iPhone 9 rumors and news

Apple has yet to release the successor to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, but rumors of future iPhones have already begun to swirl — including tidbits about the iPhone 9.

The iPhone 9 could be years away, but a few of the details are starting to come into focus. Here is everything we know about Apple’s next-generation iPhone.

Specs

Samsung might supply the iPhone 9’s screen. That is according to The Bell (via The Investor), which reported that the Seoul, South Korea-based company will supply 5.28-inch and 6.46-inch OLED panels for Apple’s upcoming phone.

“[The] iPhone 9 is expected to come in two OLED models — 5.28- and 6.46-inch display sizes,” The Investor reported. “Samsung’s OLED shipment is also likely to be more than double at 180 million units.”

Assuming details are not adjusted down the line, the iPhone 9 could look radically different from the iPhone 7 and the rumored iPhone 7S. The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch LCD screens, respectively, and the iPhone 7S and 7S Plus’ displays are expected to retain those dimensions.

The iPhone 9 will have a screen that is more vibrant and colorful than the iPhone 7’s. OLED, or organic light-emitting diodes, creates light depending on how much electric current you send it and dims black in the absence of a charge. That is in contrast to LCD panels, which have a persistent backlight that never switches off.

The iPhone 7S and 7S Plus are rumored to debut alongside a high-end iPhone — the iPhone 8 or iPhone X — with a 5.8-inch OLED panel. If the rumors are true, it seems that Apple will equip all future iPhones models with OLED.

Design

Alushta, Russia – November 21, 2014: Man holding an iPhone 6 Space Gray with social networking service Twitter on the screen. The iPhone 6 was created and developed by Apple.

The iPhone 9’s design remains a complete mystery, as of now, but there is a chance it will look something like iPhone 8.

According to the latest rumblings, the upcoming iPhone 8 will boast a stainless steel body, a bezel-less curved touchscreen, a Touch ID fingerprint sensor that is concealed beneath the display and vertically oriented dual rear cameras. The front shooter is expected to be oriented along the phone’s center (in contrast to the iPhone 7’s off-center selfie camera), and the iPhone 8 is likely to ditch the home button for a digital, software-based alternative.

Naming, release date and price

Historically, Apple has followed predictable iPhone release schedule: Minor “S” models follow major upgrades. The iPhone 4S came after the redesigned iPhone 4, and the iPhone 5S came after the Touch ID-enabled iPhone 5. But Apple might switch things up this year.

Rumor has it that Apple will release three iPhone models in fall 2017: The iPhone 7S, 7S Plus, and 8. If that happens, the iPhone 9 could launch as soon as next year. But if it doesn’t — if Apple sticks to its guns and releases the iPhone 8 next year — the iPhone 9 could be as many as two years off.

If the iPhone 9 is priced anything like the iPhone 8, it will be expensive — analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that the 128GB and 256GB iPhone 8 will cost $1,000 and $1,100, respectively. But it could be in line with the iPhone 7S, which is expected start at $650 for the 64GB model and $750 for 128GB —  the same as the iPhone 7.

Beekeepers think AI that targets mites can save us from the ‘beepocalypse’

Why it matters to you

We depend on bees for our survival, and a new AI app may just save them from extinction.

Bees are in mortal danger. Last year, more than 40 percent of colonies disappeared in the United States alone. And that’s a big problem for humans as well as for bees. About a third of our diet comes from plants that depend on insect pollinators. Without bees, we’ll be in big trouble.

One of the insect’s worst enemies — and a significant contributor to colony collapse — is a small mite called Varroa destructor that’s as devastating as it sounds. They latch onto bees and brood, sucking the life out of them.

A handful of solutions have emerged over the past few years, including hot hives that kill the mites and robobees that replace natural pollinators.

Now, a concerned team of beekeepers and software developers from Sweden have proposed another plan. They want to build an AI-powered app called BeeScanning that would analyze images of beehives to spot the mites, then alert keepers so they could rid their hives of the mites.

“I’ve been taking pictures of my bee colonies to learn how to foresee their development,” Björn Lagerman, a BeeScanning founder who’s been beekeeping for 45 years, told Digital Trends. “Last summer, I started taking pictures of frames with brood to learn the capacity of different queens. Examining the stills, I discovered mites, which I didn’t see on the moving bees when I first took the pictures.”

The mites appear as little red dots on the backs of bees. The more pictures Lagerman took, the more mites he found. He realized he could develop a tool that could scan the images much faster and more accurately than his own eyes.

