In a study published in Science Advances, researchers in Drexel's College of Engineering describe a method for spraying invisibly thin antennas, made from a type of two-dimensional, metallic material called MXene, that perform as well as those being used in mobile devices, wireless routers and portable transducers. Phys.Org reports: The researchers, from the College's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, report that the MXene titanium carbide can be dissolved in water to create an ink or paint. The exceptional conductivity of the material enables it to transmit and direct radio waves, even when it's applied in a very thin coating. Preserving transmission quality in a form this thin is significant because it would allow antennas to easily be embedded -- literally, sprayed on -- in a wide variety of objects and surfaces without adding additional weight or circuitry or requiring a certain level of rigidity.

Initial testing of the sprayed antennas suggest that they can perform with the same range of quality as current antennas, which are made from familiar metals, like gold, silver, copper and aluminum, but are much thicker than MXene antennas. Making antennas smaller and lighter has long been a goal of materials scientists and electrical engineers, so this discovery is a sizable step forward both in terms of reducing their footprint as well as broadening their application.

At an event yesterday where the company unveiled a range of new Echo smart speakers and other Alexa-enabled devices, the company announced a new way to easily set up internet of things (IoT) devices. The Verge reports: Called Wi-Fi Simple Setup, the system will use Amazon's Wi-Fi Lockers to store your Wi-Fi credentials and share them with compatible smart home devices. Amazon is debuting this tech with TP-Link and Eero, with the idea that customers can reuse network credentials in order to set up new devices. This means devices will connect on their own instead of you having to manually set up each smart product. According to Amazon, it's as easy as plugging in a Wi-Fi Simple Setup-enabled device. The device will automatically look for the Wi-Fi Simple Setup Network and connect once it receives encrypted credentials. Amazon says the process should take no longer than 30 seconds. The ecommerce company also announced a "plug-and-play smart home kit called Alexa Connect Kit. "It starts with a module that has Bluetooth LE and Wi-Fi and a real-time OS that companies can put in their products in order to make them smart," reports The Verge.

iFixit tore apart Apple's iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, revealing very similar insides to last year's iPhone X. Engadget reports the findings: One of the most interesting features is the battery on the XS. The iPhone XS sports a slightly downgraded battery from the iPhone X, a 10.13 Wh battery (2,659 mAh at 3.81 V) versus 10.35 Wh (2716 mAh at 3.81 V). But a new configuration might more than make up for it: Apple is using a brand-new L-shaped single-cell battery instead of two separate batteries. However, the XS Max still sports two batteries. Some other tweaks include a new, Apple-branded power management chip and a new antenna line on the bottom of the phone. The camera bump is also slightly taller, meaning your iPhone X case might not fit on your XS, if you plan on upgrading. The Verge also notes that "there's no evidence that the teardown team could find of any improved water or dust resistance, despite the improved IP68 ratings on the iPhone XS and XS Max."

Xiaomi, the world's fourth largest smartphone maker, was caught by a Reddit user for placing ads in the settings menu of its smartphones. The ads reportedly show up in Xiaomi's MIUI apps, including the music app and settings menu (MIUI is the name of Xiaomi's skinned version of Android). The Verge reports: When The Verge reached out to Xiaomi for confirmation on this matter, the company responded with the following statement, while also clarifying that it only applies to its devices running MIUI and not its Android One phones: "Advertising has been and will continue to be an integral part of Xiaomi's Internet services, a key component of the company's business model. At the same time, we will uphold user experience by offering options to turn off the ads and by constantly improving our approach towards advertising, including adjusting where and when ads appear. Our philosophy is that ads should be unobtrusive, and users always have the option of receiving fewer recommendations."

According to "several real-world tests and synthetic benchmarks," the new iPhone XS and XS Max, equipped with the world's first 7-nanometer A12 Bionic processor, are the world's fastest smartphones, reports Tom's Guide. They even significantly outperform Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 chip. From the report: Geekbench 4 is a benchmark that measures overall performance, and no other phone comes close to Apple's new handsets on this test. The iPhone Xs notched 11,420, and the iPhone Xs Max hit 11,515. The older iPhone X scored 10,357, so that's about an 11 percent improvement. There's a lot more distance between the new iPhones and Android flagships. The fastest Android phone around, the OnePlus 6, scored 9,088 on Geekbench 4 with its 8GB of RAM, while the Galaxy Note 9 reached 8,876.

