Latest news with #modular
The Verge
6 days ago
- The Verge
Fairphone 6 gets a 10/10 on repairability
The new Fairphone 6 is smaller and more modular than older models in the series, but it's just as repairable. The phone picked up a perfect score in iFixit's teardown test, despite no longer offering tool-free battery replacements. It helps that the only tool you do need — throughout the phone — is a T5 Torx screwdriver, and only seven screws sit between you and a battery swap. Fairphone itself has shown you can get from shutdown to reboot with a new cell in just two minutes, so it's still a simple swap. The company says that the screws are required for the slimmer soft-pouch battery. The only glue throughout is found on the phone's mainboard, which is just about the only repair Fairphone doesn't recommend you make yourself: almost everything else, from the USB-C port to the individual camera sensors, can be replaced with minimal effort. Replacement parts will be available from Fairphone and iFixit, and the phone's replaceable backplate also enables a line of swappable accessories similar to those found on the CMF Phone Pro 2. iFixit also rated the phone highly for its IP55 rating — not the best around, but impressive for a phone sealed with screws rather than glue — and for the company's longterm support. Fairphone is guaranteeing seven years of Android OS updates and eight years of security patches, with a five-year warranty and a loyalty program that rewards you for hanging onto your phone and repairing it. Despite the high score, iFixit acknowledges that you do compromise on specs by opting for the Fairphone 6. Its dual rear camera is fairly basic, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7S Gen 3 chipset is no powerhouse. Even the USB port is limited to sluggish USB 2.0, though the 6.3-inch 10-120Hz LTPO OLED display is more impressive. This isn't the first Fairphone to fare so well. Every model since the Fairphone 2 has received a 10/10 in iFixit's teardown tests, a score that no other phone has ever managed. The Fairphone 6 is available now in Europe for €599 (around $705), from Fairphone and other retailers. It costs considerably more in the US, at $899, where it's only available from Murena and ships running /e/OS, Murena's privacy-focused and de-Googled take on Android. It's available to preorder now, and ships in August.
CNN
24-06-2025
- Business
- CNN
Yarbo's modular lawn maintenance devices make lawn care a breeze
One of the best things about summer? Kicking back on the patio and enjoying your backyard. One of the worst things about summer? Everything it takes to keep it looking good. Yarbo's changing all that by simplifying yard care during summer and beyond with its line of automated, eco-friendly modular lawn care products. Yarbo is the world's first multifunctional modular lawn robot, made up of one intelligent core device that powers interchangeable modules that do the hard work. What does that mean for you? Kicking back while your automated Yarbo system mows the lawn, trims the edges and clears away leaves and snow. The Yarbo Trimmer is its latest innovation and delivers super-precise, consistent results along lawn borders and tight spaces. You can preorder one now, as well as a Yarbo Core, for August shipment. Also new in? The just dropped Lawn Mower Pro, the newest and coolest robotic lawn mower setup on the block. Best of all, you can preorder it now for a major discount. Yarbo's whole goal is to take your lawn care to-do list, rip it up and revolutionize all-season yard maintenance with its automatic, modular yard robot system. The company started out in 2015 with Snowbot, inspired by the idea that winter snow removal makes life harder but doesn't have any great technological solutions. Since then, it's expanded its intentions and capabilities with Yarbo, which launched in 2022. Yarbo's version of the future is one with fully automated yards, which means more time for what matters. With so many pain points of lawn care swept away with Yarbo's innovations, it's no wonder the company has raised more than $27 million in its recent Series B round. The company's about to use it to scale up in a big way by enhancing its supply chain and production, increasing R&D investment and developing its products. Yarbo will also deepen its partnerships with suppliers and banking institutions this year, enabling it to make its products the best they can be as the company gears up to ship tens of thousands of units in 2025. Also on the to-do list, thanks to the investments, is to hire top talent, speed up its product