Tired of AI filters and endless selfies? Retro‑styled Await Camera makes you wait 24 hours to see your photos

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Your smartphone camera lets you take 47 photos of the same sunset, delete 46 of them, and still feel like something’s missing. Rolling Square’s new Await Camera takes the opposite approach. You get 24 shots across three rolls, no preview screen, and a full day before you can even see what you captured. The Swiss company unveiled this retro digital camera at CES 2026, pricing it between $70 and $100 as part of a subscription service that prints and ships your chosen photos.

Waiting feels revolutionary in 2026. Await forces you to consider each shot before pressing the shutter, then sit with your choices for 24 hours while the photos sync to the cloud and “develop.” Only after that delay can you review what you captured, select the keepers, and wait again for physical prints to arrive at your door. This deliberate friction contradicts every principle of modern digital photography, yet that’s precisely the point. Patience, not megapixels or computational processing, separates memorable photos from forgettable ones.

Designer: Rolling Square

The design language screams disposable camera aesthetics but with actual build quality behind it. Rolling Square went with a translucent lower body that shows off the internals, which feels very Y2K revival but somehow works here. The top fascia snaps off and comes in colors that would make a highlighter jealous: yellow, lime green, turquoise, cobalt blue. At 98 x 67.5 x 15.5mm and just 95 grams, this thing disappears in your pocket. The front keeps it minimal with a viewfinder, xenon flash (yes, actual xenon, not LED), the lens, and a tiny speaker grille. Flip it over and you get a small OLED display showing your remaining shot count, another viewfinder window, and an orange shutter button. That’s the entire interface. No menus, no settings, no mode selection hell.

Rolling Square stripped out everything people actually hate about photography in 2026. There’s no “share to Instagram” button begging you to post immediately. No WhatsApp integration pushing you to dump photos into group chats. No sticker library, no caption prompts, no AI restyling that makes everything look like it passed through the same algorithmic blender. Await functions as a camera, period. You point, you shoot, you move on with your life. The three-roll system divides your 24 photos into eight-shot chunks, creating natural break points that encourage thinking in sequences rather than spray-and-pray shooting. The OLED counts down your remaining exposures, which creates this low-key anxiety that actually improves your photography because suddenly you care about composition again.

Here’s where it gets interesting. After you burn through your shots, you connect Await to your phone and the photos upload to the cloud. But you can’t view them for 24 hours. Rolling Square artificially enforces this development window, and honestly, it’s the smartest friction they could have added. That delay prevents you from judging your work in the moment, which means you approach editing with fresh eyes instead of deleting anything that doesn’t match your initial expectation. Film photographers lived with this for decades and somehow produced the most iconic images in history. Maybe instant feedback actually makes us worse at evaluating our own work.

Once the 24 hours pass, you open the app and see your roll. Now you pick which shots deserve to become physical prints through the subscription service (monthly or annual plans, though Rolling Square hasn’t dropped exact pricing yet). Selected photos get printed and shipped to your address, which adds another waiting period between shooting and holding the final product. The whole process can span a week or more, turning photography back into something that produces tangible objects rather than files that die in your camera roll. Physical prints demand different engagement. You can stick them on a fridge, write on the back, hand them to someone, lose them in a drawer and rediscover them years later. They exist independent of devices, batteries, or cloud services, which gives them staying power that Instagram stories will never match.

Rolling Square hasn’t announced a firm release window, although the crowdfunding campaign should launch any time around end of January or the first half of February. Pricing allegedly will land between $70 and $100 for the hardware, plus subscription costs for the print service. The target audience seems to be people exhausted by infinite scroll and computational perfection, which describes roughly everyone under 30 and most people over it. Await won’t replace your smartphone or convince serious photographers to ditch proper gear, but for specific moments when you want to shoot more thoughtfully than another burst of instantly-forgotten phone snaps, this approach makes sense. Patience rarely feels like a feature until you realize how completely you’ve lost it.

The post Tired of AI filters and endless selfies? Retro‑styled Await Camera makes you wait 24 hours to see your photos first appeared on Yanko Design.

