ICYMI: the 7 biggest tech stories of the week

Date:
Sat, 24 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Description:
We've covered a bunch of big stories on TechRadar in the past week, and
here's where you can catch up on them all.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Well, it's been another
eventful week for the world of tech, to say the least, and as always, we're bringing you the top stories from TechRadar in one easy-to-read place just
in case you haven't been able to keep up with our coverage over the last
seven days.

When it comes to this week's ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) roundup, there's something for everyone, whether you come to us for updates on all things
audio or if you've been affected by another tech crisis. That said, Apple has also been in the spotlight with the launch of the iPhone Duo which we
finally managed to get our hands on. So, let's recap this week. 7. Apple teases 'Pro and Tell' event The Sudo player (Image credit: Apple) Hot on the heels of Apple's anticipated iPhone Duo keynote and the announcement of its first smart display, the company teased its upcoming 'Pro and Tell' event, which is scheduled for October 28 in LA. While we're not expecting a formal keynote, we imagine there will be plenty of hands-on time. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: So what's new for Apple? Well, the main device we're expecting to see is the company's first touchscreen MacBook in 14-inch and 16-inch editions. This will likely be an OLED display packing the same vibrant, rich viewing experience as an OLED iPhone or iPad Pro, all within a redesigned, slimmer notebook.

It doesn't end there; Apple is also tipped to unveil upgrades for its iPad lineup, though we're not expecting them to be the cheapest of devices. You
may like ICYMI here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories for August 7, 2026 ICYMI: the 7 biggest tech stories of the week ICYMI: here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories Read more: Apple promises to 'Pro and Tell' on October 28, and this might be the long-awaited arrival of the touchscreen MacBook Pro 6. Spotify cracks down on Premium Family plan sharing ChatGPT is getting more visual (Image credit: Shutterstock / PJ McDonnell) Spotify is clamping down on account sharing for those who are signed up to its Premium Family plan, and the platform has started enforcing a new QR code
verification system, which has started rolling out to a number of users if theyre not at the same address as the account manager.

The QR code, which appears on the account holders device, requires members under the same plan to scan it in order to verify that they're living in the same household. This code updates every few seconds, therefore making it harder for you to use screenshots to bypass the process. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

If you receive a verification prompt, youll have a 7-day window to complete the scan, but failure to comply comes with consequences. Spotify will boot
you back to ad-listening on the free tier, as well as banning you from
joining another Premium Family or Duo plan for 12 months. It really does feel like a prison sentence. Read more: Spotifys crack-down on Family plan sharing could land you a 12-month ban, and it could be the final straw for users myself included 5. The ultimate retro music system landed for nostalgists The Garmin Enduro 4 (Image credit: Trettitre) Start-up audio company Trettitre
has launched its new Retro Ambient Audio System, which raised $2 million on a goal of $3,000 on Kickstarter. Essentially, it's an all-in-one physical media machine: a combined record player, CD player, and cassette player, designed
to let you listen to any kind of physical media at home.

The full MSRP of the device is $899, and you can buy the components
separately if you wish, but the magnetic wall-rack is where the fun is at. Trettitre's marketing videos show users removing the record player from the wall, carrying it via a handle, plugging in some IEMs, and listening to vinyl on their kitchen table, because this turntable has an onboard battery that charges when you put it back on its wall mount. What to read next ICYMI: here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories from AI to Snap Specs ICYMI: here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories from Apple to Sonos ICYMI
here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories for August 15, 2026

The only thing that's missing is a speaker, which you'll unfortunately have
to purchase separately. Read more: This wall-mounted turntable, CD-player and cassette system is ideal for retro music lovers in tiny homes you just need
a spot for a Bluetooth speaker 4. Unitree revealed its 'kung fu' robot bodyguard Gemini AI plans are changing (Image credit: Unitree) Robot vacuums are great, but how about owning a personal Robocop that fends off burglars with its black-belt martial arts skills? Thats the kind of smart home tech we can all get behind, and Chinese robotics giant Unitree teased it this week in the form of its H2-X humanoid. Unitrees teaser video (above) is like a
trailer for a budget sci-fi movie. The H2-X is seen leaping from four-meter platforms, defending someone from a knife-wielding attacker, and (rather violently) pushing a child out of the way of an oncoming car. Sadly, theres very little in the way of specs, and the robot would find it nigh-on impossible to clear consumer certification hurdles to make it to market. Still, its an impressive demo that keeps our robot bodyguard dreams alive. Read more: Unitree reveals its H2-X bodyguard robot a 'Kung Fu' humanoid
with an 8-hour battery life and some serious martial arts skills 3. A free, lossless music streaming app won us over The Sonos Beam Ultra (Image credit: Future / Audiophile.fm) This week, Audiophile.fm launched its own app for iOS and Android after being limited to the web browser for some time. It's hi-res and completely free to use.

