If there’s one thing that sucks the fun out of darts, it’s the mandatory math you have to do in order to work out how well you’re doing. That’s the malady British manufacturer Target Darts, making its first trip to CES, is solving with its Omni automatic scoring system, saving your beer-drenched brain.
Omni is a halo that magnetically attaches to a compatible board, equipped with four 1080p cameras and an LED light strip. When you throw your darts, the system uses computer vision to identify where they ended up on the board.
From there, the scores will be represented on a nearby computer or tablet, and can even be output to a big TV in the vicinity. Even better, is that you won’t just have your score tracked, but you’ll hear a pre-recorded voice telling you how many points you need to score on your next throw, just as you see in a professional match.
Omni isn’t out just yet, but when it launches, players will be able to use it in conjunction with Target Darts' existing Virt camera. That’s a pair of webcams — one facing the board, one facing the player — that enables darts fans to play against real people online either with friends, or with similarly-ranked strangers.
Target Darts’ Omni scoring system will start shipping on January 31, and in the UK is priced at £449.95 (around $556). If you’d like to pick up a model in the US, you’ll have to find a reseller, a list of which is available on the company’s website.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/target-darts-is-bringing-tech-smarts-to-the-game-183015898.html?src=rss
Broadly speaking, there are two types of e-bikes: Ones with a motor in one of the wheels, and ones with the motor mounted between the pedals. Those in the former group, known as hub motors, are cheap and bountiful, but lack the oomph required to cover rough terrain and high inclines. Those in the latter group, known as mid-drive motors, have all the power, but are heavy on the wallet as well on your arms as you lug them around. Consequently, I’m excited by what Urtopia turned up with to CES 2025: Titanium Zero, a 3D-printed titanium concept e-bike weighing less than 20 pounds packing Quark DM1.2, a custom-designed mid-drive motor that’s small enough to fit inside the bottom bracket and weighs just 2.6 pounds on its own. By its own admission, it’s not as brawny as chonky mid-drive models from Bafang and Bosch, but it might be a perfect alternative for less extreme trails.
Of course, right now it’s just a concept device so we should keep the salt of reasonable skepticism in our left palm at all times. Even so, Urtopia’s Titanium Zero is plenty light enough in the hand, looking a lot more like a regular steel-framed three-speed bike than an e-bike. Hell, if it didn’t have the little controller visible on the crossbar, you could easily mistake this for an old-school racing bike, down to the drop handlebars.
Daniel Cooper for Engadget
And then there’s the aforementioned Quark DM1.2, which adds another layer of theoretical desirability onto the package. Urtopia says the tiny mid-drive motor can produce 65nm of max torque, which isn’t going to give any of the bigger names any nightmares; a Bafang M560 can output 130Nm. But it’s a rough rule of thumb that a regular rear hub motor can output around 40nm, so there’s a significant performance boost. It’s the sort of hardware I’m quite eager to test on the comically steep hills near to my home, just to see if the claims match the reality.
Sadly, the Titanium Zero and Quark DM1.2 aren’t ready for prime time, and so we’ll have to wait for now.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/i-want-urtopias-titanium-zero-concept-e-bike-174539195.html?src=rss
This isn’t just any retro-styled microphone, but an all-in-one tool for music creators looking to record vocals when on the go. It’s the creation of Hisong, a startup looking to build a more elegant alternative to toting around a microphone, mixer and headphones wherever you go. The AirStudio One is a wireless condenser microphone with a few secrets buried inside, like a professional audio interface, a wireless USB-C dongle and a pair of true wireless headphones. The idea being you can record a banging vocal when you’re on the road without any additional hardware.
AirStudio One isn’t just a regular microphone, either, since it’s been engineered with a multi-core Digital Signal Processor to help get the best sound from its slender body. Open the companion app on your phone, and you’ll be able to mix the audio, set the EQ and even apply audio effects in real time. This isn't the first product we've seen this CES that puts more of the meat inside the microphone — Shure's MV7i carries its own two-channel audio interface.
You could also use this to record sound for your videos, and if you opt for the analog dongle, can even output your sound to any device with a 3.5mm line-in. It’s worth saying the ambient noise at CES made it impossible to test the sound quality of microphone. But this is the sort of gadget that has “intriguing prospect” stamped all over it. We’ll likely give this a deeper prod when it’s available to buy later in the year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/airstudio-one-is-a-portable-microphone-thats-full-of-surprises-173019602.html?src=rss
It’s the second day of CES 2025, and I’m sure you’ve spent the whole day with your eyes pointed to our liveblog containing all the news of the day. But I’m sure there are a few folks who might have sneezed, or blinked, and missed something important. Which is why we’ve made this lovely list of all the biggest news from this day of the show, just for those folks who sneezed.
Lenovo blesses us with its presence at CES
There was plenty more PC-flavored news broadcast to the world, including Lenovo’s turn in the spotlight. Most notably, it showed off the ThinkBook Plus, a real version of its flexible OLED laptop from a few years back. At the touch of a button, that 14-inch display will expand to a bit more productivity-friendly 16.7-inches, which might justify the $3,500 starting price.
Lenovo also showed off a dummy prototype of its Legion Go 2 gaming handheld, and hints as to what specs it’ll be carrying. Alongside that, it announced the Legion Go S, the first third-party SteamOS gaming handheld that’ll offer a legitimate alternative to the Steam Deck. If you’d rather play games in a more traditional way, by which I mean with one leg as an ersatz table while you sit awkwardly on a crowded bus, then you can opt for Lenovo’s new Legion Pro 7i gaming laptop which can be specced with NVIDIA’s RTX 5090 graphics.
Of course, Lenovo also released some normal laptops, including the Yoga Slim 9i, the first laptop to launch with an under-display camera. The tweak enables it to boast a 98 percent screen to body ratio, which should get all of your friends and enemies feeling jealous. The ThinkPad X9, meanwhile, will likely break hearts of longstanding ThinkPad fans, since it has no aluminum chassis and no Trackpoint. Yes, we can hardly believe it too.
Qualcomm brings new chips, while Maingear, ASUS and Razer bring the PC goodies
Qualcomm, with less to prove than Intel right now, has announced its Snapdragon X chips will land in more Windows Copilot + PCs in the near future. A plethora of models are currently in development, with a focus on affordability rather than bells and whistles. Qualcomm and its partners, which include Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo are targeting a base price of $600. Which should be affordable enough for plenty of entry-level buyers to update their ageing hardware to take advantage of whatever we work out what AI is actually good for.
