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Google’s first-party cases for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro didn’t go over so well. In the year since those phones were released, the cases have earned an unfavorable reputation for staining and warping out of shape. This 9to5Google article is a good summary of what was so bad about the $29.99 accessory.Some Pixel fans have called for Google to return to the fabric-coated cases that were available for previous generations of its phones. But the company hasn’t gone that route. Instead, the new Pixel 7 and 7 Pro cases are similar in material to the Pixel 6 cases — but they’re now solid colors instead of being semitransparent. That should at least address the staining and yellowing issue. Google has chosen colors that match the hues of the new... Continue reading…

Puff Bar is the most popular e-cigarette brand with teenagers. | Image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Kids are still finding ways to use flavored e-cigarettes despite the Food and Drug Administration’s crackdowns, according to new data from federal agencies. And even though youth vaping rates appear to be falling, 2.5 million kids still said they use the products.The most popular brand of e-cigarettes with middle and high school-age kids is Puff Bar, according to the data, which was collected through the 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey and published by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Puff Bar makes disposable vapes that come in a variety of flavors, and it was able to skirt FDA regulation by switching to synthetic nicotine — which the agency didn’t regulate until this year.In April, Congress passed a law... Continue reading…

A palm tree stands above agricultural fields amid ongoing drought on August 26th, 2022, near Bakersfield, California | Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images Severe drought limited crops, cut power supplies, and fueled out-of-control blazes throughout the summer in North America, Europe, and Asia. Those disastrous summer drought across the Northern Hemisphere were made 20 times more likely because of human-induced climate change, according to a sweeping new study from an international group of researchers with the World Weather Attribution initiative.In August, officials noted that Europe was likely in the thick of its worst drought in 500 years. The same month, Southern China officially entered its longest drought in 60 years of record keeping. Perennially parched California has just had its three driest years on record.What might have seemed outrageous in the past is quickly becoming the... Continue reading…

A close-up shot of the Google Pixel 7 Pro, revealing its three rear-facing camera lenses. | Image: Allison Johnson We now know pretty much everything about Google’s Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, the first flagship phone competition for Apple’s iPhone 14 lineup for late 2022. And though comparing iOS and Android devices is an exercise that’s not exactly straightforward (I’m trying to avoid the apples versus oranges phrase for once in my life), lining up the specs should at least tell you which phone might deliver the right kind of performance or camera quality for your budget.Each of these phones is built on custom processors from their respective creators. And as is usually the case, Apple is being quiet about the usual specs that it doesn’t disclose about its phones, like RAM count and the exact size of the battery, so keep that in mind. All that said,... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Your burning questions about the new smart home standard, answered Continue reading…

The 2016 Google Pixel next to the 2017 Google Pixel 2. This is the midpoint in Google’s journey of delivering phones by Google. | Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge Several years ago, if someone told you they had an Android phone, then it would have been safe to assume they were not talking about Google’s Pixel. Until recently, “Android” had a much stronger association with hardware from Samsung, OnePlus, Huawei, or even LG when it was still making phones. But that mindset may finally be shifting as the Google Pixel slowly gains more name recognition among the Galaxies of the world.The goal of the Pixel is to bring out the best of Android and invite manufacturers and consumers to see what Google’s operating system could — and perhaps even should — look like. After all, the iPhone’s always been known for its consistent interface and cohesive ecosystem across Apple’s devices, while Android phones... Continue reading…

It’s (almost) here. | Image: Valve Valve is now selling the official Steam Deck Docking Station for $89. When we first published this story, there was a button to make a reservation, though changed to a “Buy now!” button soon after. Currently, it’s back to a reservation button.Valve’s official dock is intended to make it easier to hook up the handheld gaming PC to a monitor or television. The dock has three USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 ports, a gigabit ethernet port, a DisplayPort 1.4 port, and an HDMI 2.0 port. It connects to your Steam Deck via a USB-C cable that plugs into the USB-C port on the top of the device. Unlike the Nintendo Switch, using the dock won’t increase the power of your Steam Deck; it only lets you charge the device and connect it to an external display.It’s... Continue reading…

The Pixel 7 Pro gets a slight face-lift but no major exterior changes for 2022. This has been a refrain over the past couple of months, so you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro look and feel a lot like the devices that came before them: the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. Their price tags — $599 and $899, respectively — remain unchanged, too, which is a welcome sight in this Year of Price Hikes and Relentless Inflation. But aside from a slight design tweak and more subdued color options, the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro don’t have much to show on the surface that’s new.Google’s official listed dimensions for the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro suggest that they’re ever so slightly smaller than their predecessors, just by a millimeter here and there. In reality, they both still very much look and feel... Continue reading…

