Indian fitness platform, Ultrahuman, is expanding its wearable portfolio by launching a smart ring to boost its ability to provide tech loving ‘biohackers’ — and, it hopes, health-concerned Boomers — with more insightful metabolic insights.

Sensors embedded in the forthcoming Ultrahuman Ring include temperature, heart rate and movement monitors, which enable the device to track the wearer’s sleep quality, stress levels and activity density, per CEO and co-founder, Mohit Kuma.

The device is designed to work in conjunction with the startup’s existing wearable, a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) sensor-based service it brands ‘Cyborg’, to deepen the quality of insights for users — such as by identifying when a poor glucose response might be linked to a bad night’s sleep, say, or elevated stress levels, rather than putting all the focus on whatever it was the user ate right before their blood sugar spiked.

The Ultrahuman Ring is not a CGM itself but it can function as a standalone health tracker, according to Kumar — giving the fitness startup a shot at broadening the appeal of its metabolic tracking service since the smart ring just slips on the finger, instead of, as is the case with the CGM, requiring that a spring-loaded filament is fired into the user’s upper arm (and left in place, ‘worn’ under the skin).

The clean, chunky look of the ring band (which comes in a shiny metal titanium or black finish) is also more likely to fit in with fashion-conscious consumers than rocking a ‘Cyborg’ arm patch. 

The Ultrahuman Ring goes up for pre-order today, with shipping slated to start in August.

At the time of writing pricing hasn’t been confirmed but the startup told us there will be two options: One (premium) price covering lifetime usage; and another (monthly) subscription option with a relatively small lock in period, after which the user would be free to quit on demand.

One ring to end the guesswork?

“The idea is to help you understand more about what are the additional factors in your metabolism,” say Kumar, discussing the incoming smart ring in a Zoom call with TechCrunch. “Right now today with the glucose monitor you actually understand the outcome of how glucose metabolism works but there are many other factors that affect glucose levels — factors like stress, sleep, activity. These are the major ones.”

“Today, a lot of this is actually guesswork,” he goes on. “But with our own wearable — and with the access to the raw data of the wearable — we actually have the ability now to understand what was the leading factor that led to a poorer glucose response. For example, if you’re under-recovered because of, let’s say, lack of sleep and the glucose levels get elevated the platform now can clearly figure out what is the contributing factor. And similarly for lack of activity.”

Many factors can affect how the body metabolises glucose, while big swings in blood sugar can be associated with health problems like diabetes and heart disease — creating an impetus for consumers to make lifestyle changes intended to stablize their glucose response, such as upping their activity level, choosing a healthier diet and getting enough sleep.

Ultrahuman’s metabolic fitness tracking service essentially sells real-time feedback to help individuals get a handle on what’s going on with their biology. But when we road-tested its beta product last year, we highlighted the relative challenge for the average user to intelligently interpret their glucose variability data — and link it to specific lifestyle factors — vs taking a too simplistic read of the data.

The smart ring looks intended to shrink this interpretation gap by enabling Ultrahuman’s platform to track and triangulate a variety of biomarkers to provide the user with a stronger read on what’s behind their glucose peaks and troughs. (Or: “If lack of activity is leading to elevated base levels of glucose the platform will be able to decode it in a much more efficient way,” as Kumar puts it.)

Ultrahuman will be going up against a number of more established players in the smart ring space — typically also with a strong focus on health/fitness tracking. However it argues its differentiating twist here is that it’s “optimizing for metabolism” — and, well, it has the glucose tracking data to back that up (thanks to early adopters of its CGM-based ‘Cyborg’ wearable).

“Different platforms optimize for different things. Oura, for example, optimize for sleep. Whoop provides for recovery. And here we’re optimizing for metabolism,” argues Kumar, adding that how Ultrahuman captures data (with “more real-time” sensors) is a distinctive technical element of its differentiation vs rival smart ring makers.

“The way we have built the data pointers, the frequency of data pointers, the type of metrics, real-time-ness of temperature etc, is more optimized towards the metabolism than other wearables,” he also suggests.

“For us temperature is a much more important biomarker given that we’re looking at the metabolic rate and glucose metabolism. So that was one of the reasons why we decided to build our own wearable — so that we have control over the accuracy of the insights and also the ability to derive some of these insights which was not possible with the existing class of wearables.”

According to Kumar, the Ultrahuman Ring measures stress by looking at factors like heart rate, HRV (heart rate variability) and temperature — running its own algorithmic analysis of the data to identify a per user stress response.

For activity, he says it’s aiming to identify “activity density” — by looking at input from accelerometers, as well as temperature and heart rate — to try to understand “what zone of activity were you in”.

The sleep tracking component also pulls data from activity sensors, temperature and heart rate — to identify different phases of sleep (REM, deep sleep etc). 

While sensor-laden, the Ultrahuman Ring is not currently configured to deliver direct feedback at the hardware level (such as by vibrations) — but Kumar suggests that haptic nudges and/or smart alarms are something it wants to add in future. 

Image credits: Ultrahuman

Two wearables for gut insights

Ultrahuman settled on a smart ring as its choice of form factor for this second wearable, rather than — say — a smart band, for a few reasons. Firstly, it avoids the risk of having to compete with existing wrist-mounted wearables (like the Apple Watch) for space on the user’s person. But Kumar also says its testing showed that a ring form factor yielded the lowest data variability of all the forms it tested for metrics like temperature, an important consideration for accuracy.

The team also judged that a ring stands a better chance of being worn more consistently and continuously than other types of wearables. (Ultrahuman’s Ring can survive getting wet in the shower or the pool, he confirms, with also up to five days of battery life before it needs to be charged.) “The more data that the user has about themselves, the more powerful the insights will be,” he adds.

If the ring user is simultaneously wearing Ultrahuman’s CGM too, insights picked up by the ring’s sensors will be directly linked to their real-time glucose levels (which the Cyborg sensor measures via changes to the interstitial fluid under the skin of their arm) — enabling actionable connections to be made between glucose variability and lifestyle events which may be triggers (high stress, poor sleep, low activity levels etc).

“Where our strength will be is in terms of marrying things like glucose variability and impact on your sleep,” he predicts. “Or, for example, if you have a late meal and a late glucose spike — what impact did it cause on your sleep?

“For some people this is perfectly fine — they can have a late glucose spike and they’ll actually pretty much be in the [target sleep] zone. But for a lot of people it actually affects their REM sleep pretty [badly]. And in some cases it affects their deep sleep also.”

The Ultrahuman smart ring plus Cyborg CGM combo could therefore power diet-related interventions for users who can’t avoid having a late meal but for whom its metabolic tracking has implicated glucose spikes as negatively affecting their sleep quality — by suggesting, for example, they opt for certain foods that are linked to improved sleep (such as tryptophan rich foods) when they have to have a late meal.

“Those are the insights where we will actually be pretty unique,” he suggests.

The product will also approach movement and activity recommendations in a distinct way to rival products, per Kumar.

“Movement is not just about burning more calories — it’s also about frontal lobe development, it’s also about longevity. And movement is an activity which helps people reduce cortisol levels and at the same time increase their [high calorie] expenditure. So a lot of our focus is going to be around movement — if you look at it from an activity tracking perspective.”

A user of Ultrahuman’s smart ring who has not tapped its upper-arm-mounted CGM sensor yet can still get some general benefits, according to Kumar. But he emphasizes that the greatest utility comes from the combination of the two wearables. “People will be able to understand their sleep quality, people will be able to understand their levels of stress recovery, movement etc. But if they want to understand the effect on their glucose metabolism of all these factors they have to unlock it by a CGM. So it works both ways,” he says.

The ring can also work to bridge service gaps inevitably affecting the Cyborg sensor — and thereby expand the utility of its CGM tracking service — by continuing to provide a prior Cyborg sensor user with personalized feedback after their sensor has expired. (The arm-mounted CGMs typically last two weeks before they have to be replaced — meaning the Cyborg service is interrupting unless a fresh sensor is applied — whereas the Ultrahuman Ring is designed to stick around for longer and won’t automatically ‘expire’ in the same way.)

