta360 in the US, which is also accepting gear from other brands like DJI, but there are also other big names like Samsung. It’s worthwhile checking with a brand directly, as many have partnered with third-party businesses like Recommerce to launch or scale their trade-in programs.

If there’s one thing I learned from this whole experience, it’s that maybe the smartest upgrade you’ll make this year isn’t a new gadget. Instead, it’s finally letting go of the ones we don’t use, and while Earth Day might feel like the right moment to do it, this is a habit worth keeping all year round.

• Walt Disney World reveals its fourth solar facility on Earth Day
• The new site now helps power up to 100% of the resort's daytime operations
• It spans a huge 484 acres, or the size of 366 football pitches

The ‘happiest place on Earth’, Walt Disney World, now wants to snatch the title of ‘the most energy-efficient place on Earth’ as it unveils its newest solar facility in Levy County, Florida.

As per its announcement, the addition of its fourth solar facility means that all of its sites combined “can produce up to 100% of the daytime power needs of the entire resort”. It was built in collaboration between Bronson Solar and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, but its size is what creates the shock factor.

The solar project spans a mammoth 484 acres — roughly the size of 366 football fields — and provides 74,500 kilowatts of power to supply clean electricity to every park on the resort and their amenities.

Compared to its existing 5,000-kilowatt ‘Hidden Mickey’ solar site, it’s a monster upgrade, but when you take Walt Disney World’s total size and realize how much energy it needs to operate, it’s difficult to wrap your head around.

600,000 solar panels to power 25,000 acres

Now that Walt Disney World has increased the number of solar facilities, this means that the resort now has a staggering 600,000 panels that feed power to every nook and cranny of the resort.

For starters, its four theme parks (Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom) and two water parks are some of the biggest consumers of the resort’s solar power farms. When you factor all the rides, parades, and vendors it needs to power across these sites, it’s already a massive demand, but there’s so much more to Walt Disney World beyond this.

On top of the energy needed to keep the parks alive, there are over 20 themed hotels and hundreds of restaurants and dining sites that also require a large slice of the solar pie, not forgetting the endless transportation options that run for hours on end, the non-stop on-site entertainment, and retail facilities.

When you put all this into perspective, the fact that Walt Disney World has accumulated enough solar panels to provide clean electricity for all daytime operations is a huge environmental achievement, yet still an unbelievable one.

It's a global commitment

Disney’s focus on sustainable energy isn’t just limited to its Florida home, but it stretches across all Disney resorts across the world.

The Disneyland Resort in Hong Kong has just completed the second phase of developing the country's first and largest solar car park canopy, with 400 panels spanning 80 parking spaces. Similarly, Shanghai Disney Resort has fitted solar panels on backstage rooftops, cutting down on emissions by more than 2,500 metric tons.

On top of these resorts, Disney has built solar facilities across its Tokyo and Paris resorts. It also hasn’t forgotten about the Disney Cruise Line, fitting solar plants to power Castaway Cay and Lookout Cay sites in The Bahamas.

CIOs and other executives need to be ready for another major change imperative in the form of AI… but what can they glean from past events? Smart leaders will learn from history and apply key lessons from the last landmark technology-enabled inflexion point: cloud computing and the rise of ecommerce.

I’m old enough to have lived through the cloud computing revolution and it was a remarkable time. The changes to the way we deployed and ran IT had significant impacts internally (elastic capacity, lower upfront costs, a smaller admin overhead, reduced ‘shelfware’) but also on broader business performance.

Cloud computing accelerated decision-making and lowered the risk and expenses associated with R&D and program and process trials. I believe that AI will be even more transformational and drive more impact, especially on the business side.

Let’s be honest here: all major change exercises have bumps on the road. Cloud certainly did and AI tools will not be an exception to that rule. Those who went through cloud-enabled business transformation, as I did at Accenture, need to apply wisdom, recognize familiar obstacles and opportunities, and act accordingly.

An incomplete shortlist of concerns will include:

- securing buy-in from stakeholders;

- managing up, across and down, including scope for retraining and new roles;

- not buying into propaganda or ‘tulip mania’ where hype exceeds reality and common sense;

- avoiding vendor/platform lock-in that restricts downstream flexibility;

- building necessary and complementary skills and partnerships externally;

- managing new vendors with new tariff structures or ways of working;

- re-engineering business processes to capitalize on technology change;

- and seeing this as a holistic change opportunity, not a technology silver bullet.

