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Samsung is going to let customers in Arizona and Iowa add their driver's licenses to Samsung Wallet beginning later this month, Samsung's Sally Hyesoon Jeong said onstage at the 2023 Samsung Developer Conference on Thursday. It's unclear when more states might be supported, but Jeong did say that starting next year, Samsung customers will also be able to use the Samsung Wallet to authenticate your driver's license online."The new feature brings Samsung on closer footing with Apple and Google, which both also offer the ability to save driver's licenses from select states in their mobile wallets. Arizona became the first state to officially support Apple's solution in March 2022, and as tracked by 9to5Mac, Colorado, Maryland, and... Continue reading...

The Steam Deck, in its bundled carry case. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Think we're not getting a new Steam Deck just because Valve isn't ready to upgrade its performance? Think again: Valve already put a new Steam Deck through the FCC's certification process on August 13th, agency documents reveal. Image: FCC Image: FCC The mystery Valve 1030" that went through South Korea's National Radio Research Agency has now been definitively identified as a Steam Deck, and it's our first proof the hardware's potentially close enough to release to justify showing it to regulators.Why are we only learning about this now? Because just like with the original Steam Deck, Valve used its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip vendor to sneak it through. Valve sleuths Brad Lynch and @TVKilledMi... Continue reading...

Samsung's newest soundbar, the HW-Q900C, is now capable of being a SmartThings hub, | Image: Samsung At its annual developer conference today, Samsung once again put its SmartThings smart home platform front and center, announcing that its newest soundbar, the HW-Q900C, is now capable of being a SmartThings hub, complete with support for Zigbee, Thread, and Matter.The electronics giant has been pushing SmartThings aggressively over the last couple of years as it works to connect all its appliances, TVs, smartphones, and gadgets from other manufacturers together in a unified IoT-based smart home ecosystem. The addition of the soundbar to its Hub Everywhere program is a continuation of the company's quest to put its smart home hubs everywhere, with the goal of making it easier for people to get started with the connected home.The... Continue reading...

The last-gen Apple Watch Series 8 offers many of the same features as the newer model. | Image: Apple Google may have just released the Pixel Watch 2, but the Apple Watch is still the better buy if you own an iPhone. And right now, you can get the 41mm GPS-enabled Apple Watch Series 8 in black with a small / medium-sized band for just $225 at Amazon when you clip the on-page coupon. Members of Target's free-to-join Target Circle program can also buy the wearable for just $224.99 ($175 off) in select colors like red when they clip the on-page Target Circle coupon.The discount drops the last-gen flagship wearable down to roughly the same price as Apple's budget-friendly option, the second-gen Apple Watch SE, which is on sale for $219.99 when you clip the on-page coupon. That's an excellent deal, given that the Apple Watch Series 8 offers... Continue reading...

We've got deals on all sorts of TVs, ranging from affordable (yet feature-packed) models to high-end OLED and Mini LEDs that will really wow you. | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge Things are looking bright for those who want to nab a great TV in 2023 at a substantial discount. That's because, these days, you can usually land a great deal on a mid- or high-end TV from LG, TCL, Hisense, or Amazon's own Fire TV brand with some regularity - even if the biggest discounts remain reserved for sales events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or the lead-up to the Super Bowl.Right now, there are a number of discounted 4K TVs to choose from, spanning a wide variety of prices, size configurations, and feature sets. Whether you want a secondary TV for the bedroom or a high-end OLED that's built for a cinema-like experience, we've picked out the best TV deals across some common categories. And be on the lookout for more TV... Continue reading...

Image: Film at Lincoln Center There's an old episode of the podcast Reply All I think about all the time called Negative Mount Pleasant" - a title that reveals nothing about what it's about. Also, the first eight minutes of the episode aren't super instructive either. It opens with tape from a village meeting, where the community of Mount Pleasant is accosting their representative about a mysterious new development that is happening in their backyard.This isn't exactly how Evil Does Not Exist starts. But like Negative Mount Pleasant," it makes the small-town stakes feel big - and specific. The conflict in director Ryusuke Hamaguchi's excellent new film concerns the imposition of a new glamping" site just outside Tokyo. Some 6,000-plus miles from the Wisconsin... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is rolling out a new and improved version of its Microsoft Teams chat client today. It has been rebuilt from the ground up to make it faster and easier to use and has been in preview since March. After years of development, Windows and Mac users can now freely install the new version of Microsoft Teams.The new version of Teams is up to two times faster while using 50 percent less memory, according to Microsoft. That's good news to anyone who uses Teams already, which has been particularly resource-hungry on older laptops and PCs. Installing the new Microsoft Teams app should be three times faster and launching or joining meetings two times faster, with the app now taking up 70 percent less disk space. Image:... Continue reading...