ASUS’ new ZenBook A14 made its debut in the desert, showing off some pretty lovely industrial design and a spec sheet to match. Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar was delighted with the premium materials used in its construction, and the look and feel. The one downside is that it’s equipped / blighted (delete as appropriate) with Qualcomm’s X or Elite chips, limiting backwards compatibility with older Windows apps.
Maingear, meanwhile, went to town on its fancy-looking water-cooled desktops as it attempts to reassert its dominance in the custom PC space. The range comes with heavy-duty plumbing and a whole bunch of fans and radiators to help keep your planet-burning GPUs cool.
One permanent fixture of CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada is gaming company Razer showing off its latest lighting-infused hardware. First up, it debuted its new Blade 16 laptop, which it says is its thinnest gaming laptop ever made. It also showed off Project Arielle, an RGB-clad gaming chair that’ll glow red as it warms you up and blue as it cools you down. And, to round things out, the company also showed off a fancypants monitor stand that, surprise surprise, was also RGB.
Smart Glasses at CES 2025
Smart glasses have always been something of a technological cul-de-sac, but the signs are that the technology is quickly maturing. We’ve seen plenty of specs at this year’s CES that aren’t just a faddy gimmick with a too-expensive price tag. For instance, RayNeo’s new X3 AR Pro frames comes with a built-in camera and the ability to interact with a ChatGPT-powered assistant. Then there’s Even Realities, which brought the G1A and G1B to the show, which impressed me no end. They’re far lower tech than some of the products on offer, but with a more robust feature set that includes real-time translation, teleprompting and turn-by-turn directions. Xreal, too, was able to show off its latest personal cinema-style AR glasses that didn’t make me want to throw up the second I put them on.
The CES Auto Show: New Honda EVs and BMW’s Panoramic iDrive turn heads
Honda rocked up in Nevada to talk up prototype models of the concept vehicles it showed off last year. The 0 Series Saloon sedan, which 100% looks like the car Inspector Gadget would drive, and the 0 Series SUV, which also looks like a car Inspector Gadget would drive. The auto maker said both models will be available to buy at some point next year, harnessing Honda’s brand-spanking new EV architecture.
And BMW was also here, showing off its new Panoramic iDrive system that’ll come to every new BMW. That includes a display running the width of the dashboard with key statistics on your drive, rather than sticking it in an instrument binnacle like a normal person is used to. Of course, the idea here is to give you so many places to stick useful information it’s impossible for you to miss what’s going on. Unless you spend so much time staring at the raft of digital displays that you forget your eyes should really be pointed toward the road.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-best-tech-and-gadgets-we-found-on-ces-2025-day-two-110005772.html?src=rss
According to Wikipedia, the first instance of the phrase “post-truth” was written by Steve Teisch in 1992 when referencing political scandals post-Watergate. Clearly, ol’ Stevie never visited CES, where the standards for saying things that are provably true are slightly laxer than in the rest of civil discourse. Apropos of nothing, a company called Rictor, which makes and sells one e-bike, the Rictor K1, is advertising the Skyrider X1. A moped-cum-quadcopter that you can use to zoom through the streets one second, and through the skies another. Which, as you all know, is a totally achievable thing for any consumer electronics company to be able to achieve by its promised launch date of 2026.
The Skyrider X1, its theoretical makers claim, is an electric moped with an enclosed cabin that, when things get too congested, will transform into a quadcopter. All you’ll need to do is pop out the four arms, each with two fanblades, and you’ll be able to ascend up to a maximum of 200 meters above the ground. Rictor says safety is its top priority, including plenty of redundant systems and, should all else fail, a built-in parachute. Plus, the Skyrider X1 is capable of automatically taking off and landing, and can plan its optimal route when it’s up in the air. And on the company’s website, it says the X1 SL, with a 10.5kWh battery will have a flight time of 25 minutes, while the X1 SX, with its 21kWh battery, will stay in the air for 40 minutes.
That’s pretty exciting, not to mention the company says that it’s aiming to sell the Skyrider X1 for $60,000, far below what you might expect to pay for a mop-copter in this class. You could buy one and use it to speed up your DoorDash deliveries and earn some sweet money in tips. Perhaps, when the pre-order page opens, you can lay down that cash before heading over to my new venture, where I’ll sell you a bridge. Seriously, one of London’s many bridges, that you’ll own, all to yourself, but you will need to arrange delivery and pay for shipping with a third party I haven’t yet invented.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/rictors-skyrider-x1-is-equal-parts-moped-quadcopter-and-fantasy-220802108.html?src=rss
Another CES, another opportunity for the technology industry to lob a trebuchet’s worth of molten lead at the last vestiges of my dignity. This year, it’s EcoFlow that is showing off this delightful solar hat that does more for then planet, and your phone, than it does your personal brand. Admittedly, if you’re wearing a suitably outdoorsy ‘fit, it’s probably not going to look too out of place, but its aesthetics are second to its function.
As the name implies, the EcoFlow Power Hat has small solar panels embedded in the brim that, when you’re out and about, will help charge your portable devices. The brim is segmented, and each section has a little set of Monocrystalline Silicon cells with a rated efficiency of 24 percent.
Photo by Daniel Cooper
On the underside of the brim, there’s a little plastic box with an LED light showing you the hat is generating a charge. Pull back the attached rubber tabs and you’ll find a USB-A and USB-C port, letting you charge one or two devices at a time.
EcoFlow says it’ll output a maximum of 5V / 2.4A, so you can expect it to keep your phone or tablet topped up rather than producing anything too life-saving. There’s no battery on board, naturally, so you’ll need to keep a long wire handy to run from your cap down to whichever pocket you keep your devices near.
Photo by Daniel Cooper
The company says it’s sturdy enough, with each panel on a discrete segment you can fold down to near pocket size. It’s IP65-rated for water and dust ingress, but steer clear of immersing it in water or putting it in a washing machine.
The EcoFlow Power Hat is presently on sale for $129, plus or minus the cost of your dignity.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/ecoflows-solar-hat-is-better-for-the-planet-than-your-style-203358237.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.
