One of the places in the UK capital where mobile connectivity is strongest is up to 30m underground, as more stations and tunnelled sections of the Tube network across London now have 4G and 5G mobile coverage as part of the ongoing development project between Transport for London (TfL) and Boldyn Networks.
TfL carries up to four million passengers a day on the London Underground network, and renewing and preparing the communications network for the future has long been regarded as essential to maintain and improve critical infrastructure. Before it carried out its first expansion work, TfL noted that legacy systems can slowly become unreliable and disrupt services, leading to delays and an overall negative impact on passenger journeys.
All of the three mobile network operators – VodafoneThree, EE and Virgin Media O2 – are taking part in the roll-out, as part of the Mayor of London’s and TfL’s stated commitment to bring mobile connectivity to the whole of London’s transport network.
The expanding coverage will host the new Emergency Services Network (ESN) which, when fully operational, is designed to give first responders immediate access to life-saving data, images and information in live situations and emergencies on the frontline.
Boldyn Networks was awarded a 20-year concession by TfL in June 2021 to deliver high-speed mobile connectivity across the entire London Underground network, creating a backbone of mobile and digital connectivity across the network to all ticket halls, platforms and tunnels on the Tube network, with total network coverage targeted for some time in 2026.
Around 400 engineers are regularly working on the project overnight, delivering the project during the limited overnight engineering hours on the Tube network. Boldyn is also committed to installing a fibre backbone across the capital to improve connectivity both above and below ground.
TfL and Boldyn are working to introduce high-speed 4G and 5G mobile coverage across the whole Tube, Docklands Light Railway (DLR), Elizabeth line network, and the Windrush line between Highbury & Islington and New Cross. Following full interoperability testing being completed across all Tube lines in 2025, design and initial testing work is now underway on the Windrush line and DLR, ahead of the tunnelled sections and stations getting coverage later in 2026.
Alongside the whole of the Elizabeth line, which was completed in December 2024, 62 out of 121 Tube stations which are located “underground” now have begun receiving mobile coverage in their ticket halls, corridors and platforms. Key stations including Euston Square, Cannon Street and Battersea Power Station have recently gone live with 4G and 5G mobile coverage, with more – including King’s Cross St Pancras, Gloucester Road, Warwick Avenue and Vauxhall – set to go live in the next few months.
TfL also revealed that work to extend coverage in the tunnels along Tube lines was continuing to “make good progress”, with the first sections of the Circle and District line between Blackfriars and Cannon Street, and between Notting Hill Gate and Bayswater, now live. TfL and Boldyn are working to introduce more sections as quickly as possible during 2026 and they expect “the vast majority” of the Northern and Metropolitan lines to have coverage in the tunnels by end of summer 2026.
Work to deliver mobile coverage across the whole Tube network will continue throughout 2026, with work focusing on sections of the Circle and District line, where a number of stations already have limited mobile coverage due to being closer to the surface, as well as along the Victoria, Jubilee, Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines. Installation work will also continue along sections outside of Central London, and where smaller tunnelled sections need to be treated individually.
Installation work is already taking place alongside the planned escalator works at Cutty Sark Docklands Light Railway station to help ensure that customers can benefit from mobile coverage at this station as quickly as possible.
Alongside installing mobile coverage across the Tube, TfL and Boldyn are also working to install small-cell mobile technology on TfL assets, such as lighting columns, to enhance mobile connectivity in high-footfall urban areas. Some of the capital’s busiest areas such as King’s Cross, Waterloo, London Bridge, Old Street, The Shard and Hyde Park Corner already have such connectivity.
Commenting on the network and the aims of the project as a whole, Isabel Coman, director of engineering and asset strategy at TfL, said: “It’s great to see further progress in our goal to introduce high-speed mobile coverage across our Tube network…We are on a clear path towards having 4G and 5G mobile coverage across the whole network by the end of 2026. Engineers are working hard overnight during the limited engineering hours to deliver this programme.”
Boldyn Networks UK & Ireland chief operating officer Nick Hudson added: “Our long-term partnership with TfL to extend reliable 4G and 5G mobile coverage across the London Underground is grounded in improving everyday journeys for millions of people. A project of this scale demands extraordinary engineering effort and close-knit collaboration with TfL, with work often carried out overnight in one of the world’s most complex transport networks.
“We’re immensely proud of what’s been achieved so far, and each section completed brings us closer to our goal of creating a more connected London for those who visit the city and those who call it home.”
Like all sports teams these days, Bath Rugby has found that providing state-of-the-art connectivity is part and parcel of the modern experience, and looking to elevate matchday mobile for its fans, the club has announced the successful deployment of an Antevia Networks 5G Shift end-to-end private network at its Recreation Ground stadium.
The current Premiership Rugby Champions, Bath first began life as a rugby club in 1865, and played its first game at the historic stadium in 1894. The iconic and idiosyncratically designed stadium holds as many as 14,500 spectators for each home game. It is set deep in the heart of the city that is famous for its Georgian architecture and Roman baths, almost 100 miles west of London.
