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Believe it or not, Big Tech’s fall hardware events are already upon us. (Heck, Samsung already got a jump on things in July.) Up next: Google’s big Pixel shindig. You can learn all about the new Pixel 10 lineup, along with new watches and earbuds, on August 20.

Google’s new hardware has leaked far and wide. But that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a few surprises. If you want to be the first to hear the official scoop, you can tune into the Made by Google YouTube channel (or right here!). The event kicks off at 1PM ET on August 20.

What’s on tap? You can expect a more power-efficient Tensor G5 processor in all the new Pixel 10 phones. (That could help power new Gemini AI features, too.) The base-level Pixel 10 should get a big camera upgrade: a 5x telephoto lens. Before this generation, you had to splurge on a Pro or Fold model to get optical zoom. Cameras will be higher-res across the board, too.

In other areas, Qi2 magnetic charging is expected to come to the new Pixels. Expect a new accessory ecosystem, a la Apple’s MagSafe, dubbed “Pixelsnap.” We’ll also likely see the Pixel Watch 4 with a larger battery and smaller bezels. And the Pixel Buds 2a could bring refinements to the company’s budget earbuds.

Finally, Google teased… a strange number of guests for the upcoming event. Apparently, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Curry, Lando Norris and the Jonas Brothers are all joining the stream. So get excited for some awkward celebrity endorsements!

Engadget’s Pixel 10 roundup will give you a much more detailed dive into the leaks. You can head back here on August 20 at 1PM ET to watch live.

Samsung’s $250 flagship Galaxy Buds 3 Pro are among the top noise-canceling earbuds. Now Samsung has launched the more affordable “fan edition” Galaxy Buds 3 FE that look nearly identical to the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro but are missing those buds’ LED lighting element, have a single-driver design instead of a dual-driver design and leave off a few other features. They will be available on Sept. 4 in black or gray. 

Read more: Best wireless earbuds of 2025 

Like the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, the Galaxy Buds 3 FE have a noise-isolating design with silicone ear tips, and they feature noise-canceling as well as a transparency mode. Samsung is touting their AI features, which include “accessing Gemini for conversational AI assistance and Galaxy AI Interpreter app to use Real-Time Interpreter or Live Translate to translate phone calls.”

The Galaxy Buds 3 FE’s “blade” design is a departure from the early Galaxy Buds FE ($70), which have a stemless design with wing tips that help lock the buds in your ears.

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Since I haven’t tried the Galaxy Buds 3 FE yet I can’t tell you how much their performance differs from the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro’s, but I suspect there will be a slight drop-off in sound quality due to the fact that the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro have a planar driver alongside a dynamic driver that helps improve clarity and treble performance. 

The Galaxy Buds 3 Pro are regularly on sale (you can get the Latin American version for $125 on Amazon) and Samsung says you can trade in any wired or wireless headset and receive up to $30 off the Galaxy Buds 3 FE. So they, too, should be regularly discounted and perhaps dip to around $100 during the holiday shopping season.

I’ll let you know how they compare to the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro and other earbuds in their price range as soon as I get my hands on a review sample. For now, here are the Galaxy Buds 3 FE’s key specs:

Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 FE key specs

• Weight per bud: 5 grams
• 1-Way dynamic driver
• Enhanced active noise canceling and transparency modes
• 3 mics (Samsung Crystal Clear Call technology)
• Bluetooth 5.4
• Battery life: Up to 6 hours with noise-canceling on (single-charge) with three additional charges in the case
• IP54 dust-resistant and splash-proof
• Pinch and swipe touch controls
• Supported audio codecs: SSC (Samsung Seamless Codec), AAC and SBC
• Ear-detection sensors
• Hands-free Google Assistant with Gemini integration
• Support for Galaxy AI Interpreter app
• Auto Switch allows for seamlessly connectivity across Galaxy devices
• FindMy Earbuds feature
• Price: $150
• Colors: Black or gray
• Available: Sept. 4

Like the 7-inch screen, the 5-inch version can detect up to five touchscreen inputs at once, and it doesn’t require a separate power supply when attached to the Pi board. Raspberry Pi OS can automatically detect when one of the touchscreens is installed and offers the Squeekboard onscreen keyboard to allow input without external accessories.

The 5-inch touchscreen is a good fit for smaller smart home projects that benefit from some kind of a screen for controls—or if you just have a Pi sitting in a corner somewhere running Homebridge or a VPN server or something that you’d like to be able to control or interact with in a pinch without using an external monitor, keyboard, or mouse (or a remote-access technology like SSH). It’s not exactly a groundbreaking project, and it’s hardly the first touchscreen for the Pi, but as an inexpensive and officially supported accessory, it may benefit from wider compatibility and ecosystem support than some third-party screens.

In addition to the 5- and 7-inch models of the Touch Display 2, Raspberry Pi also offers a $100 15.6-inch portable display for people using a Pi board (or the Raspberry Pi 400 or 500 devices) as regular desktop computers.

For the first time, scientists have created a brain implant that can “hear” and vocalize words a person is only imagining in their head.

The device, developed at Stanford University in California, could help people with severe paralysis communicate more easily, even if they can’t move their mouth to try to speak.

“This is the first time we’ve managed to understand what brain activity looks like when you just think about speaking,” Erin Kunz, lead author of the study, published Thursday in the journal Cell, told the Financial Times.

“For people with severe speech and motor impairments, brain-computer interfaces capable of decoding inner speech could help them communicate much more easily and more naturally,” said Kunz, a postdoctoral scholar in neurosurgery.

Four people with paralysis from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or brainstem stroke volunteered for the study. One participant could only communicate by moving his eyes up and down for “yes” and side to side for “no.”

Electrode arrays from the BrainGate brain-computer interface were implanted in the brain area that controls speech, called the motor cortex.

Participants were then asked to try speaking or to silently imagine certain words.

The device picked up brain activity linked to phonemes, the small units that make up speech patterns, and artificial intelligence software stitched them into sentences.

Imagined speech signals were weaker than attempted speech but still accurate enough to reach up to 74% recognition in real time, the research shows.

Senior author Frank Willett, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Stanford, told the Financial Times the results show that “future systems could restore fluent, rapid and comfortable speech via inner speech alone,” with better implants and decoding software.

“For people with paralysis attempting to speak can be slow and fatiguing and, if the paralysis is partial, it can produce distracting sounds and breath control difficulties,” Willett said.

The team also addressed privacy concerns. In one surprising finding, the BCI sometimes picked up words participants weren’t told to imagine — such as numbers they were silently counting.

To protect privacy, researchers created a “password” system that blocks the device from decoding unless the user unlocks it. In the study, imagining the phrase “chitty chitty bang bang” worked 98% of the time to prevent unintended decoding.

“This work gives real hope that speech BCIs can one day restore communication that is as fluent, natural and comfortable as conversational speech,” Willett said.

More information

Learn more about the technology by reading the full study in the journal Cell.

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