The Verge

Kohler’s PerfectFill technology can run your bath for you. | Image: Kohler Kohler’s long-touted PerfectFill technology is finally here, and frazzled parents everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief. The company announced the availability of its smart bath tech at CES 2022 this week, which lets you fill up a bathtub with a simple voice command. So, if you’re downstairs cooking dinner and want to get the kids’ bath going, you can just ask Alexa or Google to run the bath for you.PerfectFill consists of drain kit and digital valve that work together to draw the bath to your preferred temperature and depth. So, no more worrying about flooding the bathroom because you forgot it was running or scalding junior when they jump in the bath. Image: Kohler The PerfectFill digital wall controller... Continue reading…

Contrary to this image, Concept Nyx squeezes both screens down in size to make the full playing space for each game viewable. | Dell For CES 2022, Alienware is showing off its Concept Nyx, which imagines a future when loading and playing games on a variety of screens can happen as instantaneously as streaming music and TV shows. The idea is simple on its face (though undoubtedly complex underneath the veil): through the Nyx software, all of your PC games would be available to stream wirelessly to a variety of screens at home, regardless of where you bought them.Imagine you’re playing Cyberpunk 2077 on your PC display, but you want to move over to the living room couch and play on a big TV. The idea is that you’d be able to tap a button in an app, and the game would wirelessly swap displays, letting you hog the TV all to yourself or have your game squeeze next to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Staring at your non-fungible tokens on a smartphone or laptop screen is fine and all, but why not remind everyone who visits your home of the money you spent on digital art NFTs by showcasing them on your TV screen? Somehow we’re in a world where that’s about to become reality: Samsung says it’s planning extensive support for NFTs beginning with its 2022 TV lineup.“With demand for NFTs on the rise, the need for a solution to today’s fragmented viewing and purchasing landscape has never been greater,” the company said in a press release. “In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world’s first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator, a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art — all... Continue reading…

Image; Samsung CES is always a moment when companies reiterate their dedication to environmental causes and trumpet their latest, more efficient products and packaging. After introducing a solar-powered Eco Remote for its 2021 TVs, Samsung is back again with a new version that comes with a pretty fascinating trick.Like the previous Eco Remote, this one can be charged with solar energy, but Samsung has also added RF harvesting capabilities that let the remote preserve its charge by “collecting routers’ radio waves and converting them to energy.” Neat. You don’t see this in many gadgets — mostly because it’s really only practical for low-power devices. But remotes certainly fall into that category.Aside from the new RF harvesting option, the Eco... Continue reading…

The new “Samsung Gaming Hub” | Image: Samsung Samsung is revealing a new lineup of smart TVs at CES 2022 today, including features as exotic as radio-wave powered remote controls and support for NFTs — and they also happen to be the first Samsung sets in a while to let you play triple-A video games from the cloud instead of just your Xbox, PlayStation or PC. After an vague tease in October, Samsung is now confirming that “select” 2022 models will explicitly offer access to Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Google Stadia, and the Utomik cloud gaming service as part of a new “Samsung Gaming Hub,” a user interface which Samsung’s intending to expand to additional services as well.The Samsung Gaming Hub isn’t just for cloud gaming, either. Intriguingly, the company says that your HDMI-connected... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung Samsung has managed to single-handedly define the category of “lifestyle TVs” — high-design TV sets that blend into the home more seamlessly than traditional TVs — with The Frame. I’ve got several friends, coworkers, and family members who have recently purchased some model in The Frame lineup. For them, the device’s stylish look, customizable bezels, and ability to showcase artwork or personal photos when the TV is “off” are more important than the latest picture quality or HDMI specs.For 2022, the company is hoping to take The Frame to the next level and make its wall art parlor trick more convincing than ever before. Samsung says the latest models will have a matte, anti-reflective display with a “lifelike” texture that feels like... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung Samsung introduced its first TVs with Mini LED technology at CES 2021, and they wound up being perhaps the best sets that the company has produced yet — not counting the exorbitantly priced The Wall, that is. So this year, Samsung is opting for a different approach: it’s taking smaller strides in hardware and focusing more of its efforts on software refinement and new features.Samsung’s 2022 TVs will continue to run the company’s Tizen OS, but they’ll now come with a totally revamped home screen that’s described as “a testament to our vision for the future of TVs.” The first part of the new user experience is what Samsung calls the Media Screen. This will “put all of your streaming service content into one, easy-to-browse place” with a... Continue reading…

