The iPhone Ultra may actually live up to the hype, as people who have tried pre-release versions of the model indicate it will be worthy of its hyper-premium price.

Apple is widely expected to be launching its first foldable smartphone in September, under what is believed to be called the iPhone Ultra. However, while it will ship with a more premium price than a typical Pro-grade iPhone, it seems that it may actually be worth it.

In Sunday’s “Power On” newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman says he has spoken to multiple people who have tried out the inbound foldable. Based on what they say, it seems like it will offer a lot to potential buyers.

Despite being a thick device when folded, the pre-launch users say it still manages to fit in a pocket. They liked the way the hinge mechanism worked, expressing that it also felt durable.

The model, as you’d expect, also benefits from its massive folding display, which lets Apple introduce iPad-like app layouts. Even this was seen as a positive to the initial users.

When it comes to photography, the device apparently doesn’t have a telephoto camera, but it’s still great for taking shots. The foldable device apparently excels as a camera viewfinder.

There’s also a reversion when it comes to biometric security, too. While iPhones are using Face ID, the new model will go back to Touch ID.

Multiple halos

The lack of a telephoto camera could be an issue when it comes to price. With expectations of it costing consumers at least $2,000, omissions like that could put off some potential early adopters who are used to getting the best specifications in such devices.

That said, the iPhone Ultra stands to become a new halo product for Apple, and possibly the smartphone industry in general.

Though Apple is late to the foldables market compared to rivals such as Samsung, its own launch will reverberate across the industry. This is a thing we have seen time and again, with Apple helping buoy the rest of the market in new areas and design ideas.

Your typical consumer may have heard of foldables but won’t necessarily have investigated the product category. With Apple bringing out a model, complete with its marketing engine, it will help raise awareness of foldables in general.

The iPhone Ultra stands to benefit foldables made by rivals.

As for Apple, the existence of the iPhone Ultra will draw even more attention to the rest of the iPhone range. Apple coming out with something outlandish like a folding smartphone will have a natural halo effect on the rest of the range.

Consumers may not necessarily buy the iPhone Ultra, but they may be drawn to other products launching at the same time in their price bracket.

Apple has already raised prices on Macs and iPads to absorb the costs of increased RAM costs, but an iPhone price hike is still expected. The competition may have provided a hint as to how much.

Prices went up across many product lines, including ones like Apple TV, Apple Vision Pro, and Mac to compensate for the AI-induced RAM shortage. Only the iPhone remained untouched by price hikes, but new premium devices launching in September will almost definitely see higher prices.

According to the “Power On” newsletter from Bloomberg, Apple’s competition could provide a hint about where iPhone prices might go. It’s all guesswork with no indication of knowledge of Apple’s actual plans, but the idea works simply because of the volumes Apple sells iPhones at.

Samsung, Google, and others have increased prices by about $100. The report suggests that means the iPhone 18 Pro would start at $1,199, a 9% increase, which is low compared to Apple’s other price increases.

It is impossible to predict what Apple might do here. No one expected the years-old Apple TV 4K to jump up by $70 either.

I expect that Apple will do everything in its power to leave the base prices unaffected since that base price is basically a feature of the device. Higher storage tiers will see bigger price jumps than normal.

The real question is where the foldable iPhone “Ultra” might land. It is expected to start at $1,999, but even then that might not be enough for the ultra-niche device.

Apple is expected to reveal the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone Ultra, and new Apple Watches during the September event. The Apple Event will be announced any day now, and may take place on September 9.

Imagine you visit a dumpling shop to indulge in a plate of piping-hot savory goodness. And as you queue up, you are given access to compute tokens for AI interactions and to an agentic system that recommends delicacies and helps visitors explore the menu in an interactive fashion. That’s exactly what a viral dumpling shop in China’s national capital is serving. 

The unexpected pairing of AI agents with dumplings is not surprising, at least for the Chinese market.  

It’s not just the corporate race, where companies are offering frontier AI models at a fraction of the cost compared to American products such as ChatGPT and Gemini. Earlier this year, as the OpenClaw frenzy gripped the internet, China was operating on a whole other level with AI agents. Even people in their 50s and 60s lined up outside booths to get the agentic system installed on their phones, and local administrations in China even started offering subsidies for OpenClaw projects. 

