Earlier this year, investment bank Piper Sandler published results from an annual survey showing that 87 percent of teens own an iPhone, leaving precious little market for Android device makers to carve up. But Samsung has a new plan to break the kids of their Apple addiction: Get YouTuber and restauranteur Jimmie Donaldson, aka MrBeast, to make content with its phones. Starting with a video where he drives expensive cars around. Samsung writes in its announcement that this will showcase “what’s possible with a Galaxy smartphone for aspiring and professional creators.” The company’s phones get some screen time in the…
The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Pixel 8 camera specs and a new AI promo video for the phone were posted by 91Mobiles, courtesy of leaker Kamila Wojciechowska, giving us our first real look at how Google will integrate more AI into its flagship smartphones (via 9to5Google). Magic Editor, which the company said earlier this year would come to “select” Pixel phones, is like a supercharged version of Magic Eraser. It enables you to remake any picture you take so it looks like you want it to. That’s shown in…
The Apple Watch Series 8 bears more than a striking resemblance to this year’s model (surprise, surprise). | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Apple Watch Series 9 has officially landed, bringing with it a few minor improvements under the hood, watchOS 10, and a new Millennial pink(!) color. The new smartwatch is technically the best Apple has ever made, though the updates are all pretty iterative. Thankfully, if you’re looking to pick up an Apple Watch for the first time or make the jump from an earlier model, the last-gen Series 8 is on sale at…
Driverless trucks from Waymo. | Credit: Waymo Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed Assembly Bill 316, which would have required human attendants in driverless vehicles over 10,000 pounds, reports Reuters. The bill saw broad support among state legislators and was backed by the Teamsters and other labor organizations. At the moment, The governor wrote in his veto message that the bill “is unnecessary for the regulation and oversight of heavy-duty autonomous vehicle technology,” adding that the existing regulatory framework is “sufficient.” The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) was given regulatory authority over autonomous vehicles in the state. Newsom writes that…
Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge “The new FineWoven iPhone cases are very bad,” according to my colleague Allison Johnson, so you probably shouldn’t buy one. Still, I’ve been curious to learn more about them, and iFixit’s new teardown just gave me even more information than I could have thought to ask for: it put one of the new cases under a microscope, tested how it stood up to things like hot sauce and coffee, and tore the thing apart — and, best of all, photographed every step of the way. There are some incredible zoomed-in photos of the…
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 looks to be a minor update of the prior model, with faster performance and new connectivity options. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Microsoft announced the Surface Laptop Studio 2 and Surface Laptop Go 3 during its recent hardware event in New York City, introducing the two laptops alongside a flurry of AI-powered features for Windows 11, Microsoft 365, and Bing. The high-end Surface Laptop Studio 2 starts at $1,099, while the Surface Laptop Go 3 starts at $799; both are slated to launch on October 3rd at 12AM ET. Although the forthcoming…
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Spotify’s long-awaited HiFi tier could finally be getting closer to launch. Code within the Spotify app reveals new details about the “Supremium” tier, which could feature 24-bit lossless audio, the ability to create playlists with AI, and more, as spotted by u/Hypixely on Reddit. Spotify first announced the more expensive HiFi tier in February 2021, but the feature has been stuck in limbo since then. The last we heard about the tier was in June of this year when a Bloomberg report found Spotify had rebranded the HiFi tier as “Supremium.” The Redditor’s…
You can limit the battery charge to 80 percent on the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro. This is apparently in response to complaints about the iPhone 14 Pro’s battery capacity issues. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Apple has detailed how the iPhone 15’s new 80 percent charging limit setting works in an update to a support document. Here’s Apple’s explanation of what you can expect if you enable the setting: When you choose 80% Limit, your iPhone will charge up to about 80 percent and then stop charging. If the battery charge level gets down to 75…
Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images Intel has wrapped up its annual Innovation event in San Jose, where the chipmaker gave us a glimpse of what’s coming down the pipeline over the next few years. In case you don’t have a spare hour and a half to sit down and watch CEO Pat Gelsinger’s keynote, here are some important things we learned. Meteor Lake will launch on December 14th If you haven’t guessed, AI was kind of a theme here. The company officially introduced its “Meteor Lake” generation (known officially as the Intel Core Ultra) to the world at the Innovation…
