At some point in 2023, Sam Altman founded a new AI hardware device firm: io Products. Last September, Jony Ive confirmed his involvement in this startup tech company. Industry whispers suggest that Open AI's CEO (Altman) and the former Apple chief designer (Ive) were collaborating on the making of voice-enabled smart AI assistant household products. According to a (paywalled) The Information news article, this fledgling operation attracted an "undisclosed amount of funding" from wealthy benefactors. The "small team" is reportedly working on some type of "revolutionary" screenless AI phone, but this rumored project is likely in a very early stage of development—so moles have not disclosed exact details.

The report posits that Ive has recruited Tang Tan and Evans Hankey—both high-level ex-Apple industrial leads, with long-term iPhone design experience. The Information's anonymous inside sources believe that Ive's LoveFrom boutique agency will determine the visual setup for forthcoming io Products smart devices. Additionally, the report extends to a potential takeover bid—valued at around $500 million (USD)—coming from Altman's main gig. Open AI's leadership is supposedly weighing up its options. The Information disclosed an alternative avenue; a simple partnership—rather than a comprehensive takeover.

Apple is off to a great start in 2025, thanks to a record-breaking fourth quarter. Net revenue soared to a whopping $124.3 billion - the highest ever for the Cupertino giant - with iPhones driving 55.6% of revenue. Macs and iPads, as usual, appear to be a drop in the bucket compared to iPhones, with $8.98 and $8.088 billion in net sales respectively. Services witnessed commendable growth, adding $26.34 billion to Apple's pile.

Of course, this does not mean that the grass is all green for the company. Apple Intelligence witnessed a tumultuous launch, suffering from multiple setbacks and lukewarm reviews. Tim Cook does believe that there is still a lot of innovation on the table for the iPhone, which he revealed in a recent interview. Considering that the company is widely rumored to be preparing a major redesign for the iPhone, along with a brand-new Air/Slim variant, it does appear that this year will turn out to be quite an interesting one for iPhone enthusiasts.

Global leader in storage solutions, Patriot Memory, proudly announces the launch of the iLuxe Stick, the latest addition to the iLuxe series of digital lifestyle products following the iLuxe Cube. Combining sleek design with high performance, the Patriot iLuxe Stick is a portable storage device that ensures you'll never miss capturing a precious moment due to insufficient storage. With the iLuxe app, photos and videos are seamlessly transferred to the iLuxe Stick in real time, providing effortless storage expansion for iPhones and iPads. The device also simplifies cross-platform file transfers.

The iLuxe Stick features a dual-connector design with both Type-C and Lightning interfaces, ensuring compatibility with Apple iPhones from the iPhone 6 to the latest iPhone 16. Its innovative Trust Circle encryption system supports up to 16 encrypted members, allowing users to select sharing permissions while maintaining privacy and security.

DIGIERA introduces the external SSD, a cutting-edge storage solution designed to meet the increasing needs of iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro users. With mobile content creation and data management evolving rapidly, this SSD delivers the perfect balance of speed, portability, and durability, making it ideal for high-resolution video capture, fast data transfers, and other demanding tasks.

Advanced Performance and Speed
At the heart of the DIGIERA external SSD lies its USB 3.2 Gen2x2 technology, delivering blazing-fast data transfer rates with read speeds of up to 2000 MB/s and write speeds of 1800 MB/s. This makes it six times faster than traditional external hard drives, ensuring users can seamlessly store and transfer 4K ProRes videos, high-resolution images, and large project files directly from their iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro.

In the world where the largest companies are riding the AI train, the biggest of them all—Apple—seemed to stay quiet for a while. Even with many companies announcing their systems/models, Apple has stayed relatively silent about the use of LLMs in their products. However, according to Bloomberg, Apple is not pushing out an AI model of its own; rather, it will license Google's leading Gemini models for its iPhone smartphones. Gemini is Google's leading AI model with three variants: Gemini Nano 1/2, Gemini Pro, and Gemini Ultra. The Gemini Nano 1 and Nano 2 are designed to run locally on hardware like smartphones. At the same time, Gemini Pro and Ultra are inferenced from Google's servers onto a local device using API and the internet.

