Category: Technologies

In my two decades as CNET’s TV reviewer, I have seen a lot of TVs — but nothing like this. C Seed makes incredibly expensive custom-built televisions for the ultra-wealthy, and the N1 is its latest offering. The 137-inch version I saw at CES 2024 is one of two N1 models in existence.

The most incredible thing about the N1 is the way it folds into a compact rectangular chunk when not in use. Press a button and the screen divides into parts that slowly butterfly together, then descend into the rectangle, hiding the screen entirely — a process that takes about 2 and a half minutes. The folded N1 looks more like a solid metal bench than a TV.

Unfolded, the N1 has a stunning, bright, seamless picture, and the screen can rotate 180 degrees. The divisions between the different sections of the screen were invisible to my eye. That’s because the company uses a proprietary system it calls Adaptive Gap Calibration. It automatically measures the distance between the edges, uses sensors to detect offsets and calibrates the brightness of adjacent LEDs. I couldn’t detect any seams in the image.

The TV uses micro-LED technology, the same display tech found on Samsung’s The Wall — another massive, super-expensive TV that happens to be C Seed’s major competitor. C Seed says the gigantic 4K resolution screen can achieve 4,000 nits peak brightness, with HDR and wide color gamut. In my brief viewing time with C Seed’s demo material, the picture quality looked great. As with The Wall, I could discern individual pixels when I was very close to the screen, but from any normal seating distance, the image looked smooth and sharp.

C Seed makes other huge folding TVs. The company rep told me C Seed has sold around 200 units in the 10 years it has been in business, each one custom-built. Clients typically wait six months between ordering and delivery. The 137-inch indoor N1 costs $200,000, a price that includes installation and setup, and the outdoor version is $240,000. If you’re so inclined, you can order a 165-inch ($300,000) or a 103-inch ($110,000) version instead.

Normally, this is the part when I say I look forward to reviewing a TV in CNET’s lab — but in this case, that’s not gonna happen.

SAG-AFTRA, the world’s largest labor union representing performers, announced Tuesday at CES 2024 that it has signed an agreement with artificial intelligence voice technology company Replica Studios. The agreement will allow union members to license digital replicas of their voices for use in video games.

As AI expands into more areas of life, its ability to mimic famous voices has been controversial. In 2023, an artist who goes by the name Ghostwriter released Heart on My Sleeve, a song that uses generative AI to mimic the voices of Drake and The Weeknd, though apparently neither of those stars had anything to do with the track. That song sparked a debate about Grammy eligibility, and Ghostwriter said at the time that he believed artists should financially benefit if AI copies their distinct voices.

Tuesday’s announcement marks the first time a group such as SAG-AFTRA has attempted to codify consent and compensation for AI replicas of performer voices.

AI and the Hollywood strike

AI was a major issue in the union’s 2023 strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which saw actors join already-striking writers on the picket lines in July. The strike ran until November, and was the longest movie and television strike in the union’s 90-year history. As a result, studios are now required to obtain consent from and pay actors for use of their AI-generated likenesses.

“Artificial intelligence has dominated the headlines, and for most performers, the best protection against the unauthorized digital simulation of their voice, likeness and/or performance is a SAG-AFTRA contract,” union president and actor Fran Drescher said in a statement Tuesday. SAG-AFTRA has over 160,000 members.

National executive director and chief SAG-AFTRA negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said at CES that the union had been involved with AI issues for almost a decade.

Replica Studios CEO Shreyas Nivas, who signed the agreement with Crabtree-Ireland at CES, called the agreement “groundbreaking” in a post on LinkedIn.

“This partnership will allow voice actors to safely explore new opportunities for their digital voice replicas while establishing protections around consent, contracts and compensation,” Nivas wrote. It also includes stated conditions for safe storage of such digital assets.

A turnaround for studios on AI

In a podcast that aired in December, SAG-AFTRA general counsel Jeffrey Bennett said that studios had earlier claimed they did not need performers’ consent to replicate their voices with AI.

“Before we started negotiating these terms, the position of the studios was [that] they did not need consent to create replicas,” Bennett said. “So, if you fast-forward from the position that they took as early as January 2023 to the position we now have with these contract terms and some of the legislation that’s coming, we have flipped that whole narrative on its head. They recognize now they can’t do this without consent.”

While this agreement is specifically about video games, Crabtree-Ireland said other agreements might be reached for other kinds of vocal performances, such as music and TV commercials.