To test real-world performance, we use the Adobe Premiere Clips app to transcode a 2-minute 4K video to 1080p. The iPhone X was miles ahead last year with a time of just 42 seconds. This time around, the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max knocked it down further to 39 seconds. The Galaxy S9+ took 2 minutes and 32 seconds to complete the task, and that's the fastest we've seen from an Android phone. The OnePlus 6 finished in 3:45, and the LG G7 ThinQ took 3:16. One good way to measure real-world performance is to see how long it takes for a phone to load demanding apps. Because the phones have the same processor for this round, we just used the iPhone Xs Max and put it up against the iPhone X and the Galaxy Note 9. The iPhone XS Max was faster every time, including a 15-second victory in Fortnite over the Note 9 and 3-second win in Asphalt 9. The phones were closer in Pokemon Go but the iPhone XS Max still came out on top. The new iPhones did lag behind the competition in the 3DMark Slingshot Extreme test, which measures graphics performance by evaluating everything from rendering to volumetric lighting. The iPhone XS Max and iPhone X received scores of 4,244 and 4,339, respectively, while the OnePlus 6 received a score of 5,124.

As for the GFXBench 5 test, the iPhone XS Max achieved 1,604.7 frames on the Aztec Ruins portion of the test, and 1,744.44 frames in the Car Chase test," reports Tom's Guide. "The Note 9 was far behind at 851.7 and 1,103 frames, respectively. However, the Galaxy S9+ edged past the iPhone XS Max on this test."

Two separate reports are saying Apple's yet-to-be-released AirPower charger is facing overheating issues. The product, designed to simultaneously charge an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods, was announced more than a year ago at Apple's 2017 iPhone event. Apple has yet to provide any additional information on AirPower, even during its iPhone event last week. The company even appears to have wiped all mention of it from its website. CNBC reports: Tech writer Sonny Dickson, who has a track record of accurately reporting on Apple, said over the weekend that Apple has struggled with heat management, which affects accuracy and charging speed. Dickson thinks it's unlikely Apple will make its end-of-year release deadline. Daring Fireball's John Gruber said something similar. Gruber said the charging pad, which uses a multi-coil design, is "getting too hot -- way too hot."

"There are engineers who looked at AirPower's design and said it could never work, thermally. ... I think they've either had to go completely back to the drawing board and start over with an entirely different design, or they've decided to give up and they just don't want to say so," Gruber said. Apple gave a broad timeline for AirPower's launch, saying it would go on sale in 2018. So it is still possible it can work out any issues before the end of the year.

Amazon is planning to release at least 8 new voice-controlled hardware devices before the end of the year, according to CNBC. "The devices include, among others, a microwave oven, an amplifier, a receiver, a subwoofer, and an in-car gadget, people familiar with the matter said," reports CNBC. "All of the devices will be Alexa-enabled, meaning they can easily connect to the voice assistant. Some of the devices will also have Alexa built in." From the report: Amazon is expected to reveal some of these devices at an event later this month, according to an internal document describing the plans. The new devices reflect Amazon's ambition to make its Alexa voice technology ubiquitous by focusing on areas where people spend most of their time -- at home and in the car. Alexa was initially considered a geeky experiment at Amazon. Now it is now one of the most popular voice assistants, leading the growth of the burgeoning smart speaker market, which is expected to be worth $30 billion by 2024, according to Global Market Insights.

According to Bloomberg, the next round of China tariffs won't include devices that receive and transmit voice data, a category that includes the Apple Watch, Fitbits, Sonos Speakers, and a host of other fitness trackers and home assistants. The Verge reports: The White House recently backed down on the rate at which the imports would be taxed. Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that listed goods would likely be taxed at only 10 percent. As recently as August, President Trump had considered setting the rate at 25 percent. Customs documents describe the category in vague terms, listing the devices as "machines for the reception, conversion and transmission or regeneration of voice, images or other data." But that vague category has come to encompass a wide range of personal tech, including fitness trackers and personal voice assistants. The Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, BeatsWL, AirPort, and Time Capsule all fall under the code, according to a letter submitted by Apple to the U.S. Trade Representative. Other categories of Apple products will still be affected by the tariff, including adapters, the Mac mini, and any circuit boards or internal components shipped individually to the United States.

