If you get stuck while using a new device, you have a few options. You can ask a tech-savvy friend or family member who might be able to help; you can Google it and might find a how-to article or video; or you could visit a forum like Reddit, where you might find users with similar issues to yours.

For Apple users, there’s also been the Apple Community website.

For nearly 30 years, that peer-to-peer site, originally called Apple Tech Exchange but renamed Apple Support Community most recently, has been a place for users to post questions for other Apple users to answer.

Why is Apple Support Communities closing?

However, as reported by MacRumors, the Apple Support Community will close in a week's time.

A post at the top of the forum’s website says: “The Apple Support Community will permanently close on 20 November, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.

“You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.

"We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.”

You might wonder why, and that's fair. Apple told MacRumors that the site closure was decided “after a careful evaluation of strategy and customer needs”.

Forums require a lot of moderation, and with alternatives like Apple Geniuses in Apple Stores and the Apple Support website, it’s perhaps not all that surprising.

Still, the Apple Support Community has been a great source of help and advice over its many years, so it’s a sad day for anyone who has used it and found it helpful.

Google has just pushed out its latest Pixel Drop, with a surprising update for Pixel 10 owners especially – although there are also updates right back to the Pixel 6.

The headline news for Pixel 10 users is that this update brings Gemini Intelligence. This raises the baseline for supported Gemini elements, with features such as Rambler, personalised suggestions, and agentic handling of multi-step tasks.

The feature was first launched on the Pixel 11, but now comes to Pixel 10, while it's also on Samsung's latest folding phones and the forthcoming Motorola Signature 27.

As detailed in the official Google blog post, the Create My Widget feature will let you describe what you want a widget to do and drop it on your home page.

Rambler is designed to clean up your dictated messages, taking into account pauses, changes you make, and removing any ums and errs.

For multi-step tasks, Gemini can now handle those, such as making a reservation or ordering a delivery. The update expands the feature to the UK, Japan and India, too.

There are also summaries, so that long conversations can be quickly glanced at without having to re-read the whole thing.

Additional Pixel Drop features for Pixel 11 and other devices

For those with a Pixel 11, Call Screen now gets more conversational and less robotic, so when a call comes in that you prefer to screen, the experience will be better for the caller. You get a full live transcript on the screen so you can decide whether to take the call or not.

Messaging also gets a lift for those with the Pixel 11 Pro, where the HiLight will glow if a message comes in from one of your favourite contacts. It's nice to see HiLight actually doing something, although these still feel like baby steps.

Finally, all Pixel owners back to Pixel 6 benefit from an expansion of Google Search that becomes more universal, searching across your phone to surface photos, messages, calendar events and settings.

Regular Pixel Drops provide Google with a way to update devices with new features outside of bigger Android version changes. That means that Pixel devices often feel fresh, because there are regular tweaks, rather than a single, annual update.

I've more often than not been pleasantly surprised by the games arriving on PS Plus each month, for members to enjoy at no extra cost, but the November selection is head and shoulders above most.

Starting on 17 November 2026, PlayStation will add a highly-revered collection of titles, including one that I've previously described as the game "my PS5 Pro deserves".

Even though it was released a year ago, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is arguably still the best showcase for Sony's Pro console. It's a truly stunning work of art.

As well as its looks, the gameplay has been refined since the original, offering a more complex and immersive experience than before. Combat has been greatly improved too, while the whole shebang is more strategical and involving.

It's perhaps been forgotten a bit in the wake of other AAA games, but thanks to PS Plus it'll soon get another chance to impress.

Another big release that will be added to the game catalogue soon – on 24 November in the UK, US and Japan – is Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. The Yakuza RPG spin-off is completely over-the-top and surprising addition to the franchise, but no less fun than the other Like a Dragon games.

This time you play as the eye patch-wearing series-regular Goro Majima, who finds himself stranded on a beach in Hawaii and suffering with amnesia. That leads him to becoming a pirate, of course.

PS4 owners can also enjoy the game when it arrives on PS Plus.

Then there's Atomfall from British studio Rebellion. It's a first-person action-adventure that's something like a cross between Fallout and the movie A Clockwork Orange. There are tones of Doctor Who in its very British style and plot, too.

This all makes for great, reasonably short fun. And PS Plus Extra and Premium members can find out why on 17 November.

Also coming to the game catalogue this month are the excellent Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, Trepang2, MotoGP 26, Hell Let Loose (which is available now), and Cricket 26 – The Official Game of the Ashes.

It's an incredible lineup of top quality games, with something for everyone.

PS Plus Premium members also get Soul Reaver 2 and Freedom Wars Remastered as part of the classic catalogue.

Some of the above games will arrive on 17 November, some on 24 November for those in the UK, US and Japan. None will cost you any more than your usual subscription.

How much is PS Plus Extra and Premium?

PS Plus Extra is priced at £11.99 / $16.99 per month and gives you access to the main games catalogue, as well as online multiplayer gaming, exclusive discounts and a handful of additional free games each month.

PS Plus Premium includes the above but adds an additional classic catalogue of retro games and remasters. You also get access to cloud gaming, which works on the PlayStation Portal handheld as well as PS5 consoles. It's priced at £14.99 / $19.99 per month.

Some regions have a similar plan to Premium – PS Plus Deluxe – but without the cloud gaming. That includes Australia, where it's priced at AU$26.95 per month.

Rockstar has revealed the enhancements PS5 Pro owners can expect when playing Grand Theft Auto VI in little over a week – but the bad news is that it won't include our most hoped for improvement.

Not only does the game have some general PS5 exclusive features, such as haptic feedback when playing on a DualSense controller, it'll look better on the PlayStation 5 Pro.

That's thanks to the inclusion of ray-traced shadows on the Pro model only. Neither PS5 nor Xbox Series X/S will support ray-tracing in the game.

Another step-up feature is PSSR – PlayStation's upscaling technology that helps visuals look higher-resolution than they are.

"The PlayStation 5 Pro offers breathtaking visuals, with improved clarity through PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) and ray-traced shadows only available on PlayStation 5 Pro," said Rockstar in its latest blog post.

However, while many games also use PSSR to benefit frame rates, that isn't the case with GTA 6. Rockstar has opted to stick to 30fps for all versions of the game.

"Grand Theft Auto VI has been fully developed from the ground up to provide the best possible experience for the current generation of consoles, targeting 30 frames per second while pushing both platforms to their absolute limits to bring the vast and rich world of Leonida to life," it added.

Some will be disappointed by that news (as are we), but from the trailers we've seen so far, it's likely the frame rate will be largely forgotten when we finally get our hands on the game.

It's also been announced that PS5 and PS5 Pro owners will also get an additional feature – the speaker in the DualSense controller will be used for extra immersion. And Rockstar claims that load times will be faster on PlayStation consoles.

Xbox owners can take solace though in the fact that GTA 6 will be available through Xbox Cloud Gaming from day one, so they'll be able to play the game remotely on multiple devices if they choose.

At the beginning of this year, Cambridge Audio revealed a bold new product line in its standalone L/R speakers range. Available in a trio of sizes – X, M and S – all with built-in amplification, thus no need for extras, delivering great stereo imaging capabilities.

While I've tried out the largest L/R X in the range around a year ago, it's the smallest L/R S that we've reviewed on T3.com – gaining a full 5-star award, given the quality of those little speakers.

Now, however, Cambridge has just revealed a 'magic' feature upgrade for its StreamMagic platform, called RoomMagic, which is the brand's proprietary room correction feature – and it's available right now.

This over-the-air (OTA) update is free of charge and will benefit the L/R X and mid-size L/R M speakers only at this stage. Cambridge keenly points out that there's "no subscription, trial period or separate app" for this new benefit.

RoomMagic simply uses your phone's or tablet's built-in microphone via the StreamMagic app as part of the calibration process, no further hardware required, and guides you through room correction in a matter of minutes.

It's designed to correct for "bass and low-frequency room effects, while preserving the character of the speaker," ensuring that wherever you park your L/R X or M speakers in a room, they'll sound optimal.

Not that they sound anything short of stunning already, but this RoomMagic feature will elevate that sound profile yet further. It's a common feature on many brands, including Bose and Sonos, so it's great to see Cambridge supporting a much-requested feature.

There's more personalisation here, however, as the RoomMagic solution delivers three target curves, offering a choice over the correction type to suit preference. A slider in the app allows for intensity adjustment, so you can tweak the sound beyond what's delivered by default.

If you've been considering buying such a speaker pair for some time – and the biggest new hi-fi trend of 2026 is powered wireless speakers – then check out the latest Cambridge Audio L/R pricing below. Each is a worthwhile investment to really amp up your home audio – and now the M and X will sound better than ever, too.

If you've been on the hunt for the best OLED TV, then T3's ultimate pick of 2026, the Sony Bravia 8 II, has just been further cut in price as part of the Black Friday sales.

I know, right, Black Friday isn't until the end of the month – but retailers have pushed early on their sales this year, including Richer Sounds, which is offering a further £100 discount over even Amazon's price.

Check out the 55in Bravia 8 II deal at Richer Sounds

This is one luxury OLED set – well, it's QD-OLED technically – and a premier purchase if you want the utmost quality from your shows and movies. It's simply brighter, yet more colour-balanced and natural-looking than its key competitors.

So why consider buying the Sony Bravia 8 II? It's just the all-in-one package for picture aficionados, offering stunning high dynamic range (HDR) performance and bright image quality.

But that's not all. Per our Bravia 8 II review, published in late 2025, it also offers "excellent sound quality" – which is a rarity straight out of the box. But the Sony seems to do it all, from image to audio!

That's why it won the T3 Awards gong for TV of the Year back in July of this year.

It's come from good stock, of course, as the previous A95L model was also an absolute stormer of a set. The Bravia is even better, but only available in two sizes – the 55-inch one, as recommended here, or a larger 65-inch panel.

If you would prefer the larger panel then that, too, also has an additional £100 discount available from Richer Sounds. Again, enter the code BLACK100 at the checkout for this to take effect, netting you the lowest price of the moment.

No, this Bravia isn't a budget set by any means, but it is a high-end model that's worth paying the extra for if you admire your movies. And at this Amazon-busting Black Friday price, it's never been a better time to buy.

The only downside, from where I'm sitting, is that the wide-set legs require a physically larger AV stand to accommodate it. So don't let that catch you out – do some measuring before committing to buy!

Apple has had a busy couple of months. Not only did it announce its first folding phone, the iPhone Duo, but it also revealed its first smart display, the HomeView, its first iPad mini with an OLED display. There was also its first touchscreen Mac, of course.

Safe to say, then, that the new CEO, John Ternus, has done everything he can to hit the ground running since taking over the reins from Tim Cook at the beginning of September.

There’s plenty to say about the iPhone Duo and HomeView, but the touch-enabled MacBook has its own stories to tell too. It had been rumoured for years, despite Steve Jobs famously saying that touch on a Mac would be “ergonomically terrible”, yet it isn’t just the ability to touch the screen with your finger that has captured attention.

How to turn off touch on the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display

Apple also reintroduced the illuminated logo on the lid in this model and added an OLED display for the first time. Yes, yes, another first.

If you aren’t a fan of the light-up logo, which was last seen on a MacBook Pro in 2016, there is a way to switch it off, though you will have to do it using a Terminal command, so it’s a little trickier than a quick toggle.

And if you aren’t a fan of touch, we’ve got good news for you, too – there are MacBook Pro models available that don’t have the PROLED XDR Display’s touch capabilities (and you’ll save money buying them).

However, if you want the new design without the notch, the punchy and vibrant OLED screen, and you still don’t want to be able to touch the screen, there’s still good news. You can turn touch off, and it’s easier than running a Terminal command.

As spotted by 9to5Mac, to turn off touch on the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, or customise it, head to System Settings > Accessibility > Physical and Motor section > Touch. If you toggle on “Ignore Touch Gestures”, the touch capabilities will turn off and ignore all touches unless you turn it back on.

Seems a waste, but there you go.

The camera specs for the forthcoming Galaxy S27 family of phones have leaked, revealing that the changes to the hardware will be minimal.

That might come as a disappointment for those expecting something new from Samsung, with the Galaxy S27 and Galaxy S27 Plus set to use the same sensors as previous Galaxy S26 devices.

We'd already heard that the Galaxy S27 Ultra would be dropping a lens, losing the 3x telephoto and just offering a single 5x telephoto instead. This is where it will differ from the Galaxy S27 Pro, which will have that 3x telephoto, a slight step-down in range.

That telephoto lens in the Galaxy S27 Pro is based on the same sensor that's being dumped from the Galaxy S27 Ultra this time around, reported to be the 10-megapixel Samsung S5K3LD, according to SammyGuru. A cynic might say that the Pro is using the Ultra's spare parts.

Elsewhere, both the Ultra and the Pro will use the same 200-megapixel main camera, based on a Samsung ISOCELL HP6 sensor. This is the new hardware across all these cameras, so the positive is that the main camera – the one that people use most – is getting a boost.

Otherwise the Ultra and the Pro will share the same ultrawide and selfie camera hardware.

Positioning these new devices, from the camera perspective, leans heavily on the new sensor for the main camera that's going into the Ultra and the Pro. We already know that the Ultra is a great device, with the weakness being the 10-megapixel 3x optical zoom.

It's strange that Samsung is introducing a new device with that very same camera. While the Pro will benefit from a new main camera experience, the telephoto experience might not hit the pro levels that some expect.

We're expecting the Ultra and the Pro to have a fresh new design, while the power might come from either the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, or the Exynos 2700 – although the latter might just be reserved for the S27 and S27 Plus.

Otherwise we're expecting the Galaxy S27 Pro to get Privacy Display, with most of Samsung messaging for the new devices going into the new AI features that they offer.

The phones are expected to launch at a Galaxy Unpacked event in February 2027.

Motorola has been teasing a new wider foldable design, looking to take the Razr family of folding phones in a slightly different direction.

Having shared sketches of a more compact book-type folding phone, Motorola has now revealed a lot more, including confirming the Razr Flex name.

Leaked via a support page (via 9to5Google), we also learn that this is planned for a 2027 launch. There’s no specific date, but seeing as the Razr Fold was unveiled at CES in January, it’s fair to guess that the Razr Flex might be revealed at CES 2027 in just a couple of months time.

Other details about the device have been comprehensively leaked, suggesting it could come with a 4.97-inch cover screen and a 6.92-inch internal display.

That would make this a phone that’s more compact than existing models like the iPhone Duo or the Galaxy Z Fold 8. That could give the Moto Razr Flex a couple of advantages.

Being more compact would make it more pocketable, while it might also help bring the price down. It would be fair to expect Motorola to compete with Samsung on price and undercut Apple by a considerable margin.

Previous leaks have suggested that the Razr Flex could have a 4:3 internal display, so it’s not quite the wide version you might expect – instead it’s more of a compact foldable.

It’s also said to be powered by the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, with 12GB RAM, which could again help to keep the price down, while it’s expected to have two cameras on the rear, both with 50-megapixel sensors.

Motorola seems to be approaching its phones with a little more ambition than previously. The new Motorola Signature 27 flagship pushes the brand into territory it has not been in for some time – and that might be to the Razr Flex’s benefit.

One of the things I found in the Signature 27 was software that was lighter on the bloat, with less intrusive AI than previous Moto AI devices. If the Razr Flex takes the same approach, it could be a really competitive device.

LG has spilled the beans on some of its incoming TVs, as part of the brand's 2027 range, revealed early due to the CES 2027 Innovation Awards being announced.

CES 2027 is a show, taking place in Las Vegas this coming January, but with just shy of two months to go until kick off, it's already ramping up industry interest in what'll be on show.

Key to LG's 2027 TV releases are two high-end models, covering 'design' and 'transparent' areas of its OLED range:

• LG Signature OLED T6 – the brand's transparent OLED for 2027
• LG OLED evo AI W7 – the brand's super-thin 'Wallpaper TV' for 2027

At this stage there's no confirmation of more models, but if history is anything to go by, then the usual OLED models will also get a refresh. But let's assume the following:

• LG OLED evo AI G7 – the brand's top-tier multi-layered panel OLED
• LG OLED evo AI C7 – the brand's mid-tier OLED model
• LG OLED evo AI B7 – the brand's budget OLED release

Of the two confirmed panels, it's interesting to see the 'T' model features a numerical digit as part of its product name for the first time. The previous model was called simply 'OLED T' – so the 'OLED T6' being a 2027 release is somewhat, er, misaligned?

That's because the OLED W7, which updates the previous W6 Wallpaper TV, is clearly better aligned with the 2027 release date.

Nonetheless, the OLED T6 earned the CTA's CES Best of Innovation Award, which is the fifth consecutive year that the brand has won such an award. The picture up top is of the 2023 original transparent prototype, for context.

Given its specialist nature, the OLED T6 will only launch in 77-inch size. Its 4K panel is fed wirelessly, using LG's Zero Connect box to deliver images without latency (thanks to its 60GHz technology).

The transparent display can, at the touch of a button, enjoy its mechanically positioned contrast screen, turning the T6 into a 'normal' TV. It's all about improving the viewing experience, depending on the scenario.

The LG OLED W7, meanwhile, received the CTA's CES Innovation Award in the Video Displays category. The TV's ultra-slim nature gives it a point of distinction, marking it out from its (assumed) OLED G7 equivalent in terms of design.

Beyond just TVs, LG is also blowing its trumpet about winning awards for the UltraGear 25G590B monitor, Signature 30-inch Combination Wall Oven, 25-inch Closet Fit WashTower, and Hair Dryer products. Goes to show LG's wide range in home electronics.

The T3 team will be on the ground at CES 2027, exploring what's new in depth, and getting the latest on LG's TV range at the show. So stay tuned in January next year for more...

We've been celebrating the 30th anniversary of T3 over the last week or so, with the magazine having first hit the newsstands in November 1996. That's included a collection of features looking back at the last 30 years of tech – plucked from the brains of T3 staff past and present.

However, what about your own tech knowledge – how's your recollection of the last three decades of gadgets, games and gizmos? Well, you can put it to the test with our super-sized T3 at 30 quiz.

We've put together 30 tricky tech questions to complete in 30 minutes to find out whether you are a gadget guru or not. It's all for fun though and might give you some fond memories of devices you've owned in the past.

So give it a go and let us know how you got on in the comments underneath...

T3 magazine might be celebrating its 30th anniversary but that doesn't mean it all ends there. Both the mag and T3.com will be helping guide you through the next 30 years of tech innovations, devices and events too.

Why not subscribe to T3 magazine and let us provide you with the latest on all the stunning products each month. And come back to the site often to keep up with all the wonderful world of tech has to offer.

We're just about coming to the point where most game publishers write off November – with GTA 6 now just over a week away, the amount of oxygen it's going to suck up in terms of people's interest is hard to overestimate. Still, some bold ones have nonetheless thrown their games out this month.

