Intelligent Energy’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology Can Now Fit Inside an iPhone

British power technology company Intelligent Energy has developed an iPhone 6 prototype with a built-in fuel cell that supports hydrogen cartridges delivering up to a week’s worth of battery life, according to The Telegraph. It also demonstrated a hydrogen-powered MacBook Air.

The patented fuel cell system, reportedly poised for its first major commercial deployment in cell towers across India over the next few weeks, creates electricity based on the chemical reaction of combining hydrogen and oxygen, which produces only small amounts of water vapor and heat as waste.

Intelligent Energy also introduced a hydrogen-powered iPhone charger called Upp based on the same technology last year, but its latest breakthrough has seen it fit the fuel cell portion of the technology alongside an iPhone 6 battery pack without altering the size or shape of the smartphone.

Henri Winand, CEO of Intelligent Energy:

To our knowledge this has never been done before. We have now managed to make a fuel cell so thin we can fit it to the existing chassis without alterations and retaining the rechargeable battery. This is a major step because if you are moving to a new technology you have to give people a path they are comfortable with.

The only cosmetic difference on the iPhone 6 prototype is the addition of rear vents allowing a small amount of water vapor to escape. The Telegraph reports the device it saw at the company’s Loughborough, United Kingdom headquarters also had a modified headphone socket for refuelling hydrogen gas, although likely only because it was a prototype.

Intelligent Energy plans to sell a disposable cartridge that will attach to the bottom of a smartphone and provide enough hydrogen-releasing powder “for a week of normal use,” and the company’s corporate finance chief Mark Lawson-Statham vaguely mentions having a “partner” on board — speculated to be Apple, although both companies declined to comment as expected.

Nevertheless, the rumours and clues are overwhelming. Apple has a series of patents around fuel cell technology on public record. In recent research on Intelligent Energy, Zeus Capital analyst Dr Tom McColm wrote that he believes it is working closely with Apple.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are powered by 1,810 mAh and 2,915 mAh lithium-ion batteries respectively.

Apple Partners With Popular YouTubers for Possible Upcoming Ad Campaign

At VidCon this year, Apple was reportedly in talks with a few popular YouTube channels, suggesting the possibility of an advertising campaign collaboration between the Cupertino-based company and YouTubers like Louis Cole and Wong Fu Productions. Similar to Apple’s experimentation with advertising the iPhone 5c on Tumblr, a move to partner with well-known YouTubers with subscribers numbering in the millions could help attract a younger-skewing audience for Apple.

Specifically, Louis’ channel “FunForLouis” has just north of 1.5 million subscribers, while Wong Fu Productions has about 2.5 million. Louis made his partnership with Apple known in a video posted in early August, detailing a meeting at Apple HQ in San Francisco, which was instigated earlier in the summer at VidCon, the yearly conference for YouTube creators in Anaheim. Louis remains understandably silent on the specifics of the meeting in the San Francisco vlog, but does confirm he and Apple will be collaborating on something together in the future.

“Well guys, that was an exciting, but very long meeting. We ended up going for some food and drinks and stuff in a bar, but turns out I’m going to be doing some stuff with Apple. They don’t work with many people, but we’re going to be doing some stuff together, which is exciting. I can’t tell you more than that.”

Wong Fu Production‘s potential connection with Apple comes from a report out of Ad Week, suggesting that the sketch comedy channel was “paired” with Apple at VidCon in a sort of speed-date set up by the conference. Far less of an official meeting between the two as Louis Cole had, there’s still the potential that Wong Fu could see a similar partnership with the company as Louis’ channel. The style of videos differ drastically between Louis and Wong Fu, with the former presenting a detailed travelogue of his various adventures around the world, and the latter publishing straight-forward comedic skit and parody videos.

Although their styles don’t mesh together, Apple could be creating a new ad campaign, possibly for the upcoming “iPhone 6s” and “iPhone 6s Plus,” that centers on creatives from YouTube using the company’s new products as the main tools for shooting, editing, and publishing content for their channel. Even though FunForLouis and Wong Fu Productions aren’t even close to the most popular channels on the site (the top 100 range in descending order from 38 million to 6 million subscribers), if Apple keeps partnering up with distinctive channels, it could create an interesting, idiosyncratic ad campaign.

