Open-fit earbuds have tickled the fancy of music listeners who don’t want those intrusive in-ear buds shoved in their ear canals all day long. The likes of Shokz OpenFit, 1More Fit S50, Soundpeats RunFree and Sony LinkBuds are good options for people who want a fashion-first, active lifestyle without any ear itches. Bose was the first major brand to release the Sport Open wireless earbuds back in 2021 but phased them out in just one year due to a lack of popularity.
While Bose has a good stronghold on the market with the Quite Comfort earbuds when it comes to ANC performance, they still want to take another chance with the rising trend of open earbuds. We saw a glimpse of that in the shape of Ultra Open earbuds (something like the Huawei FreeClip earbuds) spotted at CES 2024 and now the audio accessory is official.
Designer: Bose and Kith
They’ve launched the buds in collaboration with Kith, a fashion and lifestyle brand founded by Ronnie Fieg. Bose also created a version of the QuietComfort Earbuds II in close quarters with singer Normani, but this collaborative effort goes much deeper. It’s the start of a loṇg stint with Ronnie who’ll now be the creative consultant for integrating fashion, culture and sound to develop interesting audio products.
The open-style pair of buds have a very distinct design with a clip-on configuration that’s not at all intrusive if you wear glasses or want to sport sunglasses on a sunbaked day. The cuff-shaped buds hook onto the outer ear for all-day-long comfort wear and beam audio into the ear canal without disturbing others in your vicinity or compromising environment awareness in busy streets. The two sections of the earbuds – speaker on the inside and battery on the outside – are joined together by a flexible joint for easy on-and-off fit for active individuals.
The earbuds are being pitched as a “breakthrough audio wearable” for enjoying music while “still hearing the world around you.” The technical specifications are scanty at this time and all that is known is that they have 7.5 hours of playback time, Bose Immersive Audio and water resistance. As you can see they have a very prominent Kith branding on each of the buds and charging case as well, with the font done in Bose styling.
Kith edition Bose Ultra Open Earbuds will be available to buy in the US and Europe starting 22 January for a price of $300. These buds will come in limited numbers and it’ll be interesting to see if Bose releases a more mainstream version in the coming months.
Unlike the daytime, people are split on what they think of the night. Some find solace in the rest that it offers, while others are wary of the dangers that lurk in the corners. The latter is mostly due to the uncertainty that the unknown brings to our minds, which is often associated with the dark of night. But nighttime as well as dark places are just as filled with treasures to discover, adventures to be experienced, and discoveries to be made, as long as you’re not stumbling in the dark, literally. Being able to see at night is often painted as a superpower, but you can actually gain that ability quite easily with today’s technologies. Harnessing decades of experience in optics and photography, YASHICA is opening the doors to new and exciting experiences with a pair of binoculars that brings the night to life in full color and stunning 4K quality.
Designer: YASHICA
Click Here to Buy Now: $139$252 ($113 off). Hurry, less than 48 hours left! Raised over $250,000.
Catch every detail in 4K UHD
There have been cameras that can see in the dark of night for years now, but most of them fail to impress or captivate budding explorers. The majority can only see in green or monochrome hues, not to mention lack enough detail to really make you appreciate the wonderful world that the night holds. The YASHICA Vision easily sets itself apart from the crowd by breaking down these barriers to deliver a photography experience that’s truly out of this world, letting you see at night as if it were day.
YASHICA Vision reveals a radiant spectrum of colors, even under the most challenging lighting conditions.
With an impressive 0.0037lux sensitivity and F/1 wide lens aperture, the YASHICA Vision binoculars can take in as much light as they need to capture detailed, sharp, and high-resolution visuals. And thanks to advanced optics and a powerful CMOS sensor, these images won’t be stuck with a dozen shades of green or gray, painting the night in full color and creating a picture that you wouldn’t otherwise see with your naked eye. Best of all, you can record that picture or video in stunning 4K quality, leaving no detail unturned.
Clarity in complete darkness.
The YASHICA Vision further redefines night-time exploration with its remarkable aperture size of F/1. This feature is crucial as it allows for a higher light intake, especially under low-light conditions.