Nintendo probably knew it would find its audience with the glossy Ocarina of Time remake, but I'm more impressed by the bravery of Auroch Digital, which today releases Warhammer Survivors, a little game that has managed to capture way more of my attention than I expected.

It's an official, branded spin-off from Vampire Survivors, which became such a runaway hit back in 2022, scoring itself some massive sales figures and, most impressively, a BAFTA for Best Game. Now wrapped in the Warhammer franchise, this new game was something I thought I'd download as a curio to see how it felt.

Well, five hours later I've fallen pretty hard for it, and it's been a great reminder of how smaller games can really capture your imagination when they're tuned the right way. Crucially, this is both a hugely affordable little game, and one that you can play on almost any platform.

It's out today with an introductory 10% discount that makes it just £5.75 / $7.19 / €6.74 regionally, making it less than a tenth of the price of GTA 6, and it also arrives on Switch 1 and 2, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and mobile (on both iOS and Android). There aren't many games that can boast the same list of platforms all at launch, and if you're on Xbox, it actually launches on Game Pass.

When you boot the game up, you immediately get to choose between either the original Age of Sigmar part of the Warhammer timeline (meaning swords and sorcery) or the grimdark future of the 40,000 timeline (meaning sci-fi and bolter guns). Getting both is already a really nice touch, and between the two, there's a huge amount of content to unlock.

You'll start with a limited pool of characters and weapons, but before long you'll have multiple to choose from and a wide array of builds to go for – each empowering you as you navigate through insane waves of pixel-art enemies. There are strong bullet hell elements going on here, and the screen can get insanely hectic, but after five hours I've never really finished a run without unlocking something or at least learning a valuable lesson.

Plus, Warhammer Survivors absolutely has that "one more run" compulsion that made Vampire Survivors so enjoyable. I've been playing it primarily on my Switch 2, and being able to do so for quick bursts in bed or on a train has been joyous. I've also put a couple of hours in on my iPhone, though, and found both pretty much equally enjoyable.

This has been the definition of a great palate cleanser, and I really do recommend it if you're on the hunt for something to play before GTA 6 comes out. Frankly, for the right gamer, it might even be a better fit than Rockstar's gargantuan game.

It's Black Friday season and several retailers have gone early with their own big deals. However, many like to wait for the Amazon sales to start before starting to compare prices and the good news is we finally have a date for you.

Amazon's Black Friday Week kicks off on Thursday 19 November 2026 and actually runs for more than a week. It encompasses Cyber Monday so runs through to the end of play on Monday 30 November.

We can't complain though, that just means there'll be even more time to snag huge discounts on tech, smart home, toys and a whole lot more.

And where the Black Friday Week will differ from Amazon's usual sales periods, you won't even need to be a Prime member to get the vast majority of the deals. Of course, you'll get next-day and even same-day deliveries on thousands of items if you are, and some discounts will be exclusive to those with Prime – but there'll be something for everyone regardless.

Amazon has also revealed some of the deals you can expect during the coming event. It's going a little earlier on its own devices deals, with Amazon Fire TV Sticks, Ember smart TVs, Kindle, Ring and Blink products hitting their lowest prices from 16 November.

There'll also be swathes of discounts from big-name brands, like Oral-B, Philips, Samsung, Ninja, Shark, Sony and Lego. We'll make sure we bring you all our personal picks here on T3 too.

It's also worth noting that you can get some great offers on Amazon's services this month, as well. That includes three months of free Amazon Music Unlimited – which is available to customers who haven't tried the music streaming rival to Spotify yet.

And there will be thousands of Kindle books available from just 99p in the UK. While Amazon US visitors will be able to get up to 75% off thousands of movies on Prime Video, either to buy or rent.

It should all make for the best time to save yourself a bob or two in the build up to the holidays. And we'll be there with you all the way.

HOVERAir's most ambitious camera yet is finally available, and it's yet another example of the company's approach to filling gaps in the market we didn't know existed.

The HOVERAir VERSA is a handheld 4K gimbal camera, like the DJI Osmo Pocket 4, that transforms into an autonomous drone by attaching a pair of wings.

It's an intriguing proposition, especially for content creators who already travel with multiple cameras, but why did HOVERAir decide to combine these two categories in the first place?

I spoke to MQ Wang, co-founder and CEO of HOVERAir, about the thinking behind VERSA, the compromises involved in its development, and why he believes modular cameras could be the future of content creation.

Why carry two cameras?

According to Wang, the idea for VERSA came directly from feedback from existing HOVERAir users, many of whom were already combining the company's flying cameras with traditional handheld devices.

"People loved getting a third-person aerial shot without a drone pilot or a crew," he explained. "But the self-flying cameras were only part of their kit."

Users would launch their HOVERAir devices to capture dramatic aerial footage before returning to their phones or gimbal cameras for everything else.

"The question quickly became: why should those be separate tools?"

VERSA attempts to answer that question with a compact camera weighing just 163g in handheld mode, increasing to 230g when its detachable flight system is installed.

It features a three-axis mechanical gimbal, a 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor, 4K recording at up to 60fps and 10-bit H-Log recording.

HOVERAir also claims up to 17.5 stops of dynamic range, although Wang clarified that this figure was measured internally at a signal-to-noise ratio of one, meaning actual performance will vary depending on the shooting conditions.

Wang acknowledges that the modular design required compromises, particularly when it came to weight. VERSA is noticeably heavier than HOVERAir's existing X1 models, although its removable battery promises up to three hours (!) of handheld recording.

The camera that thinks for you

Beyond the hardware, HOVERAir is betting heavily on computational photography and intelligent framing.

VERSA features AI-assisted composition in handheld mode and automatic framing in flight, powered by a custom processor capable of up to 50 TFLOPS of computing power.

The flying camera also offers more than ten automated flight modes, subject tracking, and gesture controls, letting you adjust framing without physically operating the device.

One particularly interesting addition is 3D Worlds, which allows VERSA to fly around a subject and reconstruct the captured scene as a three-dimensional environment.

However, an important distinction separates autonomous filming from truly autonomous navigation.

"VERSA doesn't feature any active obstacle avoidance, so it is important that users stay aware of their surroundings," Wang admitted.

Its automated flight modes follow predefined movements or track subjects rather than independently navigating around obstacles, something potential buyers should consider when filming around trees, buildings or other hazards.

One camera for everything?

Wang doesn't necessarily believe modular cameras will replace every specialised device, but he sees a future where different camera categories become increasingly interconnected.

"We believe the bigger opportunity is removing the trade-offs consumers have traditionally had to make between portability, image quality, and creative freedom," he explained.

It's an interesting argument at a time when dedicated action cameras, pocket gimbals and autonomous drones are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Whether the VERSA can bridge the gap between handheld and aerial filming without sacrificing performance remains to be seen. It’s certainly a novel concept that fits nicely with HOVERAir’s approach to gadgetry.

And as Wang puts it, "We see handheld and autonomous flying cameras becoming increasingly interconnected categories."

The HOVERAir VERSA is available from 10 November 2026 at HOVERAir, Amazon and selected retailers.

The FlySmart Combo starts at £599, with black and white colour options and additional accessories available.

In 1996, Apple was a very different company from what it is today. It had recently appointed a new CEO, Gil Amelio, but it was struggling with a falling stock price and had to cut costs significantly.

Its Newton PDA, though initially considered innovative, was being beaten by the newer Palm Pilot, and the biggest hope was the acquisition of a company called NeXT, owned by Steve Jobs. Jobs returned to the role of CEO in 1997 and set the trajectory of Apple to the trillion-dollar company it is today.

Along that journey were some pivotal product launches, from the original iMac to the launch of the iPhone, iPad, iTunes and ultimately the iPhone Duo. This is a look back at those products that changed the landscape – and a few that didn’t.

1996: Apple Pippin

In another world, we could all be looking forward to playing GTA VI on our Apple Pippin devices, but that wasn’t to be. The Pippin platform was developed by Apple, but the first device was made by Bandai. The idea was that various manufacturers could create Pippin consoles, which were designed not just to play games but also to act as a set-top box.

Ultimately, it struggled to match up to the likes of the Sega Saturn and the new PlayStation at the time and was then completely killed by Steve Jobs on his return to Apple, when he stopped all licenced Apple products.

1997: Newton eMate 300

Where the Newton can be seen as an early incarnation of the iPad, the eMate is clearly a precursor to the MacBook. Designed by a young Jony Ive, it combined a larger 6.8-inch Newton display with a built-in keyboard in a clamshell design that bears a striking resemblance to the first iBook, which launched in 1999.

1998: iMac G3

Possibly the most iconic computer that Apple has ever made, the iMac G3 was an all-in-one machine, combining a CRT display, speakers and a CD-ROM drive within the computer. The first version featured a PowerPC G3 processor with a 4 GB hard drive, 32MB RAM and ran Mac OS 8.1.

1999: iBook G3

Following the success of the iMac, the iBook followed a similar design language, thanks to Ive. The clamshell design initially came in Blueberry or Tangerine colours, but later added Indigo, Graphite and Key Lime variations. This was also the first consumer machine to offer WiFi connectivity.

2000: Power Mac G4 Cube

Arguably Apple’s golden age of design, the G4 Cube was like a deconstructed iMac. The main computer was housed in an elaborate 8-inch crystal-clear polycarbonate acrylic enclosure. The housing lifted the main machine off the desk to give the impression of it floating.

It paired with Apple’s new Cinema display, which had a similar design and circular Apple speakers. It was the computer for a new millennium, but unfortunately, due to its high price and lack of expandability, it never quite took off. It’s still gorgeous, though.

2001: iPod 1st Gen

If ever there was a device that changed the world, it was the iPod. Pitched as 1,000 songs in your pocket, this was more than Apple’s answer to the MP3 player. It changed the music industry and, with the help of the new iTunes service, selling songs for 99p/99c each, rewrote the rulebook.

2002: iMac G4

Another incredible piece of design by Jony Ive’s team, the iMac G4 was nicknamed iLamp for its resemblance to Pixar’s Anglepoise lamp. Initially, it came with a 15-inch display, but larger 17-inch and 20-inch displays were added later.

There was a brief hope that the design would be resurrected for Apple’s HomeView device, as it looks a bit like an iPad screen on top of a HomePod, particularly with the smaller screen.

2003: Power Mac G5

A solid piece of industrial design, the G5 packed a lot of power for its time. It originally offered up to a 2GHz dual-core processor, a 160 GB hard drive and memory expandable to 8GB (later models went to 16GB).

This was the last Mac before Apple moved to Intel chips and was ultimately replaced by the Mac Pro. Back as a graphic design student, this was the machine you dreamed of.

2004: iMac G5

This third major reincarnation of the iMac brings us close to the format that is still largely the same as it is today. The computer part is built into a flat-screen display, providing perhaps the cleanest desk experience to date, especially with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Two years later, it too upgraded to Intel chips, but this model still ran on the PowerPC G5 chips.

2005: Mac mini

The Mac mini was marketed as a truly affordable computer with the aim of tempting Windows users over to a Mac. It was sold as just the box itself with the slogan BYODKM (Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard and Mouse).

The second edition in 2006 switched to the new Intel chips and added an HDMI port, allowing you to plug it into your TV. Ahead of the Apple TV, it provided an easy way to watch movies and play music.

2005: iPod shuffle

The iPod Shuffle showed just how small a music player could be. It was Apple’s first flash memory-based player and the first without a screen. It would connect to your iTunes library and download a selection of songs for you. Alternatively, you could create a playlist to update from or pick manually.

The second edition, which came a year later, featured a clip so you could attach it to your clothing. It was the perfect music device for the gym or for anyone active, as it barely added any weight to a set of earphones.

2006: MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro was first released in February 2006 as a replacement for the PowerBook G4. It marked the beginning of the Intel chip generation and remains one of Apple’s biggest products.

It was followed later that year by the MacBook, which replaced the iBook as the more affordable option. The MacBook Pro has always been the choice of creatives, and the fact that the basic formula has hardly changed in 20 years just goes to show how good it is.

2007: Apple TV

The Apple TV (or originally iTV) was designed to allow users to watch content from iTunes on their TVs. People were already doing this with the Mac mini, so it made sense.

However, it soon became much more. As TVOS developed, the Apple TV and then the Apple TV 4K became a home hub, a gaming machine and a streaming box – perhaps closer to the original idea of a network computer.

2007: Apple Wireless Keyboard (2nd generation)

Though the first generation of wireless Apple keyboards came in 2003, it wasn’t until the second generation, three years later, that it developed into something closer to what we still use today. This was a low-profile keyboard like the keys on a laptop, with an aluminium enclosure and function keys for media control. The Magic Keyboard we know and love didn’t come until 2015, but this was its beginning.

2007: iPhone

Rumours of an Apple phone had been swirling for a while, but when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at Macworld in 2007, it was electrifying. “Today we’re launching three revolutionary products,” said Jobs.

A widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device. Not three separate devices, one device, called the iPhone. It wasn’t until the second generation, the iPhone 3G, that it really took off, but since then we’ve seen it grow and grow.

2008: MacBook Air

The world’s thinnest notebook was theatrically removed from a manila envelope by Steve Jobs at Macworld in 2008. The MacBook Air featured a 13.3-inch display, a full-size keyboard and yet was just 19mm thick.

It achieved this by not having an Ethernet port, FireWire, line-in, or optical drive built in – instead, users could buy an external drive or adapters if needed. While this is now the norm, it felt extreme at the time. Initially powered by Intel chips, it moved to Apple silicon in 2020 and remains an extremely popular model to this day.

2008: AirPort Time Capsule

AirPort was the name of Apple’s wireless connectivity and the first base stations in 1999. However, it was the introduction of the Time Capsule devices that was really clever.

These AirPort Time Capsules combined a router with a networked storage device, providing easy backup for your device or a shared storage space.

Later versions grew from an Apple TV size up to something akin to a modern mesh router node and offered 1TB capacity. However, as cloud storage improved, the demand for these spinning-drive devices faltered, and the whole line was discontinued in 2018.

2010: iPad

In some ways, the iPad is a natural progression from the Newton, which was discontinued more than 10 years earlier. Now, with the technology from the iPhone and modern Macs, a new product was born, with its own unique operating system. Though it initially shared more with the iPhone than it did with the Mac, the iPad offered a new way to browse websites, play games and watch movies. When I bought my first iPad, I wasn’t quite sure why I needed one, but I knew I wanted it.

2011: Siri

Siri wasn’t originally an Apple product. It was acquired and then integrated into iOS 5 to coincide with the launch of the iPhone 4S. The early incarnations offered strong voice recognition but failed to wow with its knowledge base or ability to understand broader accents.

It wasn’t until 2024, when Apple added a large language model to Siri, that it really caught up with its competitors. Today, Siri AI is much more responsive and able to provide genuinely helpful assistance through its deep integration in iOS 26 and contextual awareness.

2013: iPad Air

With the iPad Air, Apple thinned down the then-current iPad to just 7.5mm thick and reduced the weight by 28% to just one pound (454g). Despite this, it still featured a 9.7-inch Retina screen, thanks to thinner bezels. It introduced the next-generation FaceTime HD camera on the front and a 5MP iSight camera on the back. This was launched alongside the iPad mini.

2015: Apple Watch

The first big announcement by CEO Tim Cook, the Apple Watch was seen as a slight redirection. Rather than a tech product, the Apple Watch was seen as more of a fashion accessory and was initially sold in luxury department stores in addition to its own stores, reaching a new non-tech audience.

It came in a range of case materials, including two 18-karat gold versions and offered straps by Hermes. The Apple Watch also introduced a digital crown as a means of scrolling through its menus and a force-touch option to access menus and shortcuts. This was later replaced with haptic touch.

2015: iPad Pro

The iPad Pro saw a shift to the tablet being used as a true creative tool. Many were already using the second-generation iPad Air for creative purposes, but the iPad Pro offered a larger 12.9-inch display and a faster A9X chip inside.

Another coup for creatives was that alongside the iPad Pro came the first Apple Pencil, giving you the ability to sketch, edit, mark up or write on the display. It also introduced a new smart keyboard with full-size keys, turning the device into a mini MacBook.

The fifth generation of iPad Pros, which launched in 2021, finally saw it gain an M1 silicon chip, which changed the game once again.

2016: AirPods

Launched alongside the iPhone 7, the AirPods offered a wireless alternative to the white wired Apple earpods that had been a fashion statement around the launch of the iPod.

The iPhone 7 was also the first model not to include wired headphones in the box, to some people’s annoyance. However, the AirPods soon became a statement in their own right and remain Apple’s biggest-selling accessory.

2018: HomePod

Since the early days of Siri, Apple was rumoured to be working on a speaker to rival Amazon’s Echo speaker range, but it wasn’t until 2018 when one finally arrived.

The original HomePod was far more than a smart speaker; it was aimed at music lovers who may otherwise have considered Sonos devices. The cylindrical speaker featured seven tweeters and a 4-inch woofer inside to provide room-filling sound and plenty of bass. Six microphones were used not only for Siri voice commands but also to help tune the acoustic performance to its surroundings.

You could also pair two together to create a stereo arrangement and deliver sound from streaming services, including Apple Music, or connect wirelessly to an Apple TV device for bigger sound from your TV.

2021: AirTag

Apple’s Find My Phone service had been around since 2009, offering an easy way to locate a lost phone via the MobileMe subscription service, and then later for free on iCloud.

While this expanded to Macs and then other Apple devices under a more general ‘Find My’ name, it wasn't until the AirTag that Apple offered a way for you to track anything.

Though designed mainly for keys, bags and other luggage, people have used them for locating dogs, cars and even people – though updates soon mitigated unwanted tracking. AirTags don’t use GPS, they use anonymous Bluetooth signals from other iPhone or iPad devices to locate, so they work best in built-up areas.

2022: Apple Watch Ultra

With the popularity of rugged smartwatches growing, principally from Garmin, Apple’s answer was the Apple Watch Ultra. Based on the Apple Watch Series 8, it offered a bigger, brighter display, a 60-hour battery life and a strong titanium casing. It also featured a unique bright orange action button, a depth app for when you’re in the water, and a siren, should you need rescuing.

2024: Apple Vision Pro

Perhaps the most anticipated device since the iPhone, the Vision Pro took Apple into a brand new sector. Mixed reality glasses combine virtual reality (fully immersive) with augmented reality, offering the ability to overlay menus and screens into real-world environments, using high-resolution cameras to capture the world around you and a micro LED display equivalent to around 4K per eye to show it back to you.

Rather than being gaming-focused, the Vision Pro prioritised productivity, photos and movies. The high cost and bulky form made it a difficult sell, but a second-generation model is still expected to come and could be amazing.

2026: MacBook Neo

In an unexpected move, Apple released a budget laptop to tempt users away from PCs. The MacBook Neo’s aggressive price was the same as the iPad Air M4 and iPhone 17e at the time.

