Tech – Page 5

Belkin shows tech firms getting too comfortable with bricking customers’ stuff

Smart Home, Tech / Mike M. / July 12, 2025

In a somewhat anticipated move, Belkin is killing most of its smart home products. On January 31, the company will stop supporting the majority of its Wemo devices, leaving users without core functionality and future updates.

In an announcement emailed to customers and posted on Belkin’s website, Belkin said:

After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to end technical support for older Wemo products, effective January 31, 2026. After this date, several Wemo products will no longer be controllable through the Wemo app. Any features that rely on cloud connectivity, including remote access and voice assistant integrations, will no longer work.

The company said that people with affected devices that are under warranty on or after January 31 “may be eligible for a partial refund” starting in February.

The 27 affected devices have last sold dates that go back to August 2015 and are as recent as November 2023.

The announcement means that soon, features like the ability to work with Amazon Alexa will suddenly stop working on some already-purchased Wemo devices. The Wemo app will also stop working and being updated, removing the simplest way to control Wemo products, including connecting to Wi-Fi, monitoring usage, using timers, and activating Away Mode, which is supposed to make it look like people are in an empty home by turning the lights on and off randomly. Of course, the end of updates and technical support has security implications for the affected devices, too.

People will still be able to use affected devices if they configure the products with Apple HomeKit before January 31. In these cases, users will be able to control their Wemo devices without relying on the Wemo app or Belkin’s cloud. Belkin says seven of the 27 devices it is discontinuing are HomeKit-compatible.

Four Wemo devices will not be affected and “will continue to function as they do today through HomeKit,” Belkin said. Those products are: the Wemo Smart Light Switch 3-Way (WLS0503), Wemo Stage Smart Scene Controller (WSC010), Wemo Smart Plug with Thread (WSP100), and Wemo Smart Video Doorbell Camera (WDC010). All except the Smart Video Doorbell Camera are based on the Thread protocol.

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A mess of its own making: Google nerfs second Pixel phone battery this year

batteries, Google, Google Pixel, Google Pixel 6a, Tech / Shannon Garcia / July 11, 2025

Not all batteries age the same way. Some problems will appear quickly, but others won’t be noticeable until after many charge/discharge cycles. A few years back, Samsung released the Galaxy Note 7 with a slightly larger battery than the previous model. Within weeks, the phones started to catch fire, and even after swapping in a different battery pack, the issue persisted. It was a huge mess that led to a recall and steep financial losses.

Samsung’s battery missteps may have prompted manufacturers to take possible battery defects more seriously. So when Google detected problems with aging Pixel 4a batteries, it didn’t take any chances. It decided to degrade the experience on the remaining Pixel 4a units out there, even if the lower capacity and slower charging upset users. When Pixel 6a units started to catch fire again, Google decided to simply limit battery performance.

Pixel 6a update — The mandatory Android 16 July update will limit battery charging speed and capacity on affected phones. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

Pixel 4a units contained one of two different batteries, and only the one manufactured by a company called Lishen was downgraded. For the Pixel 6a, Google has decreed that the battery limits will be imposed when the cells hit 400 charge cycles. Beyond that, the risk of fire becomes too great—there have been reports of Pixel 6a phones bursting into flames.

Clearly, Google had to do something, but the remedies it settled on feel unnecessarily hostile to customers. It had a chance to do better the second time, but the solution for the Pixel 6a is more of the same.

A problem of Google’s making

Like other smartphone manufacturers, Google moved away from offering removable batteries in the 2010s to make phones slimmer and more durable. Smartphone makers largely dismissed the concerns of repair advocates who pointed out that lithium-ion batteries degrade over time, and making them difficult to remove wasn’t the best idea. However, this was a time when people only kept smartphones for a year or two before upgrading, but we have since entered an era in which people use phones for much longer. The way phones are marketed has changed to reflect that—Google has enacted longer support windows, topping out at seven years for its latest phones.

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Gemini can now turn your photos into video with Veo 3

AI, Ai video, Gemini, Google, Tech, Veo 3 / Shannon Garcia / July 10, 2025

Google’s Veo 3 videos have propagated across the Internet since the model’s debut in May, blurring the line between truth and fiction. Now, it’s getting even easier to create these AI videos. The Gemini app is gaining photo-to-video generation, allowing you to upload a photo and turn it into a video. You don’t have to pay anything extra for these Veo 3 videos, but the feature is only available to subscribers of Google’s Pro and Ultra AI plans.

When Veo 3 launched, it could conjure up a video based only on your description, complete with speech, music, and background audio. This has made Google’s new AI videos staggeringly realistic—it’s actually getting hard to identify AI videos at a glance. Using a reference photo makes it easier to get the look you want without tediously describing every aspect. This was an option in Google’s Flow AI tool for filmmakers, but now it’s in the Gemini app and web interface.

To create a video from a photo, you have to select “Video” from the Gemini toolbar. Once this feature is available, you can then add your image and prompt, including audio and dialogue. Generating the video takes several minutes—this process takes a lot of computation, which is why video output is still quite limited.

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Ars staffers share some of their favorite unexpected 3D prints

3D printing, bambu lab, bambu lab a1, Features, Tech / 9u50fv / July 9, 2025

Once you solve one problem with a 3D printer, you’ll go looking for others.

Coffee bean dosing cups and espresso tamper handle Credit: Aurich Lawson

Part of the fun of 3D printing is discovering just how many possibilities there are for different things to print. Obviously, they’re fun for printing toys or decorations that you couldn’t or wouldn’t buy yourself, but they’re also powerful problem-solving tools. Once you’ve solved a few problems with 3D printed parts, you start looking around for other minor inconveniences or quality-of-life upgrades that you could solve—and the breadth and depth of the 3D printing community means that you can almost always find someone else who has already thought up and posted a solution for you.

As a coda to our series about breaking into 3D printing for the first time, the 3D printer-pilled among the Ars staff is sharing a few of their favorite unexpected prints, from fun all-purpose gifts to containers and organizers to parts that will help you with your other, non-3D-printing-related hobbies. This is just a fraction of what’s out there, but if you’re still on the fence, maybe some of these will open your mind to the possibilities.

Coffee gear

Every morning, I make either a pour-over coffee or some form of espresso. For measuring my beans, I printed two dosing cups. The black one is matte black PLA with a fuzzy surface texture (an option in most slicers that adds random noise to the outside wall paths), and the white one is ABS that I sanded to a smooth surface. For sanding, I prefer ABS, as it’s easier to get something that has no real signs of layer lines. To tamp my espresso grounds, I printed a handle in black ABS and sanded it smooth to feel good in the hand. The rounded knob helps me get pressure more comfortably than the raw metal of the original tamper, and the radial fins fit perfectly into the dosing cup, keeping the tamp straight up and down so I don’t end up with a sloped surface.