It’s finally arriving. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s edit button is finally arriving in the US. The company will begin gradually rolling out the long-awaited feature to Twitter Blue subscribers in the US on Thursday afternoon, Twitter spokesperson Joseph Nuñez said in an email to The Verge. Lucky subscribers in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have had the ability to edit their typos since Monday, and now it’s coming to the US.I’ve already seen a bunch of edited tweets on my timeline. The key has been to look for a little pencil icon on tweets in your feed or in tweets themselves. If you want to see an edit history, click on a tweet and then on the pencil. Tweets can be edited up to five times and only 30 minutes after someone has posted the tweet. See it for yourself in this... Continue reading…

The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro next to the Pixel 6A. | Image: Google The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are now available for preorder, releasing on Thursday, October 13th. Google is claiming that these are the company’s best phones ever, unsurprisingly, launching with improved camera capabilities, a more buttoned-up design, and jumping from the Tensor in the Pixel 6 to the new Tensor G2 processor. We’ll only know whether these improvements are worth the money once we review them, but there’s a lot that we can glean about their supposed improvements right now from the spec sheet.If you own or are considering buying a Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro, we think it’d be handy if you had a comprehensive graph that compares Google’s latest models to its now-last-gen phones. So, we’ve made one for you. Continue reading…

The all new Pixel Watch is here. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge I’ll admit it: the Pixel Watch didn’t look all that impressive in official renders. It was a circular watch with a digital crown. Big whoop — it’s not like we haven’t seen smartwatches with a similar vibe before. But those renders don’t really do the Pixel Watch justice. In person, it’s actually a lot more impressive.Looking at the Pixel Watch, it really does feel like Google decided to give some folks the circular Apple Watch they’ve been clamoring for. It’s got the curved glass display, a minimalist and techy feel, a digital crown, and a flat side button. Those elements aren’t unique to Apple Watches, but they serve similar functions here. That said, even with the Apple-esque design, it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb when you put... Continue reading…

The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are available for preorder through Google and other retailers Google has pulled back the curtain on its new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, which are now available for preorder at Google and other retailers, with units shipping out on October 13th. These new iterations of the Pixel Phone are equipped with further improvements to the already impressive camera array and a second-generation Google Tensor CPU.The base model of the standard Pixel 7 comes with 128GB of storage and is priced at $599, while the Pixel 7 Pro starts at $899 for its 128GB configuration. The standard Pixel 7 has a larger configuration available with 256GB of storage, while the 7 Pro can be configured with up to 512GB of storage.What’s new with the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 ProBoth the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro look very similar to their... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google just wrapped its big fall event, where it showed off its Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, and the Pixel Watch. (We’ll have hands-on looks up on the site shortly.) The company also offered more details on its upcoming Pixel Tablet coming in 2023. All said, there wasn’t much in the way of surprises this year since Google already spilled its own hardware beans at Google I/O, but it was great to see these devices up close and to get firm prices, release dates, and more.In case you missed out on the event as it happened (you can always scrub through our live blog to see our first takes), we’ve built this post that will tell you every single major announcement that took place. Image: Google Google’s Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro... Continue reading…

The Xbox Series S is adorably compact but still a capable machine. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We’re five days away from Amazon’s Prime Early Access sale, and arguably the best part about it is that other retailers are getting into the mix with competing sales events of their own. The first notable one is Target’s Deal Days, and its best sale is on the Xbox Series S.Here’s the deal: you can get the Xbox Series S console via in-store pickup order at your local Target for $249.99 (regularly $299.99), and when you add a standard Xbox controller to your cart it gets thrown in for free. This includes the slightly pricier red, blue, and electric volt controllers, and the whole deal saves you up to $105 until it ends Saturday. You, of course, still get the usual white controller included with the console.The Xbox Series S is the... Continue reading…

Nintendo At this point, there’s not much information Nintendo can share about Pokémon Scarlet and Violet short of just giving us the game already, but it’s sure gonna try. Today, Nintendo released a honking huge 14-minute long trailer, squeezing out the last bit of juicy details ahead of the game’s launch on November 18th.The informative trailer reminded us of the Paldea region and the unique phenomena of Terastallization by which you can crystalize your pokémon empowering its abilities and potentially changing its type. We also got a glimpse of the new “Let’s Go” command in which a trainer orders its pokémon out into the field to battle other ‘mon in real time. New in Scarlet and Violet is the ability to craft TMs made from materials dropped... Continue reading…

