Gear News of the Week: Amazon Buys Bee, VSCO Has a New App, and CMF Debuts a Smartwatch

Amazon has acquired Bee, a relatively new AI company that debuted an always-listening wearable earlier this year. Bee cofounder Maria de Lourdes Zollo shared the news via LinkedIn.

We covered Bee AI at CES 2025—it was one of many new wearables that promised to listen to everything around you. It didn't save audio recordings, but it used the power of third-party and in-house large language models to transcribe words and create a journal of sorts, offering insights into your day, crafting takeaways, actionable tasks, and summaries of conversations.

Despite being one of the first on the scene with its Alexa voice assistant, Amazon has been trailing behind the likes of OpenAI and Google's Gemini in the AI space, only recently debuting the upgraded version of Alexa+, powered by LLMs. The Bee acquisition would let Amazon offer its customers a different kind of AI experience from Alexa, one that is with you wherever you are and is always listening. That raises several privacy concerns, and Amazon has historically had a poor track record on that front.

We'll have to wait and see whether Bee's current privacy policies will shift under the new ownership, and what will become of the little yellow wearable.

Nothing's sub-brand CMF has a new smartwatch, following up on last year's Watch Pro 2. It's called the Watch 3 Pro, which is a subtle shift in the naming convention that makes it more similar to the CMF Phone 2 Pro that debuted a few months ago. The price is also now $99. Even with the $30 price bump, it's still one of the cheapest smartwatches around, though it runs RTOS (real-time operating system), meaning you won't be able to access your favorite apps here.

That trade-off lets the Watch 3 Pro purportedly last 13 days on a single charge, a slight bump over its predecessor (the new watch lasts 4.5 days if you have the always-on display enabled). There's a new dual-band GPS for more accurate route tracking, 131 sport modes with a personalized running coach, and a new heart-rate sensor that CMF claims is more accurate across workout intensities and skin tones. Naturally, there's a dose of “AI-powered” post-workout summaries.

The CMF Watch 3 Pro can now track blood oxygen levels and stress, and it offers guided breathing exercises to help you relax. It even has period tracking. That's almost all the typical health features found on more full-featured smartwatches, save the electrocardiogram and fall detection. You'll be able to see basic notifications on the watch, and there's now a ChatGPT integration that lets you talk to the chatbot and set reminders, though your phone will need to be nearby for processing.

It's available in dark gray, light gray, and orange, with a metal body and soft-touch silicone straps. CMF says all of its smartwatches are now transitioning to the Nothing X app, the same app used to configure Nothing's audio products. There's support for Apple Health, Strava, and Google Health Connect, so your data will show up in those respective platforms. It officially went on sale July 22, though some regions will have to wait until later this year.

Microsoft has announced a new Surface Laptop with an integrated 5G cellular modem, which will use Verizon's 5G network. Although it looks nearly identical to the current Surface Laptop 13.8 (7th Edition), it uses a new “custom multi-layered laminate” material on the exterior rather than aluminum, which Microsoft says “allows radio signals to pass through without impacting performance,” according to the company's blog post. Microsoft also boasts that it has completely redesigned the Surface Laptop to “thoughtfully” and “strategically” integrate the antenna inside to reduce interference.

The new device is targeted toward business users, but it's an interesting reversal to the severe lack of cellular laptops recently. Microsoft has been offering a 5G option of the 2-in-1 Surface Pro for a while now, but never a Surface Laptop. When 5G was first rolling out in 2019, laptops with integrated 5G cellular connections were starting to roll out, such as the Lenovo Yoga 5G in 2020. But interest died out pretty fast. Perhaps Covid killed the momentum, since people were at home with their stable Wi-Fi connections. Or maybe it was because the Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered laptops at that time really couldn't compete with Intel.

Interestingly, because it's an enterprise device, the Surface Laptop 5G is actually powered by an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 rather than Qualcomm's Snapdragon X. Microsoft may also be trying to preempt Apple's move into cellular MacBooks. It was reported late last year that Apple was exploring the idea, having acquired Intel's 5G modem business back in 2019.

