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Xiaomi, the world’s third largest smartphone maker, today unveiled “ Mi Air Charge Technology ” that it says can deliver 5W power to multiple devices “within a radius of several metres” as the Chinese giant invited customers to a “true wireless charging era.” The company said it has self-developed an isolated charging pile that has five phase interference antennas built-in, which can “accurately detect the location of the smartphone.” A phase control array composed of 144 antennas transmits millimeter-wide waves directly to the phone through beamforming, the company said, adding that “in the near future” the system will also be able to work with smart watches, bracelets, and other wearable devices. A company spokesperson said Xiaomi, which has previously introduced 80W and 120W wireless charging tech, won’t be deploying this new system to consumer products this year. Here’s how the company has described the mechanics of its new tech: On the smartphone side, Xiaomi has also de

The impact of United States government sanctions on Huawei is continuing to hurt the company and dampen overall smartphone shipments in China, where it is largest smartphone vendor, according to a new report by Canalys . But Huawei’s decline also opens new opportunities for its main rivals, including Apple. Canalys says Apple’s performance in China during the fourth-quarter of 2020 was its best in years, thanks to the iPhone 11 and 12. Its full-year shipments returned to its 2018 levels, and it reached its highest quarterly shipments in China since the end of 2015, when the iPhone 6s was launched. Overall, smartphone shipments in China fell 11% to about 330 million units in 2020, with market recovery hindered by Huawei’s inability to ship new units. Even though demand in China for Huawei devices remains high, the company has struggled to cope with sanctions imposed by the U.S. government under the Trump administration that banned it from doing business with American companies and dra

Sony is making a play for the top end of the professional digital camera world, where videographers and sports photographers demand immaculate image quality at high resolutions in short order. The new Alpha 1 beats pretty much everything on the market on paper, but it’ll set you back a cool $6,500. This is, of course, well above the price range for ordinary consumers and even spendy enthusiasts and “prosumers.” It’s a professional tool, and in this range Canon has historically been the go-to with its 1D series, and more recently its R5, a full-frame mirrorless that leapfrogged the competition to great acclaim last year . But Sony clearly means to leapfrog the R5 in turn. The Canon R5 ticked all the right boxes: full frame sensor, 45 megapixels at 20 frames per second, an excellent EVF, in-body image stabilization, and 8K video. Sony ticks them all too… but harder. Image Credits: Sony The Alpha 1 will send down its 50 megapixel stills at 30 frames per second and with no viewfind

Tula is a new company founded with the specific purpose of developing user-friendly hardware and software for sound capture, and its debut product, the Tula Mic, is now shipping after a successful crowdfunding campaign last year. Tula Mic is both a USB-C microphone input for computers and mobile devices, and also a dedicated recorder that has built-in storage and its own battery that can provide up to 14 hours of continuous use. It’s a strong intro offering that fits a lot of user needs at an attractive price point. Basics The Tula Mic is small — it’s definitely best described as “hand-held,” taking up roughly the size and surface area of a deck of cards. The physical design includes microphone capsules up top, with control buttons running along either side, and a USB-C charging port in the middle of the back of the hardware. The top-left side also features a standard 3.5mm port, which can be used not only for headphones for monitoring and playback, but also for input for lavalier m

Dallas-based Nomad set out to take an age-old cooking method and modernize it – but not by introducing connected or smart features. Instead, the Nomad Grill & Smoker takes classic charcoal grilling and relies on clever industrial design to make it packable and portable, while making sure cooks of all expertise levels can make great-tasting food even if they’re cooking with charcoal for the first time. Basics Nomad’s grill looks like some kind of fancy protective case that you’d expect to see traveling with a film crew, crossed with maybe a modern Mac Pro. It has an anodized aluminum build that uses a unibody casting in manufacturing, with high external durability and internal heat retention. It measures roughly 2 feet by 2 foot, and is around 9.5 inches tall when closed, with a total weight of 28 lbs including the cast stainless steel grill grate that’s included int the basic package. 28 lbs may seem like a lot, but it’s remarkably light for the cook surface you get with Nomad,

As the global pandemic continues, having options for keeping active at home is increasingly top-of-mind. Treadly is a startup focused on building a home treadmill that’s compact and convenient, with smart connected features that boost engagement. The company recently released its second-generation product, and it’s super compact, with hardware improvements that boost the weight limit for users and add cooling benefits that extend workout times. Basics Treadly’s design is probably a lot smaller than you’re expecting – it’s just 3.7-inches tall for the base, and it weights just 77 lbs. The whole deck is just 56-inches long by 25-inches wide, and there’s a flip-down handle that you extend when you want to jog at a faster pace, while folding it away for strictly walking workouts. There’s a display built into the deck itself, offering a simple but easy to read black and white readout of key stats, including speed, total steps, time and distance. The handrail features manual controls, an

Apple is said to be working on a new version of the MacBook Air with a brand new physical case design that’s both thinner and lighter than its current offering, which was updated with Apple’s M1 chip late last year, per a new Bloomberg report . The plan is to release it as early as late 2021 or 2022, according to the report’s sources, and it will also include MagSafe charging (which is also said to be returning on Apple’s next MacBook Pro models sometime in 2021). MagSafe would offer power delivery and charging, while two USB 4 ports would provide data connectivity on the new MacBook Air. The display size will remain at its current 13-inch diagonal measurement, but Apple will reportedly realize smaller overall sizes by reducing the bevel that surrounds the screen’s edge, among other sizing changes. Apple has a plan to revamp its entire Mac lineup with its own Apple Silicon processors over the course of the next two years. It debuted its first Apple Silicon Macs, powered by its M1 chi