Lagerman got together a small team and took to Kickstarter to seek funding. Initially, they plan to launch a tool to help keepers around the world collaborate by uploading images of their own hives.

The images these keepers upload will help the BeeScanning team train an AI to identify individual mites in a picture full of bees. By the end of 2017, Lagerman hopes to compile a database of 40,000 images from 10,000 hives, which would be used to train an algorithm to efficiently spot the mites. They want to raise money on Kickstarter to fund the app’s software development and distribution.

“If you don’t monitor varroa and treat accordingly, your bees will die,” Lagerman said. “That’s the motivation driving beekeepers to examine their colonies in all ways they can think of!”

The project reached its goal of 50,000 Swedish krona ($5,745) within the first 10 days of the campaign. That money will help fund the database. The team has now added a number of stretch goals to enable features such as offline mode and a community-focused web interface.

Infltr is the first app to edit stills, video, GIFs, and Apple Live Photos

Why it matters to you

If you want to edit your GIFs, Apple Live Photos, photos and videos in a single app, Infltr is currently the only one that can manage all four.

Love them or hate them, the moving photos called GIFs and Apple’s Live Photos are here to stay — and now there’s an iOS program that can edit them all. Photo editing app Infltr’s latest update makes the app the first program that can edit GIFs and Live Photos right alongside regular photos and videos.

Version 2.8 of Infltr allows users to edit GIFs and Live photos, which makes the app the only one capable of handling the four most popular media types, according to the developer. The update includes 10 new tools that work across all four file types, including the ability to adjust saturation, brightness, contrast, filter intensity, crop, rotate, straighten, flip horizontally, flip vertically and change perspective both horizontally and vertically. All of the edits are saved in the photo’s history, which allows any of the custom edits to be undone later.

Infltr gets its name from the infinite filter possibilities available with a swipe, navigating through a seemingly limitless number of filters that now number surpasses 7 million. The new GIF and video tools can be used alongside the platform’s original filters, which are applied in real time, to further customize the look. Adjustments can also easily be applied to more than one image at a time and favorite filters can be saved for easy access later.

Along with allowing users to edit GIFs, Live Photos, images, and video after the fact, the app’s camera mode allows users to shoot Live Photos and still photos with filter effects already applied, showing the results in real time while still saving an original unretouched file. The developer says the saturation, brightness, contrast, vignetting, and filter intensity can all be previewed in real time in the app’s camera mode.

Infltr is an iOS-only app that has received Editor’s Choice and Apple’s Best New App award in more than 150 countries. Infltr is available from the App Store for $2 for the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.

No $4,000 PC needed: To dominate mobile esports, you just need a phone

Seated in the front row, I had a prime spot for watching the opening rounds of the 2017 Vainglory mobile esports spring championships, and I was totally focused on the big-screen entertainment in front of the stage, where the players were seated. I leaned forward, along with the other spectators, as the action increased. The chatter in the event space intensified, turning into shouts and gasps, while fans yelled encouragement. A crucial move was executed, and I shouted with the crowd, clapping as one team neared its first win of the day. I was absorbed by the game, the experience, and the spectacle. Yet less than 48-hours earlier, I wasn’t even aware of its existence.

It came as a surprise to learn Vainglory is the world’s number one mobile esport, and this year is its second championship season; but that doesn’t mean it’s widely known. PC and console games may dominate esports, but to mainstream audiences the concept is still relatively niche. Mobile eSports even more so; but this may not remain the case for long. Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of Vainglory developer Super Evil Megacorp, says the smartphone’s ubiquity will create “borderless esports.” Digital Trends spoke to him about it ahead of the first day of the Vainglory Spring Championships in London.

Vainglory is the world’s number one mobile esport, and this year is its second championship season.

“The opportunity with mobile, now the devices are capable of PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 level graphics and the networking has become very stable, is that real-time play is now possible,” he said. “Mobile is such a democratising device, and so many people have one, we are able to bring a form of entertainment that has been somewhat niche until now, to potentially billions.”

Comparing it to PC esports, he used traditional sports as an analogy to drive home the point. “It’s the difference between something like ice hockey, where you need skates and all the right equipment, and something like football, where all you really need is a ball.”

That makes it way more approachable than PC or console esports

“If you have a phone you can download the game, it’s free,” Segerstrale said. “We find a third friend and that’s it, now we’re a team. It’s that easy.”