An Asus Z690 Hero motherboard with burnt up MOSFETs. | Image by Actually Hardcore Overclocking via YouTube A YouTuber who goes by the name of Buildzoid on the Actually Hardcore Overlocking channel has figured out that a backward capacitor on the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard is causing it to melt down, according to a report by Tom’s Hardware. Asus has since acknowledged the issue in a post on its site and plans on issuing replacements to customers with affected motherboards.Problems with the Z690 Hero motherboard started turning up on the Asus support forum, as well as on Reddit, and the issues experienced by users are pretty much identical. As noted by Tom’s Hardware, users reported that their motherboards started smoking in the same spot: the two MOSFETs (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) next to the DIMM slots... Continue reading…

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge In an ongoing battle pitting the FAA and airlines against the FCC, Verizon, and AT&T over their planned launch of mid-band 5G service, the mobile carriers are declining a request by the FAA for a two-week delay.Earlier this year, an FCC auction sold the two carriers rights to use so-called “C-band” frequencies at a price of nearly $70 billion. Verizon and AT&T are eager to roll it out so that in addition to offering ultra-fast 5G connectivity in specific areas using high-band millimeter-wave technology and much slower 5G over low-band frequencies, the new spectrum will provide in-between performance over much wider areas. T-Mobile currently uses mid-band spectrum that isn’t in the C-band.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you woke up on January 1st, 2022, and found that your work email’s inbox was unusually empty, you aren’t alone. Microsoft rang in the New Year with a bug that prevents Exchange servers from sending emails, but fortunately, a fix has since been issued, as detailed in a report by Bleeping Computer.“The problem relates to a date check failure with the change of the new year”“The problem relates to a date check failure with the change of the new year and is not a failure of the AV engine itself,” Microsoft explains in a post on its Tech Community forum. “The version checking performed against the signature file is causing the malware engine to crash, resulting in messages being stuck in transport queues.”Microsoft outlines the solution... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Tesla delivered a record 936,172 vehicles in 2021, as outlined in a report from Tesla, representing an 87 percent increase over the 499,550 vehicle deliveries Tesla made in 2020.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Twitter has permanently suspended Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account for repeatedly violating the platform’s rules on COVID-19 misinformation, as noted in a report by CNN. Since the ban only affects Greene’s personal Twitter account, @mtgreenee, she can still access and tweet from her governmental account, @RepMTG.In a statement to The Verge, Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough explains that the platform “permanently suspended” Greene’s account “for repeated violations” of the platform’s COVID-19 policies. “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” she adds.Twitter implemented a five-strike system for COVID-19... Continue reading…

Samsung Samsung is adding onto its lineup of smart monitors with the 4K 32-inch M8. Like the models that are currently on sale, this new one can deliver smart TV-like functionality, including offering access to streaming apps, in addition to being able to plug into a computer like normal monitors. The company hasn’t revealed a release date or price, but the initial details we’ve learned prove that Samsung is going a few steps further with the M8 to make it even more useful to a variety of people.This smart monitor is 11.4mm-thick, which Samsung says is significantly thinner than prior models. Perhaps the most impressive feature is its magnetic and moveable SlimFit camera that can attach to the monitor for video calls. The monitor itself... Continue reading…

