In short: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday in what the White House called “productive and constructive” talks over access to Mythos, the frontier AI model capable of finding thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities. The meeting signals a thaw in the standoff that began when the Pentagon blacklisted Anthropic for refusing to drop safety restrictions, though any deal would likely exclude the Defence Department and route Mythos access through civilian agencies.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei walked into the West Wing on Friday for a meeting with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The White House described the conversation as “introductory, productive, and constructive,” saying the three discussed “opportunities for collaboration, as well as shared approaches and protocols to address the challenges associated with scaling this technology.” President Trump later told reporters he had “no idea” the meeting had taken place.
The meeting is the most significant step toward resolving a standoff that has left one of the most important AI companies in the world blacklisted by its own government while that same government scrambles to gain access to its most powerful model. If the two sides reach a deal, it will likely exclude the Pentagon entirely, routing Mythos access through civilian agencies that are not party to the original dispute.
How we got here
The conflict began in late February when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded that Anthropic grant the Pentagon unfettered access to its AI models for “all lawful purposes,” including autonomous weapons systems and domestic surveillance. Amodei refused. He has said publicly that Anthropic wants to work with the military, but that AI models are not yet reliable enough for autonomous weapons and that US law has not caught up to protect Americans around AI’s use in mass surveillance. Hegseth’s response was to designate Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk, a classification previously reserved for companies associated with foreign adversaries, effectively blacklisting it from all government contracts.
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Anthropic sued the Trump administration in early March, filing two federal lawsuits alleging illegal retaliation. A federal judge initially blocked the blacklisting, but an appeals court reversed that decision on 8 April. Anthropic is now excluded from Department of Defense contracts but can still work with other government agencies. After the court ruling went against it, Anthropic hired Trumpworld consultants to facilitate a political resolution, and Axios reported that Friday’s meeting was designed to pave the way toward a deal.
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The paradox that brought Amodei to the White House is that Anthropic announced Mythos on 7 April, ten days after losing its appeal, and the model turned out to be something the government could not ignore.
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What Mythos can do
Mythos is a general-purpose AI model that, during testing, proved capable of identifying and exploiting thousands of previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser. It found flaws that had survived decades of human security review. When directed to develop working exploits, it succeeded on the first attempt in more than 83% of cases. It is the first AI model to complete a 32-step corporate network attack simulation from start to finish. The UK’s AI Security Institute evaluated it as “substantially more capable at cyber offence than any model previously assessed.” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said publicly that it “reveals a lot more vulnerabilities” for cyberattacks. The Council on Foreign Relations called it “an inflection point for AI and global security.”
Anthropic chose not to release Mythos publicly. Instead, it created Project Glasswing, a controlled access programme providing the model to roughly 40 vetted organisations, including Amazon Web Services, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and JPMorgan Chase, to find and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. The company committed up to $100 million in Mythos usage credits and $4 million to open-source security organisations. The decision to restrict rather than release is a direct application of the safety principles that put Anthropic in conflict with the Pentagon in the first place.
What each side wants
The Treasury Department is seeking Mythos to hunt for vulnerabilities in its own systems. Parts of the intelligence community and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are already testing it. The White House Office of Management and Budget is setting up protections to allow federal agencies to use a controlled version. Bessent’s presence at Friday’s meeting signals that the economic and financial security arguments for Mythos access have reached the most senior levels of the administration.
Anthropic needs the blacklisting resolved. Not because it needs Pentagon revenue; thecompany’s annualised revenuehas reached $30 billion, it has attracted investor offers at an $800 billion valuation, and it is exploring an IPO. But the supply-chain risk designation damages itsenterprise credibilityand creates uncertainty for every government-adjacent customer. What Amodei wants is a resolution that restores his company’s standing without surrendering the safety commitments that provoked the dispute.
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The outlines of a compromise are visible. Anthropic would provide Mythos access for defensive cybersecurity purposes through civilian agencies. The administration would withdraw or narrow the supply-chain risk designation. The Pentagon would remain excluded unless a separate process for reviewing specific military use cases can be agreed. Both sides have incentives: Anthropic because the blacklisting is commercially damaging, and the White House because the technology is toovaluable to forgo.
The pressure from abroad
The diplomatic dimension adds urgency. Anthropic is planning to provide Mythos to selectBritish banks within daysand is quadrupling its London office to 800 staff. The Bank of England’s Governor Andrew Bailey named Mythos as a cybersecurity risk in a speech at Columbia University on 15 April, and the Bank’s Cross Market Operational Resilience Group is convening an emergency briefing with the CEOs of the UK’s eight largest banks and representatives from the Treasury, the FCA, and the National Cyber Security Centre. Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne described Mythos as an “unknown unknown” at IMF meetings.
The result is a situation in which America’s closest allies may have access to a critical national security tool before the US government does. Thatgeopolitical realitygives the White House an incentive to resolve the dispute that transcends the original disagreement over safety guardrails. Bessent, whose Treasury Department is one of the agencies most eager for Mythos access, presumably made this point in Friday’s meeting.
What Friday means
The word “introductory” in the White House readout is carefully chosen. It signals that Wiles and Bessent are opening a channel, not closing a deal. The litigation is still active. The appeals court ruling still stands. Hegseth has not withdrawn his position. But the fact that the White House Chief of Staff and the Treasury Secretary sat down with the CEO of a company the Pentagon has blacklisted, and described the conversation as productive, represents a shift in the administration’s posture that would have been difficult to imagine six weeks ago.
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Amodei built the most capable cybersecurity tool in existence as a byproduct of building a general-purpose AI model, then restricted its release on safety grounds, then was punished by the government for maintaining those same safety principles, and is now being courted by that government because the tool cannot be replicated or replaced. That sequence is playing out not in a congressional hearing or a regulatory proceeding but in a room in the West Wing where the most powerful chief of staff in a generation, the Treasury Secretary, and the CEO of an AI company are trying to find a formula that satisfies national security, commercial reality, and the safety principles that started the whole fight. Friday did not produce that formula. But it established that everyone in the room wants one.
iPads are stolen from a Best Buy, G-Love is caught up in the fake Ledger app scam, and AirTags solve two thefts, all in this week’s Apple Crime Blotter.
