Apple users eagerly anticipating the ability to control their robot vacuums through Siri and HomeKit will have to wait a little longer. In a recent update to its Home product webpage, Apple quietly announced that support for robot vacuum integration has been pushed back to “early 2025.” This delay was first noted by MacRumors.
Promise and the Delay
During its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, Apple unveiled plans to enhance the Home app with robot vacuum compatibility. The feature was expected to debut by the end of 2024, possibly alongside the iOS 18.2 release. However, the revised timeline indicates that the feature is still under development.
At launch, the integration will allow users to issue commands to robot vacuums via Siri in U.S. English and control their devices through HomeKit. Tasks such as initiating cleaning cycles, switching between sweeping and mopping modes, and monitoring the device’s battery status will all be supported. Additionally, users will be able to incorporate robot vacuums into HomeKit automations, enabling workflows like starting a cleaning session when the house is empty.
Other Delayed iOS 18 Features
Robot vacuum support isn’t the only iOS 18 feature facing delays. Apple has pushed back several other functionalities announced during WWDC. For example, the initial Apple Intelligence features rolled out in October, one month after iOS 18’s public release. Meanwhile, additional AI capabilities and a more advanced version of Siri are still in testing and are now expected in 2025.
Expanded HomeKit Capabilities
Despite delays, iOS 18 has introduced some significant enhancements to the HomeKit experience. These include simplified processes for inviting temporary guests to control HomeKit accessories and support for Ultra Wideband door locks.
iOS 18 is compatible with iPhone XR and later models. Users can update their devices by navigating to Settings > General > Software Update.
Samsung is poised to make waves in the tech world with the anticipated launch of its first smart glasses, a groundbreaking step in the wearables market. According to Yonhap News, these glasses are likely to be unveiled during the company’s January 2025 Galaxy Unpacked event, where the Galaxy S25 series will also take center stage. However, the smart glasses may steal the spotlight with their innovative features and sleek design.
Focus on Simplicity and Usability
Weighing approximately 50 grams, Samsung’s smart glasses aim to closely mimic traditional eyewear, providing a familiar and lightweight user experience. This design ethos aligns with the trend of creating subtle, unobtrusive wearable devices. Unlike earlier AR devices, these glasses reportedly forego complex hardware like built-in displays or projectors for augmented reality applications, focusing instead on functionalities such as gesture recognition, audio playback, and possibly payment capabilities.
This approach contrasts with Samsung’s ongoing collaboration with Qualcomm and Google on an ambitious XR device powered by smartphones. The new smart glasses, designed in-house, suggest a more conservative and refined take on wearable technology, emphasizing comfort and everyday usability.
Learning from the Past and Competitors
Samsung’s foray into smart glasses is not its first venture into high-tech eyewear. The company previously launched the Samsung Gear VR, a virtual reality headset co-developed with Oculus. While the Gear VR offered an immersive experience, it was hampered by its reliance on specific smartphone models, leading to its eventual discontinuation.
In crafting these new glasses, Samsung appears to be drawing inspiration from the success of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, which combine stylish designs with practical features. By leveraging its Galaxy AI technology, Samsung may incorporate advanced functionalities, potentially integrating AI assistants like those seen in Solos AirGo 3 smart glasses.
Anticipated Timeline and Competitive Edge
While the January Unpacked event will likely feature only a teaser for the smart glasses, a full launch is expected in the third quarter of 2025. Samsung’s history of unveiling innovative wearables, such as the Galaxy Ring in 2024, highlights its capability to deliver cutting-edge devices.
The introduction of these smart glasses signifies a growing competitive landscape in the wearable tech market. As Meta, Apple, and other players continue to expand their offerings, Samsung’s entry is poised to bring more choices to consumers, driving innovation across the industry.
By combining user-friendly design, innovative technology, and its established ecosystem, Samsung’s smart glasses could redefine what consumers expect from wearable devices, ensuring a competitive edge in this burgeoning market.