“[If you just have the ring] the platform will understand, based on what sort of metabolic rate, your carb processing capabilities, how much you should be walking, for example, after a meal,” explains Kumar. “And that’s possible because now we understand what sort of activity levels led towards decreasing throughputs. So that’s how — over time — we actually don’t need your CGM data also, in many scenarios, to derive this output.”

Bringing biohacking to Boomers?

Since the ring form factor is obviously more accessible vs the (semi-invasive) arm-mounted CGM, Ultrahuman is expecting greater adoption of the smart ring than for the Cyborg tracker.

He says it currently has 25,000 people in India on the wait-list for the Cyborg service — which remains in a managed beta — but it’s expecting at least 100,000 people to buy into the smart ring over the next year.

Ultrahuman will be selling the smart ring globally — whereas availability of the Cyborg sensor remains limited to India and the UAE, owing to regulatory considerations and also its decision to focus on markets with high rates of metabolic disorders for the product to target — so the pool of potential buyers is larger.

At the same time, Kumar says the team is hoping the smart ring will be able to act as a broader marketing tool to cross-sell the CGM-powered service.

The typical profile of existing Cyborg users is an individual between 30-40 years old with a passion for fitness (and/or data analysis), and an interest in preventative health. But with the smart ring expected to have broader appeal, Ultrahuman now has its eye on convincing older, Baby Boomer generation consumers to take a punt on its metabolic health service — a wider population (of circa 25M-30M globally) that Kumar suggests hasn’t adopted a health wearable as yet. But maybe a shiny bit ‘o’ bling could be just the nudge they need…

“Maybe they have adopted a wearable like Apple Watch because it’s not just a wearable for health — it also does a bunch of things — but they haven’t gone deep into deep health or a biohacking wearable yet. So that’s what our target audience in the future would be — but the first audience is going to be biohackers, people who love data about their health,” he adds.

European Union lawmakers are proposing to ban flavored heated tobacco products — a category that covers vaping — in a move they say is intended to protect the health of young people after a “significant” rise in sales of novel heated tobacco products.

The EU has set itself a goal of creating a ‘tobacco free generation’, and having less than 5% of the population using tobacco by 2040, as part of a major anti-cancer drive.

But the rise of vaping — with its array of youth-friendly flavored cartridges/pods, touting tastes like bubblegum, crème brûlée, mint or strawberry watermelon — presents an obvious challenge to steering young people away from smoking.

Announcing the proposal to amend existing EU rules, to remove an exemption on the sale of flavored tobacco products that currently applies to e-cigarettes and other heated tobacco products, the Commission said sales volumes of these products had risen at least 10% in at least five Member States, adding that the sales volume of heated tobacco products at retail level now exceeds 2.5% of the total sales of tobacco products at Union level.

Puffco has long led the market with innovative cannabis vaporizers. The Puffco Peak Pro is easily one of the best e-rigs available, and the company just unveiled a new vape called the Proxy. It offers the best of the Peak Pro and can be built into various form factors.

Don’t be distracted by the lovely pipe. That’s just a piece of glass. The Proxy slides into the glass piece. Think of the Proxy as a modular dabbing rig, able to fit into any form factor made for the unit. Bubbler? Sure. Glass beaker? Yep. Pipe? Obviously.

The $299 self-contained rig is about the size of a taller D-cell battery. Inside is the same heating element found in the company’s other flagship product, the Peak Pro. USB-C recharges the battery, and the unit comes pre-programmed with four different heat levels.

Puffco ships the Proxy with the pipe shown here, along with a travel case that holds cables, a cleaning kit and a concentrate container spot.

It’s simple to use: Open the carb cap at the top, drop in your favorite concentrate (resin, shatter, hash, etc.), and hit the button twice to activate the oven. Then, a couple of seconds later, blast off. I found the glass pipe smooth and comfortable, but I would also love to try it with a water piece.

[gallery ids="2336757,2336758,2336759"]

“This looks like a vaporizer, just in a pipe form,” Puffco founder Roger Volodarsky said to TechCrunch. “But it’s the first truly modular vaporizer that’s been made to work in any design you want. And [Puffco] will release different accessories in other form factors that the Proxy can drop into.”

And the company is looking to makers to build other unique accessories for the Proxy.

Puffco has long had an active community that built accessories for the company’s flagship product, the Puffco Peak and the Peak Pro. Puffco sells a few on its site, and Etsy and eBay are full of custom glass pieces and utility accessories. However, the Peak’s design is limiting and requires makers to build glass pieces to a specific form factor.

Volodarsky hopes makers will find it easier to build around the self-contained Proxy.

“It takes much less work to build for the Proxy,” Volodarsky said. “If an artist is going to make a top for a Peak, it’s going to take them eight to 16 hours … unless it’s really, really cheap. [The Proxy] takes much less effort, so artists can get the value for their time. If it takes four hours to make a piece, they can charge way less for it. We think there will be much more affordable options in our community.”

The Proxy is available today at Puffco.com and several retailers for $299. In addition, the company expects new form factors and accessories to be available in the next couple of months.

Volodarsky founded Puffco in 2013 and has bootstrapped the company since. Roger doesn’t want to take venture capital money.

“I have a big problem with having to serve investors,” he told TechCrunch. “Everything has to be deeply profitable, and usually that means you’re paying employees as little as you could. It means you’re cutting corners to drive profitability. We’re here to grow and professionalize the space, and that doesn’t align with the returns I think shareholders would want. So yeah, I’m avoiding having any investors for as long as I can, and it doesn’t look like that need is coming up in the future. The only people that have any ownership interest in Puffco are early-stage employees.”

Volodarsky says the company has experienced exponential growth from 2016 to 2021, consistently doubling its revenue yearly. The chip shortage affected the company, though. The Proxy was supposed to be released in 2021, but the company had to push it back until now, when it could acquire enough inventory to launch the product.

The Puffco Proxy is hitting the market at a pivotal time. Cannabis is now legal in various forms throughout the United States, with Europe showing signs of turning on the lights. With the explosion in domestic markets, more consumers are discovering the plant, and some are looking for high-end experiences and equipment — that’s where Puffco’s products play.

I’ve long been a fan of Puffco’s products, and the Proxy carries the best of the company into new form factors. I had a few days with the Proxy, and it’s much easier to clean than other Puffco products, and it’s a joy to use. It’s easy to take the Proxy out of the glass pipe and imagine it fitting into all sorts of glass pieces. I can’t wait to see what people build for this thing.

It’s hard to get a thrill from glimpses of unreleased smartphone hardware these days, given the baked-in maturity of the mobile market and the general form and function sameness of the sticky rectangles we humans routinely spend hours poking at and peering into each day.

But this rear-view design-teaser (below) of a forthcoming handset made by hardware startup, Nothing, might just give you a little tingle: Meet the minimally named phone (1), in all its pure, deconstructed, ‘analog’ glory — parrot not included, presumably…

As design aesthetics go, it’s approximately akin to if The Ordinary made electronics. Which is to say clean, minimalist, functional looking, even clinical, as if to suggest it’s purged of performative frills — except that first-glance stark contrast is the performative visual thrill this type of look is shooting for as a differentiator so there’s plenty of contrivance at work.

In phone (1)’s case, by stepping away from the shiny, hermetically sealed look that iPhone maker Apple is so fond of — and scores of Android device makers have so keenly copied — Nothing is delivering some smart, instant visual differentiation vs the premium competition.

On its website, it sums up its approach with phone (1) as: “Designed with intention. Full of warmth. And joy.” Which suggests the parrot is there to represent all the fun stuff you can do with the stripped-back bit of cuttlefish-bone-white mobile kit it’s having a (staged) beak at.

