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Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge CES will continue through the weekend, but The Verge has already seen a whole lot of what the show has to offer. This week on The Vergecast, myself, our editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, and our senior news editor, Richard Lawler, get together and talk about some of the weirdest stuff we’ve seen, the most absurd concepts, and all the genuinely cool tech coming out of the show.We start the show talking about some of the goofiest car concepts we saw, including the Sony and Honda collaboration dubbed Afeela and BMW’s new concept that has color-changing panels (courtesy of E Ink) and a digital assistant.We then moved on to talk about TVs, Lenovo’s dual-screen laptop, and plenty of smaller, fun gadgets like Withings’ new pee sensor. It’s a... Continue reading…

Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge The Always Home Cam, Ring’s autonomous indoor security drone, made its public debut at CES this week. But it was flying in an empty room behind a glass door and disappearing into a side room between flights, so we never saw it take off or land. The demo, while impressive, shows that it’s unlikely we’ll see Ring’s indoor security camera patrolling your living room anytime soon.Despite announcing preorders (by invitation only) for the security camera in 2021 and saying it would ship to customers’ homes that year, Ring still hasn’t committed to a new date. “We are looking forward to — in the next short future — shipping it out to customers at high volume,” founder Jamie Siminoff told The Verge in an interview. But he also said 2024 was... Continue reading…

The Pixel 7 (left), and Pixel 7 Pro (right). | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Pixel 7 owners are taking to Twitter and Reddit to report that the glass covering the phone’s rear camera is shattering, despite the phone apparently not being knocked or dropped. PhoneArena and Android Police have pulled together photos from numerous owners showing the damage to their handsets, with reports stretching back at least as far as November — just a month after the phone went on general sale.Photos posted across social media show both $599 Pixel 7 and $899 Pixel 7 Pro phones suffering from the issue. Owners are reporting being quoted anywhere from $200 to over $400 to fix the damage, though others say Google has agreed to conduct repairs under warranty.

Good news for folks who dislike the yoke-only steering wheel on the Tesla Model S and Model X — you can now configure the vehicles with a round wheel option again. | Image: tesla Tesla has re-introduced a round steering wheel option for its Model S and Model X vehicles, following two years of criticism regarding the practicality and safety of the racing-style yoke steering. As noted by Electrek, the Tesla online configurator for the Model S/X was updated on Thursday, adding the option for a round steering wheel alongside the existing yoke. Selecting the rounded wheel option doesn’t impact the price or the estimated delivery timeline. Other Tesla models such as the Model 3 and Model Y are already available with a round steering wheel.A controversial redesign for both the Model S and Model X in 2021 ditched the traditional steering wheel (and control stalks) in favor of a singular yoke option with capacitive... Continue reading…

When you open the app, it shows an announcement saying it’ll no longer be available. On January 25th, Snap will be shutting down its camera app for Mac and PCs. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, you may remember it as the program that let you apply silly filters to your face while you were on Zoom or other video conference calls. It’s also, as Verge alum Billy Disney pointed out on Mastodon, the reason a boss accidentally showed up to a work meeting as a potato in 2020:

If your Wear OS watch has a cellular connection, you can get turn-by-turn directions. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google Maps on Wear OS is getting a big navigation upgrade. On Thursday, Google announced that you can now get turn-by-turn directions in Google Maps on internet-connected Wear OS watches without a smartphone (via Droid Life). That means if you’re out and about with a cellular-connected watch (like, say, the cellular-enabled Pixel Watch) with an active LTE plan or your watch is connected via Wi-Fi, you can get directions right on your wrist even if you don’t have your phone.Wear OS fans have been waiting a little while for this update; Google and Samsung had said in August that phone-less Google Maps navigation for Wear OS watches was on the way. At the time, Samsung said the feature was “coming soon,” according to 9to5Google — turns... Continue reading…