These qualities are more than enough for urban exploration, delving into creepy basements, or watching the coast in the dark of night, but the YASHICA Vision still has more to offer, especially for those who want to get close to nature in the dark. With the ability to see objects 600 meters away even in pitch darkness and a 3x optical zoom and 5x optical zoom, wildlife photography at night becomes not only possible but also safe and enjoyable. What’s even more impressive is that YASHICA Vision’s ability to see in full color is also made possible with the use of AI analyzing and understanding a vast amount of data to automatically improve the image by reducing noise, enhancing contrast, and compensating for light. This results in images with natural color reproduction and a higher dynamic range, even under low light and at low lux levels. There is almost literally nothing you can’t see in the dark, and the night becomes your playground rather than a source of fear and anxiety.
It might look like a pair of bulky binoculars, but the YASHICA Vision is a truly innovative photography device designed to accompany you on your nocturnal adventures. A 16-hour battery life and support for up to 512GB microSD cards promise very few downtimes as you go about your way in the dark. An intuitive and convenient binocular design allows users to have a comfortable and enjoyable time focusing on seeing instead of fumbling around the controls. Finally, a robust construction, an IP65 dust and water resistance rating, a built-in compass, and SOS guiding lights all mark the device as a reliable companion for your most daring exploits at night.
Whether you’re trying to discover what nature has to offer once the sun has set, trying to debunk urban legends and mysteries, or simply trying to enjoy the world after dark, the YASHICA Vision offers a ground-breaking tool that breaks wide open the doors to a whole new world filled with life, color, and wonders even in the dark of night.
Click Here to Buy Now: $139$252 ($113 off). Hurry, less than 48 hours left! Raised over $250,000.
Electric battery-powered vehicles might seem the future but in the long run, they are harmful to the environment in their wicked way. The next best thing is the hydrogen-powered drivetrain and many automotive manufacturers are already exploring the possibility. Sure, the cost of such vehicles is not practical enough to go mainstream, still, constant innovations in technology are getting things closer to fruition.
MIT’s electric vehicle team is also exploring the possibility with their hydrogen-powered electric motorcycle prototype. The two-wheeler uses a new hydrogen-based testbed and is open source for other proactive automotive developers to test out as the files are available online. Led by Aditya Mehrotra, a graduate student working with mechanical engineering professor Alex Slocum, the Walter M. May and A. Hazel May Chair in Emerging Technologies, the project aims to take clean energy alternatives to the next level with innovation.
Designer: MIT
According to Aditya, “We’re hoping to use this project as a chance to start conversations around ‘small hydrogen’ systems that could increase demand, which could lead to the development of more infrastructure.” The team took a 1999 Ducati Supersport donor motorcycle frame as the basis and fitted an electric motor, drive train, hydrogen tank and other custom-made components to develop the design. Some components were donated by industry sponsors and the two-wheeler took shape over the period of one year.
The heart of the system is a fuel cell developed by South Korean company Doosan and it’s mated to the supporting gas cylinder for drawing energy. Until the drivetrain is fully developed the bike runs on this hybrid system. The bike is still in the early stages of development and is going to be purely a concept of proof for other designs to follow. To this accord, the team is mindful enough to create a handbook detailing the process of development and fail-safes in case anything goes wrong.
This is important because “a lot of the technology development for hydrogen is either done in simulation or is still in the prototype stages because developing it is expensive, and it’s difficult to test these kinds of systems,” as per one of the team members. There have been previous efforts to develop such hydrogen-powered vehicles but nothing that’s completely open-source like this one. The project is an ongoing endeavor until the cost of the fuel cell is made commercially viable.
Although it might not be as prominent as Touch ID, the notch, or the more recent Dynamic Island, the physical mute switch has become one of the most loved features of the iPhone right from day one. It is one of those small features that proved just how attentive Apple was to the little details that significantly improved the lives of their customers. After more than a decade in service, that switch was eventually replaced by the Action button in the iPhone 15 Pro models this year, but of course, that isn’t the end of the story. According to sources, next year’s iPhones will have an even more talented Action Button and best of all, it will be available on all models right off the bat.
