A detailed look at the OnePlus 12 ahead of its global launch

The OnePlus 12 in its three colors. | Image: OnePlus

OnePlus has officially launched the OnePlus 12 in China, and its highest-specced model comes with more RAM than I had in my desktop gaming PC until very recently. Although the flagship smartphone’s base model comes with 12GB of RAM alongside 256GB of storage, opting for the highest-end version gets Chinese buyers 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. OnePlus is yet to confirm configurations when it launches internationally in “early 2024.”

The phone’s RAM isn’t the only eye-catching spec. Charging speeds are also speedy, with support for 100W wired fast charging and 50W wireless charging (a feature that was missing entirely from the OnePlus 11). Based on our experience with the previous OnePlus 11, that 100W fast charging is likely to...

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Halide says it will never support video, so it’s launching Kino instead

Image: Kino

Halide cofounder Ben Sandofsky has a message for everyone who’s asked if video capture will be added to the popular iPhone photography app: “Never.” Lux, the development team behind Halide, is instead working on Kino — a new, dedicated video capture app for iPhones that aims to provide professional recording features now that Apple supports log video encoding. Its release is scheduled for February... if all goes as planned.

Just as the Halide photography app was released in 2017 to coincide with Apple adding RAW support for iPhone, Kino’s development was prompted by Apple announcing support for log video encoding in September, a format that allows more detail to be preserved for post-production color grading. In Sandofsky’s own words,...

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Instagram and Facebook cross messaging is coming to an end

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

From mid-December, Instagram and Facebook’s messaging services will no longer be cross-compatible, according to a pair of Meta support pages quietly updated_._ Once the feature is discontinued, you won’t be able to start new cross-platform chats, and existing conversations between services will go into read-only mode. It’s unclear exactly when the pages were updated, but the Instagram version carried the notice as of at least November 21st.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed the change in a statement given to The Verge. “A few years ago, we introduced a new Messenger experience in Instagram DMs which enabled people to message and call a FB account (Messenger) from an Instagram account and vice versa,” spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said. “Starting...

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The new Astro A50 X headset switches between your consoles and PC using HDMI passthrough

The futuristic looking headset and its included docking station come in either white or black. | Image: Logitech

Logitech’s Astro gaming brand has a new flagship gaming headset that costs more than some whole-ass consoles, and it’s designed to simultaneously play nice across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC with a single button press.

But the $379.99 Astro A50 X doesn’t do all of this with simply plebeian technology like Bluetooth. It uses HDMI passthrough for its expansive connectivity — meaning the beefy charging dock of this headset is designed to be wired up as a central hub for much of your home audio / video setup. I hope you’re prepared to take some expert-level classes on cable management (i.e. lots of YouTube searching) if you’re looking to buy one when it ships on December 20th and not make a serpentine mess of cables out of your...

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The Fiat 500e is a tiny, affordable EV that’s only emission is classical music

© 2023 Stellantis

Stellantis announced the all-new 2024 Fiat 500e, a tiny, affordable electric car that could be the perfect antidote to all those oversized, bloated electric SUVs and trucks that are coming out soon. The tiny EV will be available in North America in early 2024.

The Fiat 500e is a great example of the kind of vehicle that makes a lot of sense for cities and maybe even some suburbs. It’s electric, so it won’t spew pollution into the air. It’s small, so it takes up less space and is, on balance, less dangerous to pedestrians, cyclists, and other people who share the road.

The Fiat 500e is a great example of the kind of vehicle that makes a lot of sense for cities and maybe even some suburbs

Starting at $34,095, the Fiat 500e will squeeze...

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PlayStation accounts are being ‘permanently suspended’ and no one knows why

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Many PlayStation Network users reported Monday that their accounts were unexpectedly permanently suspended.

“This account is permanently suspended from PlayStation Network due to violations of the PlayStation Network Terms of Service and User Agreement,” Sony said in a message to one user. A user on Reddit reported getting a similar message, and a look at PlayStation accounts on Facebook and Instagram shows dozens of people who’ve received similar notices in the last few hours. I’ve also seen reports from the gaming forum ResetEra and from Verge readers who wrote into our tips inbox.

Some who have received these suspensions are understandably distraught, as they may have spent a lot of money on digital PlayStation games that they no...

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The Verge’s favorite holiday gifts under $100

Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge

The world can be an expensive place. Fortunately, we’ve assembled 30-odd gifts that are designed to keep your holiday spending (mostly) in check.

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The UK tries, once again, to age-gate pornography

Illustration by Hugo Herrera for The Verge

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has laid out how porn sites could verify users’ ages under the newly passed Online Safety Act. Although the law gives sites the choice of how they keep out underage users, the regulator is publishing a list of measures they’ll be able to use to comply. These include having a bank or mobile network confirm that a user is at least 18 years old (with that user’s consent) or asking a user to supply valid details for a credit card that’s only available to people who are 18 and older. The regulator is consulting on these guidelines starting today and hopes to finalize its official guidance in roughly a year’s time.