Illustration: The Verge X is planning to shut down Circles, a feature that lets you share posts with a limited group of people instead of all of your followers. The company said in a “PSA” on Thursday that Circles will be disabled by October 31st. “After this date, you will not be able to create new posts that are limited to your Circle, nor will you be able to add people to your Circle,” X wrote in a post on its help center. “You will, however, be able to remove people from your Circle,” and the company gave instructions on…
The Steam Deck. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Valve has been clear it wants to build a Steam Deck 2 — and equally clear that a faster handheld wouldn’t arrive soon. Now, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais tells The Verge and CNBC that it could be late 2025 or beyond before it raises that bar — because it wants to see a leap in performance without a significant hit to battery life. “I don’t anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years,” he told me via email. Here’s the whole quote: It’s important to…
Image: TSM Shopify is entering the League of Legends arena. On Wednesday, Shopify announced that its Rebellion esports brand will be acquiring TSM’s spot in the League Championship Series (LCS), the pro circuit for US League of Legends esports. The move marks a major change of the guard in the LCS. TSM, one of the biggest esports organizations in the world, got its start as a scrappy League of Legends team; the TSM acronym stands for Team SoloMid, which references a solo League of Legends player occupying the middle lane of the game’s multi-pronged map. In the mid 2010s, TSM…
Screenshot from Vincent Zhong’s iPhone 15 Pro review. In a recent interview with IGN, an Apple executive claimed that the iPhone 15 Pro was “going to be the best game console.” I was skeptical; although Apple boasted about the capabilities of its new GPU in its A17 Pro chip and said high-fidelity games like Resident Evil Village, the Resident Evil 4 remake, and Death Stranding would all be coming to the iPhone 15 Pro, I didn’t believe they would run very well in practice. But after actually seeing footage of Resident Evil Village in action on an iPhone 15 Pro,…
Image: Roblox Roblox is now rolling out the ability for developers to create subscriptions that they can sell in their experiences, according to a forum post. The company announced in July that it was working on these tools, saying that they could help developers “establish a recurring economic relationship with their users and potentially increase the predictability of their earning,” and now developers can actually start to plan out their offerings. Roblox users won’t be able to buy subscriptions just yet, however; that won’t be possible until sometime in November, according to the post. When they can, users will pay…
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge The Justice Department has removed access to publicly posted trial documents in US v. Google amid a dispute over how files should be made available online, according to reporter Leah Nylen of Bloomberg. Nylen, reporting from the courtroom, said that Judge Amit Mehta will make a decision in the morning on future online access to exhibits. The Big Tech On Trial newsletter reported more details of the exchange, which apparently occurred during an exchange between the Justice Department and Google over whether an exhibit could be submitted as evidence. Google’s attorneys apparently raised…
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more. Happy Tuesday! Got a super-packed issue of Hot Pod today for everyone. First off, I’ll take a look at Spotify’s chief public affairs officer’s lengthy new blog post about Apple’s App Store policies. Also, Apple’s iOS 17 will bring episode art to Apple Podcasts. What will that mean for podcasters? Before I hit the news, a couple of new developments. First off, Freakonomics Radio unveiled a new premium subscription today called Freakonomics Radio Plus. Members…
Mutant Mayhem comes to Paramount Plus on September 19th. | Image: Paramount Paramount announced that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem will hit Paramount Plus tomorrow in the US and Canada. The CG-animated movie is now the seventh Turtles movie in a line that started with the better-than-it-should’ve-been 1990 live-action film. Mutant Mayhem is already available to preorder on 4K UHD Blu-ray, standard Blu-ray, and DVD. The movie hits just a day before Paramount Plus ends its 50 percent discount for a year of its ad-supported tier ($29.99) or a year of its Paramount Plus with Showtime plan ($59.99), which…
Later this week, you can watch many cast members from Baldur’s Gate 3, a game that is based heavily on the mechanics and universe of Dungeons & Dragons, play the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons as their characters from the video game. It sounds meta but awesome. The cast members will be appearing on High Rollers, a live-play D&D show that streams on Twitch, on Friday at 7PM BST / 2PM ET / 11AM PT. “We have very kindly been approached by [Baldur’s Gate 3 developer] Larian Studios and some rather fine guests to run a little D&D one-shot,”…