The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Monday, Microsoft finally delivered two long-in-the-works updates for its Xbox Cloud Gaming Service (xCloud) that could mark a sea change for the future of cloud gaming.One is that xCloud games are now powered by custom Xbox Series X hardware, a major upgrade from the Xbox One S consoles that have powered the service since its launch in September. This means xCloud now has faster load times, less latency, and higher-resolution 1080p streaming. But perhaps more importantly, xCloud is expanding from Android to iOS and PC via the web for anyone in 22 countries with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.Taken together, the two updates mean that nearly anyone who has access to the service can play some of the biggest games on Xbox,... Continue reading…

Good Omens is returning for a second season on Amazon Prime Video, the company announced today, with stars Michael Sheen and David Tennant returning to reprise their roles as the odd-couple angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley.Also back for season 2 is Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote the original novel together with Terry Pratchett and will be returning as showrunner alongside Douglas Mackinnon (who directed the first season). Gaiman will also be writing the second season together with John Finnemore.The six-episode first season was originally conceived as a standalone miniseries, and already covered the entirety of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s original novel. So much so that both Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett, Terry’s daughter, shot... Continue reading…

Photo: Marvel Studios Natasha Romanoff finally gets her standalone film Continue reading…

Photo by Matt Doughtery / KPRC2 Houston Car companies will be required to report crashes involving advanced driver assistance systems under new rules proposed by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).The general order will apply to manufacturers of vehicles equipped with Level 2 driver assist systems through fully autonomous Level 5 systems, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers’ taxonomy for autonomous vehicles.At Level 2, the vehicle can control both steering and acceleration and deceleration, but it falls short of self-driving because a human sits in the driver’s seat and can take control of the car at any time. Level 5 refers to a fully autonomous vehicle that can travel anywhere, under any conditions. Notably, there are not Level 5... Continue reading…

The ZenFone 8 delivers flagship-level build quality and performance in a small package Continue reading…

Logitech announced its new G335 wired gaming headset that’s available for preorder now at $69.99. It’s expected to ship in July. The G335 borrows several design elements from the $129.99 G733 wireless model released in 2020, including its expressive color options (as well as a new mint colorway), the comfortable bungee headband, breathable ear pads, a volume dial built into the right ear cup, and a flip-to-mute microphone.This more affordable model is compatible with the G733’s replaceable headband straps and mic covers sold through Logitech’s site, but it does away with most of that headset’s fancier features, like USB-C charging and the strip of RGB lighting on the front side of the ear cups. Logitech says this wired model has a... Continue reading…

At their best, Super Mario sports titles move beyond the game they’re trying to mimic. You don’t have to care about cars or racing to enjoy Mario Kart, just as you don’t need to know who Pep Guardiola is to have fun with Super Mario Strikers. The sport is just a starting point. From there, Nintendo’s designers expand on it with all kinds of interesting and new ideas. Mario Golf: Super Rush, which is out now on the Nintendo Switch, does some of this. There are familiar characters with superpowers, courses with strange obstacles, and a new mode that’s supposed to emphasize speed over all else. Ultimately, though, Super Rush ends up feeling a little too much like, well, golf.Super Rush at least gets the basics right. Swinging a club feels... Continue reading…

Hyundai has officially completed its acquisition of Boston Dynamics, the creator of the internet’s favorite dancing Spot and Atlas robots (which only occasionally look like dystopian nightmare machines). And to celebrate, the company is collaborating with K-pop sensation BTS on a new video that shows seven Spot robots grooving to the band’s 2020 song “IONIQ: I’m On It.”And while Spot’s smooth dance moves might bring a frisson of worry to any K-pop fans thinking that K-pop boy-bands might be the next industry that Boston Dynamics is targeting for its robots to replace human workers in, right now it seems that BTS isn’t too worried about the competition. A second video shows off the band celebrating the Hyundai acquisition alongside a... Continue reading…

The Asus ZenFone 8. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge The Zenfone 8, Asus’ well-specced and compact competitor to the iPhone 12 mini, has launched in the US. The company is currently selling two versions of the phone on its website. There’s a model with 128GB of storage which will eventually sell for $629 once its early bird pricing of $599 expires on July 13th, while the other has 256GB of storage and costs $699. Both are equipped with 8GB of RAM and are compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile’s networks, but not Verizon.We liked the Zenfone 8 when we reviewed it last month. Its 5.9-inch display makes it a relatively compact device in comparison to the rest of the Android market, and its 120Hz refresh rate and Snapdragon 888 processor mean it feels snappy and responsive to use. Its smaller size... Continue reading…

Instagram Instagram has always limited who can post swipe-up links to their stories, but today, the company is starting a new test that could widen that ability. In this case, however, it isn’t a swipe up that people will be able to offer, but instead a linking sticker. These stickers will operate the same way a swipe-up link does, except with a tap instead of a swipe. People will also be able to respond to stories that include a sticker, which they can’t currently do with stories that have a swipe up.For now, the test is small, and Vishal Shah, Instagram’s head of product, tells The Verge it’s mostly to learn how people might take advantage of links. They’ll be watching for the types of links people post while keeping a particular eye on... Continue reading…

An Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon has announced a new feature for its Kids Plus service on Fire tablets and Echo smart speakers called Reading Sidekick. Designed to help kids improve their reading skills and ability, the Reading Sidekick allows kids to read either physical or digital books along with Alexa by taking turns at reading the books aloud with the digital assistant. The Reading Assistant is included in the Kids Plus service that comes with the Kids edition Fire tablets and Echo speakers or as a $2.99 per month ($4.99 without Amazon Prime) or $69 per year ($99 without Prime) subscription plan and is available starting June 29th.The Reading Sidekick works with most Alexa-enabled devices, including the Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Dot Kids, Echo Plus, and Echo... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Best Buy is offering an attractive deal on Razer’s Basilisk Ultimate wireless gaming mouse that includes a charging dock. The current price is $40 off, and you’ll get a $50 gift card to Steam for no extra cost. Amazon is selling this mouse for a similar price, but the Steam gift card bundle is exclusive to Best Buy. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Steam is looped into this deal since its big Summer Sale is happening, bringing discounts to many digital PC games through July 8th. This $50 could get you several games or pay for all of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, as an example.Compared to other mice in Razer’s lineup, this one has perhaps the most features. The scrollwheel can tilt for extra inputs, the DPI clutch for your thumb is... Continue reading…

The original Palm Pre. Physical home buttons are all but extinct on modern smartphones, and the Palm Pre ended them.It’s not hard to notice that smartphones have steadily shed their buttons throughout the years: keyboards, numpads, call and hang up buttons, directional navigation keys, and more have all fallen to the wayside in favor of more versatile touchscreens.In 2007, the iPhone — with its then-revolutionary 3.5-inch multitouch display — helped to push that trend along by reducing navigation down to a single home button. But even as touchscreen sizes grew and buttons fell away, the humble home button stubbornly stuck around. (Apple wouldn’t ditch the button for over a decade, when the iPhone X arrived in 2017.)But it was the Palm Pre, and its largely... Continue reading…

Here’s the HP Pavilion Aero 13. | HP HP has announced the Pavilion Aero 13, the lightest consumer laptop yet. It has a maximum weight of 2.18 pounds (0.987 kg), making it one of the most portable laptops you can buy of any type or size. It’s also powered by AMD’s Ryzen 5000 mobile processors, up to a Ryzen 7 5800U.On the outside, the Aero is available in four colors: pale rose gold, warm gold, ceramic white, and natural silver. Weight isn’t the only thing getting slimmed down, as this is the first Pavilion with a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio. The Pavilion has traditionally been HP’s budget line, with a bigger and clunkier design than the company’s pricier lines, but HP has been shrinking the bezels and chassis footprints on a number of its models this year. ... Continue reading…

