Chris Welch

Today, Sharp is announcing the first Roku TV that features an OLED display. Until this point, the program — launched back in 2014 — has exclusively produced sets with LCD panels from a slew of different TV manufacturers. But with its new Aquos OLEDs, Sharp is finally bucking that trend. Available in 55-inch and 65-inch sizes, these TVs support Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10, and feature four HDMI ports that all support variable refresh rate (VRR) for smooth 4K 120Hz gameplay. The Aquos OLED sets also…

iPhone 14 and 15 buyers won’t need to pay for Apple’s satellite-powered Emergency SOS safety feature anytime soon. This morning, the company announced that it’s extending the free phase of Emergency SOS for an additional year for iPhone 14 owners. That means that the service will now lapse at the same time for both iPhone generations in November 2025. Emergency SOS makes it possible to reach emergency services via a satellite connection in areas where Wi-Fi or a regular cellular signal are unav…

Instagram is changing a lot these days, especially when it comes to the ways in which we can share our content with others and segment different audiences. But today, the Meta-owned app is bringing the focus back to its creative tools — adding a handful of features including Instagram’s first new filters in ages. And there are a ton of them: I count 25 new filter additions on iOS before you reach the ones that were present before. “From subtle color edits to options for expressive styles, thes…

Sonos is in a bit of a rough patch with its consumer hardware business. Demand isn’t nearly on the same level that it was a few years ago, and CEO Patrick Spence has used the word “challenging” more than once when discussing the company’s last several financial quarters. Today’s earnings, which saw revenue decrease by 5.5 percent year over year, are another example. “While it was a challenging year in the categories in which we play, the strength of the Sonos brand and product portfolio enable…

Last week, it was reported that Amazon is quietly developing its own operating system that will replace Android on its Fire TV devices before expanding to other products, including the company’s many smart displays. Janko Roettgers spilled the details in his Lowpass newsletter. The report predicted that Amazon’s software, codenamed Vega, could appear on Fire TV streaming hardware as soon as next year. But as discovered by Zatz Not Funny!, it turns out this new homegrown OS is already being use…

Sony’s first pair of true wireless earbuds designed for the PlayStation 5 will arrive on shelves early next month, and I’ve been testing them out over the last couple of days. The $199.99 Pulse Explore earbuds offer lossless, ultra-low-latency audio when using the company’s new PlayStation Link wireless protocol. With most devices such as a PS5, PC, or Mac, that’ll require plugging in the included USB dongle. But Sony has baked support for PlayStation Link directly into its new PlayStation Porta…

People can get very attached to the way certain earbuds fit into and feel in their ears. When design changes do inevitably happen, manufacturers often tell us journalists how much consideration went into the smallest of tweaks — and they love to discuss how much data (and how many ear scans) informed those decisions. But you know what? There will always be a subset of customers who preferred the old way instead. And this is where Samsung’s new noise-canceling Galaxy Buds FE come in. Priced at…

Amazon announced that Prime subscribers can now join One Medical, the primary care service that Amazon acquired for $3.9 billion, at a steep discount. A membership normally costs $199 per year, but the company has dropped that price to $99 annually (or $9 monthly) for its Prime customers. The discount is effective immediately and available beginning today at this link. This gives Prime members an easy and much faster way of seeing a primary care doctor without waiting weeks or months, as can of…

Calls on WhatsApp are (optionally) getting even more secure for the app’s most privacy-minded users. As outlined in this blog post, WhatsApp just added a new “protect IP address in calls” toggle to its settings that shields your IP from whoever’s on the other side of a call. When activated, calls will be relayed through Meta / WhatsApp servers, thus concealing your true IP address. “Most calling products people use today have peer-to-peer connections between participants. This direct connection…

Google’s Magic Editor is already capable of mind-bending photo retouching, but occasionally it’ll refuse to do certain edits. When this happens, it displays a vague message about violating Google’s AI terms. It seems Google will soon be clearer about why Magic Editor sometimes abandons a task. Android Authority spotted strings in the Google Photos app about the tool being unable to manipulate “photos of ID cards, receipts, images with personally identifiable information, human faces, and body p…

