Meta Is Charging a Subscription for Smart Glasses Features. Now you'll need to subscribe for "expanded access" to the most advanced features. So you paid a few hundred bucks for a neat little gadget and think you're good to go. But it turns out you'll need to subscribe to a monthly plan to unlock its advanced features. That where AI-powered consumer electronics are increasingly heading, and Meta is the latest to prove it with its smart glasses .

Try One of macOS 27's Best Features Right Now Apple's fall macOS release will let you build Shortcuts by typing what you want to happen. But Claude Code and Codex users don't have to wait. Buried deep inside everything announced at WWDC this year was something I, an Apple Shortcuts enthusiast, can't wait to try: the ability to make Apple Shortcuts using generative artificial intelligence. In macOS 27, you'll be able to just type what you want a shortcut to do, and the app will build it. Anyone who builds shortcuts regularly knows the process of doing so can be tedious, even if the end results save you a lot of time.

Apple's Camera Chief Thinks AI Can Give You Superpowers The generative features in iOS 27's new Photos app will add fake pixels to some of your shots, but Apple's Jon McCormack says the company isn't using AI "for the sake of AI." What even is a photograph these days? As tech giants pack generative AI capabilities into our phones and their camera software, the line between what is a real image and what isn't continues to blur. Phones from Google and Samsung, for example, now come with features that let you drastically alter a photo by erasing people, moving people around in the shot, and even adding new objects to the scene. Apple is getting in on the action by adding new generative features to its Photos app, though the company's iPhone camera chief, Jon McCormack, stresses that Apple is taking a more measured approach than its competitors and isn't "doing AI for the sake of AI."

Apple took the wraps off iOS 27 at its WWDC event, and the iPhone update is chock-full of smart upgrades, with a big focus on improvements to Siri. While the news coming out of WWDC 2026 is not as dramatic as last year's iOS 26 update, where the new Liquid Glass redesign caused a big stir, Apple's presentation still made waves. During the WWDC keynote, Apple walked through the changes coming to the next version of its mobile operating systems, iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. These updates will roll out to iPhones and iPads later this year, likely in September. There are several smaller quality-of-life improvements, but the big highlight is the Siri AI upgrade .

Oura's New Ring 5 Is Smaller and Lighter--and Adds an AI Health Coach But the real upgrade is Oura's push into AI-powered health insights and proactive monitoring. Two years on since the Oura Ring 4, Finnish health tech company Oura is back with a new smart ring --right in time to compete with the other screenless fitness tracker of the moment, the Fitbit Air . The Oura Ring 5 doubles down on the company's minimalist ethos with a smaller ring design, upgraded durability, and--unsurprisingly--a suite of AI-powered wellness features . The Ring 5 is available for preorder today and begins shipping June 4. It starts at $399 in silver and black, while premium finishes--Stealth, Brushed Silver, an updated Gold, and a new Deep Rose color--cost $499.

Best Power Banks Best Smart Rings Routers vs. Modems Choose the Right Laptop Smart Sprinklers Deals Delivered The beleaguered luxury phone maker is pushing the AlphaFold, which has decent specs and comes with Vertu's new Hermes Agent on board, to wealthy would-be buyers. Vertu is a company known for making extraordinarily gaudy smartphones with outdated technology, luxe materials, and eye-watering prices . Now the brand is here to meet the AI moment with its first-ever book-like folding phone, complete with an AI agent on board. The company announced the AlphaFold smartphone on Thursday--targeting business executives--which comes outfitted with the Hermes Agent. This agent can purportedly handle schedules and tasks on a user's behalf and "connect to enterprise systems."

Google is sprucing up its Gemini models, revamping search, and enabling AI agents in everything. There are also some spiffy new smart glasses coming this fall. Google just wrapped its keynote address at its annual I/O developer event . The company showed off a swath of new agentic AI features and some demos of its upcoming Android-powered smart glasses. As it has in the past few years, the spectacle largely revolved around Google's perpetual stream of AI efforts.

Google I/O is back with updates to Search, Android, Gemini, and a fresh peek at upcoming Android XR smart glasses. Here's how to watch the announcements live and what to expect. This is the annual developer event and product showcase where Google shows off all the shiny new updates to its Android operating system and other platforms, as well as new features and improvements to its artificial intelligence models. The big announcements at Google I/O usually come in the form of a livestreamed keynote event at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, hosted by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. That starts on Tuesday, May 19, at 10 am Pacific time (1 pm Eastern).

Metalenz's Polar ID face-scanning technology works even when the camera is hidden under the display. The notch has largely been replaced on today's smartphones by floating punch-hole cameras that take up less space and look a little more futuristic, though notches are still prevalent on some laptops, like Apple's MacBooks . On the iPhone, Apple calls its floating pill-shaped camera system the Dynamic Island, which debuted on the iPhone 14 . The iPhone still has the largest camera cutout today, due to its Face ID biometric authentication system. This island could get much smaller, however, thanks to new under-display camera technology announced at Display Week 2026 from Metalenz, a optics startup from Boston.

There Aren't a Lot of Reasons to Get Excited About a New Amazon Smartphone The company is reportedly building a new AI-powered mobile device. If Amazon follows through on the plan, experts warn it would be next to impossible to break into a crowded market. Reuters reports that Amazon's Devices and Services unit is working on a smartphone--dubbed Transformer--with Amazon's Alexa+ AI assistant and shopping as a major focus of the experience. It's unclear what this smartphone would cost, how much Amazon is spending to develop Transformer, and what operating system it will run. There's no word on when it will launch, and there's still also a chance the project could be scrapped altogether.