Paul Alcorn reporting for Tom's Hardware: AMD listed the Ryzen 7 2800H and the Ryzen 5 2600H on its website. These new processors bring the inherent goodness of the Raven Ridge architecture, found in the Ryzen 5 2400G and the Ryzen 3 2200G, to gaming notebooks. As such, these processors come with AMD's Zen compute cores paired with the Vega graphics architecture, and they are also AMD's first processors to support DDR4-3200 as a base specification. Both new models feature a similar design as their desktop counterparts, albeit with slightly redesigned in frequencies to adjust for the flimsy cooling in mobile form factors and battery life limitations. That's reflected in the processors' reduced 45W TDP (thermal design power), which is much lower than the 65W TDP found on the desktop parts. AMD does give vendors some wiggle room with a configurable TDP (cTDP) range that spans between 35W and 45W.

The Ryzen 7 2800H is analogous to the 2400G, but it comes with a 3.3 GHz base and 3.8 GHz boost clocks. The four-core, eight-thread CPU is complemented by Vega graphics with 11 CU (Compute Unit) clocked up to a max of 1,300 MHz, which is a nice boost over its desktop counterpart. The Ryzen 5 2600H is similar to the 2200G, but it's four cores are hyper-threaded, which is a big bonus. The Vega graphics come with 8 CUs and boost up to 1,100 MHz.

Nvidia's new "Scanner" tool for the company's newest GeForce RTX 2080 graphics cards will provide one-click overclocking. PCWorld reports: Nvidia Scanner isn't actually a tool you can download. Instead, it's an API that developers can implement, similar to how current GeForce overclocking software relies on Nvidia's NVAPI. Tom Peterson, Nvidia's director of technical marketing, says all of the major overclocking programs will implement Scanner. You simply press the Test button, and the software starts walking through your graphics card's volt frequency curve, running arithmetic tests all the while. If the overclock starts pushing too far, Nvidia Scanner will discover a math error before your card crashes. When that happens, Scanner ramps up your card's voltage and starts testing again. After about 20 minutes, Scanner will have a complete understanding of your RTX card's capabilities, and automatically generate an overclocking profile built to squeeze as much performance as possible out of it without crashing. Easy-peasy. PCWorld's Brad Chacos mentions a demonstration where "Nvidia's Tom Peterson showed Nvidia Scanner pushing the GeForce RTX 2080 -- which ships with a 1,710MHz boost clock -- all the way to 2,130MHz at 1,068mV."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGate: The newest Apple Watch can now flag potential problems with your heartbeat -- a feature that's been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration and that Apple is marking as a major achievement. But some doctors said that including heart-monitoring tools in such a popular consumer product could prompt unnecessary anxiety and medical visits. Physicians say the watch could be good for patients who have irregular heart rhythms but may not realize it. Some people who have atrial fibrillation, the condition for which the watch is screening, don't always have noticeable symptoms. In an ideal situation, someone who doesn't know they have a problem could get a warning from their watch and take that data to their doctor.

But there is also concern that widespread use of electrocardiograms without an equally broad education initiative could burden an already taxed health-care system. Heart rhythms naturally vary, meaning that it's likely that Apple Watch or any heart monitor could signal a problem when there isn't one -- and send someone running to the doctor for no reason. "People are scared; their heart scares them," John Mandrola, a cardiologist at Baptist Health in Louisville, said. "That leads to more interaction with the health-care system." An extra visit to your doctor may not sound like a bad thing, but Mandrola said it would potentially lead to another round of tests or even unnecessary treatment if there are other signs that can be misinterpreted. And doctors might wind up facing a crowd of anxious Apple Watch users getting false signals -- something physicians have already had to deal with as fitness trackers that monitor heart rates have become popular.

OnePlus CEO Carl Pei confirmed to TechRadar that the OnePlus 6T won't have a headphone jack. Instead, it will feature a larger battery that will be "substantial enough for users to realize." From the report: Our first line of questioning was obvious. Why? Why ditch the jack? Why ditch it now? For Pei, it's about timing, and creating the best smartphone experience. "When we started OnePlus, we set out to make the best possible smartphone, but making a great phone doesn't mean putting every component available into the device," he said. "You've got to make decisions that optimize the user experience, and understand that at times things that provide user value can also add friction. "We also had to think about the negative side [of removing the headphone jack] for our users. We found 59% of our community already owned wireless headphones earlier this year - and that was before we launched our Bullets Wireless headphones. "If we were to do that [remove the jack] two years ago, the percentage [of wireless headphones owners] would have been much lower and it would have caused a lot of friction for our users."

