The Verge

NxtWear Air is a personal secondary display for your phone or laptop embedded in a pair of glasses frames. | Image: TCL TCL is preparing to launch a second iteration of the wearable personal display it released in limited supply last year. Version two, called NxtWear Air, offers the same secondary-display-in-a-pair-of-glasses function as the original but has been made 30 percent lighter — down to 75g compared to 130g. TCL has made some adjustments for the style-conscious, too, tweaking the design to look more like a normal pair of sunglasses and less like something you’d be embarrassed to wear in public.NxtWear Air, like its NxtWear G predecessor, offers two 1080p Micro OLEDs embedded in a pair of glasses frames that should give the wearer the effect of viewing a 140-inch screen from about 13 feet away. Its lenses are opaque, and the glasses don’t offer... Continue reading…

Cync’s line of smart home products now includes new bulb options, an outdoor camera, and a smart thermostat. | Image: GE Lighting Cync, the brand born from C by GE, showed off a huge expansion of its smart lighting line at CES 2022 (yes, in person). Eleven new smart bulbs join its already comprehensive offerings. Plus, the company is expanding further into the smart home with a new outdoor camera and the release of its first smart thermostat, complete with room sensors.Cync also shared its commitment to the new Matter smart home standard, telling The Verge that its color A19 bulb and light strip will be Matter-compatible via a firmware update when the standard launches in mid-2022.Cync’s products — which include light switches, indoor and outdoor bulbs, smart plugs, an indoor camera, and a motion sensor — use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Mesh for connectivity. They don’t... Continue reading…

Today JBL is taking the wraps off three new portable speakers. The diminutive Pulse 5 and more powerful PartyBox Encore feature integrated light shows, while the BoomBox 3 tries to split the difference with a more stoic, bass-focused design.The waterproof and dustproof (IP67) JBL Pulse 5 ($249.95/£219.99/€249) is a portable Bluetooth 5.3 speaker that fires 360-degree sound and lighting for up to 12 hours on rechargeable battery. The lights can be customized via the JBL Portable app and work without playing any sound at all. The speaker can also be combined with other JBL PartyBoost-enabled speakers for bigger sound and more dynamic lighting. Image: JBL JBL PartyBox Encore. JBL bills the 100 watt PartyBox... Continue reading…

Most home robots unveiled at CES tend to over-promise and under-deliver. Every year, we’re treated to staged demos of prototype “robot butlers” that always fail to materialize as real products. But two new bots created by a startup named Labrador Systems look like they’ll break this cycle. Why? Because the company has kept things simple — extremely simple — by building what are essentially self-driving shelves.The Caddie and Retriever robots are designed to move stuff from A to BLabrador’s robots, named Caddie and Retriever, are designed to help around the house by ferrying goods. They’re both about the size of a side-table and come equipped with wheels and sensors that let them navigate your home. Owners will set a number of... Continue reading…

The Garmin Vivomove Sport (left) and the Venu 2 Plus | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge When you think of Garmin wearables, you’re probably thinking of its running smartwatches — durable and a little bulky, but with excellent GPS, detailed metrics, and long battery life. The company has made strides in recent years to expand beyond its fitness niche, but it seems to have finally hit its stride at CES 2022 with the Venu 2 Plus and the entry-level Vivomove Sport.It might seem a bit soon for a Venu 2 Plus, given that the Venu 2 just launched last April. However, the device fixes one of the more glaring omissions from the Venu 2: voice capabilities. The Venu 2 Plus adds both a speaker and microphone, meaning the smartwatch is now capable of taking and making calls directly from the wrist, as well as adding voice assistant... Continue reading…

AMD CEO Lisa Su. | Image: AMD Ahead of their press conferences at this year’s truncated and part-virtual CES, AMD and Intel are teasing big CPU announcements for the show. AMD’s “product premiere” is due to take place at 10am ET today, while Intel has a “digital-first live experience” scheduled for slightly later at 1pm ET.Intel’s CES tease is focused on one key spec, 5.5GHz, which is expected to be the maximum boost clock speed its upcoming CPU will be able to reach. That’s a 300MHz improvement over the company’s current flagship, the Core i9-12900K, which was announced late last year and can reach a top boost clock speed of 5.2GHz. VideoCardz reports that the new processor could be called the Core i9-12900KS, and may release in late Q1 2022.

