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 Pebble just announced the Index 01, a smart ring for recording thoughts. It's a little ring with a built-in microphone and that's about it. The Index 01 is almost anti-tech in its simplicity. There's no needless AI component shoehorned in, aside from speech-to-text. It's a ring with a microphone that you whisper ideas into and I want one.
Here's how it works. You get an idea while walking down the street, so you quietly whisper it into the ring. The ring sends the idea to a notes app or saves it for later review. Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky calls this an "external memory" for the brain, but I call it a nice way to avoid having to dig the phone out of a pocket or bag just to utter something like "pizza, but for cats."
The ring doesn't record unless a button is pushed, so it won't be listening in on private conversations, and it doesn't require a paid subscription of any kind. It's on the smaller side, about the size of a wedding band, and is water-resistant.
The battery also lasts for "years" and never needs to be charged. The ring is designed to be worn at all times, so users develop the muscle memory of holding down the little button when they have something to share. See what I mean? I want one, and I've quite literally never worn a ring in my life.
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 Apple has announced the availability of Tap to Pay on iPhone in Hong Kong, allowing independent sellers, small merchants, and large retailers in the region to use ?iPhones? as a payment terminal.
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Google and Apple have long existed as polar opposites, each ruling over their tech kingdoms with little interest in cooperation. But the latest build of Android's Canary operating system hints at an unusual instance of collaboration between the brands, with a new feature that seems aimed at making data transfer simpler between Android and iOS mobile device during the setup phase. It is expected to also be available in a future developer beta of iOS 26.
A representative for Google confirmed that the report from 9to5Google on this development is accurate, but didn't provide any additional details on how the transfer will work. Each brand already has their own dedicated Switch to Android and Switch to iOS apps for making the swap between ecosystems, but making the transition easier at the operating system level and adding support for moving more types of data certainly sounds promising. That said, features can go through a fair bit of iteration between the dev betas and the final launch, and Android Canary is a very early stage of development, so we'll be curious to see what actually arrives on our smartphones.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/google-and-apple-partner-on-better-android-iphone-switching-204738960.html?src=rss
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 Apple Wallet car key support is coming to Rivian's second-generation R1S and R1T electric vehicles with a 2025.46 software update later this month, according to the company's software chief Wassym Bensaid. He did not provide a specific date.
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Roskomnadzor, Russia's federal agency for monitoring and censoring mass media, has blocked access to Snapchat and FaceTime in the country, Bloomberg reports, citing Russian news service Interfax. The bans were reportedly put in place because the platforms were used "to organize and carry out terrorist acts," and commit fraud.
It's not clear if either service is still accessible by using a VPN, but banning Snapchat and FaceTime fits with Russia's crackdown on communication and social platforms that started after the country's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Facebook and X were blocked in March of that year, and Instagram was added to the ban list not long after. In 2024, the encrypted messaging app Signal was also banned, and more recently in July 2025, Russia threatened to block access to WhatsApp.
Engadget has contacted both Apple and Snap to comment on the Russian bans. We'll update this article if we hear back.
Banning or restricting these platforms is a way to exert control over where and h
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