Has Xbox really lost the console wars?

Has Xbox really lost the console wars?

Xbox chief Phil Spencer. | Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

FTC v. Microsoft day two was all about console wars and whether Xbox is really in a distant third place.

The second day of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing was really all about one man: Phil Spencer. The Xbox chief took the stand to discuss Microsoft losing the console wars, Sony’s aggressive and hostile competition, and to paint Xbox in a distant third place where it’s struggling to compete.

Spencer also revealed Microsoft looked at buying Zynga to improve its mobile gaming prospects and acquired Bethesda after learning that Starfield might become a PlayStation exclusive. He also, importantly, swore under oath that Microsoft won’t pull Call of Duty from PlayStation. That promise turned into some frustrations with the FTC’s line of questioning from Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley and some testy exchanges between the FTC’s lawyer, James Weingarten, and Spencer.

Oh, and Google turned up at the end to talk about Stadia in a rushed last-minute testimony.

Yeah, it was a lot. Let’s dig in to day two.

Can we please stop talking about the Nintendo Switch?

We kicked off the day with a sealed courtroom so that Jamie Lawver, senior finance director at Xbox, could deliver witness testimony about highly confidential Xbox financials. We don’t know what Lawver revealed to Judge Corley, but it set the stage for Spencer to appear and talk about the Xbox platform and the Nintendo Switch.

The FTC and Microsoft have been arguing about whether the Switch should be included in its definition of the console market for two days now and in multiple filings with the court. Microsoft wants the Switch included because then Xbox is in third place. The FTC argues that inside Microsoft it’s always competing and comparing Xbox to PlayStation, not Switch. It provided market analysis and metrics that Microsoft uses internally to back up its “high performance” console market of just the PS5 and Xbox Series S / X consoles. The reality is, as always, somewhere in the middle.

The FTC had consoles inside the courtroom on day two to show how visually different the Switch is from the PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles. “The PS5 and Xbox Series X shipped at the same time... from a form factor these two functionally look more equivalent,” said Spencer, commenting on the visual appearance of the consoles the FTC had hauled into the courtroom.

Photo by Philip Pacheco/Getty Images

FTC attorneys bringing a PS5 to court.

“It’s incorrect to say Nintendo isn’t a competitor,” argued Spencer, but earlier on, he admitted there were some clear hardware differences. “The Switch was designed for people to take on the go,” said Spencer. “Whereas the gen 8 [Xbox One] consoles require that they’re plugged into the wall and don’t have a screen. Nintendo built a different platform.”

To further drive home the FTC’s point, Spencer was questioned about how many frames per second (fps) the Xbox Series S / X consoles can support, how many fps the Switch supports, and even the differences in GPU teraflops. At times it felt like the FTC was minutes away from calling a PC gamer to the stand to testify about memory speeds, CPU cores, and thermal paste.

The reality is that the Nintendo Switch is still a game console. It can play some of the games that the Xbox Series S / X and PS5 also play, albeit rarely as well or at the same visual fidelity. Its catalog includes extraordinarily popular games like Fortnite that don’t fit the conventional triple-A model. And it’s already successful without Call of Duty and the types of triple-A games that people typically buy a PS5 or Xbox Series X for, thanks to Nintendo’s decades of investment in its strong lineup of exclusive titles.

If you’re a gamer that Microsoft and Sony both care about, you’re probably also a potential Switch customer. At the end of the day Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all competing for your gaming time and attention.

In the Epic v. Apple verdict it was decided that the Switch was potentially a future competitor to Apple and Google phones but not one yet. Nearly two years later, we’re in another antitrust case where the definition of the Switch is being debated. It’s a game console, folks. Move on.

The console wars and Xbox struggles

Ahead of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing, we saw Microsoft argue that “Xbox has lost the console wars, and its rivals are positioned to continue to dominate, including by leveraging exclusive content.” In a court filing, Microsoft said it had a 16 percent share of console sales in 2021 (when you count the Switch) and 21 percent of the console install base.

So, “has Microsoft lost the console wars?” asked the FTC’s lawyer in court on Friday. Spencer paused for 10 seconds here to gather his thoughts, as he clearly knows this is a hot topic among Xbox and PlayStation fans.

“As the console wars is a social construct with the community, I would never want to count our community out, they’re big fans,” Spencer answered carefully. “If you look at our market share in the console space over the last 20 plus years, we’re in third place. We are behind Sony and Nintendo in console share globally.”

Spencer was then questioned about an email exchange with Xbox CFO Tim Stuart where the Xbox chief described Sony’s PlayStation platform as “hostile to Xbox’s survival.” Spencer then admitted Xbox hasn’t “effectively” competed with PlayStation:

Every time we ship a game on PlayStation... Sony captures 30 percent of the revenue that we do on their platform and then they use that money among other revenue that they have to do things to try to reduce Xbox’s survival on the market. We try to compete, but as I said, over the last 20 years we’ve failed to do that effectively.

Later in the day Spencer was then asked about Xbox targets. “So your business is not necessarily meeting its internal targets today, right?” asked the FTC’s lawyer. “It is not right now, no,” admitted Spencer. “Today, with the majority of our business residing as the third-place console business, we are not a robust business.”

But just two weeks ago, Spencer revealed gaming revenue at Microsoft is double what it was in the Xbox 360 era in a behind-closed-doors presentation after its Xbox Games Showcase. Spencer also said at that presentation that Xbox has more players than ever, and Microsoft is expecting $1 billion in PC gaming revenue this year. So the Xbox business is in pretty good shape, but Microsoft clearly has some even bigger targets.

If the Xbox business isn’t meeting targets and struggles to compete, why is Microsoft spending nearly $70 billion on Activision? Spencer explained it’s apparently all about the mobile opportunity:

The deal, as we’ve talked about, expands our business to the mobile platform... the existing business that we run today as the third-place console business is a very difficult business to drive profit and margin. So the opportunity for us to expand in a meaningful way onto mobile, the world’s largest gaming platform, was really both a strategic and business opportunity behind this deal.

And to back that up, Spencer was asked about how the Activision deal could help Xbox consoles:

FTC: If Microsoft is going to grow, particularly in a business like console, it can grow by taking share from its competitors

Spencer: There’s no console growth in our [Activision] deal model.

FTC: Do you have any intention of this deal helping you climb out of the number three spot?

Spencer: In console, we do not.

FTC: So that’s just a write off?

Spencer: I don’t understand how that’s a write off?

The FTC then immediately moved on to a new question.

It sure sounds like Microsoft has realized console gaming is stagnant and there’s a mobile opportunity ahead, but we’ve heard some of this before. Spencer said in October that Xbox Game Pass subscriber growth had slowed down and we’ve seen Microsoft focus on PC Game Pass growth in recent months instead. Microsoft recently increased Game Pass for console prices, but not PC Game Pass ones. Spencer also said in 2019 that Microsoft’s gaming business isn’t about how many consoles it sells and, more recently, that losing the Xbox One generation was “the worst generation to lose” as gamers built their digital library.

But surely the Activision deal isn’t all about mobile, so what’s stopping Microsoft from using this giant acquisition to keep content from competitors and create Xbox exclusives? “If you could make a decision that would benefit Microsoft and harm Microsoft’s competitors in any of the markets we’ve been discussing, that would be good for Microsoft Gaming’s numbers, right?” asked the FTC’s lawyer, trying to show that Microsoft could harm the competition and boost its gaming revenues.

“We are trying to compete in the market by growing our business,” said Spencer. “Some of our business growth is obviously growth that our competitors would like to have, so in the end our growth is probably... from some of our competitors not realizing that growth themselves.”

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Xbox exclusives, Zynga, and Bethesda

The FTC argues that a big part of the Activision deal, much like Bethesda, will be Xbox exclusives. We heard on day one of this hearing that Bethesda’s Indiana Jones game is now Xbox and PC exclusive after Microsoft acquired Bethesda. What about other Bethesda games?