The agreement does not cover the controversial use of performer voices to train large language models, Crabtree-Ireland said. That training has come under fire from notable figures such as Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, who, along with other authors, has sued artificial intelligence company OpenAI for allegedly using his published works to train the AI technology that powers generative AI chatbot ChatGPT.

Crabtree-Ireland also said he saw no reason why the estates of dead performers could not agree to the use of those voices under the new licensing agreement.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.

A new company says its phone app can “translate” your baby’s cries and tell you whether they’re hungry, uncomfortable, tired or in need of a diaper change. Showcasing its tech at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, Cappella says it uses AI and machine learning to decipher an infant’s needs.

Read more: The most eye-catching tech gadgets at CES 2024

According to Cappella, its technology is about 95% accurate — that’s versus roughly 30% for humans who try to guess their babies’ needs. Take that figure with a grain of salt, of course: You know your baby best, and you can hit an “I disagree” button on Cappella’s app if you don’t think it’s correct.

The app costs $10 a month, and Cappella is still working on temperature — whether your baby is crying because they’re too hot or cold — as another data point for analysis.

Another product that claims to translate your baby’s cries, Qbear+, was shown off at CES last year, and even won an innovation award. The big difference here is that you don’t have to buy a new device: You can just use Cappella’s app on your own phone.

You can also use Cappella as a more general parenting app, as it can track sleep, feedings and diaper changes. It’s also working on using AI to soothe your baby, too.

“With our groundbreaking AI-powered baby cry translator, we accurately understand your baby’s needs and use AI-generated sounds to soothe your little one without requiring your constant attention,” Cappella’s site says.

Cappella is already available in the Apple App Store, and you can join the waitlist for the Android app in the Google Play Store.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.

CES 2024 is in full swing in Las Vegas, where the CNET team is on the ground scouring the show floor for the best, and weirdest, cutting-edge tech. Here at the world’s largest technology show, we’re getting our eyes and hands full of everything from futuristic concepts to practical products you can preorder or buy today. As you might expect, AI is everywhere at CES this year, especially in the form of ChatGPT and similar generative AI chatbots.
We’re also seeing plenty of new car tech, gaming gear and robots — there’s even a robot for your dog.

Here’s what’s captivating us at CES 2024. We’ll bring you more news on the best tech highlights as we come across them this week in Las Vegas.

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Foldable phones? How about a foldable TV?

What to do with a TV when it’s not being used? You could make it see-through (more on that below) or, if you happen to have a couple hundred thousand dollars lying around, maybe you opt for a foldable TV like the 137-inch one C Seed showed off at CES 2024.

The custom-built N1 features a stunning, bright, seamless picture,and its screen can rotate 180 degrees to face different directions. Divisions between the different sections of the screen were invisible. But when when not in use, the N1 folds up into a compact rectangular chunkin about 2 and a half minutes with the touch of a button, forming something that looks more like a metal bench than a large expensive TV.

Oh, and it costs $200,000 for the 137-incher, but hey, that includes installation and setu.

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Steam Deck has a new challenger

After years of near misses such as the Steam Machine, the Steam Deck was an unexpected success for Valve, and the console is the current standard for mobile PC gaming. While the competing Asus ROG Ally looked cool, using Windows on it was apparently pretty clunky. Now that situation might change with the help of Intel — the company has a lot of experience making Windows machines. MSI’s Claw handheld obviously owes a debt to the Steam Deck, but it has Intel’s new Meteor Lake chips onboard instead of AMD chips. CNET’s Scott Stein says this development means more manufacturers will have the opportunity to design their own Steam Deck-alikes that can also run Windows.

This phone bends over backward for you

As phones with screens that fold in half get more consumer attention, Samsung appears to be poised to flip the market again. The electronics giant showcased a concept handset at CES 2024 called the Flex In & Out Flip that can fold in both directions and completely backward, allowing you to use the phone’s 6.7-inch screen even when the device is shut.

When bent backward, one side is slightly shorter than the other, to avoid covering the camera, while the larger side was big enough to show several icons in the phone’s quick settings menu, media playback controls and the time and battery level. Although the handset is only a concept design right now, CNET’s Lisa Eadicicco points out that it might offer a hint at the future of devices that roll, flex, bend, fold and otherwise contort to adapt tech to our unique needs.

