The "NexDock" (from Nex Computer) already turns your phone into a laptop workstation. Purism chose it as the docking station for their Librem 5 phones.

But now Nex is offering its own smartphone "that runs Android 16, launches Debian, and dual-boots into Windows 11," according to the blog It's FOSS: Fourteen years after the first concept video was teased, the NexPhone is here, powered by a Qualcomm QCM6490, which, the keen-eyed among you will remember from the now-discontinued Fairphone 5.

By 2026 standards, it's dated hardware, but Nex Computer doesn't seem to be overselling it, as they expect the NexPhone to be a secondary or backup phone, not a flagship contender. The phone includes an Adreno 643 GPU, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 512GB via a microSD card.

In terms of software, the NexPhone boots into NexOS, a bloatware-free and minimal Android 16 system, with Debian running as an app with GPU acceleration, and Windows 11 being the dual-boot option that requires a restart to access. ["And because the default Windows interface isn't designed for a handheld screen, we built our own Mobile UI from the ground up to make Windows far easier to navigate on a phone," notes a blog post from Nex founder/CEO Emre Kosmaz].

And, before I forget, you can plug the NexPhone into a USB-C or HDMI display, add a keyboard and mouse to transform it into a desktop workstation.
There's a camera plus "a comprehensive suite of sensors," according to the article, "that includes a fingerprint scanner, accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, and proximity sensor....

"NexPhone is slated for a Q3 2026 release (July-September)..."

Back in 2012, explains Nex founder/CEO Emre Kosmaz, "most investors weren't excited about funding new hardware. One VC even told us, 'I don't understand why anyone buys anything other than Apple'..." Over the last decade, we kept building and shipping — six generations of NexDock — helping customers turn phones into laptop-like setups (display + keyboard + trackpad). And now the industry is catching up faster than ever. With Android 16, desktop-style experiences are becoming more native and more mainstream. That momentum is exactly why NexPhone makes sense today...

Thank you for being part of this journey. With your support, I hope NexPhone can help move us toward a world where phones truly replace laptops and PCs — more often, more naturally, and for more people.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the Guardian: The financial campaigner James Daley has launched a 1.5 billion pound (approximately $1.5 billion) class action lawsuit against Apple over its mobile phone wallet, claiming the U.S. tech company blocked competition and charged hidden fees that ultimately harmed 50 million UK consumers. The lawsuit takes aim at Apple Pay, which they say has been the only contactless payment service available for iPhone users in Britain over the past decade.

Daley, who is the founder of the advocacy group Fairer Finance, claims this situation amounted to anti-competitive behavior and allowed Apple to charge hidden fees, ultimately pushing up costs for banks that passed charges on to consumers, regardless of whether they owned an iPhone. It is the first UK legal challenge to the company's conduct in relation to Apple Pay, and takes place months after regulators like the Competition and Markets Authority and the Payments Systems Regulator began scrutinising the tech industry's digital wallet services. The case has been filed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal, which will now decide whether the class action case can move forward.

[...] Daley's lawsuit alleges that Apple refused to give other app developers and outside businesses access to the contactless payment technology on its iPhones, which meant it could charge banks and card issuers fees on Apple Pay transactions that his lawyers say "are not in line with industry practice." The lawsuit notes that similar fees are not charged on equivalent payments on Android devices, which are built by Google. It says that the additional costs were borne by UK consumers, having been passed on through charges on a range of personal banking products ranging from current accounts, credit cards, to savings and mortgages. The lawsuit says that about 98% of consumers are exposed to banks that listed cards on Apple Pay, meaning the vast majority of the UK population may have been affected.

A federal judge revealed a previously undisclosed ~$800 million, six-year partnership between Epic Games and Google tied to Unreal Engine services and joint marketing. It raises questions about whether the deal influenced Epic's willingness to settle its antitrust case over Android. The Verge reports: [California District Judge James Donato] allowed Epic and Google to keep most of the details of the plan under wraps. But during the hearing, he quizzed witnesses, including Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and economics expert Doug Bernheim, on how it might impact settlement talks -- revealing some hints in the process. "You're going to be helping Google market Android, and they're going to be helping you market Fortnite; that deal doesn't exist today, right?" Donato asked Bernheim, who answered in the affirmative. He also described it as a "new business between Epic and Google."

