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On Wednesday I spent a day fishing, on a small boat out of Gloucester, MA. We caught many cod (none of which we could keep), and a bunch of hake and mackerel (all of which we could keep). And…I caught a squid! Near as I can tell, it’s a longfin squid, sometimes called a Boston squid (Doryteuthis (Amerigo) pealeii).
That night I cooked it over a barbecue grill—hot and fast. Delicious.
If you're like most people, you might still be getting used to iOS 27 on your iPhone. Perhaps you haven't even installed it yet, or maybe you're confused about why iOS 27.0.1 exists. (The short answer: The iPhone 18 Pro is a bit glitchy.) But there's a new iPhone update on the horizon that adds even more new features and changes to the mix: iOS 27.2. While this update isn't nearly as big of an overhaul as iOS 27 itself, it's still impactful, especially for Health app users. Here's what's new.
The update is currently in testing, so if you want to try it out early, you can enroll your iPhone in Apple's beta and check these features out today. Just know that all betas come with some level of risk, so if you decide to go down this path, create a proper backup of all important data before installing the beta.
With iOS 27.2, Apple is totally overhauling the Health app. This is perhaps the biggest change coming with Apple's update, and fitness users will likely welcome many of these new features. With the new Health app, you'll be able to see your Fitness rings within the Health app, rather than the Fitness app; there's a new "Longevity" tab that gives you insights into key aspects of your long-term health, including mental wellbeing, nutrition, daily movement, heart health, metabolic health, sleep, and hearing health. There are also new assessments you can take to analyze your current overall health and where you can improve, including a new "Health Age" feature. You can even allow your iPhone's camera to watch you exercise in order to rate your fitness in categories like flexibility, balance, VO2max, and strength.
This is by far the Health app's biggest revamp in years, and I'm looking forward to exploring the new features when the update drops. For more on what's new with the Health app in iOS 27.2, check out Lifehacker senior health editor Beth Skwarecki's guide here. (Beth is particularly fond of the new step count that appears at the top of both the Health and Fitness apps.)
Call Context is an excellent use of Apple Intelligence. When you're on a phone call, Apple Intelligence checks if the phone number you're calling is related to a business that you have relevant information for elsewhere on your device. If so, it fetches that information for you and displays it on the call screen. For example, if you're talking with your airline's customer service line, Call Context can proactively display your flight number based on the itinerary it finds in your email.
With iOS 27.2, Call Context now includes anniversary alerts. If you're on a phone call with someone you have a saved anniversary for, that alert will appear on-screen. That way, you can get a small reminder if you call a friend on their birthday, but you happened to forget the occasion. (Thank you, technology, for saving some of us from our thoughtlessness, even if you are enabling bad habits.)
As part of a previous announcement of accessibility features, Apple revealed it was adding a new API to FaceTime that supports adding a human interpreter to video calls. This feature did not make it to iOS 27, but it appears to be rolling out in Apple's next update, making video calls more accessible going forward.
If you have an Apple TV, you likely know you can set up profiles, so individual users can personalize the experience when watching shows and movies. As MacRumors highlights, these profiles are now coming to the Apple TV app in iOS and iPadOS 27.2. That way, multiple users can personalize the Apple TV experience on a single device: If your family shares an iPad, for example, each user can switch to their Apple TV profile when it's their turn to watch. Now, if we could only get system-level profiles too, Apple.
At launch, Siri AI is only available in English. But with iOS 27.2, Apple is expanding that list. Once you update to the latest version, you'll be able to use Siri AI in French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Apple isn't thrilled with how some of its apps look in iOS 27, apparently. MacRumors also spotted that in the Music app, Apple removed some of the red accents and turned certain buttons from red to black—including the Play and Shuffle buttons, and the icons in the Library sections. In the Clock app, "AM" and "PM" are now smaller than the time when setting alarms. In Podcasts, "Up Next" is now "New Episodes," perhaps adding a touch more clarity. Finally, Apple changed "App Access" in Siri to "Excluded Apps," and now allows you to exclude multiple apps from Siri at once.