Image: Lenovo Last month, I spent 15 whole minutes hunched over an HP Spectre x360 in a drafty Best Buy store — agonizing over whether its amazing OLED screen would destroy the laptop’s battery life and repeatedly googling for the answer. When I found out the answer was “yes, substantially less battery,” I had to walk away.But why should I have to choose between a great screen and one I use all day? Why not both? That’s the idea behind the ThinkBook Plus Twist, a new laptop that Lenovo’s announcing at CES 2023.Not only does it have a 13.3-inch, 400-nit, 60Hz 2.8K OLED touchscreen that covers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, you can swivel its screen around to reveal another 12-inch, color E Ink touchscreen around back — one that refreshes 12... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Just last month, Warner Bros. Discovery followed up on its decision to cancel Westworld by full-on yanking the show from HBO Max — a drastic, money-saving decision that was yet another part of CEO David Zaslav’s grand plan to get the company back in the black. Now, though, Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels says the entertainment conglomerate is getting ready to shift gears and put more of its energies into creating new things rather than tearing apart what already exists.Speaking at Citibank’s annual Communications, Media & Entertainment Conference today, Wiedenfels was adamant about 2023 being a year of “relaunching and building,” Variety reports. Wiedenfels said that Warner Bros. Discovery felt the need to take “a little... Continue reading…

The Eargo 7 are FDA-cleared self-fitting OTC hearing aids that can now be bought at 1,500 Victra Verizon dealerships. | Image: Eargo 2023 is going to be a big year for hearables. While the concept isn’t new, this is the first CES since the FDA established a new category of over-the-counter hearing aids for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss. OTC hearing aids began hitting shelves in mid-October, and they’re on the show floor in Vegas right now. But the best hearables are from brands you’ve likely never heard of.Take the Eargo 7.If you’re familiar with hearables, you’re probably not surprised to see Eargo with an FDA-cleared OTC self-fitting hearing aid at CES. The company has been a CES regular since 2015, and technologically speaking, its seventh-gen device isn’t so much a novel never-before-seen gadget as it is a refinement. (The Eargo 7 is technically... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Android phones will soon be getting a feature similar to — and perhaps even more powerful than — Apple’s Emergency SOS via satellite. Qualcomm has announced that its new processors and modems will allow phones to communicate with the Iridium satellite network, letting users send and receive messages even in areas without cell coverage.The feature, called Snapdragon Satellite, will be available in phones that have both Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and its X70 Modem system, along with some additional radios. Phones that support it should be “launched in select regions starting in the second half of 2023,” according to the company’s press release, and there are several manufacturers working on designs, according to Francesco... Continue reading…

Sony and Honda’s new EV prototype: Afeela. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge CES rumbles on, and Apple sneaks out a new audiobook feature. Continue reading…

Razer claims the Leviathan V2 Pro can envelop a user with “3D audio” thanks to a built-in IR camera that allows it to optimize audio based on the users location. | Image: Razer Soundbars might not be the audio system of choice for most desktop setups, but Razer is trying is offering a new one for people who don’t want to mess with headsets or finicky surround sound systems. The popular gaming tech company just announced the Leviathan V2 Pro at CES 2023, the latest addition to its existing range of soundbars designed to provide compact, low-profile audio for PC gamers.Created in partnership with THX and Audioscenic, Razer claims that the Leviathan V2 Pro can envelop a user with “3D audio” by combining beamforming surround sound with head-tracking AI technology. A built-in IR camera can detect the user’s position, allowing the soundbar to optimize sound by adapting the audio beams to the listener’s position in... Continue reading…

The HTC Vive XR Elite. | Image: HTC HTC is opening preorders for a new virtual and augmented reality headset, the Vive XR Elite. The XR Elite is a $1,099 standalone headset that’s designed to compete with Meta’s Quest headsets and the rumored Apple AR / VR device. Shipping in late February worldwide, it supports the gamut of consumer games and software HTC has offered on past VR headsets, plus mixed reality experiences using full-color passthrough video.The Vive XR Elite is aimed at consumers who want games, passive media, and productivity tools in a relatively lightweight package. HTC promised a small and light design, and the XR Elite weighs in at 625 grams, making it heavier than the Meta Quest 2 but notably lighter than the 722-gram Quest Pro. It offers mixed reality... Continue reading…