The world’s first residential smart door, the Masonite M-Pwr Smart Door, features integrated power and Wi-Fi, a Ring video doorbell, and a Yale smart door lock. | Image: Masonite Door manufacturer Masonite is showcasing the first residential smart door at CES 2022, highlighting the home building industry’s shift toward embracing connected technology. The concept was announced earlier in 2021, but CES is the first chance most will have to see the door in action.A collaboration between Masonite, Ring, and Yale, the M-Pwr Smart Door is the first residential exterior door to integrate power, lights, sensors, a video doorbell, and a smart lock into the door system. Image: Masonite The Masonite smart door features strategically situated motion-activated lighting alongside a Yale door lock and Ring video doorbell. The door, a premium fiberglass model available in a variety of styles, colors,... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Ford says its planning to double production of its upcoming electric pickup truck, the F-150 Lightning, to 150,000 vehicles per year by 2023. The news comes as the automaker prepares to start making and shipping its new EV in the first half of 2022.Production of both the F-150 Lightning and F-150 Lightning Pro for commercial customers has entered its final pre-build stage this week at the company’s Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan. Deliveries of the first trucks are expected to start in the spring.The number of electric F-150s Ford planned on making in its first few years of production has been a bit of a shifting target. At first, the company was only targeting 40,000 vehicles annually, eventually telling... Continue reading…

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge In a standoff that’s pitting Verizon, AT&T, and the FCC versus the FAA and the airline industry over the two carrier’s plans to upgrade their 5G wireless services, the mobile companies now say they’ve reached an agreement with the Department of Transportation. For Verizon, delaying the launch of the “C-band” spectrum means canceling a celebration scheduled for 1PM ET on Tuesday, marking the beginning of its spectrum upgrade.

The less-expensive Fan Edition of the S21 includes a 6.4-inch 120Hz display. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge After a year of will-they-or-won’t-they speculation, Samsung has, at last, announced the Galaxy S21 FE. Like the 2020 Galaxy S20 FE (the FE stands for Fan Edition), this device features most of the flagship-level specs of the Galaxy S21, including a Snapdragon 888 chipset and 120Hz display, at a lower price: $699 for the 128GB base model. With the S21’s nearly midrange price tag and a compelling upper-midrange option in the Galaxy A52 5G, it’s yet another addition to an already crowded spot in Samsung’s lineup.The Galaxy S21 FE offers a 6.4-inch display, slightly larger than the S21’s 6.2-inch panel. Outside of that size difference, the S21 FE has a whole lot in common with the S21. Its screen is a 1080p OLED panel with 120Hz like the... Continue reading…

Plus multiuser profiles for webOS Continue reading…

Invoxia’s Smart Dog Collar uses miniaturized radars to monitor resting respiratory and heart rate. | Image: Invoxia Pet trackers have been around for ages, but Invoxia is looking to shake things up at CES 2022 with a new smart collar that can also monitor your dog’s vital signs. And of course, the smart collar also doubles as a GPS and activity tracker for your pooch.Canine fitness trackers generally rely on a combination of accelerometers and GPS sensors. Invoxia’s approach is a bit different. To monitor vitals like resting respiratory and heart rate, Invoxia says it worked with board-certified veterinary cardiologists to develop deep learning AI that utilizes miniaturized radar sensors — the same type as the Soli radar Google used in its Pixel 4 phones. According to Invoxia CEO Amélie Caudron, the radars are ideal as they’re capable of taking... Continue reading…

The Game Booster service will cost $50 annually The demands placed on our home networks are higher than ever, especially when it comes to gaming. Netgear was arguably one of the first router manufacturers to optimize the networking needed for gaming with its Nighthawk line of routers. Now, it's attempting the same thing with its new line of 6E enabled Orbi mesh routers. The Game Booster service largely resembles the Nighthawk Pro Gaming application used to configure their XR line of gaming routers, with one glaring difference: it requires a subscription.The Game Booster service for Orbi devices will cost $50 annually, and while this isn’t a massive sum of money, it certainly raises some questions about why Netgear is charging for a service that was previously offered for free on... Continue reading…

The Withings Body Scan has a retractable handle that enables 6-lead EKGs and segmented body composition readings | Image: Withings Withings isn’t a stranger to smart scales, but for CES 2022 the company is taking a much more ambitious take on the gadget. Announced today, the Withings Body Scan will feature six-lead EKG readings, segmented body composition measurements, and the ability to assess foot nerve activity. Basically, it’s the scale for people who want to know how fat is distributed through their body and how that might in turn relate to their heart health.On the surface, the Body Scan looks like your typical scale — albeit with a retractable handle up top. It contains four weight sensors and 14 ITO electrodes in the scale itself, plus an additional four located in the handle. The scale also features a larger 3.2-inch LCD color screen, as well as a battery... Continue reading…