The Neo ran on the same A18 Pro chip that was used in the iPhone 16 Pro, and surprised everyone with how effective it still was at running the full version of Mac OS and just about any application you could throw at it.

2026: HomeView

One of Apple’s worst-kept secrets, the HomeView had been expected to launch for a couple of years – though it was thought to be called the HomePod.

This device bridges a gap into the world of smart home, providing a central hub for all of your devices, as well as FaceTime calls, videos, music, and Siri AI interaction.

It’s a welcome addition for those who already have an Apple ecosystem in their home, and also saw a series of Apple home accessories, developed with LG, that connect natively to Apple’s system.

2026: iPhone Duo

For nearly six years, iPhone users waited for Apple to launch a folding phone, watching Samsung and others improve their offerings. When the time was right, though – and principally the technology was there to avoid a visible crease – it came.

The iPhone Duo has only been on sale for a few weeks at this point, but initial reaction has been strong, and there’s still a long lead time to buy one. I’m sure the second version will iron out the kinks, such as the lack of Face ID and the low-res under-screen camera, but it feels like the future for the iPhone right now.

Apple first announced a redesigned, more contextually aware Siri at WWDC24 when it revealed Apple Intelligence, but we didn’t experience what that new Siri was like for a couple of years after.

It was worth the wait though as Siri AI finally delivered on its promise, and the result is a far cry from the old Apple assistant.

It could see even bigger improvements by next year, too, if the latest rumours are to be believed. In Mark Gurman’s latest Power On newsletter (via MacRumors) there is talk of Siri being made "more like an agent".

Agentic AI has already been a hot topic this year, with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit dedicating entire keynotes to delivering chipsets that can power on-device AI that knows what you need, perhaps even before you do.

What could be next for Siri AI?

According to Gurman: "Dots, Muse and Grok can keep track of goals, determine what needs to happen next and continue pursuing objectives without the user initiating every individual step.

"Apple ultimately wants to go in this direction, I'm told, and I believe the company could make Siri more like an agent as early as next year."

He didn’t detail what an agentic Siri could look like in practice, though Gurman noted that Apple’s CEO, John Ternus, recently told the company’s software engineering chief that the company will need to "move quickly beyond merely making necessary improvements to Siri".

I’ve been using Siri AI since the developer beta was released in June 2026, and I’ve so far been very impressed with it. It’s found everything from a marinade recipe I was sent in 2023 to a pasta bake recipe I was emailed in 2021, while helping with plenty of mundane tasks too.

I’m all for an agentic Siri that can predict things without me having to spoon-feed it, although it will need to be done right.

Last week, ahead of a personal trip to Austin, Texas, I received a pre-flight email from British Airways alerting me that the A350 scheduled for that route was fitted with Starlink.

Starlink is the satellite internet service, as provided by SpaceX, which has won contracts with many carriers to fit its antennas to fleets. British Airways first announced this almost one year ago, in November 2025.

However, it's taking time for such upgrades to be completed, as the BA fleet has only reached double-digit successful fittings to date – but as the rollout continues, Starlink will eventually feature on all its aircraft, not just those destined for long-haul routes.

I'm a frequent flyer and this is the first time I've encountered in-flight Starlink, which BA offers for free to all passengers for the duration of the flight, regardless of ticket type or cabin of travel.

That's a huge upgrade over the current non-Starlink in-flight internet situation, where free flight-duration Wi-Fi is available only to passengers in First class (where available), and pay-for for all other passengers in Club, Premium, and Economy.

To access, you must be a member of the British Airways Club, as that's where sign-in takes place for the Wi-Fi connection. But this is at no cost – and you can also earn Avios (BA's redemption currency) and Tier Points to rise up the frequent flyer ranks.

As you can see from the image embedded above, Starlink is fast – really fast. I was able to connect even before take-off, much to my surprise, and from the Tarmac at Heathrow T3 I was achieving download speeds of around 285Mbps.

That's on par with, or even faster than, the Wi-Fi I get in my home office – which is sourced from a gigabit BT Full Fibre connection. Sure, I can get faster results when nearer to my router, but to achieve such sustained speeds while in an aircraft fuselage is nothing short of impressive.

Once airborne, I re-tested and, consistently, Starlink was delivering sustained download speeds at over 200Mbps. Upload isn't quite so impressive, at 17Mbps in my testing, but perfectly good enough for real-time calls. I was achieving the same on the return flight, too.

That meant, at no cost, I was able to stream part of an episode of Paramount+'s latest Dexter season without issue, which I could never have imagined would be feasible even just a couple of years ago. Starlink really does change the game.

Part of me wishes there was no Wi-Fi on flights, as a rare opportunity to escape the connected world. The other side of me, however, knows how important connectivity has become for work – and that's where it will become a reason for someone to book with a specific carrier over another.

So I can see huge sense in the Starlink and British Airways agreement. It's free for all passengers – and its speeds surpass what else is available to such a huge degree that it's totally changed the idea of what in-flight Wi-Fi can mean.

Huawei has just launched a new pair of wireless earbuds that not only promise an astonishing 80 hours of battery life and high-resolution audio but also seriously undercut the Apple AirPods Pro 3 in price.

But as tempting as they might sound, I'd strongly advise against buying them today.

That's because the FreeBuds SE 5 MAX are already scheduled for a substantial price cut in just 10 days, just in time for Black Friday.

Anyone buying them at the £79.99 launch price will pay £30 more than those who wait until 19 November, when the earbuds will drop to £49.99 as part of a promotional offer.

Going the distance

Huawei claims the FreeBuds SE 5 MAX can deliver up to 80 hours of total playback with the charging case, although that figure assumes ANC is switched off.

The earbuds themselves last up to 10 hours on a single charge without noise cancellation, dropping to seven hours with ANC enabled, which is still respectable, especially for budget-friendly earbuds.

Fast charging is another welcome addition, with Huawei claiming that a 10-minute top-up provides up to four hours of additional listening time, provided ANC is disabled.

Interestingly, Huawei reckons the FreeBuds SE 5 MAX could last up to two weeks between charges in a typical daily-use scenario, including a mix of listening and calls.

More than meets the ear

The FreeBuds SE 5 MAX feature multi-mode ANC that can reduce noise by up to 52dB under specific laboratory conditions, with Ultra, General, and Cosy settings for different environments.

In Dynamic mode, the buds automatically adjust noise cancellation based on your surroundings, and Huawei says that the three-microphone system uses AI-powered noise reduction to help isolate your voice during calls.

On the audio front, Huawei has equipped each earbud with a 10mm dynamic driver and support for Sony's LDAC codec, which can transmit audio at bitrates of up to 990kbps on compatible devices.

You can also fine-tune the sound using four preset listening modes or a customisable 10-band equaliser.

Huawei has opted for a semi-transparent charging case, available in White, Blue and Black, while the earbuds themselves weigh approximately 4.3g each, making them the company's lightest in-ear ANC earbuds to date.

Other features include Bluetooth 6.0, dual-device connectivity across Android, iOS and Huawei devices, and IP55-rated dust and water resistance for the earbuds, although the charging case doesn't share that protection.

The Huawei FreeBuds SE 5 MAX are available now on Amazon UK for £79.99. The buds will drop to £49.99 from 19 November to 29 December.

Samsung could be planning to charge users a monthly or annual fee to use its Galaxy AI services, seeing the bell toll for free AI.

A new report claims that Samsung is working on an AI Premium subscription that could cost $4.99 a month, or $47.99 when paid annually.

According to SammyGuru, the company appears to be testing the plan with an early access programme, outlining that there's a free tier and then a premium tier that will be paid for. Those sticking to the free tier will have limitations on usage, while the paid tier will include four times the usage, as well as giving access to advanced features like generative video creation.

Samsung launched Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24 and it has remained free in subsequent devices. However, at launch, Samsung outlined that Galaxy AI would remain free until the end of 2025, so the move to a subscription should not surprise anybody.

How has Samsung Galaxy AI evolved over the years?

In recent years, Samsung's focus has been on pushing AI features, while marketing its Galaxy S phones as "AI phones". That's seen hardware changes take a back seat as new AI features are highlighted instead.

The focus has often been on Now Brief, summarisation, translation, and more recently Now Nudge, designed to keep the user informed and make daily tasks smoother. Samsung's AI strategy has also involved trying to reinvigorate Bixby, its much maligned voice assistant.

The downside of many of the brand's Galaxy AI offerings is that they rely on using the Samsung Keyboard, so anyone switching to a different keyboard app disables a lot of the inline AI services. On top of that, Now Brief hasn't really established itself as an essential feature, with many users on Reddit saying that they disable it.

Photo editing remains popular, although this is likely to remain free under the plans outlined.

Samsung faces another challenge from Google, with Gemini integrating many AI features (albeit with a charge for higher use), while Google Photos offers comparable photo editing features, as well as smart platform-level AI options like Circle to Search.

The introduction of a paid tier will allow Samsung to keep offering AI services, while those heavy users will find themselves facing a subscription charge. User data probably means that Samsung knows how many people are using Galaxy AI, the question is whether they would continue to do so if they're asked to pay.

Announced more than a year ago, Sony's PlayStation-friendly Pulse Elevate wireless speakers have taken a while to get here. But now fans will have to wait a bit longer still – the company has identified a "production issue with the product" and has delayed them further.

Originally set for release this week – on Thursday 12 November – the speakers have now been delayed indefinitely. It seems that at least of the units that have been manufactured so far failed to "deliver the experience we intended for our players".

The announcement was made on the PlayStation Blog, with an apology and hope that the issue will be resolved "soon".

I can only imagine what the problem might have been – whether it was an audio issue affecting performance or something involving the wireless technology.

Sony's Pulse Elevate speakers – what's gone wrong?

The Pulse Elevate speakers come as a stereo pair in either black or white. They can stand either flat or tilted backwards to direct the sound at an angle – ideal for desktop use, say.

They use PlayStation Link wireless connectivity and work with PC and Mac, as well as PS5 and the PlayStation Portal handheld. It's an "ultra-low latency" and lossless connection that allows them to connect to your device via an included USB adapter.

They are also Bluetooth-enabled, so you can send audio from a separate device, such as your smartphone or tablet. And you can even listen to a Bluetooth stream and game audio delivered by PlayStation Link at the same time.

Basically, there are a few things that could have gone wrong there.

Alternatively, the speakers sport planar magnetic drivers and support Tempest 3D AudioTech to achieve virtual spatial sound from a stereo pair. And there are built-in subwoofers for deeper bass.

And, with AI noise reduction on the built-in mic in the right-hand speaker, you are meant to get clear, precise voice chat.

Again, any of those elements could have been the problem.

To be honest, it's brave for a company to pull a product so close to release, fix it and ensure it's delivering what it promised. Applaudable, in fact.

After all, the Pulse Elevate speakers cost £199.99 / $219.99, so I'd rather they worked as they should. And I'm happy to wait, in that case.

AI assistants are increasingly finding their way into all sorts of devices, but most still rely on screens, speakers or voice commands. Designer Adam Miklosi has offered an alternative in the Glyph (1), a transparent cube that gives artificial intelligence a physical form.

Inspired by the distinctive design language of Nothing, this unusual concept replaces conventional displays and menus with six illuminated faces. Rather than tapping a screen to change functions, you simply turn the cube, with whichever side faces upwards determining what it does.

A cube that skips the digital fuss

Glyph (1) has a six-sided enclosure made from transparent moulded polycarbonate, with rounded edges and an inner chassis that's visible through the casing. Each face features its own programmable Glyph LED matrix, using the dotted lighting style associated with Nothing's smartphones.

The idea is to give each side a different purpose. One could act as a timer, another control music playback, while others could handle smart-home functions, weather information or notifications. There's even the possibility of an ambient AI voice assistant.

Internal orientation sensors detect which face is pointing upwards and activate its assigned function. This means there's no need to navigate menus or swipe through endless options. Just turn the cube to switch between tasks.

Nothing-inspired design with a practical purpose

The transparent casing isn't just there to look pretty. Miklosi has deliberately drawn on Nothing's approach to showing off the technology inside its products, making the internal components part of the overall design.

The concept is presented in monochrome black and white versions, with the LED matrices providing the main visual feedback. Because each face can be programmed independently, users could also customise the icons and animations displayed for different functions.

It's a fun alternative to the constant stream of notifications and screen time that comes with traditional smart devices. Rather than demanding your attention, Glyph (1) is designed to sit on a desk or shelf until you need it.

Will the Glyph (1) actually go on sale?

Glyph (1) is currently a design concept, rather than a finished product. There's no confirmed release date, price or indication that it'll ever reach production.

I take hundreds of photos on my phone, but how many actually make it off the screen? Twogather has tackled this with its new DA1 Camera, a compact digital camera that prints your photos as soon as you take them.

There's no screen to check, no app to open and no gallery full of forgotten pictures. The DA1 uses a built-in thermal printer to produce black-and-white photos on a roll of paper, giving you something physical to keep or hand to someone else.

A camera that skips the digital fuss

The DA1 takes a photograph by capturing a moment, rather than having you spend time looking at a screen afterwards. Press the shutter and the camera produces a physical print, ready to be shared, collected or added to a journal.

Unlike traditional instant cameras, it doesn't use photographic film. Instead, its built-in thermal printer uses heat to create images on specialist paper, meaning there's no ink or film cartridge to replace. You will, however, need to keep a supply of refill rolls handy.

The approach also means there's no digital storage. Twogather describes the DA1 as having no memory, so there's no option to revisit your shots in a gallery or transfer them to your phone later. Once printed, the photograph is the finished product.

It's an interesting contrast to cameras such as the Fujifilm Instax mini Evo 2, which combines digital photography with instant printing and lets you choose which images to print. The DA1 goes the opposite way, removing the opportunity to review and edit altogether.

Two finishes and a handful of useful accessories

The DA1 comes in two versions, called Neon and Clear. Both share a rounded-square design with a prominent circular lens, but the Clear version exposes the internal components, circuitry and printing mechanism, giving it an unusual see-through aesthetic. Neon, meanwhile, goes for a more colourful exterior.

There are a few accessories to make it more practical, too. A screw-on viewfinder helps with framing, while the included wrist strap and belt clip offer different ways to carry it. Each camera bundle also comes with five colour markers, allowing you to doodle on the black-and-white prints or add a handwritten message before passing them on.

A neck strap is available separately for anyone who would rather wear the camera around their neck.

How much does the DA1 camera cost?

Twogather has priced the DA1 Neon at $98 (approximately £75), while the transparent Clear version costs $110 (around £84). Those prices are before shipping and taxes, and the camera is currently available for pre-order in the US, with deliveries promised for November 2026.

Thermal paper refills are also available, priced between $18 and $25 on the official website. The company estimates that each roll can produce around 50 or more photographs, although actual results will depend on usage. The paper is also described as BPA-free.

There's one important catch for UK buyers: Twogather is currently only accepting pre-orders for US customers, with international availability yet to be confirmed.

Film photography might be enjoying a modern-day revival, but Lomography is taking the nostalgia a step further with a new gold-plated version of its Lomo MC-A 35mm film camera.

Celebrating the camera's first birthday, the special edition arrives alongside a glossy black alternative, with both models benefiting from a handful of improvements.

The headline attraction is the Lomo MC-A Gold Plated, which does exactly what its name suggests. It features genuine gold plating alongside a rich brown leather covering, giving the compact camera a distinctly old-school luxury aesthetic.

It's accompanied by the new MC-A Noir, which takes a different approach with a glossy black finish and chunky, textured black leather.

Of course, there's more to the MC-A than its appearance. Both new editions retain the camera's 32mm f/2.8 multi-coated glass lens, which features five elements arranged across five groups and can stop down to f/16. Photographers get automatic focusing as well as zone focusing, with a minimum focusing distance of 0.4 metres.

There's also plenty of control for those who prefer to get hands-on. The MC-A offers automatic, aperture-priority and fully manual shooting modes, alongside a built-in Xenon flash for that unmistakable direct-flash film aesthetic. Multiple exposures are supported, too, giving creative photographers another reason to experiment.

Following feedback from its community, Lomography has introduced several small and useful refinements. Film loading is now easier, the camera remembers its settings when switched off, and its automatic programme is more likely to select an f/3.5 aperture. The LCD information panel also keeps its settings visible for longer when the shutter button is half-pressed.

The Gold Plated edition comes with a matching leather half-case and a complimentary glass lens filter set, adding to its premium appeal.

Both limited-edition cameras are available to pre-order now, with shipping expected to begin in December. The Gold Plated model costs £549, while the Noir edition is priced at £499. For comparison, the standard MC-A costs £449.

This sure is a more extravagant way to enjoy 35mm photography, but Lomography clearly isn't interested in letting the analogue revival lose its sense of fun. And if you're going to embrace the nostalgia, you might as well do it in gold.

While the '90s and '00s brought true innovation to the tech landscape, the 2010s added refinement – effectively launching the devices we regularly use today. Many of them were so good that although we've been treated to iterative upgrades, their DNA is still very much alive in our latest gadgets.

UK broadband hit gigabit speeds by the end of the decade, Disney+ arrived in the States to further the streaming wars, and TikTok appeared on the scene like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's Child Catcher, waving its digital lollipops to lure our kids into its doomscrolling dungeons.

It was also arguably the era of Apple. Rocked by the untimely passing of Steve Jobs early in the decade, its product lines grew and evolved faster than ever before. Rivals have been catching up ever since.

And so we take a look back at the 2010s – a purple patch for consumer tech, that on reflection turned out to be the calm before the storm. Before COVID, conflicts and component crises threw a spanner in the works. Happier times, for sure.

GOOGLE PIXEL (2016)

Although Google had loaned its name to the Nexus phone range from 2010, they were still made by third-party manufacturers (HTC, Samsung, LG and Motorola). That all changed in 2016 when it decided to bring the hardware fully in-house and rebrand the line to Pixel. This gave us a stock Android experience on devices entirely designed and developed by Google – something that has proved popular to this very day.

Launch price: £599

SONY MDR-1000X (2016)

Sony's first headphones in the 1000X range came as a bit of a shock. Bose was the king of active noise cancellation at the time, but this wireless pair saw the Japanese tech giant making a power-play for the throne. As well as offering a premium audio experience and solid ANC performance, the Sony pair were among the most comfortable headphones ever made – a trend continued by the WH-1000XM2 and beyond.

Launch price: £330

NIKE+ FUELBAND 2012

Although fitness tracking had been around in multiple forms beforehand, Nike effectively changed the game in the early 2010s – almost literally. It gamified counting daily steps and activities with the wrist-worn FuelBand, turning them into NikeFuel points and rewarding wearers with achievements. This encouraged sharing and competition amongst friends and groups, sparking a big trend until the market became saturated with cheaper equivalents and Nike eventually withdrew.

