Apple Unveils HomePod mini 2, HomeView and Apple TV 4K; Google Releases Gemini 4 Argon

Apple said HomePod mini 2 uses an Apple S10 chip and computational audio, with 360-degree sound that analyzes and optimizes acoustic performance in real time. It can be used alone, in stereo pairs or in multiroom audio configurations, and can act as the default speaker for Mac computers with Wi-Fi 6E or later. It supports Siri voice control and does not store voice requests by default, can serve as a home hub to control accessories and run automations, recognizes smoke and carbon monoxide alarm sounds and sends notifications, and supports Face ID-linked accessories. It comes in pink, green, blue, white and midnight and is priced at 1,099 yuan. Pre-orders opened in more than 23 countries and regions including China and the United States, with sales starting Oct. 30.

Apple HomeView, a smart-home hub, carries an A18 chip and a Secure Exclaves security enclave, a 7-inch Liquid Retina display with True Tone and automatic brightness from 0.3 to 500 nits. The desktop version connects the screen to a hemispherical base with a stainless steel hinge and includes an acoustic system with two full-range drivers, a downward-firing woofer and two vibration-canceling passive radiators; a wall-mounted version has two dedicated drivers. It runs HomeView software version 27.2 with Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, can distinguish up to six users by face recognition and works with HomeKit and Matter. HomeView comes in silver, starlight, light pink and space gray, with the wall version in space gray and silver, and is priced at $299 in the U.S.

The fourth-generation Apple TV 4K uses an A19 chip, with CPU performance up to 50 percent higher and GPU performance up to twice as fast, plus a dedicated AV1 hardware decoder and Secure Exclaves for microphone data isolation. It has three far-field microphones for hands-free voice control and can form a four-speaker surround system with four HomePod mini 2 units or HomePod second generation. Its Siri Remote adds Precision Finding and sound playback locating. The device supports Wi-Fi, Thread and local processing for HomeKit Secure Video. Pre-orders started in the U.S. and 29 other countries and regions at $299, with sales on Nov. 13.

Apple also worked with LG and Schneider to launch Apple Home Collection, a smart-home accessory line that supports end-to-end encryption, pairs with a single tap on iPhone and integrates natively with the Apple Home app and Siri. All products support Thread and Matter. The line includes four LG monitoring devices with up to 2.5K resolution, built-in storage, iCloud+ 10-day event history and Apple Intelligence summary search; an LG Smart Deadbolt Lock with ultra-wideband passive proximity unlocking, Apple Wallet home keys, an integrated keypad, a physical backup keyhole and Aliro local offline operation; and LG Smart Thermostat and Schneider Home Smart Thermostat with on-device adaptive temperature control on iPhone, compatibility with mainstream HVAC systems and onboard wiring detection. The collection will go on sale through Apple's website and retail stores starting December 2026, with some accessories arriving in early 2027. Prices include LG Video Doorbell at $249.95, LG Floodlight Cam at $399.95, plug-in LG Outdoor Cam at $299.95, plug-in LG Indoor Cam at $199.95, LG Smart Deadbolt Lock at $349.95, both thermostats starting at $199.95 and two standalone sensors starting at $39.95.

Google released Gemini 4 Argon on Oct. 13. The model supports Gemini API's unified one-million input and output token limit, according to Shaoshupai. Google said it ranked first on the Vals Index, scored 87 percent on the Embodied Reasoning ERQA benchmark, increased internal Agent code submissions by more than 35 percent and reduced code rollbacks by nearly one-third, achieved 2.85 times end-to-end inference acceleration for Gemma 4 E2B on A100, raised throughput from about 37,900 tokens per second to more than 108,000, sped up xTB molecular structure prediction by 2.3 times and conformer search by 1.8 times, scored 57 percent on RareBench for rare-disease diagnostic assistance and 52.2 percent on LabBench wet-lab reasoning. On safety, the company said the model nearly halved violation rates in adversarial tests, cut speculative shortcut attempts in coding benchmarks to 2 percent, and held the success rate of 15 adaptive attacks to 0.7 percent on the Gray Swan indirect prompt injection benchmark. Gemini 4 Argon is available to developers, enterprises, researchers and subscribers. Gemini API introductory pricing is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with a 95 percent discount for cached input. It has also launched in the Gemini app for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. Google integrated Gemini Spark agent task automation into the Gemini main interface through a task tab, and the Google Antigravity agent coding interface has been integrated into the Gemini macOS app.