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The Ian Brennan/Ryan Murphy true crime anthology series Monster is back with its first trip into the more distant past, taking us back to 1892 to examine one of the most famous and discussed murderers in American history: Lizzie Borden, a woman said to have killed her father and stepmother with an axe. Borden was never convicted; controversy and conspiracy theories linger; and though it happened more than a century ago, the crime was recent enough that we can pore over police files and crime-scene photos and argue over the facts, which makes for thrilling dramatic television.
After all, while a story about an evil killer is one thing, one following an ambiguous, possibly sympathetic killer? That's the stuff of truly juicy true crime. If you're looking for more in the same violent vein, here are 10 shows to stream next.
The real-life Candy Montgomery has been portrayed multiple times—by Barbara Hershey in a 1990 CBS movie, by Jessica Biel in this Hulu miniseries, and, more recently, by Elizabeth Olsen in HBO Max's Love & Death. Like Lizzie Borden, Candy is a woman killer (maybe?) who we can't seem to get enough of. Jessica Biel is so good here, though, that this one earns extra points. In an impeccably reproduced 1980, Candy was accused of murdering her neighbor, Betty Gore (Melanie Lynskey), following the woman's affair with Candy's husband, Allan (Pablo Schreiber). And with an axe, no less. Was it cold-blooded murder, or self-defense? Stream Candy on Hulu.
This TV movie could be described as speculative—it plays a bit like high-end Lizzie Borden fan fiction (or perhaps a fever dream), with a phenomenal cast led by Christina Ricci. Set after Lizzie Borden's acquittal for crimes that, the movie makes clear, she absolutely did commit, we find Lizzie and Emma (Clea DuVall) trying to get on with their lives, even as a Pinkerton agent (Cole Hauser) dogs their every move. A trip to New York City finds Lizzie in a love triangle involving a playwright and a sex worker, a woman whose pimp tries to extort our young murderer. That turns out to be every bit as bad an idea as you might expect. Stream The Lizzie Borden Chronicles on Prime Video.
Inspired by a documentary of the same name, The Staircase sidesteps true crime tropes by taking a meta approach to its twisty story. Colin Firth stars as real-life crime novelist Michael Peterson alongside Toni Collette as his wife and, perhaps, his victim, Kathleen, who dies following a fall down a flight of stairs. Peterson was convicted of murder, a charge later reduced to voluntary manslaughter, but there are a lot of lingering questions about the case, and the drama focuses on many of the tangential players—lawyers, family members, and the French film crew that turns up to document everything—offering a glimpse of what life might be like inside of such a whirlwind. Stream The Staircase on HBO Max.
In 2007, 19-year-old American student Amanda Knox was studying in Perugia, Italy, only to find herself arrested and accused of the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher. The prosecution did a remarkable job at smearing Knox's name in the Italian press, such that she was eventually convicted of the crime despite an almost total lack of evidence, and the fact that the actual killer had already been tried and convicted. Grace Van Patten is great in the lead, and the series does a phenomenal job of dramatizing the various missteps and fabrications that lead to a conviction. A bit of fascinating behind-the-scenes with this one: While the family of Meredith Kercher did not participate, Knox herself executive produced alongside Monica Lewinsky, another person who knows what it is to be tried in the media. Stream The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox on Hulu.
As its subject has become something of a social media influencer and a reality star in the years since, the story of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard has become more complex, not less, since this show's 2019 debut. At the time, though, the series earned rave reviews for its exploration of the childhood of Gypsy-Rose (Joey King), who ultimately conspired in the murder of her mother, Dee Dee (Patricia Arquette), after years of apparent psychological abuse. Stream The Act on Hulu.