Spencer refused to confirm whether Elder Scrolls VI is an Xbox exclusive or not. “I think we’ve been a little unclear on what platforms it’s launching on, given how far out the game is,” said Spencer. “It’s difficult for us right now to nail down.” Spencer did previously hint that Elder Scrolls VI would be an Xbox exclusive, but the game is still years away.

“Have you had conversations at Microsoft about skipping PlayStation with Activision titles?” Spencer was asked by the FTC. “I don’t remember a specific conversation, but it would seem like a normal conversation for us to have,” admits Spencer.

It was also revealed that Microsoft had explored the idea of making Minecraft Dungeons exclusive, in a chat between Phil Spencer and former Xbox CMO Mike Nichols, where both agreed it should be exclusive to Xbox. Minecraft Dungeons eventually shipped on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

One of the biggest surprise revelations around exclusives was the reasoning behind Microsoft’s Bethesda acquisition. Spencer revealed that Sony regularly pays competitors to “skip our platform,” and Microsoft felt it needed to own Bethesda to compete:

When we acquired ZeniMax one of the impetus for that is that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire... to pay Bethesda to not ship those games on Xbox. So the discussion about Starfield when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third-place console where we fall further behind on our content ownership so we’ve had to secure content to remain viable in the business.”

So while Microsoft argues the Activision acquisition is about mobile, it’s also very clearly about Xbox consoles and having exclusive content so that Microsoft doesn’t slip even further behind the competition. Spencer argues that exclusives are “an established part of the console business, and Sony and Nintendo are very strong with their exclusive games.”

Microsoft also explored the idea of acquiring Zynga to boost its mobile efforts. “We entered into some discussions with a company called Zynga, it ended up getting acquired by Take-Two,” said Spencer, before admitting Microsoft spent a lot of time talking to Zynga. “In the end for our opportunity, we thought we needed to have something that was even bigger than Zynga was given our very small starting space in the mobile business.”

Image: Activision

A Call of Duty oath and FTC frustrations

Call of Duty has been the centerpiece of a lot of regulators’ concerns, particularly with Sony’s arguments against Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal and its filings with regulators. Sony has maintained that it fears Microsoft could make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox or even sabotage the PlayStation versions of the game.

We heard a bombshell email from PlayStation chief Jim Ryan read out in court earlier this week, revealing that he wasn’t actually worried about Call of Duty exclusivity and was “pretty sure we will continue to see Call of Duty on PlayStation for many years to come.”

Spencer has committed to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation multiple times, with Microsoft arguing it doesn’t make financial sense to pull the game from Sony’s platform and it would harm the Xbox brand if it did so.

“I would raise my hand, I would do whatever it takes,” he told Judge Corley in court. “My commitment is, and my testimony is, that we will continue to ship future versions of Call of Duty on Sony’s PlayStation 5.”

The “5” in that oath became a contentious part of the FTC’s questioning later on, though:

FTC: Can you swear under oath that without looking at any future terms that need to be hashed out, you’ll ship all the versions of Call of Duty that may exist on all the versions of PlayStation that make exist in the next 10 years?

Spencer: That’s my goal, yes.

After some intense back and forth over deal terms and agreements, Spencer elaborated:

That’s my goal, yes. If what you’re trying to propose is that Sony might change the terms of how we ship games on our platform then that would prohibit us from shipping on their platforms.

The FTC then wanted to see whether Microsoft would make the same Call of Duty promises about other Activision games. It was a particularly fraught exchange:

FTC: Would you make the same promise with respect to all of Activision’s content?

Spencer: I was asked specifically about Call of Duty. No, Activision ships games on mobile and many different platforms. They have some PC-only games like World of Warcraft. I don’t think there’s a blanket statement you can make for Activision Blizzard game content on PlayStation

FTC: What about Diablo? Can you promise it will ship on all future versions of PlayStation?

Spencer: Can I promise? I am able to promise, yes.

FTC: you’re able to bind Microsoft today? Are you able to bind the corporation here today?

Spencer: [silence]

FTC: I think the point has been made, I’m happy to move along.

Judge Corley: Why don’t we move along.

The exchanges between the FTC and Spencer didn’t get much better, and it was clear there was frustration at the line of questioning from Spencer and even Judge Corley.

At one point, Spencer hit back to correct the FTC lawyer on how acquisitions work:

FTC: Now you have a $70 billion upfront payment that you’re making for Activision, right?

Spencer: No, when you acquire something it’s not a payment. It’s like when you buy a house. You’re buying an asset that has value so it’s really a transfer of cash into an asset called Activision, that you believe retains the value that you acquired. So to try and characterize the $70 billion as somehow spent is incorrect. Financially, it’s really moving $70 billion in cash into an asset, which is a game publisher, that to us is actually worth more than $70 billion, so it is not spent.”

The FTC then returned to questioning focused on Spencer’s Call of Duty commitments. Judge Corley directly cut off the FTC’s questioning of Spencer after the regulator’s lawyer asked if Spencer could make a Call of Duty commitment to bringing the game to a Sony PlayStation cloud service. “I don’t think that’s it, I’m going to cut off the questioning there,” said Judge Corley.

The question was a strange one, because the FTC has been arguing that Microsoft’s cloud gaming agreements with Nvidia, Boosteroid, and others are “facially ambiguous and present significant questions,” despite Microsoft arguing they’re relevant. So if the FTC doesn’t think Microsoft’s cloud gaming deals with competitors other than Sony are relevant, why does it want to know about Call on Duty on Sony’s cloud service in particular? Since Judge Corley stopped the line of questioning, we might never know. The deals were enough to convince EU regulators to approve the acquisition, though.

The FTC also had some other bizarre lines of questioning on day two. Early on, Spencer revealed some inside information about why Minecraft still doesn’t have an optimized version on PlayStation 5. “Sony was reluctant to ship us PlayStation dev kits... it put us behind on our development for Minecraft on PS5,” said Spencer. The FTC characterized this as Microsoft then retaliating by still not providing an optimized version of Minecraft on PS5 nearly three years later.

“There is a version of Minecraft that runs on PS5,” says Spencer, but this isn’t an optimized version — it’s simply the PS4 version of the game. Then again, there still isn’t an Xbox Series S / X optimized version of Minecraft, so is Microsoft fighting back against its own platform too?

Image: Google

The Google Stadia controller.

Why did Google show up?

After Judge Corley abruptly ended Spencer’s time on the stand, Dov Zimring, Google’s former Stadia product lead, appeared. The FTC has been focusing on Microsoft’s cloud competition in this case, trying to show that the company sees cloud as a dedicated market and not just a feature.

During Thursday’s testimony we learned that Microsoft was working on a separate “dedicated” version of Xbox Cloud Gaming in September 2022. That’s the same month Google announced its Stadia shutdown. Microsoft now says it’s no longer planning a separate version due to costs and usage.

The FTC spent a lot of time asking Zimring to discuss the technical aspects of Stadia, and he claimed it had “the best technology in the market,” at the time. “We had performance capabilities that didn’t exist in the [cloud] market like 4K,” said Zimring.

But Google Stadia failed because it didn’t have enough games and consumers weren’t interested in cloud gaming. “Our ability to have sufficient content... the number of games on the platforms as well as the blockbusters at a certain time,” were a big part of that failure, admitted Zimring.

Zimring also revealed that Google had experimented with running Stadia on Windows servers, but it was costly. “We had prototyped on Windows early on... the mission we had established at the very beginning was to enable revolutionary experiences... we saw Windows as limiting to innovate in that regard because we didn’t have control over the operating system,” said Zimring. “[Windows] would have doubled our total cost of operating on hardware that was equivalent to the 8th generation consoles, like the PlayStation 4.”

