Apple is gearing up to enter a brand-new product category next year – a smart home speaker/display hybrid that doubles as a control hub for all your smart home devices! Imagine a compact iPad on a retro-inspired iMac G3-style stand, complete with built-in speakers. This new gadget is rumored to offer basic apps such as FaceTime, Notes, Photos, and Calendar, but don’t expect a full-blown iPad OS. We’ll dive into all the latest leaks about this future Apple product, but we’ll also talk about the iOS 18.2 beta and the Apple Intelligence features it’s going to bring later this year. Finally, we’ll discuss Samsung’s Korea-bound Fold Special Edition foldable that’s actually way thinner and fancier than the Fold 6, as well as the upcoming OnePlus Open 2!
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Back to iOS 18.2, this is actually going to be the release that’ll bring the majority of the promised AI features, such as Genmoji (Apple’s generative emoji creator) and the Image Playground app for image generation. It’ll also have Visual Intelligence – a well-integrated, Google Lens type of feature that lets your iPhone interpret the surrounding environment and offer instant info, powered by Apple’s integration with ChatGPT. So much good stuff is going to come with iOS 18.2, but this update is expected to arrive some time in December.Meanwhile in foldable land, Samsung has launched a Special Edition Galaxy Z Fold exclusive to South Korea, featuring a significant camera upgrade to 200MP and, more importantly, a way slimmer design. Whether we’ll get this phone outside of Korea remains to be seen.
Speaking of slim foldables, the first real leak of the OnePlus Open 2 / Oppo Find N5 is here, and boy things are looking good! We’re expecting a larger screen, super-slim, 9.x mm profile, improved cameras, and magnetic wireless charging.