The last year has been big for Google’s AI efforts. Its rapid-fire model releases have brought it to parity with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic and, in some cases, pushed it into the lead. The Nano Banana image generator was emblematic of that trend when it debuted last year, and subsequent updates only made it better. Now, Google has announced yet another update to its image model with Nano…

It’s hard to overstate the role that Wi-Fi plays in virtually every facet of life. The organization that shepherds the wireless protocol says that more than 48 billion Wi-Fi-enabled devices have shipped since it debuted in the late 1990s. One estimate pegs the number of individual users at 6 billion, roughly 70 percent of the world’s population. Despite the dependence and the immeasurable amount of sensitive data flowing through Wi-Fi…

There used to be countless companies making flagship Android phones, but a combination of factors has narrowed the field over time. Today, Samsung is the undisputed king of the Android device ecosystem with its Galaxy S line. So we can safely assume today’s Unpacked has revealed the most popular Android phones for the next year—the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Galaxy S26+, and Galaxy S26. Samsung didn’t swing for the fences this…

In an illustration of the severity of the current memory shortage, HP Inc. CFO Karen Parkhill said that RAM has gone from accounting for “roughly 15 percent to 18 percent” of HP PCs’ bill of materials in its fiscal Q4 2025 to “roughly 35 percent” for the rest of the year. Parkhill was speaking during HP’s Q1 2026 earnings call, where the company said it expects the total addressable market…

Paramount Skydance increased its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) from $30 per share to $31 per share, WBD said today. Amid a competing offer from Netflix for WBD’s movie studios and streaming businesses, WBD said that Paramount’s new bid “could reasonably be expected to lead to a ‘Company Superior Proposal.’” Under its revamped offer, Paramount would also pay the $7 billion regulatory termination fee that would arise should a…

DJI, the most popular consumer drone maker, is suing over the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s import ban against new, foreign-made drones, which has been in effect since December 23, 2025. On Tuesday, the Shenzhen-headquartered company filed a petition [PDF] with the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that seeks to overturn the FCC’s decision to list DJI on its Covered List. The Covered List includes communications equipment and…

Panasonic, once revered for its plasma TVs, is giving up on making its own TV sets. Today, it announced that Chinese company Skyworth will take over manufacturing, marketing, and selling Panasonic-branded TVs. Skyworth is a Shenzhen-headquartered TV brand. The company claims to be “a top three global provider of the Android TV platform.” In July, research firm Omdia reported that Skyworth was one of the top-five TV brands by sales…

Meta announced today that it will divorce its Horizon Worlds social and gaming service—once promoted as the company’s first major step into the metaverse—from its Quest VR headset platform and digital store. The company says it is now “shifting the focus of Worlds to be almost exclusively mobile.” The announcement is also filled with statements like “we’re doubling down on the VR developer ecosystem” that are attempting to head off…

There’s something special about the gadget that “just works.” Technology can open opportunities for those devices but also complicate and weigh down products that have done just fine without things like sensors and software. So when a product like the beloved Rubik’s Cube gets stuffed with wires, processors, and rechargeable batteries, there’s demand for it to be not just on par with the original—but markedly better. The Cubios Rubik’s WOWCube…

This week, Apple released the first developer betas for iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, macOS 26.4, and its other operating systems. On Tuesday, it followed those up with public beta versions of the same updates. Usually released around the midpoint between one major iOS release and the next, the *.4 updates to its operating system usually include a significant batch of new features and other refinements, and if the first beta…