Let’s dive deeper into a few of these…

Understanding limitations

It’s OK not to know everything. In business, we do everything we can to look ahead, see around corners and anticipate next steps. But ultimately we rely in part on best guesses. That’s especially so in the case of AI (or cloud), the underlying technology is moving very fast. There’s nothing wrong with making incremental changes to plans and course-correcting on a regular basis. And, as goalposts inevitably move, it’s the only sensible approach.

It may get worse before it gets better. Any big change program carries risks. With cloud, we made mistakes that led to unexpected consequences like cost spikes and ‘bill shock.’ We didn’t always factor in what we would consume and how much that consumption level would cost so results sometimes got worse in the short term.

But everything we can know today tells us that investing in AI is a strategic competitive advantage. Some projects will fail and computing costs may come with a higher price tag, but these are short-term challenges that will ultimately lead to long-term progress and our ability to innovate, automate and analyze.

First-mover advantage isn’t always an advantage. In the cloud, there was industry, media and peer pressure to adopt quickly. We feared laggard status and missing out on a promised competitive advantage. Later, some former ‘laggards’ claimed a ‘second-mover advantage’ because they observed the frenzied action before reacting.

The truth of what was better (first-mover or second-mover) was somewhere in the middle. Some sectors and organizations moved fast successfully, while others were better off once the dust settled. There were significant variances caused by differences in industry, company profile, skills and risk appetite. Establish which camps you fall into to move at the right speed but make sure you are prepared to make big moves when the time is right.

Rethinking security and governance

Security and governance need a rethink. Many people underestimated the impacts on data privacy and regulatory compliance in the cloud. This led to cybersecurity compromises caused by misconfigurations and external risks due to the larger attack surface that was presented.

With AI, we need to accept that immense new power will also be used by malicious actors so we must mitigate risks caused by new processes and well-meaning employees and partners.

Vendor choice is different. New technology waves bring new vendors. Smart CIOs will look at the risk of using untested providers, analyze their backgrounds and likely futures, and make choices accordingly.

They will often be assisted by chief risk officers, identity, privacy and sovereignty experts, change veterans, and others with specialist domain expertise. Organizations must avoid being locked into vendors or platforms that restrict downstream movement and value.

Business process change is more important than technology change. Change can’t sit in an IT silo. It’s more important to understand new vistas of possibility and rethinking what business processes are ripe for AI-enabled change. Just as important is communication. So winning buy-in from above, below and across the organization is critical.

AI is exciting, fast-moving and, yes, scary. It’s fine not to get everything right but learning from history will help.

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When Tim Cook officially relinquishes his Apple CEO role in September, he'll leave his successor John Ternus with a $4 trillion dollar house that's largely in order, but perhaps missing a few key features and upgrades.

Ternus, who has been with Apple for 25 years, most of them in a hardware leadership role, will first have to address a software problem: AI. Apple, which is used to being a tech and innovation leader, is inarguably behind when it comes to artificial intelligence, and whatever Apple does or doesn't do in the space will likely be laid at the feet of Ternus, even as he's trying to get those feet under the CEO's desk.

There isn't enough Apple in AI

To be fair, Ternus didn't create this issue, and, as with much of what Apple will do over the next 12 to 18 months, what it does next in the AI field has been preordained. Apple's Siri solution is based on a pre-arranged agreement with Google to use its Gemini foundational models to produce the vastly improved and more conversational version of its assistant (as well as other parts of Apple Intelligence, I bet).

We'll learn more about that at WWDC 2026, which just became far more interesting event than it already was, because it occurs in the liminal space between the Cook and Ternus eras. Cook will surely still be visible and may launch the keynote, but I expect Ternus to pop up in far more videos, especially any that point to a big and bold future.

There are, as I see it, three big initiatives looming in front of Ternus. One is the aforementioned Siri upgrade, a project which Ternus might be least comfortable with, considering his hardware background (I've only ever spoken to Ternus about hardware).

The challenges of AR and folding

The second will be iPhone Fold. Most rumors point to this being the year we see it, and to September's iPhone 18 launch being the occasion of its unveiling. Obviously, this is in Ternus' wheelhouse. When it was time, last September, for an on-Apple campus podcast about the new iPhone Air, it was Ternus who sat a seat away from me (and Apple Global Marketing lead Greg Joswiak, who playfully threw his Air at me).

Ternus lacks Cook's charming Alabama accent, Steve Job's mercurial nature, and the quotability you might want in the leader of one of the world's biggest companies; but he's smart, and he knows his stuff. He is interesting.

What I expect to see when Ternus finally unveils the iPhone Fold is a gearhead's passion. I think he'll love that moment when he shows the world how Apple did folding better than anyone who's done it before (if that's the case).

