As spotted by The Verge’s Jess Weatherbed, the new feature is rolling out first in Korea before expanding to more regions later in the week (including the US).

Google says to expect up to a 40% improvement in response times when controlling smart home devices, shorter responses to requests, fixes to alarms and timers, more accurate local weather, and the ability to create multiple calendar events with the same details. Check out the full release notes.

They’ll be available to pre-order starting March 25 and include several updates: better noise cancellation and sound quality with the H2 chip, Bluetooth 5.3 (up from 5.0), camera remote with the digital crown, reduced wireless latencey for gaming, live translation, conversational awareness, personalized volume, loud sound reduction, personalized spatial audio, lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio via USB-C (note this came to the USB-C AirPods Max 1), though note, Apple is specifically marketing the AirPods Max 2 for Logic Pro mixing in Personalized Spatial Audio with head tracking.

Two other interesting things Apple mentions here: 1. Custom High Dynamic Range Amplifier. This is likely how they’re getting better audio quality. 2. Studio-Quality Recording. While the number of mics hasn’t changed, the mic system seems to have been upgraded, which, combined with a new digital signal processing algorithm, is how they’re also likely getting better transparency (which was already best in class for headphones).

Even though The Verge’s headline here is somewhat confusing, Google is, in fact, still going to charge developers App Store fees globally, just slightly less than the current 30%. There will still be fees even if App Developers use their own billing system.

More locks should support this, according to Samsung’s press release, but once again, Aqara seems to beat everyone to release.

ⓘ

Aqara UWB Smart Lock U400

$269.99

View on Amazon

More Stores

Affiliate Links. Product data updated: 2026-05-07 US price.

Especially the pink color, it looks sick. More details to come on March 5th.

Unlike last year, there’s no free storage upgrade (likely because of price increases), no trade-in option for the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro, and prices have gone up for the base S26 and S26 Plus.

According to a report from the NYT, Meta is planning to launch a dystopian facial recognition feature called “Name Tag” that would let Meta Smart Glasses wearers identify people out in the wild and have Meta’s AI provide more information about them to the user. Taking an incredibly nihilistic viewpoint, the company cited the political tumult in the United States as the perfect time to launch the feature.

Google has confirmed to Android Authority that phones other than the Pixel 10 series will receive the ability to use Quick Share to wirelessly share files with Apple devices.

As reported by The Verge, Google Home users can now take advantage of all the new low-cost IKEA smart home buttons. We’ll definitely have more to say about this in our upcoming smart home videos out later in the month!

After reading this piece by the wonder Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge, I’m more bullish on AI’s ability to fix people’s smart homes. Highly recommend this read.

Here’s the lock on Amazon if you want to check its price or learn more:

ⓘ

Aqara UWB Smart Lock U400

$269.99

View on Amazon

More Stores

Affiliate Links. Product data updated: 2026-05-07 US price.