6 Months Later

As reported by Engadget, new and generally affordable smart bulbs, sensors, and remote controls have begun to hit the market from the Swedish furniture maker, some of which won’t be available in the US until 2026. As we pointed out in our 2025 smart home guide (below), since the new switches are Matter-compatible, they’ll work with other manufacturers’ devices, not just IKEA’s.

Apple has reportedly delayed the next-generation iPhone Air and is considering making changes to its form factor, as reported by The Verge. Based on our experience with the phone so far, here’s what might be going on:

As reported by The Verge, after an embarrassing moment for the company when users were unable to control the temperature of their beds due to an AWS outage, the company finally rolled out a solution for local control of the bed via Bluetooth. But it’s not enough – users should be able to control things like alarms locally as well, and not have to pay for a subscription to do it, as we pointed out in our review of the Pod 4:

The Verge is taking us back to the best tech gadgets of the past in a new podcast called Version History. The Blackberry episode was also an excellent look back at the BBM phenomenon that Apple and Facebook eventually crushed with the iPhone and WhatsApp/iMessage. Highly recommend giving it a listen/watch.

It’s pretty interesting that their new speaker ditches the Nest branding, while their security products, like the new Doorbell and Cameras, retain the Nest brand. The always fantastic Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge got a first look at all the latest devices:

Launched at Meta Connect, the latest generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses gets all the upgrades we saw in the Oakleys. There’s also a new Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, which we’ll be reviewing over the long term.

After years of saying it was coming, the company finally announced it will be rolling out to Spotify Premium subscribers in the coming months, at no additional cost. There’s still no Dolby Atmos music, however. Even with lossless audio, many of the advantages other streaming services have, as we went over in our 2025 comparison, remain.

As reported by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy for The Verge, Ultraloq has become one of the first smart lock brands to roll out a software update to their lock (Ultraloq Bolt NFC), which already supported Apple’s Home Key technology. The coming changes to smart locks are something we covered in our 2025 smart home guide, which also covered the new Aliro standard, and UWB-unlocking (which might prove to be a real game changer). Smart lock section starts at 10:25: