Sometimes, unusual is good

This month has been a rather interesting one for us. While it may seem at first glance like a ‘slow’ month for everyone else because Apple has dominated the news with the iPhone 15 launch, there has been no shortage of unique tech products and experiences. This issue of HWM was put together to highlight this - dare I say, phenomena - one you take the spotlight away from Apple just for a moment. In the computing space, our Editor-in-Chief has been flying all over the world to check our Intel’s next-generation Meteor Lake CPU and the new manufacturing processes that come with it. This is actually a very big thing for Intel as it would be their very first consumer CPU to be produced with a chiplet design and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography node. For me, growing up in an industry of Intel dominance from the Pentium days, it seems strange to think that they’re now last in line in terms of microprocessor development and playing catchup to everyone. AMD was the first to use chiplets since 4 years ago with the Zen 2 architecture, and their latest Zen 4 is based on a TSMC 5nm node. Apple on the other hand has progressed to a TSMC 3nm node with the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro chipset, and we can expect the same for the upcoming M3 CPUs. In contrast, The Intel 4 Process is technically still a 7nm node (with EUV), but the chiplet design now allows them to integrate TSMC 5nm nodes as well. In other product news, we’ve uncovered a gem in the Nothing Phone (2). While everyone in the Android camp seems to be shifting to foldable designs, Nothing has created a classic candybar phone with features we think actual people would love, rather than niche, gimmicky ones that look good on a pamphlet but rarely ever used in real life. And as much as we like to decry the state of digital cameras, the new Nikon Z 8 is pretty drool-worthy. And if you’re always looking for something different from the usual suspects, we’ve got some highlights from Devialet and Redmagic in this issue that may interest you too.