Latest Technology News Today: 12 November 2026

Samsung has opened pre-orders for its Intelligent Eyewear, with 30 designs made with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster and prices starting at $395. The glasses run Google's Android XR platform with Gemini, use a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip, and Samsung says the battery will last up to 9 hours. They launch December 10 in South Korea and the United States. Google says visual data is encrypted, never used for ads and not saved in history.

Apple has launched HomeView, its first smart display, at $299, with a 7-inch screen and Siri AI that can use personal context from an iPhone or iPad. Reviewers say it is a strong smart home hub and speaker, but its usefulness depends on Apple's core apps and an iPhone or iPad companion. Some found authentication and privacy friction when personal texts, calendar and reminders appear on a shared screen.

IBM has unveiled Nighthawk r3, a 520-qubit quantum processor planned for 2027 that can execute 10,000 quantum operations. The company says it will link two r3 units into a single 1,040-qubit system, a step toward its Starling fault-tolerant quantum computer targeted for 2029. IBM's current Nighthawk r2 has 120 qubits and handles 7,500 operations.

Apple's M6 iMac keeps the thin, colorful all in one design largely unchanged while updating the chip. The base $1,499 model has two Thunderbolt ports, a lesser M6 with 10 CPU and 10 GPU cores, up to 24GB of RAM, and no Touch ID unless buyers add the $80 number pad keyboard. The $1,699 version is better for workstation use, and the iMac remains a good choice for a clean desk despite its price.

Nintendo will stop allowing Google and Apple sign-ins for existing and new accounts starting January 26, 2027, and is asking users to set up a password or passkey before then. The company is also ending the My Nintendo Platinum Points mission that rewards linking a Google account. Nintendo has not said why it is removing the options, and says the exact end time depends on the progress of system change work.

Ring has confirmed its Drone Cam will rely entirely on an AI Pilot system to follow pre-programmed routes and navigate obstacles, with no manual control option when it launches in January. The confirmation follows a CBS Mornings demonstration in which an early version crashed twice while being manually piloted. Ring said one crash involved a collision avoidance malfunction and the other occurred after the drone lost internet connectivity.

Oppo Belgium has listed the A7 Pro in Europe at 499 euros for the 256GB model, with a 70 euro discount making the effective price 429 euros. The phone is available in Shine Titanium and Surfing Blue with 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The European version has a 50MP ultrawide selfie camera and a 7,400mAh battery with 80W charging, while the Chinese version has an 8MP selfie camera and an 8,000mAh battery with 45W charging.

More than 1,600 Rockstar Games employees in the UK begin voting on Thursday on whether to recognize the Rockstar Game Workers Union, part of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain. The ballot runs until November 26, a week before Grand Theft Auto VI is due to launch on November 19. If successful, it would become the largest recognized union in the UK games industry, giving workers a collective voice.

NHS England has removed a website claim that 137 hospital trusts are benefiting from Palantir's AI health data system after the Guardian found 29 were not using all or most of it. The original list described bodies as live with and realizing benefits from the federated data platform. The change comes as ministers consider extending Palantir's £330m contract to 2029 and the Office for Statistics Regulation examines the claims.

Google has introduced TPU 8tx and TPU 8i Max, extending its eighth-generation TPU family. The 8tx uses the same silicon as the 8t for confidential, hardware-isolated inference aimed at regulated enterprises and governments, while the 8i Max combines two 8i chips for long-context agentic work. Google has not yet shared prices or ship dates, and the 8i Max is estimated at about 20.2 FP4 PFLOPS, 768 MB SRAM and about 17.2 TB/s HBM bandwidth.

WhatsApp is making view once text messages available to beta users on Android, extending a feature already used for photos, videos and voice messages. A view once text disappears after the recipient reads it, cannot be copied, forwarded or saved, and blocks screenshots and screen recordings while it is open. In the current beta, view once texts cannot be scheduled. The feature is useful for sharing sensitive information.

vivo has set a November 26, 12 PM local time India launch for the X500, X500 Pro and X500 Pro Max, along with the Watch GT2. The watch was sold in China last October, but vivo is advertising a 25-day battery in India, compared with up to 17 days there. The launch will also include ZEISS telephoto extenders and camera accessories, with the 200mm extender compatible with all three phones.

AWS has released a local emulator that serves an AWS API endpoint so developers can test software on their own machines, development servers, or CI without calling AWS. Written in Rust, it supports APIs for services with models in AWS's API models repository, but does not replicate the full cloud or evaluate IAM policies the way AWS does. AWS publishes fidelity scores and says coding agents can use an aws-emulator skill to check compatibility.

Huawei has set November 20 for the unveiling of its new Osta sub-brand. Richard Yu, head of Huawei's consumer business group, confirmed one of the first two phones as the Osta O1 Pro by posting from a device with that name. The O1 Pro is rumored to have a 6.39 inch LTPS OLED display with 1.5K resolution and a 16:9.5 aspect ratio, and to come in several storage options. The launch will also include the Osta O1, though details remain unconfirmed.

Oppo has said the Reno17 will carry four 50MP cameras, including a main, periscope telephoto, ultrawide and selfie unit. The phone is due in China on November 16, alongside the Reno17 Pro. Leaks point to a 6.5-inch screen, Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chip and 8,000 mAh battery for the Reno17.

A Ninth Circuit panel rejected SpaceX's bid to send a sexual harassment lawsuit by eight former employees to private arbitration, citing a 2022 law that lets plaintiffs bypass such agreements. The court said the claims qualify without proving they would survive a motion to dismiss. The case follows firings tied to a 2022 internal letter criticizing Elon Musk's social media posts.

Meta has released Muse AI compatibility for Apple Watch and Android Wear OS, letting users talk to the assistant by voice, text or dictation from their wrist. The agent, which passed 10 million US app store downloads in its first 40 days, can manage bills, meetings, deadlines and purchases. Meta also teased a Muse Charm device, while Surfshark testing found Muse collects twice as many data types as rival consumer agents.

Russian cloud operator Yandex admitted losing 2.84 percent of customer data after drone strikes damaged its datacenters, including a fire at its ru-central1-b zone in early October. The company said it restored over 97 percent of data and is now enabling backups by default for virtual machines. It also launched a new ru-central1-f availability zone with resource quotas and no private endpoint traffic yet.

Vercel AI Gateway Production Index for November 2026 says teams using paid AI services switch to a new model after an average of four weeks, giving models an effective half-life of about six weeks. The report says Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5 was the top model by spend in its first full month after launching on September 22, 2026. It also found that one in six AI development teams now use a video model, up from 10% in previous months.

The iQOO 16R or 16s has been certified for sale in India by the Bureau of Indian Standards under model number I2606, though the certification does not attach a commercial name. The model number was previously associated with the iQOO 16R and recently with the iQOO 16s in Malaysia. It is rumored to be a rebranded iQOO Z12 Turbo, with a 6.59-inch screen, Snapdragon 8 Gen 6 or 8 Gen 5 Pro SoC and possibly an active cooling fan.

Thailand has introduced its first environmental regulations specifically for data centers, covering noise, heat emissions and water consumption. Facilities using uninterruptible power supply systems must keep noise around 70 dBA, a level comparable to many household hair dryers. The rules also require temperature increases beyond facility boundaries to stay between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius, cooling water reuse and tested wastewater discharge.