Crunch Hype

You’d be forgiven for not knowing the name Ubtech, Honestly, I wasn’t really familiar with the Chinese company until late 2017, when they brought a biopedal stormtrooper robot by our offices. The company’s about to get a pick up some traction, however. Last year, it announced that it had scored an $820 million Series C, […]

Media software maker Plex is preparing to take on The Roku Channel and Amazon Prime Video Channels, possibly as soon as this year. The company is in discussions with rights holders and content providers, with a focus on bringing free, ad-supported movies to the Plex platform – similar to how The Roku Channel got its […]

Just imagine, a pair of noise-canceling headphones without a smart assistant on-board. What is this, 2017? Thankfully, Sony used its CES press conference today to announce that it’s finally addressing its well-received WH-1000XM3’s lack of Alexa. The headphones will be getting Amazon’s smart assistant via a firmware update at some point during the first quarter […]

In a new deal Toyota, AT&T and KDDI are bringing 4g connectivity to Toyota and Lexus vehicles. This will start with the 2020 model year vehicles that are slated to hit dealers in late 2019. Previously, Toyota worked with Verizon to offer a similar connectivity package to vehicle owners. The deal today, however, seems to […]

It’s hard to get excited about bluetooth speakers. Believe me, I’ve tried. But damn if this isn’t a nice one. As someone who spent a good part of the last year traveling, I’ve been using the Harman/Kardon Traveler a bit, to make hotel rooms slightly more bearable. The Lenovo 700 Ultraportable Bluetooth Speaker might end […]

Lenovo is announcing a ton of stuff this week at CES. Because, well, that’s what Lenovo does. Along with new gaming laptops and a ton of accesories, the company also refreshed its flagship notebook lines, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga. Both models are thinner and lighter than their already thin and light predecessors […]

CES is, at best, a mixed bag on the food front. It’s certainly true that Las Vegas has a number of world class restaurants, but on most days, you’re either standing in impossibly long lines for terrible convention center fast food or fighting it out for some press center box lunch. The folks at Impossible […]

As Comcast continues to hone its ambitions to be the hub around which our many connected devices and services revolve in your home, and Intel continues to build smaller, faster and more efficient chips, the two are announcing a key deal to give Comcast an edge over the likes of Amazon, Google and the field […]

I have an OtterBox case on my phone, mostly because my five month old loves to knock my phone out of my hands. I also have a PopSocket on my phone, again, because my five month old loves to knock my phone out of my hands. It’s also nice to use the PopSocket as a […]

My favorite mesh gear, Netgear’s Orbi, has gotten a considerable speed update. The new router, called the RBK50, supports Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax technology which will send gigabit wireless speeds from router to router in your mesh. WiFi 6 is still new to the industry and there isn’t much support outside of specific hardware like this. […]

Network gear maker D-Link just announced a 5G router that sends high-speed Wi-Fi through your house without cables. The router, called the DWR-2010, should allow users to get massive speeds over 5G networks without running cable. Don’t expect to pick this up at the local Best Buy, however, as the 5G router will probably ship […]

After a recent update some AT&T phones now have a 5G E icon. This icon replaces the one indicated the phone is running on a 4G network. But here’s the thing: The phone is still on a 4G network. AT&T has played these games before, too. This nonsense is a marketing ploy by AT&T. The […]

A long-running class-action lawsuit filed after consumer electronics giant Vizio was caught spying on customer viewing habits can be settled, subject to a final approval, a court has ruled. The group of Vizio customers alleged in its 2016-filed complaint that the company was covertly collecting viewing data from customers’ internet-connected smart TVs. U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton […]

Okay, this is a fun surprise. In addition to all of the standard TV and appliance talk, Samsung used its CES press conference today to announce a number of different robots — an entirely new field for the consumer electronics company. The company offered a sneak preview of the Samsung Bot Care on stage at […]

The UK government has announced new powers for police to tackle illegal use of drone technology, including powers to land, seize and search drones. This follows the recent Gatwick drone fiasco when, just before Christmas, a spate of drone sightings near the airport caused a temporary shutdown of the runway, and disruptive misery for thousands of people at one of […]

Samsung is announcing two new laptops at CES. The company is launching a pro-level laptop called the Notebook 9 Pro and a laptop for student called the Notebook Flash. The Notebook Flash is an entry-level laptop with a textured design. It looks like fabric but it’s made out of plastic. The screen doesn’t look great […]

Amazon accumulated $797 billion in market value on Monday, overtaking Microsoft to become the most valuable publicly-traded company in the U.S.