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Get to work with this gaming laptop

More and more, we’re asking our laptops to do double duty. In addition to strong gaming performance, we want to be able to use these thinner, lightweight devices for work or school. The HP Omen Transcend 14, which made its debut at CES 2024, is light enough for a daily commute but sports a 14-inch 2.8K OLED display with a 48-120Hz variable refresh rate backed up by an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070.

The 14-inch laptop weighs only 3.6 pounds (1.6 kilograms) — light for a gaming laptop and has battery life good for up to 11.5 hours with the integrated graphics and an Eco mode. The new 14-inch size starts at $1,500. A 16-inch version will also be available with the option for a 4K 240Hz OLED starting at $1,900.

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This thermometer also checks your heart and lungs

If you ever wanted to hold up a single device to your head for a quick health checkup, the Beamo might be just what the doctor ordered. The BeamO, which looks like a game stick, is a four-in-one thermometer,electrocardiogram, oximeter and stethoscope made by Withings and it wasunveiled this week at CES 2024. Depending on where on your body you “beam it,” the device can give you clues about your health.

The device, which Withings describes as being “portable and smaller than a smartphone,”combines the simplicity of taking your temperature at home with some ofthe wellness metrics newer-grade wearables and smartwatches carry, likeblood oxygen and heart rate readings, as well as chest sounds when usedas a “digital stethoscope.”

Following expected clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration this June, you can get one for $250.

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Forget a projector, get a huge TCL instead

CNET’s projector reviewer Geoff Morrison has been extolling the benefits of projectors for many years, but even he has come around to technologies like OLED and Mini-LED of late. What would he think of the new TCL 115QM891G? This is a 115-inch 4K LCD TV that’s up to five times brighter than most TVs, and with better blacks too, according to TV reviewer David Katzmaier.

As TV reviewers ourselves we’ve seen large TVs, but in the old days they were stuck at HD. The pixels on Panasonic’s 103-inch 1080p, for instance, were huge and easily noticeable. This is why 4K technology is so great — it means you can install a TV as big as a wall, and not see black lines between the pixels. The TCL also going to be a lot cheaper than that $100,000 Panasonic too, at under $20,000.

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Stained glass gets a new lease on lifelong power

Solar panels are great — they produce electricity from one of the most abundant resources we have, and they pay for themselves in quick order — but no one has ever called them pretty. Fear not! Japanese company inQs has worked out a way to make solar cells out of colored glass. The company is exhibiting a number of objects at CES 2024, including a stained glass pane that generates electricity. The devices are small, and one was able to power only a desk fan, but we like how they point to a rethink of how solar panels should look and work.

Disguising weird-looking things has been a perpetual trend at CES, as with LG’s ArtCool air conditioners. And this year the Samsung Music Frame lets you put art inside a smart speaker.

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Hey, Ida, which is better: Alexa or Siri?

AI is already everywhere here at CES 2024 — and adding to the list of products it’ll be appearing in is cars. Volkswagen has announced a deal with ChatGPT that enables users to ask all sorts of questions of their car, in the same way they would of a traditional digital assistant. At the moment, VW’s voice assistant lets users say, “Hey, Ida,” to ask a question about something basic, like requesting tire pressure. But the automaker’s cars are incapable of answering more advanced questions like, “When did the New York Jets last win the Super Bowl?” Under the new deal, if the car’s assistant can’t answer the question, it’ll hand off the query to ChatGPT. (Yes, the Jets did win one. But it was a very, very long time ago.)

It’s worth noting that competitors like Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri have been completing these queries natively for many years, so teaming with ChatGPT is an easier way for VW’s Ida to catch up.

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Must-see-through TV

TVs are getting bigger every year, which means there’s a bigger slab of black plastic taking up a significant portion of the living room wall when it’s not in use. But what if we could make it disappear, without actually pulling it off the wall?

LG has apparently done just that with a transparent OLED screen that converts from a “fish tank” to a 77-inch television (pictured above). Unlike Samsung’s competing technology this will apparently be a real product, shipping later in 2024.

Meanwhile Samsung is showing off the first transparent version of its Micro-LED display tech at CES 2024. While transparent OLED and even LCD-based screens have been around for a while, Samsung says its Micro-LED display technology produces brighter, clearer images and is more transparent than the current tech. But Samsung says its transparent Micro-LED tech isn’t available in the market, so what Katzmaier saw (or didn’t see?) is essentially a concept.

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A 2-minute ice cream maker

Coming soon to a restaurant near you: freshly made ice cream, ready from start to finish in just 2 minutes.

