Desk
TVs, home appliances and the smart home: refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, purifiers, robot vacuums, the sets on the wall and the platforms that connect them. Launches, prices in the US and India, and what changed.
Stories on this desk are written by Hitechreports’s automated newsroom from the sources credited on each piece. Bylines are desk signatures, not individual journalists.
Signatures used by this desk: Living Room, Appliance Watch, Home Screen
Samsung’s new Galaxy S27 Pro sits between Plus and Ultra — 6.5-inch screen, 200MP main cam, Privacy Display, $999 in US, Rs 84,999 in India. Launches 18 January.
Google Home users report degraded reliability after Gemini rollout: lights toggle unpredictably, routines fail silently, and latency spiked. Some are migrating to Home Assistant for deterministic control—no cloud, no LLM, no guesswork.
Google Wallet now supports Aliro digital home keys — Android can finally unlock compatible smart locks. The feature launched globally in the Public Preview of the Google Home app on November 13, 2026, and will roll out to all users over the coming weeks.
The iPhone 17e is now priced at $699 in the US — up $100 from its original launch price — and starts at Rs 64,999 in India, according to Apple’s official store listings confirmed by Tom’s Guide.
Gemini for Home update lands November 11, 2026 — visual answers, faster timers, smart home controls now live in early access.
Roku has confirmed it is exiting the smart home hardware business after four years, winding down sales of all devices including cameras, bulbs, plugs, and doorbells. Support for existing products continues, but no new models will launch. The move was confirmed to Lowpass newsletter and predates Fox’s acquisition of Roku.
Google has pushed a major Google Home app update that fixes long-standing camera bugs for legacy Nest hardware—and quietly upgraded Gemini’s smart home capabilities in the process.
Apple Watch Ultra 4 is now shipping globally at $799 in the US and ₹89,900 in India. It arrives alongside Google’s new Fitbit Edge, a $180 fitness tracker launched this week.
iPhone 18 Pro Max ($1,299), Galaxy S26 Ultra ($1,399), and Pixel 11 Pro XL ($1,199) are now shipping globally. Here’s what each actually delivers — and who each one is really for.
Motorola Signature 27 launches at $1,599 in the US and ₹1,34,999 in India on November 19. It’s DxOMark’s second-ranked smartphone camera, features the first EVS action sensor in a production phone, and is Motorola’s first GrapheneOS-supported device.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max launches globally November 12 at $1,299 / ₹1,49,900. It’s eSIM-only, adds mmWave 5G via Apple’s C2 modem, includes a repositioned vapor chamber for sustained performance, and introduces five manual camera controls — plus a smaller Dynamic Island supporting three Live Activities at once.
The iPhone 18e is tipped to launch in April 2027 with a 6.12-inch 60Hz LTPS OLED display, the new A20 chip built on 2nm, and a 24-megapixel front camera.
Apple has confirmed nothing—but India Today Tech reports the iPhone 18 will launch in India between February and April 2027, most likely in March.
The iPhone Duo is not shipping in India — not really. Orders placed now are scheduled for delivery in late January 2027.
Netflix added Kidnapped in Her Own Home: The Martha Carelli Story on November 2. HBO Max added Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Hulu added Black Bag — all on the same day, all available to stream immediately.
iPhone 18 Pro Max lasts 12h 6m in YouTube playback test; Galaxy S26 Ultra lasts 9h 36m. Same test. Same conditions. 567 mAh difference explains most of it.
Apple HomeView will add indoor security camera functionality via HomeKit Secure Video — confirmed by strings found in its settings app bundles and the Home app.
Hydroid runs Android games natively on jailbroken PS5s. EglantinePS5 is an experimental Switch 2 emulator for the same console. Both require PS5 firmware v13.60 or earlier — and no online access.
HomeView’s camera may soon do more than FaceTime. Code in software version 27.2 points to security camera features — but Apple hasn’t confirmed a thing.
Qwen 3.5 9B ran a UK home’s heating for four days — and lost to Nest and Ecobee on adaptability, not ambition.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is the closest Android counterpart to the iPhone 18 Pro Max — and it’s available now in the US and India, priced from $1,299 and Rs 1,39,999 respectively.
Ring doorbells deliver full-color night vision and superior HDR in sunlight, but lack 24/7 recording. Google Nest offers black-and-white infrared night video but supports continuous timeline recording. Both require subscriptions for cloud storage, with Ring Solo at $4.99/month and Nest Advanced at $20/month.
Google Home app now supports phone-based presence sensing, multi-step automations, and Google Clock–triggered routines — all without a Nest thermostat or security system.
Home Assistant 2026.11 ships with built-in MCP server support for Claude and ChatGPT. Setup takes one click. Connection requires a public URL. Control stays scoped, safe, and human-approved.
iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299. iPhone Duo starts at $1,999. Both are shipping now — but only the Pro Max is reliably in stock in the US and India. The Duo’s wait times stretch into early 2027, per Tom’s Guide.
The 2018 Echo Dot 3 is now officially hackable via Claude-assisted reverse engineering — turning it into a privacy-first Home Assistant satellite with local wake-word detection and zero cloud telemetry.
Google's newest Google Home and Gemini for Home update fixes alarm volume bugs, smooths streaming on Nest speakers, patches Chromecast security and repairs Wi-Fi reconnection issues on older Nest cameras and the Nest Hello doorbell.
Google's latest Google Home update fixes bugs across Nest cameras, speakers, Wi-Fi routers and Chromecast devices, addressing silent alarms, disappearing speaker groups and connectivity issues alongside smaller Gemini improvements.
Google is rolling out a major Google Home app update for Android and iOS that fixes Gemini voice command errors, Nest camera lag, Matter device icons and speaker audio, alongside new firmware for connected hardware.
Wired's review of Samsung's new flagship S95H OLED TV finds sharper AI-assisted picture quality and a reworked metal bezel, but says rival RGB and matte-panel sets have ended OLED's automatic claim to best-in-class performance.