Designer: Apple (via MacRumors)
The physical mute switch delivered peace of mind by letting iPhone users switch from ring to silent mode and vice-versa with a literal flick of a switch, saving you from stress and embarrassment in times when your phone shouldn’t be audible. Presuming you know what the current sound mode is, you don’t even need to look at the switch’s position to push it. You can do it while your iPhone is still in your pocket, and no one will be the wiser.
There might be some fans who are sad to it go, but that switch has ascended to become a button. It can now do more than just switch to silent mode since it can be mapped to some actions, hence its name. Apple had some ambitious plans for the Action Button, but the lack of time meant it had to make do with a simple physical button and limit it to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. But now that the cat is out of the bag, it is free to push forward with its original plans.
Although nothing’s set in stone yet, Apple might change the Action Button from a mechanical button to a capacitive one with force sensitivity. This is similar to the technology used in the previous Touch ID home button as well as the Force Touch trackpad on MacBooks. This revamped Action Button would be able to distinguish between a simple press, a long press, and a hard press, so you’d be able to assign at least two actions to the same button (long press is set to switching between ring and silent by default).
The exact implementation details are, of course, still up in the air, but it would be a very big improvement over the current basic implementation. Even better, those same sources claim that this new Action Button will make its way to all iPhone 16 models, both the standard and Pro models, so there wouldn’t be a need for envious buyers. Again, all of these are still unofficial, so Apple could still pull the plug from the plan if it doesn’t deem the feature to be ready by the time it locks down the iPhone 16 features next year.
Samsung’s still stuck with the foldable format. Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi have limited themselves to an Asia-exclusive audience… and Google mentioned NOTHING about the Pixel Fold’s sales, hinting at disappointment. So did the OnePlus Open arrive at the perfect time to reinvigorate foldable sales the way Apple’s Vision Pro reinvigorated the metaverse? Or is the OnePlus Open a little too late to a rather lackluster party that Samsung’s been trying to throw since 2019? My gut tells me it’s the latter.
All Foldables are the same
Speaking of 2019, I remember when Elon Musk took to the stage to reveal the Cybertruck at a Tesla event in November of the year. Just before Musk revealed the truck’s unique design, he revealed an image of four pickup trucks kept side by side with the logos removed. Musk asked the audience to look at the truck and identify which one belonged to which brand. To the untrained eye, without the logo, every truck looked the exact same. Rightfully so, Musk’s point was to highlight that within the pickup format, companies weren’t imaginative in the least. Everyone just colored within the lines, churning out trucks that had no character and that couldn’t be differentiated in a lineup. Foldable phones are seeing a similar trajectory. Apart from the fact that they bend in half, there’s really no difference between a OnePlus Open, a Pixel Fold, a Galaxy Z Fold, an Oppo Find N2, or a Huawei Mate X2. Every single phone looks the same on the front and when you open the device, and the only real difference lies in their back and how many cameras they have crammed into that bump. If you REALLY want to look for innovation, it’s probably in the way those hinges are designed or whether the phones leave a gap when they fold shut or have a clean closing seam… but otherwise, these foldables are exactly like their unfoldable counterparts.
Image Credits: MKBHD
The OnePlus Open Looks Great! But…
Amid much fanfare, OnePlus released their highly anticipated Open phone today (although most people will argue it looks EXACTLY like the Oppo Find N3). For a first attempt, it’s a stellar device that has a beautifully thin design that folds shut. The bezels are practically invisible both on the outside as well as the inside, firing major shots at Google’s Pixel Fold that looks absolutely chunky and hideous in comparison, and the phone is slim when folded, but opens up to reveal a gorgeous 7.8-inch display that shows barely any crease when opened. It’s got a Hasselblad-powered camera, the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, and an impressive 4805mAh battery. The software is great, with a uniquely designed interface that prioritizes power-use, allows multitasking, and has an almost laptop-style dock of apps at the bottom that you can access on demand. Heck, the alert slider is back too, making this phone a true OnePlus icon. However, there are a few rather glaring problems. The phone is quite literally a rip-off of the Oppo Find N3, which most people would have figured out considering Oppo owns OnePlus now. So if you’re looking for something absolutely refreshingly different, this really isn’t it. The phone also skips wireless charging in a strange turn of events, and has a starting price of $1700, making it eye-wateringly expensive considering you could get a GOOD flagship phone for half that price. The overarching problem, however, is that if you view OnePlus’ own teaser from last week, it’s a vague message AT BEST. The teaser talks about how life bends you, and how your phone should bend too. It vaguely rants about “opening to new possibilities” and ties it to OnePlus’ “Never Settle” tagline. Sure, one could argue that it’s just a teaser, but what it’s teasing isn’t new. The OnePlus Open is great on paper, but it makes absolutely no compelling case for why you should buy it over any other foldable, or even any other regular non-folding flagship with a big screen, good battery, and a great camera.