From a connectivity perspective, Bath Rugby had previously experienced severe congestion on its legacy public Wi-Fi and macro cellular networks, which would cause point-of-sale terminals to fail, slowing service and impacting revenue. What began as a project to stabilise this retail connectivity was expanded to support a growing set of use cases throughout the matchday experience, leading to increased return on investment.
Antevia Networks says that through its technology it can change the economics of 5G private networks. The company believes their roll-out has been held back by high-cost and slow, complex installation cycles typically involving major suppliers and telecoms domain expert integrators.
Addressing these concerns, the 5G private network at the Recreation Ground is said to be able to deliver predictable, low-latency connectivity across the entire stadium and surrounding fan zones on match days. In addition, it has been built to support a range of operational and commercial use cases, including point-of-sale transactions, mission-critical staff communications, CCTV and body-worn cameras, media connectivity, and digital signage.
Designed to overcome traditional limitations and provide better performance than legacy Wi-Fi and congested public mobile networks, 5G Shift is described as being able to provide “unbroken” coverage using a fraction of the access points, “dramatically” reducing the cost and complexity traditionally associated with cellular deployments.
Powered by patented multiplexing and shared cell technologies, the network requires no RF planning, can be deployed rapidly and is managed like enterprise Wi-Fi by the club’s existing IT team. 5G Shift uses a cloud-based virtualised RAN architecture built on O-RAN standards and COTS hardware. The patented multiplexing technology enables all radios to appear as a single shared 5G cell to eliminate handover issues, and reduces the number of access points required. In deployments to date, Antevia says it has required less than 10% of the access points required for Wi-Fi.
As a result of deployment, Bath Rugby uses the network to connect mission-critical and high-value applications including point-of-sale terminals for food, beverage and club-shop transactions; push-to-talk communications for medical teams and match-day operations; CCTV and body-worn cameras for crowd safety and control; and digital signage across fan areas delivering real-time interviews, replays and information. It can also see use in providing temporary connectivity for VIP hospitality areas and high-speed media access for journalists filing live reports.
“Bath Rugby’s Recreation Ground is a perfect example of how simple, scalable and cost-effective private 5G can deliver real-world value,” said Antevia Networks CEO Simon Cosgrove. “5G Shift gives organisations comprehensive coverage with ultra-low latency at a low price point, without the complexities and heavy engineering normally associated with the deployment of private cellular.
“We’re proud to be supporting Bath Rugby with a network that stands up, even when the stadium is at full capacity, and we’re excited to keep expanding the use cases that can help deliver operational and commercial benefits for the club.”
For the deployment, Bath Rugby and Antevia worked with local enterprise resilient wireless services firmSpry Fox Networks.
In its first ever major legal action outside the United States, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) has disrupted cyber crime-as-a-service network RedVDS – whose subscribers have cheated their victims out of millions of pounds – after obtaining separate court orders in the UK and Florida.
The DCU turned to the British legal system because the malicious infrastructure used to run RedVDS was hosted by a UK-based provider. A great number of victims of RedVDS users, well over 7,500, are also located in the UK, it said.
“Cyber crime today is powered by shared infrastructure, which means disrupting individual attackers is not enough. Through this coordinated action, Microsoft has disrupted RedVDS’s operations, including seizing two domains that host the RedVDS marketplace and customer portal, while also laying the groundwork to identify the individuals behind them,” said Microsoft DCU assistant general counsel, Stephen Masada.
The takedown operation drew Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), with further support provided by the German authorities through the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) at the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the city of Frankfurt-am-Main, and the Criminal Police Office for the state of Brandenburg.
At the time of writing, the RedVDS website states that its domain has been seized by Microsoft.
Industrialised fraud
The RedDVS cyber criminal service charged as little as $24 (£18) per month to provide digital fraudsters with access to disposable virtual computers used to scale fraud operations cheaply and securely.
The DCU believes RedVDS users have compromised more than 191,000 organisations worldwide since September 2025 and netted over $40m in the US alone, with prominent victims including Alabama-based H2-Pharma, a supplier of allergy, cancer and mental health medications, which lost $7.3m; and Florida-based Gatehouse Dock Condominium Association, which was tricked out of $500,000 it had set aside for repairs to its members’ homes.
The service was used for a wide range of cyber criminal activity, including running phishing campaigns, hosting malicious infrastructure and facilitating fraud. It was often used alongside generative AI (GenAI) tools to help identify more targets quicker, generate more convincing lures, and in some cases to manipulate video footage or clone voices.
However, where RedVDS appeared to excel was in supporting business email compromise (BEC) where cyber criminals impersonate trusted individuals to send payments to accounts they control.
In particular, its users targeted the real estate sector, compromising the accounts of estate agents, escrow agents or title companies. The DCU believes that as many as 9,000 customers in the real estate industry, most in Australia and Canada, were affected by this activity to some degree.
Masada said the DCU’s latest action built on ongoing efforts to disrupt fraud and scam infrastructure via both legal and technical actions, and through global collaboration.
“It marks the 35th civil action targeting cyber crime infrastructure by Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit, underscoring a sustained strategy to go beyond individual takedowns and dismantle the services that criminals rely on to operate and scale,” he said.
“As services like RedVDS continue to emerge, Microsoft will keep working with partners across sectors and borders to identify and disrupt the infrastructure behind cyber-enabled fraud, making it harder for criminals to profit and easier for people and organisations to stay safe online.”