Photo by Daniel Cooper
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. But, it's worth saying that runtime is based on you not changing the images too frequently, especially since these prototypes take a few minutes to switch between images.
Having now seen these up close, I can say they're more promising in the real world than they are on the internet. The colors pop a lot more than you might expect from an e-paper display, and you're able to see brush strokes in the paintings. At least, you can if you don't stand too close — peer in as you might with a real painting and you'll just see the pixels used to assemble each image. Certainly, it's a neat way to get some high art on your walls without the need to be forever yoked to the same picture. But you might find there are some art styles that work better than others.
As these are prototypes, PocketBook isn't yet ready to commit to pricing, but said that it'll initially offer its art app for free, with a subscription potentially in the offing further down the line. Similarly, it isn't going to talk about how much each model will cost until April or May, when they'll be ready to pre-order. But Enrico Mueller, PocketBook's Managing Director, suggested a ballpark for the 13.3-inch model would be around €600 ($620), while the 31.5-inch model will retail for something like €1,700. The 28-inch unit, however, will be more given the extra technology on show, and so will be around €2,500.
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
It’s been a while since I’ve tried a pair of personal cinema-style AR glasses given their propensity to be rubbish. The field of view is often too restrictive, they’re often too low-res and they’re often prone to giving me eyestrain headaches. But after I tried on Xreal’s new One Pro glasses at CES 2025, I was suitably impressed as the company's latest addresses all of those gripes and plenty more.
Xreal turned up in Las Vegas to show off the One Pro, which is a marginal improvement on the Xreal One that debuted, and quickly sold out, a month ago. Both pairs are equipped with the company’s first in-house spatial computing chip, delivering less blur, no flicker and a 120Hz refresh rate. They’re also equipped with Bose-branded sound, not that I was able to test their quality in a crowded casino ballroom. The difference between the two comes down to slightly better optics.
The point of the new X1 chip is to ensure the glasses can do all the spatial brainwork without needing to rely on whatever device you’re hooked up to. That enables you to have ultra-wide displays that could be used to give yourself a mega desktop if you need to get some serious work done. Or, if you want to pin a games console in one place in your virtual environment, you can now do that even if you’re wired up to something low power. Speaking of, I got to try two different demos, the first playing Super Mario Odyssey on a Switch, and then one with an ultra-wide desktop display on a laptop.
Photo by Daniel Cooper
On one hand, these glasses remain bound by the same constraint every other pair of these devices have ( and will always have). You’re trying to trick your eyes into thinking two small screens close to your eyes are actually one massive screen that’s a lot further away. Your eyes are, however, smarter than that, and it’s rare that I’ve been able to view the illusion as its creators intended. But, mercifully, the resolution, brightness, low latency and broad field of vision all help to sell the trick here in a way that worked better than I have ever experienced.
In fact, I got quite lost playing Odyssey, not realizing that I’d been playing for five or more minutes as my eyes didn’t put up their usual protest. Hell, the fact I just mindlessly got on with it and it never occurred to me to stop to give my eyes a rest was the first sign these were a cut above. When I got to the desktop and was able to comfortably read the text on the screen (even the tiny titles in browser tabs), it felt revelatory. Look, this is table stakes for a device like this, but the fact I managed to use it comfortably speaks volumes.
I’ll reserve full judgment until I’ve had the chance to put these through their paces properly but, right now, I’m impressed. The Xreal One will be back in stock shortly, while the One Pro should begin shipping in March 2025.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/xreals-new-one-pro-ar-glasses-are-surprisingly-good-143034826.html?src=rss
Withings is at CES yet again, this year showing off its updated blood pressure monitor and a new way for its users to keep their hearts healthy. The Withings BPM Vision, for that is what it is called, is a new tabletop blood pressure monitor designed for home use. It boasts a big, color display the company promises will help make it easier for you to understand what’s going on.
Like its predecessors, BPM Vision connects to Wi-Fi, instantly uploading your latest data to its cloud platform. But Withings has broken with tradition, using a tabletop design with a connected cuff, rather than the all-in-the-cuff design of the BPM Connect and BPM Core. Concerns around readability likely prompted the change, as it was hard to read the screen strapped to your arm.
Withings
Withings is also launching Cardio Check-Up, where users can get feedback on their heart health from a board-certified cardiologist. Withings+ subscribers in the US, France and Germany will be able to send readings to a physician once every 90 days. They’ll take a look at the data and check there’s nothing to be concerned about, and promise to respond within 24 hours.
BPM Vision is expected to be available in the US from April 2025, pending the usual blessing from the FDA. Cardio Check-Up starts today as part of the Withings+ subscription, and can be accessed if you have an annual or monthly payment plan.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/withings-updates-its-blood-pressure-monitor-and-launches-a-cardio-check-up-feature-140046862.html?src=rss
Even Realities has turned up at CES 2025 in Las Vegas to show off its smart glasses, the G1, which have been out for a few months now. The company also wanted to use its trip to the desert to show off the G1B, which puts the same technology in a different body. And after just ten minutes playing around with them, I'm already a fan of the way they bring digital smarts into the real world.
The G1 is a pair of smart glasses that either come in a Philip Johnson-esque round body or, if you opt for the new G1B, in a more rectangular frame. Both are equipped with a 160mAh battery the company promises will last for around one and a half days on a single charge. Inside are a pair of waveguide displays with a 25-degree field of view and a resolution of 640 x 200 displaying basic text and graphics in old-school green. The glasses have their own charging case, itself equipped with a 2,000mAh battery that’ll keep them re-juiced at least two and a half times before you need to find a cable.
Photo by Daniel Cooper
The company opted not to throw too many features at the G1, focusing instead on where it could make a real impact while respecting the battery. For instance, activate your phone’s navigation and you’ll get turn by turn directions showing up in your field of vision. Similarly, you should be able to use the glasses as a prompter, with the system’s built-in microphone following along as you speak. That microphone can also be used for real time translation in a number of foreign languages, as well as transcribing your dictations. Plus, you’ll get the option to have your smartphone notifications dropping in front of your eyes, sparing you the indignity of looking at your phone or watch.