These were all files I downloaded from MakerWorld, and I didn’t really do anything to them except minor scaling or adding the fuzzy skin.

—Aurich Lawson, Creative Director

Even more organizational tools

3D printers are good for imposing order on chaos. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

My very first 3D prints were new organizational tools to try and impose some order on the chaos of my home and office, and my favorite prints still tend to be of that genre.

Cleaning out and fully organizing my desk with 3D-printed baskets and containers is still on my long to-do list, but I did manage to tame the loose pile of USB sticks and memory cards in my desk with one of the many available organizer designs. This Gridfinity-compatible design is the one I went for, but there are truly dozens of examples on MakerWorld alone; I like this one because it can hold a lot of USB-A drives and because each individual slot is versatile enough to hold USB drives or SD or microSD cards. But there are examples with more USB-C ports and some with different dimensions and spacing, so you can find the one that works best for the space you’re trying to fit it into.

Who doesn’t need to be able to store multiple pairs of *Bluey* sunglasses? Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Having a third sunglasses-wearer in the house (and one with multiple Bluey sunglasses) also made it necessary to find some kind of way to easily put them away and keep them from floating around the living room or car and getting lost forever. I really like the versatile and modular SnapStack Modular Glasses Holder design, which gives you designs for a base and a top, and then you print as many sunglasses holders as you need; if you need to expand later on, just print another one or pop the top off and add to the one you’ve already made.

We had enough things to store that I went right for this three-sided version of the stand, which I printed to be able to hold nine pairs (and which is large enough that you can rest a sunglasses case or something else on the top). I stuck a few small adhesive furniture pads to the bottom to prevent damage to the table. But if you have fewer, you can print free-standing or wall-mounted versions, too.

—Andrew Cunningham, Senior Technology Reporter

Aerogarden baskets and Mario mushrooms

Screenshot of Bambu Studio showing aerogarden baskets being set up for printing — So, so many Aerogarden baskets. Credit: Lee Hutchinson

I have two fun 3D printer things to share—one is a life/money hack kind of thing, and the other is just neat.

On the life/money hack thing, my wife is a big Aerogarden kind of person—we have probably two dozen or more of the hydroponic plant doodads all over the house in various sizes, from tiny to “one wall of the kitchen.” She raises small plants in the Aerogarden(s) and then transfers them outside to the real garden; doing this means she was buying lots of special little Aerogarden baskets for the baby plants to take root in.

That sounded like a job for a 3d printer! And sure enough, Thingiverse came to the rescue! In the two years we’ve had our Bambu Lab X1 Carbon, I’ve printed probably a thousand or more of these things, in 27-lot batches because that’s how many will fit on a single build plate.

Photograph of Lee's 3d printer and a bunch of printed 1-up mushrooms all over it. — I got mushrooms and companion cubes for days! Credit: Lee Hutchinson

The other thing that has brought delight, honestly, is this little screw-top Mario 1-Up mushroom (at least, I think that’s the same one as the one I’ve been printing—it’s hard to tell, but it looks the same). It’s a little silly, but these things are not only really fun to fidget with—the top comes off and you can hide stuff in them!—but they also make fantastic little gifts for folks, especially anyone with kids and/or Gen-X sensibilities. Everyone needs more screw-top 1-Up mushrooms in their lives, and they work great in tons of different colors!

— Lee Hutchinson, Senior Technology Editor

Festool track hangers

I have three different tracks for my Festool tracksaw that I like to hang on my garage wall. It keeps them from getting dinged up, and they are easily accessible when I’m ready to cut with them. For these, I modeled my own designs in Fusion 360, with the main body printed in matte black PLA and the knob printed in a green HTPLA called Lootsef by Protopasta. That’s “Festool” spelled backward, of course, and it’s designed to pretty much perfectly match Festool’s signature green.

I used nuts embedded in the main body and bolts through the knobs to allow them to be turned to lock or release the track in place. I modeled the Festool logo into the top of the knob and used the ironing option in Bambu Studio to use the printer’s hotend to smooth the top surface around the logo.

The protective end caps were printed in the same HTPLA from a file someone uploaded to Printables.

—Aurich Lawson, Creative Director

Gridfinity all the things!

Gridfinity is a modular, grid-based storage and organization system that’s optimized for 3D printing and rapid customization. Created by Zack Freedman, Gridfinity uses a standardized 42×42 mm base grid upon which you can place highly adaptable tool trays, organizers, and workspace layouts.

The upshot is that you can print anything from a little 1x1x1 cube (42 mm³) to a massive storage bin the size of your print bed. If your desk, kitchen, or bathroom drawers scream out for organization, this is a good solution because you can print exactly what you want.

The Gridfinity Generator has you covered when it comes to printing a custom base grid. This parametric gridfinity tool is a great place to start printing bins, particularly if you’re in a situation where you can shave a few grams of filament off your design (desk bins, for instance, can typically use very thin walls).

—Ken Fisher, Editor-In-Chief

Green PETG for your green thumb

New hobby meets ancient practice when you combine 3D printing and agriculture! Credit: Andrew Cunningham

After several years of dashed hopes and false starts, I was finally able to get a single raised garden bed going in our backyard this year (among other things, a raised bed is a bit easier to protect from the wildlife in our backyard and simpler to use with the Square Foot Gardening system). The 3D printer contributed a few odds and ends, including parts that helped add strength to the enclosure I built around it and tools that helped me keep the cage’s corners (mostly) square.

But now that some of the plants are actually going, the 3D printer’s main contribution to the cause has been 3D-printed cages, which I’ve been using to get my vining plants to grow upward instead of outward (necessary for the close quarters of square-foot gardening) and to keep things from flopping over onto the ground.

As with the desk organizers, there are many options for plant cages and trellises, depending on the size of your plants, what you’re trying to grow, and your aesthetic and functional preferences. I’m giving these circular stackable ones a try since I like that they can easily be printed continuously based on how high your plants want to get, though for big ol’ tomato plants, you’ll still want a stake in the ground to help bear the weight once the plants are more than a few feet high.

If you do this—and especially if you’re using an open-bed printer like my Bambu Labs A1, which doesn’t handle filament like the UV-resistant ASA well—you’ll want to make sure to print using PETG plastic instead of the typical PLA. PETG can be fussier than PLA (it’s more prone to stringing, especially if you’re not drying your filament rolls), but it’s also less prone to warping after extended sunlight exposure, it’s modestly UV-resistant, and it has a bit more flexibility and resiliency than the more brittle PLA plastic.