As we’ve noted before, Nothing is a dab hand at teasers. Albeit, founder Carl Pei’s tweet about this pre-launch reveal claims the startup’s hand was forced by leakers ahead of next month’s official unboxing. (But if you believe that, well, I have a very healthy Norwegian Blue parrot to sell you… )

A previous Nothing teaser of phone (1) showed what look like illuminated light strips on the back of the device — a strikingly contrasting feature to the otherwise utilitarian look being revealed today. So all may not be as purely functional as the phone’s analog look might imply on first glance, as it seems to sprinkling a little fun into the design mix too.

Pei has previously said Nothing’s debut smartphone will pack a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, rock wireless charging and run a skinned version of Android (aka NothingOS) — which its marketing suggests will layer something “bold” and “warm” atop Google’s hyper-familiar smartphone platform. So if the user interface doesn’t — somehow — feature snazzy plumage we’re going to be disappointed.

The rest of phone (1)’s specs are tbc but Nothing will officially reveal all on July 12.

In its early pre-pandemic days, Keychron made a name for itself with its series of affordable mechanical keyboards — including a few low-profile ones that remain a rarity to this day. Those boards didn’t necessarily appeal to enthusiasts, but were more than good enough for most mainstream users who wanted a different kind of keyboard. Last year, Keychron upped the ante with the launch of the Q1, an enthusiast-level, fully customizable hotswap keyboard with a 75% layout that had more than a few similarities to the heavily hyped GMMK Pro. Since then, Keychron has expanded this series with the 65% Q2, which received pretty rave reviews at the time and now the Q3.

The QMK-compatible Q3 clearly follows in the footsteps of the Q1 and Q2. It uses the same double-gasket design that should make for a relatively bouncy typing experience (though in my experience, there’s less bounce than I would’ve expected), and the overall design is pretty much the same, with the exception that it’s a tenkeyless (TKL), so you get a full keyboard with standalone arrow keys and a full row of function keys, but without the numpad. The body is made from aluminum and the whole unit weighs in at a hefty 4.5 pounds. In part, that’s because Keychron opted for a steel plate here.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

You can opt to get a bare-bones version where you supply your own switches and keycaps for $154 (or $164 if you want to get the optional volume knob), or a fully assembled version with keycaps and your choice of Gateron Pro Red, Blue or Brown switches for $174 (or $184 with knob).

For the extra $20, I think getting the assembled version is a no-brainer, given that the keycaps and switches will cost you significantly more and even if you want to replace them, you could always reuse them in another project (because who only has one keyboard, right?). The double-shot PBT keycaps aren’t the greatest (and the OSA profile takes a bit of getting used to), but they are perfectly serviceable and while some reviewers have reported issues with legends that weren’t printed very well, that was not an issue on the unit I received. Twisting the knob feels pretty satisfying, too.

Keychron offers three color choices for the Q3: black, silver grey and navy blue, which all come with matching keycaps if you opt for the fully assembled version. I got the blue version and really enjoyed the look.

My review unit came with Gateron Brown tactile switches, which I do not love. They are OK switches, but just not my style. I had a fresh set of Akko CS Jelly Black linear switches, which are pretty much my go-to option for budget linears these days (or Gateron Yellows, which Keychron sadly doesn’t offer as an option for its Q series).

Image Credits: TechCrunch

The joy of custom mechanical keyboards is that you can adjust them to your own preferences. These days, with hotswap being the standard, you can easily try different switches instead of just opting for the mediocre horror that is the Cherry Brown. But at the same time, the Keychrone Q2 won over a lot of users because it was pretty much great out of the box. It was an easy board to recommend to first-timers. That wasn’t the case with the original Q1 (Keychron has since launched a second version), and sadly it’s not true for the Q3 either.

In many ways, the Q3 is reminiscent of the Q1 in that it can be great, but you have to put a bit of work into it. If you’re an enthusiast looking for this kind of design, the Q3 will be right up your alley, but out of the box, it suffers from quite a bit of case ping (that is, a quiet but definitely audible high-pitched sound that resonates through the case when you hit a key and that can quickly get annoying). It only takes a few minutes to take the board apart, cut up a Band-Aid and perform the “force break mod” where you strategically place those pieces of Band-Aid close to the screws that hold the board together, and you’re in business. While you have the board open, you can opt for the tape mod and maybe add some additional sound dampening to the bottom of the case and with maybe 15 minutes of work, a Band-Aid, some masking tape and maybe a bit of polyfill (there’s some sound dampening material already included, but it’s not very effective), you’re done and the board will sound significantly better. And let’s face it, if you’re an enthusiast, you were going to do all of those things anyway.

If all of that sounds like it’s way too much work for a keyboard, then the Q3 definitely isn’t for you. You could opt for the Q2, which is a great gateway drug into mechanical keyboards in the same price bracket, and if you want something fancier, your options are endless.

Maybe it’s the larger size or maybe the overall design had already been dialed in before the Q2 launched, but the Q3 feels like a slight step back for Keychron. Now, as I said, if you’re an enthusiast and looking for a TKL, which isn’t a format that’s widely available, I think the Q3 is a good option. If you’re not locked into the TKL layout, just get a Q2 or maybe the NovelKeys NK87 (which starts at $135 for the polycarbonate case and $225 for the more comparable aluminum one).

Apple’s health business could now stand alone as one of the largest in the sector in terms of sheer reach — if it could ever be disentangled from the company’s other products, which, by design, it really can’t. At the company’s annual WWDC global developer conference last week, a variety of new health-related features were introduced that cover not only the wellness-oriented Apple Watch lineup, but also the company’s iPhone, iPad and beyond.

From product design, to participation in academic research, and to hiring, Apple has demonstrated a concerted effort to do more in health, and I spoke to Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, Vice President of Health Dr. Sumbul Desai and Vice President of Fitness Technologies Jay Blahnik following its WWDC announcements to learn more about just how important health and wellness are to the consumer technology giant’s ambitions.

Williams started off by reiterating something I’ve heard from Apple in the past on the subject: As a company, it never really set out with a strong intent to get into the health business in the beginning — at least not in the way it set out to develop a product like the iPod or the iPhone.

“It started when we were working on the watch,” he said. “And because the watch was such a personal device, and you’re wearing it, we thought that there is a huge opportunity to maybe give people information about their health, and the more we started pulling on threads, we decided that not only is there an opportunity — there’s a responsibility to do more in the health space.”

Williams said that the impact of that felt responsibility is what has resulted in the many health features Apple has introduced in the years since the Watch’s introduction, both on the Watch and across its platforms. Ultimately, Williams said, Apple has two “fundamental tenets” that undergird its approach to introducing new health-related products and services: that they be “deeply grounded in science,” and that “privacy is at the core of everything” Apple does.

Informed patients, augmented physicians

Those principles are at the heart of the new features Apple unveiled at the conference, according to Desai, who pointed to the scientific rigor behind their introduction of sleep stage tracking for the Apple Watch, and the fresh FDA clearance of their AFib history feature, which will roll out to Apple Watch users in the U.S. with the watchOS 9 update sometime this fall.

Image Credits: Apple

“As Jeff alluded to, everything we do in health is based on the science, and AFib history was validated in a clinical study, with participants wearing both Apple Watch and an FDA-cleared reference device,” Desai told me. “In that study, the average difference in weekly measurements between the two devices is actually less than 1%.”

That’s a remarkably thin margin for a piece of non-specialized consumer tech, which comes with the added benefit of being worn by owners consistently for the bulk of the day over a period that can span years — a claim no dedicated medical heart-rate monitor can match.

The significance of offering AFib history as something Apple Watch owners can share with their physicians, combined with all the other health data that they can export via PDF should they choose to share a more complete picture, might not be immediately apparent, but it represents a depth and breadth of individual patient data that healthcare professionals have never had access to before. I asked about how this kind of groundbreaking work will impact healthcare as a whole, and whether Apple is working with medical professionals on understanding those impacts.

Desai (a physician herself) pointed out that Apple spends “a lot of time talking to physicians,” both on studies like the one it’s conducting with Toronto’s University Health Network (UHN) which we covered last year, and in other capacities as well.