Most pleasingly, there are plenty of customization options, including the ability to set it so the waveguide displays only activate when you tilt your head up. From there, you can set the reading distance of the on-screen text, and you even have some limited control of the height of the text. The features on show all work as advertised, and the real-time directions will even let you switch from turn by turn guidance to a progress map of your route if you look up. The real-time translation and captioning is useful and elegant, as is the teleprompter that'll scroll the words as you say them — even in a noisy Las Vegas ballroom. The company's CSO Nikolaj Schnoor even said some early customers who have hearing loss are now using captioning to aid them in day to day conversations. There are two hardware buttons hidden behind the temple tips, too, letting you set it into dictation mode without having to touch your phone.
As smitten as I am with the features, I'm also impressed at how comfortable they are to wear, with the design putting the bulk of the (surprisingly) light weight on the hinges and temple tips. You could easily wear these for a whole day, and look and act a lot more like real glasses than gadget-y ones.
The company has even said all the right things about repairability, saying the system is modular enough that an optician can replace your lenses should they get damaged or your prescription changes. In addition, you should be able to send the hardware back to the company to replace the batteries when they wear out a few years down the road. Given the high price, that should be expected but it's pleasing to see it's been addressed.
The Even Realities G1 and G1B are available to order now, with prices starting at $599, although that figure will climb once you've included your options, including prescription lenses. Depending on where you are in the world, you can also order them through your local optician.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/even-realities-g1-smart-glasses-are-useful-and-elegant-100041452.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.
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
Ring makes doorbells, cameras, floodlights, alarms and intercoms, a list best summed up as “stuff to keep your home safe.” The obvious omission in the lineup is smoke detectors, which is why the company has rocked up to CES 2025 arm-in-arm with experts Kidde. The pair has put together a range of detectors for the home which are connected by WiFi to the Ring ecosystem.
That way, should the whiff of smoke (or, if you buy a combination alarm, smoke and carbon monoxide) wafts through your home, you’ll get a ping on the Ring app. You’ll also, and this is perhaps the most desirable feature of the package, get a warning seven days before your battery runs out, letting you avoid the dreaded alarm chirps.
Given Ring’s penchant for subscription platforms, it’s no surprise that there’s a 24/7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring service available. For $5 per month, a remote monitoring service can keep an eye on your home and raise the alarm if the undesirable gases are spotted. The smoke alarm will set you back $54.97 while the combination model is priced at $74.97, and both will be available exclusively at the Home Depot at some point in April 2025.
At the same time, Ring has announced it is upgrading the video quality for its existing Floodlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Pro. If you already own these models, you’ll soon be able to view their outputs not in HD, but 2K thanks to improvements in Ring Vision. This software update will start rolling out on January 8.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/ring-and-kidde-launch-connected-smoke-and-carbon-monoxide-alarms-140052259.html?src=rss
Concept devices are always tricky. For every one that gets turned into a real product a year later there are a thousand disappointments. Maybe the concept can’t be mass-produced affordably enough to make it viable to the business. Maybe the technology isn’t reliable enough to really make good on the promises its creators made during the glossy launch. And sometimes, it was never anything more than a bit of Kabuki to juice the stock price or lure in some new investors.
With that wariness in one hand, we can now examine Withings’ new concept device, Omina, which it says is its vision for the future of health monitoring. It’s a floor mat and smart mirror designed to usurp your bathroom scale and take up way more room in your home. The idea is it’ll offer a “holistic” view of your physical health, demystifying your biological markers as it goes.
Withings
Climb aboard and you’ll be shown a 3D body model that will visualize the results of whatever metrics it can access. Omina will be able to check your weight, heart health and metabolic health, which will be integrated with any data from your other Withings devices. That includes stats on your activity, sleep health and blood pressure, depending on what you own.
Omina “comes” with its own AI voice assistant, offering real-time feedback to help you hit your fitness goals. It’ll also answer questions, offer motivational quotes and guide you through any roadblocks you may find. Plus, it’ll connect with any telemedicine provider that integrates with the system, letting you share your vitals with your physician.
Withings
Naturally, as a concept device, you won’t be able to buy one now, or potentially ever, but it is described as being “in development.” Withings has, however, pledged that the AI assistant and telemedicine features will arrive on its Health Mate app at some point this year. In the meantime you should probably think about buying a house with a bathroom big enough to accommodate one of these things.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/withings-omina-is-its-vision-for-the-future-of-bathroom-scales-010024945.html?src=rss
Smart glasses tend to be devices that overpromise and underdeliver, especially when being shown off for the first time at an event like CES. There’s always a steady stream of companies promising we’re on the cusp of having our very own Gary-from-Veep attached to our faces before fading away into obscurity. The weight of promises Halliday has laid upon the table is a sign of braggadocio, but it’ll take a while before we know if it’s deserved or not.
For CES 2025, Halliday has turned up with a pair of eponymous smart glasses seemingly filled to the brim with technology. The right eyecup has a waveguide display that will project the equivalent of a 3.5-inch screen into the wearer’s view, while keeping that viewport easy to read in strong lighting. The company also promises that this hardware is “invisible to onlookers.” The glasses themselves weigh just 35 grams and should get up to eight hours of battery life on a single charge.
Halliday
There’s no outward-facing camera, but Halliday says its product comes with a “proactive” AI assistant, anticipating your needs before you ask. The glasses have built-in microphones that are listening to your conversations, analyzing them and answering prompts as they come up. If you were to wear one of these in a meeting, say, you’d be able to ask the system to produce a summary of said meeting immediately afterward. (And yes, we are curious about the privacy implications of such a system.)
As well as barking instructions to your glasses, the sides are touch sensitive, but it’s more likely your main mode of interaction will be with the bundled trackpad ring. You should be able to discreetly control what the AI is pumping to your eyes without attracting attention.
Halliday
There’s a fairly long list of tasks Halliday says the glasses will be able to grease the wheels for you. As well as listening out for questions in conversation and throwing up answers from the internet, you can use the screen as a hidden teleprompter. It can also translate 40 different languages, offer real-time directions and play music with the accompanying on-screen lyrics.