Only a very lucky few people ever get to travel into space, but more than 5.6 million names just completed a journey around the Moon, stored on a microSD card carried aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission.
That flight sent four astronauts farther from Earth than humans have ever traveled, completing a roughly 10-day mission that orbited the Moon before safely returning to Earth.
The trip tested critical systems for future deep-space exploration and marked a major milestone for the Artemis program which will ultimately return humans to the surface of the Moon in 2028.
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Today’s top memory card deal
(Image credit: NASA)
The microSD card, carrying 5,647,889 submitted names, was zipped into Rise, the mission’s mascot, a cartoonish Moon wearing a cap covered in stars. The mascot itself was designed by a year three student from California, called Lucas Ye, whose artwork was selected from more than 2,600 entries from over 50 countries.
While the specific card zipped inside Rise was certified for spaceflight conditions, it traces its lineage to the SanDisk Ultra series used by people here on Earth inside cameras, handheld devices, and portable recording gear.
The consumer version of the SanDisk Ultra microSD series comes in 16 and 32GB capacities and supports both microSD and microSDHC formats, making it compatible with a wide range of devices used for everyday recording and storage tasks.
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Rated at Class 10 speeds, the card supports read speeds of up to 80MB/s, which suits Full HD video capture, burst photography, and quick file transfers.
It’s durable, with protection against water, temperature extremes, and X-ray exposure, and maybe (but we wouldn’t bet on it), trips around the Moon.
After splashdown, the mission mascot didn’t stay tucked away inside the spacecraft as it should have done according to NASA’s mission rules, Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman later revealed on X.
“I was supposed to leave Rise in Integrity….but that was not something I was going to do. I stuffed that little guy in a dry bag we had in our survival kit and hooked the bag onto my pressure suit,” he wrote.
If pet hair on the sofa or crumbs down the side of the car seat are the kind of daily irritants that a full-sized vacuum feels entirely too cumbersome to deal with, a compact handheld is the tool that actually gets used.
The Shark Handheld Cordless Vacuum is built for exactly that, and it is now down from £69.99 to £49.99, a 29% saving on a machine ranked fourth in handheld vacuums on Amazon barely a month after release.
Shark’s new handheld cordless vacuum is now almost a third cheaper, barely a month after launch
If pet hair on the sofa or crumbs down the side of the car seat are a daily occurance, a Shark Handheld Cordless Vacuum is the tool for you.
Dual cyclonic air streams separate the workload inside the machine, with one stream dedicated to suction power and a second separating large and small debris to keep the filter and motor running efficiently across repeated uses rather than degrading with each session.
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That filtering performance is maintained by a HEPA filter, which captures the fine particles that cheaper handheld vacuums push back into the air, and the washable design means ongoing running costs stay low without the need for replacement parts.
Weighing just over one kilogram, the Shark Handheld Cordless Vacuum is genuinely light enough to grab for a quick clean of stairs, upholstery, or car interiors without it feeling like a chore before you have even started.
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The ten-minute run time is the honest caveat here: it is enough for targeted spot cleaning across those kinds of surfaces, but buyers expecting to cover a whole floor in one pass will need to manage expectations or ensure the battery is fully charged before each session.
A CleanTouch dirt ejector handles emptying without requiring you to reach into the dust cup, which matters more than it sounds when you are cleaning up after pets or anything particularly unpleasant, and the 0.45-litre capacity holds a reasonable amount before that becomes necessary.
The included crevice tool and scrubbing brush extend reach and versatility for the kinds of narrow gaps and textured surfaces that the main nozzle alone cannot address, rounding out a kit that covers the realistic daily use cases for a machine of this type.
This is a well-specified grab-and-go option at £49.99, backed by a two-year manufacturer warranty, and it suits households that want something genuinely lightweight and instant-access for the messes a full-sized vacuum is too unwieldy to justify.
For those still deciding on a primary machine to pair it with, our best cordless vacuum cleaners 2026 guide rounds up every wire-free option our experts have put through its paces.
In short: The FAA is developing SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories), an AI system that would extend air traffic conflict prediction from 15 minutes to two hours, with Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence competing for the contract. The project follows the LaGuardia crash that exposed controller overwork and aging systems, and sits within a $32.5 billion modernisation programme as the agency replaces 612 outdated radar systems and recruits 1,200 new controllers in fiscal 2026.
The Federal Aviation Administration is building an AI system called SMART that would allow air traffic controllers to predict and resolve flight conflicts up to two hours before they happen, replacing a planning window that currently extends just 15 minutes. Three companies are competing for the contract: Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the project and the three bidders on 17 April, with a press event scheduled for 21 April to provide further details.
SMART, which stands for Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories, uses high-fidelity 4D modelling to anticipate bottlenecks and schedule conflicts before aircraft leave the ground. The system would shift air traffic management from reactive to predictive, addressing the fundamental problem that the current infrastructure was designed for a lower volume of flights and relies on controllers making real-time decisions with limited forward visibility. The FAA has said the system could be operational in some form later this year.
The three bidders
Palantir Technologies brings the deepest government relationship of the three. The company’s revenue guidance for 2026 is approximately $7.2 billion, representing 61% growth, driven by a $10 billion ceiling-value Army contract signed in July 2025 and expanding partnerships with GE Aerospace and Airbus. Its government revenue grew 70% year over year in Q4 2025. Palantir’s pitch for aviation AI is an extension of its core business: ingesting vast quantities of operational data and presenting it in decision-support interfaces that government users can act on without needing to understand the underlying models.