The measures have the potential to be contentious and come a little over four years after the UK...

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DoorDash makes tipping an afterthought to protest New York City’s wage raise

A DoorDash cyclist delivers during a snow storm in New York City in 2021. | Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images

For most markets where DoorDash operates, customers are prompted to tip on the checkout screen, with a middle option already selected by default. If they want to, they can adjust the tip later from the status screen while awaiting their food, or even after it’s delivered. That’s changing today; while blaming New York City’s minimum wage increase for delivery workers, DoorDash announced that for “select markets, including New York City,” tipping is now exclusively a post-checkout option.

The company said the change is intended to “better balance the impact of” new costs resulting from the city’s change. It wrote that the new regulations will “force” it to raise fees, so the move is meant to “ensure our platform remains affordable for all...

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Spotify cancels industry-favorite podcast Heavyweight

Image: The Verge

Heavyweight, one of Gimlet’s flagship shows and a favorite among people in the industry, has been cancelled by Spotify. After the show finishes its current season, the team that makes Heavyweight will be laid off, a person familiar with the situation told The Verge.

“We are extremely proud of the team who has supported these talented storytellers across each of the incredible episodes of Heavyweight,” Spotify spokesperson Rosa Oh said in a statement to The Verge. “We are excited to share the upcoming episodes and season that will be available on Spotify and other podcast platforms, and we will work with the show creator to ensure a smooth transition for wherever the series goes next.”

The cancellation comes as Spotify executes a layoff...

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The first GTA VI trailer is here

Image: Rockstar Games

Less than a day before Rockstar was set to debut GTA VI’s first trailer, a now-suspended account called @Gta6trailerleak posted the trailer on X (formerly Twitter). Though the GTA VI trailer was scheduled to premiere Tuesday, December 5th at 9AM ET, Rockstar has gone ahead and posted the trailer in full on its official YouTube channel.

The trailer confirms many little details that have slowly come out about GTA VI over the last two years, including the Vice City setting and that the game would star the series’s first female protagonist with Bonnie and Clyde-inspired story elements. The trailer says the game is set to release in 2025, though it doesn’t specify on which platforms it will be available.

GTA VI’s reveal has been rife with...

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Getty lawsuit against Stability AI to go to trial in the UK

The Verge

A UK court ruled a lawsuit from Getty Images against Stable Diffusion creator Stability AI can move on to trial, finding merit in Getty’s insistence that its copyrighted material was used to train AI models.

The Business and Property Courts of England and Wales under the High Court of Justice ruled on Friday, determining Getty’s claim that the startup used its copyrighted library of images to train the Stable Diffusion model should be investigated further. Stability argued the case should not be heard in a UK court because it said no one involved in the training or development of Stable Diffusion was based in the UK. The company also said it trained the model using US-based cloud computing power from AWS.

However, Justice Joanna Smith...

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23andMe admits hackers accessed 6.9 million users’ DNA Relatives data

Image: Getty

23andMe confirmed that a recent breach leaked data belonging to 6.9 million users. In an emailed statement to The Verge, company spokesperson Andy Kill says the breach affected around 5.5 million users who had DNA Relatives enabled, a feature that matches users with similar genetic makeups, while an additional 1.4 million people had their family tree profiles accessed.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and update to its blog post late on December 1st, 23andMe said a threat actor using a credential stuffing attack — logging in with account info obtained in other security breaches, usually due to password reuse — directly accessed 0.1 percent of user accounts, making up around 14,000 users. With access to those...

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The influences of Godzilla Minus One go beyond the atom bomb

Image: Toho

Director Takashi Yamazaki opens up about taking the king of monsters back to its roots for a modern audience.

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Meta is removing the ability to see phone notifications on your Quest

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Meta is discontinuing a feature that lets you see notifications from your smartphone while you’re using a Quest VR headset, according to the patch notes for the Quest’s v60 update. The company introduced the ability to see iOS and Android notifications in the headset in 2021.

Meta didn’t elaborate further in the patch notes about why it’s removing the feature, and it’s a shame that it’s doing so. Without those notifications, it’s difficult to know what’s happening on your smartphone when you’re fully immersed in your Quest unless you pull the headset up from your eyes — which forces you to stop what you’re doing on your Quest.

That said, if you have a Quest 3, the headset’s full-color passthrough is good enough to see your smartphone’s...