Zimring was called as a witness by the FTC, but Microsoft’s lawyer took time in questioning to establish that Stadia was trying to compete with consoles like Xbox and PC. “So Stadia competed with consoles, including Xbox?” asked Microsoft’s lawyer. “Yes,” confirmed Zimring. The FTC sees cloud gaming as a separate market to consoles, so Google’s confirmation it was competing directly with consoles could undermine that argument.

Microsoft also took the time to spell out in a back and forth exchange with Zimring that Activision content isn’t available on any cloud gaming services right now, but it would be if the deal closed thanks to Microsoft’s cloud gaming agreements with Nvidia, Boosteroid, and others.

Next week on FTC v. Microsoft

We’re only two days into this five-day hearing and we were supposed to hear PlayStation chief Jim Ryan’s pre-recorded video deposition today. Some filings with the court suggest parts of Ryan’s deposition could be sealed, so it’s still not clear how much we’ll get to hear next week.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will also appear next week, likely on Wednesday, and we’ve still got to hear from two Nvidia executives about cloud gaming and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. The hearing will resume again on Tuesday morning at 8:30AM PT / 11:30AM ET, providing everyone a working day of rest on Monday.

The Verge will be covering day three of the case closely on Tuesday, and you can follow all of our live coverage and daily recaps right here.

How to tell everyone on Gmail if youre in or not

How to tell everyone on Gmail if you’re in — or not

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Recently, a friend who has been on Gmail for a long time suddenly noticed the chat availability settings in the upper right of the web app. This notice was actually added to the Gmail page about two years ago when Google Chat was integrated into Gmail. It notifies anyone whom you’ve ever used Chat with that you’re at your computer (or phone) and available — or not.

Even though most people may not receive notification of your availability (especially if you don’t tend to use Google Chat), you may find the idea that somebody may know when you’re using your account... irritating. (At least, my friend did, and I can sympathize.) However, you can turn the notification off — or, at least, mark yourself “away” so that your presence will not be obvious to anyone who has access.

To switch your chat availability on the web version of Gmail:

To adjust your chat availability, first look for the button to the right of your search box. If you haven’t accessed it yet, it will probably show a green dot and read Active. Click on the box to see all your options for chat availability. These include:

• Automatic: this will show a green dot and the word “Active” whenever your activity indicates that you’re available.
• Do not disturb: this will mute your chat notifications, but only for a specific amount of time. You can specify a number of hours or create a schedule — weekdays between 5PM and 8AM, for example. However, you can’t create a permanent “Do not disturb” notice; I created one to go daily from 6PM to 6PM (so it would last 24 hours), and it automatically defaulted to expire in one week.
• Set as away: this will set your status as away and will not change until you switch it.

Google gives you several options for setting your chat availability.

Create a personal status

There are other status options available, which you can access by clicking on Add a status in the drop-down menu. There are several presets that you can add, including Be right back, Commuting, Out sick, or Vacationing. You can also create your own; however, as with Do not disturb, you have to set a time limit — although you get a later time range:

• Click on the button to the right of your search box.
• Select Add a status.
• Write your status message at the top of the pop-up box. A Clear status after drop-down menu will appear, using Today as the time limit. Click on that.
• Select Custom and choose a date, which can be up to a year from today’s date.

You can set your own custom status.

To set your chat availability on the Gmail mobile app:

You can also set your availability and create your own custom notice on your phone using the Gmail app for iOS or Android. Note that wherever you set your status, it will be reflected in all the devices that are using that same Google account.

• In the app, tap on the three parallel lines in the upper left corner.
• A menu will appear from the left; your current status will be on top. Tap on the status to change it or on Add a status to create your own option.

Open the side menu in Gmail to change your activity status.

As with Gmail’s web version, you can add your own status message.

Google Pixel devices finally have a real default weather app

Google Pixel devices finally have a real default weather app

Finally, a real Pixel Weather app. This particular forecast is for the birds, though.

Google finally has a default weather app to compete with Apple and Samsung. Though Pixel phones have long been able to display the current weather in widgets, tapping on those widgets just launched a basic screen with a cute weather frog and a handful of stats. It felt like a web page because that’s basically what it was.

With the launch of the Pixel Tablet earlier this week, Google has rectified that situation. Its new weather app — which is accessed via the same widgets as before, as there’s no icon to launch it — has a much nicer design without losing the playfulness of the older experience. It has 10-day and 24-hour forecasts; wind, humidity, barometric pressure, and UV index reports, plus current sun position and sunrise / sunset times. It also shows details for precipitation, wind, and humidity broken down by the hour. All of this is available in an easy to parse single screen with some fun animations for the current conditions.

The new app also has the ability to provide immediately upcoming precipitation information, including how intense it will be and long it will last before it stops. It can even provide this data up to 12 hours in advance thanks to its use of data provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other sources. This information will only be displayed in the app when it’s relevant — if there isn’t any upcoming precipitation near you, it won’t show this data.

The new weather experience shows quite a lot of detail in an easy-to-parse way. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any radar maps.

Perhaps the only thing missing from this new weather experience is a radar view — if there is one, I’ve been unable to find it in the app. It’d also be nice to have an app icon to launch the weather app instead of having to rely on a widget. Like the barebones previous version, this new one is powered by the Google app, but it feels much more native and less like a dinky little website.

For now, the new weather app is limited to tablets, including the Pixel Tablet and the soon-to-launch Pixel Fold. 9to5Google reports that Google plans to bring it to other devices in the future, but there’s no timing for when that might happen. Android Police has some images of what it looks like running on a phone-sized screen, thanks to developers that were able to activate it on their devices.

Samsung devices already have a rather complete weather app preinstalled, but I’m hopeful that Google doesn’t keep this exclusive to the Pixel line and makes it more widely available. It wouldn’t be the first time Google extended Pixel-specific software outside of its own devices.

Photography by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Russia invades Ukraine: the latest news on connectivity cryptocurrency and more

Russia invades Ukraine: the latest news on connectivity, cryptocurrency, and more

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

This even has implications for the ISS

On February 24th, Russia invaded areas of Ukraine near its northern, eastern, and southern borders. It’s a significant military action that could have alarming consequences, and more than 500,000 people had reportedly fled from Ukraine to neighboring countries as of February 28th.

Tech companies responded to the crisis in various ways, with a focus on trying to reduce online misinformation and avoid putting Ukrainians in danger. Google disabled Maps traffic data in Ukraine to protect citizens, for example, while Facebook removed a Russian misinformation network. But Russia has blocked Twitter and partially blocked Facebook. And there have been internet outages in Ukraine that have sparked concerns about the possibility of attacks on Ukraine’s internet infrastructure.

Read on for our latest coverage of the crisis.

Making sense of the EUs fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

Making sense of the EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

Image: Apple

The European Parliament recently voted on regulation that would, among other things, require smartphone manufacturers to make their device’s batteries more easily user-replaceable. Here’s the fine print.

If you’ve been online in the past week, you’ve probably seen one or two headlines about the European Union voting in favor of easy-to-replace batteries in smartphones by around 2027. That’s based on a June 14th vote in which the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of an agreement that would overhaul the rules around batteries in the bloc.

The good news is that those headlines are fundamentally accurate; the EU is moving forward with regulation designed to require smartphones to have batteries that are easier to replace, to the benefit of the environment and end users. But this being the European Union, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. And it’s these details that could have a significant impact on how and when manufacturers will actually have to comply.

Competing legislation

For starters, the widely cited 2027 deadline for offering smartphones with more easily replaceable batteries isn’t quite the whole story, according to Cristina Ganapini, coordinator of Right to Repair Europe. That’s because there’s another piece of legislation currently working its way through the EU’s lawmaking process called the Ecodesign for Smartphones and Tablets. It contains similar rules about making smartphone batteries easier to replace and is expected to come into effect earlier in June or July 2025. So by the time 2027 rolls around, some smartphone manufacturers may have already been selling devices with user-replaceable batteries in the EU for over a year.

Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge

Replacing the battery in HMD’s Nokia G22, the kind of repair process the EU wants to bring to all smartphones.

According to a draft version of the ecodesign regulation on the EU’s website, batteries should be replaceable “with no tool, a tool or set of tools that is supplied with the product or spare part, or basic tools.” It also says that spare parts should be available for up to seven years after a phone’s release, and, perhaps most importantly, “the process for replacement shall be able to be carried out by a layman.” The legislation is currently being scrutinized by the European Parliament and Council, and Ganapini expects it to pass into law in September this year, with its smartphone battery replicability requirements coming into effect a year and a half later.

Despite the overlap between the two pieces of legislation, the battery regulation voted on by the European Parliament this month is still important. That’s because the battery regulation is more stringent than the ecodesign regulation in a key way: it doesn’t offer a loophole that would allow smartphone manufacturers to avoid having to make their batteries easy to replace if they’re able to make them long-lasting instead. Specifically, they’ll need to maintain 83 percent of their capacity after 500 cycles and 80 percent after 1000 cycles to qualify. Such devices would also have to be “dust tight and protected against immersion in water up to one meter depth for a minimum of 30 minutes,” according to the ecodesign rules — capabilities often achieved with glue.

“We would rather have seen longevity requirements alongside repairability requirements rather than leaving the trade-off to manufacturers,” says iFixit’s repair policy engineer Thomas Opsomer. “That said, 83 percent capacity after 500 cycles and 80 percent capacity after 1000 cycles is a fairly ambitious requirement; it would probably translate to at least five years of use.”

“A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools”

It’s unclear exactly how many manufacturers’ smartphone batteries may meet the requirements for this longevity loophole. For example, one Apple support page notes that a “normal battery” typically retains up to 80 percent of its original capacity after 500 complete charge cycles. But other manufacturers may already be providing batteries that are this long-lasting. Fairphone spokesperson Anna Jopp tells me the (fully replaceable) battery in its Fairphone 4 already fulfills these longevity requirements, while Oppo recently boasted that some of its batteries retain 80 percent of their charge after as much as 1,600 charge cycles.

In addition to not offering the longevity loophole, Opsomer also points out that the battery regulation covers all products with a portable battery; it’s far wider-reaching than the phone and tablet-focused ecodesign regulation.

What makes a battery “removable” anyhow?

So what exactly does it mean for a smartphone’s battery to be easy to replace? A lot of the EU’s definition boils down to what tools are required for the procedure. Although “removable” recalls the feature phone era or one of Fairphone’s devices that only require a fingernail to open, the definition used in the battery regulation voted on this month doesn’t go that far. Instead of requiring removal without tools, the battery regulation instead places limits on the kinds of tools that will be needed to replace a battery. Here’s the relevant section:

“A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it.”

Rather than calling for entirely tool-free battery replacement, the wording of the regulation focuses on preventing end users from having to use proprietary tools or finicky processes. So the EU’s goal is less about turning every phone into a Fairphone 4, with its battery you can pop out in a couple of seconds with your bare hands, and more like the recent HMD Nokia G22, whose iFixit battery replacement guide still calls for the use of a basic tool or two. In other words, the G22’s battery can be replaced using commercially available tools that don’t seem terribly specialized and doesn’t require proprietary tools, solvents, or thermal energy like heat guns or an iFixit iOpener, which are designed to melt the glue some manufacturers use to hold components together. Simple, right?

Image: iFixit

A Google Pixel smartphone, alongside the kinds of tools needed to repair it.

Not so fast, says iFixit’s Opsomer. He points out that while EU law only defines “basic tools, product group specific tools, other commercially available tools, and proprietary tools,” it doesn’t define “specialized tools.” “This current specification could easily give rise to a situation where in order to replace a battery, a user would have to purchase a tool that is in fact specialized but not officially defined as such,” Opsomer says, “The cost of which could easily exceed the cost of the replacement battery.”

So iFixit is pushing for lawmakers to count a device as user-repairable under the battery regulation if it can be repaired using “basic tools.” Included in this category are common screwdriver styles like flat-head, Phillips, and Torx, though Opsomer admits it’s likely to include some nicher implements like iFixit opening picks.

Another potential point of contention is how user-replaceable batteries could coexist with waterproofing. The battery regulation contains an exemption for devices “that are specifically designed to be used, for the majority of the active service of the appliance, in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion.” Opponents of such rules often bring up waterproofing as a feature that could suffer if a device is designed to be easily opened.

“A big success for the right to repair”

In a statement, Opsomer said the EU’s exemption is based on “unfounded safety claims” and cited underwater flashlights as an example of a device that’s able to offer both a user-replaceable battery alongside a waterproof construction. In a YouTube video, repair technician Louis Rossmann cites the Samsung Galaxy S5 (IP67 — so it can be immersed in relatively shallow water for up to 30 minutes) and Sonim XP10 (IP68 — which can be immersed in deeper water for longer periods of time) as phones with good water resistance that also offer removable batteries, though other recent repairable phones like the Fairphone 4 (IP54 — offering protection against splashing water) and Nokia G22 (IP52 — protected against dripping water) fare less well.

A good start

Qualms about the specifics aside, the result of this month’s vote on new battery regulation was broadly welcomed by right-to-repair campaigners. Right to Repair Europe’s Ganapini called it “a big success for the right to repair,” while Fairphone’s legal counsel Ana-Mariya Madzhurova said the regulation “will further empower consumers by ensuring that batteries across industries are more durable, sustainable and repairable.”

The EU’s user-replaceable battery rules still have a long way to go, despite this month’s successful vote. The battery regulation will need to be formally endorsed by the Council of the EU while the ecodesign rules are still being scrutinized by the European Parliament. Although the passage of both sets of rules seems likely given their current progress, discussions are ongoing behind the scenes between different groups vying for looser or stricter interpretations of the written rules.

But, in the years ahead, it’s looking like smartphone buyers in Europe will have a far easier time keeping their devices running and out of the landfill after their batteries degrade naturally over time. And, unless manufacturers want to produce devices with user-replaceable batteries that are only sold in Europe, it seems like the rest of the world is also set to benefit.

NFC technology is getting better range and charging capabilities

NFC technology is getting better range and charging capabilities

Apple Pay uses NFC technology, and it requires you to effectively touch the terminal to make a connection. | Image: The Verge

Tap-to-pay services like Apple Pay may soon no longer need the actual tapping part to work. That’s because NFC, the technology that enables you to pay at shops by touching your phone to a payment terminal, is getting new capabilities over the next next two to five years, such as a communications range boost, more powerful wireless charging for tiny devices like earbuds, and more (via Android Authority).

NFC, which stands for Near Field Communication, is inside thousands of devices today ranging from smartphones to video game-enhancing figurines. Now the body that decides how to standardize the technology, the NFC Forum, is outlining key areas that will move NFC tech forward through 2028. The Forum is comprised of hundreds of companies, including Apple, Google, Huawei, Sony, NXP, and Qualcomm.

Image: Nintendo

Nintendo’s Amiibo figures use NFC, and perhaps future iterations with upgraded NFC won’t need this instructional on where exactly to make contact.

One of the friction points of using NFC tech is its incredibly short range. For an NFC connection to be successful, the devices need to be within 5mm of each other — which is short enough to make “contactless payments” a misnomer. The NFC Forum is looking to stretch that “four to six times” further, which would make it more like 30mm (or 1.18 inches).

With the added distance (and power), people taking public transit in places like New York City could more easily wave their hand bags on terminals instead of taking out their phones. And merchants can stress less about customers magic-wanding their smartphones around payment terminals hunting for the precise connection point.