Sweeney's testimony cracked the mystery a little further. He referred to the agreement as relating to the "metaverse," a term Sweeney has used to refer to Epic's game Fortnite. "Epic's technology is used by many companies in the space Google is operating in to train their products, so the ability for Google to use the Unreal Engine more fullsome... sorry, I'm blowing this confidentiality," Sweeney said. Donato then offered a hard dollar figure on one part of the deal: "An $800 million spend over six years, that's a pretty healthy partnership," he said. We soon learned that refers to Epic spending $800 million to purchase some sort of services from Google: "Every year we've decided against Google, in this year we're deciding to use Google at market rates," he said. Sweeney did throw cold water on the idea that Epic and Google are jointly building a single new product together, though. "This is Google and Epic each separately building product lines," he clarified, when Judge Donato asked what the term sheet referred to with the line "Google and Epic will work together."

Donato seemed potentially leery of the partnership, asking Bernheim whether it could constitute a "quid pro quo" that reduced Epic's incentive to push for terms that would benefit other developers. Currently, Epic is backing a settlement that would see Google reduce its standard app store fees worldwide and allow alternative app stores to register for easy installation on Android. Sweeney disputed the notion that Epic might be getting paid off to soften its terms, when it's the one paying out. "I don't see anything crooked about Epic paying Google off to encourage much more robust competition than they've allowed in the past," he said. "We view this as a significant transfer of value from Epic to Google." He also says the Epic Games Store won't get any special treatment from Android in the future under this deal. It appears that the settlement arrangement is tied to the business deal. Judge Donato suggested that Epic and Google would only make the deal if the settlement goes through. Sweeney says the specific terms of the deal have not yet been reached, but admitted that he expects them to. He told Judge Donato that yes, he considers the settlement and deal "an important part of Epic's growth plan for the future."

Nova Launcher has been acquired by Instabridge, which says it will keep the app maintained but is evaluating ad-supported options for the free version. Android Authority reports: Today, Nova Launcher announced that the Swedish company Instabridge has acquired it from Branch Metrics. Instabridge claims it wants to be a responsible owner of Nova and does not want to reinvent the launcher overnight. However, the launcher still needs a sustainable business model to support ongoing development and maintenance. To this end, Instabridge is exploring different options, including paid tiers and ad-supported options for the free version. The new owners claim that if ads are introduced, Nova Prime will remain ad-free. However, this is misleading, as ads are already here for some users. Last year, the founder and original programmer of Nova Launcher left the company, signaling its "death" as he had been the sole developer working on the launcher for the past year.

New data from Similarweb shows Threads has overtaken X in daily mobile users. However, X still dominates on the web with around 150 million daily web visits compared to Threads' 8.5 million daily visits. TechCrunch reports: Similarweb's data shows that Threads had 141.5 million daily active users on iOS and Android as of January 7, 2026, after months of growth, while X has 125 million daily active users on mobile devices. This appears to be the result of longer-term trends, rather than a reaction to the recent X controversies [...]. Instead, Threads' boost in daily mobile usage may be driven by other factors, including cross-promotions from Meta's larger social apps like Facebook and Instagram (where Threads is regularly advertised to existing users), its focus on creators, and the rapid rollout of new features.

Over the past year, Threads has added features like interest-based communities, better filters, DMs, long-form text, disappearing posts, and has recently been spotted testing games. Combined, the daily active user increases suggest that more people are using Threads on mobile as a more regular habit. Further reading: Threads Now Has More Than 400 Million Monthly Active Users

Asus won't release any new smartphones this year, and that may signal the brand's exit from the Android space altogether. From a report: Asus Chairman Jonney Shih confirmed the news at an event in Taiwan on Jan. 16. According to a machine-translated version of quotes reported by Inside, Shih said, "Asus will no longer add new mobile phone models in the future."