It's hard to believe that, in today's age of digital streaming, a platform
can exist without there being a huge catch. But as far as we can see, this is the case for Audiophile.fm. The app and website connect you to internet radio stations, which are all broadcast in FLAC at CD quality or better. While the app is ad-free, some stations do weave in the occasional ad to pay the bills.

There's also no algorithm feeding you endless variations of the songs you already like, so you can end up with truly random listening. Read more: There's a new free hi-res music streaming app on iPhone and Android with no ads and no subscription I tried it, and immediately I'm having more fun with discovery than on Spotify 2. We reviewed the iPhone Duo Starlink is expanding its network (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future) The wait is over. Not only did Apple finally reveal its first folding device, but now we finally have
our extensive review of the iPhone Duo. The flexi-phone proved expertly designed and engineered in a way only Apple could do. It opens flat and hides the crease under a unique nano-texture display. It features the powerful A20 Pro chip, two excellent 48MP cameras, and exciting versatility. The big
screen supports split-screen multitasking (though we wish we could do more than two apps), and the large display will soon support the Apple Pencil. It has all-day battery life and performance that easily supports console-grade gaming. Is it perfect? Not quite. The outer screen loses too much space to
the dock, many apps are still not optimized, and it is thicker and heavier than the competition. Still, weve liked it enough to consider making the iPhone Duo our daily driver. Read more: I spent a week with the Apple iPhone Duo and yes, it was worth the wait 1. The PHP crisis sparked an internet meltdown The Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro (Image credit: Getty Images) Aside from Duo, the three-letter phrase that dominated the tech news this week was PHP. Slightly less fun than a folding phone, this security flaw in the programming language thats used in about 70% of the worlds websites hit countless sites as they scrambled to deploy patches. And that might only be the start. High-profile sites that temporarily went dark to roll out fixes included Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, and security experts have warned that the PHP2Shell flaw is now being broadly exploited in the wild. Fortunately, for now the impact appears to be relatively minor. But with AI helping bad actors find and exploit these kinds of security vulnerabilities, its a taste of the kinds of stories we can expect to see a lot more frequently. Read more: Which major websites have been hit by the PHP security crisis? Here are the biggest so far, from Wikipedia to the Internet Archive Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/tech/icymi-the-7-biggest-tech-stories-of-the-week-in cluding-our-iphone-duo-review-and-the-recent-php-crisis


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ICYMI: the 7 biggest tech stories of the week

Date:
Sat, 31 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Description:
We've covered a bunch of big stories on TechRadar in the past week, and
here's where you can catch up on them all.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Over the past seven days, the tech world has been inundated with more news, events, and exciting announcements, and you can best believe we've had our ears to the ground to cover as much as we can.

Apple kicked off our week of news with another round of announcements, most notably its new M6 upgrades and the launch of its first-ever touchscreen MacBook. But as we prepare to leave 2026 in the past and look forward to a fresh year, we've used this week to reflect on the best tech of the past 12 months, rounding up products across 100 different categories for our Product of the Year winners. As it is with every ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) recap, these roundups are designed to give you an at-a-glance look of some of the biggest stories we've reported this week, because even we understand that keeping updated with every new tech announcement isn't a walk in the park. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: 7. We revealed our favorite tech of the year The Sudo player (Image credit: Future) The past 12 months has been rich with new product announcements, and frankly, we've been spoilt for choice. But after much deliberation, we've put together our full list of Product of the Year winners across over 100 different categories.

It's been a monumental year for Apple to say the least. As far as phones go, the iPhone 18 takes the Phone of the Year crown while the MacBook Neo
(Apple's flagship budget laptop) is our laptop of the year but there's
plenty more where that came from. You may like ICYMI here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories for August 7, 2026 ICYMI: here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories for September 26, 2026 ICYMI: here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories

We didn't honor just the best phones, laptops, cameras, headphones, and soundbars, but streaming services, health tech, and smart home devices also made the final cut so check out the full list to see which products defined 2026. Read more: Meet the TechRadar Product of the Year 2026 winners our editors choose their favorite gadgets of the last 12 months 6. The $6.3bn Binance hack was the biggest in history ChatGPT is getting more visual (Image credit: Shutterstock / Diego Ioppolo) One of this week's last-minute breaking news stories, cryptocurrency exchange Binance was hit with an attack where $6.36 billion in tokens were withdrawn in less than 30 minutes. Researchers
at TRM Labs linked the attack to North Korean hacker organization Lazarus Group. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

While we don't know exactly what went down, Binance co-CEO Richard Teng confirmed the attack via a LinkedIn post. He also added that the attacker did not simply use one engineer's permissions, and this was not a single 'one-click' action. It involved a more complex attack process". TRM Labs also said the attackers pulled funds from 10 different chains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Tron, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Avalanche, and
Polygon.