Consumers aren’t asking for foldable phones…
The tragedy with foldables is that consumers find them interesting, but not interesting enough to buy. We love the idea of wowing at stuff, but just a small fraction of users are actually enthusiastic enough to put the money where their mouth is. The number is so small that companies don’t EVER talk about how many foldables they sold. Not to consumers, not to analysts, not even to shareholders. The reason behind this tiny number is beyond just the fact that foldable phones are more expensive than some laptops. It’s that consumers literally aren’t asking for foldables. People just want better cameras and batteries, more durable devices that last longer, and ease of repairability, whether it’s first or third-party repairs.
The Folding Screen isn’t the solution… It’s the problem
Just like consumers have ‘range anxiety’ with EVs, they have ‘bend anxiety’ with foldables. We’re a generation that puts cases on phones, applies tempered glass on screens. I’m absolutely anal about making sure my phone doesn’t see a scratch on it, so you can imagine how neurotic I’d be if I had a folding phone worth twice as much as my current device. There’s an inherent fear of accidentally shutting your phone with some dust or sand in it, or having your keys get wedged as you fold your phone shut, or just the fact that folding a display may end up damaging it (Marques Brownlee’s OnePlus Open handset showed a few dead pixels within 3 weeks). Besides, foldables don’t have one screen – they have two, so that’s double the anxiety. After all, warranties don’t cover cracked or damaged displays. Fixing the display on a foldable costs as much as buying a new flagship phone. All that being said… those concerns may be generational. Foldables could scare off our generations but could somehow appeal to younger generations who don’t look at all these as concerns but as ridiculous hypotheticals. That puts us at an interesting turning point.
How Foldables benefit the entire Smartphone Industry
The minute you stop thinking of foldables as actual consumer gadgets and start thinking of them as R&D devices, you begin to appreciate them. First-generation foldables had horrible designs. Their bezels were unappealingly thick, the phones themselves felt incredibly chunky, the hinges made all sorts of noises, and the battery life was abysmal. Cut to nearly half a decade later and you really begin to see how far we’ve come. Newer foldables have thinner profiles, practically invisible bezels, highly engineered hinges, and split batteries that go up to 5000mAh in capacity, giving you all-day usage just like a regular phone. This innovation helps consumers in two ways – First, it carries over onto regular phones, which can now house better batteries, and which can be engineered to be more durable thanks to the material science that goes into foldables. Secondly, the ONLY way to make foldables more affordable is to make more of them. There was a time when OLED displays were terrifyingly expensive, but now even a $500 mid-range phone has an OLED display, showing how effective the economies of scale are at bringing down the cost of cutting-edge tech. If we’re on this trajectory, it wouldn’t be inconceivable to imagine a $799 foldable, which would appeal to a vast variety of users. That future, however, remains largely unknown… which is why it isn’t really easy to predict whether the OnePlus Open came too early or too late. My gut as an avid tech-lover tells me that foldables won’t die, but they’ll remain a niche. Before foldables become mainstream, we’ll move on to the next thing, which could possibly be spatial computing. In that eventuality, there won’t be much demand for a folding phone, however, folding technology will carry forward into other sectors like tablets and laptops. My gut tells me the OnePlus Open might just be a bit of a bust, but it’ll play a key role (along with other foldables) in helping spur innovation in multiple different directions.
Foldable smartphones (like the OPPO Find N3, which we loved) are filtering into the high-end smartphone marketplace, tying together the best parts of mobile computing. When you buy a foldable phone in lieu of a regular smartphone, you’re essentially getting two devices in one: a smartphone that can instantly double its screen space, and a tablet that can instantly halve its size to fit in your pocket.