Shih said Asus will continue to support existing smartphone users with software updates and warranty assistance. This matches a previous report from DigiTimes earlier this month that said Asus wouldn't introduce new models in 2026. The big question is whether that means stepping back altogether or a temporary pause. In his speech, Shih alluded to the possibility that Asus may return to smartphones, but did not confirm it.

After nearly two decades of touchscreen dominance, QWERTY smartphones are staging a niche comeback, with Clicks and Unihertz unveiling new physical-keyboard phones at CES 2026. Gizmodo reports: At CES 2026, Clicks, the company behind the Clicks keyboard case and the new Power Keyboard, announced plans to sell the Communicator, a "second phone" with a QWERTY keypad. Clicks pitches the $500 phone, launching later this year, as a device primarily intended for messaging -- sending texts, DMs, Slack messages, whatever. The company didn't have a functional unit -- only a mockup dummy to fondle at the show -- but it looked cool enough, even if it'll be a very niche product. It's a cool idea, but how many people will carry a companion phone to their main phone just to shoot off a few DMs? $500 is a lot to ask for that satisfaction.

But Clicks isn't the only one trying to bring back QWERTY phones. Unihertz, makers of the really tiny Jelly Android phones and also Tank phones with massive battery capacities, also teased a new phone with a physical keyboard. The Titan 2 Elite seems to be a less gimmicky version of the Titan 2, which itself was a BlackBerry Passport knockoff but with a bizarre square screen on the backside.

Look closely, and there are some weird similarities between the Clicks Communicator and the Titan 2 Elite. We don't have dimension specs yet, but the screens seem to have the same rounded corners, and even the hole-punch camera is in the same upper-left corner. The only difference seems to be the keyboards; the Communicator uses individual keys, whereas the Titan 2 Elite's keyboard is more BlackBerry-esque. After digging into the Clicks Communicator's specs, a few other features stood out that Slashdotters might appreciate. There's a dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack, a physical "kill switch" (essentially an alert slider), fingerprint scanner and even a customizable notification LED. The last time we saw a phone with a dedicated notification LED was around 2019!

Prosecutors in Taiwan issued an arrest warrant [non-paywalled source] for the chief executive officer of the Chinese smartphone company OnePlus, stepping up the island's efforts to block China's tech players from recruiting Taiwanese talent. From a report: The Shilin district prosecutors office issued the warrant for CEO and co-founder Pete Lau and indicted two Taiwanese citizens who worked for him, according to an indictment by the office. OnePlus, a niche player whose phones run on a customized version of Android, is suspected of illegally recruiting more than 70 engineers in Taiwan.

The autonomous territory has stepped up its efforts to stop Chinese companies from raiding workers, who are often coveted because of their technical knowledge and experience. The Taiwanese officials put such limitations in place because they say recruiting from the semiconductor sector and other tech operations could jeopardize national security.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: SteamOS's slow march across the Windows-dominated PC gaming landscape is continuing to creep along. At CES this week, Lenovo announced it will launch a version of last year's high-priced, high-powered Legion Go 2 handheld with Valve's gaming-focused, Linux-based OS pre-installed starting in June. And there are some intriguing signs from Valve that SteamOS could come to non-AMD devices in the not-too-distant future as well. [...] Valve has also been working behind the scenes to expand SteamOS's footprint beyond its own hardware. After rolling out the SteamOS Compatible software label last May, SteamOS version 3.7 offered support for manual installation on AMD-powered handhelds like the ROG Ally and the original Legion Go.

Even as SteamOS slowly spreads across the AMD-powered hardware landscape, the OS continues to be limited by a lack of compatibility with the wide world of Arm devices. That could change in the near future, though, as Valve's upcoming Steam Frame VR headset will sport a new version of SteamOS designed specifically for the headset's Arm-based hardware. [...] It's an especially exciting prospect when you consider the wide range of Arm-based Android gaming handhelds that currently exist across the price and performance spectrum. While emulators like Fex can technically let players access Steam games on those kinds of handhelds, official Arm support for SteamOS could lead to a veritable Cambrian explosion of hardware options with native SteamOS support.