Thales, the European aerospace and defence firm, has more than 85 years of supplying air traffic management systems to the FAA and the Department of Defense. More than 99% of instrument landing systems at US airports use Thales equipment. The company’s TopSky platform is already embedded in theaviation infrastructurethat SMART would need to integrate with, giving it an incumbent advantage that the other two bidders lack.
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Air Space Intelligence, a Boston-based startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, is the smallest competitor but arguably the most relevant. Its Flyways AI platform already manages over 40% of all US air traffic through partnerships with major airlines, using the same kind of 4D modelling and optimisation that SMART requires. ASI recently announced a partnership withJoby Aviationto integrate electric air taxis into the national airspace, positioning the company at the intersection of current air traffic management and the next generation of aviation.
Why this matters now
The urgency behind SMART is not abstract. On 22 March, Air Canada Express Flight 8646 collided with a fire truck on the runway at LaGuardia Airport. The investigation found that the air traffic controller involved was simultaneously serving as tower controller and clearance delivery controller, and that the automated runway safety system failed to alert because it could not create a confident track when vehicles merged near the runway. The incident crystallised a problem that the aviation industry has been warning about for years: controllers are overworked, the technology they rely on is outdated, and the margin for error is shrinking as traffic volumes increase.
The FAA has received $12.5 billion from Congress for air traffic control modernisation and estimates it needs an additional $20 billion to complete the overhaul. The agency is replacing 612 outdated radar systems, migrating its NOTAM system to a cloud-based platform, and recruiting controllers at an accelerated pace, having hired nearly 1,200 new controllers in fiscal 2026 so far, roughly half its annual target. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, who was confirmed by Congress and sworn in last July, has made SMART a central pillar of the modernisation programme.
DOGE, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, has also inserted itself into FAA operations. DOGE personnel have visited air traffic control facilities to evaluate operations, and Musk has said the initiative will make “rapid safety upgrades” to air traffic control systems. A separate initiative called Project Lift is directing FAA funds toward upgrading network communications. DOGE is scheduled to end operations on 4 July, though a successor entity will continue.
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The contract dynamics
The competition between Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence reflects three distinct approaches togovernment AIprocurement. Palantir offers a platform that can be configured for any government use case, backed by extensive security clearances and institutional relationships. Thales offers domain expertise and an installed base that no competitor can match. ASI offers a purpose-built aviation AI platform that is already handling a significant portion of the traffic the FAA is trying to manage.
The FAA’s history with technology modernisation is not encouraging. The agency’s last major technology overhaul, the NextGen programme, took more than a decade and cost billions more than originally projected. The air traffic control workforce has been resistant to automation that threatens to change established workflows, and procurement timelines in government aviation are measured in years, not months. SMART’s promise that it could be operational later this year suggests either a genuinely compressed timeline or a demonstration version that falls short of full deployment.
For Palantir, the FAA contract would extend its government portfolio into a critical civilian agency and support the revenue growth trajectory that has made it the most expensive stock in the S&P 500 at roughly 120 times sales. For Thales, it would modernise a relationship that has sustained its US aviation business for decades. For Air Space Intelligence, it would validate an approach that has already proven itself in the commercial aviation sector and position the company as a central piece of nationalairspace infrastructure.
The stakes are higher than any individual contract. The US air traffic control system manages roughly 45,000 flights per day across the most complex airspace in the world. The controllers who run it are stretched thin, the technology they use predates the smartphone, and the safety margins that have made commercial aviation extraordinarily safe are being tested by volume growth, staffing shortages, and the kind of cascading failures that the LaGuardia incident exposed. SMART is a bet that AI can close the gap between what the system was designed to handle and what it is being asked to do. The question is whether any of the three companies competing for it can deliver on that promise at the speed theFAAnow requires.
Ring is rolling out a new feature designed to make its doorbell alerts a lot more useful. It also makes them a bit more personal.
Called Familiar Faces, it replaces generic notifications like “Person detected” with named alerts such as “Mum at Front Door.” As a result, you know exactly who’s outside without opening the app.
The feature is launching for 2K, 4K and select HD Ring devices in the UK, and it’s entirely opt-in. Once enabled, your camera starts detecting faces. It lets you build a personal directory of up to 50 people, from family members to frequent visitors like dog walkers or babysitters. From there, notifications become more tailored including the option to mute alerts for people you see all the time.
It’s a small change on paper, but one that tackles a familiar annoyance. Standard motion alerts can quickly become noise, especially in busy households. However, by adding context, Familiar Faces aims to cut through that clutter and make alerts more meaningful. For example, you’ll know your child just got home from school or spot an unexpected visitor right away.
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Setup is fairly straightforward. You can label faces directly from your event history or within a dedicated library in the Ring app. The system automatically clears out unlabelled faces after 30 days to keep things tidy. Named faces will then appear across your timeline, notifications and shared accounts.
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As you’d expect, Ring is leaning heavily on privacy controls here. The feature is off by default, face data is encrypted and stored within your account. Moreover, the app includes prompts that remind users to obtain consent where required. You’re also in full control of your library, with options to edit, merge or delete profiles at any time.
Familiar Faces is available to users with a Ring Protect subscription, including Pro and Pro Intelligence plans. The feature will roll out via the app starting today.
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It’s not a huge hardware upgrade, but it’s the kind of smart, software-led tweak that could make everyday use of Ring cameras feel a lot less repetitive. Consequently, it should feel a bit more intuitive.
We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
As this product isn’t available, consider this a hands-on, as between now and its release, some of the issues I’ll talk about might well be fixed.
Punkt. is a Swiss company that manufactures in Germany, and the MC03, as the name suggests, is the third iteration of its secure, minimalist phone design.
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If you like minimalist things, perhaps in black and white, and your Android phone not spaffing your personal data around carelessly, then perhaps the MC03 could be for you.