It's the Flipper Zero. Clearly. | Image: Flipper Zero The Flipper Zero - which the company calls a portable multi-tool for pentesters and geeks in a toy-like body," Verge friend Chris Person calls a Swiss Army Knife of antennas," and my kids call the meebo" because I use it to emulate Amiibos for them - is now available in a limited edition with a transparent shell. I could have made several sentences from that info, but it felt appropriate to the spirit of Flipper Zero to cram it all into one. Image: Flipper Zero If you're excited by the prospect of 18 clearly labeled GPIO ports, I've got great news. Aside from the casing, the limited-edition translucent model is just like the other Flipper Zero units, with (among other things) RFID, NFC, sub-GHz, Bluetooth,... Continue reading...

Samsung's SmartTag2 is smaller and has a larger keyring hole than the previous model. | Image: Samsung Samsung is announcing a new version of its SmartTag item trackers at its Developer Conference today. The aptly named SmartTag2 is the company's second-generation locator device and now features longer battery life, more durability amongst the elements, and better signal penetration with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), so you can find it even if it ends up underground, according to Samsung.SmartTag2 is also smaller than the previous model, so it can fit into tinier spots in your bags and live low-key between your keys. It now has a rated battery life of up to 700 days, which beats out the previous model at 165 days and even Apple's AirTags, which last about one year on a single CR2032 battery. It's not quite as long as Tile's three-year... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge Getty's entire brand is built on authenticity. CEO Craig Peters sat down with us at Code to talk about how the company is dealing with AI and disinformation. Continue reading...

Image: Displace Back at CES 2023, we got a first glimpse at a truly wireless" TV from a startup called Displace. This $3,000 4K OLED TV has swappable batteries that power the screen - and also a vacuum suction system that can keep the display adhered to walls without traditional mounting. And it can stick to virtually any surface, including ceramic and glass. At the time, there were valid questions about what would happen to the 55-inch TV whenever those batteries became fully depleted. Would it just... fall off the wall and come tumbling to the ground?In Las Vegas, Displace mentioned a built-in safety system that would avoid potential disaster but wasn't ready to show it in action. Fast forward to earlier this week, and the company offered a live... Continue reading...

Image: Leica Seven years after releasing the Leica Sofort, Leica has finally announced a sequel: the Leica Sofort 2. The instant film camera will be available for $389 on November 9th.The new Leica Sofort 2 costs about $90 more than its predecessor, and it transforms the product from a fully instant camera into a hybrid instant camera - it takes pictures with a 1/5-inch digital sensor, and you get to choose the photos you want to print. You also have the option of printing out photos you take with your smartphone, just in case you prefer those over the ones the Sofort 2 captures.In addition, the camera now also comes with USB-C support along with a few extra features and design updates. That includes multiple lenses and a lever you can pull to... Continue reading...

Image: Apple Apple's long-in-the-works WWII drama Masters of the Air is only a few months away. The company announced that the series, which comes from the same minds behind Band of Brothers and The Pacific, will start streaming on Apple TV Plus on January 26th. Subsequent episodes will drop every Friday, culminating in the finale on March 15th.As part of the announcement, we also got a first look at the series in the form of some images:Masters of the Air was initially announced in 2019 before Apple TV Plus had launched and was billed as the first project from Apple Studios, the company's relatively new in-house film and TV production arm. It's notable in large part because it reunites Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman as executive... Continue reading...

Image: Charter / Comcast In April 2022, cable operators Comcast and Charter announced a partnership that the companies said would produce a next-generation streaming platform on a variety of branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs." A few months later, we learned that this joint effort would be called Xumo, and now the first hardware device is making its way to customers. It's called the Xumo Stream Box, and at the outset, it's available within Spectrum's service footprint - with availability for Comcast's Xfinity customers to follow.As the consumer exodus from traditional cable continues, the Stream Box is meant to be an end-all, be-all solution that combines inexpensive subscription bundles with an avalanche of FAST (free ad-supported television)... Continue reading...