“We don’t want to throw technology over the wall,” Desai explained. “We want to actually bring the physicians along so that they understand where how this can be used, because to your point, it’s going to change their practice, and it’s also going to change their interactions with their patients.”

“It’s clear to us that the future of healthcare still has the patient-physician relationship at the center of it,” Williams said. “We just want to enhance that. We don’t view that technology somehow replaces [that], we just view that it enhances that relationship and in the future, you’ll have a much more empowered patient, and a physician who is able to operate at the top of their license because they just have a better set of information with which to work.”

Williams acknowledged that features as detailed as AFib history “will take some time” to be “understood, used and adopted,” but he cited one powerful way it could have an immediate impact: Detecting a case in which a patient receives an ablation treatment to resolve chronic AFib, but in which that treatment doesn’t take the first time and the AFib (which would be otherwise asymptomatic) remains.

Apple is also introducing medication reminder features to Health, including the ability to scan labels to add your own medicines, and get reminders to hopefully improve adherence to their intended use. It’ll also provide users with info about potential negative interactions, and offer yet another way in which patients can have more informed conversations with their doctors with actual data to back them up.

Super sleep science

Apple’s approach to sleep tracking is likewise backed by science, and promises to contribute still more back to the research community through a new Apple sleep study that the company is adding to its ongoing heart study as an opt-in option for Apple Watch owners to join when the new update launches. Williams prefaced the feature by acknowledging that Apple is hardly the first to do sleep stage tracking (dedicated health-tracking companies including Oura and Whoop have been offering that for years, for instance), but again references a need to feel confident in the science behind the feature before bringing it to the public.

“The machine learning models that were trained, were validated against the clinical gold standard of polysomnography [a type of multi-parameter sleep study],” Desai added. “And this was actually one of the largest and most diverse populations ever studied for a wearable.”

Image Credits: Apple

“Prior to sleep stages, we were really focused on helping people meet their sleep duration goals, since that’s really important — that consistency — but we wanted to go a little further and dig into the science, and provide users with more information around their sleep cycles,” Desai explained. “So using the signals from Apple Watch’s accelerometer and heart rate sensor, users will now be able to see their sleep stages while they’re in REM, core and deep sleep.”

Apple’s use of ‘core’ to define the type of sleep users spend the bulk of their nights engaged in, which is more commonly referred to by other sleep stage trackers as ‘light,’ is an interesting break from the field: The company found that ‘light’ wasn’t really the best descriptor, since it tended to strike the average user as something meriting concern, when in fact it’s a perfectly normal part of the overall sleep cycle.

It’s a good example of how Apple continually strives to balance a desire to add increasing power and sophistication to its health features, while maintaining their approachability and accessibility to a very broad audience. That’s also a key ingredient in their approach to the changes coming in their new Fitness features unveiled at WWDC.

Keeping fitness fun while serving fanatics

Blahnik has been with Apple since before the Apple Watch was introduced, and he’s overseen the company build its fitness features from fairly fundamental activity tracking, to a sophisticated suite of metric management and a variety of professional, guided workouts. At WWDC, Apple made a number of big announcements around Fitness, including bringing simple activity tracking directly to the iPhone for users who don’t have a Watch, as well as a bunch of new metrics, features and sport types for enthusiast and advanced athletes, and improvements to the Fitness+ subscription workout service.

“Over the years, we’ve continued to push further and further, because we know different things motivate different people,” Blahnik said. “And we want to make sure that we’re constantly providing variety for different personalities, and for the things that motivate people.”

The updates include three new metrics for runners that can help avoid injuries, including stride length, ground contact time and vertical oscillation. Blahnik pointed out that these are typically captured using a range of specialized equipment or direct observation by a professional, and that they’re “really difficult to do from the wrist.” Still, he says Apple was able to build algorithms that track them reliably, and then display them either directly during a workout session, or afterwards in the workout summary.

Considering Apple spent a lot of time talking about these, and other advanced features like custom workouts and automatic tri-sport workout detection for triathletes, I asked Blahnik how Apple determines when and where to address more advanced needs, vs. more general population features.

“Prior to Apple Watch, most most people wouldn’t know, unless they brought their phone, even how far they had run, and […] the more that this kind of information becomes available, you do find users want more,” he said. “Or they maybe get on a journey where they’re going to do their first 5k, and they start reading more about their health. And so while [the new metrics] do seem advanced, I’m always amazed at the fact that some of what we measured in the beginning seemed advanced as well.”

Image Credits: Apple

Blahnik says that in the early Apple Watch days, even having access to the basic three rings that Apple still uses to categorize and present its health data in summary — Stand, Move and Exercise — was itself “advanced” compared to what was generally available. Still, even if users are seeking more granular feedback, he notes that the challenge is in introducing sophistication while still welcoming in those who might find the full scope of what Apple Health has become overwhelming.

“I think for us, it’s just a journey where we’re constantly wanting to offer more, trying to build the features in a way that are usable and inspiring to both beginners and advanced athletes, and then never burdening the person that just wants to come in and start the experiment,” he said, pointing out that the Workout app still looks and feels the same when first opened, and reveals its complexity as you choose to dive in.

Health is quotidian

Apple’s health efforts have evolved from a subset of one among many of a single ancillary device’s features, into something that spans the company’s entire product ecosystem, and that both informs and welcomes collaboration from healthcare practitioners and researchers globally. I asked Williams for a sense of how that shift has led Apple to think differently about its overall approach to product development.

“I think everyone has an appreciation for the fact that these devices are with you all the time,” he said. “We have this huge opportunity to help people with their health and so, broadly — with everything from Screen Time, which is ultimately a health thing, since there’s a huge mental health crisis, and we think something like Screen Time helps contribute to people’s wellbeing — all the way across the company, people think about ways in which our products and services can help people from a health standpoint.”

European Union co-legislators have reached provisional agreement on a common charging solutions for smartphones, laptops, tablets and other small and medium sized electronics — some 15 different categories in all — agreeing that, by autumn 2024, USB Type C will be the common charging port for in scope devices.

Laptop makers have been given a little longer to implement the common charging solution on account of different power charging characteristics — with 40 months after the rules enter into force to adapt their kit.

Wireless charging interoperability is also being addressed by the EU — although not immediately; lawmakers have agreed for the Commission to ask standards authorities to come up with a standard to enable wireless charging interoperability. The Commission will then be empowered to adapt the directive via delegated acts to ensure that wireless charging kit does not sidestep the requirement for a common approach.

The provisional agreement between the European Parliament and Council paves the way for a formal vote later this summer to approve the amendment to the EU’s Radio Equipment Directive — but the bloc’s co-legislators reaching a compromise is usually the crux moment for EU lawmaking.

The new rules will enter into force 20 days after publication in the EU Official Journal — with the common charger provisions starting to apply 24 months after that (hence 2024).

The parliament has been pushing for common charger rules for over a decade, arguing it’s a key step to shrink the volume of e-waste generated by consumers in the bloc. Unused chargers are estimated to represent about 11,000 tonnes of e-waste annually, per EU lawmakers.

The Commission finally came forward with a proposal last fall — and it’s notable that today’s compromise only took a matter of months to agree.

“The common charging solution will not only affect Apple. It will affect a lot of brands producing some of these 15 different types of products when it will come into force in two years time,” said the parliament’s lead negotiator on the file, Alex Agius Saliba, speaking during a press conference in which he dubbed the provisional agreement “historic” and a “great achievement”.

Under the incoming rules, EU consumers will have a choice to buy a new device with or without an external power supply — and must be provided with clear information on the charging characteristics of new devices so they can easily tell whether their existing chargers are compatible or not.

In-scope products placed on the market before the date of application will not be required to comply so it will be interesting to see whether or not there’s a flurry of device releases by manufacturers seeking to use up existing components ahead of the deadline.

Internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, who was also at the press conference to laud what he described as a “very important” agreement, said a common charging approach is in the interests of European consumers and the environment.