Sony has acquired Housemarque, the Finnish studio behind recent PS5 exclusive Returnal, the company announced today. It was announced with a tweet which suggests Sony might also be about to acquire Bluepoint Games, the studio behind the recent Demon’s Souls remaster.In a blog post announcing the acquisition, PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst said that the studio “is one with incredible vision, capable of creating memorable new games that resonate with our community.” Although Housemarque has produced games across multiple platforms including PC, iOS, and the Xbox 360, the majority of its recent titles have been exclusive to Sony’s platforms. Prior to Returnal it was best known for the Super Stardust games, which have appeared on... Continue reading…

The UltraSharp shown on its two included mounts. | Image: Dell Dell has launched the high-end UltraSharp webcam that costs $199.99 and is available now worldwide. Its cylindrical design is reminiscent of Apple’s old but iconic iSight external webcam, but its features are aimed to compete with Logitech’s Brio and other modern 4K-ready webcams. In addition, it aims to serve as a more affordable and easier-to-set up alternative to mounting a DSLR camera behind your monitor.The UltraSharp is a USB-C webcam that houses a Sony STARVIS CMOS 8.3-megapixel sensor. It’s capable of recording or streaming in 4K at 30 or 24 frames per second and in 1080p or 720p at 24, 30, or 60 frames per second. You can tweak the field of view (FOV) between 65 degrees for a close crop, 78 degrees, or 90 degrees for the... Continue reading…

Image: Nothing Tech startup Nothing will announce its debut pair of true wireless earbuds, the Nothing Ear (1), at 9AM ET on July 27th, the company’s founder Carl Pei announced today. The launch comes around a month later than the June launch window Nothing previously announced, after Pei tweeted that the company was delaying the launch because it had “a few things left to finalize.” Carl Pei is best known as one of the co-founders of OnePlus, a company he parted ways with last year.Details about the Nothing Ear (1) are thin, but the company has teased several details about them over the past few months. We know they’ll have a “stripped-down aesthetic” featuring transparent materials in their construction, and that they’ve been designed in... Continue reading…

OTPs can be set to delete automatically after 24 hours. | Image: Google Google is updating its Messages app in India to allow it to delete one-time passwords (OTPs) automatically, to stop the single-use codes from clogging up your inbox, the company has announced. Alongside it, Google also says the app will be able to sort messages into categories, keeping your personal correspondence away from notifications about bank transactions and special offers.As someone that almost exclusively uses WhatsApp for personal communication, my phone’s default texting app is typically a graveyard of six-digit codes, which by design become useless mere minutes after they’re received. Having the ability to automatically delete them after 24 hours should make Messages less cluttered and more usable. Source:... Continue reading…

Google is working with non-profits to aggregate 90,000 locations with free food support across all 50 states . | Image: Google Google announced a new website designed to be a “one-stop shop” for people with food insecurity. The “Find Food Support” site includes a food locator tool powered by Google Maps which people can use to search for their nearest food bank, food pantry, or school lunch program pickup site in their community.Google is working with non-profit groups like No Kid Hungry and FoodFinder, as well as the US Department of Agriculture, to aggregate 90,000 locations with free food support across all 50 states — with more locations to come. The new site is a product of Google’s newly formed Food for Good team, formerly known as Project Delta when it was headquartered at Alphabet’s X moonshot division. Project Delta’s mission is to... Continue reading…

Microsoft is introducing a new Dynamic Refresh Rate (DRR) feature in Windows 11 that’s designed to save laptop battery life and boost refresh rates when they’re really needed.A number of laptops now ship with 120Hz and beyond displays, which make Windows feel a lot smoother across scrolling, animations, and inking. While the added smoothness feels great, running at higher refresh rates takes its toll on battery life.In Windows 10 you have to decide between 60Hz and 120Hz on a laptop, and it’s a static choice. Microsoft is now building DRR into Windows 11, which will allow a laptop to dynamically adjust its refresh rate. “This means that Windows 11 will seamlessly switch between a lower refresh rate and a higher refresh rate based on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is working to enhance the integrity of the Play Store by adding new restrictions and safeguards to developer accounts.Google Play Store developers will soon have to verify their email address and phone number and provide extra details like a physical address in an attempt to increase security and ensure that accounts are being created by ‘real people,’ the company has announced. Developers will also be required to use two-step verification. The search giant says it’s making the changes “to keep Google Play safe and secure and to better serve our developer community,” and to “make sure that every account is created by a real person with real contact details.”The Record reports that the announcement coincides with the emergence... Continue reading…

