Something strange happened to a few of us on staff when the Leica Q was released in 2015: we stopped reaching for smartphones at the first sign of a photogenic moment. The compact Leica Q became our default camera for everything from landscapes and architectural shots to macro details on watches and in cocktails. It enabled better image-capture because it was simply intuitive. It could …
At this year’s CES, countless products on display promoted their assisted capabilities. Last year’s show delivered us the first glimpses of virtual assistants embedded into everyday devices, but 2019 previewed the phenomenon’s mainstreaming—Google Assistant in a mirror, Amazon’s Alexa taking queries from inside your toilet and more. There is valid skepticism about the possibility of all of your devices listening in on you. Letting the Google or …
Designer Klemens Schillinger has created a collection of objects that are essentially substitute phones, with the goal to combat smartphone addiction. Around the same size as most phones, the objects contain stone beads in ways that—when interacted with—imitate the motions we have grown so accustomed to: scrolling, swiping and more. Schillinger says, “More and more often one feels the urge to check their phone, even …
