Latest news with #modulardesign
The Guardian
07-07-2025
- The Guardian
Framework Laptop 12 review: fun, flexible and repairable
The modular and repairable PC maker Framework's latest machine moves into the notoriously difficult to fix 2-in-1 category with a fun 12in laptop with a touchscreen and a 360-degree hinge. The new machine still supports the company's innovative expansion cards for swapping the different ports in the side, which are cross-compatible with the Framework 13 and 16 among others. And you can still open it up to replace the memory, storage and internal components with a few simple screws. The Framework 12 is available in either DIY form, starting at £499 (€569/$549/A$909), or more conventional prebuilt models starting at £749. It sits under the £799-and-up Laptop 13 and £1,399 Laptop 16 as the company's most compact and affordable model. Where the Laptop 13 is a premium-looking machine, the Laptop 12 is unmistakably chunky and rugged with over-moulded plastic parts for shock protection. It is designed to meet the MIL-STD-810 standard common to rugged electronics. It looks and feels as if it could take a beating, not like a flimsy DIY kit you put together yourself. The glossy 12.2in screen is bright and relatively sharp. But it is highly reflective, has large black bezels around it and has a relatively narrow colour gamut, which means colours look a little muted. It's decent enough for productivity but not great for photo editing. The touchscreen rotates all the way back on to the bottom of the machine to turn it into a tablet or it can be folded like a tent or parallel to the keyboard. The screen supports the use of a wide range of first and third-party styluses for drawing or notes, which could make it handy in the classroom. A selection of fun colours are available for the DIY version, further enhancing its college appeal. The 1080p webcam at the top is decent, although it won't rival a Surface, and it has a physical privacy switch alongside the mics. The stereo speakers are loud and distortion-free but lack bass and a little clarity, sounding a little hollow compared with the best on the market. At 1.3kg the Laptop 12 isn't featherweight but it is nice and compact, easy to fit in bags or on small desks. The generous mechanical trackpad is precise and works well. But the laptop lacks any form of biometrics, with no fingerprint or face recognition, forcing you to enter a pin or password every time you open the laptop or to use secure apps such as password managers, which gets old fast. Screen: 12.2in LCD 1920x1200 (60Hz; 186PPI) Processor: Intel Core i3 or i5 (U-series, 13th gen) RAM: 8 or 16GB (up to 48GB) Storage: 512GB (up to 2TB) Operating system: Windows 11 or Linux Camera: 1080p front-facing Connectivity: wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, headphones + choice of 4 ports: USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, DisplayPort, ethernet, microSD, SD Dimensions: 287 x 213.9 x 18.5mm Weight: 1.3kg The Laptop 12 comes with a choice of two Intel 13-generation U-series processors, which are lower-power chips from a few years ago. As tested with the mid-range i5-1334U it won't win any raw performance awards but was generally up to the task of more than basic computing. It feels responsive in day-to-day tasks but struggles a bit in longer, processor-heavy jobs such as converting video. The older chip means the battery life is a little on the short side for 2025, lasting about seven to eight hours of light office-based work using browsers, word processors, note-taking apps and email. Use more demanding apps and the battery life shrinks by a few hours. The battery takes about 100 minutes to fully charge using a 60W or greater USB-C power adaptor. The port selection is entirely customisable with a fixed headphone jack and four slots for expansion cards, which are available in a choice of USB-A and USB-C, DisplayPort and HDMI, microSD and SD card readers, or ethernet. Other cards can add up to 1TB of storage and the USB-C cards are available in a range of solid or translucent colours to make things even brighter. It is an excellent system but note the Laptop 12 supports only USB 3.2 Gen 2, not the faster USB4/Thunderbolt common on new machines. Framework rates the battery to maintain at least 80% of its original capacity for at least 1,000 full charge cycles. It can easily be replaced along with all the rest of the components, including the RAM and SSD. Framework sells replacement parts and upgrades through its marketplace but also supports third-party parts. The laptop contains recycled plastic in many components. The DIY edition of the Framework 12 starts at £499 (€569/$549/A$909) with pre-built systems starting