Over the past seven days, the tech world has been inundated with more news, events, and exciting announcements, and you can best believe we’ve had our ears to the ground to cover as much as we can. Apple kicked off our week of news with another round of announcements, most notably its new M6 upgrades and the launch of its first-ever touchscreen MacBook. But as we prepare to leave 2026 in the past and look forward to a fresh year, we’ve used this week to reflect on the best tech of the past 12 months, rounding up products across 100 different categories for our Product of the Year winners. As it is with every ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) recap, these roundups are designed to give you an at-a-glance look of some of the biggest stories we’ve reported this week, because even we understand that keeping updated with every new tech announcement isn’t a walk in the park. 7. We revealed our favorite tech of the year
The Sudo player (Image credit: Future) The past 12 months has been rich with new product announcements, and frankly, we’ve been spoilt for choice. But after much deliberation, we’ve put together our full list of Product of the Year winners across over 100 different categories. It’s been a monumental year for Apple to say the least. As far as phones go, the iPhone 18 takes the Phone of the Year crown while the MacBook Neo (Apple’s flagship budget laptop) is our laptop of the year — but there’s plenty more where that came from. We didn’t honor just the best phones, laptops, cameras, headphones, and soundbars, but streaming services, health tech, and smart home devices also made the final cut — so check out the full list to see which products defined 2026. Read more: Meet the TechRadar Product of the Year 2026 winners — our editors choose their favorite gadgets of the last 12 months
6. The $6. 3bn Binance hack was the biggest in history
ChatGPT is getting more visual (Image credit: Shutterstock / Diego Ioppolo) One of this week’s last-minute breaking news stories, cryptocurrency exchange Binance was hit with an attack where $6. 36 billion in tokens were withdrawn in less than 30 minutes. Researchers at TRM Labs linked the attack to North Korean hacker organization Lazarus Group. While we don’t know exactly what went down, Binance co-CEO Richard Teng confirmed the attack via a LinkedIn post. He also added that “the attacker did not simply use one engineer’s permissions, and this was not a single ‘one-click’ action. It involved a more complex attack process". TRM Labs also said the attackers pulled funds from 10 different chains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Tron, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Avalanche, and Polygon. That said, the attack did not target user funds, as Teng confirmed, sharing that “Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and company funds". Read more: Binance hit by ‘largest crypto theft on record’ as North Korean hackers steal $6. 3bn in just 20 minutes
5. Apple admitted a ‘small’ number of iPhone Duos have a screen issue
The Garmin Enduro 4 (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff/ Future) The launch of the iPhone Duo prompted worldwide excitement for Apple’s first foldable phone, but a small number of users on Reddit have reported issues with the device’s hinge cracking and causing the screen to break. It’s unclear whether these issues are a common occurrence across all iPhone duo devices or whether they’re simply isolated incidents, but looking at the reports on social media we’ve assumed it’s the latter. Foldable phones are innately more delicate than standard smartphones, and with many first-time users opting for the iPhone Duo, some may not be equipped with the knowledge of how to treat them. Following the report, Apple shared a statement with us, saying "We are aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units…