Standards-based wireless charging of individual earbuds? Maybe!

The NFC Forum is also looking to increase wireless charging power from the 1W currently, to a more usable 3W. While that’s far less than the Qi standard’s max of 15W, it’s enough for the Forum to boast that “The change will bring wireless power and charging to new and smaller form factors, disrupting industrial design while defining new markets.” So, standards-based wireless charging of individual earbuds? Maybe!

The roadmap includes changes meant to make point-of-sale transactions easier, as well. Apple had enabled a Tap to Pay API last year that lets developers turn iPhones into payment terminals. Future NFC standards aim to make this functionality native so that businesses and individuals can receive payments anywhere.

In addition, the NFC Forum is looking to add a “multi purpose tap” that could do several actions in just one tap, like having all your crew’s tickets being allowed entry at a concert with just one tap instead of swiping to the next one by one. And NFC is planning for a feature that can act like an info drop on the device it’s attached to, specifically to share its composition for easier recycling instructions.

The NFC Forum will be presenting its development roadmap during a public webinar on June 27th.

Reddit Wants to Grow Up. Will Its Community Let It?

Reddit Wants to Grow Up. Will Its Community Let It? As the social media site matures, its users and moderators have made their displeasure about corporate changes known, putting the company into a bind.

A.I. Beach Vibes-Based R.T.O. the Black Mirror Quamputer

A.I. Beach + Vibes-Based R.T.O. + the ‘Black Mirror’ Quamputer Generative artificial intelligence can increasingly do the work of creatives — so why aren’t we seeing more A.I. ads and A.I. actors?

New Study Bolsters Room-Temperature Superconductor Claim

New Study Bolsters Room-Temperature Superconductor Claim A team of researchers verified a key measurement from a study earlier this year that had faced doubts from other scientists.

Canadas Online News Act Targets Facebook and Google

Canada’s Online News Act Targets Facebook and Google A new Canadian law will require technology companies to license news content. Facebook’s owner said it would drop news from the platform.

Reddit pressures mods to end the blackout as they find new ways to protest

Reddit pressures mods to end the blackout as they find new ways to protest

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit appears to be ramping up the pressure on moderators to open communities that closed in the blackout protest against recently announced platform changes. A Reddit admin — an employee of Reddit — has told unpaid volunteer moderators of a subreddit that the “expectation here is that communities reopen,” according to a message shared publicly by a moderator of r/DIY.

The pressure worked. The community was closed, but it reopened on Thursday, and a mod said that fears of Reddit actions forced the team’s hand: “We’re re-opening because if we don’t, the mods that Reddit appoint may not care about the subreddit the way we do,” the mod wrote.

The mod’s post also announced a vast number of changes to the subreddit’s rules that hew more closely to Reddit’s general requirements, while also undoing many of the norms and rule tweaks that were in place to improve the quality of content. The changes include no longer requiring users to do basic research and lowering the standard for what the subreddit counts as spam. Reddit has its reopened community, but at what cost?

We’ve seen messages from other moderators where the admin, ModCodeofConduct, uses similar rhetoric. To the moderators of r/homeimprovement the admin said that “to be very clear you cannot remain closed so we need to know if any mods here wish to participate in opening the community.”

To the moderators of r/harrypotter, the admin account wrote that “keeping the community closed is not an option” — even though users have voted for the subreddit to be private, according to a post from a r/harrypotter mod.

More than 2,600 subreddits remain dark in protest, and users on r/ModCoord (moderator coordination) are still sharing their stories of receiving messages from Reddit that they view as threatening and intimidating. “My tiny 27-user sub is being threatened for staying blacked out,” one user wrote. “Reddit is a BULLY,” said another, sharing a screenshot of where they told ModCodeofConduct their messages were “harassment and intimidation.”

Reddit didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. According to Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, “We’ll no longer comment on hearsay, unsubstantiated claims, or baseless accusations from The Verge. We’ll be in touch as corrections are needed.” In the absence of corrections, then, you can assume Reddit believes none are necessary.

Meta is yanking news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada

Meta is yanking news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta will be removing news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada now that the country’s Senate has passed the Online News Act, the company announced on Thursday. The legislation, officially Bill C-18, will force tech companies like Meta and Google to negotiate with news publishers and pay them for their content.

Meta has been a vocal opponent of the Online News Act for some time. “The world is constantly changing and publishers, like everyone else, have to adapt,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement in May. “Asking a social media company in 2023 to subsidize news publishers for content that isn’t that important to our users is like asking email providers to pay the postal service because people don’t send letters any more.” Meta also warned on June 1st that it would begin testing the removal of news from the apps in anticipation of the passage of the law. Bill C-18 will take effect six months after it gets royal assent, according to the Associated Press.

Pablo Rodriguez, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, has pushed back on Meta’s choice to pull news. “Facebook knows very well that they have no obligations under the act right now,” Rodriguez wrote on Twitter. “Following Royal Assent of Bill #C18, the Government will engage in a regulatory and implementation process.”

Google has also tested blocking news content for some Canadian users, but in a statement to The Verge, the company said that it’s still working with the government on a potential solution that would address the company’s concerns.

“We’re doing everything we can to avoid an outcome that no-one wants,” Google spokesperson Jenn Crider said in a statement to The Verge. “Every step of the way, we’ve proposed thoughtful and pragmatic solutions that would have improved the Bill and cleared the path for us to increase our already significant investments in the Canadian news ecosystem. So far, none of our concerns have been addressed.”

According to National Post, the company is in “last-minute talks” with Rodriguez as of Thursday afternoon.

Meta has removed news in an entire country in the past. The company pulled news content from Facebook in Australia in 2021 in opposition to a law similar to Canada’s, but it brought news back after the Australian government amended the law.

YouTube is getting AI-powered dubbing

YouTube is getting AI-powered dubbing

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube wants to make it easier to dub your videos in other languages by giving you some help with AI. The company announced Thursday at VidCon that it’s bringing over the team from Aloud, an AI-powered dubbing service from Google’s Area 120 incubator.

Here’s how it works, according to Aloud’s website. The tool first transcribes your video, giving you a transcription that you can review and edit. Then, it translates and produces the dub. This video has the details.

YouTube is already testing the tool with “hundreds” of creators, YouTube’s Amjad Hanif says in a statement to The Verge. And Hanif says that Aloud currently supports a “few” languages, with “more to come”; according to spokesperson Jessica Gibby, Aloud is currently available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Still, even with a limited number of languages, Aloud could be a useful tool as a growing number of creators add multi-language dubs to their videos. And if you want to hear an example of Aloud’s results for yourself, check out the Spanish dub track in this video from the Amoeba Sisters channel. (Click the gear icon, then “Audio track.”)

Down the line, YouTube is “working to make translated audio tracks sound like the creator’s voice, with more expression, and lip sync,” Hanif says. Those features are planned for 2024, Gibby says.

Motorola Razr Plus review: the right moves

Motorola Razr Plus review: the right moves

The Razr Plus is a much better phone than the preceding models. It’s a little fiddly, but for the right kind of person, it presents a rewarding experience.

The Motorola Razr Plus is the first folding phone that makes me genuinely excited for what’s ahead. In the here and now, it’s a good device, though not quite as ready for the mainstream as Motorola wants you to believe. But for a specific kind of tech-inclined person willing to try out something new, the Razr Plus will be very rewarding.

One feature defines the Razr Plus experience: the 3.6-inch outer display. It’s bigger than anything else offered on a flip-style foldable right now — in fact, it’s bigger than the screen on the first iPhone. It’s not just a check-your-notifications display; it’s a display, full stop. It opens up a whole bunch of use cases that I kept discovering the more I used the phone. It definitely has its limits, but if you’re willing to work within them, then the cover screen becomes kind of a secret weapon.

