It’s almost the end of 2025, but the tech news shows no sign of stopping. We have seven more essential stories you need to catch up on from iRobot, Samsung, OnePlus, and more.
The biggest amongst our seven include Meta trashing its third-party VR headsets, and iRobot going bankrupt, and to catch up on both of those and five more stories, you simply need to scroll down.
7. iRobot went bankrupt, but isn’t dead yet
The iRobot Roomba was a pioneer of robot vacuums, with the first model launched in 2002. Sadly, hot competition in the robovac space forced iRobot to declare bankruptcy this week – but that isn’t the end of the much-loved brand.
It’s been acquired by Picea Robotics, a company that had already been building Roombas for iRobot. For now, iRobot says there’ll be no immediate changes for Roomba owners to worry about, and the vacuums will continue to work as usual. The future, though, is a bit more uncertain, and iRobot’s co-founder Colin Angle told us the bankruptcy is “a tragedy for consumers.”
6. ChatGPT finally got an app store
ChatGPT has been steadily gathering some handy plug-ins for the likes of Photoshop and Kayak over the past few months – and this week, OpenAI gathered them all in an app store for us to peruse.
The ‘Apps directory’, which is available in the app or on the web, already has a number of useful options, including Spotify and AllTrails. Once you’ve added them, you can call on the apps inside your ChatGPT conversations to create playlists or discover new hiking routes. We’ve rounded up our early favorites below.
5. Warner Bros. rejected Paramount
The latest episode of the hit entertainment drama we hate to love aired this week: Warner Bros. Discovery announced its head hasn’t been turned by the advances of Paramount – instead, it remains faithful to its true love, Netflix.
But much like a rom-com franchise being milked dry, this won’t be the last we see of this love triangle dynamic. This was just the WBD execs rejecting the offer and highlighting its issues in a letter to their shareholders – WBD stock owners could still choose to sell out to Paramount’s hostile takeover.
Additionally, Paramount could return with a better offer – something its CEO, David Ellison, sneakily teased in leaked texts to WBD CEO David Zaslav, in which he highlighted that the bid did not include the words “best and final.” If it does, a bidding war will almost certainly materialize.
4. Your TV was called a “mass surveillance system”
What if we told you your TV was watching what you watched and using that information to build a profile and then deliver marketing and other details and offers based on that? That, among other things, is the contention of the Texas Attorney General, who is now suing the largest TV manufacturers, including Samsung, TCL, Hisense, LG, and Sony.
And spoiler alert: we found the Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) setting in one of our LG TVs (no one knows if it was on by default or not), and we can show you how to turn it off.
3. Micro-RGB is coming to smaller TVs
Samsung stunned us earlier this year with a 115-inch Micro RGB TV that seriously impressed us after a hands-on. However, at that size and a hefty price tag, it wasn’t for most consumers. That’s set to change next year, though.
In the lead-up to CES 2026, Samsung has confirmed it will expand its Micro RGB line to include more sizes, including smaller models such as 55-inch and 65-inch, all of which still feature micro RGB technology for brighter, more immersive colors and a more compelling viewing experience. Samsung isn’t sharing pricing yet, but the hope is that bringing Micro RGB TV tech to more sizes will expand the price points beyond a single option. Time will tell.
2. The OnePlus 15R landed
The OnePlus 15 might have only debuted in October, but OnePlus is back with the 15R – a device that costs less but boasts impressive specs, including a 7,400mAh battery that is larger than the one in the 15 proper.
Other highlights of the OnePlus 15R include its 6.83-inch AMOLED display, 32MP front-facing camera, 50MP primary camera, and 12GB of RAM.
Though it does come with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset and an 8MP ultra-wide snapper. So the 15R doesn’t quite compete with the OnePlus 15, but at a cost of just $699.99 / £649 it doesn’t need to. OnePlus isn’t officially available in Australia.
In a move which feels as expected as it is disappointing, Meta revealed this week that it has “paused” its third-party VR headset development program – meaning the announced Asus and Lenovo HorizonOS headsets won’t see the light of day. At least not running Meta’s operating system.
Announced over a year and a half ago, this writing was arguably on the wall when neither device manifested at Meta Connect 2025.
Meta has pledged to “Focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market.” Though our resident XR expert can’t help but wonder if this Meta might have cemented Android XR as the Android of XR instead of Horizon OS.
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