—Andrew Cunningham, Senior Technology Reporter

Tool drawer organization

I also liked the idea of Gridfinity, but I found the 42 mm size a little awkward—and yes, it’s a Hitchhiker’s Guide reference, not a spec built around the size of human fingers. I modeled my own system in Fusion 360 based loosely on the idea, but with a 50 mm grid that I laser-cut out of cardboard to avoid having to print it. The containers are printed in matte black and white PLA, with a color switch using my X1C’s AMS multi-spool system to get the white tops. There’s no function to the white; I just thought it looked nice with the labels.

Custom holders for Wera screwdrivers and hex wrenches. Credit: Aurich Lawson

I modeled custom holders for another drawer to hold my screwdrivers and hex wrenches. Having the perfect shape to fit the screwdrivers is slightly overkill, but it’s super satisfying to drop them into place and watch them settle exactly into place. There’s a metric and imperial holder for the hex wrenches, each removable, so I can take them with me to find the right fit when I’m working on something. All the holders lock into the same 50 mm grid as the bins.

—Aurich Lawson, Creative Director

My main squeeze

Sometimes you stumble across things you didn’t know you needed. For me, that’s this Toothpaste Squeezer. You can print one or a dozen of them in no time. They’re simple yet effective.

Will it change your life? No. But it will give you that satisfying feeling of dealing with a beautifully primed tube of toothpaste every time. Even my in-laws use these now (or so they say). If you want something a little more hefty with a built-in ratchet, check this one out.

—Ken Fisher, Editor-In-Chief

Corral your remote controls

Even if you have a decent universal remote, chances are good that you still need your other remotes nearby. This remote control stand is easy to print, looks great, and offers a few customization choices. It also prints in multicolor without an AMS, so you can match your decor quite easily. And I’m pleased to note that it holds the fat TiVo remote with no problems.

—Ken Fisher, Editor-In-Chief

The Armorer helmet

In addition to practical prints, I like to make display props, especially Star Wars helmets. I don’t wear them for cosplay or anything; I just like having them around to look at and enjoy. I have several shelves full now, and I like to use a combination of ABS and resin to print them for the various advantages in post-processing and detail. This Armorer helmet from The Mandalorian is the first helmet I did, before I had my Bambu X1C, and it was printed in PLA on my Prusa. I later printed the horns in resin, but they could have been done in PLA and sanded smooth easily enough.

I’m including this helmet instead of any of my others because I wanted to show that you can make something like this with any bed slinger printer. You don’t need an enclosure or a large-format printer—this was printed in sections and glued together—and you don’t need fancy or toxic materials like ABS and resin.

There was a lot of sanding, filler primer, bondo, and several different passes of automotive paints, plus a two-part catalyst clear coat to finish it off. But you could get a lot of this look with rattle cans, without the need for a compressor and spray gun.

—Aurich Lawson, Creative Director

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

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Gmail’s new subscription management is here to declutter your inbox

Apps, email, Gmail, Google, Tech / Mike M. / July 9, 2025

With decades of online life behind us, many people are using years-old email addresses. Those inboxes are probably packed with subscriptions you’ve picked up over the years, and you probably don’t need all of them. Gmail is going to make it easier to manage them with a new feature rolling out on mobile and web. Google’s existing unsubscribe prompts are evolving into a one-stop shop for all your subscription management needs, a feature that has been in the works for a weirdly long time.

The pitch is simple: The aptly named “Manage subscriptions” feature will list all the emails to which you are currently subscribed—newsletters, promotions, updates for products you no longer use, and more. With a tap, you’ll never see them again. This feature in Gmail will be accessible in the navigation drawer, a UI feature that is increasingly rare in Google’s apps but is essential to managing inboxes and labels in Gmail. Down near the bottom, you’ll soon see the new Manage subscriptions item.

The page will list all email subscriptions with an unsubscribe button. If you’re not sure about letting a newsletter or deal alert remain, you can select the subscription to see all recent messages from that sender. As long as a sender supports Google’s recommended one-click unsubscribe, all you have to do is tap the Unsubscribe button, and you’ll be done. Some senders will redirect you to a website to unsubscribe, but Gmail has a “Block instead” option in those cases.

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Samsung and Epic Games call a truce in app store lawsuit

android, epic games, gaming, Tech / 9u50fv / July 8, 2025

Epic Games, buoyed by the massive success of Fortnite, has spent the last few years throwing elbows in the mobile industry to get its app store on more phones. It scored an antitrust win against Google in late 2023, and the following year it went after Samsung for deploying “Auto Blocker” on its Android phones, which would make it harder for users to install the Epic Games Store. Now, the parties have settled the case just days before Samsung will unveil its latest phones.

The Epic Store drama began several years ago when the company defied Google and Apple rules about accepting outside payments in the mega-popular Fortnite. Both stores pulled the app, and Epic sued. Apple emerged victorious, with Fortnite only returning to the iPhone recently. Google, however, lost the case after Epic showed it worked behind the scenes to stymie the development of app stores like Epic’s.

Google is still working to avoid penalties in that long-running case, but Epic thought it smelled a conspiracy last year. It filed a similar lawsuit against Samsung, accusing it of implementing a feature to block third-party app stores. The issue comes down to the addition of a feature to Samsung phones called Auto Blocker, which is similar to Google’s new Advanced Protection in Android 16. It protects against attacks over USB, disables link previews, and scans apps more often for malicious activity. Most importantly, it blocks app sideloading. Without sideloading, there’s no way to install the Epic Games Store or any of the content inside it.

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The curious rise of giant tablets on wheels

android, Features, lg, Monitors, Reviews, tablet, Tech, TVs / DJ Henderson / July 5, 2025

Not quite a TV, not your average tablet

Hands-on with KTC’s 32-inch Android tablet on a rolling pedestal, the A32Q7 Pro.

KTC’s MegPad 32-inch Android Tablet (A32Q7 Pro). Credit: Scharon Harding

Over the past few years, LG has set off a strange tech trend that’s been rolling onto devices sold across Amazon and other online electronics retailers.

In 2022, the company launched the StanbyME, which is essentially a $1,000 27-inch tablet running LG’s smart TV operating system (OS), webOS, but lacking a tuner. LG’s press release announcing the device described it as a “wireless private TV screen with a built-in battery” that is easily portable and ideal for watching shows and movies, in addition to “video conferencing with family and coworkers and viewing online lectures.”

Today, the StanbyME competes against a slew of similar devices, including some from Samsung, but mostly from smaller brands and running Android.

I’ve had one of these devices, the KTC MegPad 32-inch Android Tablet (A32Q7 Pro), rolling around my home for a few weeks, and I’m left curious about what’s driving the growth of StanbyME-like devices, which are noticeably niche and expensive. I’m also uncertain whether these hybrid devices have an ongoing place in a consumer tech world already inundated with big-screen TVs, small-screen tablets, and beloved laptops.