Nikon is going all-in on the retro aesthetic with its latest Z-series mirrorless camera. The company says the new Z FC, officially styled “Z fc,” is designed specifically to evoke its FM2 film SLR from the ‘80s, with dedicated dials for settings like shutter speed, exposure compensation, and ISO.The approach is similar to the Nikon DF, a retro-style full-frame DSLR that Nikon released in 2013. But the DF was much larger than the film cameras it was inspired by. The Z FC has a 20.9-megapixel APS-C sensor (and of course no SLR mirror and prism), which means the resulting camera is far more compact and looks a lot closer to something like an FM2. Beyond the exterior, the Z FC is a modern camera with broadly similar specs to... Continue reading…

With Dolby Vision gaming HDR technology available on Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, some TV owners have noticed that suddenly there’s a new setting to worry over. While some HDMI 2.1-equipped 4K displays could handle 120Hz, and some can support Dolby Vision for gaming, at first there weren’t any that could do both things at once.Now LG has confirmed it’s the first manufacturer with Dolby Vision HDR at 4K 120Hz support on some of its TVs, just a couple of weeks after owners noticed it arriving in updates. The 03.15.27 firmware enables the feature on C1 and G1 2021 OLED TVs, and today LG says support is on the way for other premium TVs in its 2021 lineup.

Photo Illustration by Thiago Prudêncio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The alternative social network Parler and representatives of former president Donald Trump were reportedly considering an idea to make Trump an active member of the platform after he left office, but Parler apparently pushed back on one key part of the proposed arrangement: the platform did not want to ban Trump’s detractors, according to an excerpt of Michael Wolff’s upcoming book about the last days of Trump’s presidency published in New York Magazine.Here’s what was going on, according to Wolff:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Juul has agreed to settle its first state lawsuit over deceptive business practices with North Carolina, a move that will limit the vaping company’s marketing claims and placement of products in stores.Under the settlement, Juul will no longer use marketing strategies geared toward young people, including most social media marketing campaigns, advertising near schools, and sponsoring sporting events or concerts. The company also cannot use models under 35 years old for advertisements in the state, and it’s required that Juul products are sold behind the counters of stores, according to The News & Observer. Juul will also pay a $40 million fine to the state.“North Carolina is now the first state in the nation to hold Juul accountable... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve been experiencing the bug where the iOS version of Snapchat crashes at launch, it seems that there’s now an update to fix it available in the App Store. The bug that’s been fixed by the update didn’t appear to have affected the Android version of the app.Before updating to the latest version, 11.34.1.35, the app would give me a message that something went wrong, before crashing to Springboard on my iPhone 12 Mini. Now, I’m no longer getting the error, and have successfully been able to send a Snap.This is what the bug looked like when it was present:

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on Windows 11. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is announcing that the next version of Office for Windows 11 will have a native 64-bit Arm version, for improved performance on large or picture-filled documents, and support for 64-bit add-ins. The new version of Office is currently in beta, available to Office Insiders.Microsoft also announced a redesign of Office, which you can see above and below. While it uses a similar design to Windows 11, it’ll be available whether you're running the Windows 11 Preview or Windows 10. In addition to the new design, Office will also adapt to your Windows light / dark mode, so you should be able to avoid the experience of opening a document and having it blast light into your eyes at night. Image: Microsoft The... Continue reading…