We’ve loved trying the vanilla ice cream churned out by the speedy ColdSnap — first in 2021 and then again this year. We’re still a year away from being able to buy one of these innovative ice cream makers for our homes, but the company came to CES this year with the news that its restaurant partners will have hold of the machines much sooner.

The countertop ice cream maker uses Keurig-like pods to make a bowl of the cold stuff in less than 2 minutes. The finished result has a gelato-like consistency that had us coming back for more every time we passed the ColdSnap booth.

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Robot stain fighter

Here’s a product sure to clean up — literally. Samsung’s new Bespoke Jet Bot Combo, a smart robot vacuum with a mop, does more than just get rid of dust bunnies and dog hair. It’s designed to roam your rooms scouting for stains on hard flooring and scrub them out so you don’t have to.

The robot taps AI-powered object recognition to identify stains on hard flooring. Yes, it can tell the difference between the surfaces, presumably making adjustments to its cleaning technique accordingly. You can also tell this likely $1,000-plus household helper where it can and can’t go as it attacks stains as bad as a puppy piddle or a zinfandel spill with a spinning mop that hits 170 rpm. (Pricing details aren’t yet available.)

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Teeth tech

AI isn’t just helping keep your floors clean, it’s also being used to make sure your teeth are as clean as they can be. The Oclean X Ultra Wi-Fi Digital Toothbrush features an algorithm-controlled motor, five brush modes tailored to specific needs, an interactive touchscreen that shows you areas you missed and, brilliantly/weirdly, an AI voice guide that speaks into your brain via bone conduction to help you improve your technique.

It also features Wi-Fi connectivity so you can pair it with your home network, and it will store information about your brushing history until you can download it to your app. It also offers 40 days of battery life through wireless charging. It will go sale in the US in the fall for $130.

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What’s old is new

If you consider yourself an old-school smartphone user, you may yearn for the physical keyboards that used to be a mainstay of the phones of yesteryear. The iPhone’s on-screen keyboard ushered out the full physical keyboards that were popular on BlackBerry devices.

The Clicks keyboard, from Clicks Technology, will transform your iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, adding a keyboard that’s actually integrated into a wraparound case. This $139 wraparound slides onto your device and runs off the phone’s battery, so no charging required.

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It’s all in the wristwatch remote

Imagine using your wrist to control everything around you. A flick this way, and you can turn off the lights or scroll through the offerings on Netflix. Finnish startup Doublepoint has developed software that can turn an Android watch into a general-purpose controller for any device via a Bluetooth connection.

The software will come to developers in the first half of this year,but it’s up to developers and app-makers to decide what a small gesture, such as tapping fingers or rotating your wrist, will actually do.

Steven Musil, Sareena Dayaram, Katie Collins and Ty Pendlebury contributed to this article.

iPhone owners who were part of the 2020 class-action lawsuit against the company should finally be receiving their piece of the payout after Apple admitted to slowing down its older phones.

With so many phones to choose from, people buy their handsets for the features, like cameras or messaging apps, or simply for the brand name. But with so much of our lives oriented around the phones we’re using all day long, the less glamorous aspect of battery life is often front and center. Especially when it’s suddenly at a very low percentage.

Owners of older iPhones noticed back in 2017 that their phones were running more slowly, and their batteries draining quickly. They were right. That same year, Apple admitted that its iOS software had slowed down the performance of older iPhones, but said there was a reason for it: As the lithium-ion batteries in the older phones aged, they didn’t hold a charge as well, and could unexpectedly shut down. The software slowed performance of those phones to prevent this, the company said.

As former CNET reporter Shara Tibken wrote, some people have long believed Apple hinders older devices to encourage customers to buy new models, which is something Apple has denied. But that belief only aggravated debate over Apple’s lack of transparency about the phone slowdowns.

The lawsuit was successful, and in August 2023, a judge cleared the way for payments to proceed. Some iPhone owners are reporting online that they are already seeing the money — here’s what to know.

How did Apple respond to the lawsuit?

The company apologized for its lack of transparency, updated its software and offered battery replacements. In 2017, the company said, “We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down,” and said it has never done anything to “intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.”

The company has a lengthy page on its site discussing iPhone performance in relation to the battery. It warns that on older phones, iOS “dynamically manages performance peaks to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down so that the iPhone can still be used.”

How much will class members receive?