Pei went on to explain that there are user benefits to the removal of the port, which should bring some comfort to OnePlus fans already pouring one out for the headphone jack. "By removing the jack we've freed up more space, allowing us to put more new technology into the product," he said. "One of the big things is something our users have asked us for, improved battery life." Pei wouldn't be drawn on what the "new technology" will be, but we already know the OnePlus 6T will feature an in-display fingerprint scanner, which will eat up some of the space left by the exiting jack. Pei did mention they will include an adapter in the box to allow users to use wired headphone.

Rachel Metz reports via MIT Technology Review: Imagine a box, similar to a Wi-Fi router, that sits in your home and tracks all kinds of physiological signals as you move from room to room: breathing, heart rate, sleep, gait, and more. Dina Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, built this box in her lab. And in the not-so-distant future, she believes, it will be able to replace the array of expensive, bulky, uncomfortable gear we currently need to get clinical data about the body. Speaking at MIT Technology Review's EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, Katabi said the box she's been building for the last several years takes advantage of the fact that every time we move -- even if it's just a teeny, tiny bit, such as when we breathe -- we change the electromagnetic field surrounding us.

Her device transmits a low-power wireless signal throughout a space the size of a one- or two-bedroom apartment (even through walls), and the signal reflects off people's bodies. The device then uses machine learning to analyze those reflected signals and extract physiological data. So far, it has been installed in over 200 homes of both healthy people and those with conditions like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, depression, and pulmonary diseases, she said. Katabi cofounded a startup called Emerald Innovations to commercialize the technology and has already made the device available to biotech and pharmaceutical companies for studies.

Three years ago, Apple introduced 3D Touch for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, a pressure-sensitive feature that uses capacitive sensors integrated into the smartphone's display to sense three degrees of pressure in a user's touch and respond differently based on the amount of pressure exerted. It's a neat idea as it has allowed users to interact with the user interface in a completely new way. Now, with the release of the new iPhone XR, Apple seems to be on the way to phasing it out. The Verge reports: While both the new iPhone XS and XS Max include 3D Touch, Apple has chosen not to include the feature on the iPhone XR. Yes, that phone is cheaper, and Apple had to strip out some features, but 3D Touch has been included on iPhones in that price range since it was introduced not too long ago, so this feels less like necessary cost savings and more like planned omission. There have always been a few core problems with 3D Touch. For one, its use often amounted to the right click of a mouse, which is funny coming from the company that famously refused to put a dedicated right button on its mice or trackpads. And selecting from those right click options was rarely faster or a substantially more useful way of getting something done than just tapping the button and manually navigating to where you needed to go. People also didn't know the feature was there. The iPhone did little to train users on 3D Touch. And even the people who knew it was there had no way to tell which icons supported it without just 3D pressing everything to see what happened.

Apple isn't entirely removing the concept of 3D Touch from the iPhone XR. Instead, the phone will include something Apple is calling Haptic Touch, which will make a click when you activate a button's secondary feature by pressing and holding it. But that replacement underscores just how useless 3D Touch has really become: it's not more than a very, very fancy long press. That's something phones have always been capable of. And despite the name, I've found long press features to be faster and easier to use than their 3D Touch equivalent. Instagram, for instance, lets you preview photos with a 3D Touch on the iPhone or a long press on Android. I find the Android version to be simpler and quicker. Here's what Apple's marketing leader, Phil Schiller, had to say about the feature back in 2015 when it was first introduced: "'Engineering-wise, the hardware to build a display that does what [3D Touch] does is unbelievably hard,' says Schiller. 'And we're going to waste a whole year of engineering -- really, two -- at a tremendous amount of cost and investment in manufacturing if it doesn't do something that [people] are going to use. If it's just a demo feature and a month later nobody is really using it, this is a huge waste of engineering talent.'"

When Apple unveiled the iPhone Xs and Xs Max earlier today, it said they will contain the A12 Bionic chip -- the first smartphone processor to be made using 7nm manufacturing technology. But, as IEEE Spectrum points out, Huawei made the same claim late last month when it unveiled the Kirin 980 system on a chip. From the report: Apple's new A12 Bionic is made up of four CPU cores, six GPU cores, and an 8-core "neural engine" to handle machine learning tasks. According to Apple, the neural engine can perform 5 trillion operations per second -- an eight-fold boost -- and consumes one-tenth the energy of its previous incarnation. Of the GPU cores, two are designed for performance and are 15 percent faster than their predecessors. The other four are built for efficiency, with a 50 percent improvement on that metric. The system can decide which combination of the three types of cores will run a task most efficiently.