Launch price: £129

LG 65EC9700 (2014)

LG had already started to carve a niche for its OLED TVs, but initial releases were limited to Full HD (1080p) panels, while rivals were already making 4K Ultra HD LED sets. Then came the 65EC9700, which effectively changed everything. Okay, so it was curved, and that TV trend died out quickly, but finally having a 4K OLED for sale set a new standard for premium TVs that continues today.

Launch price: £5,999

OCULUS RIFT CV1 (2016)

Although Oculus had made a couple of headsets prior to the CV1, they were more for developers than the public. This particular model had a wider consumer release and can therefore be seen as a pivotal product in the general acceptance of virtual reality. The HTC Vive was also significant around the same time, but it was the CV1 that set the groundwork for the Oculus/Meta Quest series.

Launch price: £499

SONY PLAYSTATION 4 (2013)

Although Sony had largely lost the battle with Xbox in the 2000s, it came back with a vengeance with its new-generation console. The PS4 might have been an overheating wheezebucket at times, but Sony's back-to-basics approach of focusing on the games themselves – such as God of War, Uncharted 4, Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us Part II – saw it leave the Xbox One in the dust.

Launch price: £349

NINTENDO SWITCH (2017)

Remarkably, the Nintendo Switch was originally pegged to be a massive failure, mainly due to a price point considered too high and a relative lack of quality launch games. But the initial critical response turned out to be fleeting, with the new format not only becoming one of Nintendo's biggest success stories, but spawning a whole category in gaming hardware (we're looking at you, Steam Deck). It certainly put the flop that was the Wii U firmly to bed.

Launch price: £279.99

APPLE WATCH (2015)

There was some consternation about the square aesthetic and pricing structure, but Apple once again nailed it with its first smartwatch. Indeed, the Apple Watch became synonymous with the category, even though several other devices had appeared before. What's perhaps more remarkable is that it remains as popular today, even considering that it's just about the only smartwatch on the scene locked to just iPhone use.

Launch price: from £299

AMAZON FIRE TV STICK (2014)

Amazon hedged its bets when it decided to enter the streaming market in 2014, with a Fire TV set-top box being followed by a stick-like dongle a few months later. It was this latter form factor that became vastly more popular, with the retailer selling many millions of the numerous iterations since. The first Fire TV Stick was a HD-only device, but was well spec'd for its day, and it soon saw off its slab-like sibling.

Launch price: £35

AMAZON ECHO 2014

It seems crazy to imagine what our homes were like before the Amazon Echo brought Alexa into them, but Amazon's first smart speaker only arrived in the mid 2010s and still took a little while to truly take off. The tube-like device supplied 360-degree audio from a single audio array (2.5-inch woofer, two-inch tweeter) but still sounded great in a kitchen or bedroom. We miss the simplicity of the form factor, to be honest.

Launch price: £149.99

PEBBLE (2013)

Before the Apple Watch arrived, Pebble became a Kickstarter success story with its own smartwatch. Opting for an e-ink display to the benefit of extended battery life, the design and appeal of the original Pebble saw the company raise over $10 million on a promise alone. Thankfully, the watch lived up to expectations, and we're thrilled that the founder has recently resurrected the brand for a new line of products.

Launch price: £99

SONOS PLAY:1 (2013)

Sonos may have had a rockier time in recent years, but it was the king of multiroom music through the 2010s. That was largely thanks to the Sonos Play:1, its smallest and most versatile speaker. Used as a solo speaker, its loud, throaty performance belies the single 3.5-inch mid-woofer and tweeter combination. And when combined with other Play:1 units, it could provide a wireless home cinema experience that was unheard of at the time.

Launch price: £169

APPLE AIRPODS (2016)

Let's face it, we weren't the only ones who sniggered at the design of the AirPods when Apple first announced them in 2016. They looked inspired by a specific scene in There's Something About Mary (if you know, you know). However, we soon had egg on our faces as they became so popular, pretty much every earbud manufacturer has adopted a similar aesthetic since.

Launch price: £159

PHILIPS AIRFRYER (2010)

Where would we be without the air fryer? It might not have seemed like it at the time, but Philips' idea to cook chips using much less oil has had as big an impact on our kitchens as the microwave. The first model circulated heat around the food, and although there's been a bit of refinement since, the concept remains largely the same. Even the form factor continues to be the norm.

Launch price: £200

SAMSUNG GALAXY S (2010)

Samsung is recognised as the biggest phone manufacturer in the world, and that's largely thanks to its premium Android series. First launching with Android 2.1 installed, the Galaxy S was one of the first flagships with a Super AMOLED display. This gave it an advantage over the iPhone, especially as it also had the fastest GPU in a phone to date.

Launch price: £510

APPLE iPAD 2010

While the iPad was far from the first touchscreen tablet, Apple effectively reinvented the format. A similar concept to the iPhone, the iPad offered many first- and third-party apps, but this time on a 9.7-inch display that was comfortable to hold. It proved to be one of the biggest selling devices of the decade, but also sadly one of the last great launches of the Steve Jobs era.

Launch price: from £429

APPLE iPHONE 4 2010

Apple's iPhone is quite rightly considered the godfather of the smartphone, but it was the iPhone 4 that really changed the game. Where previous models (and rival devices) were largely rounded and plastic-feeling, the iPhone 4 arrived with a flat-edged stainless steel frame and glass on the front and back. Tiny to hold in comparison with today's iPhones (it had just a 3.5-inch display) it still feels premium and luxurious nonetheless.

Launch price: £499

NINTENDO 3DS 2011

Nintendo has always been king of the handheld, with the Game Boy and Switch being class-leading, but it's the DS family that tops the lot – selling over 228 million units in total. The 3DS handhelds accounted for around 76 million of those, and while most players turned off the 3D function almost immediately, the quality of games and robust hardware options mean it's still popular long after being discontinued.

Launch price: from £219

PHILIPS HUE 2012

Originally launched as an Apple Store exclusive, Philips Hue was mind-blowing on its debut. Although LED bulbs already existed, this new technology enabled control over whole home lighting solutions. The inclusion of scenes and the ability to colour-match photos on your phone made for some interesting decor choices. It was expensive, offering just three bulbs in the starter kit, but that didn't seem to matter.

Launch price: £179

GOOGLE NEXUS 7 (2012)

Small tablets were once more popular than those with larger screens, and the Nexus 7 led the way. This seven-inch device preceded the iPad mini by several months, and its keen price and stock Android operating system made it a good family choice. Many cheap and cheerful tablets followed – including the highly credible Tesco Hudl and Amazon's Fire Tablet range – but it's the Nexus 7 we remember fondly.

Launch price: £159

Biggest tech flops of the: 2010s

XBOX ONE 2013

While it can hardly be described as a complete flop, the Xbox One nonetheless saw Microsoft dramatically concede its hard-won position as number one in the console market. It all began to go wrong at its debut during E3 2013, when the focus of Microsoft's announcement was on its entertainment capabilities and always-on internet requirement. Even though some of the messaging was rolled back prior to launch, the damage was done and Sony laughed all the way to the bank.

Launch price: £429

AMAZON FIRE PHONE (2014)

Considering its success in other tech product areas, including Fire Tablets, it made complete sense for Amazon to launch its own smartphone. However, it was priced in the same region as the iPhone at the time, yet ran on Amazon's own largely unsupported Fire platform. That meant it lacked many of the apps and software features of its rivals, including the myriad Android handsets available for less. All this resulted in the phone being discontinued just one year after launch.

Launch price: £399.99

PHILIPS CINEMA 21:9 PLATINUM (2010)

Philips second stab at a super-widescreen TV was actually a decent bit of kit, and it must have sounded like a good idea as other manufacturers also considered the form factor (CES 2010 saw at least two rivals demonstrate sets that never made it to market). However, the reality of a 21:9 TV is that if you're not watching 21:9 content – movies or ultrawide games – you are left with massive black bars either side of the screen. That's not great for general TV viewing, and Philips ditched the idea.

Launch price: around £4,300

Virtually speaking

Virtual reality had come in and out of fashion over the three decades before, but the 2010s finally saw the tech hit the big time – especially where consumers are concerned.

Oculus – now part of Meta – brought its first publicly available headset to market, while the HTC Vive improved on the concept further. However, both required the use of a powerful PC to work and a web of cables that looked like it spawned from the neuromantic mind of William Gibson. But the launch of the first Meta Quest (née Oculus Quest) in 2019 proved to be truly groundbreaking. It was a completely standalone headset that didn't require wires or a PC, and it set the stall for future versions and its rivals.

VR, XR and MR are still not exactly as mass-market as some would have hoped by now, and the Metaverse never really amounted to much, but the barriers to everyday consumer use were truly torn down in the 2010s. We can't wait to see what's next.

The rise of ride-hailing

While many tech trends – such as video streaming and social media – started the decade before and then blossomed in the 2010s, there was one that appeared as if by magic and effectively changed the world.

Uber launched its first customer cab-hailing service in San Francisco in 2011 and it revolutionised passenger transportation. It has since expanded into more than 70 countries and 15,000 cities worldwide and, much to the chagrin of London's black cab drivers, it has become as synonymous with taxis as Tannoy is with public address systems.

Rival services, such as Lyft in the US and Bolt in the UK, also launched soon after, but are still relatively small in comparison. It's the concept, though, that really wins: the ability to hail, track and direct your ride to a specific pickup point made the service so much easier to use.

Even the fact that payment is taken digitally proved a godsend – no more stops at a late-night ATM to get out cash, while the cab's clock was ticking. Huzzah!

Samsung has been developing smart glasses, in partnership with Qualcomm and Google, for a number of years. First revealed at Google I/O in May and then again at Galaxy Unpacked in July, we finally have a date for the launch of the Samsung Intelligent Eyewear.

The details don't come from Samsung, but instead have been revealed by partner Warby Parker, who confirmed that they will be available to pre-order from 12 November.

Those details come from Warby Parker's earnings call, via 9to5Google.

Warby Parker continues to use the term "Intelligent Eyewear", which was originally used by Google when they were first showcased at Google I/O. That might also be in response to the backlash against some other smart glasses, colloquially known as "pervert glasses".

Beyond the pre-order date, deliveries are said to be "during the holiday season", with Warby Parker focusing on the US market for the launch. It's thought that Samsung's other partner – Gentle Monster – will offer more choices for Korean markets.

Thanks to an extensive leak, we've seen many of the designs that will be offered, with a range of frame styles and lenses.

That leak also furnished us with more details about the hardware, including Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 hardware, with 2GB RAM and 64GB of storage.

The glasses will run Android XR, with Gemini providing the connected skills, while a 12-megapixel camera will be on most of the models for image capture and to feed into the AI system.

It's thought that the battery should be good for about 72 hours of use (including the case), while IPX4 protection will mean that if you get caught in the rain then it should be fine.

The launch is going to focus on the US and Korea, with the potential to expand availability through 2027.

The new Samsung Intelligent Eyewear will launch at a time when smart glasses are getting a lot of unwelcome attention, with venues banning them and some regions considering legislation to control their use.

Samsung is expected to launch a pair of over-ear headphones alongside its Galaxy S27 series of phones in early 2027.

The existence of these headphones was first revealed by code strings in the Galaxy Wearable app, but now there's a slightly more official confirmation, from the FCC.

As uncovered by SamMobile, a few more details about a new Samsung product numbered SM-U700 have appeared online. It confirms the location of the regulatory label, with a partial image of the headphones included.

This is still not a lot to go on, with the label's location on the headband shown, with a tiny glimpse of the swivel mechanism for the ear cups. Black and beige colours are confirmed, along with support for Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE.

That's about as far as we can go with this leak, leaving us none the wiser about many of the core details about these new headphones.

It's been some time since Samsung has released a set of over-ear headphones, with most of the focus on Galaxy Buds over the past few years. However, Samsung also owns a number of audio brands, and there have been no shortage of headphones from JBL and others.

It's thought that Samsung is looking to produce a high-end set of headphones to compete with Apple's AirPods Max and provide a Galaxy ecosystem choice for those wanting an alternative to ear buds.

Currently there's no date on the launch of Samsung's next phones, with past events suggesting that a January of February event is likely.

That's expected to give us the Galaxy S27, Galaxy S27 Plus, Galaxy S27 Pro and Galaxy S27 Ultra. Adding the Galaxy Studio to the mix will make for a bumper event.

With the launch of the Galaxy Studio, Samsung might look to widen the support for audio codecs that it supports. While SBC and ACC will come as standard, Samsung's own format SSC will likely provide high-res support.

But those with an interest in high quality music, will likely be more interested in whether Samsung would expand to offers LDAC (a Sony technology) or aptX (owned by Qualcomm) to provide connections to other devices that don't offer SSC.

When Apple announced the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display, it wasn’t just the touch capability that made it exciting.

Admittedly, the touchscreen is a huge deal, since no previous MacBook has offered a touch display, despite PC laptops having had them for years. After all, Steve Jobs once said touch on a MacBook would be “ergonomically terrible”.

But the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display also brought back a feature many Mac fans have really missed over the last few years. When Apple redesigned the MacBook Pro in 2016, it ditched the glowing Apple logo on the lid. Now the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display brings it back.

It works differently this time, though. As Apple notes in a support document, spotted by 9to5Mac: “The Apple logo behind the built-in display is illuminated whenever the Mac is awake. It automatically dims or brightens based on the brightness level of the built-in screen and the lighting conditions detected by the computer’s ambient light sensor.”

Basically, when the lid of the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display is closed, the logo looks like polished metal, just like the MacBooks we have been used to for the last decade. And if you prefer that look permanently, even when the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display is awake and the illuminated logo is not for you, it’s possible to turn it off.

How to turn off Apple logo illumination on the new MacBook Pro

In the same support document, Apple also explains how to turn off the illumination. You’ll need to use Terminal, which you can find in the Utilities folder or by searching for it in Spotlight. You will then need to type or paste this code and press return:

sudo defaults write com.apple.CoreBrightness LEBacklightMode -int 0

You will need to enter your administrator password when prompted, then press Return again. After this, the logo illumination will turn off immediately. To turn it back on, enter this code in Terminal:

sudo defaults delete com.apple.CoreBrightness LEBacklightMode

You can also reinstall macOS to turn the illumination back on.

We personally like the glow, but at least there's now an option if you don't.

Motorola has shifted gears with the Signature 27, its first proper flagship phone in a number of years. Moving to offer flagship-grade camera credentials, adopting the most powerful chip around, and stepping up its software support, it puts the Signature 27 right in the firing line of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Exactly why Motorola chose this moment might just be down to the alignment of the stars. The company has been seeing growth, while competitors, like OnePlus, have stepped out of the US and Europe. Also consider that the margins on flagship devices are much higher than the mid-range phones that Motorola has been known for over the last few years.

So can the Signature 27 really take on the likes of Samsung? I got to test the phone in Tromsø, Norway, ahead of launch, and there's a lot to like about it.

Leaning into Motorola's strengths

Motorola has, for a number of years, talked about offering lifestyle devices that aren't necessarily all about having the highest specs. That was the message at the launch of the Razr 70 Ultra, where few specs changed from the previous year, but the luxurious finish still turned heads.

Coming in Pantone Coal Smoke (black) and Pantone Capulet Olive (green), that Pantone partnership continues to show, with unique textured finishes on these phones. They lend that sense of premium luxury, and they are distinctly different to every other flagship phone on the market.

They're also different to other Motorola phones, with a design that shifts the cameras up to the top on a raised bed where the phone is thicker. This isn't an island, this isn't Motorola copying Apple or Samsung, it's something different. It might also be a case of Marmite design, because the clustering of cameras is a little busy.

It also skews the weight towards the top of the phone; although it's only 227g (lighter than the iPhone 18 Pro Max, but heavier than the Galaxy S26 Ultra), it doesn't quite feel balanced in the hand.

Elsewhere, Motorola continues to curve its devices towards the frame, and there's certainly no shortage of grip - and no chance of fingerprints on the back of the phone either, thanks to the textured finish.

A change in user experience

Those familiar with Motorola's recent phones will know that the move from a clean Android build to Hello UI, with Moto AI, has raised a lot of questions. That's seen an increase in sponsored bloat around the device, awkward AI integration and changes to some fundamental parts of the Android experience - namely the apps tray.

I've only used the Signature 27 for a short period of time, but a lot of this has gone. There are still some preinstalled apps, but they are easily removed, and there's no sign of that irksome newsfeed in the apps tray.

The Signature 27 also sees the shift over to Qira, the new AI assistant that Motorola and Lenovo will use. That seems to have tidied up the AI experience (while still offering Gemini and all the standard Google AI features), making the user experience better.

Adding to this, the Signature 27 will come with 7 years of OS updates and 7 years of security updates, so it offers parity with Samsung, Google and Honor - exactly what you'd need to compete in the flagship space.

Debuting Snapdragon's latest hardware

Leading the hardware charge is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, the very latest flagship chip from Qualcomm. The Motorola Signature 27 is going to be one of the first phones available with this chip, months ahead of the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra, which is expected to be powered by the same hardware.

That's a great position for Motorola to be in. I didn't get to stress-test the hardware in my hands-on time, but everything I encountered was swift and smooth. Excitingly, it's backed by a 7,000mAh silicon-carbon battery, which I'd expect to make it through the day with relative ease. If it doesn't, there's 90W wired and 50W wireless charging to quickly top it up.

That's something that Samsung doesn't offer - and isn't likely to offer on its next phone.

Going big on the camera

For many phone companies, the camera is the real battleground. Motorola was keen to point out that it had worked with DxOMark on calibrating the cameras, while Qualcomm was also on hand to make sure it got the most out of the powerful new hardware.

My first impressions of the 50-megapixel main camera, using a Sony Lytia L910 sensor, are really positive. I've only tested it in limited situations, but so far it has produced detailed images rich in colour, although testing it in Norway in November, I barely saw the sun, so I can't make any definitive judgements yet.

It's supported by a 200-megapixel telephoto camera, offering 3x optical and up to 100x digital zoom. Once you get over 20x zoom, the phone's AI system wants to help. That can clean up images, but it can also leave some of the longer-range shots looking a little unrealistic as AI fills in the details. I took a picture of some herons at 100x zoom, and the AI results look like a one-legged sparrow crossed with a kiwi. They're birds, but not the right ones.

Finally, the ultrawide seems, at first impressions, slightly out of tune with the other cameras. Most of the test shots I took were a different colour tone from the main camera, so they don't quite match. That's potentially fixable with a software tweak, but it's a demonstration of how hard it is to get things right on a complex camera system like this.

I was impressed with the performance of the video that I shot. With Dolby Vision capture included, it took advantage of one of my favourite features of the Signature 27 - the display.