HTC Vive VR teaser: “go small or go home.” While Meta and TikTok owner ByteDance battle to be the premium social media / metaverse company making virtual or augmented reality hardware, HTC is reminding everyone that it has a place in the game, too. Without providing any extra details, it released this simple teaser tweet on Thursday morning, promising to “go small or go home.”A brief HTC press release sent to The Verge described the tweet as a teaser for “a new headset” and noted that it’s been a year since the Vive Flow — HTC’s early stab at a consumer VR headset that looks (sort of) like sunglasses. It references the Flow as the “first” headset made under Project Proton, a super-small headset initiative HTC discussed in 2020. Coupled with the tagline on the tweet, our best... Continue reading…

There are three colorways in total: black, red, and white. Here’s the white colorway with black upholstery and white detailing. | Image: Herman Miller / Logitech Logitech G and Herman Miller have jointly debuted the Vantum gaming chair. It’s available to order now for $995, which is a significant price difference from the $1,500 Embody, the partnership’s first gaming chair I had the pleasure to sit on for many hours in mid-2020. While the Embody was a gamer-friendly twist on a preexisting design in Herman Miller’s catalog of chairs, the Vantum appears to be a new chair altogether. It’ll come in multiple color options (white, red, and black), each including a 12-year warranty. Here’s a side view of the Vantum, showing off its thoracic support pad. Herman Miller says this is the first gaming chair to offer such a thing. Like the Embody, it’s tough to tell exactly what kind of... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Come check out Google’s latest phone — and its first smartwatch Continue reading…

What does it take to build a cell network? According to Ukama, these devices. | Image: Ukama A new company wants to let you become your own cell carrier, using your internet connection even when you’re away from home — and roaming onto the networks of other people doing the same. The company, helmed by former Facebook engineer Kashif Ali, is called Ukama, and it’s launching a crowdfunding campaign on engineering and maker-focused site Crowd Supply to get its devices out to people willing to try out the tech and start building the network.Ukama’s selling a few different pieces of hardware, set to be delivered next summer, according to Ali. The main piece is the $799 Tower Node, which is made to be mounted outside on a roof or building so it can broadcast out your home internet connection via a signal that can reach over half a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Peloton is cutting another 500 jobs, or 12 percent of its workforce, as it attempts to turn around its struggling connected fitness business, CEO Barry McCarthy announced in a memo to staff on Thursday. McCarthy says the company, which has lost money for six quarters straight, has six months to get back on its feet or else it may not be viable as a standalone company, The Wall Street Journal reports.This is Peloton’s fourth round of layoffs this year after it let go of around 2,800 employees in February, 500 in July, and almost 800 in August. Combined, the cuts mean that the company’s workforce will now sit at around 3,800 employees globally. That’s a big drop from Peloton’s peak of 8,600 employees last year but not far off from the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last May, at Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O 2022, there were hints about the company’s upcoming Pixel 7 and 7 Pro phones. Now, five months later, at Google’s Pixel launch event this coming Thursday, we are finally going to be introduced to them. Of course, there won’t be all that many surprises; there have been quite a few hints floating around about their cameras, displays, size, and price. But it will be interesting to see how many of these rumors are correct.Perhaps more interesting is the new Pixel Watch, which is also expected to be introduced and which may mean that Google is finally offering a smartwatch that could be a real contender. Other announcements may include a new Tensor G2 chip, an improved tablet,... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo It’s been a long time coming, but the time is almost here: we’re going to get a look at Nintendo’s upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie. The animated feature was officially announced way back in 2018 as a collaboration between Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment, the animation studio behind Minions, and today, the companies are releasing the first trailer.Since then, we’ve learned small details, most notably about the cast, which will include Jack Black as Bowser, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, and — most controversial of all — Chris Pratt as Mario. Pratt has described his take on the iconic plumber’s voice as “unlike anything you’ve heard in the Mario world before.”

Excellent battery life and a large display make the 14 Plus upgrade-worthy Continue reading…