TV makers love to use CES as a launch pad for TVs that they don’t actually expect a ton of people to buy. This year’s “eh, why not?” swing from Samsung: a 98-inch 8K QLED TV. “Wait, is there even anything to watch in 8K yet?” Nope, not really. Hell, even content natively shot in […]

Bixby took centerstage at today’s big Samsung CES presser. The company has been pushing to make its smart assistant a kind of connective tissue across devices, and the the fruits of that labor may finally be taking shape this year. Third-party partners have been a long promised addition, and the company just announced a pretty […]

Let’s face it, we love large numbers. We are obsessed with them, whether it’s Forbes list of wealthiest individuals or tech unicorns, if it’s a big number we can’t get enough. Such is the case with the somehow magical trillion dollar mark that Apple briefly reached last summer. We splashed the headlines and glorified it […]

Kohler, the company established in 1873 and best known for its plumbing products, has shown little restraint in the connected home era. The company debuted a connected appliance platform called Kohler Konnect at CES 2018, and the push continues this year. Feast your eyes on the Kohler Numi 2.0. This is an intelligent toilet that […]

Google continued its unstoppable takeover of CES 2019 by announcing that Samsung TVs will soon offer Assistant compatibility. The feature, which is arriving later this year, will give users the ability to adjust volume, change channels and switch image input. Compatibility requires a separate piece of Google Assistant hardware — like a Home, Home Hub […]

If your dream home involves a big screen on your fridge, then Family Hub is for you. Samsung has been developing some custom features to turn the fridge into a functional, shared display for all the family. And the company is announcing at CES an update to Family Hub with new features. The interface has […]

Vive has seemed to be devoting a lot of attention to the enterprise, but the company teased their new consumer VR headset called the Vive Cosmos at CES today. The positionally-tracked headset boasts tracked hand controllers and can be interestingly be powered via PC or “other methods,” making it the first in a new class […]

HTC is giving its high-end enterprise-focused Vive Pro VR headset a feature bump in the next few months that’s focused on eye-tracking. The company has certainly been having some financial struggles recently, those issues have seemed to force the company to more firmly fix its VR efforts on enterprise markets while loosely aiming to court […]

Several weeks after it was reported by the WSJ that two of the biggest investors in SoftBank’s massive Vision Fund vehicle were cool on its planned $16 billion investment in the coworking company WeWork, those plans have changed radically, says the Financial Times. According to its sources — and confirmed by our own — SoftBank […]

When Matrix came out with its first PowerWatch the watch world was enamored. The self-powered smart watch would suck energy from your skin by using the temperature differential between your skin and the air, allowing it to run indefinitely without charging. Now the team has added a solar feature to their latest PowerWatch 2 which […]

As Disney gets closer to launching a shiny new video service and continues to ramp up efforts in other new streaming areas like gaming, it looks like it might be winding down one of its more legacy bets. Babble, a parenting blog that Disney acquired reportedly for about $40 million to help it target hipster parents, […]

The heated debate around Amazon’s recently announced Long Island City “HQ2” is showing no signs of cooling down. On Monday morning, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) hosted a briefing in which labor officials, economic development analysts, Amazon employees and elected New York State and City representatives further underlined concerns around the HQ2 […]

That most famous characterization of the complexity causality, a butterfly beating its wings and causing a hurricane on the other side of the world, is thought-provoking but ultimately not helpful. What we really need is to look at a hurricane and figure out which butterfly caused it — or perhaps stop it before it takes flight in the first place. DARPA thinks AI should be able to do just that.

Qualcomm used its CES press conference today to announce the third generation of its Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platform, its latest AI-centric platform for building in-car experiences that include everything from voice-driven interfaces to good-old navigation systems, all with modern visual interfaces. The platform now comes in three tiers — Performance, Premiere and Paramount — for […]

Ahead of its announcements of new TV partnerships at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Roku today shared some new numbers about the growing traction of its overall platform. The company said the number of active accounts grew 40 percent year-over-year in 2018, to top 27 million by year-end. In addition, its total […]

New analysis pegs the ride-hailing giant's initial market cap at around $90 billion, $14 billion higher than its latest private valuation and a whole $30 billion lower than early estimates from Wall Street bankers.