A sublime display experience

There are a couple of firsts on the Motorola Signature 27, with a tandem OLED display, offering up to 12,000 nits. That's ridiculously bright, but there's no ridiculousness when actually using the display. It's bright and vibrant, with a great pop to the colours, but exactly where you'll see 12,000 nits used remains unknown.

Previous high-brightness phones have used that brightness for HDR content, where there's a brief peak highlight - like the centre of a candle's flame, for example. But content isn't mastered to 12,000 nits - professional mastering monitors only reach 4,000 nits, while Dolby Vision's theoretical peak brightness is 10,000 nits.

So, take the 12,000 nits figure with a pinch of salt and instead concentrate on the fact that this is a great display, supported by very capable speakers.

These have been developed in partnership with Bang & Olufsen, supporting Dolby Atmos, as well as offering a range of presets to customise the sound to your liking. The speaker quality seems great, with noticeable immersion and stereo separation.

Is this enough to dethrone Samsung?

There's no doubt that Motorola offers a flagship experience in the Signature 27 and it's great to have a proper top-tier phone from the company. With that comes a high price, at £1,299. It's cheaper than Samsung, while offering a packed spec sheet that might draw the attention of those shopping for a flagship Android phone.

But much will hang on how well that camera works in wider testing, which will be the real challenge that Motorola faces. Things so far look great, with the Signature 27 offering a great experience in a number of different areas.

The Motorola Signature 27 will be on pre-order from 16 November, starting at £1,299 in the UK.

If you have am Xbox Series X or Series S and some spare time this weekend, Xbox has a bumper bundle of free games available to play – and you don't even need Xbox Game Pass for two of them.

There's a huge variety of titles on offer too, so no matter your gameplay type, there's something there for everyone.

Crime Boss: Rockay CIty and Anno 117: Pax Romana are both available right now for all Xbox Series X/S owners, regardless of whether you have Game Pass or not.

Featuring an all-star cast – including the late Michael Madsen – Crime Boss: Rockay City is a co-op action-heist game with fast-paced combat and a twisted sense of humour. It also features a solo roguelike campaign, so you don't even need to gather friends to play.

Anno 117: Pax Romana is an altogether different affair. The real-time strategy / city building game sends you back to Roman times as you attempt to either follow the path set by history or rewrite your own.

Both of the games are available as part of Xbox's weekly Free Play Days promotion, which allows you to cram as much time with them as you can before the end of the weekend. After which, you can purchase them at a discount or subscribe to Game Pass to continue.

5 additional Xbox Free Play Days games (5 - 8 November)

If you do have Xbox Game Pass membership – Ultimate, Premium or Essential – a further five games are free to play this weekend.

PayDay 3 is another FPS co-op heist action game. You can team up with three friends to take part in ambitious robberies.

There's Nowhere Prophet, a single-player card game with RPG and strategy elements, while Ball x Pit is actually my favourite of the bunch on offer this week. It combines tower defence, base-building and Arkanoid style brick bashing to unique effect.

Deceive Inc. is another multiplayer action shooter. And then there are the strategy games Age of Wonders 4 and Ixion.

All of the games have significant discounts if you want to purchase them after. You certainly won't be bored this weekend.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is a fantastic console, never more so than right now with the likes of the Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake and Switch Sports Resort arriving on Nintendo’s hybrid machine.

But a console is nothing without its accessories, and with sale season on the horizon and shoppers sharpening their clicking fingers, now is the time to start thinking about how you can make those long sessions in Hyrule even better.

There’s no guarantee that any of these essential Switch 2 accessories will get the deal treatment ahead of the festive season, but they should all be on your wishlist either way.

Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller

The original Switch Pro Controller was widely regarded as one of the all-time great pads, so Nintendo was wise not to mess too much with the design on its Switch 2 sequel.

Like its predecessor, the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller is supremely comfortable to hold, even more so now thanks to the new smooth matte finish. The button placement is perfect and the sticks feel great, even if Hall Effect would have been nice at this price.

I’m also a big fan of programmable rear buttons, of which Nintendo’s controller has two. Even if you don’t think you need them, it only takes one game that has a particularly awkward default control scheme to convince you otherwise.

They’re also a lot easier to find than the dedicated screenshot button, if you’re the kind of person who takes a lot of those. The D-Pad is great too, so much so that it only makes me bemoan how bad the Joy-Con’s equivalent is.

One other thing to shout out is the Switch 2 Pro Controller’s brilliant battery life. At around 40 hours, it leaves most other pads in the dust, and while I admittedly love the PS5’s DualSense and its arsenal of unique features, having to plug the thing in every few days is a real pain. With the Pro Controller I rarely worry about having to reach for a charging cable.

There are plenty of cheaper third-party controller options around now, but the official option is hard to top.

SanDisk microSD Express Card

The significantly more powerful hardware that powers the Switch 2 compared to its predecessor means it’s capable of playing modern AAA games in a way the Switch just wasn’t.

This is obviously great news, but the downside is that if you plan to load up your shiny new console with the likes Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Cyberpunk 2077, all of which weigh in at above 60GB, you’re going to hit the ceiling of the Switch 2’s 256GB internal storage very quickly indeed.

Even more annoying is that your old microSD cards won’t work, as the Switch 2 only accepts the newer microSD Express standard. These cards are not cheap, but they’re fast, and if you have a large library of games and don’t want to spend as much time deleting and reinstalling them as you do playing, you’re probably going to need one eventually.

This 512GB card from SanDisk is certainly an investment, but with it I’ve managed to install nearly all of the Switch 2 games I’ve added to my library at launch, allowing me to hop between Night City, Hyrule and the Mushroom Kingdom in all of their 1080p-and-above glory at will.

Less wallet-whacking 256GB cards that double the built-in storage capacity are also available and might be a better option for some, but if you like to play lots of meaty RPGs on the go and are, like me, tired of carefully managing your downloaded games like items in a Resident Evil hip pouch, a bigger card will probably be worth it in the long run. Especially if you can grab one for a rare sale price.

SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds

SteelSeries’ excellent Arctis GameBuds aren’t just for the Switch 2, but they are a great choice if you want to upgrade your audio experience with Nintendo’s console.

As well as being extremely comfortable and well made, these minimalist buds come with a 2.4Ghz dongle that you plug into your console’s USB-C port. This all but eliminates the latency that plagues Bluetooth headphones for gaming (although Bluetooth is also supported).

The headphones sound superb, and feature surprisingly good ANC that can be toggled in the SteelSeries companion app. Here you’ll also find custom EQ settings for a huge number of games, which are regularly updated.

It really makes a difference to have an audio profile specifically created for a game or genre, and ensures those 6mm sound as impressive as they can.

The GameBuds have physical button controls as opposed to the touch alternative, which I personally prefer on earbuds that don’t have as large of a surface area as over-ear headphones. At around 10 hours, battery life is very solid too.

While I have admittedly paired my AirPods Pro with my Switch 2 on a number of occasions and had a decent enough time, it’s only when I go back to the GameBuds that I remember how much better a dedicated gaming-focused device is.

There's been a lot of talk about Project Helix, PS6 and next-generation consoles in general, but there's still a lot of life in the current-gen yet. Indeed, Xbox Series X and Series S owners could even be getting an upgrade soon that'll give their consoles a "Pro" boost.

It is reported that developers can now use AMD FSR 4.1 technology on Xbox Series X/S games, potentially improving graphical clarity and frame rates.

While this isn't technically an upgrade for the console itself, it'll seem like one. Based on FSR 4.1 implementation in PC games and on the Xbox Ally X so far, titles that currently support it exhibit big improvements.

Like PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) on the PS5 Pro and Nvidia's DLSS, FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) allows developers to run games at lower resolutions, with the technology cleverly and almost imperceptibly upscaling the image to a higher-res.

This therefore allows hardware resources to focus on other areas instead, such as frame rates. And over the years, AMD's tech has improved so dramatically that FSR 4.1 produces great results on existing hardware.

When will the Xbox Series X/S "Pro" upgrade arrive?

Of course, this will require developers to support it in their games, but if you look at the rapid adoption of PSSR and PSSR 2.0 in PlayStation 5 games since the PS5 Pro was released, that shouldn't be a barrier.

Our sister title, Windows Central, suggests that some games have already shown big wins on the Xbox Ally X handheld – where FSR 4.1 has been appearing first. It claims games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Gears of War: E-Day gave more consistent frame rates with it activated.

Fingers crossed that we'll start to see it appear on the Xbox Series X/S consoles soon, on some of the bigger games. That way we'll have more than enough to be distracted by until the full next-gen of gaming arrives.

I've tested quite a few tablets in my more than seven years as a tech journalist, but there's one that's kept me jealous the whole time, not least because I've never actually owned one myself: the iPad mini.

Apple's smallest iPad has long been the one that I think I'd most readily use in my personal day-to-day, with its diminutive size being the key to its convenience. Now, it's finally been given an OLED screen to make it even more attractive, but in the same year that its price has unfortunately surged past where I thought it would ever go.

At a recent hands-on event, I spent some time with the new mini, and it basically confirmed all my suspicions: it's the most desirable tablet on the market, but it's now priced at a point where very few people can surely sensibly approach it.

The new mini looks a lot like previous generations, but it's actually been given a fairly substantial update. That makes it thinner and lighter than ever before, which is crucial, as well as offering up a new (gorgeous) display.

It makes the iPad mini feel like something you could slip into a coat pocket and pretty much forget about, so tiny is its footprint, and the same goes for putting it in a handbag or backpack.

The new display is super vibrant, and if you're happy to pay almost silly money, you'll also get a brilliant experience if you opt for the nanotexture display that Apple now offers on higher-end models. It massively mitigates reflections, making it amazing for outdoor use (on your commute, for instance).

With the A20 Pro chipset now powering everything, this is also the most powerful the iPad mini has ever been, to the point where it's got the potential to be quite a little productivity machine. Whether that really makes sense, given its size might be up to your workflow, but even if it's just for streaming and web browsing, it'll be brilliant.

Where things get more complicated is when you actually start to consider buying this handsome little device. I'd love nothing more than to do so myself, and make it my travel viewing device of choice – but that price can't be ignored. The iPad mini now starts from £700, with a version featuring nanotexture coming in at £900, which is a fairly mad price for a tablet this size.

The other big hesitation is that even in a relatively short hands-on session, I found the tablet's 60Hz screen noticeable. It's not laggy, but as other reviewers have noticed, it's also not as responsive as the majority of the competition, and at this price that feels fairly surprising.

Still, half an hour with the tablet in my hands underlined that I'd really love to have one – I just wonder if the memory crisis has pushed its price to the point where its natural audience is going to be put off.

Perhaps this makes for an opportunity for the standard iPad to surge back up as the default choice for those people, but I can't be sure that's the case.

Regardless, we should get the iPad mini in for more detailed testing very soon, so keep an eye out for the full T3 review, which should be able to really give a sense of how these tweaks and upgrades change the picture.

As T3 celebrates its 30th anniversary, we're looking back at three decades of technology and the gadgets that have helped shape it. Narrowing that history down to just 30 products is no easy feat, with countless clever inventions and game-changing devices having transformed the way we live, work and play.

Rather than simply picking the gadgets with the best specs or highest performance, we've focused on innovation and impact – the products that brought something new to the table and helped shape the technology we use today. Some were instant hits, others were ahead of their time, but each has earned its place in our history.

1996

1. Motorola StarTAC

Launched in January 1996, the Motorola StarTAC was one of the first commercially successful flip phones, with a compact clamshell design that protected the keypad when closed. Weighing as little as 88g in its lightest configuration, it was remarkably small for its time. It also helped turn mobile phones into desirable lifestyle accessories, paving the way for the slimmer, more stylish handsets that followed.

1997

2. Tamagotchi

Long before smartphone games and virtual pets became commonplace, the Tamagotchi turned digital companionship into a pocket-sized obsession. Launched in Japan in late 1996 before arriving in the US in 1997, the egg-shaped device featured a tiny monochrome screen displaying a pet that needed feeding, cleaning and constant attention. Its genius was turning a simple electronic toy into an ongoing responsibility, creating a daily ritual that helped spark the virtual pet craze.

1998

3. Apple iMac G3

The iMac G3 was the first major new product Steve Jobs unveiled after returning to Apple, marking a turning point for the brand with its bold design and user-friendly approach to computing. Launched in 1998, its translucent Bondi Blue casing, curved silhouette and integrated 15-inch CRT display made it instantly recognisable. It also broke with convention by ditching the floppy disk drive in favour of USB ports, helping usher in a new era of computer peripherals.

1999

4. BlackBerry 850

Before smartphones made email and messaging part of everyday life, BlackBerry put wireless communication in the palm of your hand. Its first device, the BlackBerry 850, launched in 1999 as a two-way pager that could send and receive emails, complete with the physical QWERTY keyboard that became the brand's signature. Later models brought these features together with mobile calling, helping professionals stay connected away from their desks. BlackBerry would go on to define mobile productivity throughout the 2000s.

2000

5. Sony PlayStation 2

The Sony PlayStation 2 arrived as more than just a gaming console, also offering an affordable way to watch DVDs at home. Launched in 2000, it combined improved 3D graphics with backward compatibility for original PlayStation games, and its built-in DVD player was a major selling point when standalone players were still relatively expensive. With more than 160 million units sold worldwide, the PS2 became one of the best-selling consoles of all time and helped establish gaming as a central part of home entertainment.

2001

6. Sky+

Sky+ transformed television viewing by putting viewers in control of their schedules. Launched in 2001, the personal video recorder allowed users to pause and rewind live television, record programmes and watch their favourite shows whenever they wanted. It helped shift TV away from rigid broadcast schedules towards the on-demand habits we now take for granted, laying important groundwork for today's streaming culture.

2002

7. Roomba Robotic FloorVac

Following its launch in 2002, the iRobot Roomba quickly became the first commercially successful robotic vacuum cleaner. Its disc-shaped design could navigate floors, pick up dirt and manoeuvre around everyday obstacles without needing anyone to push it around. Whilst it wasn't the first robotic cleaner, the Roomba made automated home cleaning accessible to everyday consumers, turning what once seemed like futuristic technology into a practical household gadget.

2003

8. Apple iTunes Music Store

The iTunes Music Store changed how people bought music by allowing them to purchase individual tracks online instead of committing to an entire CD. Launched in the US in April 2003, it offered songs for just 99 cents each, with no subscription required. Users could download tracks, burn CDs and transfer music to their iPods, combining a straightforward storefront with a convenient digital music library.

2004

9. Facebook

Facebook deserves its place in any retrospective of technology that changed everyday life. Launched as TheFacebook in February 2004, the website initially connected students at Harvard University before expanding to other universities and eventually the wider public. Facebook was a major step towards the participatory internet, changing how people discovered what was happening in one another's lives.

2005

10. Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 arrived in 2005, bringing high-definition graphics and a more connected gaming experience to the living room. Through Xbox Live, players could compete with friends online, create gamer profiles and connect with a wider gaming community. Its digital marketplace also made downloadable games and add-ons readily accessible, helping transform consoles into something far more than simply playing games from a disc.

2006

11. Nintendo Wii

Nintendo changed the way we played video games with the launch of the Wii in 2006. It introduced motion controls that let players swing, bowl, box and even play tennis using physical movements, becoming a hit with families and casual gamers. It also proved that sometimes the biggest gaming innovation isn't better graphics, but an entirely new way to play.

2007

12. Apple iPhone

The original iPhone wasn't just a launch of the year, it was arguably the launch of the decade. Unveiled by Steve Jobs in 2007, it combined an iPod, mobile phone and internet communicator into one device, with a large touchscreen that removed the need for a physical keyboard. It completely changed what we expected from our phones, and if only we knew just how much more was to come.

2008

13. Acer Aspire One

When the Acer Aspire One arrived in 2008, it helped bring affordable, portable computing to the masses. As part of the netbook boom, it offered a compact 8.9-inch display, a lightweight design and enough power for everyday tasks. It wasn't built to replace a full-sized laptop, but it showed that you didn't need a bulky machine to stay connected on the move.

2009

14. Amazon Kindle 2

Whilst the original Kindle's launch was somewhat overshadowed by the arrival of the iPhone in 2007, its second-generation successor deserved plenty of attention in its own right. Released in 2009, the Kindle 2 was slimmer than before, with a sharper six-inch E Ink display, more storage and improved battery life. It also introduced text-to-speech, allowing users to have their books read aloud.

2010

15. Apple iPad

Apple's iPad arrived in 2010 and helped turn the tablet from a niche idea into a mainstream gadget. Sitting somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop, its large touchscreen was ideal for browsing, watching videos, reading and playing games. Its simple interface and growing App Store gave people plenty of reasons to pick one up, whilst inspiring a wave of rival tablets that followed.

2011

16. Nest Learning Thermostat

The Nest Learning Thermostat offered a smarter way to heat your home when it launched in 2011. Instead of sticking to a fixed schedule, it learned your temperature preferences and daily routines, automatically adjusting the heating to suit your lifestyle. Smartphone controls also meant you could manage your home's temperature remotely. It was one of the products that helped show just how convenient smart home technology could be.

2012

17. Raspberry Pi

Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the original Raspberry Pi launched in 2012 with the aim to make computing more accessible. This low-cost, credit-card-sized computer gave students, hobbyists and budding programmers an affordable way to learn coding and experiment with electronics. Its versatility soon inspired all kinds of creative projects, from retro gaming machines to home servers.

2013

18. DJI Phantom 1

Before consumer drones became a familiar sight in our skies, DJI's Phantom 1 helped make aerial photography more accessible. It arrived in 2013 as a ready-to-fly quadcopter, meaning users didn't need to build and configure their own aircraft from scratch. Although it required a separate camera, its relatively straightforward controls and stable flight helped introduce a much wider audience to the possibilities of personal drones and aerial filming.

2014

19. Apple Watch

Apple took its first major step into wearable technology with the announcement of the Apple Watch in 2014. It brought notifications, calls, apps and fitness tracking into a compact wearable, with its activity rings encouraging users to move more throughout the day. Its interchangeable straps and customisable watch faces also made it feel like a personal accessory as much as a piece of technology.

2015

20. Amazon Echo

The Amazon Echo helped bring voice-controlled technology into everyday homes when it launched in 2015. Powered by Alexa, the smart speaker let users play music, check the weather, set timers and ask questions simply by speaking. It also connected with compatible smart home devices, allowing people to control lights and other gadgets using voice commands.

2016

21. Google Home

Google entered the smart speaker market in 2016 with Google Home, a voice-controlled speaker powered by Google Assistant. Much like Amazon's Echo, it allowed users to ask questions, play music, check the weather and control compatible smart home devices without lifting a finger. What made it particularly useful was Google's search expertise, giving it a natural advantage when answering everyday questions.