Samsung Samsung has announced a smaller version of its Odyssey Neo curved gaming monitor. The Odyssey Neo G8 is a 32-inch gaming monitor with the same 1000R curvature of the $2,500 49-inch Odyssey Neo G9. The R stands for radius and, compared to 1800R and 1500R curvature, which are both common in the monitor market, Samsung specializes in the 1000R curvature that’s far more, well, curvy. It makes 1800R look like a flat panel by comparison. The G8 similarly has 2,000 nits of peak brightness and promises brilliant picture quality with its Quantum Mini-LED panel.Samsung hasn’t shared a price or a release date for the Odyssey Neo G8, but it’s offering up just a few images and details until a later date. Aside from the difference in size, the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The second-generation AirPods Pro may support Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), and could even come with a case that makes a sound to help you find it, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in a note to investors seen by AppleInsider and 9to5Mac.There currently isn’t an AirPods model that supports lossless audio, a form of file compression that preserves all of the data in the original audio file, resulting in higher quality sound. Each AirPods model — even the pricey AirPods Max — uses Bluetooth to deliver audio, which limits the devices to using Advanced Audio Codec (AAC), a lossy form of audio compression. Thus far, the only Apple devices that can take advantage of lossless audio on Apple Music (and elsewhere) include the iPhone,... Continue reading…

What would a Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, or Deus Ex look like if it were partly powered by the blockchain, so gamers could make money from their contributions? You may get to find out: Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda has revealed that the company’s New Year’s resolution is to release “decentralized games” starting in 2022.While you won’t find any details in Masuda’s letter discussing the company’s strategy for the new year, you will find a good sense of his cautious-but-optimistic stance — not surprising, given how other game companies that recently Leeroy Jenkins’d their way into NFTs saw such immediate whiplash you could practically feel the vibrations over the internet.Here’s the most relevant section, which comes near the... Continue reading…

Photo by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images Airbnb announced that it’s changing the way guest profiles are displayed in its app — for Oregon residents specifically. Airbnb hosts who are based in Oregon will now see a potential guest’s initials, rather than their full name, until after they’ve confirmed that guest’s booking request. The change will fully roll out by January 31st.The change aims to prevent racial discrimination among hosts, per the company’s announcement, by stopping them from gleaning a guest’s race from their name. A 2016 study found that Airbnb guests with names that sounded Black were 16 percent less likely to have bookings confirmed than guests with names that sounded white.The announcement follows a voluntary settlement agreement that Airbnb reached in... Continue reading…

Apple wants you to know that buying a $400 smartwatch could be a matter of life-and-death — and it’s brilliantly, gruesomely captured that feeling in a new TV ad.Titled “911,” the one-minute ad spot doesn’t show any of the gory details — you simply hear three phone conversations between 911 operators and people who managed to use their Apple Watch when facing seemingly imminent death: one who might drown in a sinking car, one who fell a great distance and broke his leg, and a paddleboarder who got swept out to sea.They each have a happy ending, Apple informs us: “With the help of their watch, Jason, Jim, and Amanda were rescued in minutes.” But the underlying message is brutally clear: if they didn’t have this miraculous life-saving... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge US officials have asked AT&T and Verizon to further delay new 5G deployments so that the Federal Aviation Administration can have more time to determine where they might interfere with airlines. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent a letter to the CEOs of the two telecoms on Friday requesting a delay of “no more than two weeks,” according to Reuters.AT&T and Verizon had already delayed these deployments by a month over regulators’ concerns and planned to start the rollout on January 5th as a result. The two telecoms now tell Insider they are reviewing the latest request for a further delay. Buttigieg and Dickson write that, even with an additional delay, they expect 5G deployment will still... Continue reading…

Cover art for A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and other books, movies, and compositions from 1926 enter into the public domain today in the US. The works are now “free for all to copy, share, and build upon,” according to Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which tracks which copyrighted materials will become public each year.This year, the usual list of books, movies, and compositions comes with a sizable bonus: a trove of around 400,000 early sound recordings. A recent law, the 2018 Music Modernization Act, standardized how early sound recordings are handled under federal copyright law. As part of that, it set today as the date that copyright protections would end for “recordings first published... Continue reading…