Whether you wanted it or not, NFTs are finding ways of creeping into just about every aspect of our lives. Something that began as a curiosity has quickly expanded to include networking giant Netgear and its connected smart frame, Meural.Regardless of how you feel about NFTs, companies like Netgear are capitalizing on this interest by integrating them into products like the existing Meural Frame. With a way to put these works of “art” on display, it allows these commodities to also become decorations for something besides Twitter profiles.While the Meural began its life as a way to display photos, Netgear recently announced that it would begin beta testing integration between the Meural and the MetaMask cryptocurrency wallet starting... Continue reading…

The rear camera layout of OnePlus’s next flagship, the OnePlus 10 Pro, has been shown off in a teaser image for the smartphone. The handset is due to launch in China on January 11th before coming to the rest of the world later in the year. OnePlus CEO Pete Lau previously confirmed that the phone would be revealed in January in a post on Weibo.Although the teaser image doesn’t show much more than the rear of the phone, it confirms the 10 Pro will have three rear cameras that will once again carry the Hasselblad branding. OnePlus’s partnership with the Swedish camera manufacturer began with last year’s OnePlus 9, where the two companies worked together on the color tuning of the phone’s photos, with generally good results.A three-stage... Continue reading…

Sengled’s smart bulb can track your sleep and your heart rate. | Image: Sengled Sengled, the smart lighting company that’s hedged its protocol bets by making Zigbee, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth smart bulbs, has announced a slew of new products at CES 2022. The most intriguing is the Smart Health Monitoring bulb, and the most fun is the Wi-Fi Video-Sync TV light strips. Sengled has also pledged its support for Matter, the new smart home standard, adding a fourth protocol to its package.For those unfamiliar with the smart lighting company, Sengled offers a variety of connected bulbs covering most smart home bases. Its Zigbee smart bulbs work with a hub, similar to Philips Hue, and are compatible with Alexa, Google, Apple HomeKit, and Samsung SmartThings.Its Wi-Fi bulbs don’t require a hub and work with Alexa, Google, and... Continue reading…

Photo by David Odisho/Getty Images Elizabeth Holmes deliberately misled investors about the capabilities of the blood testing technology at Theranos and is guilty of three counts of wire fraud, a jury found today. She is also guilty of conspiracy to defraud investors with her co-defendant, Sunny Balwani.She faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the counts. The jury found her not guilty of two counts of defrauding patients and not guilty of conspiracy to defraud patients. The jury did not return a verdict on three more counts of defrauding investors.Holmes was the founder and CEO of Theranos, a company that promised to revolutionize blood testing by developing a device that could run hundreds of medical tests on just a few drops of blood. The company was an... Continue reading…

In 2016, Tesla tried to reinvent the humble roof as a beautiful array of glass tiles brimming with solar energy — a vision it’s been struggling to deliver ever since. But San Jose, California-based GAF Energy thinks it has a simpler solution to the solar roof. It’s built a solar shingle, one that can be nailed down in packs much like the everyday shingles you’d use when repairing or replacing your normal, non-solar roof.Solar panel, meet nail gunYou might have heard of solar shingles before, but GAF Energy president Martin DeBono suggests the new Timberline Solar shingles are the first to actually deserve that name because they’re the first to actually work that way — you literally drive nails through a three-inch nailing strip,... Continue reading…

Cineplex, the largest theater chain in Canada, is preparing to temporarily shutter its Ontario auditoriums in response to a government mandate limiting indoor business to help curb the spread of omicron.The theater chain said that all 67 of its theaters in Ontario will close beginning Wednesday, January 5th, adding that the cinemas will reopen “as soon as we are allowed.” The measure comes as Ontario enacts restrictions on schools, dining, and entertainment venues to prevent what Ontario Premier Doug Ford characterized during a Monday news briefing as “a tsunami of new cases in the days and weeks ahead.”“To make it as easy as possible, we have already begun processing ticket refunds back to our guests’ original method of payment.... Continue reading…

Samsung C-Lab program | Image: Samsung For CES 2022, Samsung revealed a new C-Lab startup lineup that includes pet and baby tech with a spin on promoting additional wearable tech promoting safety features.The C-Lab is divided into both C-Lab Inside — an “in-house venture program” and C-Lab Outside — Samsung’s “startup acceleration program.” Established in 2012, the C-Lab Inside incubation program encourages employees to venture out and work on experimental projects. The program expanded in 2018, creating the C-Lab Outside program. Four inside programs were set to exhibit at CES 2022, with projects ranging from test-taking technology and infant health tech.Out of those featured, here are some that stood out:

