Samsung is hoping to keep its customers with incentives, including a $100 credit for Note 7 owners who stick with a Samsung device as their replacement hardware. But carriers are leaving the door open for buyers to pick whatever kind of smartphone they want instead. A new survey conducted by e-commerce agency Branding Brand suggests that a decent number may end up moving to other brands,… Read More
Samsung is on the ropes. It pains me to say it but the Note 7 fiasco is probably going to hurt them more deeply than they’ll admit and I suspect we’ll see two or three quarters of slow growth thanks to Explode-gate. It’s bad. Consider the damage done to the brand. Pilots were telling users not to turn on their Note 7 phones as they taxied for takeoff. A total recall is now… Read More
A few days ago we revealed an automotive product from Anker called Roav. At the time, it seemed the Roav was an in-vehicle heads-up display that looked a lot like the Navdy. Today, Anker reached out with additional details. Roav, when it launches in November, will be Anker’s automotive brand, with the Roav Dashtop as the flagship product. Anker tells TechCrunch the Roav Dashtop… Read More
Robotic exoskeletons are one of those technologies that tend to be associated with warfare or at least the industrial sector, but soft robotics and artificial muscles like these ones created by Swiss researchers make them suitable for more delicate operations as well. Read More
Using a mixture of different materials in 3D printing has been difficult for the user end, requiring basically knowledge of programming and specific training, but new software developed by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab aims to be the “Photoshop for 3D materials,” making it accessible to basically anyone. The “Foundry” system developed by… Read More
Kettering University unveiled this week an automotive proving grounds in a bid to lure companies and students to the Flint, MI area. The test track is on the school’s grounds, housed on land that once contained a massive General Motors’ manufacturing facility that was torn down and left abandoned. The Kettering University GM Mobility Research Center (or MRC) features outdoor lab… Read More
Apple’s latest Watch was met with great applause when the company announced in September the thing could take a dive in the pool and keep on ticking. But the price and other bells and whistles of the Watch might be too much for those just looking for a simple way to track steps, laps and calories. Enter Fitbit’s Flex 2, which starts shipping tomorrow morning. It’s a… Read More
Researchers at Disney Research in Pittsburgh have built a single-legged hopping robot that can currently bounce around 19 times without falling over. The project by Zachary Batts, Joohyung Kim, and Katsu Yamane began as a computer simulation and finally a hardware product. The researchers based their system on Marc Raibert’s hopping controller and it’s controlled by a linear… Read More
New Lab, which co-founder David Belt described as “a collaborative workspace” for companies in fields like robotics and artificial intelligence, officially opened last month.
The facility is located in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, in a building that was once used to assemble ships. Belt said he wanted to bring the building back as a manufacturing center, except updated for… Read More
Being synonymous with a particular product category is a mixed blessing. Mophie is undoubtedly the best-known name in the battery case business, but the company has been keen to distance itself from the space a bit — or, at the very least, let it be known that it has more to offer the world. Mophie released a whole bunch of new power banks a few weeks back. Necessary, sure, but… Read More