However, anyone who follows mobile tech knows there’s still a performance difference between a smartphone that costs $100, and one that costs $800. Do Vainglory pro-gamers need to own the latest and greatest devices, or face a disadvantage when playing others equipped with them? Vainglory will run on pretty much any device made in the last four years, Kristian told us, before bringing Alessandro Palmarini, known as Palmatoro and a member of the Fnatic team in London, into the conversation.

Andy Boxall

Andy Boxall

Palmarini said the choice of device is more about gameplay style preferences than performance, in a similar way that many PC esports players use a particular mouse and keyboard to play. Palmarini’s device of choice? An iPad Pro, because of the extra screen real-estate.

Palmarini began playing Vainglory on an iPad, and despite trying, he cannot convert over to a phone. Others may not share his feelings, and will avoid a big-screen tablet because of the time it takes to move fingers from one side of the screen to the other. Milliseconds count here.

The majority of players I saw used a tablet, although one player was using his thumbs on a smartphone, and I was told of another major player who uses a finger and a stylus. It’s completely individual, but one thing was clear, the power of the device is largely irrelevant. This further democratises mobile esports, because there’s little incentive to rush out and buy the newest device the moment it’s released. The game runs on a server, so the phone is effectively just a controller. Network speed is considerably more important.

[Palmarini] never set out to be a pro-player, and hadn’t competitively played another game.

Palmarini’s got involved with Vainglory competitively after seeing the game during Apple’s 2014 keynote presentation, when it was used to illustrate the new Metal API to enhance game performance. He then promptly forgot all about it. Fast forward to when his parents took away his PlayStation, as he was supposed to be studying for exams, he downloaded Vainglory and started playing. He never set out to be a pro-player, and hadn’t competitively played another game.

Palmarini qualified for the first European championship in Poland aged 15, convinced his parents — who had never heard of Vainglory or esports — that he should attend, and went on to win. When asked about the amount of time he has to spend practicing, just to maintain this high standard of play, Palmarini said, “I’m not really practicing because I have to, it’s because I actually want to play.” Now part of Fnatic’s Vainglory team, he will take a gap year to concentrate on his pro-gaming career, before thinking about university.

The live Vainglory Spring Championship, which took place at the famous O2 Arena in London, has considerable importance. Not only is it the first time Europe met North America on home soil, but the European teams hadn’t beaten a North American team competitively at that time. There’s also the lure of a $75,000 total prize fund, and the potential for drama is obvious. However, for mobile esports (and esports in general) to become successful, it needs to engage spectators.

I went in as an almost complete beginner, never having even played the game. The night before attending the event, I spent a couple of hours watching YouTube tutorials, and reading up on the game’s characters, setting, and objective. That was enough for me to follow the proceedings, and understand the commentary. This was also a surprise. I didn’t want the commentators to be irritating, and it wasn’t. Instead, it was informative and fun, just like it should be. Having watched League of Legends competitive gameplay before, and finding it almost impenetrable, this event was refreshing, and Super Evil Megacorp has worked hard to make it happen. Kristian told us the team tailors every aspect of the game, “from how the camera moves, to how the characters communicate on screen” to make it as clear as possible.

Andy Boxall

Vainglory wasn’t really conceived as a competitive esport.

“You can’t make a new sport,” Segerstrale said. “What we can do is try to create the most fun competitive experience we can, that you can play with friends, and hope the community will pick it up and start playing it competitively.”

Today, there are more than 6,000 competitive teams registered with esports organizations around the world, and it’s growing all the time — it’s safe to say these ambitions are being met.

However, it’s what happened after leaving the spring championship that shows how mobile is on the cusp of bringing esports to everyone. Vainglory is now installed on my phone, and if my schedule had allowed, I would have returned to watch the finals a few days later. Instead, I caught up with the livestream. North American team Cloud9 took the title, but not before G2 broke Europe’s bad luck streak and won two games against North American teams.

I’d looked at esports before, and was interested in the concept; but found it too complicated, too exclusionary, and too time consuming to learn the associated rules. Vainglory captured my attention at a polished and enjoyable live event, and turned me into a fan after a few hours research. Not really as a player, but as a spectator, and that’s perhaps more important to the sport overall. Vainglory is leading the mobile eSports pack at the moment, but others are sure to follow, making this an ideal time to get involved.

Device turns your empty bottles into a hydroponic herb garden

Why it matters to you

This innovative Kickstarter project brings the joy of having your own garden to your home, even if you don’t have a yard or balcony.