Hands-on

Unlike LG’s StanbyME, KTC’s device doesn’t run a smart TV OS. Instead, it’s a 32-inch Android 13 tablet. Still, KTC heavily markets the MegPad’s ability to serve as streaming hardware, and that’s one of the best uses I found for it.

A big ol’ tablet on wheels. Scharon Harding

Treating the MegPad like a smart TV on wheels meant I could have a living-room-like experience in more places throughout my home. I could watch TV in bed with a more visible screen set at a more comfortable distance than what I’d achieve with a laptop or tablet. It also meant flexibility. I don’t like having a permanent TV in my room (how would I ever get out of bed?), so I appreciated the ability to roll the MegPad out of my room or twist it so that the screen faced away from me.

The MegPad is also a diplomatic solution for homes with limited TVs or computers. This could be helpful for homes with kids with varied interests or in my home, where a speedy, 55-inch TV in the living room is the best screen available by far. I was able to let my partner take the big screen for gaming and still hang out nearby while streaming on the MegPad. I don’t have a central coffee table in my living room, but the mobile tablet enabled me to watch shows without a device weighing down my lap or making me connect a wireless speaker for better volume.

KTC’s device also has a helpful leg-up over LG’s StanbyME via its HDMI port, which makes the MegPad work like a regular monitor. Determining where to safely rest a device tethered to this mobile machine is something you’ll have to figure out on your own, though.

KTC MegPad 32-inch Android Tablet (A32Q7 Pro) — The port selection on the panel’s backside. Credit: Scharon Harding

Compared to the TV mounted on my living room wall, the MegPad is much easier to move from room to room, but it’s easy to overestimate how seamless transporting it is. Yes, it’s on a set of five 360-degree wheels, but the wheels don’t lock, and the device weighs 40.3 pounds, per its Amazon listing. That means I had to exert a decent amount of effort to move it over floor transition strips, across uneven floors, and from hardwood to carpet.

A fully rotating screen, however, makes up for some of my mobility complaints and diversifies the MegPad’s potential uses. Besides streaming, for example, the MegPad was great for watching yoga videos online, (which calls for viewing the screen from different heights and positions). It also proved to be an ideal setup for creating a large, print-out collage, which included a lot of dragging, dropping, and cropping of images.

Not a real TV

You can do a lot with a sizeable Android tablet. But with TV and movie watching being some of the most obvious uses, it’s important to note that neither the MegPad nor any of its rollable rivals are real TVs.

For one, there’s no tuner, though in the streaming world, that matters less to many of today’s TV viewers.

Further, the MegPad, like many StanbyME-like devices, uses Android 13, which doesn’t require paying vendor licensing fees like built-for smart TV OSes, such as Android TV/Google TV and webOS, would. There are some benefits to that, though.

To start, Android 13 doesn’t have the integrated ads that Android TV or the Google TV interface does. Google claims that the Google TV platform doesn’t use automatic content recognition (ACR), but as Consumer Reports has noted, Google collects “data from TVs that use its smart TV platform—and there’s no opting out of Google’s policies during setup if you want smart TV functionality.” Further, Google may combine that data with user data from third parties for advertising purposes. A spokesperson for KTC confirmed to me that the MegPad doesn’t use ACR.

As a tablet, the MegPad is compatible with more apps, many of which aren’t supported by Google TVs, like Google Sheets, Microsoft Word, Reddit, and Signal.

Android tablets are also more appropriate for storing documents, photos, and other files than smart TVs are. Although it’s likely less roomy than your PC, the MegPad has 128GB of internal storage.

But since this is an Android tablet and not a Google TV, there are no integrated channels and no live-TV-only option, which stops the device from collecting diagnostic information. Google TV would also include a more streaming-friendly user interface and the ability to watch content from different streaming providers without switching apps.

Further differing from LG’s StanbyME and real TVs, the MegPad doesn’t include a traditional remote. The tablet comes with a basic Bluetooth mouse, but due to the tablet’s portability, I frequently used the tablet without a flat surface within arm’s reach available for comfortable mouse control. The touchscreen is reliable, but gestures can be cumbersome on a tablet this large, and the display was often out of my hand’s reach.

The new portable TV?

With TVs getting larger and people turning to portable gadgets like phones and laptops for TV watching, true portable TVs have become a rarity. Demand for a small device dedicated to on-the-go TV viewing has dropped significantly since the last century. Meanwhile, fabs and supply chains are built around monitor and TV-sized displays, making it difficult to incorporate some of the most desirable display technologies, like OLED, into smaller-sized panels with competitive prices.

As a result, devices like the MegPad and Amazon’s Echo Show have become the new de facto stand-ins for portable TVs, even though they’re not true TV sets. Even LG’s StanbyME Go, a 27-inch webOS-powered display packed into a briefcase, is a far cry from what most of us would traditionally consider a portable TV.

LG StanByMe Go at a picnic — LG’s StanbyMe GO. Credit: LG

Again, these tablets have more versatility than the small, telescoping-antenna-equipped boxes you used to stick on your kitchen counter or hand to a hyper kid during road trips. But they also require a reliance on Big Tech software and all the privacy and ethical implications that come with that.

You don’t see many of these anymore. From left to right: Casio EV 570, Sony Watchman, and Casio EV 660. Credit: Richard Derk/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

KTC also sees the MegPad’s appeal as a pseudo-TV. The MegPad’s product page emphasizes users’ ability to “watch favorite shows/movies directly—no PC needed” and to “stream Netflix [and] YouTube… more effortlessly on your smart TV.” Its Amazon product page also promotes the keywords “portable TV,” “rolling TV,” “mobile TV,” and “standing TV.” This is all despite the MegPad not technically being a true TV.

“KTC defines the MegPad A32Q7Pro as a portable, smart, touchscreen monitor,” KTC’s spokesperson told me. “It combines key traits of a smart display and a large-screen tablet. While it shares some features with smart TVs, tablets, and monitors, it doesn’t fully belong to any single traditional category. It’s a hybrid device designed to bridge those use cases.”

Android tablets on wheels

Many devices like the MegPad represent a push for more Android-powered, non-Google devices that has been buoyed by a program that Google launched in 2022, the Enterprise Devices Licensing Agreement (EDLA).

As explained by partners like BenQ, EDLA is a way for third parties to incorporate Google Mobile Services (GMS), which are Google’s most commonly used apps and APIs bundled for use across different types of devices. GMS apps include popular software like Google Drive, Gmail, the Google Play Store, and YouTube.

“Previously, GMS was only officially available for smartphones, tablets, TVs, and wearables. Under the new EDLA, the list of devices eligible for GMS certification has now been expanded to include enterprise solutions such as smart boards,” a blog from BenQ, which has EDLA-certified smart displays, reads.