Marc Cherry (Desperate Housewives) created this dark comedy series with a title that makes the premise entirely clear: it’s the story of women (Ginnifer Goodwin, Lucy Liu, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, and Allison Tolman) with reasons to kill. The first season took place in three time periods (the '60s, the '80s, and the present) with three main characters linked by a single home, each caught in a web of lies and infidelity that pushes them to the brink of murder, or beyond. The stronger second season sticks to 1949 Los Angeles. It’s a gorgeously photographed and deliciously soapy series—not true crime per se, though it does explore the big themes of the Lizzie Borden story: What drives a seemingly contented woman to contemplate murder, and how much can we blame her? Stream Why Women Kill on Paramount+.
Another true crime story that's been dramatized multiple times, The Girl from Plainville doesn't redeem its murderer, but does add nuance to our understanding in the manner of the best true crime dramas. Elle Fanning is Michelle Carter, who undertook an extended campaign to encourage her emotionally fragile boyfriend, Conrad (Colton Ryan), toward a death by suicide, mostly via text messages. Elle Fanning is phenomenal, as is Chloë Sevigny (who, incidentally, played Lizzie Borden back in 2018) as Conrad's grief-stricken mother. Stream The Girl from Plainville on Hulu.
Set in the 1950s, the miniseries dramatizes the story of nightclub performer Ruth Ellis, the last woman to have been executed in the United Kingdom (in the U.S., we're clearly far less chivalrous). Lucy Boynton is phenomenal in the lead role as Ruth, a tough and sometimes callous woman who found herself seeking escape from an abusive relationship with an emotionally manipulative lover. When she shot David Blakely dead, there was really no chance whatsoever that the British press or legal system were going to have any pity on her, despite the best efforts of her attorney, John Bickford (Toby Jones). This series might have impacted her conditional pardon in 2026, a reprieve that came around 70 years too late for Ruth. Stream A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story on Britbox.
Another Ryan Murphy true crime epic (for better and worse, given the creator's penchant for the operatic), this one stars Darren Criss as sociopath and serial killer Andrew Cunanan, whose last victim was legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez). With an emphasis on the sun-soaked sex and party life of Miami Beach in the 1990s, Murphy here refined his signature style: polish, heightened drama, and a focus on the killer that borders on the sympathetic. Stream The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (Season Two) on Hulu.
The other big Margaret Atwood novel adaptation (existing in the shadow of the buzzier Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments), this miniseries is every bit as biting and well-crafted. It’s based on the true story of a poor Irish immigrant found guilty of a double homicide in 1843 under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and following a life of trauma. Years later, a psychiatrist comes to examine her and explores her past and the circumstances that might (just might) have led a disenfranchised and powerless girl to kill. As with the best explorations of Lizzie Borden, the show understands that knowing whether or not she did it isn't as interesting as understanding what might have gotten her to that point. Stream Alias Grace on Netflix.
Ninety percent of companies want to move toward autonomous IT operations over the next two years, with agentic AI, software that plans and carries out multi-step tasks on its own, doing the work. Yet 77 percent say their own organization hesitates to let AI make an operational decision without a human approving it.
Most of those companies mean autonomy with a person at the approval step, and few have the groundwork for even that. Only 41 percent say their IT environment is prepared for autonomous operations, and 19 percent of their IT operations are automated. Businesses are planning around a technology their own environments cannot support.
A minority want IT that manages itself. Most want AI to propose workflows while people oversee key decisions and actions. Technical specialists, the people who deploy and run these systems, favor supervision more than business and IT leaders do, and fewer of them expect autonomous IT to become the company’s operating model.
They are also warier about the groundwork. Leaders rate their organization’s data more highly than the specialists who work with it every day, which suggests the people making the plans see a tidier picture than the people carrying them out.
Nearly all respondents, 96 percent, say visibility across networks, applications, endpoints and cloud matters for AI-driven IT. Only 17 percent have it unified across all of those. An agent diagnosing an outage needs the whole picture, and in most companies the data sits in pieces or in silos.
Tool sprawl makes it worse. Most respondents say consolidating tools would cut operational friction, yet most also say sprawl has increased their need to integrate systems. Security and compliance concerns top the list of obstacles. Leaders weigh them most heavily, while specialists raise fragmented tools more often than leaders do. Skills gaps and resistance to change also make the list, so the technology is only part of the work.