“It’s true we have been waiting for 10 years,” Breton went on. “It was not easy but we have been able to do it. Nine months — nine months only! It means we can move fast when there is a political will. When we are able to say to the lobbies sorry but here it is Europe; we are working for our own people not your interests.”

Electronics makers wanting to sell devices to EU consumers “will have to apply to our rules”, he warned — urging device makers to “be ready” and suggesting they shouldn’t wait the full two years to make the switch since “these will be the rules”.

Breton also reiterated that the Commission is working on ecodesign and energy labelling measures — which he said are intended to prevent premature obsolescence of smartphone and tablets, another issue he dubbed “very important”.

“These measures will include reliability, ease of dismantling, incentivizing repair, access to critical spare parts as well as boosting recycling,” Breton added, suggesting that proposed legislation will be ready after the summer break.

Apple surprised WWDC keynote watchers with the release of a new, fully redesigned MacBook Air. The MacBook Air, Apple’s most popular notebook computer, last got a significant physical overhaul in 2018. The new MacBook Air borrows design cues from both Apple’s latest iMac line, as well as the new MacBook Pros that were released in late 2021. It’s also powered by the first ever second-generation Apple Silicon processor — the M2 system-on-a-chip.

The new MacBook Air features thinner bezels surrounding the display (albeit with a notch), and drops the tapered case found on earlier models in favor of a base with consistent thickness more similar to the ones found on the new 2021 MacBook Pro. Despite the loss of the taper, the 13-inch laptop is thinner (at its thickest point) and lighter than the outgoing version. It’s 2.7 pounds in total, significantly lighter than the 14-inch MacBook Pro. It’s only 11.3mm thin (0.5 inches), and it now comes in a champagne-ish color as well as a very deep blue called “midnight”.

[gallery ids="2330707,2330709,2330734,2330726,2330725,2330717"]

With the M2 on board, the computer boasts significantly improved performance over the M1 generation, as well as increased power efficiency.

MagSafe is included for charging, like the standard found on the new MacBook Pros, and it’s 25% brighter than the last gen. The display is also slightly bigger overall at 13.6-inches diagonal. The front-facing webcam is a 1080p version, which should be on par with the new one introduced in the MacBook Pro. The speaker system is integrated into the case and offers support for Spatial Audio.

For image editing, Apple says it offers 20% improvement vs. the M1 version, and for video editing, people can expect a 40% bump. Battery life remains very high, rated at 18 hours for video consumption. There’s also a new dual-port USB-C charger available, and the MacBook Air now fast-charges, offering 50% charge from 30 minutes of plug-in time.

The new MacBook Air starts at $11,99, and will be available next month.

Developing…

It’s been a tough few years for Berlin-based femtech hardware startup Inne which came out of stealth R&D in the fall of 2019, shortly before COVID-19 hit Europe. By January 2020, founder and CEO Eirini Rapti tells us she was busy making final inspections ahead of the launch of its debut product — a connected device it calls a “minilab” for at-home, saliva-based hormone testing to support fertility and cycle tracking — but then, in just a few weeks, the region was plunged into lockdown and everything changed.

Hardware startups are rarely smooth sailing at the best of times. But the coronavirus pandemic created a cascade of new challenges for Rapti and her team around supply chain and logistics — upsetting their careful calculations on unit economics. The pandemic also called a halt to a major piece of research work the startup had lined up with a US university to study its hormone-tracking method for a key contraceptive use-case — a product it had intended to prioritize but could not bring to market ahead of the study which is required to gain regulatory approval.

In a matter of weeks, Inne was forced to freeze its big launch as it tried to figure out how best to move forward — and, indeed, whether it should launch the product at all in such a challengingly reconfigured environment.

“Due to COVID-19 we’ve had to really shift around our plans,” says Rapti, talking to TechCrunch via video chat. “We had loads of unpredicted supply chain issues… There were so many fuck-ups that came up with COVID-19! It’s unbelievable what happened.

“I remember our last interview [in October 2019], I was super optimistic — I’m still very optimistic — sort of really looking forward to get all of our tech out to the world. We were setting up our production line when I spoke to you. We had John Hopkins [research university] agreeing to our contraceptive study. Like, the world was my oyster… And then I came back from a last inspection of the goods coming off the production line in January 2020 and we were hearing about what was happening in China but we were not really conscious of it and then we were so busy with pre-sales and whatever.

“And then of course a month later we didn’t know if we were going to get raw materials from China. We didn’t know if the factories that were working within Europe were going to even be able to have people in the factory. ”

The start of the planned contraception study also kept being postponed, as the US research institution which had agreed to conduct it, pre-pandemic, understandably prioritized work related to COVID-19 itself.

The upshot for Inne was a shock freeze on its best laid plans — plans Rapti had been working towards since 2017 when she founded the business and kicked off R&D to get the at-home hormone testing product to market.

“2020 for me started on this big high — we had our final products, we got our approval [to sell the device in Europe], we are launching pre-sales. I think we had 200 people buy the product and then we kind of had to stop because we didn’t know if we were even able to deliver these 200… This is how bad it was,” she adds.

As well as having shelled out to set up a production line it suddenly had to suspend, Inne had also doubled the size of its team to prepare for scaling. But suddenly the message from the investment world was ‘slow everything down’, recounts Rapti. “So I was like why didn’t you tell me two months ago?!… My whole strategy came crumbling down.”

The supply chain and logistics disruption — some of which has lingered even while pandemic lockdowns have eased — also forced Inne to concentrate most of its effort on the German market in Europe — “because we wanted to contain, as much as possible, the logistical nightmare”, as she puts it.

“Electronic chip shortages of course are affecting everyone… but it’s also as simple as backlog on logistics,” she explains, discussing how COVID-19 has dialled up difficulties for the fledgling hardware business. “Your shipments take longer or your air freight is much more expensive and all of a sudden your price per unit becomes really high — and for a small company like us, for a startup, if you cannot demonstrate your unit economics and your growth what can you demonstrate? And quite frankly I was sitting there for a few months — and I think it was the first time I froze in my career where I felt I have no idea what I will be able to show in the next six months!”

By summer 2020, Rapti was facing a big decision over how to move forward while the business was still mired in uncertainties around supply chain resilience and with no new date on when it would be able to launch contraception as it still hadn’t found a replacement partner to do the study.

Additionally, it was unclear when the startup would be able to raise more funding in such a challenging climate. Yet, given the expanded team Rapti had put in place ahead of the 2020 launch, she needed to consider burn rate — which meant deciding whether she had to let staff go to give the startup the best chance of surviving so much disruption.

The choice boiled down to two options, per Rapti: Either cut everything right back, keeping only a bare minimum of staff to extend the runway and find another, probably European-based institution to carry out the contraceptive study; or reduce cash burn a bit but go ahead and launch the minilab with only fertility and cycle tracking — meaning there could be no user messaging on natural contraception, limiting the product’s utility to (only) women trying to get pregnant or those looking for help with an irregular cycle.

In the event, Rapti went for the second choice — saying she was, above all, keen to keep the team she’d built up. She also saw an opportunity to use a partial launch to at least learn about the market, even though continuing supply chain constraints meant Inne had to limit the number of devices shipped to make sure they could provide the full service to the first buyers (its subscription-based progesterone testing service works with packs of single-use daily testing strips to gather the user’s saliva sample, with testing performed by inserting the moistened strip into the minilab for analysis).

“The first year we could circulate — I think — 500 devices, or very little, without having delays. And I think we closed last year with close to 2,000 customers,” Rapti adds.

Outside Germany, Inne also has some early users in Austria, Switzerland and the U.K. — but the launch has clearly been a very different and more painstaking process than Rapti had envisaged from her high in fall 2019.

Another cloud she may not have expected to see looming on the horizon now is the prospect of the US Supreme Court overturning constitutional protections for abortion in the US — which, followed a leaked opinion on Roe v Wade earlier this month, is already causing consternation over the risks that digital services like period tracking apps could pose to US women if their data can be used to track them or to try to build prosecutions around their reproductive health.

