Welcome to a new newsletter, with a bit of a new direction. While our mid-week edition tackles news specifics, this end-of-the-week missive combines the biggest news with more context, more things to read and watch, recommendations, easter eggs, inside baseball and stuff that interests our readers, alongside the breaking news, reviews and features you expect from Engadget. We'd love your feedback on what you'd like to see covered in these meatier editions -- hit me up at tma(at)engadget.com. Luckily for me, we kick things off with Samsung's big Unpacked event, launching three new phones and teasing two -- yes, two! -- more coming soon. Everything Samsung announced, including prices and launch dates (February 8 -- I'll save you a click), we collated here, but it was largely a fallow year for Galaxy S hardware, barring a substantially more powerful chip.

Future Apple smart speakers, like HomePod, might be much more data privacy focused. Apple has reportedly paid $200 million to acquire Seattle-based artificial intelligence company Xnor.ai, The purchase is one of many for Apple, which has become adept at vacuuming up tech startups, but it also gives us a glimpse into the company's thinking when it comes to future devices. Xnor.ai's work on hyper-efficient, low-power AI that doesn't require powerful processing or a connection to the cloud (processing locally on-device instead), neatly slots into a few areas Apple is currently working on. Whilst Apple hasn't - and doesn't typically - comment on why it acquires certain companies and how they fit into its future roadmap, we can speculate on how Xnor.ai's work fits in to the master plan.

The data we share with companies online has become a hot-button issue, but new technologies could soon be scanning us as we go about our day. That's the claim made by a neuroscientist, who believes that devices in the real world will start gathering unprecedented levels of information about us. Our bodies give off various signals that can be scanned and analysed by advanced computer systems, revealing everything from our current mood to our overall health. In a similar way to wearable gadgets already available, future devices could be set up throughout public spaces to harvest this valuable bio-data. Because they are part of our surrounding environment there will be no way for us to opt out or ditch the technology and new regulations will be needed, she warns.

AppleInsider Staff "User interface started with the command prompt, moved to graphics, then touch, and then gestures," Microsoft research executive Yoram Yaakobi told the Wall Street Journal. "It's now moving to invisible UI, where there is nothing to operate. The tech around you understands you and what you want to do. With the push, dubbed "UI.Next," Microsoft is pursuing a future in which users do not need to tell their device what to do -- by touching or speaking to it, for instance -- and instead passively consume information that the device has already prepared in anticipation of their needs. Both Apple and Google have nodded in this direction already, though the technology is far from mature.