Comparing it to the MC02 model, the new MC03 swaps up the Dimensity 900 to the newer Dimensity 7300 SoC, more RAM and storage, but largely the same camera.
However, the thing that makes this offering stand out is AphyOS, a fork of AOSP 15, a GrapheneOS-related development, according to Punkt., is inherently more secure and able to keep the user’s data from being easily harvested.
However, the AphyOS-specific apps are unique to Punkt. platforms require a monthly or yearly subscription after the first year, on top of the $699 base price of the device.
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In terms of the phone’s specifications, it’s decent, but hardly premium. The SoC is mid-range, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage are hardly pushing the boat out, and a 64MP camera sensor is hardly cutting-edge. And, Punkt. phones have a reputation for bugs that linger over successive patches.
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If you, or your business, are invested in the Proton suite the MC03 offers, including Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN and Pass, alongside Threema for encrypted messaging, then perhaps the high cost and ongoing subscription might be worth it. But for regular Android users, the high cost of mid-range hardware and additional costs to ownership could be deal breakers.
Since this device hasn’t officially launched yet, it’s way too early to say whether it is one of the best rugged phones yet.
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Punkt. MC03: Price and availability
How much does it cost? $699/£660/€699
When is it out? On Pre-order
Where can you get it? You can order it directly from Punkt.
Based on the most recent information, in Europe, the MC03 is on pre-order from the official site here, with the intention to ship at the end of April 2026. North American customers should be able to see this device in early Summer 2026, hopefully.
The pre-release pricing is $699/£660/€699. When exchange rates are taken into consideration, the most expensive place to buy is the UK, followed by Europe, where it’s made, and the least expensive is the USA, which has tariffs on European goods. This makes zero sense, other than perhaps the market for secure phones in the USA is greater than in Europe.
As an alternative, Google‘s Pixel phones can run GrapheneOS, and a Pixel 10 is around $650 with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. And that phone has an optical zoom on its camera.
Punkt has always been a design company that happens to make phones rather than the other way around. The MC03 carries that forward. The aesthetic is stripped back and deliberate, favouring clean lines over the glossy excesses that dominate this market.
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This device is assembled at Gigaset’s facility in Bocholt, Germany, which Punkt uses as a selling point and rightly so, given that German assembly brings with it a baseline assumption of quality control that assembly lines elsewhere do not always guarantee.
The dimensions are 163 x 76 x 11mm with a mass of just 240 grams. That is a meaningful presence in the hand and not a light phone by any measure, but it’s also significantly closer to a normal phone than those typically marketed as rugged. The IP68 rating for dust and water resistance is where it should be at this price point and covers immersion up to a metre for 30 minutes, which is the standard you would expect.
The frame is aluminium, and I suspect the display is Gorilla Glass protected, though Punkt’s own materials are somewhat vague on those specifics.
The button layout is as derivative as it gets, with the volume rocker and power button on the right, and a custom button on the left.
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However, due to unresolved beta issues with AphyOS, the fingerprint reading doesn’t currently work, and there is no way to define what the custom key does. By accident, I discovered it takes a shot while using the camera, but there is no tool to adjust what it does at this time. I’m assuming that the fingerprint will be read via the power button, because I don’t see the rear sensor that the phone mentioned when I tried to use this feature.
The bottom edge of the phone has the SIM tray and USB port, which doesn’t require a rubber plug, thankfully. It’s slightly odd that there is an external SIM tray, since the entire back of the MC03 comes off, revealing the replaceable battery and the TF card slot. Since there is only one Nano SIM supported by the external slot, why this wasn’t placed inside is a mystery. You can have a second SIM by eSIM, so you can have two phone numbers and a TF card in place simultaneously.
Having a battery you can replace is certainly a great feature, especially in an IP68-rated phone, although the capacity of only 5200 mAh isn’t huge. On top of the battery is a wireless charging coil that enables the phone to charge at 15W without a cable being inserted if you have a Qi-compatible charger.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
Probably the other standout feature of the MC03 is the screen, a 6.67-inch OLED with a 120Hz refresh rate, a dramatic improvement over the IPS panel the MC02 got. However, I do find a strong sense of irony in putting OLED on a phone that uses monochrome icons as part of its minimalist ethos.
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Although not in the Punkt. specs, the peak brightness is around 550 nits, which is workable but not especially impressive for outdoor use in strong sunlight. OLED’s inherent contrast advantage helps considerably, and the 120Hz refresh makes the interface feel responsive rather than sluggish in a way the old panel never could. Punkt describes the display as supporting HDR, which should benefit anything streamed from Proton or accessed via the Wild Web environment.
The MC03 certainly has a love-or-hate aesthetic based on how you feel about minimalism as a design concept. While I’m not a massive fan of excessive embellishments, there isn’t much to get excited about here from a style perspective either. Because I have the view that a lack of style isn’t an actual style, in the same way that black isn’t truly a color.
But, you might think differently, and the replaceable battery is something few alternatives can match.
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Punkt. MC03: Features
MediaTek Dimensity 7300
5200 mAh battery
The Dimensity 7300 is such a common SoC that I must have written a sixteen-part white paper’s worth of words about this octa-core chip that uses 2x Cortex-A78 @ 2.5GHz + 6x Cortex-A55 @ 2.0GHz.
Technically, it can address up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, but on this device, you get half of that amount in each case. The issue here isn’t that the Dimensity 7300 is a poor SoC, because it’s far from that, but frankly, it’s a mid-range SoC, not something built for a premium design.
That said, I’m wondering if the sort of customer Punkt. is aiming the MC03 at will care, because it’s unlikely they’ll be running the sort of tasks that demand more performance than the Dimensity 7300 has to offer. But it should be clear that if this phone were made in China, and not Germany, the justification for its asking price would be even more contradictory than it already is.
The one advantage of using a 4nm SoC design is that it can make the battery go a long way, and with only 5200 mAh of capacity under the hood, then maybe it was the right choice.