Of course, none of this is anything but sweet words until we’ve been able to see how this performs in the real world. Halliday says that pre-orders for the glasses will begin at the end of CES, with shipping starting at some point before March 2025. We don’t know the price yet, but the company says it’ll be between $399 and $499.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/halliday-promises-its-smart-wayfarers-have-a-proactive-ai-assistant-inside-010007688.html?src=rss
Until now, I could count on one finger the amount of smart rings that offered a one-line ECG in a small package. Bodimetrics’ Circul+ debuted in 2021, but where it excelled in heart-monitoring features it fell short in style — or even looking like a real ring you’d want to wear 24/7. But today at CES 2025, Circular is showing off its second-generation ring that promises to keep an eye on your heart health.
We had a chance to check out the new ring at CES Unveiled last night and they are indeed shiny and jewelry-like. They also feel remarkably lightweight. While the sensor nodes are noticeable when you first put on the ring, they’re less obtrusive after a minute or so of wearing it. Eventually, it hardly feels like you’re wearing a ring at all.
Circular says the Ring 2 boasts improved sensors as well as the aforementioned ECG, an eight day battery life and a better wireless charging dock. The company added that its companion app and AI has been completely redesigned to offer a “more intuitive and refined user experience.” Not to mention that the body is now cast in titanium with four color finishes; Gold, Silver, Black and Rose Gold.
This latest generation doesn't have the vibrations featured in Circular's first-gen rings, but the company's co-founder told us that the vibrations will return in an upcoming iteration. For now, the second-generation rings should hit store shelves in February or March 2025, but the company says it’ll cost you $380 when it does.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/circulars-new-smart-ring-has-a-built-in-ecg-010003422.html?src=rss
It’s not as if any period in human history was particularly gentle, but we do seem to live in very stressful times. Maybe it’s not the stress that’s changed, but that we’re more able than ever to notice, monitor and analyze what’s going on in our bodies. Here at CES 2025, startup Eli Health is launching Hormometer, an at-home kit that tests your cortisol and progesterone levels.
Hormometer is a wand with a collection tip at one end that you hold in your mouth for 60 seconds. Once it’s absorbed your spit, you’ll sit it down on a table for 20 minutes while the cartridge’s network of built-in microfluidics gets to work. After that, the assay will start displaying lines in a specific color, which can be read and interpreted by your smartphone camera.
The app will then be able to, presumably once it’s established your individual baseline levels, offer helpful suggestions for how to better manage your health. It’s likely those will get more detailed over time, as Eli Health says it’s creating the first data set of its kind. Which, if you’re unaware, means your hormone levels are likely going into a very large database with all of its users. The company will have to answer many questions about how it’s planning to protect the privacy of its users, especially in the US.
Cortisol, of course, is better known as the stress hormone, which increases when you’re in a tough spot. It’s cortisol that’s behind your fight-or-flight response, spiking your blood sugar to get you ready for fighting or fleeing, suppressing other critical bodily functions to do so. High cortisol levels will weaken your immune system, waste your muscles and prevent bone growth.
Progesterone, meanwhile, is crucial for regulating the reproductive system, particularly for those able to become pregnant. Low levels can risk ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage or premature labor. Excessively high levels, meanwhile, can create problems with temperature and mood regulation as well as low fertility. Progesterone is sometimes given to transfeminine individuals as well, where it's believed to play a role in breast development.
It’s worth noting that saliva-testing gadgets aren’t particularly new, and we’ve reported on them in 2005, 2009 and 2016. What’s attractive about this device, and the rest of the current crop of saliva analysis tools, is the easier accessibility. Eli Health isn’t stopping at just those two hormones, and says it’s already working to develop tests for testosterone and estradiol.
The first tests will be available to buy in the US and Canada from January 2025, with various subscription plans available, including one where each test will cost $8 if you commit to a whole year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/this-saliva-testing-wand-knows-how-stressed-you-are-010002378.html?src=rss
If there’s one thing Steven Moffatt loves to do with Doctor Who, it’s to find a monster buried in the mundane. He’s made statues, shadows, lost children and even the idea of silence into some of the show’s most terrifying villains. Sadly, the mysterious extra door you often find in older hotel rooms isn’t as universal a concern, but it’s still a rich seam for him to mine. That’s the inspiration for “Joy to the World,” Doctor Who’s 2024 Christmas Special. Which is light, fun and a little bit scattershot, much like Christmas is meant to be, right?
When Doctor Who returned, the show was woven back into the UK's cultural firmament in a way it never had been before. Part of that process was adding the show to the BBC One Christmas Day schedule, making it a universal cultural touchstone. For most of its post-2005 run, it has aired an episode next to the Strictly Come Dancing and EastEnders’ festive specials. Imagine the British equivalent to those everyone-gathered-around-the-TV events like the Super Bowl or the Macy’s Day Parade, but on Christmas Day. Even if you don’t like any of the fare on offer, you’re still expected to sit with the family and consume it.
With these specials, the prestige timeslot, longer runtime and bigger budget are burdens as much as they are benefits. The show has to play to a far broader audience than normal, with diehard fans sitting elbow-to-elbow with elderly relatives filling every silence with gossip about their neighbor's garden project. Consequently, the story needs to be a little looser, with less need for the audience to be paying undivided attention to what’s going on. And it needs to be an oasis of fun in the melodramatic drudgery that is the BBC One Christmas Day schedule.
Normally, the festive special would be the sole province of the showrunner but Russell T. Davies handed the reins to Steven Moffatt. Moffatt succeeded Davies as showrunner the first time around, co-created Sherlock and is widely-regarded as the best Who writer of the 21st century. With a pedigree as impeccable as that, and having already written "Boom" for the Ncuti Gatwa’s first season in the title road, expectations are high.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
Moffatt is an arch farce writer and has a strong grasp of structure, so it’s no surprise we open in medias res. The Doctor is offering room service to a variety of people in different time periods including Edmund Hilary’s base camp at Everest and the Orient express before stumbling in on Joy in a miserable London hotel room in 2024. After the credits, we spool back to the Doctor arriving in the Time Hotel, which allows guests to vacation throughout history. Don’t worry about causality or any A Sound of Thundershenanigans, the Hotel is somehow built to protect its guests from screwing up the timeline.
