Gadgets

By Natasha Lomas Fans of branding confusion will be pleased to hear Microsoft hasn’t ditched the Nokia phone brand quite yet. It’s just announced a new entry level mobile phone, badged with the Nokia name: the Nokia 215, dubbing the handset its “most affordable Internet-ready entry level phone yet” — and aiming it at first…

By Matt Burns Nest is today announcing significant new partners to its “Works with Nest” developer program. The new additions continues Nest’s quest to turn its product into the heart of a smart home. Among the new partners includes Lutron, Insteon, and Philips Hue. Each company built Nest products into its ecosystem. For example, now,…

By Darrell Etherington Nvidia’s new Tegra X1 mobile chipset is a veritable beast: It’s able to provide almost two times the graphics performance of the iPad Air 2’s A8X while also consuming just about the same amount of power, and it’s already in production, meaning tablets sporting the X1’s graphical prowess should be available to…

By Josh Constine You never really feel like you’re there when you’re stuck watching from whatever angle the camera person chose. Meanwhile, professional virtual reality cameras are way too big or expensive for consumer use. But thanks to new video stitching technology, the new Allie camera from IC Real Tech can turn two 360-degree camera…

By Romain Dillet I’ve written about ISKN in the past. It’s a simple slate that tracks your pen and paper sketches. It transforms your drawings into vectorial images in real time. The company just snatched $2 million in funding from Partech Ventures, CEA Investments, Kima Ventures and Pascal Cagni. But more importantly, ISKN works shockingly…

By Frederic Lardinois When you think of Parrot, chances are you are thinking about the A.R. Drone or it’s recently launched Bebop drone. But as the company’s CEO Henri Seydoux told me in an interview earlier today, drones are only one area of interest for the company. Parrot is interesting in everything that connects to…

By Frederic Lardinois At a press conference in Las Vegas, Nvidia today announced an update to its highly successful Tegra K1 mobile processor. The X1 combines a 64-bit ARM_based processor with a graphics chip based on the company’s Maxwell architecture. The K1 used Nvidia’s older Kepler GPU technology. The X1 will feature a 256-core Maxwell…

By Jordan Crook It’s been almost a year since Takuro Yoshida and his team blew up Kickstarter with the Ring, a wearable that uses simple wand-like gestures to control gadgets in the home. Promises abounded: You’ll be able to control the lights in your home with the flick of a finger. You’ll be able to…

By Romain Dillet French startup Lima is presenting another piece of its offering at CES, the mobile app. And it is a very promising app for those who backed Lima to seamlessly access their photos, music library and movies from their phones and tablets. While the team still needs to polish the app interface, it…

By Alex Wilhelm At CES this year, Snail, a Chinese gaming company, demoed a new console it is working to release early this year called the OBox. The device is essentially a modular — their word — computer that runs Android games. I tinkered with the thing earlier today when it was attached to a…

By Romain Dillet Next week will be my first CES. Over the past couple of months, when I talked with CES veterans, they all told me that CES is a horrible experience. And yet, I am still incredibly excited. I plan to take advantage of my fresh perspective on the show to share my experience…

By Darrell Etherington Withings has shored up the only major complaint I had with its Activité fitness and activity tracker/watch: The price. The French health accessory maker has revealed the Activité Pop, which is a version of its flagship Activité that costs only $149.95, rather than $450, and it goes on sale tomorrow, at Best…

By Ryan Lawler Last year at CES we were introduced to Onewheel, a crazy new self-balancing skateboard built by electromechanical engineer and board sports enthusiast Kyle Doerksen. Less than a year after the project went up on Kickstarter, Onewheel is shipping to early backers and those who pre-ordered the device. A few weeks ago, we…

By Matt Burns,John Biggs If you’re attending the show we want to see you. As in year’s past, TechCrunch will have a large broadcast tent in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center. You can’t miss it. There are LED panels all over it. Twice a day we will hold Hardware Battlefield where 16 startups…

By John Biggs What did I tell you? In a last-ditch effort to save themselves, watchmakers are now turning to the band in order to ensure that timekeeping remains well in the realm of the mechanical. The new band, part of the Montblanc Timewalker Urban Speed collection, is a little metal screen that can receive…