While it is possible to change this battery, this isn’t one of those situations where you would want to buy an extra battery to carry along to swap when you need more power. Replacing the battery requires partially dismantling the phone, and the connectors aren’t designed for repeated detachment and reattachment cycles. Swapping the battery is something you might do when it doesn’t hold a charge reliably, maybe three years from now, not because you forgot to charge it up.
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(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
With a battery of this size and 33W charging, it can be recharged from empty reasonably quickly, I estimate in under two hours.
And using wireless charging, it should take about twice that timeframe. That there doesn’t appear to be a provision for reverse charging is no huge surprise on a battery of this capacity.
Punkt. MC03: Software
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
AphyOS, developed by the Swiss firm Apostrophy, is the entire reason the MC03 exists and the source of its most interesting commercial divergence. The operating system is built on AOSP 15, meaning the Android foundation is familiar and functional, but Apostrophy has replaced the tracking and monetisation infrastructure that normally sits on top of that foundation with its own privacy-first layer.
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The most visible expression of that approach is the dual environment. The Vault is the primary home screen and contains only applications that have been vetted and approved by Punkt and AphyOS.
In practice, that means the full Proton suite, including Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN and Pass, alongside Threema for encrypted messaging and Punkt’s own curated app selection. The interface in this environment is intentionally monochrome and minimal, which sounds austere, but the logic here is that it actively discourages the aimless scrolling that characterises most smartphone use.
The Wild Web is the second environment, accessible via a swipe, and it is where the MC03 reveals its pragmatism. Google Play is not installed by default, but users can enable it during the setup process if they wish. Third-party applications installed here operate within sandboxed environments with visible, adjustable permissions. The MC03 does not pretend the wider Android ecosystem does not exist; it simply insists that applications within it be contained and transparent about their data appetites.
Additional AphyOS features include Digital Nomad, a built-in VPN that encrypts traffic, and the Ledger, which gives per-app privacy controls ranging from full access to complete lockdown. The Ledger also includes a Carbon Reduction view showing background energy consumption by application, which is either a genuinely useful tool for the environmentally conscious or a conversation starter, depending on how you look at it.
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(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
The snag? The first twelve months of AphyOS are included with the device. After that, continued access to the full feature set costs $9.99 per month, or around $120 per year. Multi-year bundles reduce this significantly: three years of future subscription is priced at $129 (a saving of 45 per cent), and five years at $199 (a saving of 60 per cent).
Without a subscription, the phone reverts to a basic AOSP device, which means losing the Vault environment, the Proton integration, the VPN, and the managed app ecosystem.
Given the device’s relatively high cost, is this additional subscription justified?
The honest answer is that value depends entirely on your existing outgoings and your threat model. If you already pay for Proton Mail and a separate VPN service, the MC03 subscription bundles several things you are already paying for into a device-level solution.
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Many Proton users pay $9.99 per month for Proton Unlimited on its own, and that does not include device-level hardening or a Threema subscription. From that angle, the MC03 subscription is competitive with the status quo rather than additional to it.
For journalists, legal professionals, medical practitioners, activists in high-risk environments, or anyone handling commercially sensitive communications, the total cost-of-ownership argument is reasonably straightforward. For a general-purpose user who mostly wants social media and a decent camera, the case is harder to make.
Let’s cut to the chase, some of these sensors are decent, others less so, the thing they all have in common is that they are inexpensive. Evidently, Punkt. doesn’t consider its core audience to be interested in photography, which is why we see Omnivision and GalaxyCore sensors across the board.
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While the 64MP Omnivision OV64b40 isn’t a bad primary sensor, it’s not something I’d expect to see on a premium device, but rather on a low- to mid-tier device.
It can take some sharp photos in good light conditions, and it has ML-PDAF focusing, but it only has digital zooming, not optical, and its native 0.7μm pixels are smaller than many competitors.
But as I’ve seen more of the results of this sensor, I’ve also noticed that the dynamic range isn’t wide, and it tends to wash out bright areas too easily. Some of its deficiencies can be addressed by post-capture software processing, but I see little evidence of this on the MC03, resulting in missing detail in shadows, for example.
The redeeming aspect of this camera cluster is that it will take 4K video, even if the storage capacity of this phone isn’t ideal for doing that.
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One disappointment is that Punkt. wouldn’t pay for the Widevine L1 license, only L3, so if you use the MC03 to watch streams from the likes of Disney or Netflix then the resolution will only be 480p, even if you have an HDR-rated display capable of better than 1080p.
In short, not a photographer’s phone, although it can take the odd decent image.
Punkt. MC03 Camera samples
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Punkt. MC03: Performance
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Phone
Punkt MC03
Motorola ThinkPhone 25
SoC
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MediaTek Dimensity 7300
Mediatek Mediatek Dimensity 7300-Ultra
GPU
Mali-G615 MC2
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Mali-G615 MC2
NPU
MediaTek NPU 655
MediaTek NPU 655
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Memory
8GB/256GB
8GB/256GB
Weight
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240g
171g
Battery
5200
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4310
Geekbench
Single
1013
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1050
Multi
2974
2998
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OpenCL
2481
2602
Vulkan
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2478
2527
PCMark
3.0 Score
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13082
15115
Battery
13h 15m
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14h 21
Charge in 30 Mins
%
39
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55
Passmark
Score
13819
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14125
CPU
6912
7077
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3DMark
Slingshot OGL
6642
6090
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Slingshot Ex. OGL
5188
5037
Slingshot Ex. Vulkan
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4905
3676
Wildlife
3184
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3185
Row 20 – Cell 0
Nomad Lite
350
349
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Originally, I was going to compare this phone to the AGM G3 Pro, since it uses the same SoC, but instead, I went with the Motorola ThinkPhone 25, which also uses that platform. I could have used the Doogee V Max LR, Ulefone Armor 34 Pro or Ulefone Armor 30 Pro, as these all use it too.