Aside from the outer display, using the Razr Plus is a thoroughly average flagship phone experience — and that’s actually a win for Motorola. For one thing, it’s $999, which is much more reasonable than the two phones that preceded it. You can still get more phone for a grand from a traditional slab-style device, but the Razr Plus doesn’t present any major compromise on battery life or day-to-day performance. Going about your business on the main 6.9-inch screen, it’s easy to forget you’re using a different kind of phone until someone notices you folding it in half and asks you about it.

That said, the Razr Plus isn’t quite ready for the mainstream. It’s better suited for someone who doesn’t mind the certain amount of fiddling required to get the cover screen to do the things you want. You’ll encounter a stray bug or two, which isn’t unexpected on a device this complicated. And long-term durability is still a question mark — most other phones that cost $1,000 come with much more robust IP68 dust- and water-resistance ratings, but the Razr Plus is quite literally built different.

The cover display’s homescreen includes shortcuts to the various panels you’ve enabled.

The main attraction is the best place to start talking about the Razr Plus: that’s the cover screen, of course. It’s an OLED panel that’s a few pixels shy of square. The sides and bottom of the front panel are curved, but the display stops well before the edges, and I didn’t have any trouble with accidental touches.

It works like this: you have a homescreen with notifications, the time, etc., and some shortcuts to various full-screen “panels,” which you can tap on or swipe to cycle through. The panels are… fine. There aren’t a lot to choose from, and they’re not as interactive as I’d like them to be.

Take the calendar panel: you can tap an icon in the upper right to switch between a daily or monthly view, but nothing happens if you tap on the events on your calendar. The Spotify panel is designed to let you control your music or jump to one of your recent listens quickly, but it’s a little unreliable. It frequently told me I was offline when I was very much online.

This is where you can launch full apps on the cover screen, consequences be damned

There aren’t many panels to choose from, either — so the apps panel is where the real action is. This is where you can launch full apps on the cover screen, consequences be damned. There’s no particular Moto magic happening here — just a whole-ass app scaled to the tiny proportions of the outer display. As you can imagine, some apps work okay like this, and some really, really don’t. But that, my friends, is the beauty of the cover screen.

This is also where the Razr Plus reveals itself as a gadget-lover’s gadget. If you want to use an app on the cover screen that isn’t in the handful of pre-populated suggestions, you need to give it permission in the external display settings — they’re in a menu you get acquainted with in the onboarding process, but it’s still a bit of a detour. This needs to be done for every single app you want to use. Then you can add it to the app panel. None of this is difficult, but it’s not exactly seamless.

During my initial setup, I picked a few that I thought would come in handy, but as I actually lived with the phone, I kept discovering with delight new use cases for the outer display. There’s kind of a sweet spot for these apps: functions that are too complicated or impossible to carry out on a smartwatch but don’t require the full firepower of the main screen. Things like typing a Spanish word into Google Translate as I’m reading with my son or checking bus arrival times at the stop by my house. I can do this all comfortably and single-handedly on the cover screen.

Typing out a text on the cover screen feels like less work than opening your device and coming face to face with everything on your phone.

In my testing, the outer screen was also perfectly adequate for answering texts. If I wanted to, like, really get into it, I would open the phone and use the main screen, but it’s helpful for quick responses. You can’t see the message you’re responding to as you type because the keyboard takes up the whole screen, but it’s fine overall, and it supports swiping, so you don’t have to peck at the slightly smaller keys. I found myself missing the space bar on the keyboard at first, but that wasn’t something I had a problem with in my long-term tests.

I’m generally terrible about getting back to texts, and I don’t have hard data on this, but I think my average text response time was much improved while using the Razr Plus. Maybe the cover screen reduces the emotional overhead of unlocking your device and coming face-to-face with absolutely everything else on your phone. It’s kind of soothing knowing you can just type “lmao,” hit send, and just move on with your life without getting sucked into an unscheduled social media scrolling session.

The cover screen does have its limits, of course. Things get lost behind the camera cutouts in the full-screen view, UIs break, and sometimes you have to tap a pop-up text option the size of a toothpick. But the badness is also kind of great. You can tap on an Instagram notification and start mindlessly scrolling through your feed, but it’s an objectively terrible experience. At that point, you come to your senses and either stop or commit to opening your phone.

Unfolded, the Razr Plus feels thoroughly average.

Guess what: there’s a whole other phone attached to this phone! The inner screen is a familiar 6.9-inch OLED with up to 165Hz refresh rate. It gets just bright enough to combat direct sunlight, and I have no qualms with it. There is, of course, a modest crease. It’s something I noticed when I swiped my thumb across it, but in most situations, it’s actually quite hard to see unless you’re looking for it.

Motorola moved the fingerprint sensor to the power button in the Razr Plus — last time around, it was awkwardly placed in the rear panel “M” logo. With the phone closed in one hand, my thumb falls naturally on the sensor in its new spot so I can unlock it quickly and type out my little text replies. Much improved, I’d say.

The whole thing is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, which came out in the second half of 2022. In the phones I’ve tested, it’s proven to be more battery efficient while running a little cooler than the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. It does an admirable job in the Razr Plus, where it’s paired with 8GB of RAM. It doesn’t cut through demanding games quite like this year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but it’s good enough to keep day-to-day tasks flowing smoothly. It does heat up with a lot of video recording or portrait mode photos, but I never saw that compromise performance.

Crucially, it will sit upright in the 90-degree laptop position to play Elmo for your toddler so he will brush his teeth

The Razr Plus ships with Android 13 and is promised three OS upgrades and four years of security support. Recent Motorola flagships have only come with a couple of years of OS upgrades, so that’s great news. You’ll still get more out of a Samsung flagship — four OS updates and five years of security patches — but I’d call it acceptable, even if there’s room for improvement.

The Razr Plus carries an IP52 rating, which means it offers some protection against dust and just a little protection against water; Motorola defines this as “spills, splashes, or light rain.” Dust is a major concern with a foldable — a little dust under that inner screen is very bad news. So some dust protection is good, but it’s not clear to me how it will hold up in the long run, IP rating notwithstanding. There’s plenty of dust already gathered up along the edge of the hinge on my review unit after a couple of weeks. After years of use, how much of that ends up inside the phone, mucking things up? What happens if you drop it in a toilet? It’s just impossible to know at this point, and it’s a major point of consideration if you’re interested in buying one.

The Razr’s hinge allows the two halves of the phone to close almost completely flat — not the case with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4. But unlike the Flip, the Razr Plus’ hinge doesn’t quite support the screen open at every angle. Once you get it almost all the way open, it kind of flops flat. Likewise, the top will flop shut once you close it down past about 45 degrees. I ran up against this limit once when I was trying to angle the front camera just right, but otherwise, it didn’t bother me. Crucially, it will sit upright in the 90-degree laptop position to play Elmo for your toddler so he will brush his teeth. Ask me how I know.

Two small phones wearing a trenchcoat

The Razr Plus is actually two small phones wearing a trenchcoat, which means it has a very specific small phone problem: a small battery. There’s a 3,800mAh cell here, which falls well short of the 5,000mAh batteries on a lot of big phones these days. But I’m going to cut to the chase: battery life is fine. It is thoroughly average, and for a small battery, that’s actually great.

On a day with three hours of screen-on time, using mostly mobile data, I was down to about 40 percent by the end of the day. When it’s time to recharge, there’s fast 30W wired charging available (AC adapter sold separately) or wireless charging at a glacial 5W. I’m used to plopping my phone down on a wireless charging stand at the end of the day, so the slow pace didn’t bother me. The Razr Plus fits just fine on the Motorola-branded charging stand that came along with my review unit, but I have to open the phone and position it just right to get it charging on my Belkin charger.

Hands-off photography is one of the flip-style foldable’s benefits.