[...] That's great news for fans of PC-based gaming handhelds, just as the announcement of Valve's Steam Machine will provide a convenient option for SteamOS access on the living room TV. For desktop PC gamers, though, rigs sporting Nvidia GPUs might remain the final frontier for SteamOS in the foreseeable future. "With Nvidia, the integration of open-source drivers is still quite nascent," [Valve's Pierre-Louis Griffais] told Frandroid about a year ago. "There's still a lot of work to be done on that front So it's a bit complicated to say that we're going to release this version when most people wouldn't have a good experience."

Google will begin releasing Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source code only twice a year starting in 2026. "In the past, Google would release the source code for every quarterly Android release, of which there are four each year," notes Android Authority. From the report: Google told Android Authority that, effective 2026, Google will publish new source code to AOSP in Q2 and Q4. The reason is to ensure platform stability for the Android ecosystem and better align with Android's trunk-stable development model.

Developers navigating to source.android.com today will see a banner confirming the change that reads as follows: "Effective in 2026, to align with our trunk-stable development model and ensure platform stability for the ecosystem, we will publish source code to AOSP in Q2 and Q4. For building and contributing to AOSP, we recommend utilizing android-latest-release instead of aosp-main. The aosp-latest-release manifest branch will always reference the most recent release pushed to AOSP. For more information, see Changes to AOSP."

A spokesperson for Google offered some additional context on this decision, stating that it helps simplify development, eliminates the complexity of managing multiple code branches, and allows them to deliver more stable and secure code to Android platform developers. The spokesperson also reiterated that Google's commitment to AOSP is unchanged and that this new release schedule helps the company build a more robust and secure foundation for the Android ecosystem. Finally, Google told us that its process for security patch releases will not change and that the company will keep publishing security patches each month on a dedicated security-only branch for relevant OS releases just as it does today.

Longtime reader joshuark shares a report: As spotted by Bluesky user DodgerFanLA, going to Office.com now greets you with the following helpful explainer: "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share, and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps now including Copilot.*"

Never has an asterisk been more relevant to me than following the words "your favorite apps now including Copilot."

About a decade ago, hardware company Corsair attempted to pivot from its classic logo -- a subtle trio of ship sails -- to a newer, edgier look, a pair of crossed swords that gave off regrettable '2000s tribal tattoo' energy. The rebrand didn't last long: after a fierce outcry from people who correctly thought the new logo sucked, Corsair swapped to a refreshed take on the sail logo, which it's been using ever since. Corsair was established in 1994, and made about $1.4 billion last year -- which I bring up because today Microsoft, a slightly bigger company, has slipped on its own rebranding banana peel. The company is seemingly all but ditching the Office name -- which it introduced four years before Corsair existed, and which drove more than $30 billion in revenue just last quarter -- with a catchy new name: "Microsoft 365 Copilot app."

The company had already downplayed the Office name, despite it being perhaps the most universally recognized software in existence, by renaming its cloud version of Word, Powerpoint, etc. Office 365 in 2010, then Microsoft 365 in 2017. Now when you want to open up a Word document, you can get to them by launching the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Intuitive!

Should Microsoft just go ahead and rebrand Windows, the only piece of its arsenal more famous than Office, as Copilot, too? I do actually think we're not far off from that happening. Facebook rebranded itself "Meta" when it thought the metaverse would be the next big thing, so it seems just as plausible that Microsoft could name the next version of Windows something like "Windows with Copilot" or just "Windows AI."

Copilot is the app for launching the other apps, but it's also a chatbot inside the apps. Any questions? Correction: Office hasn't been renamed to "Microsoft 365 Copilot app." The Verge adds: The confusion comes from Microsoft's own Office.com domain, which for the past year has acted as a way to push businesses and consumers to use the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. This app is a hub app that provides access to Copilot, as well as all the Office apps. Microsoft used to call this app simply Office, before the company rebranded Office to Microsoft 365 in 2022.