Some AI tokens with my dumplings, please!

But as the saying goes, a technology can truly claim to have reached mass-market or universal adoption if it has reached the lowest strata of social interactions. In China, the mania is apparently reaching pretty close to the home (and belly) of the target audience. How about a dumpling shop?

The outlet, which goes by the name Jinguyuan, was started by 41-year-old Li Bo, according to Rest of World. Interestingly, Li graduated with a degree in telecommunications engineering at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, but instead of finding a career anchored to his academic qualifications, he tried his hand at the food business. 

At his dumpling outlet, customers receive coupons for AI usage tokens worth $1.50, which they can use to interact with AI  models. Additionally, Li built an AI-coded website to track the queues at two other branches of his outlet.

Broadly, the rapid adoption of AI in China has been quite a spectacle. In June, the Chinese government killed over 12,000 university degrees and replaced them with new courses that focus on AI and robotics. Chinese AI companies are hiring talent straight from the high school pool, and the government is also pushing for AI education at all school levels. 

OFFBEAT

Red Tetris stickers and shirtless Windows 95 tots – accidental collectibles gathering dust

In a future edition of The Antiques Roadshow, the hosts might get all excited about a mint Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows… with a sticker on the box instead of a printed Tetris promotion.

Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen explained the reasoning behind using the sticker instead of simply printing what was in the box. Microsoft hadn’t locked down the rights for Tetris before the first print run of the packaging, so went with what it had.

The Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows debuted in 1990, the same year that Windows 3.0 was released and ushered in an era of Microsoft desktop dominance. Three more iterations of the entertainment pack followed, which included FreeCell, before Microsoft pulled the plug in 1992 (although a Best Of version arrived in 1994, and there was another version for Windows CE later in the 1990s).

We’ll draw a discreet veil over the ad-festooned version currently in the Microsoft Store.

The floppy disks in the box included several card games, Minesweeper, and a Windows version of the fiendishly addictive and massively popular game of the era, Tetris.

But it might not have gone that way. Chen explained in a post on his Old New Thing blog, “At the time the first run of boxes were being printed, the negotiations to license Tetris hadn’t yet concluded. There was a chance that the negotiations would fall through, and the Entertainment Pack would have to be released without Tetris.”

So, rather than risk throwing away a production run, Microsoft went ahead with the Tetris-less branding, and added a sticker when the deal was done. Later print runs made the sticker part of the box art, hence the rarity of the original.

Microsoft has a bit of a history of inadvertently creating collectibles. Chen recalled an incident with Windows 95, when an anti-piracy hologram on the case depicted a child pointing at a computer monitor and the Windows 95 logo. The child was shirtless, which caused offense in some quarters. Microsoft’s solution? A new hologram with the baby in a shirt and overalls.

However, some original versions still exist. Chen said, “So if you still have your copy of Windows 95, go look at the hologram. If the baby in your hologram isn’t wearing a shirt, you have a genuine collector’s item.”

We can just imagine the excitement at the recording now, as someone produces not only a stickered version of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows, but also the topless baby version of Windows 95… ®

• Brave1 lets Ukrainian units order drones built to exact specifications
• Military units have spent nearly one billion dollars through Brave1 Market
• Buyers can adjust seventeen different drone specifications before placing an order

A new procurement system launched by Ukraine’s Brave1 defense cluster now allows Ukrainian military units to commission drones built to their own specifications.

The system operates through the existing Brave1 Market platform, where military units can request drones tailored to particular operational requirements.

• China is moving its AI data centers into poor rural provinces
• Guizhou offers cooler weather, cheap land, and abundant renewable power
• New data centers must draw 80% of power from renewables

China is significantly expanding its data center capacity as artificial intelligence processing drives an unprecedented demand for computing power nationwide.

Much of this new infrastructure is being built away from the crowded eastern seaboard and placed in rural western provinces.