Ternus' third big project will be wearables. Not the Apple Watch or even an Apple Ring, but smart glasses — unless Ternus moves away from that arena.

The still-struggling Apple Vision Pro (loved for technology, less so for its price tag, and largely ignored by consumers) was really Cook's baby, and AR remains, I think, a passion of his.

What if Ternus isn't as excited about 'Apple Glasses' — wearable, lightweight frames that combine AI, info feeds from your phone, and visuals that meld real with virtual? Could Tenrus kill the product before it sees the light of day?

Highly unlikely. Ternus has worked under Cook for more than 15 years (and under Steve Jobs for a decade before that). He's surely infected with the passions of both men, and I bet he'll be honored to carry Cook's AR football into the end zone.

Apple Glasses could become Ternus' own signature product, since it'll be a platform on which he and the company can build.

Who is Ternus, really?

There are larger questions, though, about Ternus. I don't think he's a supply-chain genius as Cook was, and that's a skill he'll need, especially in the face of uncertain geopolitical times, and unceasing pressure from the White House to move even more manufacturing to the US.

Ternus, as far as I know, has never been to the Trump White House, and does not have the same relationship that Cook appears to enjoy with the President. It's unclear if Ternus shares Cook's innate diplomacy, and I suspect this will be one of his greatest challenges as he assumes command in September.

No matter what happens, the company is Ternus' from September, with Cook remaining close by as Executive Chairman, and no doubt whispering in his ear until he's on solid ground, and truly ready to start building his own Apple legacy.

• Blue Origin reused a rocket booster on its latest mission
• This was the first time it has done this, marking a major milestone
• However, the mission was a failure as it didn't place its satellite payload high enough

Over the weekend Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space company hit a major milestone by successfully re-using a rocket booster for the first time — deploying the same ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ rocket in Sunday’s NG-3 mission that it used back in November for NG-2.

This should be a time for celebration as Blue Origin proves it can better compete with SpaceX on sustainability and space travel prowess, but it isn’t. Why? Because NG-3’s primary objective was an utter failure.

Beyond a rocket booster reusability test, Blue Origin's primary goal for this flight was to drop an AST SpaceMobile communications satellite – BlueBird 7 — into orbit. It did technically do this, but NG-3 placed the satellite “lower than planned” as AST phrased it.

Per an AST SpaceMobile statement, “While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will [be] de-orbited. The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy.”

This means the satellite will be repositioned and left to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

It IS rocket science

For AST SpaceMobile this failure isn’t world-ending — it says it still has plans to launch 45 more satellites before 2026 ends — but for Blue Origin this failure will leave an embarrassing stain on what should have otherwise been a momentous flight.

The silver lining is, if this mission had to be a failure, at least Blue Origin messed up with a satellite launch and not the first launch of its lunar lander — which was originally meant to be NG-3’s purpose.

The next NASA Artemis mission is expected to drop people onto the moon for the first time in over 50 years, but it still needs a lander. SpaceX and Blue Origin are currently racing to design and test the craft that will take astronauts from their spaceship to the lunar surface, but neither has completed the project yet.

Because the Artemis missions are intended to establish a permanent lunar base, the new lander approach can’t be a repeat of the one-and-done style previous missions to the moon — it needs to be something that can repeatedly shuttle crew and cargo.

There’s also a lot less room for failure when carrying crew compared with cargo. Things can be replaced, people’s lives cannot.

We’ll have to wait and see how this mistake affects Blue Origin’s lunar lander bid. Rocket science is famously difficult, so hopefully this will simply be a learning experience for the company.

There are a lot of tech stories that get published every day on TechRadar, and we'll forgive you for not getting around to reading all of them — though we're very grateful if you do (and our daily newsletter might be perfect for you as well).

If you're in need of a catch up on what's been happening since this time last week, then our ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) round-up is here to help. It features the biggest stories from the week, summarized in an easy-to-digest format.

With new LG TVs, cameras from DJI and GoPro, Fire TV sticks, and more to discuss, it's once again been quite a week in technology — here's what went down.

7. We got our first taste of Spider-Man: Brand New Day

We've already seen a trailer, but the first extended clip of Spider-Man: Brand New Day has been shared at CinemaCon 2026 in Las Vegas, and there's lots to dig into. Besides what it tells us about the upcoming Spidey flick (arriving in theaters on Friday, July 31), it also hints at some retconning that could have an impact on the next two Avengers movies.

This is mostly just speculation until we get to see the movie for ourselves, but everything is now perfectly set up for the return of Tom Holland as the superhero web slinger. At the same CinemaCon 2026 event, we've also been treated to two excellent new posters for the movie — check both of them out via the link below and tell us which one you prefer.