“I’m horrified by what is happening to the US,” says Rapti when asked whether she is concerned about this risk. “The reality is we are not right now in a position where, legislatively wise, someone could ask for this data to be used against women in court — as of today. So what I truly believe is it would be counterproductive to go backwards and, instead of giving women access to and understanding of their own data, to say actually we need to scrap all that because it could be used against them.

“I think this would be really a step backwards. But rather I think what our job is — as female health companies — is to defend the rights of our users and also make the data as anonymous as possible so it cannot be traced back to the actual user.”

Rapti argues there is a clear way to separate profile data that is used for marketing from health data generated by usage of the product — and says Inne’s approach for the latter is currently to use double encryption and split usage data and also where it’s processed (some of which she says happens on the user’s device) so that it’s not all sitting in a single repository which it could be easily ordered to hand over.

But she also says the startup would be prepared to create further protections for user data in response to any changes to the law that threaten women’s rights.

“We need to be legally on top of things and make sure that whenever there is a law that is passed we change our product fast in order to guarantee this anonymity as much as possible,” she tells TechCrunch. “And I would rather we invest in that legal capacity on our side than to say we stay away from having women tracking their data because the government could use it. But I definitely see it as our job. We need to be on top of legislative lobbying, if I can put it that way, and make fast changes to our product in the way that data is structured so that we can protect [our users] as much as possible.”

Series A expansion

Today, Inne has better news: An extension to that $8.8M Series A round it closed back in 2019. It’s taking an addition $10M now so it can stock up on raw materials and retool its production line to unplug any remaining production bottlenecks. The expansion to the Series A is led by DSM Ventures, with Borski Fund and Calm Storm Ventures also participating, along with a number of angels, including Taavet Hinrikus (Wise), Dr Fiona Pathiraja and Rolf Schromgens (Trivago).

But not only that — Rapti says it’s planning to expand its product offering to include another hormone test — for cortisol (aka, the stress hormone; tracking cortisol can be useful for athletic performance, as well as for links to wider women’s health issues).

It is also set to its first steps outside Europe later this summer, via a US partnership with a women’s health brand called Phenology. The tie-up will be exclusively focused on perimenopause — so Inne will be getting a toe in the water in that major market while it waits on regulatory clearance for its digital contractive.

The US partner will offer Inne’s device to a subset of its users as a way to track changes in their hormones during the early stage of the menopause — supplementing the services it offers them, which includes personalized wellness programs and  supplements. (Notably, Phenology’s parent, a company called Hologram Sciences, shares an investor with Inne — DSM Ventures, aka the venture arm of Dutch vitamin giant DSM — so you can see the investment synergies at work there.)

“It was clear there was a synergy and a very clear geographical separation also — US and then Europe — and they’re not interested in contraception which I always wanted us to own fully globally,” notes Rapti. “And that’s kind of how, through seeing that Hologram Sciences would actually be a great partner for expanding our use-cases to the US, we decided on DSM Ventures being an investor in this round.”

She confirms Inne has finally been able to get a contraceptive study underway this year with a new partner in Europe, saying she expects the work to be completed around November — paving the way for Inne to be able to launch a contraceptive product in Q1 next year. That will put it into competition with the likes of Natural Cycles‘ basal-temperature based ‘digital contraceptive’ (which got regulatory clearance in Europe back in 2017); and period tracking app Clue’s more recent cycle-tracking system which gained FDA clearance for contraception in March 2021, to name two existing products.

So, demand willing, the pieces needed to scale Inne’s hormone-tracking femtech business do finally look to be slotting into place.

“I think it was the right thing to do,” adds Rapti, returning to her decision to go ahead and launch in the middle of the pandemic — to “see who buys the product” and “connect with the customers” — even if that choice meant delaying the launch of the contraceptive product.

Image credits: Inne

“It took me a long time to find especially the science and data science team that losing them over a crisis like this would have been, in the longer term, the worse ordeal,” she adds. “Because you find scientists, you make them product people and product thinking and then to let them go… It’s our core competence so that’s the first thing that I thought.”

Certainly Inne will face more competition when it finally launches its rival contraception. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing in such a novel space where women must be convinced they can trust new entrants’ methods over more tried and tested products for avoiding pregnancy like the pill and condoms.

Going ahead and launching with just fertility and cycle tracking also, of course, allowed Inne to road-test its team as it switched into commercial operations, serving those early customers. So it had a chance to iron out operational and service wrinkles with a small customer base, ahead of what it hopes will be wider scaling — as it expands both its production capacity and the product’s feature set with the help of the extra Series A funding.

Hormone tracking for the quantified self

So who are Inne’s early adopters? “We attract women who are on the less regular side of the cycle, so either have had several miscarriages or have had hormonal issues or have had very fluctuating cycles. So our data is biased towards irregularity,” says Rapti, also noting that users tend to be computer savvy and active on social media, where it does much of its marketing.

Ages of users range from 18 to mid 50s — but with a “peak” between 28 to 38, per Rapti.

Tracking progesterone means Inne can tell users whether they have ovulated or not — which, in turn, could help them detect a month when they have not ovulated, which (for people seeking to get pregnant) could help them understand challenges they may be having. For others, hormone tracking may be helpful to navigate patterns in an irregular menstrual cycle.

Other femtech products can rely on different approaches to try to predict fertility — such as temperature measurements or algorithmic analysis of cycle tracking data — but, as Rapti puts it, “the beauty of progesterone is it can really tell you has it happened or not”, so it’s offering a binary confirmation.

She says the majority of Inne’s users at present are using it for fertility tracking to help them get pregnant, with a smaller proportion (30% last year; but so far this year it’s getting closer to 40%, per Rapti) using it for cycle tracking to manage irregular periods. But she emphasizes that usage is “fluid” and “a bit of a journey” as women’s needs also change.

“We have two modes in the app: You can choose it either to cycle track, basically, but with hormones or to get pregnant,” she explains, adding: “It is such a fluid journey for a women in our product because the data tells me that some women are starting to track their cycle and then they will change their goal in a couple of months so it looks like maybe they’re preparing or they just came off the pill etc.”

Rapti’s wider vision is for the product to be able to “offer something all the way from the first period to the last period” — which is why she’s so keen to get the contraception product launched (asked if she thinks it’ll be the bigger market she says she’s not sure — but, just in pure numbers terms, there are obviously more women of fertile age seeking to avoid pregnancy than wanting to get pregnant at any given moment); as well as to build out utility elsewhere, such as by expanding into cortisol tracking.

The forthcoming cortisol test will provide users with the ability to understand whether they are going through a prolonged period of stress that has chemically affected their body, per Rapti — which she says may in turn be impacting their fertility or sports performance.

Users will be able to specify whether they want to include cortisol tracking in their Inne subscription and, if so, they will be sent a mix of progesterone and cortisol testing strips. But while the former is typically a daily test (which should be taken within a ~three hour window in the morning), the cortisol test is different; it’s not intended to be taken daily but when it is performed it needs to be done multiple times per day (and then that process repeated at intervals).

“You build the profile daily, with cortisol,” explains Rapti. “You do five measurements in one day and you do them every month for example, or every two weeks. But it’s not about, you know, ‘I do a test today and I do a test tomorrow and I see how my stress is’. No, it’s really that you’re building a chemical profile of your day and then you look at that over a period of time to try and understand if you really are under sustained stress and it has chemically affected your body or not.”

The thinking behind adding a second hormone test is not to address a broader range of users but rather to give women more reasons to get the minilab into their lives, per Rapit, by encouraging them to “trust these hormonal insights”.

Inne founder and CEO, Eirini Rapti (Image credits: Inne)

A major update to the next release of Inne’s app will bring a raft of self-reporting options — around what it’s calling “symptoms and events” — which is intended to help users link their daily activity/feelings with hormonal changes they can track using the product.