Since 2022, (the year LG’s StanbyME launched), there has been an uptick in non-Google devices with this EDLA certification. One of the categories taking advantage of the newer program is tablets on wheels, like the MegPad and similar options from Kefeya, Apolosign, Innocn, and DuraPro.

Demonstrating the marketing value of EDLA certification, the MegPad’s product page reads: “Google EDLA certification provides secure, direct access to Google services and the Google Play Store with regular updates, offering greater stability and data protection than open app ecosystems with unverified apps.”

Most EDLA-certified devices seem to be interactive displays used for education. With EDLA certification, devices like the MegPad may also draw the attention of educators or even businesses. Meanwhile, Google is happy to hand out EDLA certifications, as they can drive Android adoption, giving Google more data and access to customers outside of the typical Android devices, such as phones. Products like the MegPad can also be easier to shop with (Google loves when people use its offerings to shop) than Android devices with smaller screens.

Who’s this for?

I’ve been fascinated by the MegPad and similar devices because they introduce a unique approach to streaming, web browsing, and productivity. But ultimately, they’re hard to recommend when there are other personal gadgets that are more affordable and often take up less space.

I had fun with the MegPad and appreciated the flexibility it offered, especially in my smaller NYC home. There are some specific use cases where products like this could excel, like if you want to bring a computer or screen into a room that doesn’t always need one. It was also helpful as an entertainment center for my father post-surgery, when he primarily had to lie on one side in bed.

Overall, the growing presence of devices like the MegPad underscores a confluence occurring between smart TVs, tablets, monitors, and smart displays. With software being forced into more types of displays, often in the interest of gathering more user data, it’s an interesting time to consider what you want from your next screen—be it computing power, a certain size, the omission or inclusion of web connectivity, and mobility.

It appears that the MegPad and similar tablets are trying to take advantage of the attention that LG garners when launching distinctive devices like its StanbyME line. Besides a StanbyME lookalike, Apolosign also makes a device similar to the StanbyME Go.

Apolosign's 27 — Apolosign’s PackGo is very similar to LG’s StanbyME Go. Credit: Apolosign

Three years after LG made TV-esque devices on wheels a talking point, more brands are trying to roll into the market. That includes LG’s best TV frenemy, Samsung, which has been using the form factor in limited geographies to drive sales of “smart monitors.”

Tech brands have ulterior motives for pushing this newer form factor that go beyond filling a gap in consumer gadgets. But if a large tablet or small smart display with wheels fits your needs, the options are there, and they should meet most expectations.

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

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Meta’s “AI superintelligence” effort sounds just like its failed “metaverse”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, facebook, Meta, superhuman, superinteilligence, Tech, Zuckerberg / DJ Henderson / July 4, 2025

Zuckerberg and company talked up another supposed tech revolution four short years ago.

Artist’s conception of Mark Zuckerberg looking into our glorious AI-powered future. Credit: Facebook

In a memo to employees earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a vision for a near-future in which “personal [AI] superintelligence for everyone” forms “the beginning of a new era for humanity.” The newly formed Meta Superintelligence Labs—freshly staffed with multiple high-level acquisitions from OpenAI and other AI companies—will spearhead the development of “our next generation of models to get to the frontier in the next year or so,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Reading that memo, I couldn’t help but think of another “vision for the future” Zuckerberg shared not that long ago. At his 2021 Facebook Connect keynote, Zuckerberg laid out his plan for the metaverse, a virtual place where “you’re gonna be able to do almost anything you can imagine” and which would form the basis of “the next version of the Internet.”

“The future of the Internet” of the recent past. Credit: Meta

Zuckerberg believed in that vision so much at the time that he abandoned the well-known Facebook corporate brand in favor of the new name “Meta.” “I’m going to keep pushing and giving everything I’ve got to make this happen now,” Zuckerberg said at the time. Less than four years later, Zuckerberg seems to now be “giving everything [he’s] got” for a vision of AI “superintelligence,” reportedly offering pay packages of up to $300 million over four years to attract top talent from other AI companies (Meta has since denied those reports, saying, “The size and structure of these compensation packages have been misrepresented all over the place”).

Once again, Zuckerberg is promising that this new technology will revolutionize our lives and replace the ways we currently socialize and work on the Internet. But the utter failure (so far) of those over-the-top promises for the metaverse has us more than a little skeptical of how impactful Zuckerberg’s vision of “personal superintelligence for everyone” will truly be.

Meta-vision

Looking back at Zuckerberg’s 2021 Facebook Connect keynote shows just how hard the company was selling the promise of the metaverse at the time. Zuckerberg said the metaverse would represent an “even more immersive and embodied Internet” where “everything we do online today—connecting socially, entertainment, games, work—is going to be more natural and vivid.”

Mark Zuckerberg lays out his vision for the metaverse in 2021.

“Teleporting around the metaverse is going to be like clicking a link on the Internet,” Zuckerberg promised, and metaverse users would probably switch between “a photorealistic avatar for work, a stylized one for hanging out, and maybe even a fantasy one for gaming.” This kind of personalization would lead to “hundreds of thousands” of artists being able to make a living selling virtual metaverse goods that could be embedded in virtual or real-world environments.

“Lots of things that are physical today, like screens, will just be able to be holograms in the future,” Zuckerberg promised. “You won’t need a physical TV; it’ll just be a one-dollar hologram from some high school kid halfway across the world… we’ll be able to express ourselves in new joyful, completely immersive ways, and that’s going to unlock a lot of amazing new experiences.”

A pre-rendered concept video showed metaverse users playing poker in a zero-gravity space station with robot avatars, then pausing briefly to appreciate some animated 3D art a friend had encountered on the street. Another video showed a young woman teleporting via metaverse avatar to virtually join a friend attending a live concert in Tokyo, then buying virtual merch from the concert at a metaverse afterparty from the comfort of her home. Yet another showed old men playing chess on a park bench, even though one of the players was sitting across the country.

Meta-failure

Fast forward to 2025, and the current reality of Zuckerberg’s metaverse efforts bears almost no resemblance to anything shown or discussed back in 2021. Even enthusiasts describe Meta’s Horizon Worlds as a “depressing” and “lonely” experience characterized by “completely empty” venues. And Meta engineers anonymously gripe about metaverse tools that even employees actively avoid using and a messy codebase that was treated like “a 3D version of a mobile app. “

screen sharing — Even Meta employees reportedly don’t want to work in Horizon Workrooms. Credit: Facebook

The creation of a $50 million creator fund seems to have failed to encourage peeved creators to give the metaverse another chance. Things look a bit better if you expand your view past Meta’s own metaverse sandbox; the chaotic world of VR Chat attracts tens of thousands of daily users on Steam alone, for instance. Still, we’re a far cry from the replacement for the mobile Internet that Zuckerberg once trumpeted.