Want to eat more fresh ingredients? Wish you could spend the Memorial Day weekend tending your very own garden?

A new Kickstarter project may be able to help with both of these desires. Billing itself as the World’s Smallest Garden, it promises to bring the joy of gardening to your home — even if you live in a tiny, top-floor apartment where the closest thing to wild vegetation is the leftover stir-fry in your fridge.

The World’s Smallest Garden is a small cylindrical device you place in the top of a regular bottle, transforming it into a self-watering herb garden in seconds.

“It’s perfect for growing fresh food in small spaces,” Nate Littlewood, co-founder and CEO of Urban Leaf, told Digital Trends. “What makes it so neat is its accessibility. From the outset, we wanted to create a product that was easy to use and affordable. There are a ton of other home-hydroponic grow kits on the market already, most of which are in the $200 to $3,000 price range. These are inaccessible and intimidating to most people — and certainly too complicated for the beginner. The World’s Smallest Garden is intended as gateway product, designed to welcome people into the field of home-growing for the first time.”

The Kickstarter kit contains three of the cylindrical devices, which resemble test tubes. Simply place one of these into a bottle filled with water, and you’ll create an optimal environment for seed germination, as well as a mechanism through which your plants can water themselves.

All you need to do is make sure the plants are put someplace sunny — or, at least, with access to the appropriate light — and then check on their water levels once a week. In addition to the World Smallest Garden device, kits will also come with a range of herbs, such as sweet basil (perfect for pesto or pizza topping) and mint (great for that post-work mojito).

The kits can currently be pre-ordered, with prices starting at $15. This includes 3 of the World’s Smallest Garden tubes with seeds, stickers for your bottles, and a quick start guide. Other price options — including one in which Littlewood and co-founder Robert Elliott will give you a private cooking lesson that allows you to put your herbs to good use — are also available.

Microsoft to bring Windows 10 Home and Pro to its new Surface Laptop

Why it matters to you

Microsoft wants everyone to purchase a Surface device, and providing a full-blown version of Windows 10 on its Surface Laptop is another enticement to buy one.

Microsoft plans to release its new Surface Laptop with Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro, Yusuf Mehdi, vice president of Windows and Devices for the company, confirmed on Tuesday.

Launched at the beginning of May with a starting price of $999, the device currently ships with Windows 10 S, a new restricted version of the platform that forces users to install only Windows 10 apps sold through the Windows Store. However, offering models with the full-blown Windows 10 experience was always Microsoft’s “long-term direction.”

“We had to start somewhere,” Mehdi said. “The Surface Laptop, that was the right time to introduce the operating system. We had it on some low-end devices, and we wanted to put it on a premium machine to show the future. We don’t just think of it as a Chrome operating system. This is full-fledged.”

Microsoft is currently addressing the mobile computing market with three solutions — the detachable 2-in-1 (Surface Book), the standard 2-in-1 (Surface Pro), and the clamshell notebook (Surface Laptop). Of the three, the Surface Laptop is the only unit with Windows 10 S installed right out of the box. According to Mehdi, that will eventually change, although specific dates are unknown for now.

Mehdi indicated that Microsoft is in the planning stages of selling the Surface Book with Windows 10 S. There’s talk that Microsoft may be doing the same with the Surface Pro, but Mehdi didn’t mention or confirm Windows 10 S on that model. In fact, the latest model rolled out on Tuesday with no Windows 10 S in sight, but rather Windows 10 Pro instead.

With Windows 10 S, Microsoft is targeting a market dominated by Chromebooks. Laptops sporting the new platform start at $189, and are manufactured by Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Samsung, and Toshiba. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop serves the high-end education market, similar to what Google did with its high-quality Chromebook Pixel laptops.

Windows 10 S is touted as a highly optimized platform that runs exceptionally well on low-end hardware. Yet the Surface Laptop is nowhere near the low-end spectrum, packing either the Intel Core i5-6300U or Core i7-6600U seventh-generation processor, up to 16GB of system memory, up to 512GB of storage, and a 13.5-inch screen with a 2,256 x 1,504 resolution.

From a customer standpoint, there should be no problems in Microsoft selling the Surface Book and Surface Pro devices with Windows 10 S. Heck, the latest Surface Pro (5) has a starting price of $800 and begins with the seventh-generation Intel Core m3-7Y30 processor, 4GB of system memory, 128GB of storage, and a 12.3-inch screen with a 2,736 x 1,824 resolution.