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Tesla warns that the Model 3 is about to lose half of its tax credit in the US

Elon Musk at the Tesla Model 3 launch in 2017. | Photo by Lauren Goode / The Verge

A federal tax credit funded through the Inflation Reduction Act can currently shave up to $7,500 off the price of Tesla’s Model 3, but that’s about to drop in half. The tax credit will fall to $3,750 by January 1st, 2024 for the Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive and Model 3 Long Range, the company warned.

Elon Musk’s company made the announcement via a banner on Tesla’s website, TechCrunch reports. Starting at around $36,000, the Model 3 comes with the lowest cost of any Tesla vehicle. Now, Tesla says the full tax credit will only be available to deliveries made through December.

Why? It looks like Tesla will be unable to meet sourcing requirements under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). That might also affect tax credits for the Model Y and...

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The Apple TV just got its first big native VPN app

ExpressVPN comes to the Apple TV. | Image: ExpressVPN

One of the big uses of VPNs is to watch region-locked content, but until recently, you weren’t able to use them on Apple TVs. That’s now changing with the help of one of the bigger names in VPNs, ExpressVPN, which has released its app for tvOS. ExpressVPN will let Apple TV users connect to servers “in any of 105 countries around the world” so they can watch shows and movies and know that the IP address being reported to outside servers isn’t their own.

To download it, you’ll need to make sure you’re on tvOS 17 — earlier versions don’t support native VPN apps at all. Once set up, the app will route your traffic through faraway servers before forwarding them to whatever streaming service or other internet server the Apple TV contacts....

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OpenAI COO thinks AI for business is overhyped

Illustration: The Verge

OpenAI may be chasing after enterprise users, but some of its executives warn people not to expect the technology to change their businesses quickly.

OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap said in an interview with CNBC that one of the more overhyped parts of artificial intelligence is that “in one fell swoop, [it] can deliver substantive business change.”

Lightcap said companies have approached OpenAI expecting generative AI to solve many problems, dramatically cut costs, and bring back growth if they’re struggling. He said that while AI could improve more, “there’s never one thing you can do with AI that solves that problem in full” and that the technology is still in its infancy. He added that AI is still in the experimental...

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GTA VI: all the news on Rockstar’s next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series

Grand Theft Auto V | Image: Rockstar

The hype has never been higher for one of the most anticipated games of the decade.

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Sony’s WH-1000XM5 have dropped to a new all-time low price

It’s not everyday you see such a significant discount on Sony’s WH-1000XM5, the best pair of noise-canceling headphones on the market.

Looks like Christmas came early if you were on the hunt for a seriously good deal on noise-canceling headphones. Right now, Target is selling the terrific Sony WH-1000XM5 for a new all-time low price of $249.99 ($150 off). That’s even cheaper than the $72 discount we found on the over ears during Black Friday, and the deal even applies to both colors.

When it comes to noise-canceling headphones, Sony’s WH-1000XM5 are the cream of the crop, delivering best-in-class noise cancellation and clear, detail-rich sound. At the same time, they offer several other helpful features, like multipoint Bluetooth support so you can connect them to, say, your phone and laptop simultaneously. Meanwhile, their built-in mics offer top-notch voice call...

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This $1,000 card can store a message in DNA

Image: Biomemory

DNA data storage might sound like a far-off solution. But a startup called Biomemory is bringing it a little closer to reality with the release of new DNA cards that anyone can purchase — if you have $1,000 to blow.

DNA has emerged as a theoretical alternative to hard drives, SSDs, and other forms of digital data storage, namely because of its impressive lifespan. Science estimates the technology could potentially last hundreds of thousands of years if stored in a cool, dry environment. That’s a heck of a lot longer than the lifespan of your average hard drive, which typically tops out at around five years.

Biomemory’s DNA cards promise a “minimum” lifespan of 150 years. The $1,000 price tag includes two identical cards, each of which...

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Dragon Age: Dreadwolf has another new trailer, and promises more details in ‘Summer 2024’

Image: BioWare

First there was BioWare’s possibly premature reveal, radio silence, and constant reassurances that the project is developing smoothly amid high-profile developer departures. Now, after layoffs affecting some of the studio’s longest-serving employees including writers who have been with the company for decades (who are now suing for adequate severance), BioWare’s ready to reveal more about Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.

In celebration of “Dragon Age Day” an unofficial / official holiday celebrating all things Dragon Age, BioWare released a short teaser for the next installment in the series Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. At the end of the 50-second trailer was the news that a “full reveal” of the game would be coming Summer 2024 — six years after teasing...

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Eve brings energy monitoring to its SmartThings integration

The Eve Energy smart plug now shares energy monitoring data with SmartThings Energy. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

This week, Eve Systems announced a new partnership with Samsung that brings the Eve Energy plug’s excellent energy monitoring capabilities to the SmartThings home automation platform. The integration should be live for all users by December 4th.