Then again, it’s possible that we just haven’t given Zuckerberg’s version of the metaverse enough time to develop. Back in 2021, he said that “a lot of this is going to be mainstream” within “the next five or 10 years.” That timeframe gives Meta at least a few more years to develop and release its long-teased, lightweight augmented reality glasses that the company showed off last year in the form of a prototype that reportedly still costs $10,000 per unit.

Zuckerberg shows off prototype AR glasses that could change the way we think about “the metaverse.” Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg

Maybe those glasses will ignite widespread interest in the metaverse in a way that Meta’s bulky, niche VR goggles have utterly failed to. Regardless, after nearly four years and roughly $60 billion in VR-related losses, Meta thus far has surprisingly little to show for its massive investment in Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision.

Our AI future?

When I hear Zuckerberg talk about the promise of AI these days, it’s hard not to hear echoes of his monumental vision for the metaverse from 2021. If anything, Zuckerberg’s vision of our AI-powered future is even more grandiose than his view of the metaverse.

As with the metaverse, Zuckerberg now sees AI forming a replacement for the current version of the Internet. “Do you think in five years we’re just going to be sitting in our feed and consuming media that’s just video?” Zuckerberg asked rhetorically in an April interview with Drawkesh Patel. “No, it’s going to be interactive,” he continued, envisioning something like Instagram Reels, but “you can talk to it, or interact with it, and it talks back, or it changes what it’s doing. Or you can jump into it like a game and interact with it. That’s all going to be AI.”

Mark Zuckerberg talks about all the ways superhuman AI is going to change our lives in the near future.

As with the Metaverse, Zuckerberg sees AI as revolutionizing the way we interact with each other. He envisions “always-on video chats with the AI” incorporating expressions and body language borrowed from the company’s work on the metaverse. And our relationships with AI models are “just going to get more intense as these AIs become more unique, more personable, more intelligent, more spontaneous, more funny, and so forth,” Zuckerberg said. “As the personalization loop kicks in and the AI starts to get to know you better and better, that will just be really compelling.”

Zuckerberg did allow that relationships with AI would “probably not” replace in-person connections, because there are “things that are better about physical connections when you can have them.” At the same time, he said, for the average American who has three friends, AI relationships can fill the “demand” for “something like 15 friends” without the effort of real-world socializing. “People just don’t have as much connection as they want,” Zuckerberg said. “They feel more alone a lot of the time than they would like.”

A toy robot saying — Why chat with real friends on Facebook when you can chat with AI avatars? Credit: Benj Edwards / Getty Images

Zuckerberg also sees AI leading to a flourishing of human productivity and creativity in a way even his wildest metaverse imaginings couldn’t match. Zuckerberg said that AI advancement could “lead toward a world of abundance where everyone has these superhuman tools to create whatever they want.” That means personal access to “a super powerful [virtual] software engineer” and AIs that are “solving diseases, advancing science, developing new technology that makes our lives better.”

That will also mean that some companies will be able to get by with fewer employees before too long, Zuckerberg said. In customer service, for instance, “as AI gets better, you’re going to get to a place where AI can handle a bunch of people’s issues,” he said. “Not all of them—maybe 10 years from now it can handle all of them—but thinking about a three- to five-year time horizon, it will be able to handle a bunch.“

In the longer term, Zuckerberg said, AIs will be integrated into our more casual pursuits as well. “If everyone has these superhuman tools to create a ton of different stuff, you’re going to get incredible diversity,” and “the amount of creativity that’s going to be unlocked is going to be massive,” he said. “I would guess the world is going to get a lot funnier, weirder, and quirkier, the way that memes on the Internet have gotten over the last 10 years.”

Compare and contrast

To be sure, there are some important differences between the past promise of the metaverse and the current promise of AI technology. Zuckerberg claims that a billion people use Meta’s AI products monthly, for instance, utterly dwarfing the highest estimates for regular use of “the metaverse” or augmented reality as a whole (even if many AI users seem to balk at paying for regular use of AI tools). Meta coders are also reportedly already using AI coding tools regularly in a way they never did with Meta’s metaverse tools. And people are already developing what they consider meaningful relationships with AI personas, whether that’s in the form of therapists or romantic partners.

Still, there are reasons to be skeptical about the future of AI when current models still routinely hallucinate basic facts, show fundamental issues when attempting reasoning, and struggle with basic tasks like beating a children’s video game. The path from where we are to a supposed “superhuman” AI is not simple or inevitable, despite the handwaving of industry boosters like Zuckerberg.

Artist’s conception of Carmack’s VR avatar waving goodbye to Meta.

At the 2021 rollout of Meta’s push to develop a metaverse, high-ranking Meta executives like John Carmack were at least up front about the technical and product-development barriers that could get in the way of Zuckerberg’s vision. “Everybody that wants to work on the metaverse talks about the limitless possibilities of it,” Carmack said at the time (before departing the company in late 2022). “But it’s not limitless. It is a challenge to fit things in, but you can make smarter decisions about exactly what is important and then really optimize the heck out of things.”

Today, those kinds of voices of internal skepticism seem in short supply as Meta sets itself up to push AI in the same way it once backed the metaverse. Don’t be surprised, though, if today’s promise that we’re at “the beginning of a new era for humanity” ages about as well as Meta’s former promises about a metaverse where “you’re gonna be able to do almost anything you can imagine.”

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

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TikTok is being flooded with racist AI videos generated by Google’s Veo 3

AI, Ai video, Google, Tech, tiktok, Veo 3 / DJ Henderson / July 3, 2025

The release of Google’s Veo 3 video generator in May represented a disconcerting leap in AI video quality. While many of the viral AI videos we’ve seen are harmless fun, the model’s pixel-perfect output can also be used for nefarious purposes. On TikTok, which may or may not be banned in the coming months, users have noticed a surplus of racist AI videos, courtesy of Google’s Veo 3.

According to a report from MediaMatters, numerous TikTok accounts have started posting AI-generated videos that use racist and antisemitic tropes in recent weeks. Most of the AI vitriol is aimed at Black people, depicting them as “the usual suspects” in crimes, absent parents, and monkeys with an affinity for watermelon. The content also targets immigrants and Jewish people. The videos top out at eight seconds and bear the “Veo” watermark, confirming they came from Google’s leading AI model.

The compilation video below has examples pulled from TikTok since the release of Veo 3, but be warned, it contains racist and antisemitic content. Some of the videos are shocking, which is likely the point—nothing drives engagement on social media like anger and drama. MediaMatters reports that the original posts have numerous comments echoing the stereotypes used in the video.

Hateful AI videos generated by Veo 3 spreading on TikTok.