That said, the attack did not target user funds, as Teng confirmed, sharing that Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and company funds".
Read more: Binance hit by 'largest crypto theft on record' as North Korean hackers steal $6.3bn in just 20 minutes 5. Apple admitted a small number of iPhone Duos have a screen issue The Garmin Enduro 4 (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff/ Future) The launch of the iPhone Duo prompted worldwide excitement for Apple's first foldable phone, but a small number of users on Reddit have reported issues with the device's hinge cracking and causing the screen to break. What to read next ICYMI: here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories from AI to Snap Specs ICYMI: the 7 biggest tech stories of the week ICYMI here's the week's 7 biggest tech news stories for August 15, 2026

It's unclear whether these issues are a common occurrence across all iPhone duo devices or whether they're simply isolated incidents, but looking at the reports on social media we've assumed it's the latter. Foldable phones are innately more delicate than standard smartphones, and with many first-time users opting for the iPhone Duo, some may not be equipped with the knowledge of how to treat them.

Following the report, Apple shared a statement with us, saying "We are aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo
units. If users experience issues with their iPhone Duo display, they should contact AppleCare for a replacement". Read more: Apple responds to iPhone Duo 'crackgate' controversy and admits it's 'aware of an issue' that affects a 'small number of units' 4. Samsung revealed it first open-ear earbuds Gemini AI plans are changing (Image credit: Samsung) Remember when well-sealed noise cancellation was all the rage? Now audio manufacturers are obsessed with
open, including electronics giant Samsung , which finally introduced its own pair of clip-on, open earbuds: Galaxy Buds On. They wrap around from the back of your ears to the ear hole and project sound. The coolest thing about Samsungs pair is how they offer some external noise cancellation, so people next to you dont have to listen to your music. Read more: 'We analyzed 119 million ear data points' how Samsung built Galaxy Buds On, its first open-type earbuds 3. The iMac and MacBook Pro got M6 upgrades The Sonos Beam Ultra (Image credit: Apple) It's been an eventful few weeks at Apple, especially following the iPhone Duo launch, but the company's latest Mac and iPad upgrades are the icing on the cake, starting with M6 upgrades for the iMac and MacBook Pro. The iMac's pricing starts at $1,499, the same as its predecessor, while the MacBook Pro M6 also starts at the same level as its M5 predecessor, which is $1,999 / 1,999 / AU$3,199.

Marking the company's first 2nm chip, Apple says it will give new iMacs a notable boost for local AI processing, running 5x faster for on-device AI tasks than the previous-gen all-in-one with the M4 chip. As for the new M6 MacBook, Apple promises 30% faster graphics performance thanks to its 12-core GPU, as well as a 25% performance boost for on-device AI processing versus
the M5.

At the same time, Apple unveiled its new OLED iPad mini starting at $699 /
699 / AU$1,099. Central to the refresh is the larger 8.5-inch OLED Super Retina XDR screen, promising a more immersive view with enhanced visuals, as well as a brightness boost, now topping out at 1,200 nits, which is a considerable leap over the previous mini's 500 nits. Read more: Apple reveals iMac M6 and MacBook Pro M6 and the good news is there are no price hikes 2. Amazon gave us 8 new Echo and Alexa gadgets Starlink is expanding its network (Image credit: Amazon) Amazon gave its range of smart home devices some new siblings this week, announcing eight new gadgets including speakers and smart displays. Most of the products are available now, though some are only available for preorder.

Joining the mix is the new Echo Dot speaker, which packs a full-range driver for improved audio and 50% more bass, as well as a fourth microphone. There's also a new Echo Dot for kids.

But among the new devices is the Echo Studio with Home Camera, which combines audio and home security into one handy gadget. And it doesn't end there; the Alexa Home Map is a new smart display that renders your home in 3D, allowing you to see your entire smart home ecosystem of smart lights, speakers, displays, and cameras at a glance. Read more: 8 new Echo and Alexa gadgets that Amazon just announced from an upgraded Echo Dot to an Echo Studio with
a camera attached 1. Apple revealed its first touchscreen Mac The Amazon
Alexa Tablet 12 Pro (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future) This week, Apple did the previously unthinkable and finally introduced a touchscreen MacBook Pro. New Apple CEO John Ternus got to do the honors at an unusual event in Hollywood, California.

Shortly after the reveal, we got our hands or fingers on the new laptops (14-and-16-inch) and found the experience surprisingly intuitive. Guess Apple was right to finally change its mind. Read more: Apple's Touchscreen MacBook Pro is finally here, and yes, touching a MacBook screen feels totally and wonderfully natural Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/tech/icymi-the-7-biggest-tech-stories-of-the-week-in cluding-apples-first-touchscreen-macbook-and-our-favorite-tech-of-2026


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