Google’s new commerce framework cranks up the heat on ‘agentic shopping’

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To further push the limits of consumerism, Google has launched a new open standard for agentic commerce that's called Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). In brief, it's a framework that combines the power of AI agents and online shopping platforms to help customers buy more things.

Thanks to the introduction of UCP, Google is offering three new online shopping features. To start, Google's AI mode will have a new checkout feature that allows customers to buy eligible products from certain US retailers within Google Search. Currently, this feature works with Google Pay, but it will soon add PayPal compatibility and incorporate more capabilities, like related product discovery and using loyalty points.

On the merchant side, Google also established the Business Agent feature, which Google said will be "a virtual sales associate that can answer product questions in a brand’s voice." The Business Agent will launch tomorrow with early adopters including Lowe’s, Michaels, Poshmark, Reebok and more. Also for retailers, the UCP is responsible for the new Direct Offers feature, which lets companies advertising with Google to "present exclusive offers for shoppers who are ready to buy, directly in AI Mode." The Direct Offers feature will work in tandem with the ads in AI Mode that Google is testing.  

With UCP, Google Search, retailers and payment processors are joining forces to make online shopping even easier, whether it's figuring out what product to buy, completing the purchase or offering "post-purchase support." According to Google, UCP is compatible with existing industry protocols, like Agent2Agent, Agent Payment Protocols and Model Context Protocol. UCP was even co-developed with industry giants like Shopify, Etsy and Walmart, and was endorsed by even more companies in the commerce ecosystem, including Macy's, Stripe, Visa and more.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/googles-new-commerce-framework-cranks-up-the-heat-on-agentic-shopping-212433122.html?src=rss

CES 2026’s Loudest Flex: Brane Party Pro Hits The Bass Notes So Hard I Actually Got Goosebumps

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There’s a specific moment that happens when you first hear deep bass done properly. Your brain needs a second to process what’s happening because the sound doesn’t match what you expect from a speaker that size. I experienced that exact moment at CES 2026 while listening to Brane Audio’s Party Pro prototype, and for the sake of the rest of the hotel guests, Brane only limited the demo to 10 seconds and played its audio at 25% capacity. The sound is so thundering (especially the base notes), Brane had to quite literally hold its speaker back to avoid noise complaints.

Brane Audio structured their CES presentation strategically, starting with the Brane X to establish their credibility against established competition. Then they unveiled the Party Pro, and the difference was staggering. The low-end reproduction didn’t just sound powerful; it revealed details in familiar tracks that had been buried under inadequate bass response for years. Only after the demo did they mention the kicker: we’d been listening to a single RAD2 driver at half capacity. The shipping version with two drivers will hit four times harder, which means this might legitimately be the first speaker good enough to make your neighbors consider moving.

Designer: Brane Audio

That single driver, the RAD2, is the whole story here. It’s the second generation of their Repel-Attract Driver tech, and the numbers are just absurd. They claim a 30-fold deep-bass advantage over conventional drivers, which sounds like marketing fluff until you hear it for yourself. The genius is in how it handles the lowest frequencies. Instead of just producing a generic boom, it articulates the bass, letting you hear textures and notes in the sub-100Hz range that are usually a muddy mess. You start hearing things in your favorite songs you swear were never there before, which is a wild and slightly surreal experience.

Closer look at the RAD2 Driver

The way it prepares for that bass is mechanically fascinating. The original RAD driver in the Brane X used a small air pump to create the necessary pressure differential. For the RAD2, they’ve engineered a system of small mechanical legs that physically push the driver cone outward to prime it before the music even starts. This pre-tensioning creates the pressure needed for its massive excursion without the lag or potential noise of a pump. It’s a clever bit of electromechanical engineering that solves a very specific physics problem, and watching it happen is almost as impressive as hearing the result. It’s a purely functional design choice that looks incredibly cool.