Google has stressed security when announcing new AI models—we’ve all seen an AI refuse to complete a task that runs afoul of its guardrails. And it’s never fun when you have genuinely harmless intentions, but the system throws a false positive and blocks your output. Google has mostly struck the right balance previously, but it appears that Veo 3 is more compliant. We’ve tested a few simple prompts with Veo 3 and found it easy to reproduce elements of these videos.

Clear but unenforced policies

TikTok’s terms of service ban this kind of content. “We do not allow any hate speech, hateful behavior, or promotion of hateful ideologies. This includes explicit or implicit content that attacks a protected group,” the community guidelines read. Despite this blanket ban on racist caricatures, the hateful Veo 3 videos appear to be spreading unchecked.

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Analyst: M5 Vision Pro, Vision Air, and smart glasses coming in 2026–2028

Apple, Apple Vision Air, apple vision pro, ar, hmd, Tech, visionOS, vr, XR / Beth Washington / July 1, 2025

Apple is also reportedly planning a “Vision Air” product, with production expected to start in Q3 2027. Kuo says it will be more than 40 percent lighter than the first-generation Vision Pro, and that it will include Apple’s flagship iPhone processor instead the more robust Mac processor found in the Vision Pro—all at a “significantly lower price than Vision Pro.” The big weight reduction is “achieved through glass-to-plastic replacement, extensive magnesium alloy use (titanium alloy deemed too expensive), and reduced sensor count.”

True smart glasses in 2027

The Vision Pro (along with the planned Vision Air) is a fully immersive VR headset that supports augmented reality by displaying the wearer’s surroundings on the internal screens based on what’s captured by 3D cameras on the outside of the device. That allows for some neat applications, but it also means the device is bulky and impractical to wear in public.

The real dream for many is smart glasses that are almost indistinguishable from normal glasses, but which display some of the same AR content as the Vision Pro on transparent lenses instead of via a camera-to-screen pipeline.

Apple is also planning to roll that out, Kuo says. But first, mass production of display-free “Ray-Ban-like” glasses is scheduled for Q2 2027, and Kuo claims Apple plans to ship between 3 million and 5 million units through 2027, suggesting the company expects this form factor to make a much bigger impact than the Vision Pro’s VR-like HMD approach.

The glasses would have a “voice control and gesture recognition user interface” but no display functionality at all. Instead, “core features include: audio playback, camera, video recording, and AI environmental sensing.”

The actual AR glasses would come later, in 2028.

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Half a million Spotify users are unknowingly grooving to an AI-generated band

AI, AI music, Artificial Intelligence, Spotify, Tech / 9u50fv / July 1, 2025

Making art used to be a uniquely human endeavor, but machines have learned to distill human creativity with generative AI. Whether that content counts as “art” depends on who you ask, but Spotify doesn’t discriminate. A new band called The Velvet Sundown debuted on Spotify this month and has already amassed more than half a million listeners. But by all appearances, The Velvet Sundown is not a real band—it’s AI.

While many artists are vehemently opposed to using AI, some have leaned into the trend to assist with music production. However, it doesn’t seem like there’s an artist behind this group. In less than a month, The Velvet Sundown has released two albums on Spotify, titled “Floating On Echoes” and “Dust and Silence.” A third album is releasing in two weeks. The tracks have a classic rock vibe with a cacophony of echoey instruments and a dash of autotune. If one of these songs came up in a mix, you might not notice anything is amiss. Listen to one after another, though, and the bland muddiness exposes them as a machine creation.

Some listeners began to have doubts about The Velvet Sundown’s existence over the past week, with multiple Reddit and X threads pointing out the lack of verifiable information on the band. The bio lists four members, none of whom appear to exist outside of The Velvet Sundown’s album listings and social media. The group’s songs have been mysteriously added to a large number of user-created playlists, which has helped swell its listener base in a few short weeks. When Spotify users began noticing The Velvet Sundown’s apparent use of AI, the profile had around 300,000 listeners. It’s now over 500,000 in less than a week.

When The Velvet Sundown set up an Instagram account on June 27, all doubts were laid to rest—these “people” are obviously AI. We may be past the era of being able to identify AI by counting fingers, but there are plenty of weird inconsistencies in these pics. In one Instagram post, the band claims to have gotten burgers to celebrate the success of the first two albums, but there are too many burgers and too few plates, and the food and drink are placed seemingly at random around the table. The band members themselves also have that unrealistically smooth and symmetrical look we see in AI-generated images.

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Android 16 review: Post-hype

android, android 16, Features, Google, Reviews, smartphones, Tech / 9u50fv / June 30, 2025

Competent, not captivating

The age of big, exciting Android updates is probably over.

Android 16 is currently only available for Pixel phones. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

Google recently released Android 16, which brings a smattering of new features for Pixel phones, with promises of additional updates down the road. The numbering scheme has not been consistent over the years, and as a result, Android 16 is actually the 36th major release in a lineage that stretches back nearly two decades. In 2008, we didn’t fully understand how smartphones would work, so there was a lot of trial and error. In 2025, the formula has been explored every which way. Today’s smartphones run mature software, and that means less innovation in each yearly release. That trend is exemplified and amplified by Google’s approach to Android 16.

The latest release is perhaps the most humdrum version of the platform yet, but don’t weep for Google. The company has been working toward this goal for years: a world where the average phone buyer doesn’t need to worry about Android version numbers.

A little fun up front

When you install Android 16 on one of Google’s Pixel phones, you may need to check the settings to convince yourself that the update succeeded. Visually, the changes are so minuscule that you’ll only notice them if you’re obsessive about how Android works. For example, Google changed the style of icons in the overview screen and added a few more options to the overview app menus. There are a lot of these minor style tweaks; we expect more when Google releases Material 3 Expressive, but that’s still some way off.

There are some thoughtful UI changes, but again, they’re very minor and you may not even notice them at first. For instance, Google’s predictive back gesture, which allows the previous screen to peek out from behind the currently displayed one, now works with button navigation.

Apps targeting the new API (level 36) will now default to using edge-to-edge rendering, which removes the navigation background to make apps more immersive. Android apps have long neglected larger form factors because Google itself was neglecting those devices. Since the Android 12L release a few years ago, Google has been attempting to right that wrong. Foldable phones have suffered from many of the same issues with app scaling that tablets have, but all big-screen Android devices will soon benefit from adaptive apps. Previously, apps could completely ignore the existence of large screens and render a phone-shaped UI on a large screen.

Advanced Protection is a great addition to Android, even if it’s not the most riveting. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

In Android 16, apps will automatically adapt to larger screens, saving you from having to tinker with the forced aspect ratio tools built into Google and Samsung devices. Don’t confuse this with tablet-style interfaces, though. Just because an app fills the screen, it’s no guarantee that it will look good. Most of the apps we’ve run on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold are still using stretched phone interfaces that waste space. Developers need to make adjustments to properly take advantage of larger screens. Will they? That’s yet another aspect of Android 16 that we hope will come later.