“We are launching 41 symptoms and events that people have asked for but which will also help us give more specialist insights because we will correlate them with hormones in the coming months,” she says. “They fall in different categories — about exercise, nutrition, certain things such as headache or migraines which are related to hormones; skin conditions, hydration/dehydration. They go from exercise to lifestyle to food to skin. And different types of body pain.”

“The beauty of being able to do that with hormones is you really see [the chemical change] — the opportunity we have here is we know the chemical role of hormones, can we truly related them to self-reported symptoms? And to what extent can we do that,” she adds, confirming: “It’s a long term correlation project. We didn’t want to start with it because we wanted to make sure that hormonal data were always going to take the center stage so we needed a large data pool first to establish what we’re doing and then try to see if it can correlate.”

Here Inne’s products looks as if it could push into ‘quantified self’ territory — with potential utility overlap with a recent wave of biosensing startups and companies that are seeking to commercialize continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) hardware for a more general health/sports performance use-case (i.e. beyond the management of blood glucose for people with diabetes or prediabetes for which the CGM sensing tech was originally developed). And where there are similar question marks over the wider consumer utility of that sort of biosensing (i.e. whether the average consumer can usefully interpret all this real-time biological feedback).

But one built-in advantage Inne’s approach has vs CGM startups is it’s non-invasive. And a consumer may feel more inclined to try something experimental on the off-chance they could discover a helpful correlation if it only requires them to moisten a some test strips in their mouth a few times a month, rather than — in the case of CGM-based glucose tracking — having to live with a biowearable and its metal filament under the skin of their arm for weeks at a time.

Rapti says Inne’s plan is not to break out a totally separate service around cortisol tracking — although she stresses the test itself does involve a completely different user experience — rather the goal is to serve users who want to gain a deeper understanding of how hormones affect their bodies.

“Instead of selling new strips to a different woman what I’m trying to say is this is going to be your subscription and then you tell us what you’re interested in. And if you’re interested in both stress and cycle tracking or fertility then we will send you every month strips of both and we will instruct you what to do when. So we’re not looking to make upselling with new strips but more deeper hormonal understanding so the price will remain the same. And you’ll just get a combination of strips for that same monthly price,” she says.

“I had so many people in this raise who said oh that would be amazing for men, why don’t you sell it to men! Do you know what, I think it would be amazing for men but how about we wait a minute and just offer it to women!” she adds.

There is clearly lots more Inne could do and add. So an obvious challenge is how to create a clear marketing message around such a multifaceted product?

On that Rapti says they’ve got one big takeaway: Women want to get specific about the benefits — which means finding fora where they can discover the product but also get to ask their own questions.

“It is a very early market. I feel that women know that there’s so much they can learn about their bodies and quite frankly we are giving a new angle where we’re like — hey, look, we should be able to track our hormones because [women] have been excluded from research for all those years and if only we had been included we would have known so much more about medication, our bodies, everything around that. So let’s bridge that gap — that’s our mission. And at the same time they’re like this is great but what exactly can you do for me?” says Rapit.

“So the way we’ve been approaching it — what I can tell you works — is to be very precise on what benefit they can get. And that’s why Instagram and influencer marketing works because women get the chance to ask questions and to really understand if this will serve them or not.”

DJI has just introduced a new drone — its most capable ever to squeak under the 250 gram limit that keeps operators free from a whole host of headaches and restrictions for flight (note that local laws and rules still do apply — being small doesn’t mean you can do anything you want). The DJI Mini 3 Pro drone is the first in the series to add that ‘Pro’ moniker, and it does a lot to earn it, making this the best overall value yet in the consumer/enthusiast drone space for people who want portability, affordability and image/video quality.

The Basics

The DJI Mini 3 Pro is still small enough to earn its name, but it is a bit larger than prior iterations. While the drone’s weight comes in at 249 grams with the included standard battery pack, the wingspan in particular is a lot larger than the original Mini in particular, when the arms are extended for flight. This provides additional flight control capabilities, and it only barely changes the drone’s profile when it’s folded for carry, so it’s definitely a welcome design trade-off.

DJI has not only refined the aerial engineering here, they’ve also packed an impressive gimballed 1/1.3 inch sensor camera in the Mini 3 Pro, which can capture images at up to 48MP in RAW format, and record video in 4K at up to 60 fps, with a slow-mo mode that captures 120fps footage at full HD (1080p) resolution.

The new DJI Mini 3 Pro drone in flight

The ‘Pro’ also comes into play with the formats that the Mini 3 Pro offers: You can record video in D-Cinelike mode, which offers a wealth of color information for tuning the color mix of you video to your liking afterwards in programs like DaVinci Resolve. This can give you a cinematic look that is frankly astounding when you consider it’s coming for a drone that slips pretty easily into a jacket pocket.

Another ‘Pro’ feature that DJI has introduced to this size category for the first time: obstacle detection and avoidance. The Mini 3 Pro gets the company’s Advanced Pilot Assistance Systems 4.0, meaning you’re far less likely to have to scale a tree to retrieve it because it got caught up in some branches.

Other features include the ability to pivot the camera via the gimbal to shoot vertical video, making this the ideal TikTok drone, subject tracking, 4x digital zoom (which unlocks some creative video shooting capabilities), panorama shooting and 34 minutes of run time on the standard battery (plus 47 minutes possible on the extended juice of the optional Flight Battery Plus — which also tips you over that 250 gram limit, I should note).

Design

At first glance, the Mini 3 Pro doesn’t deviate much from DJI’s tried-and-tested approach to drone design; it’s a four-rotor aircraft, mostly made up of that central body, with extendable arms and integrated stubby landing gear. There are some big obvious changes vs. prior Minis, however, including at the front of the drone, where the usual bulbous overhang that covers the camera makes way for a scooped out, ‘hammerhead’-like look with the orientation cameras flanking the gimballed 24mm-equivalent, f/1.7 camera below.

The DJI Mini 3 Pro (right) and the DJI Mavic Mini (left) folded

This probably helps eke out weight savings to allow the Mini 3 Pro to boast its impressive specs while still staying on the fair side of those aviation rule restriction. It also means the drone ships with a larger, more bulbous protective hood attachment to keep the gimbal and camera safe and stable in transit. This was my one knock on the drone’s design — the gimbal is loose when the drone is powered down, which is understandable to protect the motors, but it means you have to fight it to a certain extent to get it to line up correctly with the protective hood before it clips in.

The DJI Mini 3 Pro (right) and the DJI Mavic Mini (left) with arms extended

DJI has obviously learned a lot from years of trying to make the most of the sub-250 gram drone category, however, and it really shows in the Mini 3 Pro. The rotors don’t have the easy removal clips that come on larger models, but once again this is a worthwhile trade-off. For a few minor inconveniences, what you get is a drone that doesn’t require a major packing logistics operation to take along with you — and one that captures images and videos of a quality that won’t leave anyone but the most demanding pro users feeling like they should’ve brought along a beefier machine.

A note here on the controller options — the Mini 3 Pro comes with the RC-N1 controller by default (though there’s a controller-less option as well to save a few bucks if you already have one), which is a great controller in its own right, but which requires you to supply the viewfinder in the form of your connected smartphone. The DJI RC package comes with that brand new controller as well, and if you’re on the fence, you should absolutely go for that one: The DJI RC has a built-in display, and essentially runs an integrated Android phone to operate the DJI Fly app. It’s a very compact and well-designed device, with excellent display quality and so many fewer headaches when it comes to fiddling with hardware smartphone connectors. More about the DJI RC in the next section.

Performance

I’ve already alluded to the quality of the DJI Mini 3 Pro’s image and video capture a few times, but in case it wasn’t clear: This thing more than delivers.

The 48 megapixel images offer new levels of detail and printing options, and the RAW capture means you can really get a lot more out of your still captures when editing after the fact in programs like Lightroom. Images are also much less noisy than they have been from prior iterations of the Mini, owing to the larger sensor and the larger pixel size on the sensor itself. Low-light capture has never been a particular strength of these drones, but DJI has done a good job of prioritizing improvements in that area on the Mini 3 Pro, and it shows.