Apple could use a local Gemini Nano for basic tasks while also utilizing Geminin Pro or Ultra for more complex tasks, where a router sends user input to the available model. That way, users could use AI capabilities both online and offline. Since Apple is readying a suite of changes for iOS version 18, backed by Neural Engine inside A-series Bionic chips, the LLM game of Apple's iPhones might get a significant upgrade with the Google partnership. While we still don't know the size of the deal, it surely is a massive deal for Google to tap into millions of devices Apple ships every year and for Apple to give its users a more optimized experience.

Google Pixel Fold is now available for pre-order and will begin shipping next month. Our new foldable phone combines the helpfulness of Pixel with a design that unfolds into a compact tablet, unlocking even more ways for you to use your device. And it's all powered by our Google Tensor G2 chip, which also makes Pixel Fold fast and secure. Here's a look at the newest addition to our Pixel portfolio.

When closed, Pixel Fold has a familiar smartphone silhouette that fits in the palm of your hand and slides into your pocket. Flip it open to reveal a 7.6-inch screen with a thinner profile than any other foldable phone in the market. To create this foldable design, we didn't compromise on form and function. Many of the Pixel components—from camera, battery, speakers and haptics technology—were cleverly redesigned to fit within the thin design. Our custom-built hinge not only contributes to that thinness, but also doubles as the most durable hinge out there. And last but not least, Pixel Fold has an IPX8 rating for water resistance.

The global economy has faced increased inflation risks and downstream inventory corrections in 2H22, which have affected IC design houses faster than wafer foundries, as they are far more sensitive and responsive to market reversals. TrendForce reports that adverse factors such as weak overall consumption, restrictions from China, and the slowdown of corporate IT spending and CSP demand have impacted the revenue performance of the world's top 10 IC design houses in 4Q22, leading to a QoQ decline of 9.2%, or approximately US$33.96 billion.

TrendForce predicts that the revenue of these top 10 companies keep declining—though with a slight convergence—into 1Q23, owing to ongoing inventory corrections across the entire supply chain as well as Q1 being the traditional off-season for consumer demand. Demand will continue to be weak despite new product launches and inventory replenishment in the supply chain.

According to TrendForce's latest survey of the global foundry market, electronics brands began adjusting their inventories in 2Q22, but foundries were unable to rapidly adapt to this development because they reside in the more upper portion of the supply chain. Moreover, revising procurement quantities of long-term foundry contracts takes time as well. Hence, only some tier-2 and -3 foundries were able to immediately respond to the changes in their clients' demand. Also, among them, 8-inch wafer foundries made a more pronounced reduction in their capacity utilization rates. As for the remaining foundries, the downward corrections that they made to their capacity utilization rates did not become noticeable until 4Q22. Hence, in 4Q22, the quarterly total revenue of the global top 10 foundries registered a QoQ decline for the first time after 13 consecutive quarters of positive growth. The quarterly total revenue of the top 10 foundries came to US$33,530 million, reflecting a drop of 4.7% from 3Q22. Moving into 1Q23, TrendForce projects that the quarterly total revenue of the top 10 will show an even steeper drop on account of seasonality and the uncertain macroeconomic situation.

MediaTek today announced the Dimensity 8200, the company's newest chipset for premium 5G smartphones. Smartphones powered by the Dimensity 8200 will offer flagship level experiences - including connectivity, gaming, multimedia, displays and imaging - at a more accessible price point. Built on the 4 nm-class process, the new chipset delivers unparalleled power efficiency. It also integrates an octa-core CPU with four Arm Cortex-A78 cores operating at up to 3.1 GHz, along with a powerful Mali-G610 graphics engine, for better performance across applications.

To enhance gaming performance, the chipset takes advantage of MediaTek's HyperEngine 6.0 gaming technologies so users can enjoy smooth high framerate gameplay without suffering connection drops, FPS jitter, or gameplay hiccups. MediaTek's Intelligent Display Sync 2.0 technology intelligently adjusts the display refresh rate according to the game frame rate detected, which helps provide smoother viewing experiences.

