Microsoft open sources its 3D emoji to let creators remix and customize them

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is open sourcing more than 1,500 of its 3D emoji, making them free for creators to remix and build upon. Almost all of Microsoft’s 1,538 emoji library will be available on Figma and GitHub starting today in a move that Microsoft hopes will encourage more creativity and inclusivity in the emoji space.

While Microsoft released its emoji in Windows 11 last year and 3D versions in Microsoft Teams in February, the company hadn’t originally planned to open source its work. “Initially we were focused on building the body of work,” says Jon Friedman, Microsoft’s CVP of design and research, in an interview with The Verge. “The idea kinda just started popping around, and it aligned with our belief and perspective that the more open...

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How to preorder the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro

Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro share a similar shape to the previous model but are slightly smaller. | Image: Samsung

Samsung revealed its latest pair of true wireless earbuds, the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, during its Galaxy Unpacked event earlier today, introducing them alongside the forthcoming Galaxy Watch 5, Galaxy Z Fold 4, and Galaxy Z Flip 4. The second pair of earbuds under the Pro moniker launch on August 26th and are available for preorder starting today for $229.99, a cool $30 more than the price of the original Pros and $80 more than the standard second-edition buds.

While we have yet to put them through their paces — we’ll be doing so in the coming weeks ahead of our full review — the Buds 2 Pro don’t drastically depart from the design Samsung established with the original Buds Pro. They retain their oblong shape but scale it down, supposedly to...

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How to preorder the Galaxy Watch 5

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 5 Pro start at $279.99 and will be available August 26th. | Image: Samsung

Samsung announced the new Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 4, Galaxy Z Flip 4, and the forthcoming Galaxy Buds Pro 2 during its Galaxy Unpacked event this week. Both smartwatches are set to launch on August 26th but are available for preorder today starting at $279.99 and $449.99, respectively.

Like its predecessor, both versions of the Galaxy Watch 5 are built on Google and Samsung’s Wear OS 3 platform as well as the Exynos W920 processor, announced last year. However, Samsung says the new Galaxy Watch 5 lineup offers longer battery life, faster charging, and a sapphire crystal display that should be more durable and scratch resistant than the glass found in previous models.

The new smartwatch also comes with...

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The Steam Deck makes PlayStation’s biggest games portable

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. | Image: Sony

Sony may have stopped making portable gaming devices years ago, but Valve’s Steam Deck is quickly becoming an excellent way to play PlayStation games on the go. Big first-party titles like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn,and Days Gone are now available on PC and have been verified for Steam Deck. PlayStation hits like Death Stranding and Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade are verified, too. Now Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, out this week, is one of the best examples yet of how the Steam Deck is becoming the new portable PlayStation.

I’ve only played a few hours, but as far as I can tell, everything that made Spider-Man one of the best superhero games ever when it first came out in 2018 on the PS4 is still here. The swinging is still...

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Vergecast: Amazon buys Roomba, non-watch wearables, and the best cheap(er) phones

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Every Wednesday and Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where our editors make sense of the week’s most important technology news. On Wednesdays, editor-at-large David Pierce leads a selection of The Verge’s expert staffers in an exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives — and which ones you should bring into your home.

This week, David taps into The Verge’s reviews team to explore where we’re headed with smart home gadgets, wearables, and midrange phones.

At the top of the show, Verge smart home reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy returns to discuss Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot, maker of the ever-popular Roomba robot vacuum. What does Amazon want with Roomba? Jennifer explains.

Later in the...

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Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked August 2022: the five biggest announcements

Another year, another new Galaxy Z Fold foldable.

Samsung has just wrapped its latest Galaxy Unpacked event where, as expected, it announced two foldables, new smartwatches, and an update to its Galaxy Buds Pro line. While the company didn’t surprise us too much with what was announced, the updates seem like quality refinements across the board — though, as always, you should wait for full reviews of the products to see if they’re truly meaningful improvements.

Read on to learn more about what was announced.

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 is an iterative update to Samsung’s flip-phone-esque foldable

The Galaxy Z Flip 4.