As you can see from these numbers, the performance of the Dimensity 7300 is reasonably consistent irrespective of the brand of phone, and it delivers reasonable if unexciting results.
However, what I found genuinely interesting was that with less battery, 20% less, the Motorola managed to run for a little longer. That hints that when you reorganise the OS to be more secure, there might be an impact on power efficiency. And, the Motorola also charges more rapidly, because it can charge at 68W, not 33W.
But the most damning aspect of this comparison isn’t in these benchmark scores. It’s that the ThinkPhone costs only £275 in the UK (not available in the USA), and it comes with a far superior camera platform that includes an optical zoom.
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Therefore, if you strip away the AphyOS part of the MC03 offering, it appears to be more than double the price that the hardware can reasonably justify.
Punkt. MC03: Early verdict
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
I can rationalise that some people find minimalist tech attractive, probably because of companies like Microsoft and others that overstuff their products with features their customers never asked for.
However, my experience with the MC03 didn’t make me want to embrace the ringfenced mindset behind this design for numerous reasons.
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As a reviewer of this device, along with the device I was provided by the makers with a long list of critical, major and minor known problems with the MC03. Having had the phone for a month, none of these has been addressed so far, and I’ve found additional problems along the way. Considering that this phone is meant to be ready for customers at the end of April, it’s concerning that I haven’t seen a rapid succession of updates.
If I do see a bug-squashing firmware release before it is available to purchase, I’ll add a note to that effect below.
But those flaws aside, my first complaint is that this device assumes, probably because the customer bought it, that they’ve entirely bought into the Punkt. ecosystem even before they’ve used the phone.
When you run through the typical question-and-answer system of a phone initialisation, you are told to create an Aphy account, which gives you one year of free use, and then it’s a paid subscription. You don’t get to skip this and come back to it later, which I personally hated.
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Then it asks you which Aphy apps you want to install, even if you have no idea which ones you want, and it won’t accept the answer ‘none of them’. Again, the same approach to the customer is blatantly to do as you are told.
I randomly picked Proton VPN, and then I discovered that while you need an Aphy account to access the app, you also have to pay extra to use it.
It’s like at every turn, this device holds its hand up and declares that where you are heading is out of bounds. A personal favourite, and not one of the documented bugs, was that I couldn’t take screenshots of my benchmark results.
It told me that either the app or my organisation had not given permission for that! Yes, that overburdening corporation I work for decided I couldn’t take screenshots, even though I’m self-employed.
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I could go on, but it’s all rather tedious to recount, and it made me just want vanilla Android more than ever.
Yes, I’m sure that what Punkt. has been built is technically more secure, and reducing the app model to this form has undeniable benefits. But, as has been the complaint with previous Punkt. phones, they’re expensive and can have significant bugs that the company seems slow to fix.
Others have commented that the security credentials of AphyOS come from companies that Punkt. does business with, where alternatives like Graphene have had independent third-party appraisals. I don’t have the inside knowledge to confirm or refute that view, but it would be interesting to see what the Mythos AI, created by Anthropic, made of this platform from a vulnerability perspective.
The security angle aside, the biggest issue here is asking this much for a phone with mid-tier components and additional subscriptions for the secure apps seems to shrink the number of potential customers for the MC03. But since this company has sold enough MC01 and MC02 devices to remain in business, it must be doing enough right to have brought us the MC03.
We live in an age where an almost infinite amount of entertainment is available to us at the push of a button (or the tap of a screen): Whether it’s movies or video games or podcasts, there’s already an abundance of diverting content at our fingertips, with more being added with each passing day.
So how can we possibly keep track of it all? Everything we’ve seen, listened to, played, and read — and want to see, hear, play, or read as well?. That’s where Sofa comes in, an app for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro that promises to help you “enjoy your downtime” by managing whatever it is that you might want to do with that downtime.
Homescreen heroes
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring the apps that we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
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Given that I badly need a better system for keeping tabs on where I’m up to in my entertainment, and the significant upgrade that this app just got with Sofa 5, I was keen to give it a try — and it’s quickly become one of my most-used apps.
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Note that the basics of Sofa (such as list-making) are free, but a subscription is needed for tracking progress over time, and for other features such as reminders and app theming. Subscriptions start at $3.99 / £3.49 / AU$5.99 a month.
How Sofa works
(Image credit: Future)
Sofa starts with the Lists tab, where you can make lists of anything you like: video games you want to play, TV shows you’re watching, mobile apps you’d like to check out, albums you’d like to recommend to other people, or whatever it is. These lists can be customized in a variety of ways, from how items are grouped to how their thumbnails are shown.
Tied closely to the Lists interface is the simple search function — this lets you sift through entertainment databases to find movies, shows, podcasts, music, apps, and more. I never failed to find what I was looking for, but custom items can be added manually if needed.
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It’s then really up to you how you manage your lists: Sofa offers just the right amount of flexibility in terms of how much control you get. Lists can be easily filtered through a whole host of criteria (from date and genre, to runtime and which streaming service something is available on), and you can pin items as well — this all means you can tailor the app to match your own preferences and viewing habits.
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List-making is something I’m a fan of, so I was able to very quickly build up multiple custom lists inside Sofa. It scores highly for the amount of information you get about each movie or TV show you record — this adds to the overall polish of the app experience, and means every screen is very easy on the eye.
I’m not going to be able to cover everything in Sofa here — there’s a fully featured podcast player, and a trip planner that I’ve barely had a chance to try — but as it was the entertainment options that I was most interested in, I prioritized digging into these.
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My tracking experience
(Image credit: Future)
To get the full suite of tracking options, you do need to sign up to one of the Sofa subscription plans. Otherwise, all you’ll be able to do is add items to lists and check them off one by one — it works, but it’s pretty basic. Paying for the app means you get options like episode-by-episode tracking for your TV shows, and more of a choice over how you log progress in the app.