Counterpoint Research said in a report that global smartphone shipments fell 20 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2026, the lowest in 14 years since 2012. Rising material costs from higher DRAM and NAND prices helped push the global average smartphone retail price up 20 percent since the start of the year. Samsung's shipments fell 3 percent, but its market share rose to 23 percent from 19 percent, keeping it first. Apple's shipments fell 22 percent, while its third-quarter market share rose to 22 percent from 18 percent. Chinese brands generally declined: Xiaomi shipments fell more than 30 percent and its share dropped to 10 percent from 14 percent; OPPO and vivo each fell more than 20 percent, with shares shrinking to 9 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

Apple also launched sleep apnea notifications for Apple Watch in mainland China on Oct. 14. The feature recently received medical device registration from the National Medical Products Administration, or NMPA. It uses a deep-learning algorithm and clinical test datasets, monitoring subtle wrist movements with the watch's accelerometer to assess interruptions in normal breathing rhythms and generate a breathing disturbances metric. The system analyzes data every 30 days and, if it detects persistent moderate to severe sleep apnea signs, sends a notification with episodes and a PDF of the past three months of data for medical reference. The feature is intended for people 18 or older who have not been diagnosed with sleep apnea and supports Apple Watch Series 9 and later, Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later, and Apple Watch SE 3 and later.

Beats and The Pokemon Company International introduced a special Pokemon x Beats Pill portable Bluetooth speaker. Its grille features Pikachu and Mimikyu, with an electric-yellow and grayscale color scheme, and for the first time it includes a charm with a Poké Ball, Beats logo and lightning motif plus a detachable lanyard in matching colors. The speaker has a custom acoustic system, supports high-resolution lossless audio over USB-C and wireless pairing of two speakers for amplified or stereo modes. It has IP67 dust and water resistance, a silicone backing, up to 24 hours of battery life and can reverse-charge compatible phones through the included USB-C cable. It is priced at 1,299 yuan and will go on sale Oct. 15 on apple.com and the Douyin Beats official flagship store.

STEPX, a large-model-native AI terminal brand, launched its first large-model-native agent phone, the STEPX Neo Pioneer Edition, in Shanghai on Oct. 13. The phone runs Step AOS 1.0, an agent-native operating system, and includes a personal agent called Step Amoo, a main screen for daily operations and a separate MiniLED dot-matrix rear screen. Its hearing enhancement system combines a six-microphone array, a low-power audio sensing chip and the Whisper 1.0 pickup algorithm. It uses a device-cloud collaborative model matrix, with the device side handling simple operations such as adjusting system settings and the cloud side handling complex demand planning and decomposition; it is accompanied by Step Studio, an AI terminal development tool that supports natural-language development. The STEPX Neo comes in carbon black and silicon silver, integrates Step series models, Step AOS and Step Studio, and is priced at 3,999 yuan with 12 consecutive months of 10 billion tokens per month. Pre-orders opened at 21:00 on Oct. 13, with official sales at 10:13 on Oct. 16.

SpaceXSI launched X Subscription, a unified membership system that bundles Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor and X Premium. The individual Plus tier provides Grok Chat, Voice, Imagine, Build and API access, Cursor coding features, and X Premium privileges including verification, reduced ads in the feed, creator tools and analytics. The individual Premium tier adds Grok Bot, the latest Grok models, AI text-and-image and video generation, fast conversational responses, code hosting, cloud agents and automation on Cursor, and unlocks an ad-free X feed and priority username protection. The Super tier adds priority access to Grok models at peak times, while the top Ultra tier offers early access to all products and models and 20 times the usage quota of Plus. Monthly individual prices are $8 for Plus, $30 for Premium, $100 for Super and $200 for Ultra; the top three tiers are also available to teams, with enterprise customization.

Google announced updates to Google Play covering app building, multi-device distribution, content discovery and the gaming ecosystem. Users can write Android apps directly through Google AI Studio; these apps do not go through Play Store review, are for personal use only, can be deployed to personal devices without a developer account and are being rolled out to users 18 and older in selected markets including the United States. Google Play also redesigned its interface for cars, XR immersive spaces and Googlebook, and added Ask Play for cross-app comparison analysis and Play in Gemini.