OnePlus is the latest smartphone maker to release its own foldable smartphone, called the OnePlus Open. Reviewers seem to agree that it comes with a good collection of attention-grabbing features… tied to a less exciting $1699.99 price point and several unfortunate shortcomings. But it’s still accurate to say the OnePlus Open represents another step forward, further solidifying an industry-wide push toward foldable phones – a step which even Apple hasn’t taken yet, given that its rumored iPhone Flip still doesn’t have a concrete release window.
Designer: OnePlus
Click Here to Buy Now
The most striking feature of the new OnePlus Open folding smartphone is its dual 2k 120 Hz fluid AMOLED ProXDR displays. The cover display alone measures up to 6.31 inches and uses a 20:9 aspect ratio, but opening up the cover display and deploying OnePlus Open’s tablet mode reveals a much larger 7.82 inch form factor when the two displays sit side-by-side.
What’s impressive here, however, is the phone’s max brightness of 2800 nits, paired with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos integration. That makes the OnePlus Open a portable home theatre that rivals many modern high-end televisions in every way but size.
The entire thing seems sturdily built, with ceramic guard shielding surrounding the cover display. When the device is fully deployed in tablet mode, it’s protected by “Ultra-Thin Glass that sits above the flexi OLED, a layer TPU for shielding against physical impact, and an anti-reflection screen protector to reduce everyday wear and tear.”
The Hasselblad triple-camera system is packed full of sensors, including a primary 48 megapixel SONY LYTIA-T808, a 64 megapixel telephoto camera with 6x lossless optical zoom, and a 48 megapixel ultra-wide sensor. There are also two front cameras: a 20 MP selfie cam in tablet mode and a 32 MP selfie cam on the cover display. Hasselblad Portrait Mode seems like a major draw for photographers working in low light conditions, and according to OnePlus, “the revolutionary cameras work in tandem to deliver DSLR-level depth-tracking, bokeh and flare effects captured by Hasselblad cameras fitted with XCD 3,5/30, 2,8/65 and 2,5/90V lenses.”
That’s a lot of gear to keep protected from the elements, which is why it’s disappointing that the device’s water resistance rating of IPX4 means it is unprotected from full immersion in water, and is less dust resistant than other devices with a higher rating. That makes it slightly less competitive with other foldable smartphones like the Google Pixel Fold.
The OnePlus Open is now available for pre-order in the United States and Canada via the official OnePlus website, Amazon, and Best Buy, with phones officially shipping out on October 26. It starts in two colors: Voyager Black and Emerald Dusk, and you can now pre-order it for $1699.99 USD or $2299.99 CAD, though OnePlus offers an additional $200 trade-in discount.
When we were watching sci-fi TV shows and movies, we probably dreamt of eventually having those vehicles, gadgets, and other technology that they were showing off there. We’re in the year 2023 and while there have been some major advancements already, we still have some ways to go when it comes to things like hoverboards and flying cars. But apparently, we might be closer than we’ve been thinking as an aeronautics company has taken one step closer to having an actual flying car on the road, or rather, in the sky.
Designer: Alef Aeronautics (Open for Pre-Order Now!)
The California-based sustainable electric transportation company Alef Aeronautics was able to receive government certification to fly its Model-A flying car over some parts of the state, specifically Silicon Valley. It is apparently the first of its kind and is able to function like what a real car on the road would do but is able to do a vertical takeoff and fly through the skies. It may not the flying car that we’ve envisioned just yet because of The Jetsons and Back to the Future but it’s one step closer to having vehicles other than planes and helicopters up there.
It is an electric vehicle that looks like a customized luxury car or something that’s from one of those sci-fi movies where flying cars are the norm. The front and sides have some grill type of panels that probably have something to do with the technology that allows it to fly. Obviously they will not reveal yet much of their secrets but the CEO Jim Dukovny claims that their car is even safer than the regular cars on the road. You can actually park and use it just like a regular car and then when you need it to fly, you just do a vertical takeoff.
Obviously, something like this will cost a lot. For now the price tag is $300,000 and they’re still getting a lot of pre-orders. Eventually, they want to be able to bring it down to 100K and then 35K so that the “average consumer” will still get a chance to own one. There are still many steps to go including regulations in cities and countries that will have it, but it’s still a pretty exciting development to have.