Again, Mehdi didn’t say exactly when Microsoft will sell its sparkly new Surface Laptop with Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro, nor did he indicate when the Surface Book will ship with Windows 10 S. But they’re on the board, and customers could see these solutions on Microsoft’s online retail space and in its brick-and-mortar stores before the end of the year.

Microsoft to bring Windows 10 Home and Pro to its new Surface Laptop

Why it matters to you

Microsoft wants everyone to purchase a Surface device, and providing a full-blown version of Windows 10 on its Surface Laptop is another enticement to buy one.

Microsoft plans to release its new Surface Laptop with Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro, Yusuf Mehdi, vice president of Windows and Devices for the company, confirmed on Tuesday.

Launched at the beginning of May with a starting price of $999, the device currently ships with Windows 10 S, a new restricted version of the platform that forces users to install only Windows 10 apps sold through the Windows Store. However, offering models with the full-blown Windows 10 experience was always Microsoft’s “long-term direction.”

“We had to start somewhere,” Mehdi said. “The Surface Laptop, that was the right time to introduce the operating system. We had it on some low-end devices, and we wanted to put it on a premium machine to show the future. We don’t just think of it as a Chrome operating system. This is full-fledged.”

Microsoft is currently addressing the mobile computing market with three solutions — the detachable 2-in-1 (Surface Book), the standard 2-in-1 (Surface Pro), and the clamshell notebook (Surface Laptop). Of the three, the Surface Laptop is the only unit with Windows 10 S installed right out of the box. According to Mehdi, that will eventually change, although specific dates are unknown for now.

Mehdi indicated that Microsoft is in the planning stages of selling the Surface Book with Windows 10 S. There’s talk that Microsoft may be doing the same with the Surface Pro, but Mehdi didn’t mention or confirm Windows 10 S on that model. In fact, the latest model rolled out on Tuesday with no Windows 10 S in sight, but rather Windows 10 Pro instead.

With Windows 10 S, Microsoft is targeting a market dominated by Chromebooks. Laptops sporting the new platform start at $189, and are manufactured by Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Samsung, and Toshiba. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop serves the high-end education market, similar to what Google did with its high-quality Chromebook Pixel laptops.

Windows 10 S is touted as a highly optimized platform that runs exceptionally well on low-end hardware. Yet the Surface Laptop is nowhere near the low-end spectrum, packing either the Intel Core i5-6300U or Core i7-6600U seventh-generation processor, up to 16GB of system memory, up to 512GB of storage, and a 13.5-inch screen with a 2,256 x 1,504 resolution.

From a customer standpoint, there should be no problems in Microsoft selling the Surface Book and Surface Pro devices with Windows 10 S. Heck, the latest Surface Pro (5) has a starting price of $800 and begins with the seventh-generation Intel Core m3-7Y30 processor, 4GB of system memory, 128GB of storage, and a 12.3-inch screen with a 2,736 x 1,824 resolution.

Again, Mehdi didn’t say exactly when Microsoft will sell its sparkly new Surface Laptop with Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro, nor did he indicate when the Surface Book will ship with Windows 10 S. But they’re on the board, and customers could see these solutions on Microsoft’s online retail space and in its brick-and-mortar stores before the end of the year.

Google finally matching in-store purchases to online activity, vastly raising value of ads

Keeping track of in-store purchases is the final step of measuring effectiveness of online ads.

Google is finally figuring out how to close the most precious link in the loop of online advertising: knowing when someone makes an in-store purchase in response to an online ad. Google has announced that it will begin using data from billions of credit and debit card transactions, matching the data to its anonymized profiles of Google users to whom it serves ads online.

By guaranteeing that a specific in-store purchase was made by a specific person to whom an ad was shown, Google could potentially be able to sell that information to advertisers to show the effectiveness of Google ads. That would put Google considerably ahead of other advertising systems, including the often loosely targeted TV advertisements that claim such a large portion of today’s advertising spending.

According to Google, through a complex set of algorithms it has been able to process through these billions of transactions for behaviors that can link individual purchase amounts with the specific people who most likely made the purchase based on other data Google has related to them. Google of course collects an often-surprising amount of data that’s tied to each individual person with a Google account — including phone location, app usage, online payments, Google searches, browsing history and more.

Google can now link individual purchase amounts with specific people who have Google accounts.

