#smartphones

The Hidden “AI Tax”: Why Your Next Smartphone is Shockingly Expensive (And How to Beat the System in 2026) You are ready for an upgrade. Your battery drains by lunchtime, your apps are lagging, and you walk into a store expecting a massive leap in technology. Instead, you are greeted by eye-watering prices for devices that look and perform suspiciously like the phone you bought three years ago. You are not imagining this stagnation, and it is not just standard inflation. You are paying the “AI Tax.” The explosive, worldwide growth of Artificial Intelligence has created a severe global component shortage, and it is quietly reshaping the consumer electronics market. Here is exactly why your tech is getting more expensive, the paradox at the heart of the industry, and how you can protect your wallet. The next time you purchase a new smartphone or laptop, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise: significantly higher prices for hardware that feels suspiciously similar to last year’s models. The driving force behind this shift is the explosive, worldwide growth of Artificial Intelligence. The rapid advancement of AI data centers has created what industry experts call an “AI Tax”—a severe global component shortage that is hitting the wallets of everyday consumers. https://www.nbloglinks.com/the-hidden-ai-tax-how-to-beat-rising-tech-prices-in-2026/ #AI #technews #techprices #AItax #business #smartphones #AInews #AIData

Many institutions are committed to #sustainability. For this reason alone, #digitalsovereignty should be important to them. Two years ago, scientists from @JLBe@mastodon.social and its network published a study on the sustainable use of #smartphones. 👉 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/sd.2995 It showed that typical #socialmedia apps such as #Instagram, #TikTok, #YouTube, etc. on #cellphones conflict with a number of sustainability goals. Among other things, they cause high #energy consumption, which is not incurred directly on the smartphone, but in #datacenters and transmission networks. A large proportion of the #electricity consumption is due to the fact that these apps do not respect #privacy and data protection, but instead spy on users. The use of #Mastodon and other #Fediverse services is more sustainable because much less data is exchanged between users' smartphones and the service instances.