It’s almost the end of 2025, but the tech news shows no signs of stopping. We’ve got seven more important stories you need to catch up on from iRobot, Samsung, OnePlus and more.
The biggest of our seven include Meta ditching its third-party VR headsets and iRobot going bankrupt, and to catch up on both of these stories and five more, just scroll down.
7. iRobot went bankrupt, but isn’t dead yet
The iRobot Roomba was a pioneer in robotic vacuums, with the first model launching in 2002. Unfortunately, fierce competition in the robovac space forced iRobot to file for bankruptcy this week – but that’s not the end of the much-loved brand.
It has been acquired by Picea Robotics, a company that had already built Roombas for iRobot. For now, iRobot says there will be no immediate changes for Roomba owners to worry about, and the vacuums will continue to operate as normal. The future is a bit more uncertain, however, and iRobot co-founder Colin Angle told us the bankruptcy is “a tragedy for consumers.”
6. ChatGPT finally got an app store
ChatGPT has been steadily collecting some handy plugins for Photoshop and Kayak over the past few months – and this week OpenAI brought them all together in one app store for us to see.
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 up apps in your ChatGPT conversations to create playlists or discover new hiking trails. We’ve rounded up our early favorites below.
5. Warner Bros. Paramount declined
The latest episode of the hit entertainment drama we hate to love aired this week: Warner Bros. Discovery announced that its head has not been turned by Paramount’s advances – instead, it remains true to its true love, Netflix.
But 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 directors rejecting the offer and highlighting its problems in a letter to their shareholders – WBD shareholders could still choose to sell out to Paramount’s hostile takeover.
Plus, Paramount could come back with a better offer — something its CEO, David Ellison, slyly teased in leaked texts to WBD chief David Zaslav, highlighting that the bid didn’t include the words “best and final.” If that happens, a bidding war will almost certainly materialize.
4. Your TV was called a “mass surveillance system”
What if we told you that your TV saw what you saw and used that information to build a profile and then deliver marketing and other details and offers based on that? This is the opinion 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 wowed us earlier this year with a 115-inch Micro RGB TV that seriously impressed us after a hands-on. But with that size and a high price, it wasn’t for most consumers. However, that will change next year.
In the run-up to CES 2026, Samsung has confirmed that it will expand its Micro RGB line to include more sizes, including smaller models like the 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 technology to more sizes will expand the price points beyond a single option. Time will tell.
2. OnePlus 15R landed
The OnePlus 15 may 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’s bigger than the 15’s.
Other highlights of the OnePlus 15R include its 6.83-inch AMOLED display, 32MP front-facing camera, 50MP primary camera, and 12GB of RAM.
Although it comes 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 just $699.99 / £649 it doesn’t need to. OnePlus is not officially available in Australia.
In a move that feels both expected and 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 more than a year and a half ago, this writing was undoubtedly on the wall as neither device manifested at Meta Connect 2025.
Meta has promised to “focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market.” Although our resident XR expert can’t help but wonder if this Meta might have cemented Android XR as Android XR instead of Horizon OS.