Gamevice, the industry-leading, mobile gaming peripheral innovator and creator of the original Gamevice and Razer's Kishi mobile controller, has announced Gamevice Flex, the new mobile gaming controller that is first to deliver a seamless transition from console to mobile cloud gaming. With upgraded features and a new design to be compatible with thousands of phone cases, Gamevice Flex eliminates the risk and inconvenience of having to repeatedly remove your phone case. Its adapter kit enables a customized fit that works for mobile phones with or without a case.

With the emergence and steady growth of cloud gaming, players are no longer restricted to one platform. They are now enjoying their favorite games using multiple devices such as PCs, smartphones, consoles and even upcoming cloud-enabled TVs such as the Samsung Gaming Hub. Recognizing this trend early and after gathering feedback from its community, the Gamevice team applied its 10+ years of experience - with over one million units sold - to develop a controller that brings a console quality gaming experience to mobile devices. To meet the demands of console players, Flex features updated buttons, Hall effect triggers with longer range, improved ergonomics for extended play, and (by popular demand) a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

From 2020 to 2025, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12-inch equivalent wafer capacity at the world's top ten foundries will be approximately 10% with the majority of these companies focusing on 12-inch capacity expansion, which will see a CAGR of approximately 13.2%, according to TrendForce's research. In terms of 8-inch wafers, due to factors such as difficult to obtain equipment and whether capacity expansion is cost-effective, most fabs can only expand production slightly by means of capacity optimization, equating to a CAGR of only 3.3%. In terms of demand, the products primarily derived from 8-inch wafers, PMIC and Power Discrete, are driven by demand for electric vehicles, 5G smartphones, and servers. Stocking momentum has not fallen off, resulting in a serious shortage of 8-inch wafer production capacity that has festered since 2H19. Therefore, in order to mitigate competition for 8-inch capacity, a trend of shifting certain products to 12-inch production has gradually emerged. However, if shortages in overall 8-inch capacity is to be effectively alleviated, it is still necessary to wait for a large number of mainstream products to migrate to 12-inch production. The timeframe for this migration is estimated to be close to 2H23 into 2024.

OLED panes are expertise areas of display makers such as LG and Samsung, however, when it comes to Apple, they have to rely on external manufacturers to make a display. For years Apple has been contracting LG and Samsung to make the display for iPhones and Macs, but it looks like Apple is now collaborating with another firm to develop micro OLED technology. According to sources over at Nikkei Asia, Apple is collaborating with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to develop "ultra-advanced display technology at a secretive facility in Taiwan". Despite TSMC not being the traditional choice for panel manufacturing, there is a list of reasons why Apple chose its years-long partner to work with.

TSMC is known for manufacturing silicon chips, however, Apple envisions that the Taiwan maker will manufacture ultra-advanced micro OLED technology using wafers. Building the displays using wafers will result in much lower power consumption and far lower size. Why is this approach necessary you might wonder? Well, Apple is developing a new generation of AR glasses and there needs to be a solid display technology for them to exist. It is reported that the new micro OLED displays are under development and are about one inch in diameter. The source also adds that this is just one out of two projects being worked on inside of Apple's secretive labs located in the Taiwanese city of Taoyuan. What is the other project remains a mystery, however, with more time we could get information on that as well.

Google Stadia has recently expanded its list of supported Android devices to include OnePlus smartphones, in addition to this they have now enabled experimental support for all Android phones. To access the feature on untested phones you must visit the Stadia app, navigate to the Experiments tab in your Settings menu, and choose "Play on this device."

To coincide with this launch, Google is introducing another experimental feature, mobile touch controls. With mobile touch controls, players can play any Stadia game with a virtual gamepad overlay, to enable the feature select "Try touch gamepad" after launching a game without a controller connected. Finally, Google is also bringing per device resolution options which can be accessed under Options > Performance.

Get the app here.

Razer, the leading lifestyle brand for gamers, today revealed "Project Linda," a 13.3-inch laptop design powered by the Android-based Razer Phone. The smartphone and laptop hybrid concept harkens a new era for mobile personal computing, blending the familiar Android environment with the ease-of-use of a laptop. As one of the few companies in the world to straddle user interfaces, laptops and smartphones, Project Linda is a groundbreaking concept that blurs the lines between the smartphone and the laptop.