In this week’s Sunday Reboot, the AirPods Pro with cameras are probably the best alternative to smart glasses that Apple could’ve come up with.

Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get the next week underway with a good first step.

Confirmed and capable: AirPods Pro with cameras

There have been rumors about a new breed of AirPods Pro in development at Apple for quite some time. Personal audio devices that somehow dealt with visual elements, not just sound.

The rumors said that Apple was coming up with AirPods Pro with built-in cameras to capture images of the local environment. All to feed data into your iPhone‘s Visual Intelligence so you can ask queries about your local environment.

This isn’t entirely out of pocket for Apple, really. We have got heart rate tracking in AirPods Pro 3, as well as some models of Beats earbuds too.

Adding extra sensors in earbuds wasn’t hard to believe. That they would be sophisticated enough to read the outside world and to transfer that data to your iPhone, was a tiny bit of a stretch.

While we knew through the rumor mill that they were being worked on in some capacity, we didn’t know just how far along the idea had progressed.

Cue a leak from Apple itself seemingly confirming they exist. A video in the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate gave a demonstration of what the earwear could feasibly do.

Admittedly, the ones shown looked like normal AirPods Pro, and could easily be used as placeholders in the video without revealing the real hardware. However, based on the angle, it could mean the sensor is positioned in the tip where the microphone is usually placed.

The video itself showed a person looking at a book, getting Siri to recognize the cover, and then to save it for later. We can probably expect a lot more potential capability from it, but it’s not a bad explanation that they have some form of imaging sensor onboard.

In the days that followed, more capabilities were raised, again from macOS. It was able to capture left and right-paired images, namely images from each AirPods Pro camera, and combine them into images seen by Visual Intelligence.

The stereoscopic view could give Visual Intelligence data about distance, which may give Apple’s AI more of an idea of where things are in the world, relatively speaking.

They would also be able to compensate for head movements and have passive and active modes. Impressively, the AirPods may even be able to process some of the data onboard instead of letting the iPhone handle it.

Capable, but not too privacy-breaking

There’s the obvious issue of privacy, as we have seen with practically all other smart glasses that have ever been created. Cameras on an item that seemingly hides them could lead to weird perverted behavior.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, but the AirPods Pro with cameras will get the same sort of outrage over everyone’s sacred right to privacy. To be fair, it’s a justifiable outcry, but one that probably won’t be as much of a problem for Apple.

For a start, the paired images will just be up to 1 megapixel in size, versus 12MP photos and 3D video on the Meta Ray-Ban glasses.

Someone actually wearing Meta Ray-Bans – Image Credit: Meta

That’s an absolutely tiny resolution in this day and age. With a lack of a proper zoom function, that makes it extremely limited for spying purposes.

There’s also Apple itself, which does what it can to protect privacy as much as possible. It would be a really bad look for Apple to ruin the years of work on one badly thought-out product.

Realistically, you have little to fear of them being seriously used for privacy-breaking reasons.

These are incredibly capable earbuds. In my book, they’re probably going to be the most capable AI-centric product on Apple’s future wearables roster.

You just shouldn’t expect much of a privacy scandal from them.

Glasses-free smart glasses

Apple’s current wearables landscape is pretty much not futuristic at all. We have the Dick Tracy-style Apple Watch, we have the ability to talk to Siri with AirPods, and then we have the bulky headset that is the Apple Vision Pro.

When it comes to the future, we have a few options. There’s the weird pendant or brooch, Apple Glass, and now AirPods Pro with cameras.

Apple Glass was meant to be the product that would combat Meta’s smart glasses and usher in the personal AI revolution. To me, a committed wearer of spectacles, the AirPods Pro are the safer bet.

For a start, AirPods Pro with cameras are the same conceptually as smart glasses, except without the glasses bit. If you think about the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, they are basically a camera on each side, a microphone, and speakers for the wearer’s ears.

That seems a lot like AirPods Pro with cameras, conceptually. Of course, smart glasses with display elements are a different breed, but for the cheaper consumer-focused smart glasses, there is more of a direct comparison.

