The pace of tech news rarely stops, which is why we’ve put together this ICYMI recap – in case you missed it – every weekend, so you can familiarize yourself with all the big headlines from the past week, even if you didn’t hear the stories the first time.
This week we’ve seen everything from household robots to flagship phones, with outages from Microsoft, another Stranger Things Season 5 trailer, Samsung’s long-awaited three-parter, and new Fitbits on the way too. This has been busy, in a good way.
7. We have the final trailer for Stranger Things season 5
We all return to Hawkins, Indiana for one last time: Stranger Things Season 5 premieres on Wednesday, November 26, with episodes then extending to the finale on New Year’s Eve, and now we have the final trailer for the fifth and final season.
There’s a lot going on here, and almost every major character in the Stranger Things the universe – good and bad – gets screen time. The wait has been long for this fifth season, but it should be enough to keep Stranger Things fans are going there for the next four weeks.
6. Microsoft Gave Us Another Huge Online Outage
Only recently an Amazon AWS outage left a string of websites, applications and services unresponsive, and this week Microsoft’s Azure platform joined in with its own critical crash. Millions of users were affected before the issues were finally resolved.
Everything that relies on Microsoft’s digital infrastructure was affected, including Minecraft and the Xbox platform, as well as Microsoft 365 apps. Fortunately, Microsoft moved quickly to patch Azure again, but this type of outage shouldn’t happen at all.
5. Samsung rolled out ads on its smart refrigerators
Ads aren’t exactly appealing at the best of times, but one place you definitely don’t want them is on your refrigerator, beaming sponsored content into your kitchen. So it’s strange that Samsung has decided to start showing ads on the screens of its Family Hub smart refrigerators.
That’s $2,000 (or around £1,500 / AU$3,000) for the fridge itself, and then you have to put up with “curated adverts” while you try to make a meal or just have a drink. Naturally, this move was met with a rather frosty response from users, although you can at least disable them.
4. Google announced that new Fitbits would arrive in 2026
Google acquired Fitbit in 2021 and since then seems to be prioritizing the Pixel Watch over any kind of Fitbit gadget. The last Fitbit-branded device to launch was the Fitbit Charge 6, which debuted in 2023 – and we had almost given up hope of new Fitbits.
So it’s encouraging that a Google executive has publicly stated that we can expect new Fitbit devices sometime in 2026. It’s unclear which gadgets might get an update, but the compact and lightweight fitness trackers could do with an upgrade now.
3. The Samsung tri-fold made its public debut
We are moving very slowly towards an official launch of the Samsung tri-fold that we have been waiting for all year. Remember, this next-generation foldable was first revealed by Samsung back in January, and we still don’t know when it will launch or how much it will cost.
What we have is the first public showing of the foldable, which made an appearance at the K-Tech Showcase in South Korea. It’s been placed behind a glass case so no one can touch it, but we hope the Samsung phone isn’t too far from going on sale.
2. OnePlus revealed everything about the OnePlus 15
One of the many TechRadar exclusives on the site this week included key information about the new OnePlus 15 flagship phone: when it launches globally, what new camera features it brings, and the different colors you’ll be able to buy it in.
All these details came to light during our conversation with OnePlus Europe Marketing Director Celina Shi. We may be nearing the end of the year, but the OnePlus 15 is a contender for one of the best phones of 2025 – find out everything you need to know about the handset.
1. The first humanoid robot for household chores has arrived
Isn’t it that by 2025 we should have robots to do all our regular and tedious household chores? Well, maybe 2026 will be the year: 1X has now opened pre-orders for the Neo Home Robot, which can do tasks like doing laundry and loading the dishwasher.
It’s not cheap, but you might consider it a price worth paying if it means you have more free time. However, some skills remain beyond the robot’s reach: you need to allow a remote operator to control it, and it can’t yet cook for you or mow the lawn. We may have to wait until 2027 for that.
Follow TechRadar on Google News And add us as your favorite source to get our news, reviews and expert opinions in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can too follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp Also.