• Read the full story: Spider-Man: Brand New Day's first big clip has been revealed at CinemaCon 2026 — and I think it's teasing us over how it'll set up Marvel's next two Avengers movies

6. There was a new twist in the US foreign router ban

The US administration recently banned the launch of any new routers manufactured in foreign countries — ostensibly over national security concerns. One of the companies expected to be affected by the ban was Netgear, but this week we got news that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will be giving Netgear routers a pass.

Netgear has told us that it did submit an application for an exemption based on the FCC guidelines, which take into account the future plans of a company as well as current manufacturing processes, and that may be what made the difference here. Whatever the details in the small print, this remains a somewhat confusing ruling by the FCC.

• Read the full story: Netgear routers seemingly won’t be banned in the US after all — and this just proves the ban was never about security

5. Amazon gave us a slimmer Fire TV Stick

There was a lot of Amazon Fire TV news this week: not only did we get a slimmer version of the dependable Fire TV Stick HD streaming device, there's an interface revamp coming for all Fire TV devices. The updated layout is apparently going to help users to find content faster, with improved category selections one of the incoming software improvements.

Alongside the interface refresh, Amazon is also pushing out Fire TV channels, which will be free and ad-supported. These channels are going to be rolling out internationally at the end of the month, and cover genres such as news, comedy, cooking, and travel. These updates are substantial enough for rivals such as Roku and Google to take note.

• Read the full story: Own a Fire TV device? You're getting a free update soon, with refreshed layout and new streaming channels — and Amazon's also launching a slimmer Fire TV Stick

4. We tried 'the most beautiful phone of 2026'

Oppo has something to say to those who think smartphone design has peaked, and it's saying it in the form of the Find X9 Ultra. We've spent some time with the handset, which is inspired by the fantastic Hasselblad X2D camera in terms of its aesthetics, and this could genuinely end up being the most beautiful phone of 2026 (and quite a few other years as well).

There's going to be a full reveal of the phone next week, but for now we can confirm that the Oppo Find X9 Ultra comes with twin 200MP cameras and 10x optical zoom, and we're confident that the inside of the phone will be just as good as the outside. Stay tuned to TechRadar for more details over the next few days, including pricing and availability.

• Read the full story: The Oppo Find X9 Ultra is inspired by my favorite Hasselblad camera — and I think it's the most beautiful phone of 2026 so far

3. The DJI Osmo Pocket 4 finally landed

After months of rumors and speculation, the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 has finally landed, and this looks to be a serious upgrade over the Pocket 3 that preceded it. We've listed seven key upgrades that make the latest model worth a look, whether you're looking to upgrade from an existing device or wanting to get started with a vlogging camera for the first time.

The upgrades here include a new 4K sensor for better photos and video, improved color handling, a new slo-mo mode (up to 8x in full 4K), and subject tracking. We've got some welcome design tweaks to talk about too, while there's a higher capacity battery compared to the Pocket 3 that should ensure more recording time between charges.

• Read the full story: DJI Pocket 4 vs DJI Pocket 3 — 7 upgrades for the next best-selling vlogging camera

2. GoPro launched its epic Mission action cams

GoPro has been rather quiet of late, but that changed this week, when we got three new models from the camera company. These models are firmly aimed at serious videographers and photographers, too — the Mission 1 Pro ILS supports a Micro Four Thirds lens mount, which means it's compatible with hundreds of existing lenses.

That model is joined by the Mission 1 and Mission 1 Pro models. All three cameras feature a new 1-inch 50MP sensor and are capable of recording 8K video, and while we're still waiting for details on pricing, we do know pre-orders are opening up on May 21. Check out the three new models for yourself and let us know your thoughts — is GoPro back?

• Read the full story: GoPros get their biggest upgrade for 20 years with trio of 'professional' Mission 1 8K action cams — and one even supports hundreds of pro camera lenses

1. We tested LG's new flagship OLED TV

For many years LG has topped our list of the best OLED TVs on the market – or been very close to the top – and so expectations were high for the LG G6 that's leading the charge for the electronics maker in 2026. Having spent three weeks in the company of the television, we can confirm that it sets a new high bar when it comes to viewing experiences.

The LG G5 remains an excellent TV, but the LG G6 has somehow managed to improve on its predecessor in terms of picture quality, reflection reduction, gaming performance, color reproduction, and performance in brightly lit rooms. Have a read through our review and see if this could be the significant television upgrade you've been waiting for.

• Read the full story: I reviewed the LG G6 for 3 weeks, and it's a fantastic OLED TV that's the new best option for brighter rooms