Photo by HUSSEIN FALEH/AFP via Getty Images Some tens of thousands of people woke up on Christmas Day to doubled wages and a higher-than-expected bank balance after Santander did an oopsie, depositing £130 million ($176 million) into accounts held by its UK customers. Santander would now like the money back, please.The deposit mishap was the result of a mysterious “scheduling issue,” according to The Times, which first reported the story. The bank confirmed to The Verge that some payments were accidentally doubled. (Santander is characterizing it as a “technical issue.”) Those transactions included those from 2,000 businesses, as well as accidental deposits across 75,000 accounts of individuals and companies like a corporate Ebeneezer Scrooge who’d been scared into generosity.S... Continue reading…

Amelia Holowaty Krales CES has dropped the last day of its 2022 tech conference in Las Vegas, and the show will now end on January 7th, the Consumer Technology Association announced today. The shorter schedule is “an additional safety measure” in the face of a surge of COVID-19 diagnoses.Over the last two weeks, a number of large companies — including BMW, Intel, AMD, GM, Google, T-Mobile, Amazon, Microsoft and the company formerly known as Facebook — have dropped their physical presences at the conference. It’s the largest tech conference in the world, which typically pulls more than 10,000 people in each year.The CTA’s president and CEO has said the show “will and must go on.”Yesterday the US set a grim new record in COVID: the highest number of... Continue reading…

Fires continue to burn into the evening in neighborhoods on December 30, 2021 in Louisville, Colorado. | Photo by Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images Devastating fires in Colorado cap off a year of awful drought across the US. Dry conditions helped set the stage for blazes that scorched hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands to evacuate just ahead of New Year’s Eve.The fires have been raging through suburbs near Denver since December 30th. Strong winds fanned the flames and knocked out power. About 6,000 acres and at least 500 homes had burned by Friday morning. But there were no casualties, which Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle called “miraculous” given the severity of the fire in a press briefing. Families had “minutes” to evacuate their homes, Governor Jared Polis said.More than two-thirds of Colorado’s land is experiencing “severe” drought, according to the US Drought... Continue reading…

U.S. President Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting on Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act at South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building August 11, 2021 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images Starting today, eligible US residents can apply for help with their internet bills under the new Affordable Connectivity Program. The program launched today with $14.2 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in November.Households can apply to take up to $30 a month off their internet service bill. For households on qualifying Tribal lands, the discount is up to $75 per month. The program could help to connect millions of people to the internet who haven’t had access to it at home, especially in communities that have historically faced more barriers to getting online.Almost a third of people living on Tribal lands lacked high-speed internet at home in 2017, according to a report by the Federal Communications Commission... Continue reading…

Photo by Jacob Moscovitch/Getty Images Mike Parson, Governor of Missouri, does not understand how websites work. He held a press conference earlier this week in St. Louis to once more reiterate his desire to prosecute a St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist for looking at the source code of a state-run website.In October 2021 reporter Josh Renaud reported that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website source code had exposed the social security numbers of over 100,000 school teachers, administrators, and counselors. He published the story only after he’d reported the problem to the state and the vulnerability had been resolved.Parson and the DESE were apparently not grateful for the alert and immediately accused Renaud of “hacking” the DESE website. Missouri... Continue reading…

This year’s entry-level iPad is currently on sale at Amazon for $299. | Image: Apple It’s New Year’s Eve, and while that means we are very soon waving goodbye (and good riddance) to the year 2021, it just wouldn’t be special enough day without a selection of great tech deals from your friends at Verge Deals. This has certainly been a jam-packed year full of, well, chaos, but also some great gadgets and worthwhile savings that help you save some coin along the way. While we can’t wait to bring you even more in 2022, let’s not get ahead of ourselves too quickly. Below, we’ll highlight some of the best deals for you in the world of tech.Starting us off, there is no better bang-for-the-buck tablet on the market for most people than Apple’s latest base-model iPad. The 10.2-inch model mostly stands alone in terms of the... Continue reading…

As we near the end of 2021, The Verge’s art team looked back on the past year to reflect on some of our favorite pieces. Our team produced a wide range of original art: from captivating photography of the future of energy, to illustrations representing the last 10 years of The Verge for our anniversary issue, to dozens of stunning shots for our reviews, to a photo shoot of a lot of chicken wings. Below is a selection of our best photography and illustration from our reviews, special issues, gift guides, features, and more. Verge 10Illustration by Micha HuigenTo mark ten years of publishing at The Verge, we looked back on a decade of tech coverage and examined what might come next. Micha Huigen’s art distills this... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge The best games you can play on the Vive, Rift, or Quest 2 Continue reading…