This level of mechanical control allows for some seriously smart audio processing. Brane’s team explained that the speaker’s internal DSP analyzes the incoming audio in real-time to identify the resonant frequency of each specific track. It then adjusts the driver’s behavior to perfectly match that frequency, essentially tuning itself to every song it plays. This is a huge leap beyond simple EQ presets. The speaker is actively collaborating with the music, ensuring that the bass response is not just powerful but also perfectly in sync with the artist’s original intent. It explains why the bass felt so integrated and clean, rather than being a loud, detached layer on top of the music.

So you take that resonant frequency matching, add the mechanical priming system, and then remember the demo was at quarter-power. The final Party Pro, with its two drivers, will displace a full 1000cc of air, which is an immense amount of sound pressure from a portable enclosure. Brane is essentially breaking Hofmann’s Iron Law, that old rule about deep bass, small boxes, and power efficiency being mutually exclusive. They’ve found a way to have all three. This technology is a new blueprint for how to generate low-frequency sound. I walked away from that demo feeling like I’d just seen the audio equivalent of the first flat-screen TV. The Party Pro will hit shelves later this year, with a price range between $1000 and $1500. You honestly may need to take permission from your Homeowner’s Association before you buy one!

The post CES 2026’s Loudest Flex: Brane Party Pro Hits The Bass Notes So Hard I Actually Got Goosebumps first appeared on Yanko Design.

California’s governor plans to set aside $200 million for state EV tax credits

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The loss of the federal EV tax credits may have been a huge blow to prospective buyers, but California wants to fill that gap for its residents. Governor Gavin Newsom's proposed budget for 2026-2027, which was released on Friday, includes a "light-duty zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) incentive program" that details a one-time infusion of $200 million.

According to the budget summary, this incentive program is "a critical part of the Administration's strategy to keep ZEVs affordable and accessible for all." The proposed budget still has to make it through the state's legislature later this year, but if passed, the new incentive would help continue the momentum of EV adoption across California. In the third quarter of 2025, the state saw almost 30 percent of auto sales being EVs, according to the California Energy Commission.

There are no details in the budget summary outlining how exactly the $200 million would break down on a per-vehicle basis, but USA Today reported that the rebate would be an "on the hood" instant discount for EVs. Previously, buyers would get up to $7,500 back in federal tax rebates on new EV purchases and up to $4,000 on used EVs. For California's proposed incentives, the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, Lauren Sanchez, told USA Today that the state is still trying to figure out if it will offer tax credits for those who buy used EVs.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/californias-governor-plans-to-set-aside-200-million-for-state-ev-tax-credits-194446449.html?src=rss

Wing’s drone deliveries are coming to 150 more Walmarts

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Don't be surprised if you see even more drones delivering groceries across the US since the Alphabet-owned Wing announced another service expansion with Walmart over the next year. The partnership said that drone delivery services will be available at 150 more Walmart locations in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Miami and more metros that have yet to be announced.

According to Wing, its top 25 percent of customers have ordered its delivery drones up to three times a week. To meet growing demand, Wing and Walmart said it will serve up to 40 million US customers and build up a network of 270 delivery locations by 2027. The partnership launched its service in August 2023 with the inaugural deliveries offered to the Dallas-Fort Worth customer base. In June 2025, Wing and Walmart increased drone delivery coverage to 100 more stores across Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando and Tampa. Last month, the two companies launched their delivery service in Atlanta and are planning to kick off deliveries in Houston on January 15.

Before Walmart, Wing broke into the US market by working with Walgreens to deliver health and wellness products in April 2022. Since then, the Alphabet subsidiary has partnered with DoorDash and Apian, a London-based healthcare logistics company. Besides its commercial partnerships, Wing has been working on a larger delivery drone that will be able to fly at up to 65 mph and carry up to five pounds, or double its current capacity.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/wings-drone-deliveries-are-coming-to-150-more-walmarts-180708189.html?src=rss

This Smart Tea Cup Wants You to Actually Enjoy Your Tea

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Here’s something you probably haven’t thought about today: when was the last time you actually paid attention while drinking tea? If you’re like most of us, you’re probably scrolling through your phone, answering emails, or binge-watching something while your tea gets cold on the side table. Tea has become background noise in our lives, something we consume rather than experience. Which is kind of ironic, considering tea ceremonies have been about mindfulness and presence for centuries.