The Surface Laptop 5G will be available starting on August 26, with a starting price of $1,800 for an Intel Core Ultra 5, 16 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage. —Luke Larsen

That's the question posed by Palmer Luckey this week. The pro-Trump tech entrepreneur has already stamped his footprint in the worlds of virtual reality through Oculus and military tech through Anduril, but a more conventional computer would be new ground for Luckey. He raised the provocative question at the Reindustrialize 2025 Summit earlier this week.

“I actually think Anduril could build computers in the United States,” he stated. “I've looked into it very, very deeply. I've had conversations with everyone you would need to do this. On the chip side, on the assembly side, on the manufacturing side. I know exactly how to do it, what it would cost, how long it would take.”

Luckey goes on to say that the only thing holding him back is that he hopes someone else does it first. He later posted the following question on X: “Would you buy a Made In America computer from Anduril for 20% more than Chinese-manufactured options from Apple?” At the time of writing, 64 percent of the over 77,000 responses said yes, while the rest said no.

Whether or not there will be Anduril laptops in the future isn't so interesting as the larger question of how much it would cost to build technology from the ground up without relying on foreign production. The way his question is stated implies that he doesn't just mean laptops that are assembled in the US, but actually devices where every component is made in the US. If we trust Luckey in his price estimation, that would mean a MacBook Air–like device would cost an extra $200. That's less than what analysts have said in the past, including one approximation that stated iPhones would cost at least 25 percent more due to increased labor costs alone. Others have put that estimate much higher—as high as $3,500 for an iPhone, or stated that it's altogether impossible due to supply chain limitations. —Luke Larsen

Google Photos officially rolled out a feature this week that lets you convert static images to videos using generative artificial intelligence. We first saw this capability on an Honor smartphone, but it's now becoming more widely available. Google says the feature is powered by its Veo 2 generative AI model. All you need to do is select the image from your gallery and choose “Subtle movements” or “I'm feeling lucky,” and it'll get animated into a six-second clip (of something that never happened).

That's not all that's new. The company is also adding a feature called Remix, which lets you convert existing photos into art styles, like anime, comics, and 3D animations (remember Prisma?). It'll be rolling out over the next few weeks. All of these effects and features might feel a little much, especially considering all the other tools at your disposal in the app, which is why Google also has a new Create tab. This is where you can go to convert photos to videos, use Remix, create collages, highlight videos, and more. The tab will be rolling out in August.

Google's Wear OS 6 update started rolling out this week—it's the latest version of the smartwatch operating system, introducing a more colorful interface, widgets that are even more glanceable, alongside power efficiency improvements for better battery life. One of the oldest watch face apps, Facer—which has hundreds of themed watch face designs across various platforms—has announced an update adding compatibility with Wear OS 6. That's big news, considering that the app lost compatibility after Wear OS 5 rolled out in 2024.

Facer didn't support Google's Watch Face Format (WFF) when Wear OS 5 launched, which was mandatory to access watch face complications. The company had to work with Google to bring back full functionality of its watch faces to Wear OS 6, and the it even says Facer will deliver “significantly improved battery life” on all faces.

The Facer update also adds new collaborations, like a SpongeBob SquarePants watch face, as well as a social component called “Looks.” It's a tab in the app that lets you show off your favorite watch faces. Think of it as a new way to discover watch faces outside of the app's general explore page. If you like a look, you can find out what watch face they're using and download it, and if you like their watch strap, Facer will point you to its own strap store so you can nab it.

Photo filter and editing app VSCO—yes, the very same that popularized the “VSCO girl”—has been around since 2012, but the company just launched a stand-alone mobile app after a decade. Capture is an iPhone-only camera app that has more than 50 “live presets” with real-time film effects and manual camera settings for better control over the final image. It essentially lets you preview the final look of your photo before you even hit the shutter button.

These presets are non-destructive, so you can still edit the original captured image later on if you decide to change things up. It supports RAW and ProRAW formats, has real-time effects like bloom, and can instantly sync with the VSCO app for additional edits or sharing. It's free to download now, and there's no word if an Android app will be available in the future.