Fifty-one percent say they lack enough oversight of AI agent performance and reliability. Many also say they do not know enough about how employees use AI or what it costs. Specialists are less confident than leaders that their governance of AI works. A company that cannot see how its agents perform has a concrete reason to keep a person at the approval step.
If you run IT operations, that 51 percent is worth testing against your own shop. Can you say today whether your agents are performing reliably and what they cost?
Almost all respondents expect AI to change what frontline IT and service desk teams can do within two years. Some expect less desk activity overall, some expect the desk to take on more complex issues, and some expect staff to shift from reacting to problems to preventing them. Very few expect the desk to stay largely as it is. A third of companies say their IT team is already extremely effective at using AI to catch and fix problems before employees notice.
Download: The IT leader’s guide to AI code sprawl
Last month's Apple event was a big one. The company announced (and subsequently released) the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, Apple Watch Series 12, and Apple Watch Ultra 4. It also announced the iPhone Duo, though the company's first foldable phone still isn't out yet. Despite all these new products, Apple apparently wasn't finished. Next week, the company will host another product announcement, titled "Welcome Home." Here's what we know.
Apple's product announcement hints are usually pretty subtle. This time, it isn't. "Welcome Home" is almost assuredly referencing Apple's long-rumored smart home devices. Sure, the company makes some smart devices, like the HomePod and HomePod mini, but leaks suggest the company has some big updates up its sleeve.
Perhaps no announcement will be bigger than its smart home hub. This device, according to the rumor mill, will be a mix between an iPad and a HomePod, competing with similar devices from companies like Amazon and Google. It may ship with a six-inch display (some reports suggest the screen is a square), but it won't be like an iPad on a stand. Instead, the experience seems more focused, letting you control smart home devices, make and receive FaceTime calls, watch videos, display the news and water data, and check your calendar. Of course, it will likely work with Siri AI, the company's new AI-powered assistant.
Apple may even expect users to buy more than one of these hubs. The idea could be to have multiple hubs throughout your house, which could let you use them like intercoms. (Apple currently offers a similar feature with its HomePods.) If the rumors are to be believed, the smart hub will understand the voice of whoever is talking to it, and tailor the experience to that user personally. If you have guests over, you could switch to a "visitor mode" to avoid revealing sensitive information.
While the smart home hub may steal the show, Apple is planning some updates to existing devices as well. The HomePod mini may come in new colors, and is expected to get both the N1 chip for improvements to wifi and Bluetooth, as well as an upgraded S-series chip for Siri AI. Apple may also update the Apple TV 4K with the A19 or A19 Pro chip, as well as that new N1 chip, and a new Siri remote. Apple may take this opportunity to reveal its new OLED iPad mini, but the company may keep the focus on smart home specifically.
According to Apple's announcement, "Welcome Home" kicks off on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at 9 a.m. ET (6 a.m. PT). That's an early start time, considering the company is based in California, though it seems Apple is hosting the event in New York City this time around. For context, Apple's events usually kick off at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) when the company hosts them in Cupertino. It's not yet clear if there will be a livestream of the event, or if it will be exclusive for invited members of the media.
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Garmin watches are my favorite training partner. The brand has long been one of the biggest names in the world of rugged sports watches and fitness trackers, and the Forerunner line especially is a go-to pick for accurate and reliable GPS tracking for runners.
So, looking at the date on my Garmin Forerunner 970, I can see that Amazon's October Prime Day sale is officially over. But if you missed your chance to upgrade your running watch, you're in luck: Two of the most popular Garmin Forerunners are still on sale, even after Prime Day has technically ended.
The Garmin Forerunner 55 is $161.99, down from $199.99. This is the most basic Garmin running watch you can buy new. Don't be deterred by the word "basic." As my colleague Beth Skwarecki reports, it was good enough for Sabastian Sawe to wear to break the sub-2-hour marathon barrier earlier this year.
The Garmin Forerunner 165 is $199.99, down from $249.99. This is my favorite entry-level running watch. The music version is also on sale; as always, it runs $50 more than the standard.
