Tech Roundup: Apple iPhone 16e, U.K. Encryption Tussle & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• The European Union says WhatsApp now faces the Digital Services Act (DSA) very large online platform (VLOP) rules after Meta said on February 14 that Channels had about 46.8 million monthly active users in the region in H2 2024, above the 45 million threshold. (Companies designated as VLOPs are required to give users ways to report illegal goods, services or content, and to provide ways to prevent or remove such posts. The DSA also places tight controls on what information companies can use for targeted advertising and heavier restrictions on child-targeted ads. Europeans who use VLOPs are also entitled to more control over how their data is used and must be given the ability to opt out of things like recommendations systems and profiling.)
• Apple unveils the US$ 599+ iPhone 16e with a 6.1" display, A18, 48MP camera, Apple Intelligence, the C1 cellular modem, USB-C and no MagSafe; debuts its first in-house cellular modem, the C1, with 5G support to replace Qualcomm modems, saying it's the most power-efficient iPhone modem ever, and discontinues the iPhone SE, iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus models.
• Google debuts a standalone website for Tasks at tasks.google.com, instead of having to access it through the Calendar app; updates YouTube on Android TV with new options for music videos, letting users choose between Artwork, Lyrics and Video display modes for a personalised experience.
• Apple releases iOS 18.4 developer beta with Apple Intelligence-powered Priority Notifications, to show important alerts in a separate lock screen section at the top, and a new Food section to News+ with tens of thousands of recipes and stories curated by the company's editors about healthy eating, restaurants, kitchen essentials and other topics; teases visionOS 2.4 update that includes brings Apple Intelligence to the Vision Pro for the first time, and confirms the AI feature is coming to the iPhone 15 Pro as well in a future software update.
• X begins rolling out Grok-powered AI tools for advertisers to generate ready-to-use ad copy and imagery and provide campaign performance analysis; makes its advanced large language model, Grok 3, available for free "for a short time."
• Brazilian Supreme Court orders the immediate and full suspension of video-sharing Rumble in the country due to non-compliance with court orders.
• OpenAI ChatGPT hits 400 million weekly active users, up from 300 million in early December 2024; begins widely rolling out its agentic AI called Operator to all users in the U.K., Japan and other regions where the service is available.
• The European Commission reportedly plans to charge Google with breaching Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the E.U. after finding that the proposed changes do not address the regulators' antitrust concerns, according to a report from Reuters.
• Chinese AI lab DeepSeek plans to open source portions of its online services' code as part of an "open source week" event the coming week; to open source five code repositories that have been "documented, deployed and battle-tested in production."
• Apple removes Advanced Data Protection for iCloud in the U.K., pulling the optional E2EE feature rather than complying with the U.K.'s order to build a backdoor in order to access data stored in the cloud.
• Xiaohongshu's app downloads fall 91% in five days after Apple and Google relist TikTok on their U.S. app stores on February 13, as TikTok's doubles.
• Google officially pulls the plug on Chromecast with Google TV Streamer sales, after formally discontinuing the product line in August 2024.
• Google updates Gemini to let free users upload files for analysis; launches a new experiment that uses AI to help people explore more career possibilities using a tool called Career Dreamers by finding patterns between work experiences, educational background, skills and interests.
• Amazon announces plans to discontinue its app store for Android on August 20 this year; to also shut down its Amazon Coins program on the same date, its Zoom and Google Meet alternative Chime on February 20, 2026, and Inspire, which was launched in December 2022 as a TikTok-style feed in its app for discovering products. (Amazon, however, intends to keep its Appstore on its devices like Fire TV and Fire Tablet.)
• Newsletter platform Substack adds the ability to post videos from its app and lets creators monetise videos, and plans to add more video tools like trimming and enhanced analytics.
• Meta starts accepting sign-ups for Community Notes on Facebook, Instagram and Threads from U.S. users above the age of 18; debuts a new ad format called Testimonials that allows content creators to get paid for written endorsements in comments on a brand's social media posts and advertisements.
• Twitch plans to implement a 100-hour storage cap for Highlights and Uploads from April 19, automatically deleting content from streamers who exceed the limit.
• Music streamer Spotify begins accepting AI-narrated audiobooks recorded using ElevenLabs' software (the company already allows AI-recorded audiobooks, with several restrictions); hopes to launch a Music Pro tier in 2025, a $6/month add-on, that will include higher-quality audio, early access to concert tickets and more.
• Amazon surpasses Walmart in quarterly sales for the first time during the most recent quarter, with revenue of US$ 187.8 billion compared to Walmart's US$ 180.5 billion.
• Google plans to add a "premium lite" tier in YouTube in the U.S., Australia, Germany and Thailand, offering podcasts without ads and music videos with ads; brings Circle to Search-like visual searches to its Chrome and Google iOS apps, without the Circle to Search branding, as a Google Lens feature.
