Latest news, developments and reporting on Products & Applications.
Perplexity has released Photon, an in-house Rust retrieval and ranking engine that now handles all production search traffic and powers a new Fast Search mode. Perplexity reports p99 retrieval and ranking latency fell from about 800 ms to about 65 ms, while Fast Search costs about 68% less than the default preset but scores slightly lower.
Manus released Manus 2.0 and Cue, giving personal agents email, phone numbers, wallets and computers, while 2Do rolled out a rebuilt task manager with modern UI and new sync tools.
TP-Link has begun selling the Archer 8 Ultra, the first Wi-Fi 8 router, in the UK, Australia, Germany and other markets. UK preorders cost £669.99 before rising to £899.99, though no Wi-Fi 8 client devices are available yet.
Facer redesigned its Android and iOS watch face store, adding curated tabs and Timex, Sonic and Angry Birds partners.
Android Authority teardowns of Google Photos 7.95 show work-in-progress tools to regenerate AI wardrobe images, add outfits without resetting the wardrobe, and delete all Ask Photos Remember List entries.
WONE combines psychometrics, wearables and AI coaching to track workplace stress continuously and prevent burnout.
BMW has unveiled the eighth-generation 3 Series, codenamed G50, with a new design language and cabin while keeping a longitudinal engine, rear-drive basis and an inline-six in the M350.
SMGCommunity has fully decompiled Super Mario Galaxy, the first Wii game to reach 100 percent decompilation, while Luma's Workshop says an unofficial PC port called AstroCore is already in development.
Which? says menopause supplements costing up to £485 a year lack key nutrients and are no better than a £22 multivitamin.
A Leiphone report says Chinese visuotactile sensor makers reject the idea that their technology is simply a camera plus silicone, pointing to materials, calibration, durability, frame rates and data-model integration as hard barriers.
AI Greta Garbo stars in SKF ball-bearings ad; estate weighs AI film role, The Guardian reports.
TechRadar reports the Philips Baristina coffee machine is now AU$359 in Australia, AU$60 below the AU$419 price its writer had already called the coffee machine deal of the year.
Amazon Prime Big Deal Days 2026 discounts Garmin devices in Australia, led by 50% off the Epix Pro (Gen 2) Sapphire Edition at AU$829, according to TechRadar.
A Sept. 30 article on Shaoshupai's Matrix describes a family's seven-day National Day road trip from Shanxi to Henan, planned with Xiaohongshu's AI assistant Diandian and local AI agents, while stressing human verification before final decisions.
Android 17 QPR2 Beta 6.1 adds message support to the Pixel 11 Pro's HiLight LED, making it glow twice for messages from favorite contacts. The beta is available now, with a stable release expected in December.
Doubao adds flight, train, ride-hailing and navigation services via chat ahead of China's National Day holiday.
On Sept. 29, Guoxing Intelligent launched 11 special robots for high-risk scenarios in Yantai and signed supercomputing cooperation, while iQOO unveiled the iQOO16 smartphone and Pad Ultra in Shenzhen, both highlighting embodied intelligence and high-performance product applications, Leiphone reported.
Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5 with unchanged API pricing, faster generation and higher Agent benchmark scores. Lei Feng News reports the bigger shift is in Agent runtime: fewer tool calls, more batching and lower iteration counts.
Blaze says it has a three- to four-year Evercade roadmap and has spoken with EA, Sega and Bandai Namco about collaborations.
General Motors said it will launch its premium Buick brand in South Korea with the Electra E7 plug-in hybrid SUV, while Porsche Korea said it will launch the all-electric Cayenne Electric.
RSA announced Agent ID, an agentic identity security platform, at The AI Conference in San Francisco. It combines discovery, an inline AI/MCP gateway and governance logging as enterprises face thousands of unmanaged agents and costly shadow AI incidents.
TechRadar published a guide on September 30, 2026, by senior staff writer Max, advising shoppers not to pay AU$699 for premium headphones and instead consider eight discounted sets with up to 61% off.
Okta has launched an AI agent runtime gateway that sits in the path of attempted agent actions and enforces authorization at runtime, according to SiliconANGLE. Intent-based authorization is planned for 2027.
TechRadar's October 2026 reviews recap names Sonos Beam Ultra, Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 5, DJI Osmo 360 II, Garmin Fenix 9 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro among its highest-scoring new gadgets.