at £749 (€849/$799/A$1,369) with Windows 11. For comparison, the DIY Framework 13 costs from £799 and the DIY Framework 16 costs from £1,399 . Similarly specced 2-in-1 Windows machines start at about £500. Like previous Framework machines, the Laptop 12 demonstrates that repairable, upgradable and adaptable computers are possible, work well and can be used by more than just the tech savvy. It manages to be fun in a way most mid-range PCs just aren't. The keyboard is solid, the trackpad good and the speakers loud. The modular ports are a killer feature that every PC should embrace, while being able to repair or upgrade it easily is still so unusual. The touchscreen is bright but unremarkable, the lack of any biometrics is irritating, and the older processor, while still decently fast for everyday tasks, means the battery life isn't long by modern standards. Its biggest problem is cost, as it is about £150-£200 more expensive than similarly specced but closed and locked-down machines. Unless you already have spare storage and RAM lying around, that's the price you have to pay for the open and modular machine. Pros: swappable ports, repairable and upgradeable, fun and durable design, compact, lots of colour choices, solid keyboard and trackpad, solid performance for everyday tasks. Cons: battery life short of best, screen is bright but a little lacklustre, no biometrics, expensive, older processor, wait time for purchases.
GSM Arena
05-07-2025
- GSM Arena
Fairphone 6 aces repairability test
Vlad, 05 July 2025 The Fairphone 6 launched last month with an expanded modular design, a better chipset, and a larger battery compared to its predecessor. This is still no flagship Android smartphone, but its key selling point isn't performance or battery life, it's repairability. Thus, you might be interested to find out what the folks over at iFixit have to say about it - after all, they've been championing people's right to self-repair their devices for years, and Fairphone itself is also all about giving people that option. It's all good news for the Fairphone 6, as iFixit has found it to be the most repairable handset yet. So, it was awarded a perfect 10 out of 10 repairability score, something that mainstream smartphone brands can only dream of, but have never achieved. Fairphone has already made parts and repair manuals available for the Fairphone 6, which it promises will get at least seven major Android updates and at least eight years of security patches. That's important because a phone being easy to repair is kind of pointless if its software isn't supported past a year or two. The entire phone uses only T5 Torx screws, so one screwdriver is enough to get to any component. Speaking of which, obviously all of the various bits and pieces are very easy to replace - this includes the battery, cameras and the screen as well as the USB port. There's no glue anywhere inside, which makes repairs a breeze but means it can only be IP55 rated for dust and water resistance. Fairphone 6 256GB 8GB RAM $ 870.00
GSM Arena
05-07-2025
- GSM Arena
Fairphone 6 aces repairability test
The Fairphone 6 launched last month with an expanded modular design, a better chipset, and a larger battery compared to its predecessor. This is still no flagship Android smartphone, but its key selling point isn't performance or battery life, it's repairability. Thus, you might be interested to find out what the folks over at iFixit have to say about it - after all, they've been championing people's right to self-repair their devices for years, and Fairphone itself is also all about giving people that option. It's all good news for the Fairphone 6, as iFixit has found it to be the most repairable handset yet. So, it was awarded a perfect 10 out of 10 repairability score, something that mainstream smartphone brands can only dream of, but have never achieved. Fairphone has already made parts and repair manuals available for the Fairphone 6, which it promises will get at least seven major Android updates and at least eight years of security patches. That's important because a phone being easy to repair is kind of pointless if its software isn't supported past a year or two. The entire phone uses only T5 Torx screws, so one screwdriver is enough to get to any component. Speaking of which, obviously all of the various bits and pieces are very easy to replace - this includes the battery, cameras and the screen as well as the USB port. There's no glue anywhere inside, which makes repairs a breeze but means it can only be IP55 rated for dust and water resistance. Fairphone 6
The Verge
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
You can upgrade this modular guitar controller with 3D-printed parts.