If you visit Office.com you'll see a big welcome to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, and a note from Microsoft that would confuse anyone not following the company's confusing branding: "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office)..." That mention of "formerly Office" is Microsoft referring to the very old Office app that launched in 2019 as a way to try and convince people to use online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Until a year ago it used to be called the Microsoft 365 app. Microsoft then announced it was rebranding its Microsoft 365 app in November 2024 to a Copilot one, which I and everyone else were very confused at. The new app icon and name -- Microsoft 365 Copilot -- then rolled out on January 15th last year to Windows, iOS, and Android users.

One-Netbook has unveiled the OneXSugar Wallet, the first gaming handheld with a folding OLED display. The Verge reports: The OneXSugar Wallet was announced on China's Weibo yesterday, but with few details about its features and capabilities. That folding OLED screen has a resolution of 2480 x 1860 pixels, and the handheld will be powered by an unspecified "Qualcomm gaming platform flagship processor," but its performance and emulation capabilities are unknown.

Based on photos and a video released by One-Netbook, the OneXSugar Wallet will feature a standard set of controls including asymmetrical thumbsticks, four action buttons, and a D-pad situated on either side of the lower half of its display. There are also shoulder buttons and triggers on the back of the handheld, and a pair of front-facing speakers flanking the top half of the screen. The biggest question is how much will the handheld cost...

Even after its acquisition by Qualcomm, the EFF believes Arduino "isn't imposing any new bans on tinkering with or reverse engineering Arduino boards," (according to Mitch Stoltz, EFF director for competition and IP litigation). While Adafruit's managing editor Phillip Torrone had claimed to 36,000+ followers on LinkedIn that Arduino users were now "explicitly forbidden from reverse engineering," Arduino corrected him in a blog post, noting that clause in their Terms & Conditions was only for Arduino's Software-as-a-Service cloud applications. "Anything that was open, stays open."

And this week EE Times spoke to Guneet Bedi, SVP of Arduino, "who was unequivocal in saying that Arduino's governance structure had remained intact even after the acquisition." "As a business unit within Qualcomm, Arduino continues to make independent decisions on its product portfolio, with no direction imposed on where it should or should not go," Bedi said. "Everything that Arduino builds will remain open and openly available to developers, with design engineers, students and makers continuing to be the primary focus.... Developers who had mastered basic embedded workflows were now asking how to run large language models at the edge and work with artificial intelligence for vision and voice, with an open source mindset," he said. According to Bedi, this was where Qualcomm's technology became relevant. "Qualcomm's chipsets are high performance while also being very low power, which comes from their mobile and Android phone heritage. Despite being great technology, it is not easily accessible to design engineers because of cost and complexity. That made this a strong fit," he said.

The most visible outcome of this acquisition is Uno Q, which Bedi described as being comparable to a mid-tier Android phone in capability, starting at a price of $44. For Arduino, this marked a shift beyond microcontrollers without abandoning them. "At the end of the day, we have not gone away from our legacy," Bedi said. "You still have a real-time microcontroller, and you still write code the way Arduino developers are used to. What we added is compute, without forcing people to change how they work." Uno Q combines a Linux-based compute system with a real-time microcontroller from the STM32 family. "You do not need two different development environments or two different hardware platforms," Bedi added... Rather than introducing a customized operating system, Arduino chose standard Debian upstream. "We are not locking developers into anything," Bedi said. "It is standard Debian, completely open...." Pre-built models covering tasks like object detection and voice recognition run locally on the board....

While the first reference design uses Qualcomm silicon, Bedi was careful to stress that this does not define the roadmap. "There is zero dependency on Qualcomm silicon," he said. "The architecture is portable. Tomorrow, we can run this on something else." That distinction matters, particularly for developers wary of vendor lock-in following the acquisition. Uno Q does compete directly with platforms like Raspberry Pi and Nvidia Jetson, but Bedi framed the difference less in terms of raw performance and more in flexibility. "When you build on those platforms, you are locked to the board," he said. "Here, you can build a prototype, and if you like it, you can also get access to the chip and design your own hardware." With built-in storage removing the need for external components, Uno Q positions itself less as a faster board and more as a way to simplify what had become an increasingly messy development stack...