Huawei's chip, the Kirin 980, was unveiled at the IFA 2018 in Berlin on 31 August. It packs 6.9 billion transistors onto a one-square-centimeter chip. The company says it's the first chip to use processors based on Arm's Cortex-A76, which is 75 percent more powerful and 58 percent more efficient compared to its predecessors the A73 and A75. It has 8 cores, two big, high-performance ones based on the A76, two middle-performance ones that are also A76s, and four smaller, high-efficiency cores based on a Cortex-A55 design. The system runs on a variation of Arm's big.LITTLE architecture, in which immediate, intensive workloads are handled by the big processors while sustained background tasks are the job of the little ones. Kirin 980's GPU component is called the Mali-G76, and it offers a 46 percent performance boost and a 178 percent efficiency improvement from the previous generation. The chip also has a dual-core neural processing unit that more than doubles the number of images it can recognize to 4,500 images per minute. Apple will be the first to bring the 7nm chip in volume to market, as Huawei is expected to to start shipping its Mate 20 series phone (with the 7nm chip) a month or two later. Qualcomm also announced late last month that it's begun sampling its 7nm next-gen Snapdragon SoC. As IEEE Spectrum notes, the real winner is TSMC, which is making all three processors.

Apple just killed the iPhone's headphone jack for good. Not only is the company no longer selling iPhones with headphone jacks, as they've removed the iPhone SE and 6s from their website, but they're no longer including a Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter with the purchase of a new 2018 iPhone. The Verge also reports that the company is discontinuing the iPhone X with the introduction of its three new iPhones today. From the report: With the iPhone XS starting at a price of $999, and the addition of the cheaper $749 iPhone XR announced today, the iPhone X has become redundant. [...] There's no longer a good reason to shell out for the more expensive iPhone X, except maybe the exclusivity of owning a phone that was ushered in with the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone. It was the first to introduce the now-ubiquitous notch that's influenced the entire mobile industry with a wave of copycat designs, and the first iPhone with Face ID. It introduced intuitive gesture controls and with the phone came wireless charging, plus AirPods.

Apple has unveiled its next-generation Apple Watch Series 4 smartwatch, featuring a larger display with smaller bezels, a 64-bit processor that's twice as fast as the previous generation, and electrocardiography (ECG) support. 9to5Mac reports: In terms of hardware, the Digital Crown has been completely reengineered with haptic feedback. For instance, as you flip through content in the Podcast application. The speaker is also over 50 percent louder, according to [Apple COO Jeff Williams]. As we reported earlier this week, the Apple Watch Series 4 uses a new 64-bit processor that offers performance up to two times faster performance. There's also a next-generation accelerometer gyroscope, which Williams says allows Apple Watch to detect a fall. When a fall is detected, Apple Watch will send an alert prompting you to call emergency services. If it senses you are immobile for more than 1 minute, the call will be started automatically.

As for heart features, Apple Watch is now capable of detecting a low rate. The device will also now screen your heart rhythm, allowing it to detect atrial fibrillation. As expected, Apple Watch Series 4 also now supports ECG -- which measures the electrical activity of the heart. With Apple Watch, you can take an ECG directly on the Apple Watch by putting your finger directly on the digital crown. The feature -- as well as irregular heart rate detection -- has received FDA clearance. Williams says that all health and fitness is encrypted on-device and in the cloud. Battery life on Apple Watch Series 4 is the same, 18-hours as before. Outdoor workout time is now 6 hours. In terms of pricing and colors, the Apple Watch Series 4 will start at $399 for the GPS model and $499 for the cellular model, with preorders starting September 14th. The aluminum model will feature space gray, silver, and black color configurations, while the stainless steel model will feature gold, polished black, and space black color configurations.