According to CNBC, Benoit Dupin, Senior Director of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at Apple, spoke at Amazon’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas about how Apple leverages custom AI chips from Amazon Web Services (AWS) in many of its cloud services. Apple is also evaluating Amazon’s latest AI chips for pre-training its Apple Intelligence models.
“We have a strong relationship, and the infrastructure is both reliable and capable of serving our customers worldwide,” said Dupin.
Apple’s participation in Amazon’s conference and its adoption of the company’s chips signify a strong endorsement of AWS as it competes with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for AI investments. Apple also utilizes these competing cloud services.
During the event, Dupin highlighted that Apple has been using AWS chips, such as the Graviton and Inferentia, for over a decade to power services like Siri, search, the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Maps, and more. By leveraging these chips, Apple has achieved a 40% improvement in efficiency compared to Intel and AMD’s x86 chips.
Dupin further confirmed that Apple is currently testing AWS’s latest AI training chip, Trainium2. He stated that Apple expects “up to a 50% improvement in efficiency with pre-training” using the Trainium2 chip.
AWS CEO Matt Garman, in an interview with CNBC, mentioned that Apple was an early adopter and beta tester of the Trainium chips.
“Apple approached us and said, ‘How can you help us enhance our generative AI capabilities? We need infrastructure to build this vision,’” Garman told CNBC’s Kate Rooney. “They had a clear vision for developing Apple Intelligence.”
This fall, Apple launched its first major generative AI product, Apple Intelligence, a suite of services that can summarize notifications, rewrite emails, and generate new emojis. According to the company, Apple Intelligence will integrate with OpenAI’s ChatGPT later this month, and Siri will gain new capabilities for app control and natural speech next year.
Unlike leading chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which rely on large clusters of Nvidia-based servers in the cloud, Apple employs a different approach. It processes as much as possible on local devices, such as iPhones, iPads, or Macs, and delegates complex queries to Apple-operated servers powered by its proprietary M-series chips.
Honor X9c Smart has been unveiled in Malaysia with some interesting specs like the Dimensity 7025-Ultra and a huge battery. It resembles the Honor X60 but doubles the bet with an extra camera.
Honor X9c Smart Specifications
The Honor X9c Smart sports a 6.8-inch full-HD+ (2,412 x 1,080 pixels) display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 850nits peak brightness, and dynamic, DC flicker-free dimming. The handset is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7025 Ultra SoC paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage,and the virtual RAM feature is also present allowing you to take a portion of storage for an extra 8 GB of RAM. It ships with Android 14-based MagicOS 8.0 skin on top.
For optics, the Honor X9c Smart carries a 108-megapixel main rear camera sensor with f/1.75 aperture and 3x lossless zoom. The phone has a 16-megapixel selfie shooter as well. It is equipped with AI-backed imaging and editing tools.
The Honor X9c Smart is backed by a 5,800mAh battery with 35W wired fast charging support. Connectivity options include dual 5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.3, OTG, NFC, GPS, and a USB Type-C port. The handset is said to come with a scratch-resistant build, which is claimed to endure 3,000 cycles of steel-wool friction. The phone measures 165.98 x 75.8 x 7.88mm in size and weighs 193g.
Notably, the Honor X9c has an IP65M-rated build for dust and 360-degree water resistance. But the Honor X9c Smart is not “professionally water resistant,” the official listing confirmed. Last, but not least, it comes with a side-mounted fingerprint scanner.
The phone is offered in Moonlight White and Ocean Cyan colourways.Honor has not yet announced the pricing details of the X9c Smart handset. However, the local price will be seen only on December 11, when the orders will begin.
Today, Tesla confirmed that an official Apple Watch app is coming soon. As part of the 2024 Tesla Holiday Update, the carmaker will officially release a watchOS version of the Tesla app. It will start arriving as part of an over-the-air (OTA) update that starts rolling out next week.
The app will let users see the current battery charge level, open their car’s frunk, and remotely enable the climate control system. The most notable capability, however, will be using it as a phone key.