SoftBank is reportedly restructuring its robotics business and has already halted production of its Pepper robot, according to Reuters. Robotics is just one of many businesses the large Japanese firm has invested in, but potentially permanently ending production of Pepper is notable because of the robot’s role as a sort of unofficial mascot for the company.SoftBank plans to lay off 330 staff members based in France, the original home of SoftBank’s robotics efforts, and apparently half of the division’s sales team in the UK and the US, Reuters writes. Production of Pepper robots was reportedly halted last year and would be costly to restart, Reuters’ sources claim. We’ve reached out to SoftBank to confirm the details of the report.The R... Continue reading…

YouTube Theater | YouTube Google-owned YouTube will have its name on a new live event venue in Inglewood, California, part of the new Hollywood Park mixed-use development, the companies announced Monday. YouTube Theater will be a 6,000-seat performance venue, which will host concerts, comedy shows, YouTube creator events, esports competitions, and community shows. Financial terms of the multiyear naming rights deal were not disclosed.The development is the site of the former Hollywood Park Racetrack and part of the same complex as SoFi Stadium — where the Rams and Chargers play — and American Airlines Plaza. Hollywood Park also houses 3,000 apartments, a 300-room hotel, and an 890,000 square-foot retail area.“YouTube Theater will drive the uniqueness of... Continue reading…

If the internet has looked a little empty to you over the last day or so, check to see if your browser is using AdBlock or Adblock Plus. According to several users, ad blockers have inadvertently wiped out the content they’re looking for on a number of mainstream sites.It’s unclear exactly what caused the problem, but the issue should either resolve itself or it can be fixed by going into settings and requesting an update for your filter lists. In an email, the Adblock Plus support channel confirmed the problem “has already been fixed” without going in depth about what it was. Several posts on social media pointed to a recent change in filtering that works in other blockers but was interpreted by Adblock Plus to block content tagged as... Continue reading…

Image: Amazon Amazon Music Unlimited customers can now score several months of Disney Plus for free, and the offer extends to new subscribers as well as existing users.Amazon announced Monday that existing Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers in the US and Canada can activate three months of Disney’s streaming service for free through a new promotion. New Amazon Music Subscribers, meanwhile, will be able to access six months of Disney Plus through the offer.Amazon’s ad-free music streaming service costs $8 a month or $80 annually after a trial period. It is separate from Prime Music, the music service bundled with an Amazon Prime subscription. But where Prime Music has a catalog of roughly 2 million songs, Amazon Music Unlimited’s library comprises... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has joined the ranks of companies valued over a trillion dollars as of today’s market close. The company’s market cap is sitting at $1.008 trillion according to Yahoo Finance, putting it over the mark for the first time in its history.Some of the most notable of Facebook’s divisions are the Facebook site itself, along with Messenger, as well as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. On the list of US tech companies that have passed the $1 trillion valuation mark, Facebook is the only one founded in the 2000s, making it the newest — as long as you’re counting from the date that Google was started (which was in 1998), instead of Alphabet (which was created 2015).The news comes alongside the dismissal of the FTC’s case to unwind... Continue reading…

BMW will stop selling the i3 electric hatchback in the US starting next month. It’s the latest pint-sized vehicle to fall victim to American car buyers’ insatiable appetite for huge, towering, climate-killing trucks and SUVs.First released in 2013, the i3 was BMW’s first real electric vehicle. Always intended to be more of a city car than anything intended for long trips, the i3 maxed out at 80 miles of range from a 22kWh battery, with a modest 170 horsepower. The battery capacity grew 50 percent — to 33kWh — after a 2017 update, increasing the range to 113 miles. Thanks to its kooky, futuristic, and polarizing design, it was never a sales juggernaut, but it certainly developed a cult following over time. The i3 was able to carve out a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Monday, a US District Court dealt a huge blow to the federal government’s antitrust case against Facebook by dismissing a complaint filed against the company by the Federal Trade Commission. The lawsuit, filed late last year, sought to unwind Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The judge also dismissed an associated case filed by a group of state attorneys general.In its initial complaint, the FTC alleged that Facebook violated federal antitrust laws by purchasing a would-be competitor in the social media market. But in his decision to dismiss the complaint Monday, Judge James E. Boasberg wrote that the FTC offered insufficient evidence for its central claim — that Facebook wields monopoly power.“This case involves no... Continue reading…

Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare, is stepping down from his full-time role with the company | Getty Foursquare founder and former CEO Dennis Crowley is stepping down from his full-time role at the company, he wrote in a Medium post on Monday. He’ll remain on the board of directors.“What started around my kitchen table in the East Village back in early 2009 has grown to nearly 400 people working around the world in 2021,” Crowley wrote. “What started as a quest to ‘build a Marauders Map’ and to ‘turn the real world into a game’ and ‘build a hipster version of Clippy’ has turned into one of the world’s leading location technology platforms, powering location services for thousands of apps and top brands around the world.”Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai launched Foursquare in 2009 as a smartphone app that let people use their... Continue reading…

Microsoft’s xCloud, the cloud game streaming component of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate that doesn’t require a console to use, is rolling out fully to iOS devices, including iPhones and iPads, as well as PCs and macOS computers via the web. It’s been in an invite-only beta period since mid-April 2021, but Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can now access games right from their devices.Microsoft says that on PCs, xCloud can be accessed through the Edge browser and Google Chrome. We’ve gotten it to work within macOS on Microsoft Edge and Safari. More than 100 games are available, and the service is compatible with Bluetooth controllers or ones connected via USB. On iOS, it’ll work as a web-based app via Safari, and you’ll have a choice between a... Continue reading…

In a blog post today, Microsoft is making another attempt at clarifying the minimum requirements for Windows 11, which have confused many, especially regarding what generation of CPUs the new OS will support. The post is clear that Intel 6th Gen Skylake and earlier CPUs, along with non-Zen AMD processors, will not meet “principles around security and reliability and minimum system requirements for Windows 11.” That lines up with the company’s original statement that Windows 11 would require Intel 8th Gen Coffee Lake or Zen 2 CPUs and up, but there is some hope for Intel 7th Gen Kaby Lake and Zen 1 users.Where things get confusing again is the news that its first Insider build of Windows 11, which is available today, won’t require TPM... Continue reading…

Samsung has taken the wraps off it and Google’s new unified smartwatch platform at MWC 2021 — sort of. The company isn’t announcing a new Galaxy Watch today, or even what the new platform will be called (it’s unofficially referred to as Wear); those announcements will come later this summer at a proper Galaxy Unpacked event. But what Samsung did show off was a first look at what its new One UI Watch software will look like, and it elaborated on just what the new Google / Samsung partnership could mean for future Galaxy Watches.To be clear: what Samsung is showing of One UI Watch won’t be what all smartwatches built on the new unified Google / Samsung platform look like — it’s an added layer on top specifically for Samsung devices. It’s... Continue reading…

Microsoft is releasing its first Windows 11 preview build today. Windows Insiders can download the Windows 11 preview (build 22000.51) right now, which includes access to the new Start menu, multitasking features, and overhauled Microsoft Store. Unlike the previous Windows 11 leak, this official preview also features an updated File Explorer that replaces the ribbon with a command bar to simplify file management a little more.Most of the Windows 11 visual changes that Microsoft revealed last week will be available in this initial preview. The new Start menu with its centered launcher-like interface is part of this build, alongside rounded corners throughout the OS and improvements to the notification center, volume flyouts, and more. If... Continue reading…

Image: 91mobiles and OnLeaks In 2020, OnePlus expanded its product lineup with the midrange OnePlus Nord, and new leaked renders from 91mobiles and OnLeaks have given us a good look at what the rumored next phone in the Nord line might look like. You can see the renders in this video (which I’ve also embedded at the top of this post).The phone, which I will call the Nord 2 (though we don’t know if that might be the official name) looks to take a lot of design cues from the OnePlus 9, particularly with the similar-looking rounded rectangle rear camera module and the hole-punch selfie camera. That rear camera module houses 50-megapixel, 8-megapixel, and 2-megapixel cameras, while the selfie camera is 32 megapixels, according to 91mobiles.