While it's not a dramatic, the Garmin Forerunner 265 is 5% off, bringing the original price of $449.99 down to $429. Although it isn't the latest and greatest anymore, this is still a fan favorite among Garmin users. It's a step above entry-level options, with dual-band GPS, power meter compatibility, and advanced analytics (like training status).
For more, I'll be keeping my eye on these other deals on Garmin watches that are still live after October Prime Day.
Tanium has relaunched Tanium Security Operations to address AI-assisted attacks in which adversaries use legitimate administrative tools to blend into normal activity and spread across endpoints. The platform is designed to detect this behavior, support response across affected endpoints and help analysts investigate threats.
With AI, attackers no longer need malware that a scanner can catch. They sign in with stolen credentials and run the same administrative tools IT uses every day. To a security tool hunting for known-bad files, that activity looks like a normal workday. Catching that behavior means knowing what normal looks like on every endpoint and acting on all of them the moment something drifts. Tanium already does that job for IT teams. Tanium Security Operations turns that same foundation on the attacker, working alongside the SIEM and EDR tools teams already own.
“AI has changed who the attacker is and how fast they move. The next breach won’t look like malware. It will look like one of your own administrators,” said Harman Kaur, chief technology officer at Tanium. “We have spent years learning what normal looks like on every endpoint our customers run. Now we use that to catch what doesn’t belong and stop it everywhere at once. That is what security operations has to become in the AI era.”
Tanium Security Operations runs on the same platform and real-time data IT teams already use to manage every endpoint. With the relaunch, detection, response, and hunting are no longer separate steps handed from tool to tool. They run as one continuous loop.
Detection that looks for behavior, not just known-bad files. When attackers use the same tools as IT, a list of bad files will not catch them. New Endpoint Drift learns how each endpoint normally behaves and ranks the machines acting out of character, so hunters start where it matters. New Insights Engine replaces Tanium’s process injection detection with an engine built to catch attackers hiding inside trusted processes.
Response sized to the threat. Detection without action is just an alert queue. When an attack spreads across thousands of endpoints in minutes, one quarantine button is too blunt and too slow. Tanium runs a range of responses directly on the endpoint, from stopping a single process or collecting forensic evidence to isolating a host, on one machine or across the whole fleet at once. A new Federated SOC model lets separate security teams share one platform while each sets its own suppressions and automatic reactions, so one team’s rules never land on another team’s endpoints. People set the guardrails, and every automated action stays inside them.
Hunting for every analyst, not just a few experts. Most teams rarely hunt because it takes deep skill and days of work. Tanium Atlas changes that. An analyst asks a question in plain language, gets an answer from every endpoint in seconds, and acts on it in the same place. Hunt strategies written by Tanium threat hunters guide each step. Tanium Atlas also ranks the alert queue and recommends whether to dismiss, escalate, hunt, or contain each one, and new SecOps dashboards and templates give every team a place to start. With Tanium, hunting becomes a routine, repeatable workflow any analyst can run.
“The AI-fueled threat landscape has changed the dynamics of security operations,” said Dave Gruber, chief analyst at Omdia. “Speed is more important than ever before, as attack execution speeds out pace current security operations mechanisms and processes. Agentic capabilities can speed detection and response, but without access to near real-time telemetry and response, agentic SOC capabilities still lag attacker activities. Tanium’s approach of grounding detection and hunting in real-time endpoint state addresses one of the most persistent gaps in enterprise SOC architectures.”
For organizations that want experts on their side, Tanium HuntIQ pairs Tanium threat hunters with the same platform and AI. HuntIQ hunters work directly in customer environments to find threats, strengthen detections, and support incident response, and can build a hunt before a patch or CVE exists, as they did for the FalconFlank zero-day. What they learn feeds back into the platform, so every hunt that follows starts smarter.