The Z Flip 4 looks a lot like its predecessor — and yes, it still flips down like the flip phones of days gone by. But there are a few new software tricks,...

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How to preorder the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4

The Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 are Samsung’s latest generation of foldable phones. | Image: Samsung

After its recent announcements at the August 10th Unpacked event, Samsung’s latest generation of foldable phones are official, and they’re coming out soon. The Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 are promising many refinements to Samsung’s established foldable formula. It remains a two-pronged approach: the cheaper Flip 4 folds in half from a “normal”-sized phone to a tiny device that’s easily pocketable, while the ultra-flagship Fold 4 sits at the top end, expanding from an average-sized phone to a mini tablet. Both models are set to arrive on August 26th, and preorders are now open across retailers and carriers.

As for the phones themselves, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 starts at $999.99 and features a new processor, a larger battery, faster charging,...

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New Splatoon 3 video shows off new Splatoon card game

Image: Nintendo

Gather your paint cans, squids. With Splatoon 3 right around the corner, Nintendo’s released the most in-depth look at what to expect from the closest thing to an esport that the company actually still cares about. (Sorry, Smash.) The 30-minute-long presentation covered (it’s a paint joke!) everything from new weapons to new stages and even featured a rough roadmap for content updates post-launch. Settle in — there’s a lot of ink to spill.

As Nintendo’s previously revealed, Splatoon 3 takes place in Splatsville, a sprawling city located in the arid desert of the Splatlands. There, inklings and octolings will plop, glop, and otherwise make all sorts of gross glooping noises as they fight to splatter paint across a variety of stages. S...

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Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 4 is a fashion-forward foldable with minor improvements

The Flip 4, just flexin’.

It’s not a day for big updates or surprises from Samsung, and the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is holding the line. It’s the latest generation of Samsung’s smaller foldable, and it comes with some small but meaningful upgrades, like a bigger battery, upgraded camera hardware, and a stronger main display. There are some new colors, too, which you can mix and match to create your own “bespoke” Flip 4. But if you were holding your breath for a price drop, then we’ve got some bad news for you: it still starts at $999 — affordable by foldable standards but still in the upper echelons of smartphone pricing.

Naturally, there’s an updated chipset: the Flip 4 comes with a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 (paired with 8GB of RAM), which you’ll find on basically every...

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Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro have a more comfortable design and hi-fi audio

The new Galaxy Buds 2 Pro are capable of 24-bit audio playback.

Continuing its string of iterative hardware updates today, Samsung is introducing the new Galaxy Buds 2 Pro. The company says they’re smaller and more comfortable than the original Buds Pro, and the new model supports 24-bit audio playback over Bluetooth — if you’re using a Samsung phone, that is. Preorders for the $229.99 Buds 2 Pro start today, and they’ll be available on August 26th. (That’s $30 more expensive than the launch price of the original pair.) Samsung’s latest top-of-the-line earbuds will be offered in black, white, and purple.

The Buds 2 Pro are 15 percent smaller than the original Buds Pro, and Samsung has also expanded the venting grille to allow added airflow to reach your ears and cut down on any “plugged up” feeling...

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Samsung goes big on battery with the Galaxy Watch 5 series

The Galaxy Watch 5 comes in both 44mm (left) and 40mm sizes.

After weeks of leaks and rumors, Samsung finally announced the $279.99 Galaxy Watch 5 and $449.99 Galaxy Watch 5 Pro today at its Unpacked event. And while there weren’t too many surprises, it seems the company took criticisms about the Galaxy Watch 4’s poor battery life to heart. Both the Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro boast bigger batteries, faster charging, and increased durability to boot.

With the Galaxy Watch 5 series, Samsung once again is shaking up its smartwatch lineup. While the Galaxy Watch 4 series rebranded the main Galaxy Watch and Watch Active lines from the Tizen era, this year’s event introduces a new model altogether: the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro. Whereas the vanilla Galaxy Watch 5 is the entry-level flagship, the Pro is meant to...