development and strengthen its business overall while kicking off pre-IPO planning. Every dollar is being used to develop and secure Yarbo's path forward as the leader in automated lawn care. Yarbo sets itself apart from the competition with a single vision that drives all of its innovation and strategy. It harnesses cutting-edge technology to tackle real-world challenges in yard maintenance, and the model (and future product development) is constantly reinforced and tweaked by feedback from the customers themselves. The company also takes a ton of pride in what it's created from scratch, thanks to creativity, robotics know-how and a belief that lawn care can be much easier than it is now. Plus, it's rallied a great team around it with employees who support the company mission and consistently demonstrate intelligence, integrity, resilience and foresight. Lawn care has always been full of gadgets and gizmos promising life-changing, couldn't-be-simpler results, but that's not what Yarbo is about. Instead, it's making investment-worthy tech that's designed to simplify yard care through its modular smart robotics, not the latest flash-in-the-pan craze. That means asking real people what they need, whether that's through online messages or onsite visits. Yarbo's team engages with its customers to find out what's working and what can be improved in future product design, essentially making them product managers in the making. Yarbo Lawn Mower Pro The Yarbo Lawn Mower Pro attaches to your Yarbo Core to take care of mowing your yard without you having to lift a finger, no matter how damp or thick the yard is. The best part about Yarbo is that its modular construction means the robot can be on hand to help at any time of the year with whatever the seasons demand of it. For the cooler seasons ahead, you can buy components that turn your robotic lawn mower into an autonomous leaf blower or snowblower. That's not all the brand has coming out, though. You can also preorder August's hot drop now, the Yarbo Trimmer, which is designed to ensure you never have to do that pesky task yourself again. Yarbo Trimmer Forget hours spent trimming the edges after a hot few hours spent mowing the lawn. Yarbo's trimmer has an adjustable height and can navigate around gardens and trees for hands-off lawn care from start to finish. Preorder now for August shipment, but keep in mind you'll need the Back Brace Mount (below) to connect it to your Yarbo Back Brace Mount Equipped with a tow hitch and made to connect seamlessly to your robot mower, this mount connects your Yarbo Core with the Trimmer (plus some future attachments Yarbo has up its sleeve).Yarbo Snowblower Bundle Buy your Yarbo Core and Snowblower in one handy bundle that gets you everything you need to use, charge and store it. Best of all is the physical controller, which looks like a video game controller and makes handling this chore (from inside, where it's warm) so much more Blower Module It'll be fall before you know it, and a leaf blower helps make lawn care so much easier. This module attaches to your existing Yarbo Core to help make clearing paths a breeze. Don't wait to preorder the Yarbo Lawn Mower Pro to score the discounts (and pick up a module for the seasons ahead). After all, we're hitting peak summer; it's time to kick back and enjoy living in an age when you really can get a robot to do your yard work for you.
The Verge
18-06-2025
- The Verge
Framework Laptop 12 review: plastic fantastic
Antonio G. Di Benedetto is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021. Framework finally made a touchscreen laptop, and the convertible 2-in-1 is one of the coolest-looking computers ever made. It doesn't have top-tier specs, but its two-year-old 13th Gen Intel Core i3 processor isn't on its last legs just yet. Like Framework's Laptop 13, the new Laptop 12 has modular ports and fully repairable innards. And you should be able to upgrade it to a newer chip eventually, given Framework's business model of selling new parts for older laptops. But charm aside, you're still paying extra for repairability and upgradability. The Laptop 12's $799 starting price, along with its middling webcam, keyboard, and chunky bezels still make it feel like a laptop for the true believers; others may have a hard time turning down similarly priced laptops with little to no repairability but better specs. The Laptop 12 is one of the most striking laptops I've ever seen. Its pink and blue 'bubblegum' color scheme is particularly fantastic. The pastel colors are vibrant and the gray-on-gray keyboard pulls it together