Apple agreed to pay a minimum of $310 million and a maximum of $500 million to settle the lawsuit. The settlement agreement required the company pay owners of certain iPhone models $25 per device, with that amount dependent on the number of claims.

According to SiliconValley.com, there have been around 3 million claims, meaning class members will receive about $65 per eligible phone.

However, as MacRumors reported earlier Saturday, several class members received payments of $92.17 per claim, beginning on Jan. 6.

“Nice thing to wake up to on a Saturday morning — especially after 3.5 years of waiting!” wrote Michael Burkhardt on X (formerly Twitter), sharing a snippet of a deposit statement showing he received six $92.17 payments.

A representative for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Why did payments take so long?

As is perhaps appropriate for a lawsuit about slowed-down phones, the payouts were slowed down. Two iPhone owners who objected to some of the terms of the settlement lost their appeal in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals back in August. The effective date of the settlement is Nov. 6, 2023.

Who is eligible to receive a payment?

The iPhones included in the settlement were the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus and SE running iOS 12.2.1 or later, as well as the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus if they were running iOS 11.2 or later before Dec. 21, 2017.

It’s too late to get in on the settlement if you haven’t already done so; the window for joining the class has closed. The deadline for submitting a claim was Oct. 6, 2020. More details about the settlement are available here.

NordVPN is one of our favorite virtual private network (VPN) providers on the market, thanks to its ability to maintain blisteringly fast internet speeds and its top-notch privacy features. Like most VPN companies, Nord touts a strict no-logging policy, claiming that it doesn’t track your web activity while you’re using its servers. Although you can — and should — remain skeptical of no-logging assertions, third-party audits back up VPN providers’ claims. In an effort to verify that it doesn’t record users’ online activities, NordVPN underwent an audit by Deloitte.

NordVPN provides additional transparency with a fourth no-logs audit

At the end of 2023, professional services firm Deloitte performed an audit of NordVPN’s claims that it doesn’t log its users’ online activities. During its evaluation, Deloitte analyzed Nord’s privacy features, including its base VPN, obfuscation, Onion over VPN (Tor), double VPN and P2P servers (which are meant for use with file-sharing software, like torrent clients). Onion over VPN and a double VPN further encrypt your web traffic for enhanced privacy, making it even harder to determine potentially identifying information like your IP address. Obfuscation tries to trick websites and apps from realizing that you’re using a VPN.

As Deloitte explains in its full report, it found no evidence of activity like web browsing data or IP addresses being stored. But if you’re like me and watch way too much Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, you’ll know that “no evidence” doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be found. A no-log audit shouldn’t be seen as a guarantee that your data isn’t being stored, but more as a trust signal that offers peace of mind. Deloitte can only comment on what it observed during the audit itself — its Nov. 30 to Dec. 7 2023 analysis uncovered no evidence of logging. Notably, Deloitte audited Nord in 2022 as well, so these regular examinations somewhat compensate for quick observation windows.

Ultimately, when you use a VPN, you’re trusting that company with your data. NordVPN’s continued commitment to transparency coupled with its privacy features like a double VPN and Onion over VPN are strong trust signals. Moreover, Nord’s Panama jurisdiction lies outside of the Five Eyes and Fourteen Eyes intelligence-sharing alliances, which is further reassurance, especially for folks with serious privacy concerns like activists or investigative journalists.

With more VPN providers undergoing third-party audits — our Editors’ Choice ExpressVPN underwent a whopping 12 independent audits in 2022 — it’s refreshing that this trend continues. For the second year in a row (2022 and 2023), NordVPN contracted Deloitte to verify its no-logging claims, so hopefully this trajectory keeps going with an audit in 2024.

Aside from its excellent privacy features, NordVPN remains one of the fastest VPNs on the planet. If you’re considering signing up, check out how NordVPN and ExpressVPN — two of our favorite virtual private network services — compare in our head-to-head match-up.

Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony, including Lily Gladstone’s historic win, may have piqued your interest in Killers of the Flower Moon, and later this week the drama will start streaming on Apple TV Plus.

Directed by Martin Scorsese, the 1920s-set film “depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror,” as an Apple TV Plus press release puts it. The movie is based on David Grann’s nonfiction book of the same name and, along with Gladstone, stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons. The movie received seven Golden Globe nominations and can be found on lists of predicted Oscar nominees.

The nearly three-and-a-half-hour film impressed critics, sitting at a score of 89 on Metacritic. Here’s when it hits Apple’s streamer, plus why you may want to consider using a VPN to watch it.