2017

22. Nintendo Switch

Nintendo struck gold again with the Switch, a console that finally combined home and handheld gaming. Released in 2017, it could be docked and played on a television, then lifted out and used as a portable console wherever you went. Its detachable Joy-Con controllers also opened the door to instant multiplayer gaming, offering the best of both worlds and helping make the Switch a huge success.

2018

23. Dyson Airwrap

The Dyson Airwrap transformed the beauty world when it launched in 2018, offering an entirely different approach to styling hair. Instead of relying on extreme heat, it uses the Coanda effect to attract and wrap hair around its barrel using airflow, creating curls and waves whilst helping to limit heat damage. It also came with interchangeable attachments for smoothing, drying and styling, turning what was traditionally a collection of tools into one rather clever system.

2019

24. Apple iPhone 11 Pro

Apple's iPhone 11 Pro marked a major step forward for smartphone photography when it arrived in 2019. It was the first iPhone to feature a triple-camera system, combining wide, ultra-wide and telephoto lenses to give users more flexibility when taking photos. Night mode also made low-light photography considerably better, whilst its powerful A13 Bionic chip delivered a noticeable performance boost.

2020

25. Oculus Quest 2

The Oculus Quest 2 brought virtual reality to a much wider audience by making it easier and more affordable to get started. Unlike earlier headsets that needed to be connected to a powerful gaming PC, it worked entirely on its own, with built-in tracking and motion controllers. Its sharper display and improved performance made virtual worlds feel more immersive, whilst its accessible design helped push standalone VR further into the mainstream.

2021

26. Sonos Roam

Sonos took its multi-room audio expertise outdoors with the launch of the Roam in 2021. This compact portable speaker brought the brand's familiar sound quality into a much smaller design, complete with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. It could switch between the two automatically, making it just as useful around the house as it was on a day out. With waterproofing and up to 10 hours of battery life, it was built to go wherever the music did.

2022

27. ChatGPT

ChatGPT arrived in November 2022 and quickly changed the way people thought about artificial intelligence. Rather than simply returning a list of search results, users were able to have natural, back-and-forth conversations, ask questions, generate ideas, write content and solve problems. Its simple chat interface made a powerful AI tool accessible to almost anyone, sparking a huge wave of interest in generative AI.

2023

28. Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses

Smart glasses had been around for years by 2023, but Meta and Ray-Ban helped make the idea feel much more wearable. Combining the familiar look of classic Ray-Ban frames with built-in cameras, speakers and microphones, the glasses let users capture photos and videos, listen to music and take calls without reaching for their phone. This allowed them to become an increasingly interesting example of technology blending into everyday accessories.

2024

29. Apple Vision Pro

Apple's Vision Pro marked the company's first major new product category since the Apple Watch, arriving in 2024 as its take on mixed-reality headsets. Dubbed a 'spatial computer', it overlays apps and digital content onto the world around you, creating virtual screens you can position wherever you like. The clever bit is how you control it, using your eyes, hands and voice rather than traditional controllers.

2025

30. Roborock Saros Z70

Robot vacuums have become very clever over the years, but Roborock took things to another level with the Saros Z70. Unveiled at CES 2025, it introduced a five-axis robotic arm called OmniGrip, which can identify and pick up small objects such as socks, tissues and slippers before cleaning the areas underneath. It essentially tackles one of the biggest annoyances of owning a robot vacuum – having to tidy the floor before letting it get to work.

This year

31. Apple iPhone Duo

It would be remiss of us to leave out 2026, particularly when you consider some of the incredible products launched this year – but there's one that really steals the show. Apple finally entered the foldable phone market with the iPhone Duo, marking one of the biggest design shifts in the iPhone's history. It features a 7.6-inch inner display that opens up to offer a more tablet-like experience, alongside a smaller 5.4-inch screen for everyday use when folded. With a precision-engineered titanium hinge and Apple's A20 Pro chip, it combines the portability of an iPhone with the versatility of a much larger display. And judging by its popularity, it's already making quite an impression.

As we all emerged from our underground bunkers, blinking into the sunlight and contemplating a return to the dark ages, it dawned on us that we would never again be able to bank online, illegally download Radiohead's latest track, or book a cheap EasyJet flight to Magaluf. The Millennium Bug had bitten, and the world had descended into chaos.

Or in fact, it hadn't. It turned out that the timely computer error that was to plunge us back into medieval times was in fact thwarted by a lot of hard work from IT departments everywhere. Phew.

The 2000s then became tech's greatest decade. The continued rise of Apple, the emergence of Netflix, and perhaps most importantly, the birth of broadband changed the world and our daily lives. We were given smartphones, high-resolution video, and proliferation of choice, as the tech firms grew to be the giants they are today.

So, join us as we look back at the noughties, and especially at the tech masterpieces the decade unleashed, with fond recollection. These devices are the forefathers of the ones you own today, and who knows, maybe one or two of them are still in use.

XBOX 360 (2005)

While PlayStation gets the lion's share of plaudits for the last three decades of console gaming, it was the Xbox 360 that ruled the '00s. Having been released a year before the PS3, it gained a foothold in the market that would take years to match. It also had the best exclusive games, such as some of the greatest entries in the Halo series and Forza Motorsport – and bar the Red Ring of Death, it was also the better hardware option.

Launch price: from £209.99

APPLE iPOD (2001)

While MP3 players first appeared in the '90s, Apple's entrance into the market didn't just help define the category, it became synonymous with it. The original iPod started with 5GB of storage – a huge amount at the time and capable of storing over 1,000 music tracks transferred from your Mac (or, later, PC). A 10GB model soon followed, and multiple generations remained popular until smartphones came along to crash the party.

Launch price: around £400 ($399)

SAMSUNG BD-P1000 (2006)

Although Sony was the main driving force behind Blu-ray, the first commercially available player actually came from Samsung. The BD-P1000 was around £800 when it arrived and didn't even support 1080p (it was limited to 720p and 1080i), but it proved hugely successful amongst home cinema enthusiasts. There were only a handful of Blu-ray movies available at the time, but thankfully it was also compatible with DVDs.

Launch price: around £800

APPLE iPHONE (2007)

Where would we be without the launch of the iPhone? Although some mobile devices had already been dubbed smartphones, the original iPhone brought a multi-touch screen and apps to the sector – things that were truly revolutionary and unique until the HTC Dream was launched as the first Android phone a year later. Apple's iPhone 3G followed in 2008, embracing the new network standard at the time, and the rest is history.

Launch price: £269

MOTOROLA RAZR V3 (2004)

The most important and popular ‘smart' phone before the iPhone was the Motorola RAZR V3. A clamshell handset with external and internal displays, the third-gen RAZR sported a camera and decent web browsing – albeit in text form. Multiple V3 models followed, but they all seemed to suffer from the range's biggest Achilles heel – appalling battery life. Many owners ended up with separate chargers at work and at home, just to keep the phone operating all day.

Launch price: around £500

BLACKBERRY BOLD 9000 (2008)

While there were other BlackBerry phones in the early part of the 2000s, they were largely used as work phones. But that all changed when the Bold launched in 2008, which coincided with increased consumer interest in social media and messaging. Its QWERTY keyboard made it stand out from the iPhone, while the smaller form factor to previous BlackBerry models meant it became something of a fashion accessory, not just a phone.

Launch price: around £500

DYSON DC16 (2006)

James Dyson's British tech brand had produced many a vacuum cleaner before, but the Dyson DC16 is the one that altered the way many of us clean our homes today. That's because it was the first cordless Dyson cleaner, and although it was a handheld only – for upholstery and in-car use – elements of its design can still be seen in many a Dyson and rival alternatives today.

Launch price: £129

AMAZON KINDLE (2007)

Where would we be without a Kindle? Reading an actual book, probably. Still, e-paper has proved a wonderful display technology, and the Kindle brought it to the masses. Few ereaders have deviated from the initial concept: resolutions have improved, storage has grown, and we now get a backlight, but the original had a keyboard, which is something we could do with on more modern models.

Launch price: from £109

PLAYSTATION 2 (2000)

Even though DVDs had arrived in the '90s, it wasn't until 2000 and the release of the PS2 that they suddenly became the standard for home movie playback. Sony's console was not only a great games machine, it was also one of the most affordable DVD decks on the market and found its way into living rooms worldwide. That was great for Sony, but also the DVD industry, which took off in a big way soon after.

Launch price: £299

SANDISK MICROSD CARD (2004)

Without the microSD card, smartphones and cameras would likely have ended up having to use clumsy external storage, or larger internal storage that would have increased their bulk. SanDisk's first commercially available microSD card had a maximum capacity of just 128MB – it was designed for phone use, although you'd barely fit one image on it these days.

Launch price: around £90

TESLA ROADSTER (2008)

Being the first road-legal electric car to run on lithium-ion battery cells, the Tesla Roadster is arguably the most important sports car of the noughties. It was also the first electric car capable of travelling for over 200 miles on a single charge, and effectively put Tesla on the map. The Roadster styling was effectively retired just a few years later, but it can arguably be called the vehicle that changed the world – not least because it unleashed Elon Musk upon it.

Launch price: From $98,000 (around £73,000)

YAMAHA YSP-1 (2004)

The Sonos Arc of its day, the Yamaha YSP-1 was one of the first sound systems in a bar form factor. It contained no fewer than 42 digital amplifiers feeding individual speaker units, including two subwoofers, and as each speaker faced in a slightly different direction, it was capable of bouncing audio around a room. This gave the impression of cinema-style surround sound from a single unit, and set the blueprint for bars to come.

Launch price: £800

NINTENDO WII (2006)

As Xbox and PlayStation duked it out to be the console king, Nintendo swept in with arguably its most important games machine yet – and the public went bananas for it. The Wii was quite unlike anything before, with a focus on motion gaming and family play. It became Nintendo's most successful console to date, and the reason why many of us still have a Balance Board lurking at the back of a cupboard.

Launch price: £179.99

HOMECHOICE (2004)

Although its customers were limited to parts of London, HomeChoice deserves its place amongst the TV pioneers. That's because, like Freely today, it delivered the UK's major TV channels – plus the likes of Sky Sports and Movies – over the internet. And although the quality wasn't the best, it was groundbreaking at the time. It still exists as part of TalkTalk TV, having been bought and rebranded a couple of times.

Launch price: around £14.99 per month

ARCHOS AV320 (2003)

One of the very first portable media players capable of video, the Archos Jukebox Multimedia came with a whopping 20GB hard drive and 3.8-inch colour screen. It could play MPEG-4 files and would allow up to 40 hours of content to be available at the touch of a button. You had to supply your videos, but being able to watch your favourite movies and shows on the move was a revelation back then.

Launch price: £549.99

NINTENDO DS (2004)

Even though it could have continued to refresh its Game Boy family, Nintendo opted to shake up the handheld market with something totally different. Inspired by its own iconic Game & Watch electronic devices, the DS added a second screen and clamshell form factor, plus a touch display to interact with. It proved a masterstroke, with more than 150 million units sold across iterations across 10 years. And that's not even including the 3DS.

Launch price: £99

T-MOBILE SIDEKICK II (2005)

The first Sidekick to arrive in the UK, the T-Mobile Sidekick II featured a form factor quite unlike anything else on the market at the time. The central screen slid upwards to reveal a full keyboard, but you could keep it shut to use the device as a conventional phone. It was a chunky beast that barely fitted into a pocket, but funnily enough weighed less than an iPhone 17 Pro does today.

Launch price: £50 + £30 per month contract

VIRGIN MEDIA TV (2007)

Cable TV was already in operation in the mid-to-late '90s, from multiple providers. It wasn't until Virgin Media was formed through the merger of Telewest and NTL that a major rival to Sky really found its feet. Its main selling point was a TV service that didn't require a satellite dish, so could be delivered to buildings that didn't allow one. It was also the first provider to offer HD TV services in the UK (as Telewest).

Launch price: £40 per month for TV, phone, broadband and mobile

APPLE MACBOOK (2006)

It seems crazy to think that Apple's first MacBook didn't arrive until 2006, but before then the company had named its laptops PowerBook and iBook. The first 13-inch MacBook was seen as something new when it arrived in 2006, made from polycarbonate and fibreglass, and in a white finish. A MacBook Pro model also launched at around the same time with an aluminium build, something followed by just about every other device since.

Launch price: from around £750

SONY XEL-1 (2007)

The world's first OLED TV had a mere 11-inch screen with a 960 x 540 pixel resolution and a price ticket of an eye-watering $2,500 (around £2,000). It looked more like a portable monitor than television set, but did carry with it the boast of being the thinnest TV yet – measuring just 3mm thick. It was more a proof of concept than a full product (although you could actually buy one), but strangely Sony was slow to capitalise after, with rival LG being the first to get a larger OLED TVs to market.

Launch price: around £2,000

Greatest tech flops of the… '00s

HD DVD (Born 2006, died 2008)

While the likes of Sony and Panasonic were readying Blu-ray, Toshiba opted for its own HD format – HD DVD. It worked in a similar way, with the same size of disc, but players were not cross-compatible. HD DVD discs also offered lower capacity than their Blu-ray counterparts, with some movies requiring owners to swap discs halfway through. Very few companies supported it, Blu-ray had won, and HD DVD died just two years later.

Launch price: from £450 (for the Toshiba HD-E1 player)

ONLIVE (Born 2009, died 2012)

Without OnLive we likely wouldn't have Xbox Cloud Gaming or Nvidia GeForce Now today, and we definitely wouldn't have Sony's cloud gaming service as part of PS Plus. That's because the PlayStation maker bought OnLive's technology for its cloud gaming platform in the 2000s. It was revolutionary at the time, but the slow broadband speeds back then just couldn't handle the streams effectively, and latency was a real issue.

Launch price: £70 for the OnLive box

MYSPACE (Born 2003, died 2019)

MySpace was initially hugely successful, being the first social media network to reach a global base and attract more than 100 million daily users, but a number of failed acquisitions and relaunch plans saw it crumble. Things could have been so different had owner DeWolfe managed to buy Facebook in 2005, but it felt the $75 million fee was too much. And for that alone, it deserves to sit among the biggest flops of the period.

Launch price: free to use

Hello, High Definition and Netflix

The 2000s were great for entertainment, with a number of technologies arriving in the decade that would eventually change the landscape of TV and home viewing.

The advent of high-definition video also proved significant, and although it took a long time before the UK's broadcast services adopted it, both Virgin Media and Sky effectively helped sell new TVs to many thousands of Brits. Some of them even upgraded a second time when it became clear that Full HD (1080p) rather than HD (720p) would be the de facto standard.

Netflix launched its offshoot streaming service in the US in 2007, which was followed by LoveFilm with a similar concept for the UK in 2009. The latter was eventually bought by Amazon, and they set the tone for a flood of streaming services.

One British institution took a bit longer to embrace HD – the BBC: it wasn't until 2023 that local BBC News was finally broadcast in Full HD. Just in time for 4K to take off.

The rise of the social influencer

Social media now permeates all aspects of our lives, but in the 2000s it was an intriguing newcomer. Facebook arrived in the US in 2004, and the UK a couple of years later, but remained relatively small initially.

Indeed, it was MySpace that dominated through the early to mid-'00s, having been the first social network to reach a global audience. Many a band or celebrity would have remained largely unknown if it weren't for MySpace. It had a wide reach and provided a platform to share information and interactions with fans.

But perhaps the biggest social success story of the 2000s belongs to YouTube. Founded in 2005 but purchased by Google just a year later, it rapidly grew into an obsession for many. At the time it was all memes and cat videos, but the platform always had more potential, and today it is arguably as important as any traditional TV broadcaster. More viewers watch YouTube through a smart TV than on mobile.

There have been numerous reports claiming the PlayStation 6 has been delayed, maybe even beyond 2028, but a company executive said today that the next-gen console is still on track.

While not revealing a timeframe or specific details, Sony's chief financial officer, Lin Tao, told listeners during the company's latest earnings call that there will be "solid progress" made on the PS6 in the next financial year.

As reported by VGC, Tao said that the PlayStation brand will "continue to enhance user engagement and further strengthen monetisation through the release of strong titles and the expansion of our service.

"We also intend to make solid progress in preparing for the next-generation platform."

It will be investing in the new platform over the coming 12 months, but don't expect an official launch or announcement quite yet.

"For future growth, we have to attach great importance to a new platform and make the necessary investments for that. We have to support the soundness of our platform and think about how rationally we can invest in that platform," he added.

"We will announce that at an appropriate time in the future."

How much the PS6 will cost when it does arrive remains a bone of contention. It has been claimed that it could be over $1,000 considering the RAM and storage alone is estimated to cost more than $680.

In all fairness, the PS5 Pro is not far that, being priced at $899 in the US and £789 in the UK. That's after a price hike was imposed earlier this year, with the ongoing components crisis to blame.

It's not likely to go up again though, as Tao also revealed that Sony has now stockpiled enough components to continue production through 2027. And, according to a chat we had with a senior vice president at LG, we could see an end to RAMageddon by the end of next year.

Hopefully that will make the next-generation consoles – PS6 and Xbox's Project Helix – more reasonably priced by the time they come around. Although the price hikes don't seem to have affected Sony much – it's still sold close to 100 million PS5 units and stock has been hard to come by recently, not least to the release of GTA 6 on 19 November.

A truly iconic design isn't an easy thing to nail in the world of headphones, and it's also quite hard to test – you don't really know if it's iconic until years later. Apple's AirPods probably tick the box, but looking further back, I think it's fair to say that Sony managed the same with the MDR-3 back in 1979.

These foam-topped on-ear headphones are so closely associated with the early days of the Walkman lineup, and they've become pop culture icons thanks to their memorable colours (blue foam or orange being particularly eye-catching).

Now, in 2026, Sony's launching a revival of the headphones (just as some people guessed), named quite simply the MDR-3. It's keeping a huge amount the same, including almost every element of their design, but swapping them over to a USB-C jack and adding some other tricks.

For example, they now have a microphone for calls, and an inline remote control on their cable, which bundles in some controls to ensure they don't massively compromise on functionality compared to wireless options.

Like the original, they're hugely lightweight, coming in at just 38g, and made largely out of incredibly thin slices of aluminium. Looking at the actual on-ear sections, it's almost impossible to tell the difference between the old version and the new, not least because the box will come with both orange and blue pads for you to swap between as you like.

Sony's gone deep on the faithfulness to its original headphones, too, right down to the packaging. The headphones will come in a near-identical box, with even the insert instruction manual deliberately looking extremely similar.

Amusingly, given the fact that the MDR-3 featured heavily in a couple of seasons of Stranger Things, there will also be a limited edition version of the MDR-3R that features red and black foam cushions, a black headband, along with a little Stranger Things logo. It's a cute tie-in if you're a fan of the show.

Of course, wired headphones like these need to thread a pricing needle, and Sony's aiming for an interesting niche. They'll cost £49 or €59 for the standard version, while the Stranger Things edition will cost £59 or €69, both of which do feel appropriately entry-level.