Apple Stops Signing iOS 8.4

Apple has stopped signing iOS 8.4 for compatible iPhone, iPad and iPod touch models, meaning that users can no longer upgrade or downgrade to that version using iTunes. Apple is now signing iOS 8.4.1 and later only.

iPhone, iPad or iPod touch users that have jailbroken their device on iOS 8.4 should refrain from updating to iOS 8.4.1, as the latest software update breaks the iOS 8.4 untethered jailbreak released in June by Chinese hacking team TaiG.

Chinese team Pangu demonstrated an iOS 8.4.1 untethered jailbreak (via iPhoneHacks) at the HackPwn2015 security conference last week, but the method has not been publicly released. With the public release of iOS 9 expected in less than a month, it is possible the team may hold off on exposing an exploit to Apple for a minor software update.

Apple Shares Drop Below $100 Amid Wider Stock Market Downturn

Apple shares dipped below $100 in pre-market trading today amid a wider Dow Jones and stock market downturn, with AAPL fluctuating around the $98-$100 mark prior to the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange opening bell at 9:30 AM Eastern. Apple shares last dipped below $100 in October 2014, four months after opening at $92.69 following a 7-for-1 split that took effect in June 2014.

Apple shares closed at $105.76 on Friday
Apple shares closed at $105.76 on Friday and are down over $35 from a 52-week high of $134.54 set on April 28, but many analysts remain bullish about the stock and believe that the current dip presents a buying opportunity for investors. The company is expected to announce new iPhones and iPads alongside the launch of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan through the end of October.

Last March, Apple replaced AT&T on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is currently down over 500 points. The Dow Jones provides a price-weighted average of 30 significant stocks traded on the NYSE and NASDAQ, including American Express, Boeing, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Disney, Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan and Chase, Microsoft, Verizon and Visa.

Why Xiaomi is Apple’s biggest threat in China (and soon, everywhere else)

When the new iOS 9 comes out this fall, Apple’s iPhone Maps app will finally offer public-transit directions. At first, the feature will be available for just 10 cities worldwide. Except in China, that is, where it’s launching in more than 300 localities at once.

Founded by serial entrepreneur Lei Jun in 2010 and headquartered in Beijing, Xiaomi announced its first smartphone in 2011. A little over three years later, research firm IDC declared Xiaomi to be the industry’s third biggest player in terms of global unit sales, trailing only Samsung and Apple. Nearly all of the 61 million handsets it produced in 2014 were for the Chinese market.

In the West, Xiaomi has a reputation for shamelessly cribbing the iPhone’s stylistic cues and applying them to dirt-cheap phones. That’s clearly Apple design honcho Jonathan Ive’s take: “I think it’s theft, and it’s lazy,” he snapped, when asked about the company at a conference last October.

Xiaomi is doing too many interesting things to be dismissed as a mere Apple wannabe, though. Its Mi smartphones appeal to “a technically inclined, geeky, typically younger sort of customer who can’t afford a top-of-the line Apple or Samsung phone,” says Ben Thompson, whose Stratechery blog is avidly followed by tech-industry insiders. Xiaomi sells Android phones with fast chips, high-resolution screens, and other potent technologies via its own website—often via flash sales—and foregoes profits on hardware, instead generating them from its marketplace for apps, games, and other content. It rolls out weekly software updates based on input from its online community of fans, who spot bugs and propose new features. And it’s using its muscle as a direct marketer to enter other product categories, ranging from 4K TVs to air purifiers.

None of this has prevented Apple from thriving in China, though, where the iPhone’s powerful image as a luxury item helps it continue to command a high price tag. In fact, for two quarters in a row, Apple has sold more smartphones in the country than Xiaomi has.

The companies’ global ambitions will increasingly collide, as Xiaomi has begun experimenting in markets outside China. It recently moved to sell accessories like headphones and activity trackers in the U.S. and Europe, though many of the factors that make the company a phenomenon back home—such as Lei’s local celebrity—are moot here in the States. Xiaomi also lacks the sort of patent portfolio that would shield it from intellectual-property lawsuits from Apple or other companies. Meanwhile, its value proposition—high specs at low prices—may not resonate in fully developed economies. “In the U.S., the sort of person Xiaomi is competing for just doesn’t exist,” says Thompson. “Most geeks and enthusiasts can afford an iPhone.”

A more promising battleground for Xiaomi could be India, where it has been wildly promoting the Mi4 and is setting up local manufacturing (to help it bring the price tag of its devices even lower), and where the free-spending types who snap up iPhones are scarcer than in China. There’s also Brazil, which Xiaomi entered by storm in June with its $160 Redmi 2. (The iPhone retails for more than $1,000 in the country.) As Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, puts it, these are “very big markets nowhere near saturated, where Xiaomi’s strategy could do really well.” Which is why Apple’s home turf feels like safe ground—at least for now.