Razer's Project Linda laptop seamlessly docks the Razer Phone inside its chassis where a touchpad would normally reside, and connects with the press of a button. The phone's Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile platform and 8 GB of RAM deliver responsive performance, instantly transforming Project Linda into an Android laptop. The Razer Phone 5.7-inch display can be used as a touchpad, or as a second screen for access to apps, tools, and more.

Presenting NextPowerUp, our sister tech-publication in the works, designed with a bigger canvas. TechPowerUp established itself as one of the top PC hardware publications thanks to our pursuit for quality reviews and relentless news delivery. We decided it was time to put these core ideals to use, in addressing the much larger consumer electronics and gadgets markets, without disturbing TechPowerUp's focus on PC enthusiast content, one of its hallmarks.

NextPowerUp is designed to keep you up to speed on the latest in over 20 markets (and growing), each with its own content channel, and editors hand-picked for them. These include Audio (personal, home, professional, concert), Business, Cinema (filming, production, exhibition), Desktops (pre-built desktop PCs), Displays (signage, projectors), Gadgets, Gaming (games, game development, gaming industry, consoles), Internet (the business of WWW), Networking (social networking), Notebooks (notebooks, Ultrabooks, netbooks), Phones (of all shapes and sizes), Photo & Video (cameras of all shapes and sizes), Politics (industry soap-opera), Robots (outside assembly lines), Science (popular science, space exploration), Software, Storage, Tablets, Televisions (TVs and technologies built around them), Transportation (wheels that don't run on fossil fuels), and Wireless (Cellular carriers, commercial WiFi).

Apple seems to have a revolving door for legal actions as of late. Today the Chicago Tribune is reporting Apple has asked a federal court in California to block Samsung from selling its new Galaxy Nexus smartphones, which use Google's newest version of Android, called Ice Cream Sandwich, alleging four patent violations including new features such as a voice-command search function.

Galaxy Nexus, the official debut of which was delayed by Samsung in October to pay respect to Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs, is the first phone running on the newest Android version before the platform is widely adopted by hardware manufacturers such as HTC Corp and Motorola Mobility. HTC and Motorola are also in separate patent disputes with Apple. In a lawsuit filed last week in San Jose, Apple said the Galaxy Nexus infringes on patents underlying features customers expect from Apple products. Those include the ability to unlock phones by sliding an image and to search for information by voice.

Charging large numbers of iPads, iPhones and iPods is a challenge for many schools, businesses and other organizations. A new 16-port professional USB charging station now makes this possible.

Compact, light and easy to use, the Power Pad 16 (DS-IP-PP16) provides the optimum power required for charging iPads and other iDevices. It can be used to replace bulky power strips and the AC adapter bricks of the standard chargers.

As promised, Google has today released the software development kit for its new Android mobile phone operating system. The Android SDK is now available to download for free, with Google encouraging the use of third party applications (in contrast to Apple's recently launched iPhone). Google is even giving developers the chance to win a share of $10 million prize money if they create an application deemed to be among the fifty best entries. Google said the following on its Android site:

Cool apps that surprise and delight mobile users, built by developers like you, will be a huge part of the Android vision. To support you in your efforts, Google has launched the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million in awards -- no strings attached -- for great mobile apps built on the Android platform.

The prize money is actually divided into initial bundles of $25,000 for the fifty most promising entries between submitted January 2nd and March 3rd next year, which is intended to aid further development, with an extra ten $275,000 awards and ten $100,000 awards being offered for the best of those.

After rumours of a Google phone emerging over the last few weeks, Google has revealed its new phone operating system today, which will be known as Android. The OS should become available in the second half of 2008 and is expected to compete with the likes of Symbian OS and Microsoft's Windows Mobile. Google has also promised to offer strong support for third party applications (a Software Development Kit to will be available from 12th November) by allowing equal access to all the same capabilities as Google's own applications, including user contacts, calendar and geographic locations. As well as this, Google has also formed an alliance of 34 companies, known as the Open Handset Alliance, which has helped to develop the OS and will continue to aid its growth and release. Among others, the alliance consists of powerful brands such as T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm and Motorola. Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, said the following:

Today's announcement is more ambitious than any single 'Google Phone' that the press has been speculating about over the past few weeks. Our vision is that the powerful platform we're unveiling will power thousands of different phone models.