Correlating this own-collected data with a new trove of in-store transactions that it previously didn’t have access to, Google is able to create a profile and match the two sets together. Google naturally explains that it never sells personally identifiable information to advertisers, and each user is identified instead through a random string of numbers … though privacy advocates will argue that this correlation of metadata is just as good as (if not better than) knowing someone’s actual identity.

Google is not alone in its quest to tie in-store purchases to online advertising — knowing exactly who made a purchase, even in a store, relating to the display of an online ad is incredibly valuable. Because of this, we don’t have a great explanation from Google on how exactly it is acquiring such a large amount of data or how it’s being processed to determine who is making each purchase.

This is the future of advertising, whether it’s Google or some other company putting the data together is sort of irrelevant at this point.

Huawei gets serious about laptops with new MateBook devices

MateBook E takes on the Surface, while MateBooks X and D go after Apple’s MacBook line.

So, Huawei makes laptops now. Sure, it’s dabbled in tablets in the past, and even released a single 2-in-1 Windows convertible last year, in the form of the original MateBook. But today Huawei showed just how serious it is about making real, actual computers, with the launch of three new MateBook devices at an event in Berlin, Germany. None of them runs Android, but the new product line demonstrates Huawei’s growth

First up is the MateBook E, a direct successor to the 2016 model MateBook. While the design has been refined, and the internals upgraded, don’t expect anything drastically different from that device.

Like the original MateBook, the new MateBook E can be used as a standalone tablet, but realistically you’re going to want to use that folio case. Don’t expect to casually one-hand the E like you would an iPad. Doing so is clumsy, a product of its shape and size as much as its weight.

The good news is that the leather folio is impressively sturdy, covering all the parts that need covering when the MateBook E is in a bag, with built-in, backlit chiclet keys that don’t feel at all mushy. The hinge can now support the device at up to a 160-degree angle, allowing for more versatility when it’s propped up. (Which, let’s face it, will be most of the time.)

More: Huawei MateBook (2017) preview at iMore

The MateBook X and MateBook D line up against Apple’s MacBook (12-inch) and MacBook Pro series, through the X is the clear flagship of the trio, beating Apple on specs and coming close on build quality.

The bump in specs compared to Apple’s notebooks (which are also passively cooled, but uses less speedy Core M-series chips) is made possible by what Huawei calls its “Space Cooling Technology,” which uses unique materials in its heat pipe to more effectively dissipate heat. Questions remain over how well this kind of approach will handle extended heavy usage — eventually, you’ll just have to ramp down the CPU — but that’s a problem for another day. In every other sense, the MateBook X is a typical, well-designed Ultrabook.

There’s liberal use of “diamond-cut” chamfers around the tapered aluminum unibody, which is flanked on either side by USB-C connectors — so you can plug in to charge on either side. It measures just 12.5mm thick, and weighs 2.31 pounds, putting it in the same “barely there” ballpark as the 12-inch MacBook, though with a larger 13-inch display.

More: Huawei MateBook hands-on at Windows Central

Bottom line: Huawei is making clear progress outside of the smartphone space. And we’d sure like to see something like the new MateBook X running Chrome OS, or maybe even the rumored Andromeda OS, eventually.

Look for all three Huawei MateBook models to become available in China, Japan, the U.S., France, Italy and Saudi Arabia later this summer. For more on all three, check out coverage on Windows Central and the new iMore.

Ikea’s cheap smart lightbulbs will soon support Google Home and Amazon Alexa

Ikea is a huge name in inexpensive home furnishing, but its influence is extending to the smart home space, too.

When Ikea gets into a market, competitors stand up and notice. In the case of smart home tech, the company began offering wireless charging solutions built into desks and lights, it allowed for the average consumer to see the magical technology without going to a carrier store or tech retailer.

Ikea’s smart lighting solution, Trådfri, similarly undercuts much of the competition, including popular incumbents like Philips and LIFX, without sacrificing quality and options. The Trådfri suite includes regular bulbs, a dimmer, and a smart mirror light — priced for the average home.

Ikea is no stranger to undercutting the home furnishing market.

And while the nascent solution has always supported Android through an app, a press release issued in Swedish this week says that Trådfri will soon support Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Apple HomeKit (via The Verge), which will add a comprehensive voice component to the ecosystem.

It’s coming later this summer, so you won’t need to wait too long, if you’ve already invested in the products. Or you could just wait until Ikea decides to take on another aspect of the smart home, because it’s definitely coming.

See at Ikea