According to reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple's next iPad Pro will be switching from the Lightning Port to USB-C for the first time. It will also ship with a new 18W USB-C charger. 9to5Mac reports: While Kuo's memo mentions both the new iPad Pro with USB-C (wow) and MacBook with Touch ID, it's still unclear at this point if we'll see the iPad and Mac on stage at Wednesday's event, or if the September 12 date will be dedicated to iPhone and Apple Watch. That would be a massive change for an iOS device but one that could improve the iPad accessory ecosystem -- and be a boon for productivity. Kuo's memo does not suggest that this is simply a change from USB-A Lightning to USB-C Lightning but instead an actual port change on the iPad itself. Daring Fireball's John Gruber notes that if Kuo is correct, "someone with a Mac, iPhone, and iPad would need three different headphone adapters." That takes courage, Apple...

Qualcomm has unveiled the long-awaited successor to its Snapdragon Wear 2100 smartwatch chipset, the Snapdragon Wear 3100. The new high-end chipset is "based on a brand-new architecture Qualcomm claims is the most efficient it's ever created, optimized for wearables-specific use cases like step tracking, heart rate monitoring, and always-on connectivity," reports VentureBeat. From the report: [T]he company's engineers stuffed the Snapdragon Wear 3100 with a four A7 cores and two secondary chips -- a digital signal processor (DSP) and an ultra-low power coprocessor (QCC1110) -- in what Qualcomm calls a "big-small-tiny" arrangement. The "big" A7 cores handle intensive, complex tasks like switching between apps, while the "small" and "tiny" DSP and coprocessor perform sensor fusion and other background chores. The way Pankaj Kedia, senior director and business lead at Qualcomm's Smart Wearable division, tells it, the coprocessor -- a diminutive 5.2mm x 4mm chip that's the product of more than five years of research -- is the inarguable showrunner. It taps a Qualcomm-designed memory module that draws a mere 0.6 volts of power, and it's altogether 20 times more power-efficient than the A7 cores.

It's principally meant for light workloads like listening for the wake phrases that precede voice commands ("OK, Google"), streaming music in the background, and updating digital watch faces. However, it's designed to be extensible -- OEMs can tap the coprocessor for real-time sleep and activity monitoring, for example, or for heart rate tracking. The coprocessor -- along with the DSP and A7 cores -- drive three smartwatch operating modes intended to boost battery life. Enhanced ambient mode displays a basic watch face UI in up to 16 colors, with a smoothly animated second hand, live complications, and ambient brightness. Traditional watch mode dispenses with those bells and whistles in favor of a basic analog watch face. Dedicated sports mode -- which isn't available at launch, but will arrive later with sports OEMs, Kedia said -- enables core features like heart rate and GPS tracking, but nothing else. When compared to the Wear 2100, the Wear 3100 offers significantly improved battery life. Here's a comparison (from Qualcomm) of the Wear 3100 and Wear 2100's power consumption:

-Lowest power mode: 67 percent lower
-GPS and location batching: 49 percent lower
-Keyword detection: 43 percent lower
-Clock update once per minute: 35 percent lower
-MP3 playback: 34 percent lower
-Voice queries over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi: 13 percent lower

"The translates to gains of about four to twelve hours in practice (depending on the form factor), or between a day and a half to two days of battery life," reports VentureBeat. "In traditional watch mode, Wear 3100 devices can last up to a week on a charge with 20 percent battery (or up to 30 days with full battery), according to Qualcomm, or 15 hours in dedicated sports mode (with a 450mAh battery)." Some other features include a new more-accepted NFC chip, an improved 4G LTE modem, and a new power management system to improve the efficiency of charging. We can expect the 3100 to appear in smartwatches "this holiday season."

Apple is recalling a "small percentage" of iPhone 8 devices due to an issue with the logic board. The affected devices may suddenly freeze or restart -- symptoms that may show up at any time. Digital Trends reports: Apple has launched a repair program for the iPhone 8, and whether your device is exhibiting issues or not, it may be a part of the recall. It's important to note that only iPhone 8 models are being recalled here -- the iPhone 8 Plus seems to have sidestepped the issue completely. Specifically, it seems like some iPhone 8 models manufactured between September 2017 and March 2018, and sold in the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, China, India, and Japan, are affected by the issue. If you bought your phone during that time and in one of those regions, you may well be affected. If you have an iPhone 8, you can copy and paste the serial number in Apple's iPhone 8 checker tool. There are a few ways to get your device fixed if it is affected. "First, you could go to an Apple Authorized Service Provider -- you can find one here," reports Digital Trends. "Second, you could go straight to an Apple Store. Last but not least, you could contact Apple Support, and they'll send you a prepaid shipping box for you to send in your iPhone for repair."