Author: Geek Planet

Apple may be ready to refresh its cheapest iPhone without raising the sticker. Bloomberg reports the iPhone 17e is lined up as the next entry model, with three upgrades in the works and a $599 starting price expected to stay put. Those changes are straightforward on paper, a move to the A19 chip, MagSafe returning, and a shift to Apple’s newest in-house cellular and wireless chips. The idea is simple, make the budget iPhone feel closer to the mainstream lineup while keeping it easy to buy. The 17e is framed as a volume phone aimed at emerging markets and enterprise…

Brands are relying more heavily on chatbots powered by artificial intelligence to handle customer service queries as they seek to mitigate tariff costs. Some brands, particularly small businesses, are laying off customer service agents or scaling back outsourced call center contracts in favor of AI chatbots as part of broader efforts to offset tariffs imposed this year by the Trump administration. That’s the case for Greg Shugar, who runs Beau Ties of Vermont, a Vermont-based company that makes woven silk jacquard neckwear and accessories and sells them through both direct-to-consumer and wholesale channels. Although all of Beau Ties’s products are made in…

A beta feature in Gemini is designed to let you move your ChatGPT chat history over, so you can keep working with the same context instead of starting from scratch. For anyone who has months of prompts, fixes, and decisions tied up in old threads, the Gemini ChatGPT import aims to make switching less of a reset. Google describes the option as “import AI chats”. The flow is simple in theory, you export your conversations from another AI platform, upload that file, then continue those chats inside Gemini with the old context attached. There’s a tradeoff built in. Imported chats…

Some Android users are reporting that the Gemini feature Circle to Search no longer shows a Share option, and it makes the feature feel like it just got a lot less practical. If you used that shortcut all the time, you know why it mattered. It let you send what you circled right away, without dumping another screenshot into your gallery that you’d have to clean up later. The complaints started on Reddit, and Android Authority says it can reproduce the change on some devices. In those cases, Circle to Search still shows actions like Create and Select text, but…

The Nokia N8 is back in circulation, and not just as a collector’s trophy. More than 15 years after its 2010 debut, a fan-made custom firmware called Reborn is keeping the Symbian flagship practical in 2026, even with Nokia’s official update servers offline. That matters because the usual route to the N8’s final software era, Nokia Belle, no longer exists. Reborn steps in with a Belle-based build that sticks to the stock feel, while cutting out bloat and dead links that drag old phones down. Short version, it makes the N8 nicer to use. The biggest quality of life fix…

The line between athlete and influencer is evaporating as more advertising dollars flow into sports, creator marketing, and into the U.S. name, image and likeness (NIL) cottage industry that straddles both worlds.Agency holding groups are paying close attention. Japanese agency group Dentsu struck a deal with MOGL, a company providing matchmaking services between NIL creators and brands, Digiday has learned. The deal grants Dentsu and its clients (which include 7-Eleven, American Express and T-Mobile) access to some 30,000 college athlete creators across 1,100 U.S. universities. Cara Lewis, chief investment and activation officer at Dentsu, said the deal was a response…

Honor emerged as one of the stronger performers in 2025, posting record growth, according to a new research report. Data from Omdia’s latest analysis shows the brand’s shipments grew 11% year-over-year, outperforming competitors like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo. The report notes that global smartphone shipments grew by 2% overall, with Apple leading the market, posting 7% year-over-year growth and capturing 19% market share. Samsung followed closely with similar growth and market share figures, while Xiaomi placed third with a 13% market share despite a 2% decline in shipments. Although Honor was not among the top 5 vendors, trailing slightly behind…

Some laptop deals are only good if you already know exactly what you want. This one is simpler: it covers a lot of use cases without asking you to compromise much. The Dell Plus Copilot+ 14-inch 2-in-1 is $499.99, saving you $350 off the $849.99 compared value. For a 2K touchscreen convertible with 16GB memory and 512GB storage, that’s the kind of price that makes it a very reasonable everyday upgrade in 2026. What you’re getting This is a 14-inch 2K 2-in-1 touchscreen laptop, meaning it can work as a standard laptop and flip into tablet mode when you want…

Elon Musk’s vision to automate as much of the ad process as possible using Grok has been met with a lukewarm response from advertisers.Part of the hesitation is that it requires handing over complete control to an AI tool — something advertisers already do reluctantly with Google and Meta. Doing so on a platform with X’s historical volatility makes the leap even harder. “We’re still hesitant with X because it’s historically underperformed and Grok, its AI assistant, is unproven,” said Christopher Spong, associate director, social media and communications at Collective Measures. “We’d need proof of its viability from a reputable…

Apple is gearing up to launch the successor to last year’s affordable iPhone 16e, and leaks suggest it may feature a more modern design and two key upgrades. While Apple has yet to share any details about the iPhone 17e, a new report hints that the company may unveil the device in just two weeks. According to Macworld, the information comes from a case and accessory maker familiar with Apple’s plans, who suggests the iPhone 17e could launch on February 19. The report notes that the timeline sounds unusual, given that Apple typically doesn’t launch new devices on Thursdays, but…