Hasta La Gadget!

The YouTuber-turned-boxer lost a split decision to Tommy Fury and had the crowd booing as he explained his defeat.

The countdown was halted with just two minutes remaining until liftoff from Kennedy Space Center.

The advent of MWC is always an opportunity for Google to shine a light on some smaller, but still useful, tweaks to its ecosystems. This year, the Android giant is unveiling a raft of minor additions to Android and Wear OS designed to further smooth the bumps in your digital life. That includes a new widget for Google Keep that’ll let you check-off to-do lists from the comfort of your home screen. You’ll also get the ability to, with a compatible watch, let you dictate notes and to-do list items from your wrist.

Another more notable change is improved noise cancellation in Google Meet when used on some Android devices. The company says that, much like the feature as it already exists, you’ll find the noise of nearby construction or other distractions will be crunched to oblivion while you chat. And, on the audio front, Google says that you’ll soon be able to use Chrome OS’ Fast Pair feature to connect new Bluetooth headphones to your machine with a single tap.

Less notable additions include the ability to mash together different emoji to offer a more topic relevant response. In the example, you can merge the Basketball emoji with the Heart Eyes, to give you either a heart-shaped basketball, or add a basketball-like texture to those same heart eyes. Similarly, Android handsets will get new tap-to-pay animations to bring some cartoonish cheer to balance out the misery of spending money on things.

And, on the accessibility front, Chrome on Android will now let you zoom the size of content by up to 300 percent while preserving page layout. Wear OS 3+, meanwhile, will offer Mono-audio for those who might be distracted by stereo, as well as grayscale and color-correction modes for your watch display for easier viewing. If you’re interested in learning more about this, you can check out Google’s full and comprehensive work-up of all the features over at its blog.

AR is an exciting idea, but it’s not clear if there’s enough computational power in the world to make such a fantastic concept real. Undeterred, Xiaomi has unveiled its Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition, a compact AR headset using the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 found in the Quest Pro. The company says these oversized sunglasses offer an elegant way to blend the digital and real worlds while, most crucially, not requiring a physical tether to a smartphone.

Weighing 126g (4.4 ounces), Xiaomi crafted the hardware from magnesium-titanium alloy and carbon fiber parts to lighten the load. It’s also rocking a custom-made silicon-oxygen anode battery which, all in, Xiaomi says will reduce the physical burden on the user. (This user would like to disagree, speaking from experience that anything over 100g pressing on your nose is still too much to take for extended periods of time.)

As for the displays, the headset is packing a pair of microOLED displays hooked up to a pair of “free-form, light-guiding” prisms so pixel-dense, your eyes won’t spot the squares. The company says, too, that you’ll experience less brightness loss than with other close-up displays, and can crank out a peak brightness of 1,200nits. And, for immersion’s sake, the front of the lenses are electrochromic, automatically dimming when you need to focus on the virtual world.

The advanced hand-tracking is said to enable a new form of user interaction, whereby our hands can be used to manipulate the digital world. In a concept video, a wearer looks at a smart light and deactivates it by flicking a virtual switch hovering over the device itself. Users will also be able to, Minority Report-style, flick and tap around the internet (or video), and potentially use these for productivity purposes as well.

The advent of these glasses is also part of Qualcomm’s own plans to leverage its Snapdragon Spaces platform to boost XR devices. Xiaomi’s hardware, when paired with a compatible device like the new Xiaomi 13, and promises latency low enough that you won’t notice the lack of a wire. And the company says that it will “work closely with developers to expedite the arrival of AR,” so vital in the still-nascent space.

Unfortunately there’s no word on price or availability since this is very much a concept device as yet. Consequently we wouldn’t recommend setting up a separate savings account to put aside cash to buy one of these unless you’re really, really, really patient.

One of the best selling points of Apple devices is that even when the company releases new hardware, previous generations continue to be supported for years to come. That’s the case for the popular 2021 10.2-inch iPad, which now finds itself on sale at Amazon for $250, the lowest price we’ve seen to date. That’s at least a $79 saving on its recommended price and $20 below its previous low.

The 10.2-inch iPad remains a solid purchase simply because it has a lot of bang for its buck. At $250, it’ll run all day, has a nice bright display and its processor is still plenty snappy for gaming and general multitasking. Its wide-angle camera with Center Stage makes it easier for the family to video call friends and loved ones by bundling everyone into the frame. The 2021 iPad has enough storage for most tasks, access to plenty of apps and offers improved Messages, Siri and Dictation features with iPadOS 16.

Make no mistake, the 2021 iPad — with its old-school design — may feel a little dated compared to its newer sibling. You won’t get those thinner bezels, faster processors and improved cameras, but you won’t be spending $400 either. There’s no Magic Keyboard or second-generation Pencil support on this model but if you don’t need those extras, it is still a very solid device for armchair gaming, reading, video watching and browsing.