YouTube TV is today revealing more details about two anticipated new features: 4K playback and offline downloads. As it turns out, the service will be bundling them together in a new add-on package it’s calling “4K Plus.” There’s no getting one without the other.4K Plus is available starting today and will cost an extra $19.99 per month on top of the standard $64.99 YouTube TV subscription. That sounds awfully expensive, but at least there’s this: customers will receive a free one-month trial — and if you sign up early, 4K Plus will be discounted to $9.99 each month for the first year. That’s easier to swallow than $20, but you’ll eventually be shifted over to the full price once that initial promotion expires. So for the first year,... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has warned buyers to keep Apple AirTags away from young children, saying it’s too easy to remove a potentially dangerous battery from the tiny location trackers.An ACCC statement cautions that AirTags’ small lithium button batteries can severely injure children if they leak or become stuck in a child’s throat, nose, or ear. It raises particular concerns about Apple’s design making those batteries too readily accessible.

Smartwatches and security Continue reading…

Last week Apple revealed that Foundation, the upcoming sc-fi show based on a series of books by Isaac Asimov, would debut on Apple TV Plus in September. Now we have something even better: a proper trailer.It’s the first good look at the show since the debut teaser last year, and it reveals what looks to be an ambitious series that could give Apple’s streaming service its own must-watch epic along the lines of Game of Thrones or The Witcher. The trailer shows lavish sets, big-name stars, and, of course, a baby floating in a tank.“‘Foundation’ has always been at the top of my bucket list.”The show, which was first announced in 2018, is being helmed by showrunner David S. Goyer, and stars Lee Pace and Jared Harris. According to Apple,... Continue reading…

You’re getting a solid laptop for $800 Samsung released its latest wave of Windows 10 laptops in late April, and one of them is already seeing a significant discount. The Galaxy Book Flex2 Alpha is $800 at Best Buy when you clip the $100 “Student Deal” discount underneath its asking price (you’ll need to sign in with a Best Buy account). This is $250 off its original $1,049 price. For an $800 laptop, the Flex 2 Alpha has a lot going for it, like its QLED display, a recent 11th Gen Intel Core i7 1167G5 processor, 16GB of RAM, and that it’s a flexible 2-in-1 form factor. It comes with 512GB of storage, and its ports include two USB Type-A 3.0 ports, one USB-C port, a headphone jack, a power plug, HDMI, and a microSD slot.The lower-spec version of the Flex2 Alpha that has half... Continue reading…

The biggest trackpad you can get, if not necessarily the best Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Samsung is hosting a virtual event for Mobile World Congress 2021 on Monday, June 28th, where it promises to share how it’s “reimagining smartwatches.” Along with wearables, the company is also supposed to share news on the latest additions to the Galaxy ecosystem and the work it's doing to enhance mobile security.At I/O 2021, Google announced that Samsung’s Tizen operating system would be merging with Wear OS to serve as the future software powering smartwatches for Android phones (tentatively called “Wear”). There are no rumors to suggest Samsung will offer an in-depth look at those efforts, but recent leaks show that the company does have a new Galaxy Active Smartwatch in the works it might announce. There’s also a chance Samsung... Continue reading…

Netflix’s partial downloads feature displayed on a mobile device. | Image: Netflix Netflix is launching a new feature for Android users that allows them to view partially downloaded titles — which will hopefully make exasperated attempts to quickly download content minutes before a flight a slightly less distressing experience.Beginning today, Android users on mobile and tablets (versions 7.64 and higher) will be able to stream Netflix shows and movies before their download is completed. Previously, a title needed to be completely finished downloading to a device before it could be viewed — which, depending on your wifi connection or data plan could make streaming a title a headache, particularly in the aforementioned airport scenario.Partial downloading will be limited to Android mobile and tablet devices for now,... Continue reading…