Meet the Raspberry Pi Pico , a tiny little microcontroller that lets you build hardware projects with some code running on the microcontroller. Even more interesting, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is using its own RP2040 chip, which means that the foundation is now making its own silicon. If you’re not familiar with microcontrollers, those devices let you control other parts or other devices. You might think that you can already do this kind of stuff with a regular Raspberry Pi . But microcontrollers are specifically designed to interact with other things. They’re cheap, they’re small and they draw very little power. You can start developing your project with a breadboard to avoid soldering. You can pair it with a small battery and it can run for weeks or even months. Unlike computers, microcontrollers don’t run traditional operating systems. Your code runs directly on the chip. Like other microcontrollers, the Raspberry Pi Pico has dozens of input and output pins on the sides of the

After two days locked up in an Italian prison, American Max Craddock was finally able to make his case to a judge. “It’s not a weapon of war,” his lawyer told the investigating magistrate . “It’s a toy they sell to children.” Craddock had been arrested in the Sardinian port city of Olbia in June 2018 after trying to board a private party bus with a collectible flamethrower from Elon Musk’s latest startup, The Boring Company . Craddock had painted his flamethrower black, and written on it the name of a floating music festival in the Bahamas he had attended the previous year while starring in reality TV show Unanchored . Alarmed by the sight of what he thought was a gun, the bus driver refused to drive off, and then called the police. Elon Musk’s Boring Co. flamethrower is real, $500 and up for pre-order “They were very chill at first,” Craddock told TechCrunch in a recent phone interview. “But as the night went on, it kept getting worse. I spent the first night in jail in Olb

Last CES was a time of reckoning for lidar companies , many of which were cratering due to a lack of demand from a (still) non-existent autonomous vehicle industry. The few that excelled did so by specializing , and this year the trend has pushed beyond lidar, with new sensing and imaging methods pushing to both compete with and complement the laser-based tech. Lidar pushed ahead of traditional cameras because it could do things they couldn’t — and now some companies are pushing to do the same with tech that’s a little less exotic. As autonomy stalls, lidar companies learn to adapt A good example of addressing the problem or perception by different means is Eye Net’s vehicle-to-x tracking platform . This is one of those techs that’s been talked about in the context of 5G (admittedly still somewhat exotic), which for all the hype really does enable short-distance, low-latency applications that could be life-savers. Eye Net provides collision warnings between vehicles equipped w

Apple has planned new upgraded MacBook Pros for launch “later this year” according to a new report from Bloomberg . These new models would come in both 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, with new and improved Apple Silicon processors like those that Apple debuted on the new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro model late last year. They would also see the return of Apple’s MagSafe charger, a magnetic dedicated charging port that would replace USB-C for power, and they could potentially do away with the Touch Bar, the small strip of OLED display built in to the keyboard on modern MacBook Pros. Bloomberg’s report suggests that these MacBook Pro models will have processors with more cores and better graphics capabilities than the existing M1 chips that power Apple’s current notebooks with in-house silicon, and that they’ll also have displays with brighter panels that offer higher contrast. Physically, they’ll resemble existing notebooks, according to the report’s sources, but they’ll see the retu

Philips Hue bulbs are pretty great, but they have a mortal enemy: the humble light switch. If you’ve got a Hue bulb tied to a standard light switch, flipping that switch means the Hue bulb loses power completely… along with any fancy tricks like controlling the bulb through your phone or a voice assistant. A few solutions for this exist, but mostly involve swapping out the switch in question for something with a bit more smarts. This morning Signify (the company previously known as Philips Lighting) announced an official solution that works with your existing switches, albeit with a caveat or two. Called the “wall switch module,” it’s expected to ship later this year — spring if you’re in Europe, or summer if you’re in North America. Once wired up, it turns your existing light switch into something more like a Hue controller, allowing it to toggle between different light presets rather than simply cutting power. At $40 each (or $70 for a two-pack), it’s… not cheap. Add in the fact

Parents with kids stuck learning at home during the pandemic have had to look for alternative activities to promote the hands-on learning experiences kids are missing out on due to attending class virtually. The New York-based educational technology startup Thimble aims to help address this problem by offering a subscription service for STEM-based projects that allow kids to make robotics, electronics and other tech using a combination of kits shipped to the home and live online instruction. Thimble began back in 2016 as Kickstarter project when it raised $300,000 in 45 days to develop its STEM-based robotics and programming kits. The next year, it then began selling its kits to schools, largely in New York, for use in the classroom or in after-school programs. Over the years that followed, Thimble scaled its customer base to include around 250 schools across New York, Pennsylvania, and California, who would buy the kits and gain access to teacher training. But the COVID-19 pandemic

Alongside its other announcements at Samsung’s event today, the company introduced its new Galaxy SmartTag Bluetooth locator, a lost item beacon for Samsung owners and a competitor with Tile. Like Tile and Apple’s forthcoming AirTags, the beacon can be attached to keys, a bag, a pet’s collar or anything else you want to track. Initially, these SmartTags will use Bluetooth to communicate with a nearby Samsung device, however, the company confirmed a ultra-wideband (UWB) powered version called the SmartTag+ will arrive later this year. The latter would allow the SmartTag to better compete with Apple’s AirTags, which are also expected to take advantage of newer iPhones’ UWB capabilities. Tile, in anticipation of this news, has already developed  a UWB tracker arriving later this year, as well. The SmartTag announced today, the Galaxy SmartTag11, will use Bluetooth and there is only one main SKU — not a range of products in different sizes or configurations. However, the tracker will be