Google's Pixel Camera chief, Isaac Reynolds, thinks year-to-year upgrades to smartphone cameras are still critical, even though some detractors think they're passé. "A person who is a casual photographer and desperately wants to be a hobbyist--they're never going to break that ceiling unless you give them the tools, he says. The features that others call'meh'--for some people, those features are life-changing. Take the 30X Super Res Zoom on the Pixel 7 Pro from 2022, which uses machine learning to stitch together multiple frames in a digitally zoomed photo to give you a result that's much sharper than you're used to. Reynolds says that because of this feature, Google now sees people using 30X zoom dramatically more than before. The new Pixel 11 Pro, announced today, can zoom up to 120X, though in addition to the digital stitching, it relies on AI-generated pixels to fill in some details. Reynolds says maybe having that capability is enough to get someone interested in, say, wildlife photography. After experimenting on their phone, they'd be ready to invest in a professional camera and a big zoom lens. "There's a reason I work on low light and zoom every single year, he says.

The Pixel 11 smartphone lineup is here, alongside the Pixel Watch 5 and the all-new Pixel Tag. Google is dialing things up to 11 this year with its Pixel phones . Ahead of its annual Made by Google event in New York City, the company unwrapped the Pixel 11 smartphone family--which includes the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Pro Fold--alongside the Pixel Watch 5 smartwatch . There's also a new hardware addition: the Pixel Tag, which seems designed to be the AirTag of the Android world. Here's everything you need to know about the hardware changes and software upgrades on Google's latest devices.

Honor's Robot Phone Has a Gimbal-Powered Camera for Vloggers Honor's new China-exclusive Android phone features a pop-out motorized gimbal camera designed to replace your action cam. You hear it often: Smartphones have plateaued . A small boost to battery life here, a minor camera upgrade there--our glass slabs don't seem to change all that much from year to year. That's exactly the kind of sentiment Honor wants to counter with the Robot Phone, which has a motorized camera that pops up out of the top. Honor has been teasing the phone since late 2025 .

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.