Tag: tech

My Arcade unveiled three Gamestation Retro products at CES 2025, and people can use them to play classic Capcom and Bandai Namco games like 1942 and Pac-Man.

Superstitious about the number 13? The wonderful OnePlus 13 will put your mind at rest, as it’ll make you feel very lucky to own it.

Krafton is using Nvidia Ace technology to implement AI-driven co-playable characters, or CPCs, into PUBG and inZOI.

Lenovo has announced three new Android tablets at CES 2025, and one of them looks like it could be a prime iPad Air competitor.

I lived in New York City for many years and absolutely loved it, with one major caveat. Packages got stolen, like a lot. This was especially frustrating for a tech reporter waiting on review gadgets and the like. Hyve Security is looking to solve this problem with its self-named smart lockbox, which it brought to CES 2025 in Las Vegas.

The Hyve is being advertised as “the first branded smart lockbox” and can be secured to the front of a house or apartment via a quarter-inch carbon fiber tether. Carbon fiber is notoriously difficult to cut, so that’s one security measure.

The lockbox also ships with an accelerometer and a “shrieking” alarm that will go off if the device is moved or tampered with. The box’s owner will receive an alert in this instance. Neighbors, friends and family will also receive alerts if they opt-in to the community service. The Hyve app will integrate with many current smart home security systems for even more protection.

Hyve Security

It’s weather-proof, which is handy for something that will likely be housed outside, and includes a photo window for drivers to snap a picture of the package nestled safely inside the pod. This is also useful for retailers, as they can be relatively certain that a package was successfully delivered to its intended owner. The app can even be used to send out pings to nearby delivery trucks in the case of a pending return.

It operates via a combination of battery and solar power. The company claims it can run for 18 months without requiring a charge.

The obvious use case here is to prevent porch-based theft, which is great. However, Hyve Security says that wide adoption of these lockboxes can eventually allow retailers to ship items without so much wasteful packaging. The Hyve costs $300 and officially goes on sale in June.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/the-hyve-package-security-box-should-protect-deliveries-from-dreaded-porch-pirates-170016213.html?src=rss

I’m not a fan of those TVs sold in picture frame surrounds that companies tell you are good for displaying art in your homes. There’s something unconvincing about using a powered, backlit screen for things you’re meant to stare at for quite a while. Can you really appreciate Turner’s Norham Castle Sunrise if you’re struggling with eyestrain after five minutes or so? Perhaps the cure for my dourness is to be found in PocketBook’s new device, InkPoster. It uses a big, color e-paper display to do the same job, giving your eyes a better chance of seeing the brush strokes up close and personal.

InkPoster is a series of color e-paper displays equipped with battery packs that can be hung in your home for up to a year on a single charge. There’s no power cable, and it can be mounted in portrait or landscape orientation, depending on your taste. You’ll be able to access a library of curated art, put together by a team of “professional art consultants” and select what you want to see inside the InkPoster companion app. You’ll also be able to use it as a regular old digital photo frame, ideal for when you want to pull a masterpiece from online and display that instead.

There are three display sizes based on two different technologies, Spectra 6 and Sharp’s IGZO. The former is found in the 13.3-inch model with a 1,200 x 1,600 resolution, which packs a 14,000mAh battery pack. There’s a 28.5-inch edition with a 2,160 x 3,060 display which uses a hybrid of both display technologies. Finally, there’s a 31.5-inch model with a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution that uses Spectra 6 and is designed to be a real focal point in your home. The two larger models both pack a 20,000mAh battery, with the same promise of a year or so of running.

PocketBook hasn’t mentioned pricing yet for either the hardware or how much it’ll cost to access its catalog of artwork, not to mention any sort of timeframe for when you’ll be able to hang this on your wall.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/inkposter-uses-an-e-paper-display-to-bring-art-to-your-home-170016899.html?src=rss

CES 2025 is here, and that means a whole fleet of new gadgets has been introduced to the world. As we do annually, the Engadget team has battled jet lag, sleep deprivation and the static shocks of those horrible casino carpets to bring you all of the most pressing news coming out of the show this year.

You can follow along with our CES liveblog here, but if you don’t want to keep a browser tab locked on the site, here’s a handy recap for you. Below may not be everything we covered, but it’s a rundown of the biggest, most important and generally interesting news coming out of the first day of the show.

There was a strong showing from the biggest names in the PC space, with Intel showing off its latest crop of Arrow Lake chips. These are AI and gaming-friendly slices of silicon that should pop up in PCs and laptops from major manufacturers in the next three months.

