Samsung may be preparing a return to full-size wireless headphones with a device reportedly known as Galaxy H1. App code offers the first clues, but key details remain unconfirmed.

The post Samsung Galaxy H1 Leak Points to New Over-Ear Headphones: What We Know appeared first on TechRepublic.

The computer peripheral market has always been more experimental at its edges than in the mainstream. Ergonomic trackballs, in particular, have attracted a devoted following among power users, but the options tend to cluster at two extremes: consumer-facing products with locked-down firmware, and niche open-source hardware that trades polished finish for deep customizability. Finding something that genuinely does both has rarely been straightforward.

Ploopy’s Adept trackball made a compelling case for the latter category, earning a loyal following with its open-source, 3D-printed design and QMK compatibility. But it always felt like it had more to say. Its circuit board had always reserved space for two more switches that never made it to production, and the base had slots for a wrist rest that never materialized. The A+ is that unfinished story, now finished.

Designer: Ploopy

The most visible addition is the button count. The Adept had six; the A+ has eight, two of which also function as knobs. Out of the box, the knobs handle high-resolution vertical and horizontal scrolling, but both are fully reprogrammable for other functions. That dual-purpose approach keeps navigation and control within a single hand without needing a separate scroll wheel or accessory sitting alongside it.

The gesture system is arguably the more interesting addition. Hold a button and flick the ball in any of eight directions, and the device fires a command. By default, the left knob activates cut, copy, paste, desktop switching, and media controls. For someone who lives inside a browser and a text editor all day, that’s a significant amount of functionality without ever lifting a hand off the device.

Layers add another dimension. The A+ has two: a navigation layer for everyday use and a control layer accessed via the right knob. The control layer handles on-device configuration, covering left-hand mode switching, toggling between high-resolution and stepped scrolling, and other adjustments. It’s the first trackball to bring this kind of layered behavior, working entirely without any software running on the host computer. There are also two bright LEDs that can be used to visually tell you what layer you’re on without having to rely on some embedded screen.

The detachable wrist rest is another long-promised feature that finally arrives with the A+. It slots in or out during use and can be screwed on permanently if preferred. The device stays ambidextrous throughout, and its 3D-printed shell means the community can print modified bodies, alter the layout, or swap in custom colors. That kind of adaptability isn’t an afterthought; it’s part of how the whole thing is designed.

The Pixart PMW-3360 sensor carries over from the Adept, running at a 1,000Hz polling rate with the tracking accuracy that has made it a standard for performance-oriented pointing devices. Omron D2LS-21 switches handle the physical buttons. The firmware remains QMK, configurable through VIA, with all design files, firmware, and assembly instructions freely available on GitHub. Kits start at $99 CAD.

The post This $99 Trackball Has Gesture Controls That Work Without Any Software first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Pixel Tag comes in exactly one color, a grey green called Fog, wrapped around stainless steel with a G logo stamped right on the front. It’s the same script Apple wrote with the AirTag and Samsung copied with the SmartTag2. A tracker spends its entire life clipped to your keys or your dog’s collar or tucked into a backpack pocket, which makes it one of the most personal objects you own. Google, of all companies, knows how to make hardware feel less like hardware. It just didn’t bother here.

Somebody at DJI figured out that a $60 microphone could come with snap-on decals, because apparently even a tiny accessory deserves a little personality. Motorola figured out something similar with the Moto Tag, which actually ships in sage green and a soft blue instead of the usual black or white default. So it’s not like nobody in tech has thought about this. It’s just that almost nobody applies it to trackers, and now Google has joined the long list of companies that had the chance and passed.

Designer: Google

The excuse I keep hearing, and I use that word deliberately, is durability. Metal survives drops, fabric doesn’t, case closed. Except my phone survives daily abuse inside a woven case, and so does yours, and so does every rugged Kevlar sleeve sold by the millions for devices far more fragile than a coin sized tracker. Nobody worries their phone case is going to disintegrate because it has some texture on it. A tracker being too delicate for color or grip is not a real constraint. It’s a decision that got dressed up as one.

Underneath that decision is genuinely solid engineering, for what it’s worth. The Pixel Tag measures 1.8 by 1.1 inches and just 5.4mm thick, which makes it noticeably slimmer than the AirTag’s 8mm body. It runs on a replaceable CR2032 battery rated for about a year, carries an IP67 rating for dust and water, and pairs instantly over Fast Pair with any Android 9 device or newer. The headline feature is Ultra Wideband combined with Bluetooth Channel Sounding, which gives you a literal on-screen arrow and distance reading instead of a vague “getting warmer” signal, though that trick needs Android 16 and Bluetooth 6.0 to actually work. It taps into Find Hub, Google’s network of over a billion Android phones, so a lost item can get spotted even when it is nowhere near your own devices. You can share access with up to ten people, ring it from a Pixel Watch, or ask Gemini through your Pixel Buds to ring it for you. All of that ships November 11 for $29, or $99 for a four pack.

Google already knows how to wrap good engineering in an object people actually want to look at, because it solved the exact same brief years ago with its speakers. The Nest Mini gets a soft, woven top because Google understood people don’t want to display a hunk of bare plastic on their kitchen counter. The Nest Audio does the same thing, fabric front, rounded edges, an object designed to belong in a room rather than announce itself as a gadget in one. That instinct exists inside the same company that just shipped a keychain accessory in one shade of grey with a logo dead center, like it needed to remind you it’s tech.

A tracker’s entire job is to sit quietly on the stuff you actually care about. It should feel like something you chose, not something you tolerated because the tech underneath happened to be good. Find Hub integration, UWB precision finding, a battery that lasts a year, all of that is genuinely solid work. But solid engineering wrapped in a logo stamped on steel isn’t a finished product. It’s half of one, and Google, weirdly, is the company with the least excuse for stopping there.

The post Google’s Pixel Tag is making the same ‘boring’ design mistake that Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi made first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Samsung T9 delivers read and write speeds of up to 2,000 MB/s, making large file transfers feel instant.

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