There’s a stabilized 12-megapixel main camera and a 13-megapixel ultrawide on the rear panel cover and a 32-megapixel selfie camera on the inside. Overall, photos from the Razr Plus are what I’ve come to expect from Motorola: occasionally great but somewhat inconsistent. I’m never sure when it’s going to go overboard on the HDR or saturation, but most of the time, it’s fine.

Photos in good lighting show plenty of detail, and the Razr Plus is capable of holding onto detail in dim lighting. In the main camera mode, it struggles to keep the shutter speed fast enough to avoid blur from moving subjects, but it actually does a bit better in portrait mode under the same conditions. Subject isolation isn’t nearly as good as on the Samsung Galaxy S23, which is the gold standard right now, but it’s passable.

There’s a lot of fun to be had once you close the phone and open the camera app from the front display. You can take selfies with the main camera, which is better in low light than the actual selfie camera (or pretty much any other selfie camera out there). There’s also a photo booth mode, which shows a countdown and takes photos on an automatic interval. I have an adorable series of photos of me and my toddler where he grows increasingly determined to snatch the phone out of my hand.

What I liked best was the ability to utilize the front-facing screen with the phone open. You can have the cover screen show a cute little animation to get a child’s attention so you can take their photo. The “get the attention” part worked, but he looked like a deer in headlights in my photos as he tried to figure out what the hell he was seeing. What worked better was using the cover screen to show a live preview of what you’re photographing — that’s when I got the best photos of my kid grinning and goofing off for the camera.

There’s also the flip-phone advantage I appreciated from the Galaxy Z Flip 4: you can set the phone down to take photos or video. I can stay engaged in whatever my kid is doing — rolling a bus toy back and forth across the kitchen, in our case — and get a cute video or some photos in the meantime. I will very much miss this when I switch back to a slab-style phone.

Video quality is good enough, though clips in dim lighting can look a bit dark and overly contrasty. You can choose from 4K or 1080p at either 60 or 30 fps — standard fare.

If you’re the right kind of person, the cover screen can be your secret weapon.

I like the Razr Plus quite a bit, but I recommend it with some reservations. It requires you to be a little more hands-on with your phone than I think most people prefer — setting app permissions, wrangling apps on a small screen, dodging the occasional bug. You’ll also need to be mindful that it’s not as dust or water-resistant as most thousand-dollar phones. If you’re prepared for all that, then using the Razr Plus is a rewarding experience.

It’s unfair to compare it to a phone that doesn’t exist yet, but it’s impossible to ignore the Galaxy Z Flip 5 looming on the horizon. We’re expecting it to launch in July, and rumors all point to a bigger cover screen on that device similar to the Razr’s. It’ll likely come with the same IP68 rating that the last Flip offered, as well as a more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. If all of that comes at the same $999 price as the Razr Plus, then it’s hard to see how Motorola will be able to compete. This is all based on speculation, but it’s worth considering before you sink a thousand dollars into a new phone.

I felt like I was more in control of how engaged I wanted to be with my phone at any given time

The summer of 2023 is, as we all know, Hot Foldable Summer, and at least part of the excitement around the Razr Plus is that it finally presents some real competition for the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip series. But more than that, this is a likable phone all on its own. Finding new use cases for the cover screen is genuinely delightful. I got some candid photos and video of my kid that I don’t think I could get with a slab-style smartphone. I generally just felt like I was more in control of how engaged I wanted to be with my phone at any given time. For the right person, I think these things are worth $999. They’re all things I absolutely want more of from my phone, and I’m glad that Motorola is back in the foldable conversation.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Sky launches TV webcam for video calling and watch parties

Sky launches TV webcam for video calling and watch parties

Sky’s Live camera sitting on top of one of its TVs. | Image: Sky

Comcast-owned British broadcaster Sky has launched a new camera that’s designed to add more social, fitness, and gaming features to its smart TVs. The Sky Live camera attaches magnetically to the top of Sky Glass smart TVs and connects via USB-C and HDMI. It lets you watch TV simultaneously with other households, supports making video calls over Zoom, can track home workouts, and also comes with Kinect-style motion-controlled games.

Sky Live costs £290 (about $370) upfront, but it’s also available to buy for £6 per month on a 48-month contract, or £12 per month on a 24-month contract. But The Guardian notes that Sky is also offering introductory deals that bring the cost of the camera down to £3 a month when bought alongside a TV. The camera requires a Sky Glass TV to function, which itself starts at £14 a month over a 48-month contract, but scales up as you add more content to your Sky package.

The launch of Sky Live comes as Xumo, a joint venture between Sky’s parent company Comcast and Charter is preparing to launch a new lineup of 4K smart TVs in the US this year in partnership with Element Electronics. The TVs will be sold under the Element Xumo TV brand, after Comcast renamed its earlier XClass TVs.

“Sky Live makes your TV much more than just a TV, by introducing new entertainment experiences for the heart of your home,” Sky’s global chief product officer Fraser Stirling said in a statement. “Get active with motion control games, work out with body tracking technology, video call on the big screen and watch TV with loved ones – even from afar. And this is just the start. With our powerful Entertainment OS ecosystem, it will keep getting better with every update.”

The camera itself is 12-megapixels in resolution with a 106-degree field of view, and has four microphones built in. It supports auto-framing to keep you in the center of the shot during video calls, and there’s also background noise suppression that attempts to keep you audible even when things get noisy. There’s no physical privacy shutter, instead you get a button to manually turn off the camera and microphone.

Image: Sky

There’s no privacy shutter, but you get a button to turn the camera and microphone off.

The watch together feature appears to be Sky’s take on Apple’s SharePlay, allowing you to watch TV remotely with up to 11 other households, The Guardian notes. Friends’ video streams appear to the right of the main video feed. The feature works with all live channels and Sky’s on-demand content, but not third-party streaming services like BBC’s iPlayer or Netflix, and streams are limited to HD rather than 4K. According to WhatHifi, Sky boasts that playback should be synchronized across all call participants (important if you’re watching live sports together), and anyone can pause or rewind the content you’re watching. It’s supposed to emulate watching TV together in the same room, after all.

The fitness and gaming features are where the Kinect comparisons become more apparent. There’s a built in Mvmnt fitness app with over 130 interactive workouts, and the Sky Live camera can keep an eye on your form and track your reps. There are also motion-controlled games including Fruit Ninja (obviously), and a version of Monopoly which is controlled with the TV’s standard remote and supports online multiplayer. But, as WhatHifi notes, Sky Live isn’t intended as a hands-free controller for the TV itself. You’ll still be using a traditional remote to choose content to watch.

Disclosure: Sky’s parent company Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.

Adobe XD put on life support ahead of Figma acquisition

Adobe XD put on life support ahead of Figma acquisition

Adobe’s own product design platform may be dropped entirely in favor of Figma. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Days appear to be numbered for Adobe XD. As spotted by developer Alex Ivanovs, the UX / UI product design platform is no longer available as a standalone app under Adobe’s Creative Cloud launcher, effectively sunsetting the software for folks who hadn’t already purchased it.

Considering Adobe is in the process of acquiring Figma, a remarkably similar set of design tools, this news isn’t entirely unexpected. But it doesn’t mean that the Adobe XD app is dead. Not yet anyway.

Anais Gragueb, Senior Manager for Creative Cloud & Innovation Public Relations confirmed to The Verge that Adobe will continue to support Adobe XD for existing customers. If you didn’t purchase an XD subscription before it was pulled then the app will still be available to download through the Creative Cloud All Apps plan. This is a package subscription for over 20 Adobe apps that starts from $54.99 per month (compared to the $9.99 per month for the standalone Adobe XD app), though Adobe XD is not one of the Creative Cloud apps listed on the landing page.