The new Sleep Number 360 smart bed | Image: Sleep Number Sleep Number’s 360 smart beds are a regular fixture at CES, and this year is no exception. Today, Sleep Number is announcing the latest upgrades to its 360 smart beds, improving some of their built-in sensors and adding on surrounding tech like lights and mobility accessories that it calls “smart furniture.” The idea, according to Sleep Number, is to create more accessible smart beds so that people can age more comfortably or recover from injuries.“Smart furniture” is a new addition that surrounds the 360 smart bed. While it looks like one of those fancy headboards with built-in shelves, Sleep Number says it was built to support sleep health and make its beds more accessible. For example, the smart furniture includes mobility aids to... Continue reading…

BioShock creative lead Ken Levine is reportedly facing trouble. According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Levine’s studio Ghost Story Games and its long-awaited debut project have been plagued by shifting design goals and an overambitious vision. It’s not a new criticism of Levine, but it suggests that the game’s nearly eight-year waiting period might not end any time soon and hints at some details about what Ghost Story is actually doing.Schreier’s story indicates that Ghost Story, a division of Take-Two Interactive staffed with former members of Levine’s old studio Irrational, was originally supposed to release a small game in 2017. The project was a sci-fi shooter set on a “mysterious space station” where three factions would respond... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s market cap briefly passed $3 trillion on Monday more than a year after it surpassed the $2 trillion mark and three years after eclipsing $1 trillion.Apple’s huge success is due in large part to the iPhone, which revolutionized the smartphone industry and remains a cash cow for the company. But Apple continues to see strong momentum in its other businesses as well, with its services and Mac divisions reporting all-time highs in its Q4 2021 earnings.Shortly after hitting the $3 trillion milestone at around 1:45PM ET, Apple’s market cap dipped below it again. Apple’s market cap must be above the $3 trillion mark when the market closes at 4PM ET for it to officially be designated as the first publicly-traded company with that... Continue reading…

Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images The Wall Street Journal points out that on New Year’s Eve, Tesla revealed on its Weibo page the launch of a new dealership in Xinjiang, a region where the Chinese government has been accused of human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims. Image: Weibo / Tesla Just over a week ago, President Joe Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that “[we] call on the Government of the People’s Republic of China to immediately end genocide and crimes against humanity against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.”Earlier in December, the Treasury Department sanctioned several Chinese... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge You should always be wary of invites to a stranger’s Home.That’s the upshot of a new piece of security research that has found a vulnerability capable of locking iOS devices into a spiral of freezing, crashing, and rebooting if a user connects to a sabotaged Apple Home device.The vulnerability, discovered by security researcher Trevor Spiniolas, can be exploited through Apple’s HomeKit API, the software interface that allows an iOS app to control compatible smart home devices. If an attacker creates a HomeKit device with an extremely long name — around 500,000 characters — then an iOS device that connects to it will become unresponsive once it reads the device name and enter a cycle of freezing and rebooting that can only be ended by... Continue reading…

Apple is now selling a new set of special edition AirPod Pros (via 9to5Mac) in time for the Chinese New Year, which begins on February 1st, 2022. Just as the previous Year of the Ox, Apple is engraving a special emoji on the AirPods Pro case — this time, themed for the Year of the Tiger.At first glance, it seems like only the standard tiger emoji is featured on the case — but turns out, it’s just a bit more snazzy with sparkles and fireworks surrounding the tiger face topped off with a cute tiger growly-face hood. Other than that, the only other difference is the retail box has the same emoji in red on the sides. Images from Apple Store website New special edition Year of the Tiger AirPods on the left comparing... Continue reading…

Arlo has announced a new smart home security system. | Image: Arlo Arlo announced the impending arrival of its long-awaited home security system at CES 2022 this week, and the product even got a nod as a 2022 CES Innovation Award honoree. The company, known for its top-quality smart security cameras, also announced its support for Matter, a possible indication that a Matter specification for security cameras isn’t too far away.The DIY security monitoring solution is a natural expansion for the company that has a full suite of home security cameras. So natural that it actually announced one at CES 2019.While that product never saw the light of day, the latest Arlo Security System is a complete redesign. The signature feature are the new, all-in-one multi-sensors with eight different functions, plus... Continue reading…

Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Blood tests on pregnant people that look for rare and devastating developmental conditions in fetuses are often wrong, according to an investigation from The New York Times.The blood testing technology, called noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), works very well for more common disorders like Down syndrome. But The New York Times reported that a review of data from multiple studies showed that when NIPT is used to test for uncommon things like Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome (which is found in one in 20,000 births) or Cri-du-chat syndrome (which is found in one in 15,000 births), positive results are wrong 80 percent of the time or more.These tests, made by companies like Natera and Sequenom, have become more popular in recent years.... Continue reading…

The Acer Chromebook Spin 513 has a battery life of up to 10 hours. | Image by Acer Acer announced that it’s updating its existing lineup of Chromebooks with three new devices at CES 2022, each of which comes with slight changes when compared to its predecessors. Image by Acer The new Spin 513 has a larger 13.5-inch display compared to its predecessor. The new Spin 513 comes with a 13.5-inch display, an upgrade from the 13-inch screen that the previously released Spin 513 had. It swaps the Snapdragon 7c Compute SC7180 in for the MediaTek Kompanio 1380, a new processor that also comes with eight cores. And like all Spin models, you can bend back the screen to use the Chromebook as a tablet or stand it up on a flat surface in a tent-like position when watching videos.However, there is a bit of... Continue reading…

The L’Oreal ColorSonic is meant to make at-home hair coloring more convenient. | Image: L’Oreal While you might not expect it, L’Oreal has been a regular at CES these past few years, launching everything from wearable UV and pH sensors to an AI-powered skin care gadget. This year, the company is back with yet another invention, the Colorsonic — a device meant to make dying your hair at home a hell of a lot more convenient.The Colorsonic doesn’t look too far off from other hair styling gadgets. The top half has a nozzle with bristles, while the bottom half stores a cartridge containing a “precise mix of developer and formula.” The device works by dispensing the correct amount of hair color and then the bristles oscillate over 300 times a minute at a specific angle to evenly apply the color. Basically, the idea behind the device is... Continue reading…

The German automaker claims improved aerodynamics and battery efficiency allows for 1,000 km of range Continue reading…

Image: Comcast Comcast has announced that its xFi Advanced Gateway Wi-Fi router is getting an upgrade — the new version will support the Wi-Fi 6E standard and have support for the Zigbee and Matter IoT standards built in. Comcast says that the addition of a third, 6GHz band alongside the 2.4 and 5GHz bands found on its old gateway (and most modern, decent routers) should make the router ready for homes with dozens of wireless devices, including ones that use lots of bandwidth like VR headsets and gaming consoles.The selling point of the new (in terms of wireless standards, anyway) Wi-Fi 6E is that it can provide more bandwidth to power more devices, all with less potential for interference from other networks. Support for this standard should,... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Update 11:55AM ET, January 3rd: GameStop has sold out of this Xbox Series X bundle for now.We’re off and running in the year 2022 with new console restocks. While we’re all hoping that availability of the popular PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles opens up so anyone can buy a console at retail price whenever they choose, for now we have to keep our eyes peeled, remain vigilant, and keep our F5 keys ready.While GameStop finished off 2021 with a series of scheduled in-store selling events for new consoles — giving us a throwback to the old days of lining up outside of stores in person — the video game retailer now has Xbox Series X consoles available on its site to order. You can pick up an Xbox Series X bundle, complete with Far... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Ring Fit Adventure, the box set for the Nintendo Switch that includes the fitness adventure game along with a pilates ring that a Joy-Con slides into, is selling for just $54.99 at Best Buy and Amazon, matching the best price we’ve seen. It’s normally $85. Actually, it’s been selling for this price since Black Friday, but if your New Year’s resolutions include getting in shape, this game is a fun, effective way to stay moving.The single-player campaign is actually a turn-based RPG where you fight against enemies by doing exercise reps. It tracks your form, making sure you don’t go too easy on yourself, though you can set the difficulty. Considering it’s a workout, it’s actually pretty fun. Read our review.This game was in short supply... Continue reading…

The Eve Outdoor Cam is a smart floodlight camera that works with HomeKit Secure Video. | Image: Eve Smart home company Eve Systems has announced its first outdoor camera and the availability of its Thread-powered smart shades at CES 2022 this week.A floodlight camera designed for Apple HomeKit Secure Video, the $250 Eve Outdoor Cam, launches April 5th, 2022 and features 1080p video, a 157-degree field of view, infrared night vision, and infrared motion detection covering 100 degrees at distances of up to 30 feet. The Wi-Fi powered camera joins the Eve Cam, the company’s indoor camera.This is just the second HomeKit Secure Video-compatible smart floodlight camera to launch; a floodlight camera is an outdoor security camera with motion-activated floodlights attached. The Netatmo Outdoor Camera is the other currently available option... Continue reading…

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…