Latest news, developments and reporting on Products & Applications.
Shaoshupai published an article on Oct. 14, 2026, explaining podcast editing difficulties through cognitive psychology and neuroscience, including continuous speech, coarticulation, categorical perception and statistical learning.
The Verge says Amazon's $549.99 Alexa Tablet 12 Pro has a standout 12-inch Nanomatte display and runs full Android, but Amazon bloatware, middling performance and a weak Alexa Plus experience keep it from being the Android tablet buyers need.
Nothing released the Headphone (1) Pro on October 13 at 2,999 yuan, adding a 40mm dynamic driver, a PEN detail unit and an xMEMS tweeter to its flagship over-ear noise-cancelling headphone, according to a review by iFanr.
SolarWinds unveiled Avior, an auditable agentic AI system for enterprise IT, while Harmonic Security, Uvi, Evos and CodeWall announced funding for AI agent governance, context, operations and offensive security.
Samsung Health now lets users start Sleep Coaching after three days of sleep data instead of a full week, and adds expanded Running Coach tiers and a Strava route import in an update rolling out this month.
MIT Technology Review reports that DARPA is funding a $73 million program to develop shelf-stable synthetic blood products, aiming for field deployment by 2029 as blood shortages threaten military and civilian trauma care.
AI short dramas top 1,500 daily releases and 50,000-yuan budgets, but a 0.4% hit rate leaves most producers losing money.
Cambridge Audio's new Spira turntable, priced at $499, targets first-time vinyl owners with a built-in phono preamp, Bluetooth and minimal controls.
MarkTechPost ranked nine AI gateways for production teams in 2026, with Bifrost first, Portkey second and LiteLLM third. The ranking weighs performance, coverage, governance, deployment, cost and vendor or supply chain risk.
Liquid AI has released LFM2.5-24B-A2B, a 24B-parameter mixture-of-experts model with about 2.45B active parameters and 131,072-token context, aimed at on-device agent and tool-use workloads. It leads several agentic benchmarks in company tests but trails larger models on knowledge and coding.
Qianwen Office released an AI productivity tool for e-commerce merchants on October 14 and opened invite-only testing. The edition adds cross-platform dashboards, trend and selling-point analysis, bulk creative generation, and ROI optimization.
TechRadar says store infrastructure, not AI models, will decide which retailers scale, citing Deloitte's AI execution gap.
Nothing CEO Carl Pei calls Apple's iPhone Duo a waste of money as pre-order scams emerge before Friday's launch.
Tencent's WeCom and WorkBuddy launched a two-way integration on Oct. 14, 2026, while ByteDance's Doubao Work added one-click imports from other AI tools and new conversation controls, deepening competition in AI-assisted office software.
In a review published by Sspai, Austin Mann tests the iPhone 18 Pro in Dunton, Colorado, citing variable aperture, manual focus controls, Focus Tracking, Reference Images and 4K time-lapse as key additions for photographers.
Google delayed Gemini skills for Workspace users beyond October 13, citing safe enterprise access. No new date set.
Magisk developer John Wu has shown full root access running on-device on Googlebook OS, while Google says it has found the cause of dark-gray blacks on some OLED Googlebooks and is preparing a fix.
QbitAI reported that a Lynk & Co 10 EM-P fell nearly 100 meters off a mountain road in Sichuan on Oct. 9, leaving the driver with only minor injuries. Lynk & Co said the cabin, airbags, battery and emergency rescue system worked as designed, drawing attention to safety as the brand pushes to catch up in intelligent features.
AI-generated variety shows are gaining millions of likes and followers on Douyin. LibTV has partnered with Douyin's Future Director Support Program to offer computing power, creation tools, traffic and promotion, aiming to help creators turn viral videos into sustained series and IPs.
STEPX released STEPX Neo, its first large-model-native agent phone, in Shanghai on Oct. 13, 2026, with Step AOS 1.0, personal agent Amoo and a 3,999 yuan full-stack price.
Chrome 155 for Googlebook OS now lets users install any webpage as a web app, even without an installable manifest, and is rolling out through Google Play over the next few days.
BYD has priced its new Han Dahan flagship sedan from 235,900 to 275,900 yuan, with over 1,000 km CLTC range, standard rear-wheel steering and advanced driver assistance as the automaker pushes further into the premium segment.
Samsung has increased Australian prices across its Galaxy S26 lineup by AU$100 to AU$250, but Amazon is selling the 256GB base model for AU$1,127, 32% below the revised RRP, according to TechRadar.
TechRadar calls HP Color LaserJet Enterprise 4701 fast and secure, but faults its non-touch UI and color toner cost.