Author Archives: Chris Davies

Facebook isn't giving up on Portal, with the social network reportedly readying a Portal TV device for the holidays that would expand its controversial hardware into greater content consumption, potentially in the hope of bypassing skepticism around how trustworthy the company is. Launched last year, Facebook Portal is a pair of video calling smart displays, which was debuted right in the midst of a privacy crisis.

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IFA 2019 has come and gone, but the best products of the big European tech show stuck in our memory. As always, we've been rounding up the greatest tech from IFA, ignoring the hype and instead focusing on which products and technologies will actually improve your life in a meaningful way. Read on for this year's winners.

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The 2020 Cadillac CT4 did not have a normal launch. Usually, we'd see the regular version of a new car, only to have the feistier model sprung upon us later on. Cadillac, though, opted to flip that script when it was announcing its new compact sports sedan.

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Sonos has quietly added a US product page for its SYMFONISK remote, a handy - and inexpensive - controller for its Sonos-powered speakers, ahead of its expected launch next month. The gadget will give Sonos speaker owners a way to remotely control their music, without having to pull out a phone and load the Sonos app, or speak to an assistant like Amazon Alexa.

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Amazon will hold its next big hardware event on September 25, the company has confirmed today, with Alexa likely to feature heavily on the menu. The launch comes a year after Amazon's 2018 devices event, which saw products as varied as an Alexa-enabled microwave and a smart wall clock.

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Two of Sonos' newest whole-home audio products are arriving on shelves, with the Sonos One SL and Sonos Port both available from today. Announced last week alongside the new Sonos Move - the company's first battery-powered and Bluetooth-compatible speaker - the two new models eschew integrated assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

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Nobody can say BMW's latest cars have been forgettable in their styling. The German automaker brought along the gleaming BMW Concept 4 to the Frankfurt Motor Show 2019 this week, and instantly divided opinion about whether its oversized snout was a stroke of design genius or a nasal abomination.

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The new Land Rover Defender isn't short on ways to make the long-anticipated truck your own, as the freshly-launched build configurator demonstrates, but there's more to it than just creating your own Baja monster. Land Rover is targeting dog lovers with its official add-ons, with plenty of customization options to keep a pup happy (and your new $50k+ SUV vaguely clean inside).

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You may not be able to buy a 2020 Land Rover Defender quite yet, but you could build your own - in LEGO form, at least. There's a new LEGO Technic model on the scene, and if you thought that the boxy styling of the 2020 Defender would lend itself nicely to a brick-built version, you're not wrong.

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Of all Apple's surprises at its big 2019 iPhone event yesterday, the one I was least expecting was that I'd fall for a dark green phone. The iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max proved controversial from the first leaks, the aesthetic balance of including a new triple camera array without making a smartphone look, well, ugly ending up being a very hot topic indeed.

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The cheapest iPad may not seem at first glance like it could be the stand-out product of Apple's big 2019 iPhone event, but it's more important than you might think. Now clocking in at 10.2-inches rather than the old 9.7-inch screen, the new iPad (2019) arguably has a tougher job than an iPhone 11 Pro does.

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There's probably a long German word for the act of refining something which is already at the top of its segment, and if I knew what it was I'd be using it for the Apple Watch Series 5. Despite the best efforts of Google, Samsung, and others, the Apple Watch tends to be the go-to in smartwatches, not least for its combination of fitness tracking, design, and app functionality.

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