Today marks the release of the first “new” song by the Beatles since 1995. “Now and Then” is available on streaming services (with an Atmos mix where supported), and the story behind the song’s production is one that’s drawn a lot of interest from fans of the iconic rock band. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr turned to breakthrough technology and machine learning to piece together a finished track from an old lo-fi John Lennon recording. The Beatles first attempted to make something from Lennon’s…

When HBO Max transformed into Max back in May, Warner Bros. Discovery said that existing subscribers on the ad-free plan would be able to hang onto certain perks (like 4K streaming) for at least the next six months without needing to spend more money. Well, we’re about to hit that six-month mark, and right on cue, the party’s over. That’s all, folks. Max is emailing affected customers, letting them know that while their monthly price of $15.99 will remain the same moving forward, they’ll be lo…

Apple reported a record September earnings quarter on Thursday, with iPhone revenue up year over year — even with just a week or so of iPhone 15 sales factored into the numbers. But all of the company’s other hardware divisions were down, and as CNBC noted, overall sales were down for the fourth consecutive quarter. The company brought in $89.5 billion in revenue overall for the quarter. CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that the iPhone 15 lineup is showing stronger early momentum than the 14 series. “If…

Alongside a refreshed iMac and new entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro featuring the M3 chip (and sans Touch Bar), Apple is introducing upgraded models of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Pro and M3 Max processors today. Design-wise, they retain the exact same look and port layout as their predecessors but now come in a new “space black” color that replaces space gray. The machines raise the bar in several ways, ranging from sheer performance to configurability. For example, the M3 Max…

Amazon is beta testing AI image generation tools for its advertisers, offering an easy way to create backgrounds or scenes around whatever product ad buyers are hoping to sell. The company says the new feature is “designed to remove creative barriers and enable brands to produce lifestyle imagery that helps improve their ads’ performance.” This could prove to be a quick, convenient option for brands that would otherwise be stuck working with boring standalone images of a product against a whit…

Apple will try to better differentiate its AirPods lineup as new models launch over the next couple of years, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. That will include phasing out both the second-gen and third-gen AirPods when a successor is announced sometime next fall. Gurman claims that the third-gen “regular” AirPods haven’t sold particularly well and partially attributes this to consumers frequently opting for the older, cheaper second-gen pair, which Apple has continued to…

Apple will try to better differentiate its AirPods lineup as new models launch over the next couple of years, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. That will include phasing out both the second-gen and third-gen AirPods when a successor is announced sometime next fall. Gurman claims that the third-gen “regular” AirPods haven’t sold particularly well and partially attributes this to consumers frequently opting for the older, cheaper second-gen pair, which Apple has continued to…

If you’re a Prime Video subscriber, beginning today, you can start streaming Crunchyroll, the popular anime service, right from inside the Prime Video app. The companies have announced a global distribution agreement that allows Amazon to offer Crunchyroll as one of its Prime Video Channels. Prime Video Channels are optional add-on services that come at an extra monthly cost. But there’s a convenience aspect in that Amazon handles all billing, and more importantly, you can watch these channels d…

Any flagship pair of headphones or earbuds you buy nowadays is going to be very, very good. Noise cancellation has grown more impressive than ever, and Bluetooth codecs like LDAC and AptX Adaptive have led to meaningful upticks in audio quality. But there’s always room for our tech to get better, and particularly in the realm of wireless audio, we’re really pushing up against the limits of what Bluetooth can deliver. That’s been true for some time, and Qualcomm believes it has come up with a so…

Chatting with someone while wearing your AirPods Pro has never been difficult: all it takes is a quick press-and-hold of the earbuds’ stem to activate transparency mode, and then it’s easy to hear anyone in your vicinity. But now Apple is taking things a step further and attempting to remove any and all friction from interacting with other people. This fall, the company rolled out a new feature called Conversation Awareness to the second-generation AirPods Pro. When you enable this setting, th…