They should be out this month, and seem like they're perfectly timed given that we're spending this week celebrating our 30th anniversary – retro tech couldn't be more apt. Sony also isn't the only one making wired headphones again; we just tried out Bose's new wired earbuds and found them pretty impressive.

The big news at Apple’s September event this year was the first folding iPhone, rather than the iPhone 18 Pro models. That’s not to say the Pros didn’t get a look-in. A couple of new colour options were introduced, including a lovely Burgundy; the Dynamic Island cutout at the top was reduced; and a mechanical variable aperture was added to the main lens.

On the surface though, apart from those colour changes, everything looked almost identical to last year's iPhone 17 Pro models.

However, it could be a different story next year. For the iPhone’s 10th anniversary, we got the iPhone X, which introduced Face ID for the first time, ditched the home button at the bottom of the screen, and marked a dramatic redesign. Next year marks the iPhone's 20th anniversary, so it’s no surprise that rumours have been circulating about what Apple might do to celebrate the next milestone.

We're expecting a major redesign, with some reports of a quad-curved display for a bezel-free finish. Early reports also mentioned no cut-outs on the display, suggesting the Dynamic Island might be dropped. But thankfully, the latter now sounds like it won’t happen after all.

What's expected for the iPhone 20 Pro?

As reported by 9to5Mac, Digital Chat Station has replied to a reader's comment on its previous Weibo post about the iPhone 18, iPhone 18e and iPhone Air 2, asking whether the iPhone 20 Max would have a hole-free screen.

The leaker confirmed the display would have holes, so it is assumed it will keep the Dynamic Island feature, as well as the standard front camera, rather than switching to an under-display camera.

The iPhone Duo has an under-display camera on its internal display, but it’s nowhere near as good as the one on the external display. It's really only good enough for video calling – and there's no Face ID on the Duo.

It's worth noting that nothing corroborates Digital Chat Station’s sources as yet, so don’t take this as gospel. But, with the Dynamic Island shrinking on the iPhone 18 Pro and Face ID expected to remain on the iPhone 20 Pro, we’re hoping the leaker is right.

Motorola just unveiled its newest flagship smartphone, and confirmed that it's going to cost just about as much as you might fear for a new top-end Android handset. £1,299.99 is quite a wedge, after all, but the Motorola Signature 27 doubtless won't be the last phone we see launch at this price in the months to come.

Motorola's giving the phone a flagship chipset to befit its pricing, too, with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 powering the whole thing, seated behind what will apparently be the brightest display in any smartphone (up to a ridiculous-sounding up to 12,000 nits of peak brightness).

That display is an Extreme AMOLED Duo one, which means you should get inky blacks and lovely vivid colours. It also has a battery that sounds about as good as you could hope for in a mainstream device right now (or one on sale in the West, at least). Its capacity is 7000mAh, which means it should have long-lasting power. That goes with 90W wired charging and 50W wireless charging (if you have a pad to support it).

Design-wise, it's a familiar look based on what Motorola has done in recent years, but with a camera bump that's now even more chunky and capable than ever before. Three big camera units comprise: a 50MP Sony LYTIA L910 main lens; a 200MP periscope telephoto option; and a 50MP ultrawide camera.

Next to them is what Motorola says is the "first-ever dedicated EVS action sensor on a smartphone". That sensor is aimed entirely at capturing fast-moving moments perfectly, and it should make for the crispest action shots yet.

From optical image stabilisation on the main camera to the ability to shoot video with Dolby Vision capabilities, there are plenty of impressive little features up the Signature 27's sleeve, too.

The phone will be available in dark green or dark grey, or "Pantone Coal Smoke" and "Pantone Capulet Olive" in Motorola's words. Impressively, it has the cumulative benefits of both IP68 and IP69 ratings, too, making it superb durability.

If all that sounds interesting to you, and you need an ultra-capable new Android phone, it goes up for pre-order on 16 November, in a couple of weeks – and, again, for the avoidance of doubt, will cost £1,299.99 to start.

When Apple first unveiled the new MacBook Pros with PROLED XDR Display, I was among the many people wondering whether a touchscreen was something I'd ever missed on my existing (and much loved) MacBook Pro.

Now that I've had a chance to use one for a decent chunk of time, I'm left conflicted, because Apple's nailed so much of the touchscreen experience, without necessarily solving that one core hesitation.

We'll have a full review of the touchscreen MacBook Pros soon, but for now I'm going off a hands-on event in London, where I was able to sit with the MacBook Pro for around 45 minutes in total and experiment with how its touchscreen feels to use.

The short version is that it feels pretty great, full of impressively designed touch interactions – but also with plenty of little hiccups that are probably keeping Apple grounded.

I've tested a huge heap of Windows laptops with touchscreens over the years, and the recent wave of Googlebook launches also all have the capability, and in every case I've found the same pattern. I'll swipe and tap a little in the setup process, because it can be easy to do so, but then once I'm in regular use I'll fall out of the habit and eventually barely use touch at all.

That's the big hurdle facing the touchscreen MacBook, and it can't really mitigate it. After all, how much you use the touchscreen is up to you. What it does do very well is replicate the gesture-based slickness that you get from a Mac's trackpad.

Swiping between desktops and around apps is really responsive and smooth, and that goes a long way towards making you want to do it more. Whether it's ever truly more efficient than using your pointer is a bit of a debate, though, and while some apps like Photoshop and Illustrator can show how brushwork benefits from your fingers, the absence of Apple Pencil support only looks weirder in their context (where it would be a further upgrade).

When people first got to touch these laptops at Apple's launch event, some clips surfaced of the way Apple has adapted its famously small window buttons (to close, minimise or maximise a window) to touch. Now, touching in that area expands the buttons to make them bigger, so you can select one with more precision.

It's a great example of an adaptation that's really neat, but also where the limits of touchscreen interaction bite. Even in a short while with the laptop, I found these buttons weren't always easy to select, or that I'd sometimes tap out of a window by being a couple of millimetres out (or I'd tap into a menu above it), all of which never happens using a mouse or trackpad.

What's more definitely positive is the actual screen's performance. It's a genuine beauty, the OLED panel bringing a depth and darkness to blacks that you can't really match elsewhere, and while the touch part might be an optional extra in my head, the basic screen upgrade is stunning.

The surprise that I hinted at in this piece's headline, though, didn't come from the screen or its touch capabilities. Rather, it was just how impactful the shaved-off weight that Apple has managed to achieve can be.

I brought my personal M3 MacBook Pro to the hands-on to compare it to, and hefting them both side-by-side, the loss of around 300g of weight between generations is really quite significant. On the one hand, you might not notice it explicitly when it's in a great EDC tech backpack, but everything adds up, and it makes a genuine difference.

Apple didn't necessarily shout that much about this change, beyond quickly highlighting it in the press release for the laptop's unveiling, but I think it's the single factor that I'd notice the most if I had it for a month or so.

That said, we should be getting our hands on the 2026 MacBook Pro very soon for a proper, detailed review, so stay tuned, and we'll see how it holds up to sustained testing, with touchscreen and all.

If you're lucky enough to own a KEF XIO then you already well know that you possess one of the best soundbars that money can buy.

But as is the trend of recent years, and much like Sonos did with its soundbars, KEF has just upgraded its soundbar with true surround sound options.

That's thanks to a new software update, which means the XIO can be paired with either the LSX II, LSX II LT or Coda W wireless speakers to act as true rear surrounds.

Wider product compatibility will arrive later down the line, too, with the LS50 Wireless II coming before the year is out, and the LS60 Wireless and LS Luxe joining from the first quarter of next year.

There's a bit of a catch, however, in that you will need to possess a KEF KW2 RX Receiver module – which is an extra cost to factor in. You can already tell what the XIO MkII will need built in from day one, eh?

We lauded the XIO as being the best single-box soundbar of last year. Perhaps not a surprise considering its lofty price – but it delivers the goods that make it worth buying.

Bass, in particular, is considerable yet well controlled, without needing an additional subwoofer – although you can, of course, add one of those too. Should you choose to, then you can revel in true 5.1.2 surround when also adding a rear speaker pair.

KEF says this upgrade will bring "true 360º spatial depth" for an even more immersive listening experience. Ideal if you already have a pair of compatible KEF speakers to throw into your home-cinema mix.

And if you don't then, well, get saving – because KEF's epic setup will surely be among the most credible (not to mention expensive) home surround setups to cater for larger TVs. Ideal for those Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Sony 360 Reality Audio sources.

As T3 turns 30, a milestone that very few tech brands can match, let alone tech magazines and websites, we're looking back on the seismic changes that have rippled through consumer tech in that span. It's fallen to me to summarise 30 years of wisdom from the many founders, CEOs, spokespeople and icons of the industry, and to pick out some memorable quotes that do justice to the time that's passed.

So, with the important caveat that this selection is arranged in no particular order, here are some quotes from the 30 years that T3's been in this world. They're the ones that ring true, that tell us something we didn't know, or that have wisdom we could all live by – and they're from a collection of people who know a thing or two about technology.

30 years of tech quotes

As I said, there's no real order to these quotes, but we're starting off with a good one, from someone who changed the face of design in tech.

Jony Ive's design work with Apple needs basically no introduction. He changed how consumers look at broad swathes of tech, from tablets to laptops, and some of his designs are still nearly untouched years and years later (I'm looking at you, Apple Watch).

So, when he talks about what makes tech potent for people, it's worth pricking up your ears. This famous quote about hiding some of the workings behind a curtain might explain some of why Apple's ecosystem thrived in opposition to Windows and the world of PCs. It nails an answer to why people love tech, accurately gauging that people sometimes love not knowing how something works.

As predictions go, this one looks pretty nailed-on, given that Hastings, one of Netflix's co-founders, was making it in 2009. Netflix at that point was years away from even making its first original programming and was instead purely a distributor, but the growth of streaming was already starting to gather steam.

Hastings was right, and now we live in a post-Netflix world. It's one in which it's inconceivable to imagine a TV launching without the app built in, and with a generation of viewers who can't imagine living without a streaming subscription. Price hikes might be threatening the established order, but this still looks like one of the more accurate bullish statements you could find.

Tim Cook's time in charge of Apple was marked by a supreme strategic vision – taking power away from its suppliers and developing its own supply chain. Now that system is operational, and Apple has a nimbleness that few rivals can match, fuelled by its own silicon and chips.

Cook's astute approach to marketing Apple's devices was evident throughout his tenure, but this quote is a particularly apt one. It points out how value can be subjective, depending on what people need from a product and what it offers compared to the competition.

In a year when Apple's phones have become more expensive than ever before, it's a maxim that will be tested to its limits, although Cook himself has ridden off into the sunset.

Carl Pei knows a thing or two about the world of tech, having helped to build OnePlus into what was a genuinely insurgent presence in the phone market. Since then he's gone his own way, and now leads Nothing in London, where he's managed to make a significant splash thanks to some bold design choices.

This quote comes from a discussion of those design elements, and underlines that Nothing believes in functionality over aesthetics. That can be hard to believe when you look at some of its tech, but peel things back a little and you'll see that it has indeed committed to tactility and practicality.

Just look at the controls on the Nothing Headphone (1) – that's putting your money where your mouth is.

Gaming has grown at an enormous pace, along with the rest of the tech world, in the last 30 years, and there's perhaps no more famous quote from its pantheon of creators than this one, generally attributed to Nintendo's great Shigeru Miyamoto. Wrongly, it turns out – there's no actual provenance for the quote, and it's never been verified by the man himself.

The spirit behind it, though, is undeniable, and it's been proven right many times since it started to circulate in articles and essays. The games industry is prone to terrible releases, whether a title is rushed or just overpromises and underdelivers – and the lesson to take your time and do things right is one that tech brands have often struggled to learn.

On the flip side, though, you have this quote from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, one that he's happily confirmed is very much true. It posits that the most polished release in the world is probably one that could have been out in the world a little bit earlier, to capitalise on your momentum.

It's a great quote because it pushes back on the received wisdom that it's a bad thing to release an unfinished product. While it certainly can go badly for you, there are also plenty of examples of how a slightly rough first launch can still establish a huge market lead for a company, whether it's the battle royale mode in Fortnite or the first generation of Apple Watch.

Back to gaming, though, for a minute, to take a look at some words from one of the people who's most tangibly changed gaming in the last 30 years, and in particular during the last decade. The genius behind Dark Souls and, later, Elden Ring, Miyazaki's games are known for their brutally difficult approach to progression.

Well, how's the quote above for an unapologetic approach? In one quick response, he nullifies any possibility of relenting and confirms why he's wired this way in the first place. Why shouldn't games challenge us in the same way that normal life does, after all?

Bill Gates has seen it all when it comes to tech, and while he's long since slid away into a post-work life of endless wealth and dubious connections, he was the source of some surprisingly concise quotes in his Microsoft days.

This one, in particular, about the value of listening to criticism, surely contains a lesson that many of his peers and acolytes must have learned. While it can be tough to take a licking when you release a device, and nobody prefers hard feedback to positive reviews, often the criticisms are more useful.

After all, how can you know what needs to improve in a device or service without listening to the people who've used it and found it wanting?

They don't come much bigger than Steve Jobs when it comes to tech figures who loom large over the past 30 years in the industry. He left too soon, but Jobs helped to build up the company that arguably defines the last three decades: Apple.

In that time, he was prone to catchy turns of phrase, concise demonstrations, and a privately ruthless approach to development. This quote, from a commencement speech he gave to Stanford in 2005, is the shortest on my list, and feels like a good place to leave things.

It's a simple encouragement to the inventors and founders of tomorrow, to keep having ideas, making mistakes and building new things – and it's a quote that has clearly impressed generations since he spoke it.

The first issue of T3 magazine hit the newsstand on 3 September 1996. Independence Day was number one at the cinema then, as it had been for many weeks – and that was the only way to watch it, as the VHS release didn't happen until the next summer (that's Video Home System, or 'video' colloquially, for those who aren't old enough).

It was a different time; a slower time. But the pace of innovation has ramped up so significantly over the last three decades that I sometimes forget I've lived through such huge evolutions in home entertainment – and a shift in consumption habits, too.

Indeed, back in 1996 my 14-inch Philips cathode-ray tube (CRT) telly with integrated VHS player just about handled my ageing Sega Mega Drive and let me tune into 'the big four' UK channels. It was beyond fathomable that Ultra-HD resolution on flat-screen TVs would become the eventual norm – not that it happened overnight.

So strap in as we take a wander down memory lane, revisiting those pivotal moments in the home entertainment landscape that completely changed the idea of what a home cinema A/V setup could do – as covered by T3 at every step along the way.

1997: DVD

I'm sure you've still got a box of these knocking about somewhere in your home. The DVD – which stands for Digital Versatile Disc – was a major step in the digitalisation of movies, providing much greater quality.

But by 'greater', I don't mean 'great' by today's standards. The PAL system – that's Phase Alternating Line – as used in the UK and much of Europe (it's NTSC in the USA), delivered a maximum 720 × 576 resolution. A far cry from 'Full HD' since, or the now-standard 4K Ultra-HD.

Nonetheless, DVD was a huge success, despite some studios being a little slow off the mark – Independence Day, for example, didn't arrive in a PAL-format DVD until 2000, a full four years after its major box office success. Twister was the first release in the UK, arriving in June 1997.

I can understand some of the hesitance, mind. The first DVD player available (also in June 1997) was the Thomson DTH-1000U, which would have cost you £600 at the time of launch. Adjust that by inflation and that's over £1,400 in today's money – and we call the PlayStation 5 Pro expensive!

Far cheaper players eventually entered the market, of course, and disc production costs improved too. Gone were the days of 'flipper discs' – movies that had 'side A' and 'side B', as they couldn't fit into the format's capacity limitations, so you'd have to manually get up, eject it from the player to turn over, before continuing to watch.

1997: Dolby Digital 5.1 surround

DVD brought with it some other magic: surround sound. Dolby Digital 5.1 had been available in cinema from 1992, but the advent of the digital disc meant delivering a true surround track was part of DVD's bigger perks – albeit one that was rarely benefited by most users.

It helped to generate greater focus around the importance of sound for home playback, though, as most chunky CRT tellies of the time didn't have the greatest speakers – and very few people could afford to invest in a full separates system back then.

Indeed, in 1997 you'd need to buy something like the Yamaha DSP-A3090 ('DSP' meaning Digital Sound Processing) – but it'd have cost you £1,750 even then, which is over £4,000 in today's money! And that's without the actual speakers and subwoofer, meaning it was very much a true 'home cinema' install option.

1998: The first flat TVs

Speaking of high-priced items: the introduction of flat-screen TVs was no overnight shift by any means, despite the omnipresence of such designs today, as the early models cost a small fortune.

Philips launched a notable 42-inch flat panel in 1998, the Flat Panel, which was yours for a cool $15,000 – it was barely available in the UK except through some luxury channels and would have been well over £10,000 at the time. A little more than driving a mid-level Ford Fiesta Zetec off a forecourt would have cost you in that same year.

I recall a friend's dad owning a large plasma screen in the early 2000s, likely a Panasonic from memory, which still would have demanded a price in the several thousands. It wasn't until after 2005, when glass production had improved and costs shrunk, that panels began to become mainstream.

2005: Full HD TV

It's almost funny to think that many of those TVs costing into the multiple thousands weren't even 'Full HD' (1920 × 1080 resolution), with Sharp's LC-45GD1E being the first model to deliver that resolution to the public back in 2005.

That's when flat-screen TVs really took off, with sales surpassing CRT in 2006, and by 2010 it was almost implausible you could buy anything else. However, I do recall the confusing nature of 'Full HD' (i.e. 1080p) and 'HD Ready' (i.e. 720p) being a sticking point for some time.

No wonder that 2005 was declared "Year of HDTV". I don't think anything epitomises that better than Sony's iconic ad, 'Bouncy Balls', embedded above, in which 250,000 colourful bouncy balls were captured descending a hill in San Francisco. That put its Bravia brand all the more on the map.

2007: Blu-ray

Taking advantage of those more resolute TV panels, it took a new format to really step home cinema viewing up a notch. And that came, eventually, with Blu-ray. Not that it was an instant or obvious solution.

At that time, Toshiba's HD-DVD was a core competitor – and you can still find movies on that disc format, all published between 2006 to 2008, which was the full two years it existed – and I even recall some companies hedging their bets on which to support.

Indeed, at the IFA technology show in Berlin in 2007, I distinctly recall LG showcasing its dual HD-DVD-and-Blu-ray player, featuring two separate drives. Quite a rare bit of history – and I suspect there's little chance that many (any?) still exist.

However, Blu-ray ultimately won because Sony used the disc format in its PlayStation 3 games console. That opened the gates for both the movie and gaming industries, with access to high-capacity and high-resolution discs.