The annual CES trade fair in Las Vegas serves us a glimpse of what’s to come in consumer technology in 2026 and beyond. BGR saw plenty of cool and exciting gadgets at the show. Many are available to buy right now, whereas others are still in the concept phase, being developed into actual products that may grace store shelves soon.
We’ve already covered the most exciting tech at CES 2026 and the best gadgets unveiled at the show, but that’s just scratching the surface of this massive international exhibition. There were countless other devices and technologies being demoed around the show floor and behind closed doors at exclusive events, so here are four more of the coolest tech innovations that BGR spotted at CES that undoubtedly deserve your attention. These innovations range from exciting new gadgets that you’ll be able to buy soon to interesting new technologies that will level-up your esports gaming.
TCL X11L SQD-Mini LED TV
Although the RGB Mini-LED or RGB LED technology was expected to be the big thing at this year’s CES, TCL truly wowed with its X11L SQD-Mini LED TV. It’s a massive improvement over the current crop of Mini-LED TVs. Instead of using red, green, and blue LEDs like standard RGB Mini-LED TVs, it keeps the same blue LEDs, which are found in many traditional Mini-LED TVs, but employs better quantum dots for more accurate colors and a new color filter. These improvements help the TV provide full coverage of the BT.2020 color space, meaning it can provide exceptional color fidelity. Because it uses single-color blue LEDs, it also avoids color crosstalk — when colors from one color LED bleed into another LED’s colors — a problem that can plague RGB Mini-LED TVs.
Another advantage of the newly showcased TCL TV is its 10,000 nits peak brightness, which is among the highest you can get on any TV. This high peak brightness enables the TV to provide better HDR performance and counter glare and reflections more effectively. It’s also the first TV to claim support for Dolby Vision 2, a new HDR format, which will arrive via a software update. The 85-inch and 98-inch models of the TV are already on preorder, with a 75-inch coming down the line. However, it’s not a cheap TV by any stretch, with the 98-inch costing $10,000.
Lenovo Legion Pro Rollable
Lenovo’s Legion Pro Rollable was one of the most exciting laptops to be shown at this year’s CES. Although it’s still very much a concept, it offers a glimpse into what’s possible in such a form factor. As the name suggests, it’s a laptop that uses motors to offer a horizontally expandable screen. Lenovo has shown off laptops with similar rollable displays in the past; however, this is the first one that’s not featuring a vertically expanding display. The company is targeting esports athletes who often need a wide screen to practice, which is hard to get in a portable form factor when traveling.
The laptop uses an OLED screen and has a 16-inch display by default, which can expand to 21.5-inch or 24-inch wide. It has a dual-motor design to expand and contract the screen. Right now, it has the same internals as Legion Pro 7i, which means you get a top-spec Intel Core Ultra CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPU. That said, the consumer version, if there is ever one, will likely feature different specifications.
Jackery Solar Mars Bot
Jackery showed off a pretty cool power station, solar panel, and robot combo called the Solar Mars Bot that can move around to get the most efficient solar charging. Its built-in wheels allow it to adjust its position outside your home or campsite to track the sun and pursue the best sunlight irradiation angle. The company mentioned this design during CES 2024 as a concept, but it has since come much closer to becoming a reality. However, there is still no word on its release date or pricing.
There are retractable solar panels on the top of the device, which can fold and unfold as necessary, and are capable of producing up to 600W of power. More importantly, the platform on which solar panels are fixed can change its angle up to 60 degrees to get the most sun and increase its efficiency. The rest of the Solar Mars Bot is similar to other Jackery power stations and includes multiple ports and sockets to power your devices, including multiple USB ports and AC outlets. The company has also included 5G connectivity in the Solar Mars Bot, allowing you to check the battery and robot status even when it’s out of Bluetooth range.
Nvidia DLSS 4.5
PJ McDonnell/Shutterstock
DLSS on Nvidia graphics cards (which means Deep Learning Super Sampling) has quickly emerged as an excellent tool to get more out of your GPU. It uses machine learning to render graphics at a lower resolution and then upscales them with the help of AI to fill in any missing details. This allows mid-range graphics cards to push out significantly higher frame rates than they would be able to achieve with native rendering. DLSS 4, which was introduced at CES 2025, was already pretty powerful. However, Nvidia is taking things to the next level with DLSS 4.5. The company showed off the upgrade at CES 2026, and it’s already available for all RTX graphics cards. One of its highlights is the updated upscaling technology, which enables significantly improved visual clarity with fine detail.
More importantly, the visual quality of the “Performance mode” in DLSS 4.5 is as good or better than the “Quality mode” in DLSS 4, which helps you get a higher number of frames from your hardware without any artifacts. For RTX 50-series GPUs, there is also the new Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation feature, which can generate up to 5 synthetic frames for each real frame and can dynamically adjust the artificial frames depending on the base frame rate to ensure smoothness at all times. Bottom line, DLSS 4.5 delivers dramatically improved visual performance with enhanced sharpness, HDR lighting, and lighting effects.
