Top Consumer Electronics Stories of 2025
12/27/2025, 8:03:12 PM | United States
In 2025, innovations ranged from 75 Hz e‑paper and water‑vapor phone cooling to RISC‑V laptops, smartphone hyperspectral imaging, tariffs, calm tech, and divergent AR designs.
In 2025 consumer electronics advanced along several fronts: faster e-paper, novel cooling, open hardware, hyperspectral imaging, trade shocks, calmer interfaces, and competing AR visions.
1) E-paper reaches LCD speeds: Boston startup Modos demonstrated a 75 Hz e-ink monitor and SDK, using an open‑source display controller to make e‑paper responsive enough for video and general computing.
2) Water‑vapor cooling in phones: Recent flagship smartphones use thin evaporation chambers to carry heat away from chips, part of broader work on liquid, laser, and exotic thermal‑management techniques.
3) RISC‑V laptops arrive: Framework’s modular laptop now supports a RISC‑V mainboard, bringing open‑ISA options to repairable hardware; the company also shipped a swappable graphics module for GPU choice.
4) Hyperspectral smartphone imaging: Researchers showed a simple calibration technique that turns an ordinary phone into a pocket spectrometer, enabling chemical and medical diagnostics from captured spectral data.
5) Tariff impacts on electronics: New U.S. import tariffs and follow‑on adjustments pressured prices and supply chains, affecting manufacturers, hobbyists, and educational suppliers.
6) Calm Tech certification: Devices designed to minimize distraction—e‑ink tablets and simplified smart‑home interfaces—received a new certification prioritizing limited, contextual notifications.
7) Two AR paths: Emerging smart‑glasses products split between full virtual screen replication and glanceable, smartwatch‑style notifications, highlighting different UX tradeoffs.