The Doctor is looking to steal some milk for his coffee from the hotel buffet, but his eye is caught on something sinister: A person carrying a briefcase with a handcuff chain is trying to check into a room. The Doctor recruits Trev, one of the employees, to keep watch while he scouts ahead to work out what scheme could be afoot. As it turns out, the case is sentient and evil, leaping from host to host and possessing each one in turn. Once it’s leapt to the next host, the last one disintegrates.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
It’s here the Doctor bumps into Joy who, through hijinks, winds up handcuffed to the case in place of the hotel manager. When the Doctor opens the case to try and find a solution, the case threatens to kill whoever it’s connected to unless it gets a four digit code. Who shall provide the code? The Doctor, emerging from his own future, taking Joy with him while leaving “our” Doctor trapped in 2024 without the TARDIS. As the hotel door closes, the Doctor hurls abuse at his future self, about why he’s always alone and people are always leaving him. He’s doubly upset as he never normally has to travel “the long way around,” one day after the other.
And so, the episode essentially stops to give us an extended sequence of the Doctor making friends with Anita, the hotel manager. The Doctor gets a job as the hotel’s handyperson, and slowly lets his guard down, spending more time with Anita until they’re a platonic couple. It’s a sequence you’d never see in a regular episode, with snatches of the Doctor and Anita’s life. He makes the microwave bigger on the inside, repaints Anita’s car TARDIS blue and they even sit and talk to one another on chairs — a key visual given the lack of chairs on the TARDIS. But as the year elapses and it’s time for the Doctor to return to his own show, he waves goodbye to Anita.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
Returning to the time hotel, the Doctor bursts back in on the events of a year ago, sharing the code and yanking Joy off to new adventures. The Doctor works out the briefcase holds the embryonic form of an artificially-created star that would offer a source of imaginable power to whoever owned it. But unless you own the Hand of Omega, stars take a long time to develop, far longer than anyone would be able to wait and test their experiment. Unless, of course, you hijack a time hotel and send it back to dinosaur times, waiting for when human history begins to see if it works.
Joy, still possessed by the case, heads to the hotel’s dinosaur room while the Doctor tries to break its hold over her. To do that, he provokes an emotion strong enough to poison the link between the case and its host before it obliterates them. He bullies her, goading her into disclosing why she's staying at a downmarket London hotel. Turns out she’s grieving the loss of her mother who died of COVID-19 in an isolation ward and Joy was unable to say goodbye to her in person. Sadly, before the Doctor can deactivate the star seed, it’s eaten by a (brilliant-looking) dinosaur, putting it out of his reach.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
The Doctor and Joy head back to the hotel and, 65 million years later, find the star is now ready to detonate. It’s been locked inside a stone structure with a heavy stone door that neither of them can move, and time is running out. So, the Doctor, who boasts that he’s “good with rope,” steals a rope from the Everest base camp, hanging it off the back of the Orient Express to haul the stone away.. It’s an impressive and kinetic sequence let down only by the dreadful CGI when Gatwa’s standing on the train. Typical Doctor Who: It can now do convincing dinosaurs, but now can’t do a convincing train.
It’s here things lose their coherence, since Joy’s eyes flash with possession energy, but by the time the Doctor returns, Joy has… eaten the star? Absorbed it somehow? Made friends with and bonded with it? He finds her standing on a cliff edge, where Joy says she’ll merge with the star and take it to the heavens, where it will do nobody any harm at all. At this point in my notes, I wrote “Don’t let this be Bethlehem,” when the camera pulls out to reveal that’s exactly where they are, complete with three camels parked outside a stable. Oy.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
Joy reunites with her mother and the Doctor goes back to traveling, but not before he gets Anita a job running the Time Hotel. We also get a little shot of Ruby Sunday, who will return to the show for its second season proper.
As I said at the top, you can’t judge “Joy to the World” on the merits of a regular episode since it’s serving multiple masters. But I don’t think we could call it the strongest episode of either Steven Moffatt’s oeuvre or the show’s various Christmas Specials. Like all of the Disney-era episodes, it has a slightly incoherent quality where the pacing sags and zips in all the wrong places. I’m for the lengthy aside where we see a “normal” year in the life of the Doctor, but the story framing it should have been tighter to balance out the slowness. It’s a fun enough way to pass an hour with a stomach full of holiday turkey (or your preferred equivalent) with enough mawkishness to make you think you’ve seen something quite profound. But I don’t think I’ll be coming back to watch this one again and again like I would for, say, “The Christmas Invasion.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/doctor-who-joy-to-the-world-review-what-a-star-190018215.html?src=rss
When Starfleet said it had dispatched the Enterprise to help the Cerritos close the rift, I was worried. Lower Decks has spent the last four years stepping out the shadow of its more famous predecessor. Its grand finale didn’t need a focus-pulling cameo from any of the Next Generation cast (or even a subtle one from Steven Culp). Mercifully, none came, and we got one last chance to spend half an hour with the Cerritos crew on their last ride. For now, at least.
The length of the Previously On… sequence was clue enough this was going to be an overstuffed episode. In fact, it felt as if creator Mike McMahan set himself the task of resolving every plotline in one episode. You can imagine some of these would have been addressed in some future episode had the show not been canceled. But even with a slightly longer runtime, the episode moves far too fast for you to really savor it.
As usual, the Cerritos is the only vessel close enough to deal with the fallout from last week’s episode. On the way to close the rift, the crew meet Ma’ah and Malor, who are fleeing a fleet of Klingon warships led by Relga, Dorg and Bargh’s sister. The fleet chases the Cerritos to the rift which is pumping out waves of dimension-hopping uncertainty. That sets up a wonderful scene where the Cerritos is remade in different ship classes as it pushes toward the center of the rift.
All of this unfolds while Rutherford fights both with his implant and his general distaste for the Cerritos. Tendi and T’Lyn are battling for supremacy as the senior science officer on the ship, and Boimler’s still using his alternate self’s diary to advance his career. A normal half hour show can accommodate an A and B story; here we’re down to G or H, at least. Given a lot of the fun of this show is just in spending time with these characters, it’s a shame their farewells are rattled through as boxes ticked off on a list.
There are plenty of wonderful moments, like when Mariner and Boimler go to Freeman and are instantly believed. In-universe, the characters have earned enough trust to be taken at their word and it’s touching. It’s also a sign of how far we’ve come compared to, say, the days of “Shut up Wesley.” Or when Rutherford realizes what’s wrong and is able to solve the issue by remembering the California Class is Starfleet’s Swiss Army Knife. Or when Boimler smashes his Padd to protect Mariner, as their friendship is more important than his career.