The Full HD (1920 × 1080) support was Blu-ray's biggest boon, of course, bringing home cinema visuals that hadn't been remotely possible before. But it wasn't only clarity – colour accuracy was a big difference, with many studios re-grading their movies before committing to the format.

2007: Netflix moves to streaming

Much as I've discussed the various physical formats, there was a much bigger movement going on in the background.

The lore of Blockbuster Video, the advance of DVD-by-mail from Netflix and Lovefilm (the latter which was eventually bought by Amazon to become Prime Video) – you didn't have to outright buy your movies in this era.

Netflix really stepped up that change in 2007, when it introduced its streaming service ('Watch Now'). That's what changed everything, though not immediately, as streaming became the dominant force in how people wanted to watch. Convenience had arrived.

2008: First OLED TV

Technological progression was also pushing new ground. Sony was the first to reveal its consumer OLED TV, the Sony XEL-1, which showed off Organic Light Emitting Diode's obvious advantages – that being true contrast, no light bleed and black levels that were of cinema projector quality.

It was the perfect format for the just-released Blu-ray, except in 2008 that first TV was a mere 11-inches and cost a staggering £3,489. I remember being at the launch event and feeling somewhere between awestruck and bamboozled. Yet here OLED continues to reign supreme for home-cinema enthusiasts.

It grew at pace, too, with LG the first to introduce a 55-inch OLED TV in 2012. Then bigger flat-screen displays were in greater demand, thanks to improved pricing. Having a massive panel in your living room – one that wasn't a separate 'home cinema' install that few to no-one possessed – became more normalised.

2012: Netflix's first exclusive changes the model

Just five years after Netflix introduced its streaming platform, it flipped the script again when its first exclusive commissioned series, Lilyhammer, debuted on the streamer.

That a largely Norwegian language show was its first almost defies belief, but I still fondly remember watching that show – it's hilarious; Steven Van Zandt is the perfect balance point for an international audience – and it set the foundations for yet more.

This was the turning point when traditional movie studios and production houses had to take note. Netflix's new power was as much a threat as it was potential opportunity to partner up, with many makers later going on to produce exclusive Netflix content.

2012: First 4K TV

While Full HD had only just about been accepted as the norm by this point, in around 2012, more technological shifts were incoming. Sony's XBR-84X900 was the first 4K resolution TV to launch, setting out the stall for the Ultra-HD format.

It was quite an extraordinary showcase: 84-inches in scale, 2160 × 3840 pixels of resolution, and with a £25,000 asking price to boot. This was not a TV for mere mortals, that was clear – but just like the Philips in 98 before it, Sony's luxury set put 4K in the spotlight. It was aspirational.

The 4K standard at smaller scales became more readily available, and within four years Ultra-HD panels had overtaken Full HD sales. It was a much quicker adoption than previous step-changes – and gave more reason for 4K UHD content to be created, too.

2014: Dolby Atmos surround sound at home

Dolby was doing a lot of work in the background, not only for visuals, but also in audio development. And Dolby Atmos was a game-changer that, initially, was looking to upsell cinemas – debuting with Disney-Pixar's Brave back in 2012.

The system went from using rigid channels – say, 5.1 or 7.1 – to an object-based system that could move many multiple sound sources through space and across many more speaker arrays in a way that hadn't been possible prior.

It coming to home systems has arguably been even more of a milestone, however, especially as its original multi-speaker requirements have been overtaken (on a volume of sales basis) by digital processing solutions, giving a psycho-acoustic surround presence to numerous current-day soundbars, for example.

If you'd bought into Atmos back in 2014, however, then Denon's AVR-X5200W audio-video receiver was the first to offer it – yours back then for a cool £1,300. That sort of setup will still deliver Atmos delightfully, but it's the all-in-one systems since, such as the Sonos Beam, that people are now more familiar with.

2014: HDR's beginnings

With an ever-accelerating pace in technological progress, 4K was bolstered by greater brightness options courtesy of new LED backlight technologies. But it was Dolby Vision that presented a mapped, metadata-driven way to best control this potential to the benefit of viewers – and that's what we call High Dynamic Range (or 'HDR').

While 8K floundered – Samsung showed off the first consumer set in 2012, but there's only so much benefit extra resolution can provide – the next evolution really came down to brightness, dynamic range, and colour volume. Even today that's where TV-makers are looking to eke out the extra point of difference compared to their peers.

HDR now has even more formats, too, with Samsung locked to its own royalty-free HDR10+ (and Advanced version), while Dolby continues to drive the volume, with Dolby Vision 2 the incoming standard.

2016: 4K Blu-ray

Here's the point at which physical media became secondary: because Netflix was already streaming House of Cards in 4K two years prior to the first 4K Blu-ray reaching the market.

I'm not saying that 4K streaming is better (because it categorically just isn't), rather that consumption habits had shifted by this point – and convenience had the upper hand for the majority. Pricing also remained reasonable at the time.

But while the streaming services were winning, true collectors were still thrilled by 4K Blu-ray's next-level standards. Huge disc sizes (up to 100GB these days) means minimal compression for the best possible visuals.

I suspect 4K Blu-ray will be phased out over time, as studios forego the production costs and opt to maintain control of where their content exists. I, however, will continue my monthly 4K Blu-ray Club purchase, continuing to explore the best in the home-cinema format for as long as possible.

2019 onward: Streaming wars

Part of the reason that physical media is likely to fall away comes down to the way content is made and distributed. Streaming services used to be minimal – Netflix and Amazon, really – which would then buy the rights to other studios' works and provide them for a permitted period of time.

Today, however, there's all-out war in the streaming world. In 2019 both Disney+ and Apple TV+ came to market. Since, in 2022, we had Paramount+ added, among others. Most recently, HBO Max has finally come to world markets, too.

That's great for consumer choice, in one sense. But it's also seen buying and selling of various franchises and IPs being housed in niche separate streamers. Not to mention less risk-taking in independent movies being made. And, don't forget, the unpredictable removal of content or cancellation of shows.

So what of the future? There's no doubt that streaming is the dominant force and will continue to be the de facto source. But cinema releases are also making a comeback, as people want to explore bolder formats (such as IMAX). And, let's not forget, a lot of home viewing is around social media, with the likes of YouTube not to be ignored.

While the exact outcome is not obvious, I'm sure it'll bring with it more technological advancement and innovation that will improve what and how we can watch. T3 has been immersed in all this for 30 years already – so here's to another three decades and all that brings (so long as it's not just an Independence Day prequel movie, alright?)!

When I look at my real-time page readership statistics here on T3, there's always one evergreen page that's bubbling along in the background – the best small phones.

Why? Well, because you can't really buy a modern, small phone anymore. Yet there's clearly demand for them – and one plucky upstart is looking to fix that.

Enough Phone, as it's called, is a 5.3-inch panel Android device that's designed to be "perfectly pocketable". It's also perfectly up to date, with a modern specification to keep it relevant in 2026 and beyond.

Under the hood there's the recent MediaTek Dimensity 7500 chipset (one step down from the top 9600 / Pro versions). That's paired with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage – so a little on the 'small' side, much like the phone itself.

The rear camera takes a leaf out of the Google Pixel 10a's book, with it designed to sit flush and not protrude from the rear. It's a 50-megapixel Sony IMX766 sensor, the kind you can expect to find in mid-level handsets – such as the Samsung Galaxy A line-up.

Battery capacity is scheduled to be between 3,500-4,000mAh, so smaller than you average, but befitting of a smaller-scale phone. It's also set to be user-replaceable, complying with incoming European standards.

While Android is the default operating system – with support until 2032, so a full 6-years of security and software updates – there's also compatibility with Sleke's OdysseyOS, designed to minimise your ongoing interactions with the device.

There's a bit of a catch, however, in that you can't just go out and buy an Enough Phone just yet. This is a crowdfunded project, via Kickstarter, with availability expected from April 2027.

Like the phone's small scale, the asking price is also pleasingly little, at $399 for the earliest backers. This increases through to $599 for the recommended on-sale price, as expected to be standard for a 2027 purchase.

Breaking into the phone business right now is a tough ask. With the exception of iPhone, the market has seen a significant dip this year, felt all the more due to consecutive year-on-year sales volume increases.

Arguably, however, that's because most phone-makers are playing rinse and repeat, offering annual upgrades to their product lines, but which actually deliver relatively little that's new in terms of the product. The Enough Phone has an obvious unique selling point – its small size.

• Check out the Enough Phone campaign on Kickstarter

Nothing might not have released a new flagship phone this year but it's hardly been standing still. We've had several new mid-range handsets, earbuds and over-ear headphones, and it's even entered a new category with Bluetooth speakers from its budget brand CMF.

Indeed, CMF has even been separated from the main company and relocated to India to help them both focus more on their respective consumers.

However, it looks like the year's business won't end there. Nothing CEO and co-founder Carl Pei has revealed that there are plans for another new product, one that's "coming soon". What's more, it's not something the brand has ever attempted before.

Alongside an essay on how AI will change technology for the good, Pei has revealed an "AI-native" product that ships in December. Well, we say revealed, but this is Nothing remember... we've got a trademark tease before anything is really unveiled.

He describes the new device as a "tool" with "no new screen". He also claims it "couldn't have been an app".

Are we getting a Nothing AI pin?

Considering the essay, his words and the picture that accompanies it, we suspect we're looking at a Nothing AI pin – the sort of thing Meta recently revealed at its developer conference.

Even if not a pin, it will surely be a wearable – something that listens to your conversations, meetings and daily life to summarise them for you to easily digest later. Maybe it works as an assistant too – a sort-of smart glasses voice without the smart glasses.

Indeed, Nothing was recently linked with planning its own smart glasses, so maybe this is a trial run. It could test the water to see if there's demand for an AI helper before forcing it onto people's faces.

Either way, considering the regularity of the brand's online teases, we'll likely soon find out more. And we'll bring you all the news when we do.

I’ve always been a big fan of IKEA when it comes to smart home tech. It's one of the brands I recommend most often, particularly if you're looking to build a smart home without spending a fortune.

I last covered IKEA's smart home lineup last in September, but there's been plenty of change since then. The retailer has continued to expand its offering, whilst also discontinuing a number of older products, meaning the range looks quite different now.

So, I thought it was time to take another look at what's available and put together an updated guide, and you'll find each suggestion below.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced a tech upgrade to its Bluetooth LE wireless standard that could be of great benefit to fans of lossless audio. The Bluetooth High Data Throughput (HDT) technology could also improve smart devices, such as smartwatches, smart glasses and even smart home products.

It essentially increases the maximum supported bit rate in Bluetooth LE to 7.5 Mbps – almost four times higher than previously. This means more data can be shifted wirelessly in the same timeframe, giving manufacturers more scope for connectivity.

High-Res Audio is one area that could see significant improvement. While some Bluetooth standards support lossless audio transmission (or near lossless), Bluetooth LE is designed to use lower energy and therefore limited to the transmission of lower resolution streams.

But by increasing the data throughput while retaining the lower energy capabilities, the new standard will be more capable of delivering much more information.

The first flagship audio devices to support the new Bluetooth HDT tech will start to appear next year.

Other Bluetooth HDT devices

Additional uses could come from smart devices, with multiple use cases highlighted by Nordic Semiconductor's Øyvind Strøm: "By making it significantly faster to move large amounts of data, Bluetooth High Data Throughput creates new possibilities for Bluetooth applications," he said in a statement.

"Imagine a smartwatch that syncs hours’ worth of sensor-rich training data to your phone in seconds, smart glasses that deliver richer AI experiences by offloading data for processing, or a smart home product that completes a firmware update with virtually no user-visible downtime."

Again, we'll have to wait for new products to support it, but this could be the breakthrough Bluetooth needs to become a general, always connected wireless standard for our daily tech. It might even take some of the strain away from our home Wi-Fi networks.

The Samsung Galaxy S27 series could confuse buyers with a report suggesting that three different chips will be used to power the devices. That could point to wildly different performance between each phone.

The change comes with the expansion of phones offered under the Galaxy S27 banner. We're expecting to see the Galaxy S27, Galaxy S27 Plus, Galaxy S27 Pro and the Galaxy S27 Ultra.

We've previously we've seen all the models in the family using the same chip – as was the case for the Galaxy S25, where all the models used the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy.

Now, according to a report compiled by Notebookcheck, we learn that Samsung could be using up to three separate chips in the one range, drawing on its own Exynos hardware as well as Snapdragon CPUs. The details reportedly come from a Customs database, outlining the following distribution of hardware:

• Samsung Galaxy S27 - Exynos 2700
• Samsung Galaxy S27 Plus - Exynos 2700
• Samsung Galaxy S27 Pro - Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6
• Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra - Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6

At first glance, this suggests that even though the Pro is lining up as a compact flagship, it won't quite have the same performance as the Ultra. The Extreme version of Qualcomm's latest chip has a more powerful GPU and NPU, while also offering more video codecs and the latest connectivity standards.

At the same time, the use of the Elite Gen 6 in the Pro might help Samsung keep the price in check and allow for greater distinction between the Pro and the Ultra.

The story doesn't end there, because the division between Exynos and Snapdragon is nothing new: for years, Samsung has used Snapdragon hardware in China and the US, while the rest of the world gets Exynos.

The US market might benefit most

That could also be what we're looking at here. There's every chance that when the Galaxy S27 launches in the US, it will have a Snapdragon chip, rather than Exynos.

That would make the line-up more coherent: having Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 in the S27, S27 Plus and S27 Pro would make the Ultra really stand out as the super flagship device with its Extreme chip.

That would mean that the Pro's biggest advantage would be offering the same camera as the Ultra, but in a package that won't quite offer the same performance.

Over the past decade we've seen Samsung switch back and forth with Exynos and Snapdragon hardware, we've seen rumours about global Exynos or Snapdragon use which haven't turned out to be true.

If the past is anything to go by, this is just the start of the rumour dance as we try to figure out exactly what will power Samsung's next generation of phones.

Users of Android TV devices have reported a change in behaviour when using their remote. People are coming forward to say that the function of the Home button seems to have changed – without any prior warning.

In the past, pressing the Home button would take you back to the home screen and to the row of familiar apps. It served as a quick way to get back to what you use most.

Now, it appears that some users are finding themselves taken to the Home option on the top menu instead, requiring more navigation to get back to what you actually want to do. It's a subtle change, but unexpected. As such, it's caught Android TV users off guard.

What's interesting about this change is that it's inconsistent, with reports suggesting that it's affecting Nvidia Shield TV users according to a thread on Reddit, although it is in the Shield TV subreddit.

Elsewhere, Android Authority has reported similar behaviour on a Xgimi Aura projector, although this appears to be Google TV rather than the older Android TV. The site goes on to report that TCL TV they tested wasn't showing this behaviour, instead jumping to the row of favourites instead.

That presents itself as something of a conundrum for users as there doesn't seem to be any way to undo it. The recommendation from those affected is to uninstall Android TV Home updates, but the user recommending this subsequently reported that it reverted back a couple of days later.

Instead, there's the suggestion that it is something to do with personalised adverts.

So this is a bit of a strange one, but it seems to be limited so far. And given the number of Android and Google TV devices out there, some might find that their Home button on the remote changes and some might not.

Changes to Google TV (which is what most users have) don't come along to often. We've seen the addition of Google TV Freeplay this year and previously greater integration of Google Photos to help you create slideshows, with Nano Banana allowing custom image creation.

This strange change might just be a blip for some users - only time will tell.

Apple has been busy over the last couple of weeks. The company didn’t just put its first folding phone on sale, it also announced its first smart display in the HomeView, updated the iPad mini with an OLED display, and, wait for it, added OLED to the MacBook for the first time too.

The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display (yes, not a name that particularly rolls off the tongue) also incorporates touch for the first time on Mac, so it’s fair to say it’s been a few weeks of plenty of firsts. The latest MacBook also comes with a new screensaver, as we all expected.

And you don't even need the new model to get it.

It's just a wallpaper, isn't it? No, it is not

Now, Apple screensavers are good fun. They aren’t just pretty colours and shapes – most of them spell out the name of the product they’re on. You’ll see the word “mini” on the iPad mini wallpaper, for example, “Air” on the iPad Air, “Pro” on the iPhone Pro models, iPad Pro and the MacBook Pro, and Neo on the MacBook Neo.

A bit like Magic Eye, you might not spot it at first, but as soon as you see it, you won’t unsee it.

For the latest MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, the new wallpaper features a series of bright lines spelling out Pro, and there’s good news for anyone who likes it but doesn’t have a spare £2899/$2899 to buy the new model. As spotted by 9to5Mac, the latest beta of macOS 27.3 – beta 3 – includes a screensaver option that is an animated version of that wallpaper.

It’s called Pro Light, and it features the Pro lettering with the same lines as the wallpaper on the latest model.

For the screensaver, light moves slowly across, highlighting different parts of the letters while the others fade into the background.

And if you don’t want to wait for macOS 27.3 to come out, 9to5Mac has a high-resolution image of the wallpaper you can download to your current Mac to keep you going.

There you go, a MacBook Pro upgrade that won't cost the Earth.

There aren't many big-name games coming to Xbox Game Pass in the first half of November, with Football Manager 27 Console being the standout for day one releases. However, the list is still packed with juicy morsels – mainly indies.

One of them just so happens to be a game I'm hooked on too, with many hours plunged into it over the last year, on both my Lenovo Legion Go S and various Android gaming handhelds.

Thronefall is an excellent and highly addictive strategy / tower defence game with a stunning art style and clever, level-based progression. And it's finally launching for Xbox Series X and Series S on 11 November. It'll debut on Xbox Game Pass for Premium, Ultimate and PC Game Pass members the same day.

You play as a tiny king who must build up his castle's defences and control troops to repel invaders. After each enemy wave, you can use collected coins to improve structures and build new ones, then you go again.

It's like a simplified Warcraft, although later levels do get rather fiendish.

The main campaign takes around eight or so hours to complete, but there's plenty of extra content and optional objectives you can aim for, so you can sink scores of hours into it. I know I have.

Other November Xbox Game Pass additions

The aforementioned Football Manager 27 Console will arrive on the platform on 10 November, for Ultimate members – PC Game Pass subscribers get the full FM 27. And Warhammer Survivors (based on Vampire Survivors) will also be added the same day.

Speaking of Vampire Survivors, the roguelite deck builder sequel (of sorts), Vampire Crawlers, is available to Premium members from today, having already been added for Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

Void/Breaker has arrived today – 4 November – too.

We'll soon also get Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School, Firefighting Simulator: Ignite, and MySims Cozy Bundle on 5 November. Tanuki: Pon's Summer on 10 November. Hope in the City on 11 November. John Carpenter's Toxic Commando on 12 November, plus Aphelion, and Paw Patrol: Dino World on 17 November.

The rest of November's Xbox Game Pass releases will be announced in a couple of weeks' time.