When to watch Killers of the Flower Moon on Apple TV Plus

The movie hits Apple TV Plus on Friday, Jan. 12. It’ll stream in more than 100 countries, according to the service.

A subscription to Apple TV Plus is currently $10 a month (up from $7 a month after a 2023 price increase). The series Lessons in Chemistry, Ted Lasso and The Morning Show are among the streamer’s offerings. You can also get Apple TV Plus bundled with other services as part of an Apple One subscription.

How to watch Killers of the Flower Moon with a VPN

Perhaps you’re traveling abroad and want to stream Apple TV Plus while away from home. With a VPN, you’re able to virtually change your location on your phone, tablet or laptop to get access to the movie from anywhere in the world. There are other good reasons to use a VPN for streaming, too.

A VPN is the best way to encrypt your traffic to stop your ISP from throttling your speeds. Using a VPN is also a great idea if you’re traveling, find yourself connected to a Wi-Fi network, and want to add an extra layer of privacy for your devices and logins. Streaming TV can be a bit smoother with a reliable, quality VPN that’s passed our tests and security standards.

You can use a VPN to stream content legally as long as VPNs are allowed in your country and you have a valid subscription to the streaming service you’re using. The US and Canada are among the countries where VPNs are legal, but we advise against streaming or downloading content on illegal torrent sites. We recommend ExpressVPN, but you may opt for another provider from our best list, such as Surfshark or NordVPN.

Follow the VPN provider’s instructions for installation, and choose a country where Killers of the Flower Moon will be streaming on Apple TV Plus. Before opening the streaming app, make sure you’re connected to your VPN using your selected region. If you want to stream Killers of the Flower Moon on more than one device, it’s possible you’ll need to configure each one to ensure you’re signed in. Go to settings and check your network connections to verify you’re logged in and connected to your VPN account. Now you’re ready to open Apple TV Plus to stream.

If you encounter issues with streaming, first make sure your VPN is up and running on its encrypted IP address. Double-check that you’ve followed installation instructions correctly and have picked the right geographical area for viewing. If you still encounter connection problems, you may need to reboot your device. Close all apps and windows, restart your device and connect to your VPN first. Note that some streaming services have restrictions on VPN access.

Walmart is expanding its drone delivery program from one pocket of the Dallas-Fort Worth area to millions of people in 30 municipalities in the region, CEO Doug McMillon announced Tuesday at CES 2024.

The retailer will use drone delivery systems operated by startup Zipline and by Alphabet subsidiary Wing, companies that have made hundreds of thousands of deliveries in recent years. They each recently obtained clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly their drones beyond visual line of sight, aka BVLOS — in other words, out of the eyesight of a human operator — which makes large-scale drone delivery operations more practical and economical.

Delivery drones offer fast service, with Walmart packages arriving between 10 and 30 minutes after an order is placed from stores up to 10 miles away. Walmart touts the technology for people who need missing cooking ingredients, last-second birthday gifts, over-the-counter medications or movie night snacks.

Drone delivery is a potentially revolutionary technology for when people need relatively small packages swiftly. It’s not economical in rural areas, and finding a place to deliver a package can be tough in dense cities, but expect it to spread across the suburbs as retailers seek a technology that satisfies consumer spending urges while keeping delivery trucks off the road. That can, in principle, ease traffic congestion and lower the carbon footprint of deliveries.

People like the technology, with regular customers placing an average of two orders per week and the more enthusiastic averaging three orders per week, Walmart said.

Drone delivery noise has been a concern, but both Wing and Zipline keep their deliveries quiet by keeping drones high in the sky and lowering or dropping packages. Zipline is testing a new drone design with Walmart that can plop a package onto a table or walkway.

Customers can order over the web by visiting wing.com/Walmart or flyzipline.com/get-delivery. Wing and Zipline have already been Walmart partners in testing drone delivery programs. Zipline has made more than 900,000 deliveries worldwide.

Asus always shows up at CES with some interesting new devices and the 2024 show is no different. The company has already announced a new gaming phone and a slew of gaming laptops, and now it’s added new premium Zenbooks and mainstream Vivobooks to the roster of announcements.

The highlight is the company’s latest Zenbook Duo dual-screen laptop. While earlier models had one full display and one smaller screen, this is the first with two full 14-inch OLED touchscreens, save for a concept it made back in 2018.

