ICYMI: the week’s 8 biggest tech stories from the Oura Ring 4 to the Verzion network outage
This week Amazon‘s early Prime-exclusive sale gave us some great deals, the Oura Ring 4 was announced, and Sonos said its app is almost fixed.
In case you missed these or any of the other biggest tech news stories of the week we’ve gathered the eight most important ones here so you can get up to speed.
Once that’s done you might want to catch up on the new Mac computers Apple is likely gearing up to announce later this month, and you’ll want to check out our picks for the seven new movies and TV shows to stream this weekend.
8. Voting for the TechRadar Choice Awards 2024 opened
The TechRadar awards are back for 2024, and this year you can help decide the winner in a record 90 categories, split among the following sections:
You can vote in every category, or just a few, but make sure all of your votes are cast before 00:01am PST / 03:01am EST / 08:01am BST on Friday October 11th 2024, otherwise it won’t count.
Once we’re done counting the votes we’ll combine the scores with the rankings of our expert judges to decide the final winners – with the one exception being the Readers’ Choice Award which is 100% decided by you. Winners in every category will be announced during our big TechRadar Choice Awards Week, starting Monday, October 28th.
7. Amazon Big Deals Day early sales began
Amazon Big Deals Day – a sort of Prime Day 2 ahead of this year’s Black Friday sale – kicks off officially on October 8, but that hasn’t stopped plenty of discounts going live as part of the early sale across Amazon US and Amazon UK.
There are plenty of discounts across a wide range of products from Amazon’s own tech – even the brand new Amazon Fire HD 8 tablets are up to 50% off – as well as some of our favorite gadgets like LG TVs and Ninja kitchen appliances.
Just like with Prime Day, however, you must be a Prime member to access the exclusive Big Deals Day discounts – though some items are on sale for everyone, so you might be able to save big on the item you want without shelling out for a Prime subscription.
6. Sonos’ app apology tour has an end in sight
Sonos’ app launch in May was one of the biggest tech blunders of 2024, but this week it announced that 100% of the app’s missing features will be restored “in the coming weeks” – and that 80% have already made their return.
What’s more Sonos said that it’ll be extending the warranty of all Sonos products that are still under warranty by a year by way of an apology to disgruntled customers, and it now has made four pledges with the goal of “addressing the root causes of the problems with the app release” to ensure it never happens again.
If you read about what reportedly went wrong with the Sonos app launch some of the new commitments sound like they’re simply trying to change the company culture back to what it was before its recent major shake-up, but words are words and actions are actions. On that note, we’ll have to see if Sonos sticks to its promise and can start to claw back consumer confidence after what can be generously described as a rough few months.
5. Disney responded to fans after axing highly rated shows and movies
We’re back here again, folks. The physical versus digital media debate has reared its ugly head once more after fans noticed that Disney Plus and Max have removed some critically acclaimed and popular movies and TV shows from their back catalogs this week.
After its latest streaming library cull drew particular fan ire, Disney responded by saying the removals accounted for “less than 2% of our total titles”, which has gone down as well as you might expect with many of its subscribers. As more and more films and series are permanently axed from the world’s best streaming services, it might be time for you to restart buying DVDs and/or Blu-rays.
4. We reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE
Samsung launched the Galaxy S24 FE alongside the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra last week, and we’ve since put the new phone through our full review process. The verdict? It’s a “shining example of how to do a more budget-friendly phone right.” For a cheaper price than the standard Galaxy S24, the Galaxy S24 FE delivers a high-quality display, strong performance levels, and a capable suite of cameras – not to mention the full gamut of Galaxy AI features that have become synonymous with the best Samsung phones.
According to our tester, Samsung’s latest FE is an “AI-powered phone that’s light on sacrifices, heavy on value,” so if you’re in the market for a near-flagship upgrade that won’t break the bank, the Galaxy S24 FE is absolutely worth considering.
3. Oura Ring 4 announced with a new sensor design
Several new challengers may have entered the best smart ring, er, ring, but Oura isn’t about to go down without a fight. This week, it introduced the Oura Ring 4. It’s not a major redesign on the outside – we suppose there’s only so much you can do to tweak a simple band shape – but inside Oura is improving its device’s measuring accuracy (no matter its orientation), making the fit more comfortable, and giving the app a refresh too.
This rejigged sensor array – dubbed Smart Sensing – sounds like it could be a major convenience win for users. If you’ve never used a smart ring before, a quick TL;DR is they have a specific orientation that they like to be in so that the sensors are in the right place to take accurate measurements. If the ring rotates out of this preferred place then your readings will be less accurate, and even perfectly fitting rings can spin out of place throughout the day when you use your hands or while you toss and turn in your sleep.
The Oura Ring 4 eliminating this need for the ring to always be worn perfectly is a step in the right direction, and we’re even more excited to hear it’s not getting a price hike. It’s ready to preorder now ahead of its October 15 launch in in sizes 4 through 15 (in either Silver, Brushed Silver, Stealth, Black, Rose Gold, and Gold) starting at $349 / £349 (not available in Australia).
2. Gemini Live now won’t cost you a dime to use
Gemini Live – a chatty version of the Google AI – has rolled out to all Android users for free. It was originally reserved only for paying subscribers, but now the voice assistant can be accessed by anyone who downloads the Gemini app – though it can only speak English for now.
After choosing one of ten voices, you can start conversing with the AI in a more natural way than you might be used to with Google Assistant or Alexa. Gemini will even respond in more human-like ways using casual language, or sounding like it’s brainstorming, rather than just responding to direct instructions.
If you’ve been waiting to try out Gemini Live now’s the best time to.
1. Verizon had a serious outage
If you live in the US and use Verizon, here’s one story you won’t have missed; from around 10 AM ET on September 30 the Verizon network experienced some serious issues until it was fixed over nine hours later.
Affected customers couldn’t make calls, send text messages, or use data – or receive calls or messages from unaffected customers using AT&T and T-Mobile.
The FCC reportedly began an investigation into what caused the outage, however at the time of writing we don’t know what went wrong and might not find out for some time.