Posted Jun 30, 2025 at 5:00 PM UTC You can upgrade this modular guitar controller with 3D-printed parts. Drakong, a new gaming hardware subsidiary of Hyperkin, has partnered with Fender for a new rhythm game guitar controller called the InfinaKore Telecaster Edition. What sets it apart from Hyperkin's Hyper Strummer is a modular design allowing the body, fret buttons, whammy and strum bars to be customized and replaced with 3D-printed alternatives. The controller supports Bluetooth and 2.4GHz connections, the Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PCs, and games including Fortnite Festival , Guitar Hero , and Rock Band . 1/4 The controller's design is inspired by the iconic Fender Telecaster guitar, and includes connection points for a shoulder strap. Image: Drakong
WIRED
28-06-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Gear News This Week: The Repairable Fairphone 6 Arrives and Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked Is Up Next
Plus: Dell officially replaces the XPS brand, Cambride Audio budget buds, and an HDMI buying boon. Courtesy of Cambridge Audio; Dell All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. The sixth generation of Fairphone arrived this week, featuring a modular design built to last from ethically sourced components in a climate-conscious way. It has been a couple of years since its predecessor, the Fairphone 5, and the Fairphone 6 is refreshingly smaller and lighter. It boasts a 6.3-inch OLED screen with a 120-Hz adaptive refresh rate, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor, and a 4,415 mAh battery that Fairphone says is good for up to two days. You also get a 50-megapixel main camera with a 13-MP ultrawide lens and a 32-MP selfie camera. Fairphone says the new device is made with more than 50 percent fair and recycled materials, including cobalt sourced through the Fair Cobalt Alliance, fair gold, silver, and tungsten, and recycled aluminum and rare earth metals. The Fairphone 6 is 100 percent e-waste neutral, made in factories powered by 100 percent renewable energy, by people paid a living wage. The Fairphone 6 is an Android phone with Google Gemini onboard, but the Fairphone Moments feature enables you to hit a physical switch for a minimalist mode with a pared-back interface and just five apps. Fairphone has always gone for a modular design to make repairs and upgrades easier, but this time, it includes a swappable accessory range with a case, card holder, lanyard, and finger loop. Despite the modular design, the Fairphone 6 has an IP55 rating. The Fairphone 6 comes with a five-year warranty, software support until 2033 (eight years is more than any other Android manufacturer promises), and a guarantee of seven major Android OS upgrades. Sadly, it's still not officially sold in the US, but you can buy one for £499 in the UK or 599 Euros on the continent. If you are interested and live in the US, there's a de-Googled version of the Fairphone 6 running e/OS, coming in August. Too bad it costs $899. — Simon Hill Dell Kills the XPS Brand XPS is finally dead. Oh, you didn't hear? Dell announced the sweeping rebrand earlier this year, but perhaps its most iconic laptop branding hasn't changed in the past six months. No new XPS models have come out, so the laptop line has been cruising along. But now, Dell's ambitious (and sometimes downright confusing) rebranding efforts have reached XPS, the beloved laptops that have been setting the standard for premium Windows laptops for many years. In place of what would've been the new Dell XPS 14 and XPS 16, the company is launching the Dell Premium 14 and Dell Premium 16. It doesn't roll off the tongue quite the same. Aside from the name, this is a modest upgrade over last year's models. The new laptops use the latest Intel chips (Core Ultra 200H series) and Nvidia's RTX 50-series graphics. Intel's new chips claim to provide better battery life—up to 27 hours on the Dell Premium 16—whereas the RTX 5050, 5060, and 5070 will improve the graphics. The Dell Premium 14 starts at $1,650, which is $50 cheaper than what it launched at last year. Meanwhile, the Dell Premium 16 will only launch with the RTX 5070 model, with other configurations to come later. While the designs remain as sleek as ever, the fact that both models start with only a 1920 x 1200-pixel resolution screen feels crazy at that price, especially when stretched out on a 16.3-inch screen. Let's not forget: The 14-inch MacBook Pro has a lower starting price and comes with a high-resolution Mini-LED screen on all models. Prices tend