Category Archives: Smartwatches

Is your air fryer spying on you? Concerns over ‘excessive’ surveillance in smart devices

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UK consumer group Which? finds some everyday items including watches and speakers are ‘stuffed with trackers’

Air fryers that gather your personal data and audio speakers “stuffed with trackers” are among examples of smart devices engaged in “excessive” surveillance, according to the consumer group Which?

The organisation tested three air fryers, increasingly a staple of British kitchens, each of which requested permission to record audio on the user’s phone through a connected app.

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Garmin Fenix 7 review: next-gen boss of adventure smartwatches

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Top-of-the-line sports watch goes anywhere and tracks anything, with longer battery life, better GPS, stamina and a touchscreen

Garmin’s latest top-of-the-line Fenix 7 track-it-all adventure smartwatch introduces a number of new features, better GPS, longer battery life and improved tech – as well as a touchscreen to go with its buttons.

Starting at £599 ($699.99/A$1,049), it can hit £1,000 or more if you pick the largest, most fancy version. But the new luxury device does give us a preview on what the firm’s cheaper sports watches may feature later in the year.

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The 20 best gadgets of 2021

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From smartphones to folding skis, the year’s top gizmos selected by tech experts from the Guardian, iNews, TechRadar and Wired

Cutting-edge tech is often super-expensive, difficult to use and less than slick. Not so for Samsung’s latest folding screen phones. The Z Fold 3 tablet-phone hybrid and Z Flip 3 flip-phone reinventions are smooth, slick and even water-resistant, packing big screens in compact bodies. The Fold might be super-expensive still, but the Flip 3 costs about the same as a regular top smartphone, but is far, far more interesting. Samuel Gibbs

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Apple Watch Series 7 review: bigger screen, faster charging, still the best

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Small updates keep Apple at top of smartwatch market, even if it’s not worth upgrading from recent models

The Apple Watch gets a bigger, better screen, faster charging and a small price cut for 2021, which is enough to keep it at the top of the smartwatch market.

The Series 7 version costs from £369 ($399/A$599) and, despite being £10 cheaper than last year’s Series 6, is Apple’s most expensive smartwatch, above the Watch SE costing from £249 ($279/A$429). It requires an iPhone 6S or newer and does not work with Android.

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iOS 15 release: everything you need to know about Apple’s big update

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Free software upgrades for iPhone, iPad and Watch improve notifications, Safari, FaceTime and more due for release

Apple plans to release software updates for its iPhone, iPad and smartwatch on Monday, which will add new features for compatible devices.

Announced at the firm’s developer conference in June, iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and WatchOS 8 bring new ways to deal with notifications, tools to keep work and home life separate, the ability to FaceTime video call with non-Apple users and more.

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Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 review: the new Google smartwatch

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Wear OS 3 watch ups ante for Android wearables, now faster and feature-packed with body-fat scanner

The Galaxy Watch 4 is Samsung and Google’s attempt to combine efforts and compete with Apple’s smartwatch – and it gets about 80% of the way there.

The Android smartwatch comes in two designs and four sizes, starting at £249 ($250) for the Watch 4 and £349 ($350) – as tested – for the Watch 4 Classic. They succeed the £269 Watch Active 2 and £399 Watch 3 respectively.

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Samsung launches first water-resistant folding phone and Google watch

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New flip phones and phone-tablet hybrids, plus updated earbuds and first Google Wear OS 3 smartwatch

Samsung is taking a big step towards making folding-screen smartphones mainstream with the launch of a pair of the first water-resistant models as part of its big tech event for the second half of 2021.

The new and improved Galaxy Z Flip3 folding-screen flip-phone and Z Fold3 folding phone-tablet hybrid were announced on Wednesday during a livestreamed event, alongside a Google watch co-developed in an attempt to take on the dominant Apple Watch – the Galaxy Watch4.

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Ransomware attack on Garmin thought to be the work of ‘Evil Corp’

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Russian cybercrime gang is believed to be responsible for taking Garmin services offline

A ransomware attack that took the GPS and smartwatch business Garmin entirely offline for more than three days is believed to have been carried out by a Russian cybercriminal gang which calls itself “Evil Corp”.

Garmin began to restore services to customers on Monday morning, after being held hostage for a reported ransom of $10m, although some services were still operating with limited functionality.

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Smartwatch maker Garmin hit by outages after ransomware attack

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US company forced to shut down call centres, website and some other online services

Garmin has been forced to shut down its call centres, website and some other online services after a ransomware attack encrypted the smartwatch maker’s internal network and some production systems.

The US company shut down services including the official Garmin website and all customer services, including phone lines, online chat and email.

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Apple halts practice of contractors listening in to users on Siri

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Tech firm to review virtual assistant ‘grading’ programme after Guardian revelations

Apple has suspended its practice of having human contractors listen to users’ Siri recordings to “grade” them, following a Guardian report revealing the practice.

The company said it would not restart the programme until it had conducted a thorough review of the practice. It has also committed to adding the ability for users to opt out of the quality assurance scheme altogether in a future software update.

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