The Consumer Electronics Show is a yearly expo in Vegas for manufacturers of all kinds to wow both the media and public with weird and wonderful bleeding-edge technology; from rollable OLED screens that unfurl to several times their original size, to household robots that can barely fold laundry at the level of a two-year old. But away from the usual assortment of increasingly thin TVs and “smart” fridges that no one asked for lies an entirely stranger set of products. These products either wow you for their creativity, or utter stupidity. It’s a fine line, and I’ll let you be the ultimate judge of which side these products lie on.
In truth, much of the concepts in this list will never see the light of day. Some are an obvious ploy to garner exposure from media outlets (guilty!), some are prototypes of products that might eventually come to market with a vastly different feature set, while some are available for pre-order now. You don’t even have to wait to buy some of the best CES gadgets. But these are the strangest, in their own special way.
An Actual Toilet Cam: Throne One
The quanitifed-self movement of the early 2000s introduced the concept of measuring everything in your daily life, but early attempts were limited to self analysis of primitive sensor data. Nowadays you can track everything, from the number of times you’ve sipped a water bottle to diaper changes, and it’s not unusual to pull out your Apple Health records when you visit the GP. So it was only a matter of time before gut health got in on the game.
Equipped with a camera and microphone, the Throne One from Throne Science sits on the side of your bowl to analyze everything about your stool and urinary habits, and lets you know when something is amiss. While this might sound like a joke, if you can make it past the ick factor, gut health is perhaps one of the most overlooked early indicators for a wide range of health issues. While temporary color or consistency changes are usually down to a change in diet, consistent issues point toward something more serious. Available for pre-order and shipping in February, the Throne One will cost $400 as well as requiring a monthly subscription for the analysis software.
AI Companion Doll: Lovense Emily
Developed by interactive sex tech makers Lovense, Emily is a lifesize silicone companion doll that integrates a sultry voice-capable AI, a series of expressive facial motors, and embedded sensors throughout her body. She’s web-connected and features a choice of five different personalities and roleplay scenarios, while a virtual cloud copy of your companion means you’ll be able to talk to her outside of the home through the accompanying smartphone app — and she remembers previous conversations to shape future ones (ChatGPT offers a similar “memory” feature). If reading that didn’t already make this feel like an episode of Black Mirror, hold on: If she ever breaks, you can download her personality into a new body. Uniquely, Emily can also connect to and control all your other Lovense web-connected toys.
Potential buyers can put down their $200 deposit now for a sizeable discount off the final price, which Lovense has said will be somewhere in the range of $4,000 to $8,000. While they haven’t disclosed which LLM is powering the companion, it’s likely a custom solution. ChatGPT has announced adult mode for verified users was supposed to be coming at the end of last year, while X’s standalone Grok AI app is notoriously spicy.
Personalized Art, On Demand: SwitchBot AI Art Frame
Generative AI “art” is a lot like Marmite: you either love it with a slice of toast or think it devalues everything about the human experience and will be the downfall of society. And digital art frames are nothing new; I reviewed the Meural Canvas around a decade ago, a glorified big photo frame that came with premium subscription options to access exclusive streams of licensed artwork. But with the advent of generative AI, it was never going to be long before someone combined the two concepts into one product.
The SwitchBot AI art frame — powered by NanoBanana — lets you generate any subject matter in any style you like: instant, on-demand, personalized fake art displayed on a gorgeous and technically impressive EInk Spectra 6 screen. It’s weird, but also strangely compelling. The smaller 7.3″ size is available now for $150, with pre-orders open for the larger 13.3 and 31.5 inch versions. SwitchBot is better known for their button-pressing smart home gadget, which is surprisingly useful for turning dumb household appliances into smart ones.
Desktop Holographic Anime Companion: Razer’s Project Ava
Following an apparent trend of global loneliness (who would’ve thought staring at a screen for 18 hours a day would have that effect?), there are a lot of virtual companions making an appearance at this year’s CES, from full size household robots to tiny little anime girls that you can keep forever inside a cylindrical cage on your desk. Project Ava, from gaming giants Razer, is a Grok-powered gaming copilot; but it’s not the only tiny desktop companion at CES, being joined by the LePro Ami (“Your always on 3D soulmate”).
The tech isn’t actually new — these seem to pop up every year, with the earliest I can find dating back to nine years ago from Gatebox in Japan — but AI has finally reached a level where these are more than glorified 3D desktop toys. With a connection to advanced AI voice models, you’ll finally be able to hold a normal conversation. With Razer’s gaming might behind it, they’ve also promised that it’ll react to your gaming achievements or you can ask it for help when you’re stuck.
How much of this will make it to the final product or if it’ll be manufactured beyond the initial influencer round of reviews is still to be seen. What we do is that like anything Razer does, it’ll have oodles of RGB.
It’s Like Music in Your Mouth — Literally : Lava’s Lollipop Star
You might have heard of bone conduction headphones, which produce audio by directly vibrating the bones around your ear. It’s useful tech for those who need to stay connected to the outside world (or just can’t stand earbuds), though the quality isn’t brilliant. Lollipop Star uses the same tech, but in your teeth. When you suck on it (or technically, bite down on it), the music plays through your jaw. By all reports, it’s both muffled and quiet, which are two things that seem somewhat important for playing music, but I’m no expert.