to fluctuate, though, and I'm happy Dell is keeping these creator-based machines with discrete graphics options around. I'll hopefully be testing them soon, but for now, let's pour one out for XPS, an iconic PC brand that's been around since the early 1990s—one of the last holdouts from a wildly different era in technology. — Luke Larsen Solos' New Smart Glasses Embrace AI Smart glasses are taking off in various forms, but Solos sees them as wearable AI devices. Both its new models, the AirGo A5 and the AirGo V2, offer access to an AI assistant. The AirGo A5 relies on audio, with built-in speakers and microphones enabling you to access SolosChat to reply to messages or pose queries. You can also use them for calls or to listen to music and podcasts. The more interesting AirGo V2 packs a 16-megapixel camera and a more advanced version 3.0 of SolosChat that combines ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek to identify objects, translate text, and provide the answers you need. Like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, you can also use them to snap photos and shoot videos hands-free. To compete with the best smart glasses, the AirGo V2 will have to improve considerably on the original Solos AirGo Vision glasses, which had a very poor quality camera and were downright clunky. Solos has also released an SDK and is partnering with companies like Envision and Deutsche Telekom to develop useful AI-driven apps to make AI smart glasses more useful and appealing. The Solos AirGo A5 costs $249, with preorders starting in August. The AirGo V2 glasses will cost $299 but aren't expected to launch until the end of the year. — Simon Hill Cambridge Audio Melomania A100 Are Compact and Affordable Wireless Buds Courtesy of Cambridge Audio If you are looking for a pair of wireless noise cancelling earbuds at the more affordable end of the market, British hi-fi brand Cambridge Audio has just thrown a new contender into the mix with its Melomania A100. Following on from last year's M100 buds, the A100 offer a more compact and lightweight design, but with plenty of the brand's hi-fi heritage still built in. The A100 borrow things like the Class AB amplification from its CX and EX Series to help power the buds' 10mm Neodymium drivers, and have a seven-band adjustable EQ for tweaking sound to your taste. The buds also provide all manner of ways to get your music to them in the best possible quality, including support for LDAC and aptX Lossless and Adaptive, and Cambridge's proprietary DynamEQ looks to keep things sounding exciting, even at low volumes. There are also touch controls here, IPX5 waterproofing and Bluetooth 5.4 multipoint for connecting to two devices. As far as battery life goes, you'll get 6.5 hours of ANC playback from a single charge, and up to 28 more hours from the case—plus three hours playback from 10 minutes on charge. That's down a few hours down on last year's model, but the price reflects that. You'll be able to pick these up now in the UK and Europe for £119/€139 and they will be available in the US a bit later in 2025 in for $149. — Verity Burns Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked Gets a Date Nothing is set to debut its flagship Nothing Phone (3) early next week in London, but in the following week Samsung will take the stage in Brooklyn to take the wraps off its latest folding phones and smartwatches. This week, the company announced the official date for its second Galaxy Unpacked event of the year—July 9—with the keynote to begin at 10 am ET or 7 am Pacific. As usual, it will be livestreamed. We're expecting to see the Galaxy Z Fold7 and Z Flip7 folding smartphones, along with the Galaxy Watch8 series. Samsung already lets you reserve the device now, and in return, you'll get $50 in Samsung store credit and a chance to win a $5,000 credit for Samsung's store. HDMI Cables Get Clearer HDMI 2.2 isn't something that most people need to worry about right now; it's the upcoming video display standard that will likely be utilized by professionals first. Still, it's worth noting that you will be able to tell which cables are HDMI 2.2 compatible thanks to a new 'Ultra96' label on all cables. This label is designed to tell buyers that it supports the full 96 Gbps bandwidth HDMI 2.2 is capable of. First revealed at CES 2025, the new standard will be slow to roll out at home because there isn't any 96 Gbps video for anyone to stream from anything, but support for up to 16K resolution (4K is the current standard) leaves a lot of breathing room down the line. — Parker Hall