The episode ends with the rift being stabilized, creating a permanent interdimensional wormhole to the multiverse. Starfleet tows Starbase 80 there, with William Boimler tasked with exploring the various dimensions therein. But such a high-profile assignment needs an experienced head, and so Captain Freeman is assigned to take command of Starbase 80. It means Mariner has to say goodbye to her mom, and Freeman goodbye to her dedicated crew of misfits.
Ransom takes command of the Cerritos, with Mariner and Boimler acting as joint first officers, at least for now. Rutherford has his implant removed, and it’s suddenly obvious to everyone how into Tendi he has been all this time. T’Lyn and Tendi are now happily science besties, sharing the role as the Cerritos heads off to explore new parts of the galaxy. And Ransom’s choice of phrase for his warp command is perfectly in keeping with his love of exercise, and no I won’t be sharing it here.
You can never quite escape Star Trek once it’s on your CV, and I’ve said before this isn’t the last time we’ll see the Cerritos crew. Animation doesn’t need your actors to stay the same age and we could easily see a revival in a few years or so. McMahan was clear the fifth season was also being used to set up potential spin-off ideas, so there’s plenty of scope for more. Which is why I’m not going to write an obituary for Lower Decks, it doesn’t need one.
Still, it’s mad to think how things have changed since Lower Decks debuted as the goofy wildcard alongside its more august siblings. Discovery and Picard were meant to be reputable shows with Lower Decks little more than the class clown for diehard fans. Both of those turned out to be far less than the sum of their parts, while Lower Decks held the spirit of Star Trek far more effectively than its so-called betters. It was the only one of that trio to emerge with anything close to a coherent legacy, and with genuine affection from fans.
Lower Decks knows this, and ends its episode with a celebration of the Cerritos and Star Trek more generally. The show exists as a celebration of the day-to-day work that would never be lionized in those brasher, shoutier, punch-fightier Treks. The USS Cerritos is an island of misfit toys who have gathered together to make themselves and each other that little bit better. Hell, that could be a comment on Star Trek, or its fans more generally, but it’s great being one of those misfit toys.
Cerritos Strong!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/star-trek-lower-decks-ends-on-a-new-beginning-140003832.html?src=rss
L to R Jerry O\'Connell as Jack Ransom, Paul Scheer as Andy Billups, Eugene Cordero as Rutherford, Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs, Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner, Gillian Vigman as Doctor T\'Ana, NoÃl Wells as D\'Vana Tendi and Jack Quaid as Brad Boimler in episode 10, season 5 of Lower Decks streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo credit: Paramount+.
The penultimate episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks is an exercise in box ticking for the show’s creative team. It does the grunt work of laying the table and raising the stakes for next week’s series finale. But it’s also the show’s last — for now — chance to wring a gag or two out of all those deep-cut, Extremely Online Trek in-jokes. It’s fortunate that while the episode is a little on the thin side, the stuff that’s thrown at the wall is charming enough for it not to matter.
For the second week in a row, we’re pulling focus from the lead quintet to catch up on William Boimler. (That, if your memory isn’t too sharp, is Bomiler’s transporter clone, last seen faking his death to join Section 31.) He’s now captain of the USS Anaximander on a secret mission to close up the interdimensional fissures the show has been encountering all season.
Boimler, the show’s avatar of a Star Trek fan, has been picking up stray figures from the canon during dimension hops. His crew includes T’Pol, Garak and an EMH version of Dr. Bashir, all played by their original actors.. And yes, Garak and Dr. Bashir are a married couple in this universe, because of course the show has to embrace that piece of fan lore that launched a thousand pieces of slash fiction.
The ship picks up an escape pod with Lt. Harry Kim inside, who learns most of the rest of the crew is Harries Kim as well. He’s the only one who’s ever been promoted above the rank of ensign, nodding to the rumor that longtime series head Rick Berman said someone had to be the lowest-ranked member of the crew. And / or as punishment for clashing with the production team, as outlined in an interview Wang gave in 2011.
They soon encounter an alternate universe Mariner who, unlike our version, is a timid engineer. She, however, has worked out a way to track the vessel that’s punching holes in the fabric of the universe. So the Anaximander lays a trap, only to reveal that it’s an old Enterprise-class ship called the Beagle. It’s an exploration vessel with a human and Vulcan crew, led by Lily Sloane.
Paramount+
Sloane isn’t trying to tear the universe to shreds, their universe just discovered to discover interdimensional travel ahead of warp. They’ve been leaping between universes exploring strange similar worlds, the same life and civilizations boldly… examining the differences. It’s a mission statement that outrages Boimler, who’s gorged himself on fanservice and is now looking for something, anything new to cleanse his palate.
Naturally, this is Lower Decks winking toward its own major flaw, given its reverence for ‘90s era Trek. I’ve always found it quite successful in bobbing and weaving around simply milking the audience’s ‘memberberries. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t at least complicit in the concept of serving up the same old crap, again and again.
Sloane disagrees, saying her crew looks to explore the ways in which people grow and evolve in different environments. She says she’s met several different Boimlers, all of whom have their own Mariner, as their connection endures across the universes. And that exploration isn’t just about exploring what’s beyond us but finding what’s true inside us. That’s a journey that can be just as perilous, and rewarding, as traveling to the furthest edges of the universe.
Kim, outraged at his namesakes’ stalled careers, steals the Beagle with plans to return to his own dimension. The Anaximander pursues, and while the other Kims mutiny and beam back, the Beagle successfully makes a jump but explodes in the process. That sends a huge wave of energy that will wipe out every universe in existence unless it’s dumped in a single place. Thankfully, Boimler knows where to send it — to his transporter twin and the crew of the Cerritos.
See you next week for the finale.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/star-trek-lower-decks-sets-up-its-finale-elbowing-its-own-ribs-140054114.html?src=rss
Despite Intel’s recent woes, I didn’t expect to see CEO Pat Gelsinger joining 15,000 or so of his colleagues being shown the door. Gelsinger is a storied engineer and business success who laid down an exhaustive rescue plan when he took the helm of the beleaguered chipmaker in 2021. It was never going to be a quick fix, given the company’s long legacy of missteps. Gelsinger may be the public face of Intel’s current malaise, but the problems started long before his tenure and will likely keep going.