In a world where we’re moving toward banning wasteful single-use plastic straws and cutlery, I can really see single-use lollipop sticks with a built-in lithium-ion battery taking off. At $9 each, you’d have to be quite the sucker for this particular innovation when the exclusive “drops” arrive shortly. Alternatively, you can buy some of these AMOS Candy musical lollipops on Amazon.
Smart AI Hair Clipper: Glyde
AI hair clippers probably weren’t on your bingo card this year, but users can scan their head shape into the Glyde app and select a desired style, strap on a special mask to protect their eyes, and then have at it — zero skill needed. Just move the clippers around over your head, and the Glyde AI automatically adjusts cutting length to match the programmed style thanks to sensors that detect the speed, tilt, and angle of the blade in real time. While a simple buzzcut is hard to mess up, anything involving a fade is usually tricky. The Glyde makes it effortless with the “fade band” marking the start. You still need to physically move the clippers over your hair, but if Glyde detects sudden movements, incorrect starting position, or not cutting upwards in a straight line, it simply retracts the blade to avoid mistakes.
As weird as thing sounds, if they hit the target price of $150-200 then it’s not far off the cost of a decent pair of non-smart clippers.
Zero-G Mental Health Pod: Reconcept
Originating from France, the Reconcept mental health pod is an alien-esque egg-shaped thing you clamber into and have a massage while it plays soothing music and binaural beats in a guided relaxation session. It’s not really zero gravity of course, but the Neutral Body Posture with the head and legs reclined was developed by NASA to improve circulation and reduce respiratory and muscular strain in astronauts experiencing microgravity.
The Reconcept pod sounds like a lot of fun — unless you’re claustrophobic, in which case it probably won’t have a positive effect on your mental health. Thankfully there are plenty of adjustable beds to help you achieve a zero-g position in the luxury of your own home. Just add a Meta Quest VR headset with haptic vest and you’re all set for plenty of meditation experiences like Tripp.
Pure Nightmare Fuel: Dreame Cyber X Robot Vacuum Transporter
For all their convenience robot vacuums have thus far been unable to tackle the incredible complexity of stairs. Until now. Dreame’s Cyber X is a terrifying beast equipped with four legs that look like tiny chainsaws — as if the dog wasn’t scared of the vacuum enough. What’s really interesting is that the Cyber X isn’t actually a robot vacuum — it’s just a transporter or base station. The vacuum has to drive inside, be carried to another floor, then get out to do its business. So while the Cyber X can move your vacuum around, it still can’t actually clean the stairs.
The Roborock Saros also made an appearance at CES with a little pair of wheels on legs to help it climb, but it’s a vacuum as well. Unfortunately the Saros can’t get back down again (or at least, it wasn’t demonstrated doing that so we’ll have to assume it can’t). But that’s half the problem solved, anyway, and it means I can finally justify that indoor slide to my wife because “the robovac needs it.”
Breakfast In Bed (As Long As You Live on One Level And Breakfast is a Croissant): LG CLOiD
The LG CLOiD is a friendly humanoid robot designed to coordinate household tasks with other connected home appliances in LG’s ThinQ ecosystem. So you’ll not only have to spend an extraordinary amount on the robot, you’ll also need to smartify everything else in your home. Unlike the quad-chainsaw-wielding Dreame Cyber X, CLOiD has primitive wheels, so it won’t be able to navigate complex home environments with any level changes. But he will fold laundry (slowly) and make breakfast, if by make breakfast you mean placing a croissant onto a plate. It’s unlikely that CLOiD will ever make it to market, but LG is showing it off as a prototype of future projects, hoping it will eventually become an “ambient care agent that supports everyday life”. I joke, but robots that can assist with care of the elderly are very much in demand in an aging society where the cost of care is skyrocketing.
Also making an appearance was the SwitchBot Onero H1, whose makers claimed it should hit retail later this year at less than $10,000. For a robot that can pick up dirty socks and place them in a basket, I think we can all agree that’s a bargain. But unlike the LG CLOiD, the SwitchBot Onero is unable to display heart emojis on its face.
We’ve all been there — you’re watching the game and need to go grab a beer, but that means being taken away from the excitement of watching people kick a ball for 30 seconds. But what if — hear me out — your TV could follow you to the kitchen? You’d never miss a thing!
Now that I’ve woven that compelling tale of a use case for you, let me explain the Hisense S6 FollowMe TV isn’t actually any of that, because despite the name, it’s not motorized and won’t FollowYou. Instead, you need to manually push it around. So it’s just a TV on a stand then? Well, yes, but that makes it sound like it’s not innovative at all. It also has a webcam, and battery, and Wi-Fi 6 — but doesn’t ship with a chain to attach it to your neck, disappointingly. The real strangeness here is that Hisense felt a smart TV on wheels was an innovation worth showing off at the largest consumer electronics show. Don’t fret about upgrading: here’s a TV stand with wheels for less than $50.
CrowdStrike has been granted a motion to dismiss a consumer class action lawsuit brought by shareholders who were affected by the now-infamous 19 July 2024 outage – prompted by a faulty sensor update – which crashed Windows PCs around the world, causing widespread disruption and billions of pounds worth of losses.