A phone key, which lives on smartphones via an application, allows users to lock, unlock, and start the vehicle. In Tesla’s car, the phone key communicates via Bluetooth signals and unlocks the doors as soon as a person pulls the door handle.
Likewise, when users walk away carrying the paired smartphone, the Walk-Away Door Lock system automatically locks the doors. Users have to go through authentication, and once a device is registered as a trusted phone key, they won’t even require internet connectivity to access all the features.
The number of authenticated phone keys allowed by a Tesla car is limited, presumably for safety reasons. Take, for example, the entry-level Tesla Model 3, which only allows up to three phone keys simultaneously.
Tesla cars also support NFC-based car unlocking, similar to the key card the brand offers. Tesla’s blog post doesn’t specify whether the watchOS app will rely on Bluetooth, NFC, or both.
In addition to releasing an Apple Watch app, the Holiday update will also let users watch and locally save clips recorded by their car’s cameras in Dashcam and Sentry Mode. Users will also be able to specify battery charging levels when they reach their destination and check the precipitation situation on the Map.
“When in Reverse, your vehicle will alert you if it detects a pedestrian or vehicle crossing behind you,” says the update note shared on X. In case a cross-traffic object is seen, the car will also issue an audible alert.
On the more playful side of things, there’s a new Emissions feature. It allows you to set any seat to “fart on contact,” which means a fart sound will play when someone sits on that seat. It’s a digital whoopee cushion and the third such fart feature from Tesla, which also has “fart on demand” and “fart on turn signal” settings.
Those are far from the only new features announced by Tesla. A post on X — Elon Musk’s version of Twitter — has the full details. Among the notable updates include the ability to set a preferred battery level upon arrival at your destination, a new alert for cross-traffic while in reverse, and Cybertruck’s “Santa Mode” that turns your car’s avatar into a sleigh.
A leak has just revealed that a tiny new DJI Flip is coming – and it could potentially be a DJI Mini series successor.The new DJI Flip, which has propeller guards similar to the DJI Neo, will have a folding design that resembles the HoverAir X1, according to a video shared by reliable leaker Jasper Ellens on X.
DJI‘s current folding drones, including the Mini 4 Pro and Mini 3, feature collapsing propellers and arms that fold towards the sides of each drone’s body. The guarded propellers on the DJI Flip appear to instead fold downwards in the leaked animation, resulting in all four of them being neatly stacked to help make the drone smaller and easier to transport when not being flown.
The addition of propeller guards will not only make the DJI Flip safer for novices to fly, but its larger propellers and their ducted design could also make the new drone quieter, according to DroneXL. Other features spotted in the leaked image and animation include a camera on a three-axis gimbal, landing leg supports under the front propellers, support for DJI’s O4 video transmission system, and an “advanced LiDAR array matching the DJI Air 3S’s sensor capabilities,” says DroneXL.
The Flip will ship with a 3,110mAh battery — larger than the DJI Neo’s 1,435mAh that allows the smaller drone to fly for up to 18 minutes. That’s also larger than the 2,590mAh that ships with the DJI Mini 4 Pro and the DJI Mini 3’s 2,453mAh battery, which gave both of those drones flight times of 34 to 38 minutes.
Overall, this makes the DJI Flip a curious little drone, and it isn’t clear yet where it might sit between the new DJI Neo and existing DJI Mini series. As always with DJI, expect new leaks to reveal more soon…
What’s still unknown are pricing details or when the DJI Flip will launch, although DroneXL suspects it could be announced as early as January 2025. Jasper Ellens also believes the Flip will be DJI’s replacement for the Mini 5 or Mini 5 Pro that was expected to debut sometime in late 2024 or early 2025.
Laptops are an essential tool and they are perfect for everyday use until their battery begins to falter. Fortunately, there is an easy fix – just replace it, but how?
When you need to replace the battery, you are faced with several questions: How do you choose the right battery, are replacement laptop batteries as good as the original, and many more.
Different types of batteries
Lithium-ion battery
Lithium-ion batteries are the most common type of battery used in laptops today. They are known for their high energy density, light weight, and long lifespan.