nicely, with left-aligned keycap legends giving it a slightly retro look. The exterior is plastic, with edges clad in thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) for added resistance to dings and scratches. It feels well built with minimal flex, likely due to its rigid metal internal frame. I described its overall feel to a colleague as 'thoughtful plastic.' As with the Framework 13, I recommend the DIY Edition (which is how you get the more fun color options). It's easier to assemble than the 13, with the keyboard connecting via pogo pins like the Laptop 16 instead of a delicate ribbon cable. You don't even need a tool to install or replace the M.2 SSD. I had our unit assembled and installing Windows 11 off a USB flash drive in about 30 minutes. Fire it up and you're treated to a 12.2-inch screen that's bright, crisp, and very responsive to touch or an optional stylus. Though, it has massive bezels on all sides. While the 1920 x 1200 resolution and 60Hz refresh aren't anything special, the dead-simple replacement procedure is. Screen replacements this easy could be clutch for classroom deployments, or for giving it to a teen. The trackpad feels better than the one on the Framework 13, and nearly as good as the excellent mechanical one on the Surface Laptop 13-inch, only lacking the Surface's satisfying ka-chunk sound. The keyboard looks amazing, but I'm less enthused by its typing feel. Its tactile feedback is slightly muted, and on rare occasions, it missed a letter I thought should have registered. It has the same 1.5mm key travel as the Laptop 13, but it doesn't have the same juice. It isn't backlit. The side-firing stereo speakers and built-in mic are serviceable. I didn't mind listening to music or playing videos on the Laptop 12, especially with the convenience of kickstand tablet mode to prop it up with the keyboard out of the way. But the webcam is mediocre, looking nice in good lighting but smeary and bad in any indoor setting that isn't bright. Its biggest omission is support for Windows Hello; there isn't even a fingerprint sensor, so get used to typing your password or PIN every time you wake it like it's 2014. Framework confirmed this was a cost-saving measure, but dang, do I sorely miss it. As for battery life, it can get you through a full school day or even a lengthier, eight-hour work day of light use, though a lengthy video call or two can noticeably shorten that. I wanted to test the entry-level configuration of the Laptop 12, but the review unit I received had 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB in its single DIMM slot and a 1TB SSD to go with the base Intel Core i3 1315U chip. With all the included expansion ports and a Windows 11 Home license, our config costs $1,086 — significantly higher than the $799 starting price. The 13th-Gen Intel chip is still a solid performer for light loads but it occasionally shows its age. You can hear the Laptop 12's fan working pretty frequently — not at an annoying volume, but just a noticeable one (and a couple of times while the lid was closed for some reason). It isn't difficult to bog the Laptop 12 down multitasking across many Chrome tabs while on a video call. I just fear what that 8GB entry-level might be like. This isn't my laptop of choice for heavy photo editing, but folding it into tablet mode and processing images in Lightroom with a stylus is an enjoyable way to work on a handful of pictures casually. Though, high-resolution RAW files are painfully slow to import, and the keyboard deck inverted on your lap gets a little warm when the laptop is under load. Framework's color-matched styluses are coming later, so I used a Metapen M2 sent with the review unit, which worked great. I love that the modularity of its four ports allows me to choose a full-size SD card reader, something you don't normally find on modern thin-and-light machines. Plus, if you opt to load it up with four USB-C ports (which can be matched to the colorful chassis), each one is capable of charging the laptop. And if you fear a child may fidget with the expansion cards by popping them in and out, there are internal screws you can tighten to prevent external tampering. It's hard not to love the Framework 12, but its drawbacks, like low starting RAM, an okay processor, and a slightly soft-feeling keyboard, are hard to swallow when it costs $799 and easily ramps up to over $1,000 with upgrades. At that price, it competes with much more powerful laptops such as the M4 MacBook Air (which, to be fair, lacks a touchscreen) and both the Surface Laptop 13-inch and Surface Pro 12-inch. The Framework could one day be upgraded to surpass those machines, but there's no guarantee. The Laptop 13 has turned out to be the shining example of repairability and upgradeability, but the big-boy Laptop 16 is currently in a weird spot. If Framework delivers on the Laptop 12's upgrade path like it has on the 13, then it could be worth the price, either for a student who can grow with it or for just about anybody who wants a tinker-friendly touchscreen 2-in-1. The Laptop 12 has the potential to become more than a quirky experiment for kids. It could be one of the best examples of a laptop in this form factor. Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge 0 Comments
