Thoughts on Tech New of Note -Week ending 01-23-2026

• Nex Computer's New Everything Phone
• TikTok Deal Closes
• Apple's Redoing the Humane AI Pin (?)

Nex Computer's New Everything Phone

A few months ago, I wrote an article about Google's upcoming Android PC and what it might take for such a product to be useful and successful. A device that builds upon the strengths of the Android platform and addresses some of its historical foibles, such as peripheral support, popular software availability, and focused intelligent marketing would be potentially interesting to a core group of people looking for their next computer. So far, we haven't received a lot of additional information on Android PCs running Aluminium OS beyond the information that Google has published and some rumors that Lenovo will be producing the first device codenamed "Sapphire". It's expected to be a high-end device and most likely will be a convertible, perhaps in the spirit of the Google Pixelbook (and hopefully not the Pixel Slate, which I owned and therefore feel quite justified in making this statement).

Nex Computer is not new to Android devices even though they haven't specifically produced one. They have been making lapdocks and screens aimed at Android devices with desktop functionality for many years. Their docks have been well loved in very small circles of people who have wanted to get more from their powerful phones than just using them in their hands. They've also inspired other companies to produce similar products at varying price points. For a while, it seemed like it might be a growing market as more phones seemed to come with a desktop feature and there were multiple docks to choose from, some even supporting advanced features such as wireless connectivity, 4K resolution screens, and detachable keyboards. But at some point, interest must have waned as the products slowly started to disappear from the market and even I - a person who uses Samsung DeX daily - forgot about Nex Computer a little bit. But it seems they never stopped working on their dreams and one of their oldest dreams was a device of their own that could be plugged into their system of displays and docks that could function as a stand-alone computer.

The NexPhone is particularly notable to me because it doesn't just rely on being yet another Android phone with a desktop view. The phone does in fact run Android 16 with a desktop view, but it can run desktop Linux apps using the Debian distro that is accessible from within Android. Nex makes a point of stressing that this allows access to desktop apps including desktop-class browsers. The lack of full extension support on mobile Chrome and other popular browsers for Android has been a real pain point for people who want to get the most from their phones. There are browsers available that support extensions, but to have access to well-known browsers that people use on their "real" computers would make a big difference for people who live in the browser. We have seen Google take a similar approach with their Pixel phones where you can activate the terminal and access a Debian environment. The Pixel implementation is still under development, and not all apps can be easily installed. It would seem that Nex has a more robust solution with hardware acceleration out of the box. Yet Nex adds another layer of functionality (and complexity?) by having a mobile UI for Windows 11 that can run on the phone as well. It appears to run in a partition as you will need to boot the phone into that mode to access Windows, but the photos and videos they've shown reveal an interface that looks a lot like the last iteration of Windows Phone. To me, a person who genuinely liked Windows Phone and owned a Surface Duo to which she flashed Windows 11 just to see what it would be like, this seems especially delightful. Having had that Windows experience with the Surface Duo, which at least had two screens, I can't say that I expect using Windows on the phone itself appeals to me as much as the possibility of connecting it to a monitor and using Windows in a traditional desktop mode. I'm honestly not sure how useful it will truly be, but the idea of having 3 platforms in one device is really intriguing to me on paper. The only thing that diminishes my excitement somewhat is that the phone itself is not a powerhouse. I do appreciate that the chip they've chosen is eligible for long-term support so it should be able to run all 3 operating systems for many years into the future. But the phone has only 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. This is probably fine for an Android phone in 2026, especially a phone on which you're doing primarily phone things or even a Linux PC where you're doing lightweight computing tasks with lightweight Linux apps. But Windows is a heavier lift and seeing as it has its own partition, that means it will be that much more limited in terms of storage. I ran into this issue with Windows on the Surface Duo very quickly. I don't know that it will be reasonable to expect that anyone could use it as their "work PC" even if it is a secondary device to a Mac or iPad. The phone does have a microSD storage slot, but it is limited to 512GB. Most likely, one will have to rely on cloud and/or external storage to get real work done. And will it work fine as a phone in Windows 11 mode? Phone functions on the Duo in Windows 11 were sketchy at best, so I hope progress has been made in this area.

Nevertheless, this device is right up my weird niche alley and I'm rooting for it. I can't wait to play with it and see how well it works in its various modes.

Check it out here: https://nexphone.com/

TikTok Deal Closes

I wrote about the TikTok deal back on December 19, 2025. My lingering thoughts then were about the continued viability of the platform from a user perspective:

What are the appropriate metrics for determining that this approach is successful? I'm more interested in this facet than I am even in whether the platform will continue to be successful from a user/consumer perspective because that angle is so much easier to quantify and probably also easier to predict. If the recommendations on the platform are perceived to be worse and that perception persists over time, then the platform will ultimately fail and all the money spent to acquire it will have been yet another tech money pit. But there is a possibility that the platform will remain viable and appealing to people even after the algorithm is retrained and deemed safe for public consumption.