The suit, filed on behalf of CrowdStrike investors in August 2024, accused the defendants – who included the company’s founder and CEO, George Kurtz – of making false and misleading statements over the efficacy of the Falcon platform at the centre of the outage.
It also alleged failings over software testing and quality assurance, and claimed that CrowdStrike was seeking to maximise its profit by rushing untested updates.
Handing down his decision at the federal district court for the Western District of Texas in the city of Austin, US district judge Robert Pitman said the plaintiff’s claims were dismissed in their entirety in part because the shareholders had failed to establish any plausible motive of intent to commit securities fraud on CrowdStrike’s part.
It his judgment, Pitman said the court agreed with CrowdStrike that the statements it made were neither false or misleading when considered in the context from which the plaintiffs removed them. He wrote that the court concluded that if anybody was being misleading, it was the plaintiffs.
Rejecting other arguments, Pitman also said that corporate mismanagement did not, standing alone, give rise to a multibillion-dollar claim. “We appreciate the Court’s thoughtful consideration and decision to dismiss this case,” said CrowdStrike chief legal officer Cathleen Anderson in a brief statement.
Reuters earlier reported that the office of New York State comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who led the lawsuit, is reviewing options following the decision.
Multiple actions
Last June, Pitman dismissed another lawsuit brought by airline passengers who experienced delays and cancellations after the sudden blackout.
Pitman’s decision in this case was made on the basis that the US Airline Deregulation Act preempted the claims the plaintiffs were making against CrowdStrike. His ruling has effectively shielded CrowdStrike from consumer suits related to disruptions experienced by its customers.
However, a third lawsuit brought by US airline Delta is still working its way through the US legal system.
Delta was particularly badly affected by failures arising from the outage, and was highly critical of CrowdStrike in the wake of the incident after it was forced to cancel thousands of flights and spend millions compensating stranded passengers and putting them up in airport hotels.
CrowdStrike and Microsoft have both claimed that Delta in fact rejected their offers of help during and after the disruption.
Single point of failure
The 2024 CrowdStrike outage stands as a stark reminder of the potential for a global catastrophe arising from unscheduled technical outages given the interconnected nature of cloud platforms, which enable single points of failure to cascade rapidly.
The scale of the problem was aptly demonstrated in November 2025, when web traffic management firm Cloudflare was hit by its worst outage in six years.
In an incident that bears some similarities to the CrowdStrike outage, Cloudflare had made a minor and seemingly innocuous change to a feature configuration file used by its Bot Management security system, which caused the file to grow larger than expected and propagate across the Cloudflare network, causing crashes and disrupting daily life on the world wide web for millions.
A month earlier, Amazon Web Services customers experienced a 15-hour outage after the cloud giant suffered a series of cascading technical issues at a northern Virginia datacentre powering its US-East-1 region, and in June, Google Cloud went on the blink for many after an incorrect change to an application programming interface management system triggered a crash loop.
Speaking to Computer Weekly’s sister title, Search Cloud Computing, Forrester principal analyst Lee Sustar said that such incidents are a “preview of what’s to come” and predicted more similar stories in 2026.
Sustar said a combination of hyperscalers pivoting from legacy environments to graphics processing unit-centric datacentres to manage AI workloads, and ageing infrastructure, would likely lead to “major multi-day outages” in the near future.
Apple has been tweaking the iPhone design almost every generation. With the iPhone 14 Pro, the company ditched the notch in favor of a Dynamic Island. On the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple added a titanium frame to its phones. On the iPhone 17 Pro models, a new camera plateau and the return to aluminum marked these smartphones.
Now, the well-known Chinese leaker Digital Chat Station claims the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max models will have a redesign, as Apple could be working on a new under-display cutout area. This leak is corroborated by other reports that say Apple will make a more discreet Dynamic Island while placing Face ID sensors under the screen. Other rumors suggest the iPhone will receive another major change in 2027, as Apple plans to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first iPhone release.
iPhone 18 — 6.27″ LTPO 120Hz display with Dynamic Island
iPhone Air 2 — 6.55″ LTPO 120Hz display with Dynamic Island
iPhone 18 Pro — 6.27″ LTPO 120Hz display with a newly redesigned under-display cutout area
iPhone 18 Pro Max — 6.86″ LTPO 120Hz display with a newly redesigned… pic.twitter.com/0Ix3CuLyuP
— Ice Universe (@UniverseIce) January 14, 2026
A design change won’t come to other iPhone models
José Adorno/BGR
Following Apple’s trend of updating the design of the iPhone Pro first, the Digital Chat Station leaker says that both iPhone 18 and iPhone Air 2 will remain with the same look as their predecessors, which means the company is not expected to add under-display components, like Face ID, or move the Dynamic Island somewhere else on the screen on these models.
While it’s still unclear whether Apple will move all the Face ID and camera components under the display on the iPhone 20, these rumors claim the company will do that with the TrueDepth system, which powers facial recognition, on the iPhone 18 Pro models.