As a glasses wearer, that means I could have all of the benefits of wearing smart glasses with the future AirPods, but without needing to replace my frames.

It sounds like I’m being picky, but there are a few good reasons for it.

The thick frames of the Ray-Ban Meta range hide the electronics. It’s just not thin enough for me. Image Credit: Meta

For a start, I really don’t like the thick frames of the current Ray-Ban Meta collection. I like my thin frames, and most smart glasses on the market simply cannot match that styling.

The second and more practical reason is that if I don’t want the “smart” element anymore, I don’t have to change glasses. I just have to take out the AirPods from my ears, put them in the charging case, and put them away.

If I had prescription lenses in smart glasses, and someone was really insisting that the spying cameras on them had to go away, I’d have a problem. Either I’d have to change to a second pair of “dumb” glasses, or go glasses-free and see the world in soft focus for a bit.

I like having my vision, and I don’t like having to carry a second pair of glasses around with me. Especially if the smart ones have thick frames that barely hide the tech.

If I suddenly had a pile of free cash and an itch to buy some smart glasses, the AirPods Pro’s camera evolution would be the route I would take.

Sure, they’re not smart glasses. But for my glasses-wearing face, they are the much better answer.

Last week’s Sunday Reboot talked about Apple’s lawsuit with Epic Games, requests for delays, and Epic Games complaining about EU fee changes.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority is fining Uber €825 million (around $966 million) — the second largest penalty issued so far under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, according to Reuters.

The Dutch regulator was investigating complaints that Uber had deactivated driver accounts through an automated process without sufficient warning or human oversight. In a statement, deputy chair Monique Verdier said that the company had “committed serious infringements.”

“A computer should not make decisions on its own that have [such] major consequences,” Verdier said.

Uber, however, argued that most driver suspensions are brief, that no permanent deactivations take place without human review, and that drivers have the ability to appeal. (Dutch regulators said some drivers were permanently deactivated without human review, which Uber disputes.) The company said it will appeal the decision.

“We strongly disagree with this decision ​and disproportionate fine,” an Uber spokesperson told Reuters. TechCrunch has reached out to the company for additional comment.

Brahim Ben Ali, a former Uber driver in France, told the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant that after his account was deactivated in 2019, he collected testimonies from 170 other Uber drivers and eventually brought his complaint to the Netherlands, where Uber’s European headquarters are located.

Ben Ali was assisted in this effort by a Swiss nonprofit focused on digital rights called PersonalData.io, which helped the drivers collect data about how the deactivation decisions were made. Founder Paul-Olivier Dehaye said a driver “can complete a thousand journeys with satisfied passengers, but if just one person reports a very serious problem, the consequences can be enormous.”

Dehaye told me that this is the third fine that the Dutch regulator has levied on Uber, following a €290 million fine over its handling of drivers’ personal data and a €10 million fine stemming from related issues. He also said he plans to start a class action suit through which drivers can seek compensation.

In fact, Dehaye said these fines all originate with complaints made by the same group of drivers. And he’s starting a new company called StartClaims to support the litigation and other regulatory action — first against Uber and then eventually expanding to other gig economy cases, as well as related areas like adtech.

While discussing the case with Dehaye (who I’ve known casually since college), I brought up a blog post by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, in which Gruber worried that this fine makes it “unlawful in the EU for Uber to monitor its drivers for pulling scams against customers, or just never picking riders up, leaving them stranded.”

Gruber also took issue with Verdier’s statement, arguing, “Saying that ‘a computer’ made these decisions is like saying that when a company suspends or fires a habitually late employee, that ‘the time clock’ made the decision. Managers at the company set the policies, and the devices measure employee compliance.”

Dehaye countered that Gruber “misses the point.”

“Uber is free to use humans to punish drivers who scam, but then [it] has to take responsibility for this decision making (like ‘being an employer’, not ‘being a marketplace’),” he said.

Sonos is launching a new pair of headphones soon, if online reports are accurate. When I heard these reports, I imagined they might be a true wireless considering rumours for that form factor have back years, but it looks like Sonos will announce a new pair of over-ears.

So what should we expect from them?