Obviously, we don't know any of this yet. And since the app itself isn't changing and people don't have to migrate to something new, things probably won't feel any different for quite some time. I'm not even sure we understand the mechanisms involved or the timing for changing over the algorithm. Communications so far indicate that the original recommendation system will be licensed to the new owners but it will be retrained here in the good ol' USA on good ol' USA infrastructure. The big potential difference seems to be in the audience. TikTok has been a global app with influences and influencers from around the world. Although a separate app isn't being created just for the USA, what users in the USA will see will likely skew over time compared to what users elsewhere in the world will see based on the USA-centric recommendation system. But all of this feels very fuzzy and difficult to distill. Supposedly, advertising, marketing, and commerce will still be handled by the global TikTok operations team. But this was a sale, right? What exactly was sold, then? There will be no separate app for the USA and everything except the training data for the recommendation system and the location of USA user data seems to remain the same. So going back to what I said in December, this was really a play for American company Oracle to have more predictable income from an important customer, plus an opportunity for a few other companies to acquire a stake in the venture.

It feels like someone got played here.

Apple's Redoing the Humane AI Pin?

OK, this really isn't a story, but people sure do seem fired up about it. I teetered between this and the Anthropic Claude Constitution, which I think is a more interesting story with longer-term implications, but people just love an opportunity to love on or dunk on Apple. So, let's go.

I want to take the high road on this non-story. Apple does make mistakes and it has produced products that failed in the market. But I think Apple remains a company full of smart people who do make smart choices more often than not and they tend to be thoughtful, even if sometimes errant, in how they spend their research and development funds. Is it possible that an AI pin could be useful for certain specific scenarios? The primary issues people had with the Humane pin were that it wasn't quick to respond to queries, the screen wasn't as useful as hoped, and the battery life was terrible.

Now, in an attempt to be as fair as possible to Apple, I'd like to imagine a world where something I wear on my lapel or perhaps around my neck that has cameras, a microphone, a speaker, and at least one button (egad!) has value. I have a neck mount that I sometimes use with a GoPro or one of my smartphones to get footage at my desk that requires me to use my hands to interact with the product or activity being filmed. It works especially well to capture video of me crocheting, since that requires both hands and trying to do it behind a traditional camera on a tripod is often awkward. In a scenario like that, the cameras and microphones would come in handy. I'm also reminded of some of the promo videos for headsets like the Vision Pro where the user was interacting with their kids without holding a phone or camera in their hands. A pin would be even less invasive than glasses or a giant headset. But I don't use my neck mount every day or even every week. And I rarely find myself wishing I had the neck mount when I'm out and about. And while having memories of spinning your child around in a circle might be fun to watch later, I don't know how often that scenario would pop up to warrant daily use of a wearable camera. Perhaps people who record a lot of voice memos would benefit from having a button on their chest to record them more easily than pulling out their phone, but this doesn't necessarily require a pin. It could be done with a ring - Eric Migicovsky has shown us this with his new Pebble Index 01 ring - or a smartwatch with similar ease. I'm reminded of Nilay Patel of The Verge who has repeatedly expressed his deep desire for a device that can recognize faces and tell him the names of people whose names he has forgotten. A device on your chest could take photos of people and if you were able to tag them via voice on the spot or via an app later, there could be some value in being able to ask the device someone's name.... but none of this would exactly be discreet, which makes it difficult to sell as a brilliant new memory-enhancing feature. I suppose Apple could popularize the idea of asking the new people we meet for permission to photograph them and tag their photos with their name much in the way that they have normalized exchanging contact information by tapping iPhones (NameDrop). Well, I think they have normalized this... I've never actually seen this happen in the wild as I don't think I've attended enough conferences in the past few years. In my head it is normalized because it sounds like a reasonable enough way to exchange information with someone on demand. But if I was at a conference and someone asked me permission to take my picture and tag it with my name, I think I would be nonplussed. Photos have been weaponized in our current timeline.

I have seen commentary on the primary purpose being a pipeline for Siri that doesn't require your phone or watch. This would be the capable version of Siri that Apple promised a long time ago; a conversational and savvy Siri that knows valuable information about you and can use it to guide you in your daily activities and interactions. A Siri with a camera and microphone could perform much like Gemini did in Google's demonstration at their last Google I/O. You could ask it to look at something and tell you what it is or give you instructions on how to complete the task in front of you. The main advantage of doing this with the pin over the phone is speed, so it would have to have enough computing power to do this on its own and not have to hand the task over to your phone. And it would probably need its own data connection much like the Humane AI pin so that it could be useful outside of Wi-Fi coverage. It would have to be significantly faster and more convenient to push the button on the pin vs. pulling out your phone and pointing it at the subject of your conversation. I do believe this is a substantial hurdle to overcome.

I like Gemini quite a bit. I use it to get answers to questions and to summarize news stories on a regular basis. But I have yet to point my phone's camera at anything in the real world and ask Gemini for help with that thing. And while I have access to Gemini on my watch, I very rarely use it on the watch because it's not really faster or more convenient. In order for me to want to wear a pin on a regular basis, the value proposition needs to be very compelling. The pin needs to be be better at something that is important to me than doing it on my phone, tablet, laptop, etc.

I am struggling to identify such a use case. So it may be that I am simply not creative enough or I'm not thinking big enough. It may also be possible that Apple will discard this idea but use the learnings from it to create something else better as they have done before. I don't want to believe that Apple is going down this road out of hubris in an effort to show up Sir Jony Ive and whatever it is he is cooking up with Sam Altman.

Apple is bigger than that, right?