Interestingly enough, Apple has been full of new ideas with its iPhones. For example, the iPhone Air was just introduced, but the company is expected to release the iPhone Fold this year. Then, in 2027, Apple might introduce an iPhone with an all-new design. Considering that, back in 2017, Apple decided to make a premium iPhone X model while offering the simpler iPhone 8, the rumored smartphone releases could make Apple’s release schedule as busy as it was back then. With two Pro models, one regular version with a new release schedule, the iPhone Air, and a future iPhone Fold, it becomes unclear where Apple will fit the iPhone 20 release and what the other models will look like.
We’ve been hearing for months that smartphones are going to be more expensive in 2026 because of the demands set out by a booming artificial intelligence industry. Advanced AI features, like the ones many smartphone vendors offer customers, rely on cloud processing and massive infrastructure investments. Those servers where some of your prompts are processed require processors, specialized GPUs, RAM, and storage. It turns out that memory and flash storage chips made for iPhone and Android devices also work in AI datacenters, which is causing significant demand pressure. Semiconductor firms have increased prices for these components in recent months, with analysts warning that some smartphone vendors will have to pass the extra costs to consumers.
Fast-forward to mid-January, and British smartphone brand Nothing, popular for its affordable entry-level and mid-range phones, has confirmed that the price hikes are real. The bad news some Android phone buyers may have feared arrived directly from Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who posted a lengthy explanation on X titled, “Why Your Next Smartphone Will Cost More.”
Less than a month ago, IDC analysts warned that “the global smartphone market, particularly Android manufacturers, is facing a threat in 2026,” in a report detailing the memory shortage crisis. IDC pointed out that smartphone vendors targeting the high-end market, including Apple and Samsung, are better positioned than vendors who manufacture cheaper Android devices. Android vendors including TCL, Transsion, Realme, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, or Huawei operate on slim margins, the IDC said, adding that such companies are “likely to suffer significantly.” Their only option is passing the cost, or part of it, to buyers. Nothing wasn’t explicitly named in that report, but the British vendor is a newcomer in the industry compared to more seasoned players.
Nothing mostly sells cheap Android phones
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Carl Pei echoed IDC’s remarks, saying that “2026 is the year the ‘specs race’ ends,” contrary to the previous expectations from both vendors and buyers. “For fifteen years, the smartphone industry relied on a single, reliable assumption: components would inevitably get cheaper,” Pei wrote. “While short-term volatility existed, the long-term downward trend in memory and display costs allowed for annual spec bumps without price hikes. In 2026, that model has finally broken, driven by a sharp and unprecedented surge in memory costs.”
Nothing launched its first handset, the Nothing Phone 1, in 2022, a $299 mid-range phone. Since then, Nothing released both flagship phones (the $599 Nothing Phone 2 and $799 Nothing Phone 3) and mid-range devices (the $349 Nothing Phone 2a, $399 Nothing Phone 2a Plus, $379 Nothing Phone 3a, and $459 Nothing Phone 3a Pro). Separately, Nothing also launched a smartphone sub-brand that makes entry-level handsets, the $199 CMF Phone 1 and $279 CMF Phone 2 Pro.
Nothing is expected to launch a next-generation series of phones this year. Carl Pei’s remarks about price hikes are likely a PR move from the experienced executive to temper price-related expectations for the upcoming Nothing Phone 4-series phones.
How much will the Nothing Phone 4 series cost?
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Pei did not mention any new Nothing products by name, but said that pricing will “inevitably also increase across our smartphone portfolio, particularly as we will upgrade some products launching this [quarter] to UFS 3.1” storage. He didn’t mention RAM costs for upcoming Nothing phones, but said that costs have tripled in some cases for memory components. Further increases are expected, as AI firms consume available supply.
“Memory is fast becoming one of the most expensive smartphone components and potentially the single largest cost driver in the bill of materials by year-end, with estimates suggesting that memory modules which cost less than $20 a year ago could exceed $100 by year-end for top-tier models,” Pei said. He added that smartphone vendors have to raise prices by up to 30% or downgrade the specs.
Pei also appears to see the glass as half full, or perhaps he’s framing the situation in a positive light to reassure consumers. “For Nothing, the current situation represents a great opportunity,” he said, adding that the company has always had to operate without benefiting from the cost advantages of well-established phone makers. Instead, Nothing realized it could not win on specs, and focused on a better design and user experience. “As the industry resets, experience becomes the only real differentiator,” Pei said. “That is exactly what Nothing was built for.”
Corporate and organisational changes at Chelsea Football Club are nothing new, but hot on the heels of appointing its ninth full-time manager in the past 10 years, the club has upgraded its mobile network in and around its stadium to strengthen connectivity for customers attending fixtures and events.
The fourth most successful club in English football, Chelsea were founded in 1905 and named after the neighbouring area of its Stamford Bridge ground in West London, one of UK capital’s most historic football venues, the only home that the football club has had in its history.
Typically in English football, clubs have been formed and stadium subsequently located; Chelsea were formed to play at Stamford Bridge, which currently boasts a capacity of just over 40,000. In addition to football, the ground has hosted a variety of other sports including cricket, baseball, rugby, boxing, greyhound racing and American football.
The connectivity capacity boost – undertaken by O2 – is designed to offer a more reliable mobile experience at peak times, making it easier for fans to share video of action and use social applications, as well as use digital services such as mobile ticketing and contactless payments.