Looking a year ahead, Bedi believes developers should experience continuity rather than disruption. The familiar Arduino approach to embedded and real-time systems remains unchanged, while extending naturally into more compute-intensive applications... Taken together, Bedi's comments suggest that Arduino's post-acquisition direction is less about changing what Arduino is, and more about expanding what it can realistically be used for, without abandoning the simplicity that made it relevant in the first place.
"We want to redefine prototyping in the age of physical artificial intelligence," Bedi said...

Apple's Developer Academy in Detroit has spent roughly $30 million over four years training hundreds of people to build iPhone apps, but not everyone lands coding jobs right away, according to a WIRED story published this week.

The program launched in 2021 as part of Apple's $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and costs an estimated $20,000 per student -- nearly twice what state and local governments budget for community colleges. About 600 students have completed the 10-month course at Michigan State University. Academy officials say 71% of graduates from the past two years found full-time jobs across various industries.

The program provides iPhones, MacBooks and stipends ranging from $800 to $1,500 per month, though one former student said many participants relied on food stamps. Apple contributed $11.6 million to the academy. Michigan taxpayers and the university's regular students covered about $8.6 million -- nearly 30% of total funding. Two graduates said their lack of proficiency in Android hurt their job prospects. Apple's own US tech workforce went from 6% Black before the academy opened to about 3% this year.

Linux's share of the desktop market has climbed to as much as 11% by one count, but that figure includes Chromebooks, and the traditional Linux desktop remains hamstrung by the same fragmentation that killed Unix decades ago. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing in The Register, argues that the proliferation of Linux desktops -- more than a dozen significant interfaces exist today, and DistroWatch lists "upwards of a hundred" -- makes it nearly impossible for ordinary users to know where to start.

Linus Torvalds has long agreed with this hypothesis. "We have way too many desktops," Vaughan-Nichols notes, summarizing Torvalds' position. The deeper issue lies in software delivery: traditional package managers like DEB and RPM "simply don't scale for the desktop," forcing distro builders to constantly rebuild programs for their specific environments. Containerized solutions like Flatpaks, Snaps and AppImages should solve this by bundling dependencies into universal packages, but the Linux community remains divided over which to adopt.

Linux Mint, for instance, refuses Snap because "Canonical has too much control over the Snap store." Hardware support further complicates this challenges, the veteran journalist writes. While Dell sells Ubuntu machines and specialist vendors like System76 and TUXEDO Computers cater to enthusiasts, "none of them make it easy" for mainstream buyers, and no major OEM strongly backs Linux. Torvalds has pointed to Chromebooks and Android as the model: Linux won on smartphones because "there's a single, unified platform with a unified way to install programs."

Longtime Linux developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced that the Linux kernel has received its first CVE tied to Rust code. Phoronix reports: This first CVE (CVE-2025-68260) for Rust code in the Linux kernel pertains to the Android Binder rewrite in Rust. There is a race condition that can occur due to some noted unsafe Rust code. That code can lead to memory corruption of the previous/next pointers and in turn cause a crash. This CVE for the possible system crash is for Linux 6.18 and newer since the introduction of the Rust Binder driver. At least though it's just a possible system crash and not any more serious system compromise with remote code execution or other more severe issues.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google has increasingly moved toward keeping features locked to its hardware products, but the Translate app is bucking that trend. The live translate feature is breaking out of the Google bubble with support for any earbuds you happen to have connected to your Android phone. The app is also getting improved translation quality across dozens of languages and some Duolingo-like learning features.

The latest version of Google's live translation is built on Gemini and initially rolled out earlier this year. It supports smooth back-and-forth translations as both on-screen text and audio. Beginning a live translate session in Google Translate used to require Pixel Buds, but that won't be the case going forward. Google says a beta test of expanded headphone support is launching today in the US, Mexico, and India.

The audio translation attempts to preserve the tone and cadence of the original speaker, but it's not as capable as the full AI-reproduced voice translations you can do on the latest Pixel phones. Google says this feature should work on any earbuds or headphones, but it's only for Android right now. The feature will expand to iOS in the coming months. [...] The new translation model, which is also available in the search-based translation interface, supports over 70 languages.