Even high-end smartphone cameras are notoriously bad at capturing accurate skin tones. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A Belgium-based company is looking beyond the visible light spectrum to put an end to a common problem for smartphone cameras: bad color reproduction. Spectricity is debuting its new S1 multispectral sensor at CES 2023, and it could be headed to smartphones on store shelves sooner than later.Standard camera sensors are limited to using certain bands of the visible spectrum — red, green, and blue. The S1, which is designed to complement the main camera system, can gather much more data, including in the near-infrared range. The company says this results in better color reproduction and more accurate skin tones, and it has big aspirations for this technology: CEO Vincent Mouret says he expects all smartphones to incorporate it “within the... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Nvidia’s latest RTX 4070 Ti graphics card goes on sale in the US and across Europe today. The “unlaunched” 12GB RTX 4080 is now the RTX 4070 Ti, with a $799 starting price point. That price, although still high, is key for this new GPU. AMD’s $899 Radeon RX 7900 XT beats Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Ti in many titles at both 1440p and 4K, so the $100 price difference really has to hold.Nvidia had planned to launch the RTX 4070 Ti as an $899 12GB RTX 4080 version. The company faced widespread criticism over pricing and how much more powerful the 16GB RTX 4080 was. Nvidia admitted in October that “having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing,” before saying it was pausing the launch of the 12GB RTX 4080.While Nvidia isn’t shipping a... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge I’m excited to announce Command Line, a new weekly newsletter from I’ll be writing at The Verge.Command Line is focused on the people and strategies leading the most consequential companies in tech. Each Thursday, I’ll dive into the biggest stories of our time, from the belt-tightening that’s happening across Big Tech to what’s next for generative AI, social media, and the looming AR headset wars, and give you scoops, insight, and perspective you won’t find anywhere else. The first edition comes out later today.My goal is to break a lot of news on the industry I’ve been passionate about covering for a long time and to regularly bring you exclusive conversations with the most interesting people in my contact list. It’s also a chance... Continue reading…

Kensington revealed the TB450 and TB550 trackballs at CES this year | Image: Kensington Trackball stans, rejoice! Kensington, one of the few remaining manufacturers of premium trackball mice, has announced two new options for the ergonomic diehards out there. Kensington introduced a pair of more budget-friendly options at CES 2023 with its new Pro Fit Ergo Trackball lineup, the $69.99 TB550 and $49.99 TB450. They join the $119.99 wireless SlimBlade Pro Trackball in Kensingtons’ trackball lineup, but where the SlimBlade Pro is manipulated by the user’s fingers, the new offerings rely on the thumb to get the cursor moving. Image: Kensington The TB450 will cost $50 and is battery-operated. Both the TB450 and TB550 offer the same ergonomic shape with the trackball stationed under the thumb and are... Continue reading…

The Rachio Smart Hose Timer (pictured) can be directly connected to a faucet, allowing you to control and monitor your watering schedule via a free app. | Image: Rachio There are plenty of smart home gadgets being showcased at CES this year, but frankly, I’m most excited by the prospect of autonomous lawn care. Luckily for me (and my poor neglected garden), both Moen and Rachio are releasing new smart irrigation gadgets that can be used to remotely control watering locations and frequency in your yard, helping to keep plants healthy while reducing water waste. And only one of them actually requires you to already have an expensive irrigation system in place.First up, Moen is expanding its Smart Water Network — a system of products designed to control and monitor water usage — with a new Smart Sprinkler Controller and Smart Wireless Soil Sensors. Moen claims that the Smart Sprinkler Controller can be... Continue reading…

AMD has acknowledged reports of its Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPUs overheating and is currently investigating the cause. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Several user reports have appeared since the launch of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card last month that claim the GPU is impacted by performance issues due to running at excessively high temperatures. Now, AMD has released a statement acknowledging that some Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference GPUs have been affected by a manufacturing fault.The issues were initially reported on forums like Reddit where multiple users said their RX 7900 GPUs were overheating, which throttled performance and in some cases, crashed their computer systems. Temperatures as high as 115 degrees Celsius (239 Fahrenheit) have been reported. While the Radeon RX 7900 Series desktop GPUs can operate up to 110 degree Celsius when under heavy loads (such as 4K... Continue reading…