GoKawiil
Tech News
Citing the United Nations' e-Waste Monitor, the report notes that global electronic waste reached about 62 million tons in 2022, an 82% rise over the prior decade, with a further 32% increase projected by 2030. It notes that less than a quarter of e-waste worldwide is properly recycled, and suggests recycling or donating old phones instead of discarding them.
Samsung's One UI 9 update changes how the Galaxy Z Flip's cover screen works, replacing the previous wallpaper-and-clock home view with a Now Brief dashboard or widget page after unlocking. Users on Reddit and Samsung's community forums say this makes it harder to return to their customized cover screen and has removed the ability to double-tap the unlocked screen to turn it off.
An Android Authority reviewer who has used every US foldable released this year, including Motorola, Samsung and Google models, spent five days testing Apple's first foldable, the iPhone Duo. The device ships unfolded with a nano-texture matte finish on its folding screen, created via laser-etched microlenses over each pixel, which diffuses glare but also dims and desaturates the display compared to glossy foldables.
The two main foldable phone formats serve different needs: clamshell flip phones open to standard phone-size screens and offer compact, one-handed use with glanceable outer-screen information, while book-style foldables expand to tablet-sized displays suited for content consumption and multitasking. Book-style models are bulkier and more mechanically delicate, requiring protective cases, whereas clamshells stay pocket-friendly but don't offer extra screen space over a regular phone.
A commentary piece revisits Ralph Waldo Emerson's warning against 'foolish consistency' to argue that effective leaders must be willing to shift positions as circumstances change. It notes that modern culture often labels such leaders as 'flip-floppers,' discouraging open reconsideration of past views.
MIT Technology Review has published its new 'Impossible' issue, covering projects like synthetic blood, moon cities, cognitive immortality, bionic eyes and blended meat. The issue also reports that Astrolab's FLIP lunar rover, carrying a computer capable of running large language models, is scheduled to launch to the moon as early as next month to test AI-driven autonomy in space.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise plans to launch its Spaceborne Computer-4, a fanless compute module roughly the size of a graphics card, to the Moon's south pole aboard an Astrolab FLIP rover in late 2026. The mission, tied to NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and a Voyager Technologies Griffin-1 lander, will run HPCG and other supercomputing benchmarks alongside AI tasks like LLM retrieval-augmented generation, vision inference, and LiDAR processing, in partnership with NASA and Deloitte.
Astrolab's FLIP lunar rover will carry an HPE Spaceborne-4 edge computer designed to run custom large language models directly on the moon's surface. The system will process camera and lidar data onboard to aid navigation and distill insights, reducing how much raw data must be transmitted to Earth.
Japan's long-lived 'gara-kei' feature phones, clamshell devices with physical keyboards that persisted even as smartphones dominated elsewhere, are rapidly disappearing. Docomo data shows smartphone ownership rose from 90% in 2021 to 98% in 2025, while MM Research Institute reports feature phone shipments fell over 25% to under 400,000 units in the first half of fiscal 2025. The decline is expected to speed up after NTT Docomo shut down the country's remaining 3G network this past March.
Samsung has begun rolling out Android 17-based One UI 9 to newer devices like the Galaxy Fold 8 and Flip 8, while older models approach the end of their update lifespans. Support duration varies widely across Samsung's lineup, with budget A-series phones generally receiving fewer years of meaningful software updates than flagship models.
Amazon is selling the XGIMI Elfin Flip Laser projector for $599, a 20% discount that marks its lowest price yet. The device offers 1080p laser projection and is marketed as suited to smaller rooms.
Android Authority's review of the 2026 Motorola Razr finds it largely unchanged from last year's model in specs, but with a higher price tag of $799.99. The phone retains its 3.6-inch cover screen, dual 50MP cameras, and a Dimensity 7450 chipset, delivering solid performance and photo quality in a design nearly identical to its predecessor aside from new color options.