EU regulators say Google's Play Store changes still don't meet fairness rules and are preparing a potentially hefty 2026 fine unless Google makes deeper concessions. Reuters reports: Google Play has been in the European Commission's crosshairs since March, with regulators singling out technical restrictions preventing app developers from steering users to other channels for cheaper offers. Another issue is the service fee charged by Google for facilitating an app developer's initial acquisition of a new customer via Google Play which the regulator said goes beyond what is justified.

Tweaks to Google Play announced in August to make it easier for app developers to direct customers to other channels and choose a fee model are still falling short, the people said, with the EU antitrust regulator viewing Apple's recent changes to its App Store as a benchmark. [...] Google can still offer to make more changes before regulators impose a fine, likely in the first quarter of the next year, the people said, adding that the timing of any sanction can still change. "We continue to work closely with the European Commission in its ongoing investigation but have serious concerns that further changes would put Android and Play users at risk of malware, scams and data theft. Unlike iOS, Android is already open by design," a Google spokesperson said.

Microsoft's Xbox consoles were conspicuously absent from Black Friday's winners, failing to crack the top three in U.S. sales during one of the retail calendar's most important weeks. According to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, the PlayStation 5 captured 47% of Black Friday week console sales ending November 29, followed by the Nintendo Switch 2 at 24% and -- somewhat remarkably -- the NEX Playground, a Kinect-like Android device aimed at children, at 14%.

Microsoft ran no promotions on its consoles during the period. The Xbox Series X currently retails for $650 following this year's price increase, up from its $500 launch price in 2020. Sony, by contrast, discounted the PS5 by roughly 40% at some retailers. Piscatella noted on Bluesky that products without price promotions typically see no seasonal lift. Costco has removed Xbox consoles from its U.S. and UK websites.

Jolla is "trying again with a new crowd-funded smartphone," reports Phoronix: Finnish company Jolla started out 14 years ago where Nokia left off with MeeGo and developed Sailfish OS as a new Linux smartphone platform. Jolla released their first smartphone in 2013 after crowdfunding but ultimately the Sailfish OS focus the past number of years now has been offering their software stack for use on other smartphone devices [including some Sony Xperia smartphones and OnePlus/Samsung/ Google/ Xiaomi devices].
This new Jolla Phone's pre-order voucher page says the phone will only produced if 2,000 units are ordered before January 4. (But in just a few days they've already received 1,721 pre-orders — all discounted to 499€ from a normal price between 599 and 699 €). Estimate delivery is the first half of 2026. "The new Jolla Phone is powered by a high-performing Mediatek 5G SoC," reports 9to5Linux, "and features 12GB RAM, 256GB storage that can be expanded to up to 2TB with a microSDXC card, a 6.36-inch FullHD AMOLED display with ~390ppi, 20:9 aspect ratio, and Gorilla Glass, and a user-replaceable 5,500mAh battery." The Linux phone also features 4G/5G support with dual nano-SIM and a global roaming modem configuration, Wi-Fi 6 wireless, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, 50MP Wide and 13MP Ultrawide main cameras, front front-facing wide-lens selfie camera, fingerprint reader on the power key, a user-changeable back cover, and an RGB indication LED. On top of that, the new Jolla Phone promises a user-configurable physical Privacy Switch that lets you turn off the microphone, Bluetooth, Android apps, or whatever you wish.

The device will be available in three colors, including Snow White, Kaamos Black, and The Orange. All the specs of the new Jolla Phone were voted on by Sailfish OS community members over the past few months. Honouring the original Jolla Phone form factor and design, the new model ships with Sailfish OS (with support for Android apps), a Linux-based European alternative to dominating mobile operating systems that promises a minimum of 5 years of support, no tracking, no calling home, and no hidden analytics...

The device will be manufactured and sold in Europe, but Jolla says that it will design the cellular band configuration to enable global travelling as much as possible, including e.g. roaming in the U.S. carrier networks. The initial sales markets are the EU, the UK, Switzerland, and Norway.