DJI Mini 3 Pro JPEG from the camera, auto-settings

Auto mode delivers images that really impress, and for most users there’s probably not much reason to delve into manual mode. But for advanced enthusiasts and pros, the manual modes offers the ability to tweak to your heart’s content, which can result in some truly unique captures that stand out from the crowd. Custom image modes including the panorama feature are excellent for unique applications like large-scale prints, and the Mini 3 Pro software makes actually getting good ones a relative breeze.

Speaking of breeze, when it comes to flight control, the Mini 3 Pro seemed to have no problem handling wind with aplomb. One thing I noticed quite a bit on my own OG DJI Mavic Mini was that it was frequently complaining about wind speeds and stability as a result; the Mini 3 Pro, even at altitudes above 400 ft, never gave any indication it was struggling with that particular issue. The days I flew were relatively calm at ground level, so your mileage may vary, but it’s definitely improved vs. previous generation hardware.

DJI Mini 3 Pro sample image, auto-settings

As much as the DJI Mini 3 Pro is optimized for stills capture, the new video options are a major upgrade vs. what this category could previously do. 4K/60, HDR, full HD 120fps slow-mo, vertical video and the D-Cinelike color profile all add up to a drone that can do it all, whether you’re an amateur filmmaker trying to make the next art-house classic, a YouTuber who puts a premium on production value, or a TikTok creator who wants to add another dimension to their content. Subject tracking works reliably well, and combined with vertical video and modes like the ‘dronie’ aerial selfie capture option, you can dive into a lot of creative options for novel posts on any platform.

As for actually flying the drone, it’s a bit hard to evaluate from the perspective of a newcomer since I’ve now been flying DJI aircraft since the original Mavic. But it definitely feels intuitive and simple, with the added bonus that the obstacle avoidance protections do kick in when large objects get in your way, potentially saving you from an expensive accident.

You can tweak settings like how fast the camera tracks in order to refine the end product and compensate for inexpert or jerky joystick movements, but out of the box the DJI Mini 3 Pro seems tuned to produce good end results for a wide range of users.

As mentioned, the DJI RC controller option also really ups the game in terms of the actual experience of flying the drone. My main headache with DJI drones in the past has been the less-than-elegant experience of connecting a smartphone to the controller, getting everything working properly and settled into the grip optimally. The DJI RC changes that into a truly seamless “it just works” experience, and you can connect the controller to any wifi network (including tethering to your phone in the field) to keep both it and the aircraft up to date with firmware and flight restriction maps. Image quality and live video feed are high-res and excellent, viewable even in direct sunlight, and it’s absolutely not something you can give up once you experience it.

Bottom Line

Along with a boost in performance, DJI’s latest Mini drone also got a fairly significant bump in price: The DJI Mini 3 Pro starts at $669, and that’s without a remote control. $759 will get you the Mini 3 Pro and the RC-N1 (which requires you to bring your own phone). The best option is of course the most expensive one, but I do think it’s the one most people should consider — that’s the DJI Mini 3 Pro plus the DJI RC for $909. As reviewed, my unit also included the DJI Mini 3 Pro Fly More Kit, which provides two more 34-min batteries, a hub to charge all three batteries at once, extra propellers, and a handy shoulder bag that perfectly fits the drone, controller and everything I just mentioned, which is an added $189.

DJI Mini 3 Pro sample image. JPEG with auto settings

All told, the DJI Mini 3 Pro kit I reviewed costs a total of around $1,100 — nearly double the price of the DJI Mini 2 Fly More combo which still retails for $599. But for what you get, particularly with the improvements to image and video quality, as well as the inclusion of the obstacle avoidance system, that’s well worth the price delta. Ultimately, the Mini 3 Pro is probably better compared to something like the DJI Air 2S, which costs $1,299 for the Fly More combo. With that option, you do get a larger sensor and better, 5.2K video recording, but most users likely won’t appreciate the differences there, and the Mini 3 Pro still manages to sneak under that critical 250g limit, which the Air 2S does not.

DJI’s pace of innovation means it can be tough to decide when to jump on as a consumer (I myself have three of my own prior generation drones, including the original Mini). But what it’s put together in the Mini 3 Pro seems like a package that has so few compromises it should satisfy even the most discerning enthusiast for years to come.

A long, long time ago before the iPod, MP3 players were badly designed devices with insufficient storage. The market was ripe for a change, and Steve Jobs, who had returned to Apple four years prior, was ready to give it to us.

On October 23, 2001 the company released its first music player with a scrolling wheel and 5GB and 10GB storage options. Who would ever need so much?

And it was a design like no other. In fact, it would have a similar impact on music lovers that the Sony Walkman had two decades earlier. We would fall in love with it and the device would be the first of many that led Apple from the brink of bankruptcy to multi-trillion dollar company.

And a humble music player got it all started.

Just yesterday, the company announced the end of the road for venerated device. That it lasted this long, was a testament to its popularity, but when the company released the iPhone in 2007, it seemed to mark the beginning of the end for a music-only gadget. Why would you need a separate thing for your music when the phone would handle everything?

It would still hang on for years in spite of that, especially with the iPod Touch, which provided both music storage and internet access in one package, a nice compromise for people who didn’t want a full-fledged phone.

As my colleague Brian Heater wrote about yesterday’s final blow:

Apple this morning announced that the iPod is dead. That is, as much as a particular gadget can ever be dead. Rather, it will shuffle off this mortal coil slowly, remaining for sale while supplies last. So if you were considering purchasing one for any reason, buy now or forever hold your peace.

I remember quite clearly getting my first iPod. It was a 4GB Mini. I couldn’t tell you the year exactly, but I remember sitting in the driveway of my children’s piano teacher waiting for them to complete their lesson and trying to figure out exactly how this thing worked.

My much loved and scuffed iPad Mini. Image Credits: Ron Miller

I was a bit baffled by the scrolling wheel design at first, but once I figured it out, like so many things Apple has created over the years, I recognized the elegance of the approach. I remember the smoothness of the cool silver case in my hand, the way my thumb moved around the wheel and the sound of the music as I pushed the headphones into my ears.

It put 1000 songs at my fingertips, which seemed like more than I would ever need.

While the device was as cool as the other side of the pillow (as Stuart Scott used to say on ESPN), the software you used to connect to it, left something to be desired. iTunes was as clunky as the iPod was cool. But it provided a way to buy music for .99 a song, and to build a library from your CDs, at a time when people were using services like Napster to share music without paying for it. That combination of hardware and software really proved to be a game changer.

But it wasn’t only the smartphone that did in the music players like iPod. Services like Spotify, and yes Apple Music, that would come along later would provide access to not just 1000 songs, or 10,000 songs as later models held, it would give you access to most any music you could imagine. We didn’t really need a dedicated device to hold our music anymore.

The iPod is a gadget from bygone days now, one that seems quaint looking back, but for a time it captured our attention and our imaginations, and gave us access to portable digital music in a way that just hadn’t existed prior to its release.

And for that, it will hold a special place in many of our hearts forever, regardless of whether Apple produces them anymore or not.

Google’s developer conference Google I/O is back, which means that the company has a few things to announce. During the opening keynote, Google is expected to unveil new hardware products, new software updates and new features for Google’s ecosystem.

The conference starts at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. on the East Cost, 6 p.m. in London, 7 p.m. in Paris) and you can watch the livestream right here on this page.

Rumor has it that Google could unveil the Pixel Watch. This isn’t the company’s first experience in the smartwatch space, but it represents a fresh new start with Google’s own hardware division leveraging Wear OS. If you’re a Pixel person, you can also expect some smartphone news and maybe new accessories.

More importantly, Google will likely share some news about its flagship services, such as Google Maps, Google’s search engine, YouTube and Google Play. It’s going to be interesting to see if Google has anything to share about Chrome and Android as well.

Whether you’re a Google user who relies a lot on Google’s ecosystem or a tech enthusiast who wants to see what’s next for Google, make sure to watch today’s keynote and read our coverage on TechCrunch.