Image: Alex Ivanovs

As Ivanovs highlights here, the entire UI & UX section on the Adobe CC launcher has been removed alongside the standalone Adobe XD app.

It’s unclear when the standalone Adobe XD app was actually removed — back in May, a member of the Adobe Support Community forums highlighted that they were unable to find a download link to install it, and that it had disappeared from the company’s list of Creative Cloud applications. An Adobe representative responded in the forum to clarify that Adobe XD was no longer available.

Adobe hasn’t disclosed any plans to completely shut down the Adobe XD app. It won’t be too surprising if that does happen though — when the company announced it was purchasing Figma back in September last year, one particular question (aside from the various concerns regarding creative market monopolization) came to mind: doesn’t Adobe already have its own app for this?

Figma was Adobe XD’s biggest competitor prior to the acquisition. It’s a more popular service for a myriad of reasons: It’s web-based, has a free-to-use membership tier, and some designers argue that it’s simply a more flexible and powerful tool for prototyping designs. According to one study from UX Tools, Figma was dominating a whopping 77 percent of the UI design market back in 2021 — and its popularity has only grown since that point.

It’s likely that pulling the standalone Adobe XD app from sale is Adobe’s way of discouraging people away from the service before a full closure. After all, once its acquisition of Figma is approved, there’s no reason to keep running two similar applications that directly compete with each other. Whether it does get approval is a matter for regulators, with the EU expected to launch a formal investigation into the matter that could delay — or even unravel — the $80 billion deal.

Mark Zuckerberg is ready to fight Elon Musk in a cage match

Mark Zuckerberg is ready to fight Elon Musk in a cage match

Zuckerberg says he recently completed “the Murph Challenge” workout in just under 40 minutes, which is insane. | Mark Zuckerberg / Meta

Here we go.

After Elon Musk recently tweeted that he would be “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO shot back by posting a screenshot of Musk’s tweet with the caption “send me location.”

I’ve confirmed that Zuckerberg’s post on his Instagram account is, in fact, not a joke, which means the ball is now in Musk’s court. “The story speaks for itself,” Meta spokesperson Iska Saric told me.

I’m up for a cage match if he is lol

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023

Screenshot: The Verge

Zuckerberg posted this on his verified Instagram account Wednesday.

The backstory here: since I recently reported more details about Meta’s forthcoming Twitter competitor, Musk has been taunting Zuckerberg on Twitter with zingers like “Zuck my .” During an internal all-hands meeting at Meta last week, chief product officer Chris Cox told employees the company thinks creators want a version of Twitter that is “sanely run,” drawing cheers. “I’ve always thought that Twitter should have a billion people using it,” Zuckerberg said during a recent podcast interview with Lex Fridman.

In terms of tech billionaire CEOs literally fighting, Musk versus Zuckerberg would be as good as it gets. Musk, 51, has the upper hand on Zuckerberg in terms of sheer physical size, and he has talked about being in “real hard-core street fights” when he was growing up in South Africa. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg, 39, is an aspirational MMA fighter who is already winning Jiu-Jitsu tournaments. He also claims to have recently completed the grueling “Murph Challenge” workout in just under 40 minutes.

Regardless of who would win, I think we can all agree that a Musk-versus-Zuckerberg match would be one of the most entertaining fights of all time. It needs to happen. Don’t back down now, Musk.

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Chinas Cloud Computing Firms Raise Concern for U.S.

China’s Cloud Computing Firms Raise Concern for U.S. The Biden administration is exploring whether it can mount a campaign against Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Huawei, potentially fueling tensions with Beijing.

Meta is increasing the performance of its Quest 2 and Pro headsets

Meta is increasing the performance of its Quest 2 and Pro headsets

The Meta Quest 2 is about to get performance enhancements (and not a new strap). | Image: The Verge

Mark Zuckerberg announced the Meta Quest 3 VR headset at the beginning of this month, which should bring enhanced capabilities for those who want to upgrade their Quest 2. But that more performant Quest 3 won’t be here until September, so in the meantime, Meta promised a future update will boost the Quest 2’s (and Quest Pro’s) performance and keep the hardware supported for much longer.

Meta is now rolling out those changes in the v55 update. The Quest 2 will get a 19 percent GPU speed increase while Quest Pro owners will get an 11 percent jump. Both of the VR headsets are also getting up to 26 percent performance increases in CPU power as well, according to Meta.

The performance upgrades should give users overall smoother game performance and a more responsive system UI, Meta says, and the company is also adding Dynamic Resolution Scaling that lets applications take advantage of more pixel density with consistent frame rates.

Developers will also be able to update their games and apps to take advantage of the performance gains. Meta’s blog post includes a sample video of The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners enjoying a higher resolution thanks to the headset performance updates.

Image: Meta

Messenger in VR.

The v55 update also has some new software experiences. The Explore tab now encapsulates Meta’s media content, including short-form videos and content from your Facebook and Instagram accounts, and as previously tested, Reels. Meta Horizon Worlds also has new places to explore, along with new Avatar digital outfits. The new Explore part of the update is rolling out “gradually” to users now.

In version 54 of the Meta Quest software, the company had introduced notifications from non-VR apps, including ones from Messenger. Now in v55, Meta is adding a standalone Messenger app in VR so you can communicate with friends without needing to take your headset off and pull out your smartphone.

Image: Meta

You can use two fingers to zoom in and out in the web browser like on a multitouch device.

Finally, Meta Quest Browser is getting multi-touch gesture support that lets you zoom in and out and interact with elements with not just the Touch controllers but also with only hand gestures. It’s like getting a taste of the hand controls available in another upcoming headset.

Amazon Prime Day 2023 will take place on July 11th and 12th

Amazon Prime Day 2023 will take place on July 11th and 12th

Amazon’s Prime Day will take place in mid-July. Other retailers will likely also hold competing events around that time. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s that time of year again. Amazon once again announced its annual sales event for Prime members. Amazon Prime Day officially kicks off at 3AM ET / 12AM PT on Tuesday, July 11th, and runs through Wednesday, July 12th.

If you can’t wait until the Black Friday / Cyber Monday holiday shopping season, Prime Day offers some of the best deals you can get on a range of goods. That’s assuming, of course, Amazon won’t surprise us again with another “Prime Early Access Sale” (aka, Prime Day 2.0) as it did in early fall last year.

We don’t yet know everything that is going to be on sale, but one thing is almost certain based on past trends: the best discounts will likely land on Amazon devices. Historically, we’ve seen everything from Amazon’s smart displays to streaming devices drop to some of their lowest prices to date. That includes products from Amazon-owned companies like Ring and Blink, so everything from the latest Echo Dot to the Ring Video Doorbell 2 is fair game.

Like last year, early deals officially kick off weeks prior to the actual event, with Echo speakers, Eero mesh Wi-Fi routers, and other Alexa-enabled devices receiving up to 55 percent off starting as early as this week. Amazon also says it will be dropping prices on various services during the 48-hour event, offering discounts on Amazon Music Unlimited, Audible, and Amazon Prime Video, among other services.

But it’s not all Amazon devices and services, though. The two-day sales event offers one of the year’s best opportunities of the year to save on other kinds of electronics, including robot vacuums, wireless earbuds, laptops, charging accessories, and 4K TVs. Amazon says the sale will showcase the “lowest prices so far this year” on select products from Bose, Theragun, and a host of other well-established brands. Outside of that, there tends to be a plethora of deals available on tabletop games, home goods, toys, beauty products, and pretty much everything else under the sun.

As usual, these Prime Day deals will be available to Prime members living in the US but also to those in other countries, including Australia, Germany, Japan, and more than 20 other regions around the globe. As we do every year, we’ll be highlighting the best Prime Day deals from Amazon and other retailers holding competing sales events. Be sure, then, to bookmark The Verge dot com and check back between now and July 11th for all of our Prime Day coverage.