Western Union, one of the easiest ways to send money from one place to another, will soon find a new office: your mobile phone. Western Union recently announced that they are working with roughly 35 cell phone operators around the world to bring Western Union services to phones. Western Union has already tested this across America, and hopes to bring it to the public in Q2 2008. To make sure that there are no Nigerians trying to get you to cash fake checks, Western Union made it so that no transaction can happen without connecting the user "to a company operator to complete the transaction".

For some time, scientists have been debating whether or not airbags harm people more than help them in an automobile accident. Sony, blatantly ignoring the claims of the anti-airbag scientists, has decided to reinvent the airbag, and use it as a way to protect cell phones.

According to Sony's patent application, the water-tight casing would surround the internal electronics of a mobile phone and then be placed within a second liquid-filled container, which would be perforated with holes.

Apparently, the purpose of these liquid airbags would be do hold your cell phone in place, and protect it in the even of a fall/spill. While the research is physically sound, whether or not people will want this awkward (and possibly large) cell phone case remains doubtful.

While we do focus on our computers a lot, most of us have something to remind us how much we love our technology while on the road: a cell phone. And this cell phone is turning into quite the issue. Driving distractions aside, cell phones do add one very negative effect to society: a huge pile of toxic waste. When people upgrade to the latest phone, they frequently throw away their old one. And these old cell phones contain such nasty chemicals as copper, nickel, antimony, and zinc. As time moves on, and phones decompose, the phone turns into a pile of toxic, hazardous mush. And when 700 million tiny piles of toxic mush make their way to the landfill, at an increasing rate of 130 million phones a year, we get several thousand pounds of toxic mush lying around in landfills everywhere. We really ought to find a better way to dispose of cell phones.

The Inquirer has gossip about Intel's future plans concerning mobile phones and portable devices. Paul Otellini, Intel's CEO, would like to swap out current mobile phone CPUs for chips made by Marvell. This should allow them to run their operating systems faster, thereby enabling manufacturers to compete with Apple's upcoming iPhone. Apple has said that its phone will be running a special version of the OS X operating system that powers Mac systems. It may be powered by Marvell Xscale processors.

Game Developers Conference 2007, San Francisco, California - March 5, 2007 - Futuremark Corporation, the world's leading developer of system performance analysis software and services for cell phones, handhelds and PCs, today announced the release of world's first benchmark for devices with Khronos OpenGL ES 2.0 programmable mobile graphics API. 3DMarkMobile ES 2.0 has been developed in co-operation with members of Futuremark's Handheld Benchmark Development Program (BDP), an organization comprised of the industry's most influential technology developers, semiconductor companies, device manufacturers and vendors.

At 3DMarkMobile ES 2.0's core are next generation gaming workloads that are defined and programmed by Futuremark in conjunction with the BDP member companies. Licensees will be able to objectively assess real-world gaming performance by executing the workloads on their platforms and products. 3DMarkMobile ES 2.0 strengthens Futuremark's highly regarded international reputation in both the handheld and PC industries for producing accurate, fair, and unbiased benchmark tests.

"We're building upon the success of 3DMarkMobile ES 1.1 with this release, harnessing that expertise, and rolling out the world's premier 3D performance benchmark for the OpenGL ES 2.0 API" said Petri Talala, Vice President of Futuremark's Mobile Business Unit. "Every top mobile device vendor is currently implementing ES 2.0 in their next generation product lines, proving the immediate need for 3DMarkMobile ES 2.0. The benchmark was highly anticipated and already today it is providing meaningful performance data for our BDP members working on next generation mobile device 3D hardware."

3GSM WORLD CONGRESS-BARCELONA, SPAIN-FEBRUARY 12, 2007-In order to meet the growing multimedia demands of today's mobile phone user, NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, today unveiled its new strategy to target the rapidly growing applications processor market . The NVIDIA GoForce 6100, the company's first in a family of applications processors, is a highly integrated and optimized multimedia solution that consumes less than half the power of any applications processor available on the market today.