Oh no, here come the AI Tamagotchis

Inbox is written by Daniel Bader. Read previous issues here, and then catch up with Ben Schoon’s excellent Weekender column published every Sunday.

⭐️ Starred

Meta may no longer be a metaverse company, but it’s trying its damndest to be a hardware company. At last night’s Meta Connect event, the company unveiled a bunch of new AI wearables, including the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta camera glasses, the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, a wider rollout of its Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, and a next-gen VR product called, appropriately, Meta VR Glasses, coming in the spring of 2027.

All of these are interesting in their own way, particularly the VR Glasses, which are basically Galaxy XR/Vision Pro competitors in a much smaller form factor and considerably lower cost ($1,299). Meta’s found considerable traction with its bevy of wearables despite growing pushback from privacy advocates and regular people who don’t want to be filmed with “perv glasses.” The audio-only product, which boasts Dolby Atmos support, is a direct response to that, but the company is still iterating on the baseline camera hardware while promising software updates will prevent misuse.

But the really interesting announcement came in the form of a Tamagotchi-like doohickey called the Muse Charm that runs Meta’s popular new Muse AI agent, which has seen massive growth as an app on Android, iOS, and Mac. The hardware has a 2-inch OLED touch display, a camera and microphones, a 5G modem, and runs a proprietary OS that Meta says will connect to retailers like Walmart and Best Buy.

AI agents are no longer novel — I’ve been testing them all summer in the form of apps like Poke, Tolan, Instinct, Town, and others — but Muse has taken off because it’s free, fast, and genuinely useful. Meta is also building it into everything it owns, from Instagram to WhatsApp, and is soon adding the ability to chat with an agent through video.

At the beginning of 2024, we had a few months of hand-wringing over AI gadgets like the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin, but they failed because the models were not even close to being ready for the tasks promised in the marketing. Now, AI agents are more than capable of chasing down a refund, booking a concert, or buying an anniversary gift, and Meta’s preemptive jump into the space will only heighten expectations for OpenAI’s rumored hardware product that’s expected to debut in 2027.

I regret to inform you, though: I think the Museagotchi looks pretty damn cute.

• As Android XR nears, smart glasses are only getting more popular despite Meta backlash.

✉️ Inbox

• Adobe Premiere for Android launches for free with layered video editing, YouTube templates. I feel like we’ve been waiting years for Premiere on Android, and it’s finally here. And free, which is pretty great.
• Samsung has delayed its Android 17 update. By a week. We’ll be fine.
• Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. Qualcomm is going to five blades this year with its new dual flagship chip strategy. The Elite Gen 6 is the standard one, with the Extreme boasting “advanced agentic AI” capabilities.
• Oppo Find X10 series goes official with triple 200MP cameras, 8,000 mAh battery. I can’t even with this phone. Monster specs and a ridiculous camera array, sure. But a battery that size? I need it right now.
• Xiaomi 18 Pro series goes official with ‘privacy screen,’ 8,500 mAh battery, and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. Oh, I guess 8,000 mAh wasn’t big enough.
• Android Auto rolls out game support, no longer in beta. I know that this exists just to compete with Tesla, but I genuinely don’t know why this is legal.
• Motorola Signature 27 is a proper flagship with Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. This phone will probably cost $2,000 but holy smokes does it look worth it.
  • Motorola Signature 27 officially gets a North American launch in the ‘coming months’
• Claude Opus 5.5 and OpenAI GPT-6 Sol & Luna both launch today with lower costs. I’ve been testing both of these models and if this is what “pacing the frontier” looks like, we’re all doomed (in a good way).
• Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra leak shows another side, confirming minimal changes. A $1000+ Android tablet? In this economy?
• Nest Doorbell has been triggering Gemini’s American accent, no matter what language you speak. This is genuinely the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. Only Google could make this happen.
• YouTube announces Custom Feeds, GIF comments, and ‘Your podcast lineup’. YouTube’s making some interesting announcements in the face of increasing competition from Netflix in the “clips” space.
  • YouTube Music adding corner access to ‘Ask Music’ with Gemini
• Google Beam 3D meeting booths coming to co-working spaces. Remember the sci-fi-esque video conferencing booths that Google debuted a few years ago under the Starline name? Well, they’re still a kajillion dollars, but they seem popular enough to be expanding to co-working spaces in Atlanta, Chicago, New York City, and Palo Alto.
• Google Maps update shows traffic lights and stop signs at your next turn on Android Auto, more
• Microsoft launches 12-inch Surface Pro with Snapdragon X2 Plus & 5G, 13-inch Surface Laptop too

➡️ FWD:

I’m going to do a bit of shameless self-promotion today and share a few cool things that the 9to5 video team has been working on.

Our Googlebook hands-on video is close to 500k views, and for good reason: Jordan absolutely crushes it with his deep dive into the highs, lows, and oddities of Google’s latest hardware launch.

Damien does a spectacular job detailing life with Google’s $899 Pixel 11, noting that “there is a good phone underneath the price hikes,” but that $100 bump really overshadows the battery and camera improvements.

Finally, I was back on The Sideload with my buddy, Will Sattelberg, where we had the privilege of talking to Kevin Michaluk and Jeff Gadway of Clicks, which is about to release its long-awaited Communicator smartphone this December. It was a really fun conversation that gets a bit philosophical about why we use technology and what it really means to disconnect in today’s world.

And if you missed my Cc: questions with Kevin from Tuesday’s Inbox edition, you can catch up with them here.

🗑️ Trash

Disney+ is raising its prices for the fourth time in four years. The popular Disney+ Premium plan with no ads now runs $21.49, a 13% bump over yesterday’s price.

Just this year, Netflix, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube Premium, and Paramount Plus got more expensive, and it seems that every streamer is making their ad-free tier as unenticing as possible to lure people back to ads.

I’m pretty close to canceling Netflix — my kids watch a fair amount of its fare — but I happily canceled Disney+ the last time prices went up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a few thousand subscribers did the same just now.

With FAST services like Pluto TV, Tubi, The Roku Channel, Freevee, and many more offering a decent assortment of free content in exchange for a network television-level of ad density, it really does seem like all roads do eventually lead to cable.

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Thanks for reading, and have a great day. Talk to you on Tuesday.

-Daniel