How Intel got here
Gelsinger was tasked with addressing almost two decades’ worth of bad decisions, all of which have compounded. Intel became an industry-swallowing behemoth as one half of the Wintel alliance, producing chips that went hand-in-glove with Microsoft Windows. The vast profits that flowed from this partnership meant there was an institutional reluctance to look too hard at new business ventures that could distract from its golden goose, still going strong all these years later.
In 2005, then-CEO Paul Ottellini turned down the chance to make the iPhone’s system-on-chip. It would have been easy for Intel, since it already made XScale ARM chips for mobile devices. You could find an Intel ARM chip inside popular phones like the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 and Palm Treo 650. A year later, it would sell XScale to Marvell, believing it would be able to shrink its x86 chips to work on smartphones. The first Intel Atom handsets showed some degree of promise, but the Snapdragons of the day — produced by considerably smaller rival Qualcomm — beat them pretty easily.
Could Intel have foreseen the meteoric rise of AI? Maybe not. But Reuters reported former Intel CEO Bob Swan turned down the chance to invest in OpenAI in 2017. It was looking for a hardware partner to reduce its reliance on NVIDIA, offering a generous deal in the process. Swan, however, reportedly said he couldn’t see a future for generative AI, and Intel’s data center unit refused to sell the hardware at a discount.
Intel’s core strength was in the quality of its engineering, the solidity of its product and that it always kept close to the cutting edge. (There are parallels to be drawn between Intel and Boeing, both of which are watching their reputation for quality erode in real time.) Sadly Intel’s bread-and-butter business hit the skids after the company failed to produce 10-nanometer chips by its planned 2015 deadline. The company’s famous “tick, tock” strategy of launching a new chip process one year and a refined version the next ground to a halt.
These issues enabled Intel’s competitors to step in and steal a march, harnessing more modern chip architectures. AMD, which held a little over 10 percent of the chip market for much of the 2010s, has seen its market share double in the last few years. The biggest beneficiary, of course, was TSMC, the Taiwanese chip factory that has become the envy of the world. Even if Intel controls the bulk of the x86 processor market, it’s TSMC that makes the chips for Apple, Qualcomm, NVIDIA and AMD, among others. Intel, meanwhile, was saddled with an older chip manufacturing process that it couldn’t use to catch up with its rivals.
The Gelsinger doctrine
Gelsinger was as close to an Intel “lifer” as you could imagine, joining the company at 18 and rising to the position of Chief Technology Officer by 2001. In 2009, he left Intel to become COO at EMC and held the position as CEO of VMWare for almost a decade. After taking the reins at Intel, he laid down a detailed plan to mastermind its glorious comeback.
Step one would be to separate Intel’s design and manufacturing business into two distinct entities. With one eye on US subsidies through the Biden administration's CHIPS and Science Act, Gelsinger pledged to build two new chip factories harnessing the same EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography) technology used by TSMC.
Gelsinger was also determined to reestablish discipline in Intel’s chip business and get back to the “tick, tock” structure. Unfortunately, the production delays that had been building up since 2015 meant that Gelsinger’s target was just to get back to parity. In the interim, Intel would also get TSMC to manufacture some of its newest chips which, while costly, would help address any concerns the company was lagging even further behind.
Nobody had any doubts as to the size of the task facing Gelsinger, but there was plenty of room for optimism. Gelsinger was humble enough to accept Intel couldn’t simply stay on its current course, and had to embrace its new status. He proposed Intel could grin and bear the short-term pain for the company's eventual benefit. If it could build for the future, harness its rivals to keep it in the game and restore faith in its processes, Intel would emerge from this as the winner. All it needed was for nothing to get worse.
Things got worse
At the end of October, Reuters reported Gelsinger made a colossal faux-pas when speaking about TSMC. The CEO was quoted saying “You don’t want all of our eggs in the basket of a Taiwan fab,” and that “Taiwan is not a stable place.” This offended TSMC to such an extent that it ended a discount Intel had taken advantage of for years
The New York Times reports Intel’s board grew frustrated with Gelsinger as his rescue plan was “not showing results quickly enough.” But Intel wasn’t going to hire Gelsinger in 2021 and suddenly bounce back in 2024. Building large and complex chip factories isn’t easy. Nor is getting thousands of engineers to solve difficult problems around chip yields. And obviously reversing a slide that started in 2015 was never going to happen overnight.
Intel’s board is presently looking for a full-time successor to Gelsinger but it’s hard to see what someone else would do differently. After all, the company still needs to build those factories in order to own and control its future, and it still needs to fix its processes. Unless, of course, the next CEO is going to be told to just stanch the bleeding and keep the money rolling in. Even in its deeply-wounded state after a few bad quarters, Intel is still the biggest name in the x86 chip world and will keep making money for years to come.
You could easily imagine Intel’s board sitting around, prioritizing a few years of healthy profits at the cost of the company’s long-term future. It can keep selling modified versions of its existing desktop chips, ceding the technological leadership to AMD, Qualcomm and others. There’s probably a decade or two of big industrial clients who would be happy using Intel processors for their hardware for as long as they’re still using Windows. Perhaps that would be fitting given how big and ossified Intel has become, admitting that it can’t move fast enough to evolve.
It’s likely that scenario won’t be allowed to happen given Intel’s broader role in the global tech space. Even if the incoming administration criticized the CHIPS Act — Intel is still set to be its largest funding recipient — having a domestic manufacturer of Intel’s scale will be an asset few sane governments would allow to fall. But just switching CEOs won’t suddenly fix the company’s big, hard-to-solve problems. It wasn’t Pat Gelsinger who screwed up power design for Raptor Lake, nor did he pass on the opportunity to make the iPhone CPU all those years ago. The TSMC stuff, he can own that, but while a CEO sets the direction of travel, he can’t micromanage every process in a company of Intel’s scale. So whoever replaces him will have the same big stack of issues to tackle, knowing that the board’s patience will be even shorter this time out.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/firing-pat-gelsinger-doesnt-solve-intels-problems-173420381.html?src=rss
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger delivers a speech at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center during Computex 2024, in Taipei on June 4, 2024. (Photo by I-Hwa CHENG / AFP) (Photo by I-HWA CHENG/AFP via Getty Images)