Blizzard Two days into the launch of Blizzard’s revamped and now free-to-play Overwatch 2 experience, a Wednesday night post on its support forum addressed problems players have had with connections, SMS Protect, and missing account items or account merge troubles.In terms of the connection issues and long queues for entry that are keeping many of us stuck at the loading screen (Login queues, server crashes, and stability problems), a critical login server has been patched to help it hold up under the load. Blizzard says it’s also slowly scaling up the nodes in its player databases to help them handle the onrush of players diving in.Blizzard said: “In all cases, no player data has been wiped or lost.”Beyond the ability to connect to the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Former Uber chief security officer Joe Sullivan has been found guilty of charges that he covered up a 2016 cyberattack where a hacker downloaded the personal information of more than 57 million people. The information stolen from Uber included names, email addresses, and phone numbers for more than 50 million Uber riders and 7 million drivers, as well as driver’s license numbers for another 600,000 drivers.As reported by the New York Times and Washington Post, the jury convicted Sullivan on two counts: one for obstructing justice by not revealing the breach to the FTC and another for misprision, which is concealing a felony from the authorities.This is believed to be the first time a company executive faced criminal prosecution over a... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Back in February, Microsoft announced that an HDR Calibration app to help Windows 11 users optimize color accuracy and consistency for gaming on their HDR displays was on its way. The app, spotted by Thurrott, has now arrived and is available for download.The app includes three test patterns, which you can use to test for the darkest and brightest visible details you can see on your display as well as its maximum brightness. You can customize how vividly colors will appear for both HDR and SDR content. In order to use the app, you’ll need a PC running Windows 11 and an HDR-capable display with HDR turned on. In terms of GPU, you’ll need an AMD RX 400 series or later, an AMD Ryzen processor with Radeon Graphics, an Intel... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro might be Google’s “fastest-selling Pixels to date,” but they haven’t been what I’d consider a slam dunk in the hardware department. I’m not talking about aesthetics here: I’m a fan of the camera bar look, personally, though I detest curved displays. To each their own. Looking at the big picture, I think the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are among the best phones that Google has made — the camera is superb (for stills), and the Tensor chip’s voice typing and dictation capabilities are genuinely next level — but they’re not without some faults. Google has successfully tackled many of the early software bugs, but some lingering hardware concerns remain.A year in, based on my own time using both devices for extended periods and... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard Overwatch 2’s launch has been beset by all of the typical problems that come with the arrival of a hotly anticipated title. Server queues are tens of thousands of players long, and once you do get to the end of your long wait, you’re either booted right then to unceremoniously rejoin the queue — or, as I was, lose your connection at a far more inconvenient time, like in the middle of a match.According to multiple Blizzard developers, the team is hard at work fixing server stability, including fending off at least two DDOS attacks, but the game’s launch problems extend beyond server uptime, namely to account merging and SMS Protect. Image: Blizzard Overwatch 2’s arrival brings with it cross-progression. If you had... Continue reading…

Tweets with multiple pieces of content will show up side-by-side or in a grid. | Image: Twitter Twitter’s rolling out a new feature on both Android and iOS that lets you combine text, photos, videos, and GIFs in a single tweet. The feature was first spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi back in April, with Twitter later confirming it was working on multimedia posts in July. Previously, you could only share one piece of media per tweet.Now that the feature is here, all you need to do is tap the photo icon in the tweet composer and add the media of your choice. The content you add will show up side by side or in a grid-like format, depending on how many images, videos, or GIFs you add. You can see how this might look in these tweets shared by Twitter.

What will happen to Tesla if Elon Musk owns Twitter? Probably near-term stock volatility and long-term foreign influence campaigns. | Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge Tesla shareholders may be experiencing déjà vu this week watching the company’s stock fall on the news that Elon Musk said he’d buy Twitter at the original offer price after all. He had previously tried to back out of buying the company, but Twitter sued him to go through with the purchase.The drop was not as precipitous as it was earlier this year — a 1.5 percent decrease this week versus a 12-point slide last April, wiping $125 billion off the electric automaker’s market valuation. It wasn’t clear if this week’s price drop was because of the Twitter news or residual mockery from the reveal of Tesla’s humanoid robot last week.Tesla is a loose collection of vibes and feelings around Musk’s pole position as a prognosticatorBut Tesla... Continue reading…

The Pixel 6A is one of many Pixels with a virtual horizon since software updates brought it to models as old as the Pixel 3A. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Ever since the Pixel 5 came out in 2020, Google implemented a handy level feature in its camera app that I truly love using. It’s so good, I’m convinced that just about every other smartphone and camera manufacturer should just blatantly rip it off for our collective betterment.The Pixel camera app automatically calls up some nifty virtual horizon lines by default when you hold the phone steady to line up a shot. You guide the two tilting white lines toward a static yellow one, and when your picture is perfectly level from side to side (roll) and front to back (pitch), they all align and turn yellow. You even get a nice haptic buzz once your horizon reaches an even zero degrees. The UI for this assistive tool changes when you point the... Continue reading…