WIRED
13-06-2025
- WIRED
Best Totes for Travel When You've Run Out of Room in Your Carry-On
The Cuyana System Tote is a modular gear-hauler that shape-shifts with your itinerary. Designed to outlast the churn of fast fashion, this travel tote starts minimal, but the genius lies in its add-ons. A laptop sleeve or insert organizer creates a structure on the go, with dedicated slots for your computer, water bottle, and other work essentials. Instead of stitched-on straps prone to failure, the System Tote's handles are cut directly from its leather body, minimizing points of wear. The main compartment snaps shut rather than zips, something to know if you're the spill-averse type. The Classic Easy Tote ($298) offers a zippered alternative. Modularity extends to accessories: A System Flap Bag insert doubles as a clutch or in-bag organizer, and a detachable, adjustable strap (also available in a wide model) converts the tote into a crossbody, perfect for hands-free airport sprints if you're unintentionally trying out airport theory. Specs Materials Italian leather Dimensions 10″(H) x 13.25″(W) x 5″(D) (13-inch); 11″(H) x 19″(W) x 5.5″(D) Weight 1.9 pounds (13-inch); 2.3 pounds (16-inch) Colors Available Black, Cappuccino, Caramel, Dark Olive, Stone, Dark Chestnut Care Instructions Wipe clean with a damp cloth What sets BaubleBar apart is its playful personalization. Your chosen icons (up to six depending on the size) are embroidered directly onto the canvas tote. The process is super user-friendly, with predesignated spots to help you visualize your picks. Choose from zodiac signs, cutesy foods, initials, and more. Just note that it's a final sale, so be sure of your design before ordering. Inside, you'll find a roomy main compartment with a small interior pocket and key loop. The large size fits everything you need for a beach day trip, and the medium and small options are better for light shopping or city exploring. It closes with just a snap button, which isn't the most secure for crowded areas. The quality of the playful embroidery makes it a fun choice for travel. Specs Materials 95 percent cotton, 5 percent polyester Dimensions Small: 8″(H) x 5.75″(W) x 13″(D). Medium: 12″(H) x 5.75″(W) x 18″(D). Large: 13.5″(H) x 7.5″(W) x 23.5″(D) Colors Available Natural, Navy, Beige Care Instructions Spot-clean with warm water and a washcloth
GSM Arena
09-06-2025
- GSM Arena
Fairphone 6 leaks ahead of launch
There's a new Fairphone device in the works and WinFuture shared our first look at it. Fairphone 6, which is expected to launch on June 25, is shown in its Horizon Black color. This will be one of the three available color options alongside Cloud White and Forest Green. The device appears to have a flat frame instead of the rounded one on its predecessor and a bright yellow button on the right-hand side. It remains to be seen if this is the volume slider or an entirely different key. The bezels surrounding the screen appear slimmer too and we can see the device will once again sport a punch-hole cutout for the selfie cam. Fairphone 6 in Horizon Black (image: WinFuture) Although we don't get a proper look at the back of the upcoming device, the new report suggests Fairphone 6 will feature an updated modular back design consisting of an 'upper' and 'lower' part with contrasting colors. The new device is expected to feature a plastic frame and back and a series of new interchangeable accessories that attach to its back. These include a card holder, a lanyard, and a ring for easier one-handed use. Fairphone 6 is expected to feature main (wide) and secondary (ultrawide) cameras. In usual Fairphone fashion, most of the key components like the display, camera sensors, speakers, microphones, and charging port will be user-replaceable. Fairphone 6 will be available with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage and is said to retail for €549. Source (in German)