• Gig marketplace Fiverr unveils AI tools, including the Personal AI Creation Model, which lets gig workers configure an AI model trained on their work and set prices to use it.
• Google updates Google Play Books for iOS with an option for users to complete their e-book or audiobook purchase on the Google Play website, under Apple's "reader apps" exception, thereby bypassing the 30% commission.
• HP announces plans to acquire assets from Humane for US$ 116 million and wind down Ai Pin business; says Ai Pin's online features will stop working on February 28, when all customer data will be deleted.
• Google removes Gemini support from the main Google app on iOS, pushing users to download the standalone Gemini app that launched in November 2024; launches a Gemini 2.0-based AI co-scientist tool to help biomedical scientists create novel hypotheses and speed up research.
• Ride hailing company Uber ditches commissions in favour of daily fees for auto-rickshaw drivers in India in response to increased competition from local rivals Rapido and Namma Yatri.
• French AI company Mistral debuts Mistral Saba, a 24B-parameter custom-trained model for Arabic language and culture, via its API; comes as its Le Chat app tops 1 million downloads in just 14 days, quickly reaching the App Store's top free downloads spot in France, surpassing OpenAI ChatGPT's 500,000.
• Elon Musk's xAI unveils DeepSearch, a reasoning chatbot that explains its thought process for queries and is capable of doing research, brainstorming and data analysis, as the company says its mission is to "understand the universe"; launches Grok-3 beta and Grok-3 mini, its latest AI models with reasoning capabilities, trained on 200K GPUs, or "10x" more compute than Grok-2, for X Premium+ users, and hikes the monthly subscription price for Premium+ in the U.S. to US$ 40, and the yearly price to US$ 395, after raising it to US$ 22 in December 2024.
• OnePlus unveils Watch 3, offering a rotating crown, five-day battery life, Wear OS 5, a new GPS antenna and new health features, for US$ 330.
• Huawei launches Mate XT, the industry's first tri-foldable, globally for €3,499, after its China launch in September 2024; comes with a 10.2-inch display.
• Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati unveils Thinking Machines, a startup focused on multimodality, human-AI collaboration, and make AI more accessible.
• Meta's Facebook starts deleting users' live broadcast recordings after 30 days effective February 19; requires users who go live after that date to download the videos to save them from getting deleted before their 30-day expiration period ends, or share the recordings to your profile as Reels.
• NVIDIA launches Signs, a new AI platform to teach American Sign Language and create a validated dataset for sign language learners and ASL app developers.
• Microsoft announces Muse AI, a first-of-its-kind generative AI model that can generate a game environment based on visuals, players' controller actions, or both; showcases the Majorana 1, its first quantum processor that uses the Majorana particle instead of electrons, that can potentially fit a million qubits.
• Oppo launches the Find N5, the world's thinnest foldable at 8.93mm closed and 4.21mm open, with IPX6, X8, and X9 ratings, in Europe and Asia for about ~US$ 1,870.
• X rivals Bluesky adds a "followers only" option for restricting replies to posts; also rolls out a "search posts" feature for user profiles.
• Meta-owned Instagram updates direct message function with the ability to translate messages in 99 languages, prewrite and schedule messages in advance for up to 29 days, and pin up to three specific messages to the top of any 1:1 or group chat; WhatsApp once again tests a setting that lets users choose whether the iOS app automatically clears the unread message count badge on its Home Screen icon after every launch.
• AI search engine Perplexity open sources R1 1776, a version of the DeepSeek-R1 model that it says was "post-trained to remove the China censorship."
• Sales in the U.S. grows 153% YoY for TikTok Shop during January 2025, in comparison to Shein's 26% and Temu's 28%.
• Germany's Bundeskartellamt charges Apple with abusing its market power via App Tracking Transparency, giving itself preferential treatment and exempting itself from rules it enforces on third-party developers by allowing users to block advertisers from tracking them across different applications; Apple refutes allegations, stating the clause applies uniformly to all developers, including itself.
• Online dating app Bumble discontinues two of its acquired apps Fruitz and Official amid broader financial challenges ailing the dating app industry, prompting a reevaluation of business strategies.
• Apple removes E.U. apps from the App Store that haven't yet complied with the Digital Services Act (DSA), a regulation that requires app developers to provide their "trader status" to submit new apps or app updates for distribution in this market; comes as alternative app store Aptoide launches for user iPhone and iPad users in the European Union.
• Apple tells U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority that some of the remedy options proposed by the watchdog to address concerns in the mobile browser market would impact the iPhone maker's incentive to innovate; says it would "not be appropriate" to mandate that access to future WebKit or that iOS features in use by Safari be provided free of charge, adding that developing features is a time and resource-intensive process.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok expands its e-commerce operations to Italy, Germany and France, with plans to also launch in Japan and Brazil this year.
• Messaging platform Telegram releases new updates, including AI-powered sticker search, choosing video covers and share a link to a video hosted on Telegram with an exact time stamp, just like YouTube.