Foxconn’s Indian operation began assembling iPhones for Apple outside of China for the first time in 2021. Apple is sending independent auditors to investigate an iPhone assembly facility in India, after poor working and living conditions at the plant prompted workers to go on strike.The facility in southern India is operated by longtime Apple partner Foxconn. An investigation by Reuters found that women working at the plant were laboring in extremely difficult conditions, forced to sleep on the floor in crowded dorms and sharing toilets without running water. Recently, an outbreak of food poisoning left 150 individuals hospitalized, prompting workers to strike and shut down the plant on December 18th.In response, Apple says it’s put the plant on “probation” (though the company hasn’t said what this means for Foxconn or the workers who... Continue reading…

QWERTY and quirky — Blackberry’s later Android incarnations retained the famous keyboard. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Dear friends, we’re gathered here today to mourn the death of that once-beloved monarch of the mobile world: BlackBerry. And, yes, I realize that this is not the first time we’ve announced the death of the company or its devices (and, for reasons I’ll explain below, it likely won’t be the last) but this is a very definite ending for legacy BlackBerry hardware.As of January 4th, any phones or tablets running BlackBerry’s own software — that’s BlackBerry 7.1 or earlier, BlackBerry 10, or its tablet operating system BlackBerry PlayBook — will “no longer reliably function,” says the company. Whether on Wi-Fi or cellular, there’ll be no guarantee you can make phone calls, send text messages, use data, establish an SMS connection, or even... Continue reading…

The test is simple. Remove your hand from the box and you die. | Image: Bauhütte Here’s something for the gamer that has everything: a tabletop hand massager that can be used to remove fatigue from your aching mitts and keep you on top form.Created by Japanese makers of gaming hardware and peripherals, Bauhütte, the device uses 15 heated air cushions to supposedly simulate the feeling of a real massage and, well, why the hell not. Bauhütte recommends you use the massager before gaming to warm up your hands; during breaks to improve circulation; and after you’ve finished to rub the stiffness out of your tired little fingers. Because you deserve it.A shiatsu mode will apparently rub your palms with firm pressure, while a “thimble” mode will pull and stretch each finger one by one. The only thing missing is a... Continue reading…

Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Image: Square Enix If you’re a PC gamer who has not already done so, you may want to open up the Epic Games Store and snag the final installment for its 15 Days of Free Games promotion. It’s especially worth your time because instead of gifting users a single title like Shenmue III or Control, the Epic Games Store is ready to cough up the entire rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy: Tomb Raider Game of the Year Edition, Rise of the Tomb Raider 20 Year Celebration, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition.Trying to add the titles to your digital library earlier today was harder than it should’ve been, as continued server problems, following yesterday’s Fortnite outage, slowed down the store. It’s unclear if Epic Games is still having issues or if people... Continue reading…

Canon EOS-1D X Mark III | Image: Canon When Canon revealed the EOS-1D X Mark III in January 2020, we proclaimed that the DSLR “still isn’t dead,” but that camera will mark the end of the line for a flagship model that some pro photographers still swear by to capture everything from sporting events to wild animals.An end to the production and development timeline of the EOS-1 is estimated as “within a few years.”CanonRumors points out an interview Canon’s chairman and CEO Fujio Mitarai gave this week to the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun (via Y.M. Cinema Magazine). The piece highlight how high-end mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras have taken market share digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras previously dominated.In it, the CEO is quoted (in Japanese, which... Continue reading…

Samsung has started teasing its next flagship smartphone SoC — expected to be called the Exynos 2200 — ahead of a January 11th announcement with a tantalizing tidbit of information: the new chipset will feature a GPU powered by AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture, better known for powering the next-gen graphics on the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and AMD’s RX 6000-series graphics cards.Of course, given that the Exynos 2200 will be powering a smartphone, the new GPU won’t be magically enabling next-gen graphics on par with the most powerful consoles and gaming PCs. But it likely will enable some improvements in graphics, along with whatever other upgrade Samsung has up its sleeve for its latest flagship chip.

