Tag: TechTips

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

While smartphones are having fun with the trend, PCs with foldable screens have yet to become mainstream, partially because there’s only one option readily available. But with HP expected to enter the scene, it’s possible ‘foldable OLED’ could become more common laptop lingo.

Lenovo made the bold first step into foldable laptops with its 13.3-inch ThinkPad X1 Fold. According to South Korean electronics website TheElec, HP’s take on foldable OLED will be bigger, with a 17-inch panel from LG Display that measures 11 inches when folded up. HP hasn’t publicly announced or commented on the rumored PC, but a couple of details make the machine seem at least somewhat plausible. For one, LG Display confirmed work on a 17-inch foldable OLED laptop design in January.

LG showed a foldable OLED laptop design at CES. (credit: LG Display)

Most recently, TheElec on Monday reported that South Korean company SK IE Technology will make transparent polyimide films to cover the bendy 4K OLED panels. The publication also claimed that LG Display currently has plans to make up to “around 10,000” foldable OLED panels for HP, starting in Q3.

On Wednesday, the latest Oculu—er, Meta Quest virtual reality gaming showcase revealed a mix of sequels and new games coming to the all-in-one Quest 2 system “within the next year.”

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  New, spooky enemies in the Bonelab universe. You can tear these apart with your VR hands.

The event’s biggest game reveal came in the form of Bonelab, a sequel to 2019’s innovative-but-clumsy PC-VR exclusive Boneworks. Its designers at Stress Level Zero insist that this sequel will come to the weaker Quest 2 hardware, along with a PC-VR version “later this year.”

Like the PC original, Bonelab will revolve around a mix of parkour- and physics-driven interactions with guns and melee weapons, only this time, it will take place in a variety of fantasy-style levels and include new monsters, like walking skeletons—which VR players can apparently grab with their hands and tear apart, bone by bone. Its Quest 2 version will support community-made mods like maps, weapons, and outfits—though it’s unclear exactly how those will be built and imported into the Quest version.

Enlarge / The official render from Evan Blass. (credit: 91mobiles)

Google has been making a smartwatch platform for eight years now, and it has never seen fit to support that software platform with a piece of Google-branded hardware. Someday, eventually, that might change, and this year the rumors are getting hotter than ever. The Pixel Watch might finally be coming.

The latest news is that venerable leaker Evan Blass scored an official render of the watch body. Blass’ leak lines up with earlier images from Front Page Tech. An Insider report from late last year also said the Pixel Watch could launch as early as the spring, and 9to5Google recently spotted that Google has added a “Watches” section to the Google Store. It’s looking like we might hear about this watch at Google I/O 2022.

One of the Front Page Tech leaks. This purports to be a Google-made image, not a re-created render. (credit: Front Page Tech)

Other than the fact that this is codenamed “Rohan” and will ship with Google’s new version of Wear OS, we know next to nothing about the watch. A crippling problem for Wear OS over the years has been the lack of a capable smartwatch SoC, so whatever chip ends up landing in the Pixel Watch will be major news. Apple has an in-house chip design firm that can reliably deliver yearly battery life and processing-power improvements for the Apple Watch. A big part of why Wear OS can’t compete is that Qualcomm has not valued the smartwatch market and spent years selling the same basic chip to manufacturers with no performance improvements.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It’s time for another Dealmaster! Our latest roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes a number of deals on iRobot’s popular Roomba robot vacuums.

Several models are currently available for prices that either match or are close to the best prices we’ve tracked: The more basic “bump-and-run” Roomba 694 is about $50 off its usual street price at $180, for instance, while a step-up model like the Roomba i3 Evo, which cleans in more orderly patterns instead of semi-random ones, is down to a joint-low of $250. The Roomba j7, meanwhile, is about $160 off its usual price and adds better battery life and the ability to automatically avoid obstacles like pet waste or power cords. “Plus” versions of the latter two vacuums, which include a self-emptying feature that allows the devices to autonomously dump their debris into a compartment built into their charging docks, are also down to the best prices we’ve tracked.

The usual caveats with robot vacuums still apply—they’re not cheap, they’ll still get stuck from time to time, and they aren’t as strong as normal vacuums—but they can still be valuable to those who want to spend less time cleaning manually. The models we’ve highlighted below have generally received positive reviews around the web for their performance and durability, so they should represent a good value for those interested in giving this kind of device a try.