Speaking of which, Dell turned up to the show to announce it was killing off the bulk of its brands in favor of copying Apple’s naming strategy. Rather than XPS, Inspiron and Latitude, you’ll have Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Max — which in Sam and Devindra’s minds, is a massive unforced error.

On AMD’s side of the chip war, it announced the new Ryzen Z2, which will power the next crop of gaming handhelds. The rumor mill was suggesting the Z2 would sit at the heart of Valve’s next Steam Deck, which Valve moved quickly to kibosh.

But on the subject of handhelds, Acer wanted to show off its supersized Steam Deck rival, the Nitro Blaze 11. As the name implies, it’s packing an 11-inch display, kickstand and detachable controllers, like a Switch that got out of its cage and found your secret stash of human growth hormone.  

Samsung rocked up at the show to flaunt the Galaxy Book5 Pro with Intel’s new Arrow Lake chips. But its real focus was on its new range of home entertainment gear, including its new soundbars and 8K Neo QLED screens, which is also what you’ll find inside its new Frame Pro TVs.

CES isn’t a mobile-friendly show, but Samsung did announce that its first Unpacked keynote of 2025 will drop on January 22. But, psh, whatever: The real Samsung mobile device news we are about is that its ball-shaped robot, Ballie, will go on sale later this year.

On the subject of things scuttling around your floors, plenty of companies are trying to find a way to make their robovacs stand out. Dreame’s X50 can avoid getting stuck on tricky door thresholds since it can vault obstacles as tall as… 6cm, via its “ProLeap System.” Given most robovacs can run aground on a threshold between one room and another, it’s a useful feature.

Roborock’s Saros Z70, meanwhile, has a little robotic arm in its lid that can pick up and move small objects found in its way. As a parent whose kids have some sort of obsession with leaving their socks in obtuse places, I already want one.

Speaking of things I want, despite my longstanding hatred of AI, I’m quite partial to the idea of Halliday’s AI Glasses. They’re designed to help you navigate life, proactively answering your questions, helping you remember key information and generally giving your tired brain a rest.

Yukai Engineering is also looking to tend to your tired brain, with its Mirumi robot designed to make you smile. The theory being if you’re feeling low, it’ll stare at you until you have a brief moment of bemused joy that’ll kick you out of your funk.

It wouldn’t be CES without an appearance by will.i.am, who LG recently appointed as its new Chief Being will.i.am Officer. The company was showing off its new TVs and soundbars, as well as its new will.i.am-infused xboom speakers with built-in boom, boom and pow.

Moving onto the bodily fluids part of our presentation: two different companies turned up to Las Vegas with saliva-testing gadgets asking consumers to spit on that thing to monitor their stress. cortiSense and Hormometer are two products that’ll monitor the cortisol (the “stress hormone”) levels in your saliva.

Day one rounded out with press conferences from a couple of heavy hitters: Sony and NVIDIA. Sony showed off very little in the way of consumer electronics, instead giving us a (eye-wateringly expensive) price for the car it’s making with Honda and then talking about broadcast stuff for an hour. Hey, at least we have a date for The Last of Us season two. As for NVIDIA, CEO Jensen Huang talked about AI for 30 minutes, then announced some (eye-wateringly expensive) new GPUs, then talked for AI for about 30 minutes. Thrilling stuff! 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/all-the-tech-announced-on-day-one-of-ces-2025-050018783.html?src=rss

Peacock will start testing mini games and short-form vertical videos on its iOS and Android apps, per TechCrunch. These experimental features were available for preview at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. The company intends to start testing them with users this month.

A Peacock spokesperson told TechCrunch that during the testing period, some users will see the games and shorts, while others only see one or the other. The remainder won’t be able to play games or watch shorts.

There are five planned games for the test: Daily Sort, Daily Swap, Predictions, What The, and Venn. These games are simple and don’t take up too much time, and some are even tied to various shows and sports. Players can predict outcomes of a series and come back later to see if they were correct, enhancing their streaming experience.

As for the shorts, they’re curated from content from Peacock’s library. They can be from TV shows or news and will be updated weekly and daily. Users can even tap on them to enter the program’s page and watch the real thing.

Both YouTube and Netflix opted to compete with TikTok quickly, and YouTube especially has more than 100 games. Netflix doesn’t have that many, but a Squid Game spinoff game did arrive on the app last month. Peacock may be competing against giants, but the possible TikTok ban does give it a better fighting chance.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/peacock-is-testing-mini-games-and-vertical-short-videos-164012685.html?src=rss