Thin Chance

At the most anticipated tech event of the year—launch of new iPhones—the only big buzz was around one announcement even though the new lineup had significant functional improvements. iPhone 17 with the new A19 chips offers 20 per cent better performance than the earlier version, while iPhone 17 Pro and Max models have the A19 Pro chip with estimates claiming up to 40 per cent improvement.

The phones also have a new camera layout and bigger sensors for better photographs. The display is also superior. But all this was expected. The novelty was the launch of iPhone Air, which comes in place of iPhone Plus, priced between the regular and Pro models. It is very thin, its main USP, but that also leads to questions over battery power. For example, Apple says the base iPhone 17 can do 30 hours of video playback on one charge as against 27 hours for iPhone Air. In India, iPhone Air is priced at ₹1,19,900, while the base iPhone starts at ₹82,900 and Pro and Pro Max are at ₹1,34,900 and
₹1,49,900, respectively.

Takers for iPhone Air would be mainly for look and feel since
the extra pricing does not translate to substantially superior features over the base version, priced at almost ₹37,000 less.

Google’s Hindi AI Mode

Google has announced that its AI mode will be made available in Hindi, alongside four other languages. Integrated into Google Search, this was previously available only in English. Powered by a custom version of Gemini 2.5, it is said to be useful for asking “longer, more complex and nuanced questions”. Google claims the answers this mode provides now would in the past require multiple search queries.

Driverless Taxis in Europe

Uber, which has partnered with Waymo to offer autonomous rides in some
US cities, will start testing a similar service in Europe by next year. This
will kick off in Munich. Here Uber is partnering with the Chinese autonomous vehicle company Momenta. Europe has been slower than the US and China in adopting robo-taxis, but this seems to be changing.

Fair Game

Popular gaming platform Roblox will soon release a short-form video app called Roblox Moments. Currently available in beta mode, it will enable users to capture, edit and share cuts of their gameplay on this platform, something which was earlier posted on platforms like YouTube. Robolox has been trying to remodel itself beyond just gaming.

artificial intelligenceGoogleiPhone AirtechnologyUber