Samsung’s leaked Galaxy S22 Ultra is just straight up a Galaxy Note now

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…

Intel and Samsung’s new demo shows how blisteringly fast a PCIe 5.0 SSD setup will be

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.

Perks of the job! Was going to save this demo for #CES2022 but with that off the table, why not just share it with everyone right now?! Here’s a 12th Gen ⁦@intel⁩ Core i9-12900K system paired with a new ⁦@Samsung⁩ PM1743 PCIe 5.0 SSD getting over 13GB/s!! pic.twitter.com/oyL08KzDtV

— Ryan Shrout (@ryanshrout) December 30, 2021

To put that in perspective, the...

Continue reading…

Plans to capture CO2 from coal plants wasted federal dollars, watchdog says

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…

Two NFT copycats are fighting over which is the real fake Bored Ape Yacht Club

A pair of non-fungible token projects are testing the boundary between plagiarism and parody. Digital marketplace OpenSea has banned the PHAYC and Phunky Ape Yacht Club (or PAYC) collections, both of which are based on the same gimmick: selling NFTs with mirrored but otherwise identical versions of high-priced Bored Ape Yacht Club avatars. Now the dueling projects are selling their apes while dodging bans from other marketplaces, becoming the latest example of how the NFT world handles copied art.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (or BAYC) NFTs are some of the most expensive crypto art assets — they recently overtook CryptoPunks as the highest-priced NFT avatars with the cheapest available ape selling for $217,000. Like other avatars, though,...

Continue reading…

Google pulls back the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro December update to fix dropped calls

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.

Hey Pixel Community,

The Pixel team paused the December software...

Continue reading…

Wondercise Studio wants to replace Zoom for connected fitness classes

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…

Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

Apple’s AirPods Pro wireless earbuds are a go-to pick that’s often on sale. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holidays may have come and gone, but there are still some great discounts available on Apple’s AirPods. In fact, we’ve actually been seeing some deals that are even better than they were during the recent shopping holidays.

Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods in October and unveiled its new AirPods lineup, we’ve seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model drop from $159 to $129. Even better, we’ve seen many retailers starting to heavily discount the second-gen AirPods as well as the more expensive AirPods Pro and Max, which offer noise cancellation and better sound quality than the standard model. We’ve even recently seen some significant discounts on the third-gen AirPods,...

Continue reading…

NYC orders nearly 200 Mustang Mach-Es for police and first responders

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…

Amazon has PS5 consoles in stock again (update: sold out)

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 refuse to care about the quality of my webcam

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…

Samsung says its foldable shipments increased four-fold in 2021

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…

12 great apps ready for your new 2021 Mac

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Make your Mac more useful and easier to use

Continue reading…

Why Theranos failed, but other researchers might not

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…

BMW, IBM, Panasonic, and Mercedes are among the latest to abandon in-person events at CES 2022

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 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 experiences

A 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 on January 5.”

W...

Continue reading…

CES 2022 in-person exhibitor list continues to shrink: BMW and Mercedes are out

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 staff

T-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…

Tesla recalls nearly half a million Model 3 and Model S cars

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla has issued voluntary recalls for nearly half a million vehicles to address potential failures in its trunk latching systems, as first reported by Barron’s. The recalls apply to all Model 3 units released between 2017 and 2020, as well as certain Model S units.

For the Model 3, Tesla believes the opening and closing of the trunk could damage the cable harness attaching the rearview camera, causing the camera to unexpectedly fail. The Model S issue is more serious, potentially preventing the front trunk from fully latching.

According to documents submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there are 475,318 vehicles subject to the recall, comprising 356,309 Model 3 vehicles and 119,109 Model S vehicles....

Continue reading…

Sony’s photo-focused Xperia 1 III is down to its best price yet

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…

11 great apps for your new Windows 11 PC

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Some great ways to tweak your new PC

Continue reading…

Tom Brady says the next sideline Surface he yeets will cost him

Tom Brady #12 of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers watches from the sidelines during the 2nd quarter of the game against the New Orleans Saints | Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

On the Sunday Night Football stage, December 19th, Tom Brady and the Buccaneers were swept for the second consecutive regular season against the Saints — a frustrating shut-out loss that had Brady spiking a poor Microsoft Surface tablet on the sideline.