Image: evleaks (Twitter) It looks like Samsung’s next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S22 Ultra, will borrow more heavily from the Galaxy Note’s DNA than ever before. In fact, a newly leaked official render published by Evan Blass confirms that the phone is pretty much a Note in every way except for its name. Wider screen with more surface to write on? Check. S Pen silo? Check. Flat top and bottom? Yep. Around back is a camera array that sticks closely to the layout from the S21 Ultra.Personally, I think the S21 Ultra was one of the boldest, best-looking phones Samsung has ever produced — especially that sleek matte black version. It owned the large camera bump in a way that actually looked good. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung PCIe 5.0 SSDs have already started to get announced ahead of CES 2022, with Samsung and Adata teasing early hardware that supports the new standard. But it’s not just theoretical: Intel has released a new demo video showing off Samsung’s new PM1743 PCIe NVMe SSD in action (together with Intel’s Core i9-12900K CPU, of course) to hit data speeds over 13GB/s in the real world.

Water vapor rises from the NRG Energy Inc. WA Parish generating station in Thompsons, Texas, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. The plant was home to the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project, until it shut down in 2021 because of high costs. | Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Biden administration wants to shove more money into projects that are supposed to capture CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial facilities before they can escape and heat up the planet. But carbon capture technologies that the Department of Energy has already supported in the name of tackling climate change have mostly fallen flat, according to a recent report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office.About $1.1 billion has flowed from the Department of Energy to carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects since 2009. Had they panned out, nine coal plants and industrial facilities would have been outfitted with devices that scrub most of the CO2 out of their emissions. Once captured, the CO2 can be sent... Continue reading…

Attendees walk through the Las Vegas Convention Center January 10, 2020 on the final day of the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) | Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images BMW has announced it will no longer be showing up in person for media events at CES 2022 — the giant electronics show that’s typically held each January in Las Vegas, attracting well over 100,000 attendees per year from around the world. It’s the latest company to at least partially bail on the show, following announcements from Intel, AMD, GM, Google, T-Mobile, Amazon, Meta, Waymo, and a large number of tech publications, including The Verge, as COVID cases rise in the US.Reports indicated BMW will show a car with color-changing paint and a “Theater Screen” for in-car cinematic experiencesA statement from BMW says, “Out of an abundance of caution, BMW will move all planned media activities at CES to a fully online program from Germany... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales The rollout of the first major update for Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro has been slow and plagued by reports of problems. Now the company says it paused releasing the December 2021 update to investigate reports of calls dropping and disconnecting.The news arrived in a post on the Google Support forums (via Droid-Life) that says a new version with all the previously announced features and a fix for the disconnection issue should be ready by late January. If you’re not having any problems, then you can keep using the new software for now, but for those afflicted by the connection issues, Google only suggests reverting and factory resetting your device as an option.

Wondercise Studio is a mish-mash of a social media network and Apple Fitness Plus. | Image: Wondercise At CES 2022, Wondercise is looking to shake up connected fitness with a series of intriguing launches, including a new stationary bike, TV app, and trackers. However, the Taiwanese company’s most intriguing launch is Wondercise Studio — a social media platform for fitness that lets anyone livestream their own class, complete with real-time metrics and performance feedback from fitness trackers.Wondercise describes Studio as a “social media platform with a fitness focus,” but the reality is it’s more of a mish-mash of every bit of fitness tech currently out there. Users can voice and video chat with each other during livestreamed classes. Anyone can host their own class, and users also “follow” other users or instructors as you would on... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge On Wednesday, New York City announced it has ordered 184 fully electric Ford Mustang Mach-Es for use by law enforcement and emergency response workers. The vehicles are set to be delivered by June 2022, as part of an $11.5 million contract that will remain in place for five years.The city said the Mach-Es would be used by the New York Police Department, New York City’s Sheriff’s Office, the Department of Correction, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department of Environmental Protection, and other emergency management and response departments.New York City plans to buy over 1,250 electric vehicles in 2022, transitioning all law enforcement vehicles to electric ones by 2035.“Law enforcement vehicles are the largest and most... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Update December 30th, 11:48AM ET: And it appears that due to an astounding lack of defenses against bots, Amazon is already sold out, again.Sony’s latest gaming console, the PlayStation 5, is one of many gaming gadgets that are hard to find in stock right now due to mostly online-only sales. If you are trying to get your hands on one, Amazon has PS5 consoles in stock right now, while supplies last.The consoles are only available for Amazon Prime subscribers, continuing a trend of retailers restricting access to consoles for paying subscribers only. If you can’t add it to your cart, keep trying — occasionally the sites restock over a period of a few minutes. We will update this post once Amazon confirms it’s out of stock.We are... Continue reading…