Eve’s Thread-based smart plug and power meter works with Samsung SmartThings through Matter, but as the Matter standard doesn't yet support energy monitoring, users are limited to basic features like on and off and scheduling. Previously, the only platform that supported energy monitoring on the Eve plug was Apple Home, and then only via the Eve app on iOS. With the SmartThings partnership, Android users can now take advantage of this useful feature. It will also work on iOS in the SmartThings...

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Zach Gage’s Puzzmo gets acquired as the newspaper games space heats up

Image: Puzzmo / Angie Wang

The battle over newspaper-style puzzle games is intensifying. Hearst — which publishes the likes of Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and the San Francisco Chronicle — has announced that it has acquired Puzzmo, a puzzle gaming platform led by indie developers Zach Gage and Orta Therox. The move puts Hearst directly up against the gaming efforts of The New York Times. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a comparison, in 2022 The New York Times acquired Wordle for “an undisclosed price in the low seven figures.”

Puzzmo launched in a limited beta form in October and is billed as a reimagining of the classic newspaper games page. It features a number of notable Gage-designed titles like SpellTower, Really Bad Chess, and Typeshift, along with a...

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The Google Pixel Watch 2 is selling for its lowest price of $299.99

Google’s second-gen watch may look just like its first, but it’s much better in the battery department. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The holiday sales festivities have yielded some deep discounts on the original Pixel Watch (dropping it to $199.99), making it a solid deal for Google’s freshman smartwatch. But now, there’s also a great deal on the newer, better Pixel Watch 2. You can get Google’s Pixel Watch 2 for its lowest price to date of $299.99 ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, or Target.

While both Pixel Watches are nearly the spitting image of one another, the Pixel Watch 2 has some big upgrades that help with everyday use — most notably, its battery life. The original Pixel Watch was a little anemic on battery, and the Pixel Watch 2 not only lasts longer but charges much faster. The Wear OS 4 device can recharge around 50 percent in just about 30 minutes thanks to...

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The Verge’s 2023 PC gift guide

Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge

The best tech gifts for those who spend way too much time sitting at a laptop or desktop PC — whether for work or leisure.

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Verizon’s new Netflix and Max bundle costs $10 / month with ads

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Verizon will soon offer customers a cheaper way to subscribe to Netflix and Max. Starting December 7th, myPlan customers can get a bundled subscription to both services for just $10 per month.

The bundle includes the ad-supported plans for Netflix and Max, each of which are priced at $6.99 and $9.99 per month, respectively. That means Verizon’s bundle costs about $7 less than what you would pay for the two separate subscriptions — in line with the rumors we heard about the deal last month. It’s a decent offer if you’re already a Verizon customer, as there’s currently no other bundle for Netflix and Max out there.

You can only take advantage of the deal if you’re a Verizon myPlan customer. The service includes three unlimited plans that...

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TikTok’s Ticketmaster feature is now available outside of the US

Videos from artists like Niall Horan (pictured) that already used the feature have attracted over 2.5 billion views since August 2022. | Photo by Emma McIntyre / Getty Images for iHeartRadio

After an initial US launch in August last year, TikTok and Ticketmaster are expanding a partnership that lets TikTok users purchase event tickets without leaving the platform to 20 additional countries. On Monday, TikTok announced that the feature will now work in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, and several other major markets. That means performers can promote upcoming shows by embedding links in their videos to purchase tickets directly within the app.

TikTok says anyone who’s been verified as a certified artist on the platform can use the feature, provided they’re in one of the regions participating in the partnership. You can check out the full list of countries in the press release linked...

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Now you can slide into Strava DMs

Photo uploads will come in early 2024, but for now you can at least send GIFs. | Image: Strava

Starting today, Strava users will be able to privately message other users within the app. At first, you’ll be able to send both direct messages, as well as group messages.

The feature is intended to be used as a way to motivate your friends on the platform or coordinate group activities. I was able to get a sneak peek at the feature ahead of time, and it’s similar to how DMs work on any other social media, which makes sense because Strava is both an exercise recording app and fitness social media platform. I was able to DM a fellow reviewer friend of mine, and we were able to share with each other custom routes that we’ve made. Pressing and holding a message will let you add a message react with the typical thumbs up, heart, laugh,...

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Building for tomorrow

Illustration by Sisi Kim for The Verge

How do you build a better future? What systems need to be in place to ensure we have the best, most sustainable outcome for the planet? Why is so much stuff broken?

These were the questions we asked ourselves as we outlined this special issue on infrastructure. We know that things like roads and bridges and wastewater treatment facilities are what make modern life possible. But there’s a lot more to our infrastructure that mostly goes unnoticed. So let’s change that.

We explore why the next few years are pivotal for self-driving trucks, look into the broadband industry’s long history with racial discrimination, ask what it will take to get rural Americans to adopt electric vehicles, and investigate the reasons Wi-Fi is so slow in most...

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