Lithium polymer battery
Lithium polymer batteries are a variation of lithium-ion batteries that use a polymer electrolyte instead of a liquid electrolyte. This makes lithium polymer batteries more flexible and allows them to be manufactured in a variety of shapes and sizes. They are also safer than lithium-ion batteries because they are less likely to leak or explode.
NiMH battery
NiMH batteries are another common laptop battery type. They are cheaper than lithium-ion batteries, but have a lower energy density and a shorter lifespan.
Nickel-cadmium battery
Nickel-cadmium batteries were once a common battery type for laptops, but are no longer used. They are cheaper than nickel-metal hydride batteries, but have a lower energy density and a shorter lifespan.
Lead-acid batteries
Lead-acid batteries are an old type of battery that are rarely used in laptops. They are cheap, but bulky and heavy.
Each type of laptop battery has its own unique advantages and disadvantages. Lithium-ion batteries are currently the most popular choice because they offer the best performance and lifespan.
How to Select a Battery for Replacement
With so many different batteries on the market, it can be difficult to know which one to choose. Here are a few things to keep in mind when selecting a battery for replacement.
Quality Indicators for Replacement Batteries
To gauge the quality of a replacement battery, consider factors like the capacity (measured in milliampere-hours or mAh), the number of charge cycles, and compatibility with your laptop model. Higher capacity generally translates to longer battery life, while a greater number of charge cycles indicates a longer lifespan. It is also important to check for certifications like CE, UL, or RoHS, which signify adherence to safety and environmental standards. Opting for low-quality replacement batteries can pose risks, including overheating, reduced battery life, and in extreme cases, damage to the laptop. It is crucial to purchase batteries from reputable suppliers who offer warranties, ensuring that the battery is tested and safe to use.
Look for User Reviews and Recommendations
User reviews and expert recommendations can be invaluable in assessing the quality of a replacement battery. They provide real-world insights into the battery’s performance and longevity, helping you make an informed decision. When in doubt, consult a professional. Professionals are accustomed to handling a variety of laptop batteries and can recommend the most suitable battery for your device, taking into account your specific needs and budget. Their expertise ensures that you get a reliable and high-quality battery, eliminating the guesswork and risks associated with making the choice yourself. They can also handle the installation, ensuring that your laptop battery is replaced safely and efficiently, maximising your device’s performance and longevity.
Battery Replacement Guide 101: FAQs
1.What are the signs that you need a battery replacement?
Battery degradation is a natural process influenced by various factors. Most of the time, batteries degrade due to exposure to extreme temperatures or due to time and usage.
These factors can reduce the battery’s capacity and its ability to hold a charge, thereby diminishing the laptop’s performance and user experience.
Here are some signs that you may need to replace your laptop battery:
Your laptop battery no longer lasts as long as it used to.
Your laptop battery dies unexpectedly, even when it is fully charged.
Your laptop battery takes longer to charge than it used to.
Your laptop battery gets hot when it is charging or in use.
Your laptop battery swells or bulges.
2. How Can I Replace The Battery In My Laptop?
Replacing a laptop battery is a feasible task that can be accomplished with some basic tools and careful steps. Remember, whenever in doubt, contact a professional to handle your laptop, misconfiguring a battery can be harmful.
3. What are the Benefits and Risks of Replacing Laptop Batteries
Replacing a laptop battery comes with its set of advantages and potential risks. Understanding these can help users make informed decisions.
1. Benefits of Battery Replacement
Replacing a failing or degraded battery can significantly extend the life of a laptop, making it a cost-effective alternative to purchasing a new device.
A new battery can restore the laptop’s original performance, eliminating issues like quick draining or the inability to hold a charge.
With a new battery, the laptop can retain its original portability, freeing users from the constant need to be near a power outlet.
2. Risks Associated with Battery Replacement
Using an incompatible or low-quality battery can lead to problems such as poor performance, overheating, or even damage to the laptop.
Inferior quality batteries may pose safety risks, including the potential for overheating, leakage, or in rare cases, fire.