I will not do this. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge I am the very person who should care about my appearance on Zoom calls. I don’t mean the state of my hair or appearance of hormonal acne on my face. I’m talking image quality. Focal length. Bokeh. I have written about and reviewed cameras and smartphones for over a decade. I use videoconferencing platforms throughout my work day. I own a nice camera that I could connect to my laptop and use for Zoom meetings. But I won’t, and I simply do not care.I know how much more flattering a longer focal length would be than my MacBook Air’s built-in wide-angle lens. I have the tools, the knowledge, and the power to employ a softly blurred background behind me. If I did, maybe I’d command more respect in meetings. My colleagues might scroll through... Continue reading…

Amelia Holowaty Krales CES, the world’s largest technology show, is pressing on, but with fewer major exhibitors appearing in-person than expected due to rising COVID-19 cases in the United States. On December 22nd, exhibitor Lenovo announced that it would “suspend all on-site activity in Las Vegas,” following announcements from T-Mobile, Amazon, Meta, and others that they’d be ditching as well and despite CES organizers’ statements that the show would go on.Intel says it will move to a “digital-first” experience with minimal on-site staffT-Mobile was the most prominent exhibitor to bail early that week. CEO Mike Sievert, one of the Consumer Electronics Show’s featured speakers, publicly announced on Tuesday that he would no longer be doing a keynote and... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Samsung wants you to know its foldables haven’t flopped. In a recent blog post, the company said it sold four times more foldable devices in 2021 than 2020. It attributes this success to the arrival of the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3, which, in our own reviews, we hailed as a step toward mainstream usability thanks to their refined designs and lower prices. Samsung says sales for these two devices in their first month alone exceeded “total accumulative sales of Samsung foldable devices in 2020.”These are promising metrics for the slow ascension of foldable phones, though you should bear in mind that Samsung isn’t sharing hard sales data. Instead, it pointed to the fact that its increases were greater than predictions made by... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Make your Mac more useful and easier to use Continue reading…

Jurors are still deliberating over the fate of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of defunct biotech company Theranos. They’re deciding if she intentionally misled investors, patients, and doctors about what her company’s blood testing technology could do. Because despite big promises, the tech the company claimed to have invented... didn’t actually exist.And the technology might never be a reality — at least not in the way Holmes described it. In this episode of our three-part series on Theranos, we look at what researchers actually think is possible in the field of blood testing and what the future could look like. Continue reading…

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Sony’s Xperia 1 III has a few things that other flagship phones don’t, including a near-4K, 120Hz OLED display, along with plenty of high-quality manual photo and video controls, dual front-facing speakers, and a headphone jack. And yet, The Verge’s Allison Johnson couldn’t recommend it — mostly due to its high $1,300 cost. Though, today’s deal on the phone makes the price just a little more digestible. For only the second time since it launched during the summer, Sony’s unlocked Xperia 1 III smartphone has returned to its all-time low price of $1,198 at Amazon and Adorama.For context, that’s around the same price as the iPhone 12 Pro Max and even cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra with equivalent storage capacity. Best Buy also... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Some great ways to tweak your new PC Continue reading…