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The new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 is a little better and still too expensive

The big folding phone.

Samsung, purveyor of the only serious foldables available on a global scale, is taking a victory lap with the Galaxy Fold 4. As is tradition, the company has announced full details after a parade of teases and leaks, confirming what we strongly suspected: it’s not a huge update.

The overall design is ever so slightly sleeker, with a slimmer hinge and bezels. This is mostly cosmetic and doesn’t make much of a difference to how compact the phone folds down — just the difference of a fraction of a millimeter (15.8mm thick at the hinge and 14.2mm where the sides meet). It weighs a little less: 263 grams compared to the Z Fold 3’s 271 grams. It’s still a heavy phone, which is to be expected for something that doubles as both a phone and a...

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LG Display’s 97-inch OLED panel vibrates to create ‘cinematic’ 5.1 sound

LG Display’s new 97-inch vibrating panel. | Image: LG Display

LG Display announced a new 97-inch OLED EX TV panel that vibrates to produce 5.1 audio without the help of a built-in speaker.

The giant display features LG’s CSO (Cinematic Sound OLED) technology seen previously on devices like this bendable 48-inch OLED panel. CSO uses a thin film exciter applied to the back of the panel to vibrate the display, resulting in audio being generated directly from the OLED without the need for additional speakers. LG Display claims the 5.1 channel system will offer a “cinematic level of immersion,” which is a bold claim considering all the sound will be coming from the TV rather than surround sound speakers placed behind the viewer.

“Cinematic level of immersion”

While we can’t vouch for the quality of...

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Learning to love being asexual while looking for love on Discord

Lille Allen / The Verge

How Discord helped me learn some parts of ourselves are a feature — not a bug

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Fork me: ‘Fall’ movie removed more than 30 F-bombs with deepfake dub technology

You know what? Fair play for dropping an F-bomb in a scene like this. | Screenshot: Fall

Without enough production budget for reshoots, the director of upcoming action-thriller Fall says the team turned to AI technology to remove over thirty F-bombs to turn its R-rating into a much more box office friendly PG-13, Variety reports.

The problem — which has now turned into a handy little marketing hook — apparently emerged when the indie film was picked up by Lionsgate for a cinematic release, where an R-rating (meaning children under the age of 17 cannot see the film without an adult present) would limit its box office potential when it releases in the US on August 12th.

“When we were filming the movie, we didn’t know if we were R or if we were PG-13, so I said the F-word so many times,” one of the film’s stars Virginia...

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The joy of a calming Twitter account

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

When I came home from my freshman year of college in March 2020, it was as if I had never experienced spring in Seattle before, even though it was the only place I’d ever called home. I watched the orange bellies of robins I had never stopped to notice. I watched the rhododendron outside my window blush before fading to white. But it’s 2022 now, and there is no longer one pandemic spring — there have been three. Was it last year that we spent Mother’s Day on our patio in the sun, eating and reading and laughing? When did we return to the Great Sedro-Woolley Footrace? And the afternoon we found baby rabbits in our window well? Time has jumbled for everyone, and I am lucky for the slowness I have found at times, especially with my family....

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Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

Although the charges against the two women are based on established abortion law (Nebraska outlaws abortions 20 weeks post-fertilization unless the mother’s life is in danger), women’s health campaigners and digital privacy advocates say the case illustrates the dangers of ubiquitous digital surveillance in a post-Roe America.

“hypocritical surveillance practices make [Big Tech] complicit in the criminalization of people seeking, facilitating, and providing abortions”

“Since the...

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I Am Groot is delightfully inconsequential

He is Groot. | Image: Disney

The big streaming series from Marvel and Star Wars take all the headlines, but since its debut, Disney Plus has also slowly become a service stuffed with animated shorts. They… vary in quality. Some are shameless examples of brand synergy, like when Loki or Billie Eilish hang out with the Simpsons for a few painful minutes at a time. But if you dig a little deeper, there’s some great stuff, including some classic-style Mickey Mouse shorts, a refreshing take on Star Wars, and a surprisingly sweet series about Baymax from Big Hero 6. Now, you can add I Am Groot to that short list of shorts.