Each of the Duo’s 16:10 displays has a 3K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate, and with its 180-degree hinge, you get 19.8 inches of workspace in a package that weighs just under 3 pounds or 1.4 kilograms. It isn’t a two-in-one like Lenovo’s Yoga Book from last year, but it does lay flat and can be used with Asus’ active pen.

The body has a wide kickstand that’s built into the base of the laptop. It keeps it more stable than the origami stand Lenovo used for the Yoga Book 9i, and it works with the laptop positioned horizontally or vertically. And since the kickstand folds out from the bottom, you don’t see it when you’re using it as a laptop.

Since the laptop is all displays, there’s no built-in keyboard. Instead, you get a slim Bluetooth keyboard to connect wirelessly for use on a desk or table to take full advantage for the extra workspace. Or, it can be used on top of the base display to use it like a true laptop. And the keyboard can be stored between the screens when it’s time to get up and go.

As for what’s inside, you’ll be able to get the new Zenbook Duo with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 H-series CPU, up to 32GB of memory and up to 1TB of storage. Ports include two Thunderbolt 4, a USB Type-A, HDMI out and a headphone jack.

Asus says it’ll be available sometime in Q1 and it’s still working out pricing for it, but I wouldn’t expect it to be cheap.

Our phones are great at many things, like snapping vacation photos, entertaining us with an endless stream of bite-sized videos and acting as our personal planners. But that’s actually problematic, according to Jesse Lyu, founder and CEO of AI tech startup Rabbit. He thinks the myriad apps and functions available on our phones have stripped away their simplicity, and he’s trying to change that with a new gadget called the R1.

The R1, which debuted at CES 2024, is a mobile device designed to answer requests and handle tasks rather than run apps. There are no actual apps on the R1; instead you press a physical push-to-talk button to launch a music playlist or book a taxi as if you were speaking into a walkie-talkie. The phone’s software is powered by a large action model, or an algorithm that can learn from how humans use apps and interfaces so that it can replicate and automate those processes. Lyu likens it to handing your phone to a friend to order takeout rather than doing so yourself. The R1 ships in late March for $199.

Read more: Your Next Phone Will Likely Be Smarter, Faster and More Bendy

There’s no shortage of virtual assistants capable of doing almost exactly what Rabbit’s R1 claims to do. Google and Amazon are also injecting their own virtual helpers with generative AI smarts to make them even better at handling complex requests more easily. But Lyu sees the need for a purpose-built device for getting things done that’s separate from your phone and therefore less distracting. He argues that just because your phone can do the same thing doesn’t mean it’s the superior experience.

That argument will take a lot of convincing, especially considering how glued to our phones we’ve become. A survey from Reviews.org found that 89% of Americans check their phone within the first 10 minutes of waking up, and 60% sleep with their phone at night. Still, the Rabbit R1, along with startup Humane’s recently announced AI pin, is another sign that tech companies are increasingly looking to build new gadgets around AI.

The R1 has a simple look

The R1’s bright orange hue, relatively small screen and scroll wheel give it a nostalgic and almost retro look. The R1 physically shares some similarities with smartphones, such as a touchscreen display and a camera, but those parts are put to use in different ways.

The R1 doesn’t have a traditional phone operating system, for example, but instead uses that 2.88-inch screen to display cards in response to your requests. The camera isn’t really meant for documenting your days on Instagram, but rather is intended to assist with visual queries like snapping photos of what’s in your fridge to generate recipe ideas.

Although it’s not being positioned as a phone, you can certainly make phone calls with it since it has a SIM card slot along with WiFi and cellular connectivity. It runs on a 2.3Ghz MediaTek Helios P35 processor and has 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM.

It doesn’t run apps, but it can connect to your apps

The R1 doesn’t have apps in the traditional sense, but it connects to services to carry out requests. Playing a playlist in Spotify or calling an Uber requires you to link those apps to your Rabbit account through an online portal. That could end up being a cumbersome process considering you’d have to manually connect any service you’d want Rabbit to factor into your usage. Rabbit says it doesn’t store any login data and authentication methods happen on the app’s system.

With the R1, Rabbit is taking on an ambitious goal by trying to carve out a place for a new gadget in our lives in a world that’s already overrun with screens and sensors. But it’s interesting nonetheless to see new hardware developed in response to the increased interest in AI we’ve seen over the past year. Still, Rabbit’s software experience has to be compelling enough to convince you to buy a new device rather than continuing to use ChatGPT, Google Bard and other AI helpers on the devices you already own.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.