Lille Allen / The Verge The Twitter trial is still on, says Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick in a new legal filing this morning. The judge — who is supervising the bench trial where Twitter is attempting to force Elon Musk to buy the company for $44 billion, as he agreed to do in April — says she has not received any filings for a stay, and so the lawyers should press full-steam ahead.Musk’s deposition is scheduled for tomorrow. One of the contentious issues in the case is whether Musk has turned over all records in his possession. In particular, Musk’s advocacy for privacy-focused messaging service Signal has led Twitter’s lawyers to suggest there are messages he should have turned over and didn’t.In McCormick’s letter today, she says she believes Musk did... Continue reading…

You’ll need at least the Google Pixel Watch app and the Fitbit app to get the most use out of the forthcoming Pixel Watch. | Image: Google It’s an unfortunate truth that getting a smartwatch usually means needing multiple apps to control one device. And it looks like the Pixel Watch won’t be an exception. As spotted by Android Police, you can already find the Pixel Watch as an available device in the Fitbit app’s menus. Selecting the Pixel Watch then prompts users to download the Google Pixel Watch app from the Play Store.So as far as we currently know, you’ll need to download at least two apps to even use the Pixel Watch as intended — regardless of what your preference may be.Based on other smartwatches, the Google Pixel Watch app will probably be where you futz with settings, select watchfaces, and manage watch apps. Being able to add the Pixel Watch to the Fitbit app... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Now seems like the worst time to announce that more ads are coming to Instagram considering the backlash the platform has experienced over its increased focus on video content (via TechCrunch). But Instagram’s doing it anyway, which means we’re going to start seeing ads on the Explore tab and in profiles.We already get ads when scrolling through feeds on the Explore page, but now, Instagram says businesses can put ads on the Explore homepage as well, which is the grid of photos and videos you land on when first opening the tab. If you’re curious as to what this might look like, Instagram provided an example that shows a large ad taking up a pretty big portion of the Explore grid. Image: Instagram Ads could show... Continue reading…

Google will pay an $85 million settlement to the state of Arizona over claims that the company illegally tracked the location of Android device users. | Illustration: The Verge Google will pay an $85 million settlement to the state of Arizona in order to resolve claims that the company illegally tracked the location of Android device users.Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich sued Google in May 2020, claiming that “dark patterns” (design tactics that can manipulate user behavior) were built into its software on Android phones and apps. The suit argued that Google kept location tracking running in the background to collect advertising data, even after users had turned off location sharing, and made privacy settings to keep location information private needlessly difficult to find. This follows a 2018 report from The Associated Press that found Google tracks users through services like Google maps, weather... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A former Amazon employee based in Seattle has been sentenced for her role in a huge data breach that saw Capital One bank pay out more than $250 million to affected customers.Paige Thompson, known online by her handle “erratic,” was convicted in June for the 2019 hack in which more than 100 million people in the US and Canada had their personal information stolen. On Tuesday, a US District Court in Seattle found Thompson guilty of seven counts of computer and wire fraud — punishable by up to 20 years in prison — but the software engineer received a sentence of time served plus five years of probation, to include computer monitoring.According to a press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ), US District Judge Robert S. Lasnik... Continue reading…

The Pro BFG is quite a sight to behold. It’s not as easy on the eyes as Sony’s DualSense, but it offers far more features that serious gamers will likely enjoy tinkering with. | Image: PDP A company beat Sony’s DualSense Edge controller to the quarter-circle punch. PDP’s Victrix sub-brand announced the Pro BFG, a wireless PS5, PS4, and PC (X-Input) controller aimed at fighting game enthusiasts and officially licensed by Sony. The Pro BFG delivers more than just swappable analog sticks and directional pads. The highlight feature is its modular plates that let you remix the layout of the controller. It costs $179.99 to preorder, and it’s launching in December.The default layout of the Pro BFG is similar to the default PS5 controller, with analog sticks near each other underneath the touchpad. You can keep it that way, or you can use the included hex screwdriver to flip it around so that it’s more like an Xbox-style... Continue reading…

The four members of the SpaceX Crew-5 mission. From left are, Mission Specialist Anna Kikina from Roscosmos; Pilot Josh Cassada and Commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, both from NASA; and Mission Specialist Koichi Wakata from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). | SpaceX Update 12:20ET: The Crew-5 mission successfully lifted off at noon, and the first stage booster landed safely on an autonomous drone ship. The crew is now on the way to the ISS. Original article continues below.The history-making Crew-5 mission is about to take off today from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft is set to launch with four astronauts on board, two of whom will usher in firsts for space flight.The crew includes NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada. Mann will make history as the first indigenous woman from NASA to launch into space. She also will be the first female commander of the Dragon crew capsule. Roscosmos’ Anna Kikina will be the first Russian cosmonaut on the... Continue reading…