The series seems inevitable in retrospect. Ever since Groot (voiced, as always, by Vin Diesel) was turned into a baby, he’s been the Minion-style comic...

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These Canon cameras are secretly Robots in Disguise

Image: Takara Tomy

Don’t you just hate it when you pick up your trusty Canon EOS R5, only to discover it’s actually a sneaky Transformer? Well bad news, because this nightmarish future spotted by TFormers is actually becoming a reality next year thanks to a collaboration between Takara Tomy (the Japanese company behind the Transformers toys) and Canon (the Japanese company behind… well you get the idea).

The collaboration has resulted in a pair of Transformers figurines that are able to fold away into surprisingly realistic looking Canon mirrorless cameras. I say “surprisingly realistic” because at first glance I somehow mistook these for functioning cameras. But in case it wasn’t obvious from their ¥ 19,800 (around $147) pricing, they’re non-functional...

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Microsoft reportedly lays off team focused on winning back consumers

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft is reportedly laying off its team focused on winning back consumers. In 2018 the software giant originally detailed its efforts to win back the non-enterprise customers it let down, forming a Modern Life Experiences team to focus on professional consumers (prosumers). Business Insider now reports that Microsoft is laying off that team, and telling the roughly 200 affected employees to find another position at the company or take severance pay.

While Microsoft isn’t officially commenting on the end of its Modern Life initiative, a Microsoft senior designer revealed there was “hard news” for the Modern Life Experiences team this week in a LinkedIn post. The news comes weeks after Microsoft cut less than 1 percent of its...

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Urbanista brings solar-powered headphone tech to true wireless earbuds

Exeger’s Powerfoyle solar panels are included on the charging case. | Image: Urbanista

Urbanista is following up its solar-powered over-ear headphones from last year with a pair of solar-powered true wireless earbuds called the Phoenix, the company officially announced today. Like the headphones, Phoenix uses Powerfoyle solar panels produced by Exeger to extend their battery life with power from the sun’s rays. But unlike the Los Angeles headphones that have solar panels built into the headband, the panels aren’t included on the Phoenix earbuds themselves. Instead, they’re built into the Phoenix charging case.

The decision to shift the solar-charging tech to the charging case makes sense given the small size of the earbuds. But it’s likely to mean that users will have to make an effort to keep the solar panels directed at...

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Elon Musk changes plans, sells $6.9 billion in Tesla shares with Twitter trial looming

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

With so much of the world’s richest man’s wealth tied up in shares of his electric car company, Tesla is a part of the deal Elon doesn’t want to do anymore for more reasons than just a few subpoenas. Six SEC filings (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) revealed Elon Musk sold more Tesla shares over the last few days, which is surprising given Musk’s tweet saying, “No further TSLA sales planned after today,” after he sold off $8.4 billion worth in April.

Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt tweeted a count of Musk’s activity between August 5th and August 9th, showing he sold 7,924,107 shares worth about $6.9 billion. Just before 11PM ET, Elon responded on Twitter, citing the looming trial against Twitter as an explanation for the new plan.

No further TSLA...

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Apple won’t even tell Ben Stiller how many of you are watching Severance

Apple

There’s no doubt that Severance is a hit — the show’s first season made our best entertainment of 2022 list even as it “paints the darkest possible portrait of how megacorporations think about and treat their employees.” For a real-life example of that treatment, all you have to ask is what happens when the people who make Severance ask Apple how big of a hit it really is.

In a bit of frustration that will feel familiar to anyone who has tried to figure out what Apple means when touting the performance of its custom ARM processors, it turns out that even Ben Stiller, the executive producer and director of Severance, couldn’t get hold of detailed data on how many people are watching. Here’s what he said in an interview with Decider:

“They...