Enter SoundSip, a design project by Aanya Jain that’s trying to bring back the ritual of tea drinking in a way that feels fresh and modern. And it does this through something unexpected: sound. The concept is beautifully simple. SoundSip is a ceramic tea cup with a hidden trick. When you hold it, it plays a soft, ambient soundscape. Put it down, and the sound pauses. Pick it up again, and it continues exactly where it left off. There are no buttons to press, no screens to swipe, no apps to download. Just you, your tea, and a cup that responds to your touch.

Designer: Aanya Jain

What makes this interesting is how the sound actually works. It’s not just random ambient noise or generic meditation music. The soundscape is designed to mirror the journey of drinking tea itself. It starts chaotic, busy, layered with competing sounds that feel restless and overwhelming. Sound familiar? That’s basically how most of our days feel. But as you continue holding the cup and sipping your tea, the sound gradually shifts. It becomes calmer, more spacious, eventually settling into white noise, what the designer calls “the sound of silence.” It’s a clever bit of emotional design. The sound isn’t just decoration; it’s guiding you through a transition from stress to stillness. You’re not being told to relax, you’re being gently led there through your own experience of holding and sipping.

The physical design backs this up beautifully. The cup itself has that warm, tactile quality that makes you actually want to hold it. There’s subtle texture, a satisfying weight, and even a small ridge near the rim that catches drips. These aren’t flashy features, but they show a thoughtfulness about the actual experience of using the object. The electronics live in a detachable magnetic module underneath the cup, so you can clean the cup properly without worrying about destroying the tech. Smart, practical, and invisible when it needs to be.

What I find most compelling about SoundSip is how it pushes back against the way we usually think about smart objects. Most connected products are about adding features, notifications, data, more information. SoundSip does the opposite. It uses technology to create less distraction, not more. There’s no connectivity, no data tracking how many ounces you drank or reminding you to stay hydrated. It’s tech in service of presence rather than productivity. This feels particularly relevant right now, when we’re all drowning in apps that promise to make us more mindful but end up being just another thing demanding our attention. SoundSip sidesteps that trap entirely. The interaction is purely tactile and auditory. Your hands know what to do. There’s no learning curve, no manual, no setup process.

Of course, SoundSip isn’t going to solve our collective attention crisis. One cup can’t undo the grip that screens and notifications have on our daily lives. But it does something important: it shows that design can create moments of pause without being preachy about it. It doesn’t lecture you about self-care or productivity. It just makes the simple act of drinking tea a little more worth your attention. Everything seems to be optimized for efficiency right now, where even our downtime gets gamified and tracked. So there’s something quietly radical about a cup that just wants you to slow down and listen. Not to a podcast or playlist, but to the sound of yourself shifting from noise to stillness, one sip at a time.

The post This Smart Tea Cup Wants You to Actually Enjoy Your Tea first appeared on Yanko Design.

This $995 Printer Turns Your Voice Into Braille Labels

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Picture this: you’re helping your grandmother organize her medicine cabinet, but she’s visually impaired. Those prescription bottles all look identical to her touch. You want to help, but learning Braille isn’t exactly something you picked up over coffee. Now imagine pulling out a compact printer, speaking into your phone, and watching as sticky Braille labels emerge, ready to paste onto each bottle. That’s the beautiful simplicity behind Mangoslab’s Nemonic Dot printer, unveiled at CES 2026.

This isn’t just another gadget trying to solve a problem nobody has. It’s a genuinely thoughtful piece of design that bridges the gap between those who want to help and those who need it. The Nemonic Dot is roughly the size of a stack of drink coasters, a plastic square about 4.5 inches wide and 2 inches thick that connects wirelessly to your smartphone. What makes it special isn’t its size, though. It’s what happens when you open the companion app and simply talk to it.

Designer: MangosLab

The magic lies in the voice interface. You speak a word into the app, and it converts your speech into text, then translates that text into Braille, and finally prints it onto a peel-and-stick strip. No Braille keyboard required. No special training needed. Just your voice and a desire to make someone’s daily life a little easier. It’s the kind of intuitive design that makes you wonder why nobody thought of it sooner.

