8. We picked our favorite World Cup tech
Yes, the World Cup has officially kicked off, but it isn’t too late to fine-tune your setup. Far from it — with over a month of soccer to go, we’ve rounded up everything you need for a successful tournament at home.
From our dream watch party setup to soundbar upgrades and the best World Cup tech deals, you won’t be short of ways to upgrade your viewing experience. And once that’s all sorted, you can dive into our ultimate World Cup watching guide for the lowdown on how to catch every match, from anywhere in the world.
7. Ocarina of Time was reborn
Closing out gaming’s week-long celebration that is Summer Game Fest and the showcases surrounding it, Nintendo’s Direct showcased an exciting mix of trailers, which included a tease for a The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake on the Nintendo Switch 2.
Little has been revealed so far beyond child Link’s design, and hints at full voice acting as the Great Deku Tree is heard narrating the intro like he does at the beginning of the N64 game.
Perhaps best of all, the trailer ended with a release year: 2026. So we won’t be waiting too long to get this Zelda game in our hands and find out if this is the series’ Resident Evil 2 Remake moment, as many hope it will be.
6. Trump Phone not ‘made in America’
To probably no one’s surprise — after serious delays, changing promises, and accidentally doxxing its buyers — the Trump Mobile T1 phone has been taken apart by iFixit, and it turns out the “American-proud design” is just a gold-skinned HTC U24 Pro, aka a Taiwanese phone launched in 2024.
In fairness, it does boast a couple of tweaks. The design has been adapted with a new camera bump shape, and the battery is a little larger at 5,000mAh battery — up from 4,600mAh — though it only offers 30W charging rather than the HTC original’s 60W.
iFixit notes that markings on the phone say it’s “assembled in the USA”, which is notably different from being “made in America,” which comes with some very specific FCC requirements that the Trump Mobile phone ironically doesn’t seem to meet.
The teardown company puts it best: “against all expectations, the T1 is actually well priced when compared to the equivalently specced U24 Pro, and the only things you give up are the 60W fast charging and your dignity.”
Read the full story: Trump Phone unmasked as a ‘gold-painted HTC U24 Pro’
5. Valve abandoned physical gift cards
It’s bad news for PC gamers on Steam this week, as Valve announced it will no longer be restocking physical Steam gift cards. Why? Because scammers are taking advantage of consumers.
This isn’t exactly a new occurrence; Steam scams have been around for years. However, Valve clarifies it’s effectively been forced to end restocks of physical gift cards, as “scammers have adapted”, even after it has actively worked with retailers and law enforcement to foil scams.
Physical gift cards are an excellent gift option for the less gamer-savvy to give their PC gamer loved ones, and can be useful for parents to top up their child’s Steam account with funds without pairing a credit card to it. However, with them gone, digital Steam gift cards will be the only option, as soon as stock runs out across multiple retailers — and one can only hope that scammers don’t end up forcing Valve to restructure digital gift cards as well.
Read the full story: Valve is officially done with Steam physical gift cards
4. Philips launched a virtual skylight
Philips unveiled a new ceiling light dubbed the ‘Philips Skylight’, designed to mimic the effect of natural daylight for indoor use, blending advanced LED and Philips’ NatureConnect technologies. Starting at 499.99 euros (about $580 / £430), the ceiling light comes in four different models and will be available later this month in most regions. It’s coming to the US in September.
Each variant of the Philips Skylight comes with a slim ceiling profile for mounting, a remote control, five preset lighting scenes, and Philips’ Day Rhythm tool, which automatically adjusts color temperature and brightness throughout the day. But despite its slew of features, it’s not Philips Hue.
This means that, unfortunately, it doesn’t connect to Wi-Fi or work with Matter over Thread, so you can’t integrate it into your existing smart home setup, and you’ll have to use the included remote to control it manually.
3. Apple revealed some major software surprises
Siri AI (see no.1 below) was the undoubted star of Apple’s WWDC event this week, but the software showcase revealed hundreds of other upgrades for iPhones, Macs, Apple Watches and more. And not all of them went down well.
You can read our pick of the best features coming to iPhones in iOS 27, or the macOS 27 highlights below (in entry no.2). But there were some notable surprises too, including the next version of watchOS dropping support for some recent models and Apple controverisally embracing generative AI in Photos.
Apple also went very hard on boosting parental controls at the event — leaving us with a sense that it had one eye on child safety, and another on increasingly demanding government regulators.
2. macOS 27 named Golden Gate
Tim Cook‘s final WWDC as Apple CEO gave us a glimpse of the future of its software, including the upcoming macOS 27 build — called Golden Gate. Unlike previous years, however, it’s not the most exciting.
There are Liquid Glass and other design tweaks that’ll make your Mac feel more usable, plus there’s a new and improved search to help you locate just about anything on your machine. There are also some performance enhancements, with apps said to feel more responsive, and of course, there’s the debut of Siri AI, more on that below.
While not the flashiest update, it’s a solid upgrade from the looks of things, though if you aren’t a fan of AI, it might feel like a downgrade.
1. Siri’s AI upgrade landed
It was a long time coming with at least one false start, but the new Siri that’s already in some people’s hands, thanks to the iOS27 Dev Beta, which arrived with the WWDC Keynote, is the Siri Apple promised us in 2024 and more.
Sure, Apple is basically playing catch-up with OpenAI and Google, but in what may be looked back on later as one of the canniest moves in this AI race, Apple has adopted Google Gemini’s best models and crafted something new. Siri AI and the Apple Intelligence updates feel at once familiar and yet like a totally Apple experience. Yes, it even makes photo-realistic fake images.
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hamish.hector@futurenet.com (Hamish Hector)