I think ‘expectations’ is an aspect that might dominate the conversation surrounding the Ace Ultra. I think hype and expectations ultimately led to the original Ace not having the impact Sonos imagined.

Even though I see the headphones on people’s heads every so often (in fact, I saw someone wearing a black version on the way to work); I suspect Sonos imagined that everyone who had a Sonos system in their home would sign up for a pair of Ace headphones as an extension of their system in the same the outdoor speakers such as the Move, Roam and Play have tried to do. But it didn’t quite work, and expectations played a part in that.

So how should we view these upcoming headphones? Has Sonos learnt from its previous mistakes and what areas should they have looked at in terms of improvements?

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A new model or a replacement?

What we don’t know is what they’re called. The Ace Ultra designation appears to be just a rumour for now, and it appears we’ll find out in some official capacity in September.

A question I’d ask is whether the headphones are an expansion of Sonos’ headphones range, or a replacement for the Sonos Ace? You may ask whether there’s any difference, and I would say there is.

An expansion would position Sonos as looking to build its headphone line-up, introducing tiers in a similar way that Sony, Bose and JBL have headphones that appeal to different people at different prices. A replacement implies a do-over, that essentially we’re back to square and these headphones would be the answer to criticisms people had of the first one.

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I’m inclined to think it’s the latter.

I think Sonos wants one pair of headphones in a bid for simplicity, a one-suits-all proposition at a premium price in a similar manner as Apple has done with its AirPods Max headphones. Has it ordered a massive redesign of the headphones? I suspect not, because there’s plenty that worked about the Ace (comfort especially) but there were areas where Sonos fell short of the competition. I’m thinking these headphones will be an ‘enhanced’ version, a 2.0 that shores up the issues people had.

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But we’ll find out for sure in September.

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Improvements needed for audio and noise-cancelling

The audio and noise-cancelling aspects of the Ace were fine – but in both regards the Ace were solid rather than exceptional. You can’t be in the same conversation as the likes of Sony and Bose by just being solid.

And in the two years since the launch of the Ace, rivals have only gotten stronger. Sony’s WH-1000XM6 are arguably the leader in the market. Bose has improved, and so has Sennheiser with the Momentum 5 Wireless, which sound fantastic. No one is resting on their laurels.

Considering Sonos’ inexperience in the headphones market, it will have had to accrue knowledge at a much faster rate than others, but it released its first pair of headphones, it got feedback from it, and like any feedback loop, that funnels resources into making the next pair better.

Here’s hoping that the noise-cancelling, which was already strong, has improved further; but more than that the sound this time around needs to have more character to it. Sonos aimed for a neutral presentation, which I found enjoyable but it had its limits. It was as detailed as other pairs, nor was it as dynamic as other pairs. When you don’t sound as good, or cancel noise as well as other pairs who are less expensive, that’s never a good sign. People will only pay a premium for quality. Sonos can’t be ‘as good’, in some ways it needs to be better.

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They need to lean into Sonos’ strengths better

For years, Wi-Fi has been seen as some sort of holy grail for headphones; though despite the potential that offers, Bluetooth still dominates.

We’ve seen AKG deliver a pair of very good headphones that have a Wi-Fi dongle. This site has published reviews of Wi-Fi headphones in the HED Unity (average) and the Wi-Fi models from Hifiman (better). When the original Ace launched, we all thought it would have some Wi-Fi connectivity, which it did through the excellent TV Audio Swap, but it also didn’t feel like it realised the potential of Wi-Fi because it was only available in this form.

By the sounds of it, the new pair could connect directly to a Wi-Fi network, like any other Sonos product, and open up the possibility of lossless audio. Of course, there’s a limitation in that you wouldn’t be able to benefit from this in outside environments – partly why Wi-Fi headphones don’t seem to have taken off – and connecting directly to the Wi-Fi would lock the headphones into the home network anyway.

But if Sonos can sort out the presentation of audio (and throw in USB-C audio while they’re at it too), and open up the bit-rate, then that’s at least something that’s different from most of the competition. That differentiation is arguably what Sonos needs the most.

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