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Microsoft celebrates 15 years of OneDrive with a redesign and new features

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft’s marking OneDrive’s 15th anniversary with a new landing page, called OneDrive Home, and it should make it easier to keep tabs on your work. Instead of arriving on the My files tab when you first open OneDrive, you’ll find yourself on the new Home page that resembles that dashboard in the online version of Office.

Like the Office web app, OneDrive Home contains a list of your files, organized by how recently you accessed them. Above the list are filters that let you sort your documents by Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF file types.

Image: Microsoft

It’s easier to understand the new changes once you see them.

There’s also a new “Activity” column to the right of the “Owner” file field that tells you...

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Dozens of Whole Foods stores will soon let you pay with just a scan of your palm

Image: Amazon

Amazon’s palm scanning technology is expanding to 65 Whole Foods locations across California. The checkout devices were introduced in 2020 as part of the Amazon One payment service, allowing customers to pay with a scan of their palm. This is the biggest rollout by the company yet, with the first new Whole Foods locations adding support today in Malibu, Montana Avenue, and Santa Monica.

Customers can set up Amazon One by registering their palm print using a kiosk or at a point of sale station at participating stores. To register, you need to provide a payment card and phone number, agree to Amazon’s terms of service, and share an image of your palms. Once completed, you can take items to checkout and not have to take out your wallet — or...

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Ex-Twitter employee convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia

Illustration by Alex Castro

Former Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo was found guilty of spying for the government of Saudi Arabia, according to a report from Bloomberg. The jury handed down its judgment in a San Francisco federal court on Tuesday, where Abouammo was also convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and falsifying records.

Abouammo previously worked at Twitter as a media partnerships manager, and helped prominent figures in the Middle East and North Africa promote their accounts. However, he leveraged his position to access the email addresses, phone numbers, and birth dates of users who were critical of the Saudi government. Abouammo then transmitted that information to Saudi officials between November 2014 and May 2015 and...

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Here’s what iOS 16’s new battery percent indicator should have looked like

There’s a new indicator in the latest iOS 16 beta, but it’s not great. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple finally added the battery percent indicator back to the status bar in the latest iOS 16 beta, and as my colleague Victoria Song wrote, it’s hideous. I’m normally somebody who keeps battery percentages off anyway, but the new one seems like it’s just bad. As Victoria pointed out, one particularly egregious issue is that the icon’s “battery” is full no matter what the percentage says, which makes the icon harder to parse.

That said, I’ve seen one mockup that’s in line with the new style for the battery percentage indicator but is far more glanceable. Check it out, from Brian Michel, engineering manager at The Browser Company:

Just recreating the battery indicator pic.twitter.com/cK8PZDe9Y5

— Brian Michel (@brianmichel) August 9,...

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The best instant cameras you can buy right now

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

We found the best cameras for your budget and needs

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Elden Ring’s story no longer makes you invade other players’ games

Summoning signs work in distant areas now. | Bandai Namco

Elden Ring just got a bit easier for single-player purists. Patch 1.06, released today, adds a new way to advance the quest of White Mask Varré — something that previously involved using the multiplayer system to invade other players’ worlds. Now, Varré will let you defeat a new character in order to join his assassins’ order, something that grants early access to a major area of the game. This comes alongside a variety of other changes, including the option to invade or help players across a much larger distance.

Varré’s multiplayer demand was a rare sore point for people — including me — who either weren’t interested in player-versus-player dueling or played in offline mode. Avoiding his quest didn’t completely lock you out of any...

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Waymo designed new features to improve AV access for passengers with disabilities

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Waymo is introducing a raft of new features designed to make its fleet of autonomous taxis more accessible to passengers with visual impairments and other disabilities.

The new features are sure to draw attention when they start hitting the streets. They include displaying the rider’s initials on the rooftop dome as a visual way to identify their assigned vehicle at a near-to-medium distance. The display shows the user’s customizable “Car ID,” which consists of two colored letters that can be configured via the Waymo app.

Another feature offers turn-by-turn navigation to guide the rider on the most appropriate path to their awaiting robotaxi, utilizing data on sidewalks, crosswalks, and other terrain features to provide the most...

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