Mangoslab, which spun off from Samsung’s internal C-Lab research department years ago, originally made their name with a cute sticky note printer. But they’ve evolved that concept into something with real social impact. Traditional Braille label makers cost upward of $1,250 and require users to type directly in Braille using specialized keyboards. The Nemonic Dot comes in under $1,000 and eliminates that learning curve entirely.

What’s particularly clever is how the device handles multiple languages and Braille standards. Because here’s something most people don’t realize: Braille isn’t universal. French Braille differs from English Braille, and there are both six-dot and eight-dot standards to navigate. The Nemonic Dot handles all of this through software translation, meaning it can adapt as standards evolve or when you need to switch between languages. The printer uses electric currents to move ball pins up and down, embossing uniform dots that are 0.6 millimeters high, meeting international standards for tactile readability.

The real-world applications are endlessly practical. Salt and pepper shakers that actually tell you which is which. Spice jars in the pantry. Light switches around the house. Medication bottles in the bathroom cabinet. These are everyday objects that most of us take for granted, but for someone with visual impairment, they represent small daily frustrations that add up. The Nemonic Dot turns those frustrations into solved problems, one sticky label at a time.

What I find most compelling about this design is how it shifts the power dynamic in accessibility. Usually, adaptive technology requires the person with a disability to do all the learning and adapting. But the Nemonic Dot is explicitly designed for friends and family members to use on behalf of their visually impaired loved ones. It’s a recognition that accessibility isn’t just about the end user, it’s about creating ecosystems of support that are easy for everyone to participate in.

The printer runs on battery power or an AC adapter, making it genuinely portable. When your label is finished printing, you press a button on top to trim the strip, and you’re done. The whole process takes seconds. There’s something refreshing about technology that doesn’t try to overcomplicate things. In an era of smart everything and AI everything, the Nemonic Dot does one thing exceptionally well: it turns spoken words into tactile information.

This is inclusive design at its best. Not flashy, not trying to reinvent the wheel, just thoughtfully addressing a genuine need with elegant simplicity. It’s a reminder that the most impactful innovations aren’t always the ones with the most features or the biggest screens. Sometimes they’re the ones that quietly remove barriers and make life just a bit more navigable for everyone.

The post This $995 Printer Turns Your Voice Into Braille Labels first appeared on Yanko Design.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: The iPhone 17 Pro Killer We’ve Been Waiting For

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Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: The iPhone 17 Pro Killer We’ve Been Waiting For

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra introduces a series of thoughtful enhancements aimed at resolving persistent user concerns. By focusing on practical upgrades such as faster charging, improved camera performance, ergonomic design, and smarter NFC functionality, Samsung has shifted its approach to prioritize usability and convenience. These changes reflect a commitment to delivering a flagship device […]

The post Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: The iPhone 17 Pro Killer We’ve Been Waiting For appeared first on Geeky Gadgets.

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Why 2026 Is the Perfect Time to Build a Second Brain with Simple AI Tools

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Why 2026 Is the Perfect Time to Build a Second Brain with Simple AI Tools

What if your brain wasn’t the only place where your ideas, tasks, and knowledge lived? What if you could create a system that not only remembers everything for you but also organizes and retrieves it exactly when you need it? Nate B Jones breaks down how 2026 is the year this becomes not just possible […]

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Replace Siri with ChatGPT in iOS 26 and Unlock Next-Level AI Features

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Replace Siri with ChatGPT in iOS 26 and Unlock Next-Level AI Features

Replacing Siri with ChatGPT in iOS 26 offers a significant upgrade to your Apple device’s voice assistant capabilities. By integrating ChatGPT, you can experience faster, more accurate, and context-aware responses, enhancing how you interact with your device. This guide will walk you through the setup process, highlight the benefits of this integration, and explore the […]

The post Replace Siri with ChatGPT in iOS 26 and Unlock Next-Level AI Features appeared first on Geeky Gadgets.

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