Let’s hope you’re not afraid of dogs, because if Continental gets its way, autonomous robot dogs are going to be delivering your packages. At the Consumer Electronics Show today, Continental unveiled its Black Mirror-esque vision for how driverless vehicles can autonomously deploy bots to facilitate last-mile deliveries. But it’s not just to look cool while also […]

The international electronics and medical device giant Philips is pushing further into pregnancy and childcare services by leading a $6 million early stage investment in the pregnancy-focused app-developer and device manufacturer, Babyscripts. The Washington, DC-based company works with hospitals and healthcare providers to distribute a medical device and mobile app for monitoring blood pressure and providing […]

A new company called Flexit lets you pay for gym time by the minute, allowing you to walk into a nearby gym when you’re traveling, for example, and slam out thirty minutes of sweet glute action before dinner. The service is like Uber for gyms in that you only pay for the time you are […]

The self-driving vehicle evangelists are uniting. A number of major automakers, technology companies and organizations with a stake in autonomous vehicles, including Audi, Aurora, Cruise, GM, Mobileye, Nvidia, Toyota, Waymo and Zoox has formed a coalition to spread the word about advanced vehicle technologies and self-driving vehicles. Their message: this tech can transform transportation and […]

Harley Davidson released new specs for its electric motorcycle and pulled the covers off the concept designs for its electric bicycle and scooter as the company's push into electrifying its product line continues.And the company showed that going electric doesn't mean losing any of the muscle that's intrinsic to the Harley Davidson chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected brand. In fact, the 2019 EV debut can out-accelerate any of the company’s gas motorcycles, according to specs released today at CES.

If you use wired headphones with your new iPhone, you’re probably familiar with the pain that comes along with trying to listen to music while you’re charging your phone via the Lightning port. Mophie unveiled its solution to this problem at the Consumer Electronics Show today. Thanks to Qi wireless charging, Mophie’s new battery case […]

Self-driving technology company Torc Robotics is partnering with Transdev, the public transportation giant, to deploy fully autonomous electric shuttles designed to provide free connections to existing transit like trains and buses. The companies, which made the announcement Monday at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, are integrating Torc’s self-driving software stack and sensor suite into an autonomous […]

Alexa may be front and center for Amazon’s play this CES, but the just unloaded a whole bunch of news about Amazon Key. The list includes a name change to the more passive Key By Amazon, a title designed to reflect the broader scope of the line. Alongside the vague rebranding, Key is getting a […]

If you’re a GitHub user, but you don’t pay, this is a good week. Historically, GitHub always offered free accounts but the caveat was that your code had to be public. To get private repositories, you had to pay. Starting tomorrow, that limitation is gone. Free GitHub users now get unlimited private projects with up […]

Audi has spun out a new company called Holoride that aims to bring a VR experience to the backseat of every car, no matter if it’s a Ford, Mercedes or Chrysler Pacifica minivan. Holoride was announced Monday at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. While Holoride says it’s an independent company, the roots of this startup […]

A Chinese voice assistant has been rapidly gaining ground in recent months. DuerOS, Baidu’s answer to Amazon’s Alexa, reached over 200 million devices, China’s top search engine announced on its Weibo official account last Friday. To put that number into context, more than 100 million devices pre-installed with Alexa have been sold, Amazon recently said. Google just […]

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. Nvidia launches the $349 GeForce RTX 2060 Nvidia broke with tradition and put a new focus on gaming at CES. Last […]

This morning’s LG CES press conference was, predictably, all about TVs. Big TVs. High res TVs. Rolling TVs. The company did, however, give a little stage time to its appliance line and, per usual, allotted some lip service to its ThinQ AI offering. The company’s definition and use of artificial intelligence seems nebulous, at best […]

There’s a trend here. After Samsung and Vizio, LG is also adding support for Apple’s ecosystem to its TV operating system webOS. Specifically, people who buy an LG TV in 2019 should be able to share content to their TVs using AirPlay 2. TVs will also be compatible with HomeKit, letting you create custom scenarios […]

VR headsets make me queasy. I’m not alone. It’s a common complaint about virtual reality content but this startup might have solved the problem in the most unlikely way. Holoride wants people to use VR in the backseat of the family sedan. My stomach is happy to report it works as advertised. Yesterday, after strapping […]

Augmented Reality has been a bit of a sleep at this year’s CES. It seems likely we’ll see a bit more on that front next month at Mobile World Congress. After all, smartphones are largely considered the first frontier for AR adoption. Still, that’s not going to stop some companies from going all-in with head […]

Ring — the security company acquired by Amazon for a billion+ dollars last year — is launching a bunch of stuff at CES. First up: the Door View Cam. While at first glance it looks pretty similar to Ring’s existing doorbell cameras, there’s a key difference here: it’s meant to go on your door itself, […]