[Photos: Mauricio Alejo]

A version of this article appeared in the September 2015 issue of Fast Company magazine.

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PSA: Apple will replace your iPhone 6 Plus’ wonky camera

Did you buy an iPhone 6 Plus sometime between last September and this January? Do you notice that your shots taken with its back camera come out all blurry? Yeah, it’s not just you. Turns out, a limited number of these phones shipped with a manufacturing defect. However, Apple is aware of the issue and has already begun issuing replacements for the iSight camera. If you think that you have one of these borked units, go to this website and type in your phone’s serial number. If your unit is part of that bad batch, Apple will replace the camera (not the entire phone) at no charge. Also, if you’re rocking one of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6’s, don’t worry; none of those units suffered from the defect.

[Image Credit: Getty Images]

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Buyer’s Guide: Discounts on Retina MacBook, MacBook Air, Apple Accessories, and More

It’s still back to school season, so deals continue to be decent as retailers attempt to lure customers into their stores for school supplies. For the first time, Best Buy is offering discounts on the Retina MacBook, dropping the price by up to $80. Several models of the MacBook Air are also available at a discount, some at the lowest prices we’ve seen.

Apple’s Back to School promotion is still going on both in stores and online, with Apple offering a free pair of Beats Solo2 headphones with the purchase of an eligible Mac. Eligible Macs include the iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, MacBook, and Mac Pro.

As always, we’ve rounded up discounts on some useful Apple accessories and we’ve found plenty of deals on apps and games this week.

iPad Air 2

Discounts on the iPad Air 2 are mediocre this week, so it may be best to hold off on purchasing. For those who need a new tablet immediately, however, there are a few minor deals.

B&H Photo is offering a discount on some of its iPad Air 2 models, dropping prices by $30 to $75. With the discount, the 64GB Wi-Fi only iPad Air 2 is priced at $569. MacMall is offering many of the same discounts, also dropping the price on the 64GB Wi-Fi only iPad Air 2 to $569.
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Apple Hiring Autonomous Vehicle Experts, Including Tesla Engineer Now Working on ‘Special Projects’

Apple recently hired a senior engineer from Tesla Motors, presumably to work on its secret car project. As highlighted by Reuters, former Tesla Motors Autopilot Firmware Manager Jamie Carlson‘s LinkedIn page says he now works at Apple on “Special Projects.”

His profile doesn’t go into detail on what he did for Tesla, but he was working on the company’s autonomous vehicle firmware project and could be taking on a similar automotive firmware role at Apple.

Reuters also points out several other previously unknown hires with similar expertise in autonomous driving, including Megan McClain, a former Volkswagen engineer, Vinay Palakkode, a graduate researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, and Xianqiao Tong, who developed driver assistance systems for NVIDIA.

On their respecitve LinkedIn pages, McClain is listed as a Mechanical Design Engineer, Palakkode is listed as an engineer working within Apple’s Special Projects Group, and Tong is listed as an R&D engineer. Last fall, Apple also hired Sanjai Massey, a Ford engineer who worked on connected and autonomous vehicles, Stefan Weber, a Bosch engineer who worked on driver assistance systems, and Lech Szumilas, a Delphi research scientist with former expertise in autonomous vehicles.

Rumors have thus far disagreed over whether Apple’s secret car project includes self-driving technology, but it’s possible the company is exploring multiple avenues of development as the project is still in its early stages. A previous report from Reuters citing a source within the automotive industry suggested Apple was working on a self-driving electric car, but a report from The Wall Street Journal stated a self-driving car was not part of Apple’s electric car efforts.

Apple is said to have more than 200 employees working on the electric car, under the code name “Project Titan.” Apple has been heavily recruiting automotive experts over the past several months, with many members on its team coming from companies like Tesla, Ford, GM, MIT Motorsports, Ogin, Autoliv, A123 Systems, General Dynamics, and more.

High profile hires have included Tesla mechanical engineering manager David Nelson, Tesla senior powertrain test engineer John Ireland, Chrysler Group Senior Vice President Doug Betts, A123 Systems Chief Technology Officer Mujeeb Ijaz, and Paul Furgale, a researcher with a specialization in autonomous vehicles.