Even Adobe is sick of using the lasso tool to manually separate objects from photographs. | Image: Adobe Adobe is set to announce a new AI-powered photo editing tool at the Adobe Max event next week that makes it much easier to alter images without prior editing experience. According to a promotional video (seen via Techspot), the new object-aware editing engine" - dubbed Project Stardust - automatically identifies individual objects in regular photographs, allowing them to be easily moved around and changed. It's similar to Google's Magic Editor announced yesterday for its new Pixel phones, but presumably more powerful.A quick demonstration of the new software shows how objects in a photograph - such as the yellow suitcase and its shadow in the example image - are automatically identified and selected as if they had been separated using... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge While Google's search engine has for years been the default on Apple's devices, newly unsealed court testimonies reveal that Apple held talks with both Microsoft and DuckDuckGo to use their search engines across Apple devices, and in Microsoft's case even potentially buying Bing, The Washington Post and Bloomberg report. The potential of a Microsoft deal also served as a useful bargaining chip for Apple when negotiating its lucrative search deal with Google.The details came to light as part of the Department of Justice's landmark antitrust case against Google which accuses the search giant of abusing its dominance of the search market. A key element of this trial is an agreement that sees Google pay Apple billions of dollars a year in a... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The clouds are gathering over Microsoft's Azure operations in the EU and now the UK, with the launch of a new investigation into major cloud service providers that also includes Amazon. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is just about to wrap up its concerns over cloud gaming with Microsoft's proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition, but it will soon turn its attention to Microsoft's Azure cloud offerings and Amazon Web Services (AWS).It's part of a fresh investigation into public cloud providers in the UK, after telecoms regulator Ofcom identified a number of features in the supply of cloud services that make it more difficult for customers to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers."Ofcom found issues with charges that... Continue reading...

Electric Era's PowerNode and charger gives businesses | Image: Electric Era A young electric vehicle infrastructure company founded by former SpaceX employees called Electric Era has designed EV charging stations that convenience stores can buy and manage with minimal power upgrades. Now, with a new round of funding led by Chevron Technology Ventures, the startup hopes it can convince prospective buyers to ease in on the electric vehicle future, especially as gas station traffic eventually dwindles down.People who drive gas cars exist in a more than-century-old ecosystem where they post up at a pump for up to 15 minutes to fuel up, use the bathroom, grab a soda and a pack of cigarettes, and maybe a lottery ticket or a crusty hot dog from the convenience store. However, those pumps and stores might not last as... Continue reading...

Photo by Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images Google is rolling out a Gmail app for Wear OS that will allow smartwatch wearers to view their inbox and open messages. The announcement comes a few months after the app's initial announcement at Google I/O in May.The app (first spotted on the Google Play Store by 9to5Google) allows users to check their email from the comfort of their Pixel Watch. Per 9to5, you can refresh your inbox, scroll full emails, and switch between multiple accounts from the watch interface. New email notifications can also be displayed on the watch's face. Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge The Pixel Watch 2 was also launched today. This is a big step up in functionality for those who use Wear OS. Previously, Wear OS watches could... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge X, formerly Twitter, is no longer showing headlines on articles shared on the platform. Instead, X is only showing the article's lead image and the domain it will link you to.You can see the differences between the new version of link previews in the X iOS app and the old version on the web in this comparison image I stitched together: Screenshots by Jay Peters / The Verge Screenshots comparing the new X link previews on iOS (left) and the old versions on mobile Safari (right). I also made a post on X to demonstrate what's going on. Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge A screenshot of my post on X on iOS. There's no headline under the image, but there is a small text box indicating... Continue reading...

Image: Google Here's a roundup of all the announcements from Google's Pixel 8 launch event. Continue reading...

Image: Artifact Just one week after adding the ability to post, Artifact announced on Wednesday that users can now use AI to generate cover art for their content. The company says the feature will add eye-catching images" that'll help users better tell their stories.Up until recently, Artifact was an AI-powered news app from Instagram's co-founders that aggregated news and links around the internet. By adding the ability to directly share and personalize content, it's becoming even more of a rival to Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). Image: Artifact If you want an image related to EVs, Artifact can generate images of futuristic concept cars. The new Artifact feature is available on the latest versions of the app on iOS... Continue reading...

Screenshot: PBKreviews via YouTube Google only officially took the wraps off the Pixel 8 just hours ago, and people are already tearing it down. In a video posted to YouTube, PBKreviews offers an early look at all the hardware packed behind the phone's 6.2-inch OLED screen.The video starts off with PBKreviews carefully removing the display, which features a fingerprint sensor that's attached to the inside. After attempting to take out the 4,575mAh battery with the included pull tab, PBKreviews loosens up the adhesive beneath the battery with isopropyl alcohol and removes it using a pry tool instead. Screenshot: PBKreviews via YouTube Here's a look at the Pixel 8's main 50MP sensor and 12MP ultrawide camera. Next, PBKreviews removes the 10.5MP... Continue reading...

Apple Store grand opening in Columbia, Maryland. | Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge It's normally pretty easy to get your broken iPhone replaced at Apple's Genius Bar under your AppleCare plan, but a (criminally) enterprising sibling duo found a way to trick the system by swapping counterfeit devices with real ones. Unfortunately for them, they got caught in 2019 attempting to exchange 10,000 fake Apple products over the course of eight years, and this week, they've been sentenced to federal prison, the Times of San Diego reports.San Diego residents Zhimin and Zhiting Liao (also known as Jimmy and Allen Liao) netted themselves around $6.1 million of genuine Apple products, including iPhones and iPads, that they ended up exporting to buyers in foreign countries. The brothers received 41-month federal prison sentences.... Continue reading...