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People are often unprepared for the amount of work a house requires. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new build or a creaking classic; unless they’ve got the cash to just hire out for every little project, new homeowners are going to need tools. That makes a basic tool set the perfect housewarming gift, and this one from Black+Decker is my go-to when a friend buys their first home. It has everything a DIY newbie needs, and at this price you can buy a couple to have on hand for future gifting needs.
A basic tool kit like this is a great idea for folks who don’t have a lot of experience doing small repairs and DIY jobs around the house because it has all the basics (including a durable bag to carry it all around in):
A basic 12oz hammer
An adjustable wrench
Needle-nose and slip-joint pliers
A ratcheting screwdriver with a full set of bits
One Phillips and one flathead screwdriver
A utility knife
A tape measure
Those are the basic hand tools anyone looking to do small jobs around the house needs. They’re basic, but decent quality, so they’ll last a long time. They can also be upgraded one piece at a time as people gain knowledge and skills.
What really sets this kit apart from others is that it’s one of the only decent-quality beginner tool sets that includes a power drill (as well as a battery and charger). Sure, Black+Decker is happy to hook newbies into their battery ecosystem, but a power drill is a game-changer when it comes to DIY stuff around the house. The kit includes all the basic drilling, spade, and hole saw bits you might need for basic work (as well as the screwdriver bits listed above), and includes a magnetic bit holder to prevent bit loss.
If you or your gift recipient develop your DIY skills, you’ll definitely wind up replacing most of this kit with better, more capable tools. But for a complete newcomer who has just completed the stress and complexity of buying their first property, this kit gets them set up to tackle basic maintenance right off the bat—and at 20% off, it's a great value.
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There's a reason the MacBook Pro is so expensive. Apple saves its most premium features for this product line—mini-LED displays, built-in fans, HDMI and SD ports, and, depending on the model, the most powerful chips. None of these comes cheap, and, after recent RAM-related price hikes, the MacBook Pro now starts at a steep $1,999. That's not the case during October Prime Day, however: Right now, you can take a decent chunk off many MacBook Pro models, and even more if you opt for one of Apple's M5 Pro or M5 Pro Max devices.
Let's start with the standard M5 MacBook Pro. This uses a similar M5 chip to the one found in the MacBook Air, though the Pro does come with 10 GPU cores (that costs extra on the Air). Other than that, these are the same processors, running the same 16GB of RAM—though the M5 MacBook Pro comes with 1TB of storage standard. You also get most of the hardware perks of the other MacBook Pro devices, without venturing into $2,499 and up territory, including three USB-C ports, the HDMI and SD card ports, a 14.2-inch mini-LED display, and a 12MP FaceTime camera. Typically, that'd cost you $1,999. But on Amazon, you can pick this machine up today for $1,869.
This is a great price for this MacBook, but it's not the only savings you'll find on MacBook Pros this October Prime Day. If you upgrade to the M5 Pro MacBook Pro, you can save $155 off its retail price, bringing the machine down to $2,345 from $2,499. With this laptop, you get all the perks of the M5 MacBook Pro, but with the M5 Pro chip, which is much more powerful. This chip comes with a 15-core CPU and 16-core GPU, along with 24GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. It also supports Wi-Fi 7, while the M5 MacBook Pro only supports Wi-Fi 6E.
Amazon also has the M5 Pro MacBook Pro with an 18-core CPU and 20-core GPU $150 off. But the biggest discounts are on Apple's most expensive 14-inch MacBook Pros. If you're in the market for a souped-up M5 Pro model, or one of Apple's M5 Max configurations, Amazon has huge discounts:
14-inch M5 Pro with 48GB of RAM and 1TB SSD: $3,299.99 at Amazon (was $3,599)
14-inch M5 Max with 36GB of RAM and 2TB SSD: $3,899 at Amazon (was $4,399)
14-inch M5 Max with 48GB of RAM and 2TB SSD: $4,499 at Amazon (was $4,999)
Similarly, Amazon has big discounts on the 16-inch version of these MacBook Pros. The best option for most people in this category is going to be the base model 16-inch, which comes with the M5 Pro with an 18-core CPU and 20-core GPU, as well as 24GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.