With movies, for example, you can opt to set what you’re currently watching, as well as keeping a log of how many times you’ve seen a particular film. For TV shows, you’re able to go episode by episode, check off entire seasons at a time, and record the dates each time. For books, you’re able to track pages and chapters.
All of this tracking information is fed into the Logbook screen, which is really useful. It gives you an overview of everything you’re part way through — an overview I’m now checking regularly — plus some fun stats on how much entertainment tracking and logging you’re doing over time.
You can see at a glance which weekends you had more free time than others, and when new seasons of the best shows dropped — it’s all there in the charts. Plus, you can add in notes and custom events, so again there’s plenty of flexibility for setting up a tracking system that’s exactly tailored to your requirements.
I’m certainly going to be using Sofa to keep track of movies and TV shows in the future, though I’ll probably still leave the music tracking to YouTube Music and Spotify. The more data you plug into it, the more useful it gets, and the way it’s put together and laid out means logging your viewing is a fun activity rather than a chore.
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Download Sofa on iOS and get your watching, reading, and listening organized
If you’re lining up for Record Store Day 2026, this episode focuses on the one name that matters most: Zev Feldman, known as The Jazz Detective. Best known for his first-release live recordings of Bill Evans on Resonance and Elemental, Feldman has already delivered 14 Evans RSD titles, with a 15th arriving April 18.
For Record Store Day 2026, he goes further than ever with 11 new jazz releases (including the Evans) across Resonance, Elemental, and Time Traveler Recordings, the label he co founded to bring back rare and hard to find 1970s jazz albums from the Muse catalog. This is not filler for collectors. It is a serious expansion of what Record Store Day can deliver.
Join Eric Pye and Mitch Anderson as they break down the full slate, the continued demand for the Bill Evans RSD series, and the reality of tracking down and restoring lost recordings. At the center is Feldman’s latest discovery, a deep archive from legendary Chicago club owner Joe Segal, now driving an ongoing series of never before heard live albums, with five debuting for RSD 2026. If you care about jazz, vinyl, and making smart choices before the lines form, this conversation gives you a real advantage.
Sponsor: Thank you SVS for sponsoring this episode.
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Resonance Records
Joe Henderson – Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase 3-LP set featuring saxophone titan Joe Henderson and his quartet with pianist Joanne Brackeen, bassist Steve Rodby and drummer Danny Spencer captured in February of 1978. Liners by John Koenig, reflections by Brackeen, Rodby and Spencer, but Joe Segal’s son Wayne.
Ahmad Jamal – At The Jazz Showcase: Live in Chicago 2-LP set featuring the iconic pianist with bassist John Heard and drummer Frank Gant on March 20-21, 1976. Newly curated liner notes by Jamal scholar Eugene Holley, Jr. with memories from Jamal’s daughter Sumayah and appreciations from pianists Joe Alterman and Fred Hersch.
Yusef Lateef – Alight Upon The Lake: Live at the Jazz Showcase 3-LP set featuring Lateef with pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Bob Cunningham and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath captured live in June of 1975. Liner notes by Lateef biographer Herb Boyd, plus interviews with Bennie Maupin, Wayne Segal and more.
Mal Waldron – Stardust & Starlight: At The Jazz Showcase 2-LP set featuring Waldron with bassist Steve Rodby, drummer Wilbur “the Chief” Campbell, and saxophonist Sonny Stitt captured in August 1979. Newly curated liner notes by Howard Mandel, interviews with pianist Lafayette Gilchrist, bassist Steve Rodby, Wayne Segal and more.
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Time Traveler Recordings
Terry Callier – At The Earl of Old Town 2-LP set featuring the influential singer/songwriter at just 22-years-old. A compelling never-before-released 1967 solo performance, recorded by NEA Jazz Master Joe Segal. The package includes comprehensive liner notes by Callier’s longtime friend, Real Jazz Sirius/XM program director Mark Ruffin and comments by daughter Sunny Callier.
Roy Hargrove – BERN Recorded at the International Jazzfestival Bern, Switzerland in May 2000, the album captures a vital, previously unissued Roy Hargrove date showcasing the then 30-year-old trumpeter/bandleader at the height of his powers. The package features extensive liner notes by noted jazz journalist/author Nate Chinen.
Buster Williams – Pinnacle Williams’ celebrated 1975 debut album will be reissued for the first time by Time Traveler Recordings’ Muse Master Edition Series. Package includes original 1975 notes by Elliot Meadow, new liners by noted journalist Mike Flynn and a rare period photo by Raymond Ross.
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Elemental Records
Michel Petrucciani – Kuumbwa (Europe only) 2-LP set capturing a fiery 1987 performance at Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, California. The first Petrucciani release among the label’s many jazz treasures, the recording features the legendary pianist with bassist Dave Holland and drummer Eliot Zigmund. The thoughtfully annotated set includes reflections by pianist’s son Alexandre Petrucciani, drummer Eliot Zigmund, Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, journalist Thierry Pérémarti, and Kuumbwa Co-Founder Tim Jackson.
Bill Evans at the BBC 2-LP set featuring spellbinding, intimate music from a 1965 performance showcasing the legendary pianist’s trio with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Larry Bunker which aired on the British TV program Jazz 625, hosted by English trumpet player Humphrey Lyttelton. The comprehensive package includes notes by Evans scholar Marc Myers, appreciations by Jamie Cullum and James Pearson, and an interview with Israels who told Marc Myers, “Yes, we were damn near perfect at the BBC.”
Cecil Taylor Unit – Fragments, The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts 3-LP set featuring two explosive never-before released Cecil Taylor Unit performances featuring the avant-jazz pianist’s 1969 Unit with saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, saxophonist/flutist Sam Rivers and drummer Andrew Cyrille at their creative peak. The expansive package includes notes by Taylor biographer Philip Freeman, memories from drummer Andrew Cyrille and appreciations from Karen Borca, Matthew Shipp, Jack DeJohnette and more.