A FEMA sample of the alert message. | Image: FEMA FEMA and the FCC conducted a dual test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) today. FEMA said in its announcements that the test would occur around" 2:20PM ET. For us at The Verge, who are spread across the US, it hit at 2:18PM instead. The text attached to the message went to cellphones in either English or Spanish, depending on the phone's language settings, though radios and TVs may have gotten the alert shortly after. (A TV in my house played the alert at 2:26PM ET.)Unlike the national alert that went out in 2021, you couldn't opt out of this one - it came to every active cellphone that's capable of receiving it that was switched on and connected to a cell tower - including, in my case, three... Continue reading...

Image: BioWare Several BioWare employees are suing their former employer after they alleged the company refused to grant them fair severance packages.A press release from Worobec Law Offices, the firm representing seven ex-BioWare employees, stated that the employees were entitled to one month of severance pay for each year of employment including benefits. The employees averaged 14 years of service to the Dragon Age and Mass Effect developer and were let go after a round of layoffs hit the company back in August.The press release alleged that BioWare offered less than the entitled amount and, when employees attempted to negotiate for more, the company refused to increase its offer. The employees are now suing BioWare for what they say are fairer... Continue reading...

Google's new Pixel 8 certainly looks a whole lot like last year's Pixel 7, which looked a lot like the Pixel 6. | Image: Google Last year's Pixel 7 phones were an iterative spec bump and nice refinement in the design department (as polarizing as their looks remained), but part of what made those phones special was how much they offered for fairly competitive prices.Now, Google has announced the $699 Pixel 8 and $999 Pixel 8 Pro (which are $100 price increases over last year's phones), each due to arrive on October 12th, and once again, they look a lot like a slow burn of subtle hardware improvements - albeit in a slick new light-blue color option on the Pro. But the showstopper feature of the new Pixels may be Google's software support, as it's claiming the new phones will see seven whole years of OS and security updates - rivaling Apple's reign as the... Continue reading...

An example of the emergency alert message going out today. | Image: FEMA As a reminder, at about 2:20PM ET on Wednesday, October 4th, your phone will probably make a loud noise and show a message that reads, THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed." A similar message will be broadcast over the air to TVs and radios that are turned on during the test. That's because the government is testing its nationwide alert systems, which it's required to do at least every three years.The test is a big lift, requiring the coordinated effort of the government, wireless carriers, cable and satellite providers, and local broadcasters. All of the major wireless carriers in the country will, during a 30-minute window, transmit the test to all of their subscribers' phones that are... Continue reading...

Image: Lucasfilm Over the course of eight episodes... not a lot really happens in the first season of the Star Wars spinoff Ahsoka. There's plenty of searching for a map and then getting to the destination on that map, but in a lot of ways, the show felt like moving pieces around on a board, setting them up for future adventures. And yet, I found myself really enjoying it - less for narrative reasons and more because the show leans into the mysticism and mythology of Star Wars in a way that's often ignored by the plentiful shows and movies. This is a Star Wars story full of witchcraft and folklore - and nowhere is that more apparent than in its finale.First, a little setup. The first season of Ahsoka has been almost entirely about one thing: a race to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge French newspaper Liberation has reported that five ex-Ubisoft employees have been arrested in connection with a sexual harassment investigation by French police.According to the paper, in 2021, French police received complaints from the Solidaires Informatique union - a French union that serves digital, consulting, and video game workers - and two individuals. After more than a year of investigation involving extensive interviews with around 50 current and former Ubisoft employees, the arrests were carried out over October 3rd and 4th.Of the five individuals arrested, only two are named - former chief creative officer Serge Hacoset and editorial vice president Tommy Francois, both of whom left the company in 2020.Francois and... Continue reading...

An exasperated-looking Pikachu wearing a detective's hat and standing with his paws on his hips. The pikachu is standing in a park, and behind him you can see overturned apple crates and a number of loose apples rolling on the ground. | Nintendo Though Detective Pikachu Returns has an abundance of personality, its lackluster visuals keep it from feeling like a solid sequel to the original 3DS game. Continue reading...

Image: Google During the Made by Google event, where it debuted new Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2 hardware, Google also announced it's launching Assistant with Bard, which leverages generative AI to provide personalized assistance to users. The company says the new AI-enhanced assistant can do things like help plan your next trip, find details in your email inbox, and even create a grocery list.Just like Bard on the web, Assistant with Bard will integrate with some of the company's existing apps, such as Gmail and Docs, to help you find and summarize information. Additionally, you can interact with the tool through text, voice, or images, and it will still retain some of Assistant's key features that allow you to do things like send a text message. ... Continue reading...