Inside the stadium, O2 has optimised the rooftop site within Stamford Bridge, boosting capacity and improving mobile performance across the stands, concourses and hospitality areas. The operator said this will ensure customers can continue to stream, share and stay connected, even when the ground is at full capacity.
Beyond the stadium footprint, new and upgraded small-cell mobile technology has been installed to improve coverage and reliability for local residents, businesses and visiting fans, helping to keep people connected as they travel to and from matches.
O2 said the upgrades are already delivering positive results on match days, with customers using more than twice as much data and enjoying a fourfold increase in speeds.
“Stamford Bridge is an iconic stadium with extremely high demand on matchdays,” said Steven Verigotta, director of mobile delivery at the operator’s parent company Virgin Media O2. “By optimising our network inside the ground and in the surrounding areas, we are giving O2 customers a more reliable mobile experience so they can enjoy every moment, from kick-off to the final whistle.”
The upgrades are part of O2’s Mobile Transformation Plan, which will see the operator invest around £700m into its mobile infrastructure to future-proof the company’s mobile network and improve connectivity in high-demand areas across the UK. In August 2025, O2 went live with its first mobile small cells in the key resorts of St Ives and Newquay in Cornwall to give businesses an improved mobile connectivity experience and faster speeds.
A month earlier, O2 also announced that it had agreed a deal with Vodafone UK to acquire 78.8MHz of mobile spectrum, bringing the operator’s total spectrum holding to approximately 30% of UK mobile spectrum and materially enhancing the company’s network position and improving connectivity in locations such as sites with crowds of people.
Data released by O2 in late 20205 showed that growing customer use of artificial intelligence (AI) alongside the continued draw of live sports and major gaming releases has resulted in record levels of data consumption across the networks of Virgin Media O2, including an 18% rise in mobile traffic.
The key theme of mobile traffic on the O2 network was that people in the UK were scrolling, chatting and embracing AI more than ever, despite nearly three-fifths of Brits (58%) saying that they began the year with a plan to reduce the time they spent on their phone.
The AI radar 2026 study from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has reported that artificial intelligence (AI) investment is set to double in 2026 compared with 2025. The study, based on a survey of 2,400 business executives, of which 640 are CEOs, found that almost every chief executive polled (94%) is committed to continuing investments even if returns take time to materialise.
In fact, almost all (90%) of the CEOs polled believe AI agents will deliver a measurable return on investment by 2026.
The study found that over two-thirds (72%) of CEOs now act as the primary decision-maker for AI in their organisation, taking responsibility from CIOs, who were previously the main lead in AI projects.
Christoph Schweizer, CEO of BCG, said: “Corporate investment in AI is here to stay. 94% of our survey respondents say they will continue to invest in 2026, even if it takes time to see the return. They intend to spend 1.7% of revenue on AI comprehensively. That is more than twice of what it was a year ago.”
BCG’s research suggests that companies leading the way in AI deployments are investing 60% of their AI budgets on agentic AI (AI agents). “We tell CEOs that they need to make AI a key priority,” he said. “The way they own it, the way they talk about it, the way they bring their organisation along. They need to spend time on deepening their own AI literacy.”
BCG recommends that CEOs understand the tools, the technology, and keep in touch with technology suppliers and partners. “Ultimately, you need to know what you talk about so that you can bring your organisation along and steer for maximum return,” added Schweizer.
With regards to the adoption of agentic AI, BCG found that more than 30% of the CEOs investing in AI during 2026 said they would be building agents to deploy in the work environment. Vladimir Lukic, global leader of BCG’s Technology and Digital Advantage, said: “AI agents will truly be something that will unlock organisations and deliver a return on investment within 2026.”
Sylvain Duranton, head of BCG X, said the research highlights differences in CEOs’ AI confidence in different regions. BCG reported that UK businesses are less likely than global peers to make large-scale investments in AI in 2026.
The study found that only 24% of UK companies plan to invest more than $50m in AI, compared with much higher shares in countries leading the AI race, such as Greater China (68%), Japan (53%), the European Union (38%) and the Middle East (41%). BCG also reported that British CEOs are the most sceptical of AI’s potential return on investment and less involved in decision-making on AI.
Discussing the regional differences, Duranton said: “CEOs in the East, in India, in China, in Japan, the Middle East and Africa tend to be highly confident that AI is going to be a positive return on investment move. In the global West – Europe, the US and the UK – there’s a bit more caution.”
In his experience, many Asian companies have huge confidence and boldness in moving forward with AI. However, many European and US firms operate in a different way. “There’s some more skepticism in their workforce,” said Duranton. “There potentially is some more regulation that they deal with.”
Firms leading the way with AI deployments, which BCG categorise as “trailblazers”, tend to focus heavily on upskilling the workforce. Jessica Apotheker, chief marketing officer and managing director at BCG, said: “Trailblazers are putting 60% of their AI budget behind upskilling and retraining their workforce. So, they’re really wanting to go deep in the organisation, changing the way people work, putting people behind this new technology.”
BCG reported that in these organisations, 70% of the workforce has been upskilled or reskilled on AI.