In some cases, replacing the battery yourself may void the laptop’s warranty, especially if the process involves disassembling the device.
It is crucial for users to weigh these benefits and risks, considering factors like battery quality, compatibility, and warranty implications. Choosing a reputable battery supplier and, if necessary, opting for professional installation can mitigate many of the risks involved.
To Conclude
Overall, if you want a good laptop battery replacement, look for different brands of batteries to compare .We are a top-notch company that provides you with safe, reliable, and long-lasting battery solutions that you can trust in terms of quality, customer service, and peace of mind.
Judging by what we’ve seen from leaks and official channels alike, One UI 7.0 will be full of pleasant surprises.But not all news is good news for Galaxy fans, especially since Samsung announced the end of Edge Panel downloads.
One UI 7 will not support the Edge Panels Galaxy Store
The company issued a termination notice earlier this week (via @theonecid), informing Galaxy device users that they will no longer be able to acquire and download Edge Panels from the Galaxy Store on devices running One UI 7 or later.
Edge Panels have always been a unique way to further customize your Samsung device. The Galaxy Store had a variety of panels, some of which were premium and cost money. This is a panel on the side of the screen that can be swiped open to provide quick access to frequently used apps. The Galaxy Store provided neat skins and customizations for the Edge Panel.
Samsung says that, even though you won’t be able to acquire and download new Panels, the ones already on your phone before updating to One UI 7 will be available in the “My apps” section of the Galaxy Store.
But it’s worth noting that Samsung also says that once you upgrade to One UI 7, you won’t be able to re-download its own Edge Panel after uninstalling it.
So, as long as you have a third-party Edge Panel installed at the moment of updating to One UI 7.0, you can continue to use it. But if you uninstall said Edge Panel after you upgrade to One UI 7.0, you won’t be able to re-acquire it — not even via the aforementioned “My Apps” section.
This is seemingly true for both free and paid Edge Panels. If you want to hold on to your paid Edge Panels after you update to One UI 7, you will have to avoid uninstalling them. If you remove them, it looks like they’ll be gone for good.
What this means for us
Aside from the Edge Panel storefront, the Edge Panel feature itself will not be removed in One UI 7.0.Nevertheless, this might be the first step in a lengthier process of slowly phasing out Edge Panels.It wouldn’t surprise us if Samsung may want to discontinue this feature altogether at a later date.
One UI 7.0 promises to deliver a lot of useful features, but apparently, edge panels are not one of them.
New leak suggests alongside the expected trio of Samsung Galaxy S25 phones, new ‘Slim’ version of the phone is going to be available worldwide.Given Samsung has released new Galaxy S devices every year since 2010 and that we’re now up to the S24, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that a new version is just around the corner.
According to the reported Erencan Yılmaz, who posted on X the model number: SM-S937B/DS. This indicates two things: the ‘B’ means the handset will be sold in all regions that Samsung operates in, while the ‘DS’ stands for dual-Sim support.
In other words, this won’t be a situation like we have with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition, which is only available in Samsung’s home country of South Korea – at least as far as direct retail sales are concerned.The latter detail is not particularly surprising, but still welcome as it means you can use two different phone numbers at the same time (for different countries, if you regularly travel, or to keep work/home correspondences on the same device).
All the indications so far point to the Galaxy S25 Slim being something along the lines of a Galaxy S25 FE (Fan Edition).
Details of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim are, appropriately, somewhat thin on the ground, but it’s likely Samsung’s answer to the rumor that Apple will be launching an iPhone 17 Slim model next year. These two devices could be going after very different markets if Samsung’s is indeed a rebadged Galaxy FE, as Apple’s Slim model is rumored to be the most expensive iPhone ever.
Even with the possible price discrepancy, Samsung could have one big advantage over Apple. According to the reliable leaker Ice Universe, the company aims to make photography the focus with a camera “stronger than S25, and more similar to the idea of vivo X200 Pro mini”.
We’re expecting to see regular S25, Plus and Ultra models arriving in January, the Slim model could yet come much later in the year, with an April date mooted.