Security has been a focus in many recent Android updates. While not the most sexy improvement, the addition of Advanced Protection in Android 16 could keep many people from getting hit with malware, and it makes it harder for government entities to capture your data. This feature blocks insecure 2G connections, websites lacking HTTPS, and exploits over USB. It disables sideloading of apps, too, which might make some users wary. However, if you know someone who isn’t tech savvy, you should encourage them to enable Advanced Protection when (and if) they get access to Android 16. This is a great feature that Google should have added years ago.

The changes to notifications will probably make the biggest impact on your daily life. Whether you’re using Android or iOS, notification spam is getting out of hand. Every app seems to want our attention, and notifications can really pile up. Android 16 introduces a solid quality-of-life improvement by bundling notifications from each app. While notification bundles were an option before, they were primarily used for messaging, and not all developers bothered. Now, the notification shade is less overwhelming, and it’s easy to expand each block to triage individual items.

Google has also added a new category of notifications that can show progress, similar to a feature on the iPhone. The full notification will include a live updating bar that can tell you exactly when your Uber will show up, for example. These notifications will come first to delivery and rideshare apps, but none of them are working yet. You can get a preview of how these notifications will work with the Android 16 easter egg, which sends a little spaceship rocketing toward a distant planet.

The progress notifications will also have a large status bar chip with basic information visible at all times. Tapping on it will expand the full notification. However, this is also not implemented in the first release of Android 16. Yes, this is a recurring theme with Google’s new OS.

More fun still to come

You may notice that none of the things we’ve discussed in Android 16 are exactly riveting—better security features and cleaner notifications are nice to have, but this is hardly a groundbreaking update. It might have been more exciting were it not for the revamped release schedule, though. This Android 16 release isn’t even the Android 16. There will be a second Android 16 update later in the year, and some of the most interesting features aren’t arriving as part of either one.

Traditionally, Google has released new versions of Android in the fall, around the time new Pixel phones arrive. Android 15, for example, began its rollout in October 2024. Just eight months later, we’re on to Android 16. This is the first cycle in which Google will split its new version into two updates. Going forward, the bigger update will arrive in Q2, and the smaller one, which includes API and feature tweaks, will come at the end of the year.

Google has said the stylish but divisive Material 3 Expressive UI and the desktop windowing feature will come later. They’re currently in testing with the latest beta for Android 16 QPR1, which will become a Pixel Drop in September. It’s easy to imagine that with a single fall Android 16 release, both of these changes would have been included.

In the coming months, we expect to see some Google apps updated with support for Material 3, but the changes will be minimal unless you’re using a phone that runs Google’s Android theme. For all intents and purposes, that means a Pixel. Motorola has traditionally hewed closely to Google’s interface, while Samsung, OnePlus, and others forged their own paths. But even Moto has been diverging more as it focuses on AI. It’s possible that Google’s big UI shakeup will only affect Pixel users.

As for desktop windowing, that may have limited impact, too. On-device windowing will only be supported on tablets—even tablet-style foldables will be left out. We’ve asked Google to explain this decision and will report back if we get more details. Non-tablet devices will be able to project a desktop-style interface on an external display via USB video-out, but the feature won’t be available universally. Google tells Ars that it’s up to OEMs to support this feature. So even a phone that has video-out over USB may not have desktop windowing. Again, Pixels may be the best (or only) way to get Android’s new desktop mode.

The end of version numbers

There really isn’t much more to say about Android 16 as it currently exists. This update isn’t flashy, but it lays important groundwork for the future. The addition of Material 3 Expressive will add some of the gravitas we expect from major version bumps, but it’s important to remember that this is just Google’s take on Android—other companies have their own software interests, mostly revolving around AI. We’ll have to wait to see what Samsung, OnePlus, and others do with the first Android 16 release. The underlying software has been released in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), but it will be a few months before other OEMs have updates.

In some ways, boring updates are exactly what Google has long wanted from Android. Consider the era when Android updates were undeniably exciting—a time when the addition of screenshots could be a headlining feature (Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich) or when Google finally figured out how to keep runaway apps from killing your battery (Android 6.0 Marshmallow). But there was a problem with these big tentpole updates: Not everyone got them, and they were salty about it.

During the era of rapid software improvement, it took the better part of a year (or longer!) for a company like Samsung or LG to deploy new Android updates. Google would announce a laundry list of cool features, but only the tiny sliver of people using Nexus (and later Pixel) phones would see them. By the time a Samsung Galaxy user had the new version, it was time for Google to release another yearly update.

This “fragmentation” issue was a huge headache for Google, leading it to implement numerous platform changes over the years to take the pressure off its partners and app developers. There were simple tweaks like adding important apps, including Maps and the keyboard (later Gboard), to the Play Store so they could be updated regularly. On the technical side, initiatives like Project Mainline made the platform more modular so features could be added and improved outside of major updates. Google has also meticulously moved features into Play Services, which can deliver system-level changes without an over-the-air update (although there are drawbacks to that).

Android I/O sign — Android version numbers hardly matter anymore—it’s just Android. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

The overarching story of Android has been a retreat from monolithic updates, and that means there’s less to get excited about when a new version appears. Rather than releasing a big update rife with changes, Google has shown a preference for rolling out features via the Play Store and Play Services to the entire Android ecosystem. Experiences like Play Protect anti-malware, Google Play Games, Google Cast, Find My Device, COVID-19 exposure alerts, Quick Share, and myriad more were released to almost all Google-certified Android devices without system updates.

As more features arrive in dribs and drabs via Play Services and Pixel Drops, the numbered version changes are less important. People used to complain about missing out on the tentpole updates, but it’s quieter when big features are decoupled from version numbers. And that’s where we are—Android 15 or Android 16—the number is no longer important. You won’t notice a real difference, but the upshot is that most phones get new features faster than they once did. That was the cost to fix fragmentation.

Boring updates aren’t just a function of rearranging features. Even if all the promised upgrades were here now, Android 16 would still barely move the needle. Phones are now mature products with established usage paradigms. It’s been almost 20 years since the age of touchscreen smartphones began, and we’ve figured out how these things should work. It’s not just Android updates settling into prosaic predictability—Apple is running low on paradigm shifts, too. The release of iOS 26 will add some minor improvements to a few apps, and the theme is getting more transparent with the controversial “Liquid Glass” UI. And that’s it.

Until there’s a marked change in form factors or capability, these flat glass slabs will look and work more or less as they do now (with a lot more AI slop, whether you like it or not). If you have a recent non-Pixel Android device, you’ll probably get Android 16 in the coming months, but it won’t change the way you use your phone.

Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he’s written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards.

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