Tom Brady threw the tablet after his INT

(via @NFLBrasil)pic.twitter.com/PyvdFi30NO

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) December 20, 2021

Now, per Brady on his Let’s Go podcast that aired Monday, the NFL is not going to let the Surface abuse continue. Should the seven-time Super Bowl champion throw the tablet again, he will be fined. “I did get warned from the NFL about that so... I won’t throw another Surface.” Brady said.

The co-host of the podcast, Jim Gray, joked that the whole...

Continue reading…

A vehicle burned at Canoo’s headquarters after a battery test

Image: Canoo

A vehicle at EV startup Canoo burned on August 24th after lithium-ion batteries left inside the car started a fire. The local fire department was able to extinguish the blaze and no one was injured, according to an incident report obtained by The Verge.

The fire happened in the parking lot outside Canoo’s Torrance, California corporate office, which was once the startup’s headquarters — before it started calling Bentonville, Arkansas home in November.

Canoo’s VP of communications Agnes Gomes-Koizumi confirmed the fire occurred after The Verge requested comment. “A small fire occurred several hours after the intentionally destructive testing of a battery module,” Gomes said in an e-mailed statement, noting the module passed the test and...

Continue reading…

Here are the best Kindle deals right now

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is one of many e-readers currently available as part of a discounted bundle at Amazon. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

When it comes to finding a device to use to read your ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your smartphone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.

Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons.

Below, we’ve listed each model currently available for purchase. Sometimes, there isn’t a deal for one, or any, of the...

Continue reading…

The best after-Christmas deals from Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and more

Sony’s WF-1000XM4, the best true wireless earbuds you can buy, are still on sale for $248. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Whether you’ve got a stack of gift cards burning a hole in your pocket or ended up with two air fryers that you don’t have room for, there are still plenty of deals to help you stretch your spending before the new year. Below we’ve outlined some of the best tech deals, sales, and promotions from a variety of retailers across a number of categories to make sure you don’t end up with two stand mixers when you didn’t even need one.

Select a category

• Smart home deals
• Gaming deals
• Headphone and earbud deals
• Smartwatch deals
• 4K TV deals
• Laptop, Chromebook, and tablet deals
• Streaming device deals
• Other deal highlights

Smart home deals

While they certainly aren’t for everyone, the usefulness of Amazon’s Echo devices makes them an excellent...

Continue reading…

The Xiaomi 12 Pro’s main camera is absolutely massive

Even for Xiaomi, the 12 and 12 Pro offer huge main camera modules. | Image: Xiaomi

Xiaomi is at it again — putting another fantastically huge camera on a flagship phone. This time, it’s the Xiaomi 12 Pro with a 50-megapixel main sensor and f/1.9 standard wide lens. It’s not the very biggest sensor Xiaomi has used in a phone, but the combination of a wide aperture lens and sizable imaging chip makes it... well, just look at the thing.

On the technical side, it’s a Sony IMX707 chip, which Xiaomi says it’s the first to use in a mobile device. Gizmochina points out that the 707 appears to be a very light refresh of the IMX700, which makes that claim a little less exciting. Either way, it’s a large 1/1.28-inch type sensor. Sony combines its 1.22μm pixels, which are already fairly large for a mobile camera sensor, to create...

Continue reading…

James Webb Space Telescope’s fuel expected to last more than 10 years

james webb space telescope

Following the revolutionary and successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, into space on Christmas day, NASA announced some unexpected news about the telescope’s future: its science mission is likely to last “significantly more” than 10 years — more than double the minimum time for the mission.

Initially, JWST was projected to be operational for 5 to 10 years, but NASA’s latest analysis released today found that the telescope will likely have enough propellant tosupport scientific operations for even longer. According to NASA, the extra propellant is thanks to the precision of the Ariane 5 rocket that the JWST was on when it was launched into space. It is also due to the precision of the first and second mid-course...

Continue reading…

Fortnite told players they ‘don’t have permission to play’ just before the servers went offline

Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

We have bad news if you’re on winter break and hope to play some Fortnite, as Epic Games has confirmed its battle royale shooter is down — and this time it’s not to help expand the game’s lore. According to a tweet from its own status page, “Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We’ll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online.”

Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue.

We'll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online. pic.twitter.com/B3wXvu5SL6

— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) December 29, 2021

pic.twitter.com/233nt73aDw

— andrew webster (@A_Webster) December...

Continue reading…

2021 was the year clean energy finally faced its mining problem

A drill rig at Controlled Thermal Resources’ (CTR) Hells Kitchen Lithium and Power project in Calipatria, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Demand for electric vehicles has shifted investments into high gear to extract lithium from geothermal wastewater around the Salton Sea in California’s Imperial Valley. | Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This year, the clean energy sector finally started grappling in earnest with one of its biggest challenges: how to get enough minerals to build solar panels, wind turbines, and big batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. Figuring that out will be critical for escaping fossil-fueled ecological disaster. It’ll also be crucial for policymakers and industry to move forward without throwing certain communities under the bus in the transition to clean energy.

Instead of cutting through landscapes with oil and gas wells and pipelines, clean energy industries and their suppliers will open up the Earth to hunt for critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper. Compared to a gas-fired power plant, an onshore wind turbine...

Continue reading…

This Apple Watch Series 7 sale arrived just in time for New Year’s resolutions

The 45mm GPS version of the Apple Watch Series 7 is down to $379, an all-time low. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If getting fit is one of your New Year’s resolutions, or if you, like me, are ending the holiday season feeling so bloated you can barely carry your own weight from all of that food (true story), today’s Apple Watch Series 7 discount couldn’t have arrived at a better time. At Amazon, both sizes of the Series 7, Apple’s latest model that boasts a larger display than its predecessor, are discounted now. At the moment, the retailer is selling the 45mm model sporting a blue aluminum case with an abyss blue sport band for $379 instead of $429.

Have a smaller wrist or prefer a smaller watchface? The 41mm GPS version is currently selling for $349 in select styles (normally $399), meaning there’s a way to save no matter the size you’re after. R...

Continue reading…

Scientists find unexpected trove of life forms beneath Antarctic ice shelf

Bryozoans found in the habitat | Image: British Antarctic Survey

A team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany has discovered a whopping 77 seafloor-dwelling species beneath an Antarctica ice shelf**—** a hint that this mysterious realm may be far more biologically rich than scientists realized.

Little is known about the environment beneath Antarctica’s floating ice shelves,the seaward extensions of the continent’s glaciers that span 1.6 million square kilometers. It’s a harsh, cold environment shrouded in continuous darkness, and previous studies of life beneath the ice have only documented a few dozen hardy life forms.

The new research, published earlier this month in Current Biology, identified more species in a single spot than had previously been documented across all the ice...

Continue reading…

The Book of Boba Fett’s first chapter has a lot of blank pages

Francois Duhamel / Lucasfilm Ltd

The Book of Boba Fett finally is giving its titular character the spotlight.

The fan-favorite bounty hunter has long lurked in the margins of Star Wars’ history: his brief introduction in an animated short during the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special; and his rocketing to popularity thanks to his iconic armor (practically designed to sell action figures) despite his brief appearances in _The Empire Strikes Back_and Return of the Jedi, his shoehorned backstory in Attack of the Clones, and a half-baked arc in The Clone Wars. For all that, Fett himself has been an enigma, a blank slate of badassery that’s never been filled in.

Fett has spend decades as a blank slate of badassery

But after years of rumorsof a solo film, an aborted history...

Continue reading…

Solar recycling is broken, but there’s a plan to fix it

Tang Dehong / Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images

A new Department of Energy-funded research project seeks to solve one of the biggest challenges with solar power — what to do with solar panels after they die.

Solar energy is key to solving climate change, but for the technology itself to be sustainable it needs to be recyclable. Unfortunately, when a solar panel dies today, it’s likely to meet one of two fates: a shredder or a landfill.

Arizona State University (ASU) researchers are hoping to change that through a new recycling process that uses chemicals to recover high-value metals and materials, like silver and silicon, making recycling more economically attractive. Earlier this month, the team received a two-year, $485,000 grant from the DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office to...

Continue reading…