But as with the 14-inch MacBook Pros, the biggest deals are on the most expensive 16-inch Pros. Here's how much you can save:
16-inch M5 Pro with 48GB of RAM and 1TB SSD: $3,299.99 at Amazon (was $3,599)
16-inch M5 Max with 36GB of RAM and 2TB SSD: $3,899 at Amazon (was $4,399)
16-inch M5 Max with 48GB of RAM and 2TB SSD: $4,499 at Amazon (was $4,999)
Amazon Prime Day is an annual event held in June or July. Amazon's October Prime Day event, known as Prime Big Deal Days, is a two-day sale that starts Oct. 6 and ends on Oct. 7.
Since Prime Big Deal Days happens in the fall, you're likely to see more deals on gaming and indoor gym equipment. Amazon has already announced some of the 35 categories that will be on sale, including beauty, tech, kitchen, fashion, and home. Some brands Amazon has already mentioned are: Shark, Princess Polly, Soundcore by Anker, UGG, Nest New York, Sony, Tarte, Adidas, and Barefoot Dreams.
Prime Day happens every summer. Prime Big Deal Days (or October Prime Day) happens every October. Amazon's Big Spring Sale happens every spring.
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A new Google wearable may be on the way, and leaked pictures suggest it may be a fitness band with a screen, a successor to the Fitbit Charge 6. Android Headlines reports that the new device will be called the Fitbit Edge.
Earlier this year, Google ran ads on Reddit that seemed to show a new fitness band alongside Pixel watches and phones. In a post titled “Um so what the hell is that??,” redditors debated whether the unfamiliar wearable was an accidental leak of a yet-unreleased device, or just an AI hallucination. After all, if you asked an AI to create a hybrid of a Fitbit and a Pixel Watch, it would look more or less like what was in the picture.
The leaked photos appearing at Android Headlines look like the device from the ad. It has an oval screen, only about as wide as the wristband and taller than it is wide. The rounded edges and the style of watch band match aesthetically with Pixel Watches, while the overall form factor—a tall screen set into a thin wristband—fits the design of the old Fitbit Charge 6.
According to spec sheets that were reportedly also included in the leak, the device will have GPS, an altimeter, and a seven-day battery life. That's the same battery life as the Charge 6, which had GPS but no altimeter. The new device is said to work with both iOS and Android, as the Fitbit Air does, rather than being Android-only like the Pixel Watch. The rumors do not include a price, a release date, or a full list of features.
If it weren’t for the earlier ad—the one that many thought was a hallucination—I probably wouldn’t have expected Google to release a device like this at all. Its last fitness tracker with a screen was the Fitbit Charge 6 in 2023. The Fitbit Air makes sense since smart bands are having a moment, and the Fitbit Air is a really well-executed one. But I wasn’t sure if Google was interested in continuing the Fitbit line beyond that one device.
It’s a good idea, I think. Small trackers are easy to wear (and forget you’re wearing), but sometimes you just want to be able to see the time on your wrist. If Google is smart, they’ll allow you to swap seamlessly between the new device and the screenless Fitbit Air. (Currently, you can pair one Pixel Watch and one Fitbit to your phone, but you can’t pair two different models of Fitbit.)
I’m excited to see what Google has in mind for the new device, assuming the rumors are true about its size, shape, and capabilities. I was disappointed by all the things the Charge 6 couldn’t do, and I hope the new Fitbit doesn’t repeat those mistakes. For example, the Charge 6 can control the music that’s playing on your phone, but only if you pay for a YouTube Music subscription. Most fitness watches—including Garmin, Coros, and Suunto watches I’ve tried—will simply give you controls for whatever is playing on your phone, no matter what app it comes from.
If it’s true that the new device also has its own GPS and altimeter, that’s also exciting—but I’m skeptical that Google will be able to stuff in high-quality versions of those components in the space available. The Charge 6, I found, had trouble getting a good GPS reading and a good heart rate reading at the same time. But the Fitbit Air is surprisingly small and capable for its size, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the new device might be able to do.