Freddie King – Feeling Alright: The Complete 1975 Nancy Jazz Pulsation Concerts 3-LP set featuring the blues legend Freddie King live before more than 50,000 fans in October 1975, the final full year of his life. Joining King are organist Alvin Hemphill, guitarist Ed Lively, pianist Lewis Stephens, bassist Benny Turner and drummer Calep Emphrey. The deluxe package features appreciations from his daughter, Wanda King, as well as ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, plus liner notes by author Cary Baker. The set documents an essential blues artist whose ferocious guitar tone, commanding singing, and genre-bridging vision helped reshape modern blues and rock.
The multiyear flight demonstration of FAME is expected to begin with an initial set of six spacecraft this summer.
Irish space-tech start-up Ubotica will offer its onboard AI systems in partnering with NASA on a mission to demonstrate autonomous intelligent satellite networks.
The ‘flight demonstration of federated autonomous measurement’ (FAME) mission is being run by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and will also see participation from UK satellite provision company Open Cosmos.
FAME aims to observe Earth by linking “more than 50 spacecraft from a wide range of operators in the largest autonomous satellite operations test ever attempted”, according to the three collaborators.
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The mission will use satellites equipped with Ubotica’s onboard AI to monitor, identify and ‘understand’ Earth events such as wildfires, rogue ships or volcanic activity in real time and “act immediately in orbit, capturing additional data and triggering follow-on observations without waiting for ground analysis”.
According to Ubotica, traditional Earth observation optical, radar and infrared satellites capture and send data to their operators for “delayed processing”, whereas its AI platform “enables satellites to think, see and act autonomously, processing imagery in orbit in real time, extracting insights using advanced AI models and immediately transmitting critical intelligence to Earth”.
FAME intends to demonstrate replication of that capability “across an entire constellation”, so that observations, interpretations through AI and subsequent related behaviours by one satellite are interpreted by others in the network, which can then adjust their next behaviours accordingly in coordination as “an intelligent system”.
FAME’s foundation lies in a previous collaboration between the trio, who said that in July 2025, they successfully demonstrated ‘dynamic targeting’, enabling spacecraft to reorient in moments when required – without ground personnel involvement – to capture event confirmation imagery.
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Ubotica CEO Fintan Buckley said: “Dynamic targeting showed what a single satellite with onboard AI can achieve. FAME shows what happens when that capability is coordinated across a network.
“Our contribution is the intelligence inside the Ubotica nodes: detecting what matters, processing it in orbit and passing the signal to whatever asset can act on it fastest. That is how you close the loop at a speed that is actually useful.”
The multiyear flight demonstration of FAME is expected to begin with an initial set of six spacecraft this summer. The collaborative work on dynamic targeting was recognised in December with the SpaceNews Icon Award for Space AI Partnership.
The trio said the first year of the mission will focus on maturing flight capabilities and executing AI and notification tests across the core constellation, while years two and three will see scaling to a network of more than 50 spacecraft “processing thousands of automated alerts and executing hundreds of autonomous on-orbit tasking commands across assets from multiple operators and agencies”.
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Dublin-based Ubotica was founded in 2016 by Buckley, John Bourke and Aubrey Dunne. In February, the company was among the first chosen for involvement in Ireland’s European Space Agency Phi-Lab at Irish Manufacturing Research in Mullingar, Co Westmeath.
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Contrary to earlier predictions that artificial intelligence would reduce reliance on mobile apps, new data suggests the opposite is happening. The app ecosystem is seeing a sharp rise in activity, with AI playing a key role in driving a new wave of app development.
According to a Tom’s Guide report quoting market intelligence firm Appfigures, global app releases grew by 60 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026 across both Apple’s App Store and Google Play. The growth is even more pronounced on iOS, where app launches increased by 80 percent during the same period. Early data for April shows an even steeper rise, with total app releases up 104 percent across both platforms and 89 percent on iOS alone.
AI Is Powering A New App Gold Rush
The surge in app creation comes amid earlier concerns that AI chatbots and agents would replace traditional apps altogether. Industry leaders had speculated that users might shift toward conversational interfaces, reducing the need for standalone applications.
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However, a different trend is emerging. AI tools are making it easier for individuals to build apps, even without formal coding skills. Platforms such as AI-assisted development tools are lowering the barrier to entry, enabling creators to quickly turn ideas into functional software.
This shift is reflected in the types of apps being launched. While mobile games continue to dominate in terms of volume, categories like productivity, utilities, and lifestyle apps are seeing increased activity. Health and fitness apps are also among the top segments experiencing growth.
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Why This Matters For The App Ecosystem
The resurgence of app development signals a broader transformation in how software is created. Instead of replacing apps, AI appears to be accelerating their production, potentially ushering in a new “app gold rush.”
For companies like Apple and Google, this translates into renewed platform relevance and increased opportunities for revenue through app distribution and in-app purchases. For developers and creators, it opens the door to experimentation and innovation at a scale that was previously difficult to achieve.
However, this growth also introduces challenges. A rapid influx of new apps increases the risk of low-quality, misleading, or malicious software entering the marketplace.
What It Means For Users
For users, the growing number of apps means more choices and potentially more innovative tools. AI-powered applications are expanding capabilities across productivity, communication, and entertainment.
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At the same time, the surge makes it harder to distinguish between reliable apps and those that may be spammy or harmful. Recent incidents involving fraudulent or malicious apps slipping through review processes highlight the need for stronger oversight.
What Comes Next
As AI-driven development continues to gain traction, the volume of app releases is expected to grow further. This could push platforms like Apple to enhance their review systems and introduce stricter monitoring mechanisms.
The next phase of the app economy will likely depend on balancing rapid innovation with quality control. While AI is clearly enabling a new wave of creation, ensuring trust and safety will be critical as the ecosystem expands.
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