Meta’s plans to beat Apple’s Vision Pro include cheaper headsets and no controllers
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Meta is looking down the road at a follow-up to the Quest 3, which is releasing this week, and plans to take cues from Apple’s Vision Pro while it races to mainstream its VR tech. That’s according to Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, who writes that the company’s Quest headset marketing plans have changed in response to Apple’s Vision Pro announcement earlier this year. Part of the plan is to release a VR headset without controllers to get the cost down next year.
Gurman says a person within Meta told him the company is “in the ‘afraid of Apple’ stage,” comparing it to the mobile phone industry just before the iPhone’s launch. He writes that the company’s shift away from a heavy focus on the metaverse and more to pushing the practical uses of the headset — gaming and productivity — is a direct response to Apple’s pitch for the Vision Pro. You could argue that Apple’s headset is more down-to-Earth than immersive virtual worlds, even if its price is very much not.
Meta’s roadmap has involved making its next headset, codenamed Ventura, even cheaper — The Quest 3 is already less than 15 percent the cost of a Vision Pro — and more comfortable without sacrificing screen resolution. And apparently, according to Gurman, Meta is also looking at doing away with controller bundling to help with that, letting customers either just use hand gestures or buy controllers separately.
Apple and Meta are ultimately after different markets, but at the moment, the existing VR headset market is pretty much just “people who want VR headsets” — you know, early adopters. Meta is trying to figure out how things will shake out when the market actually grows, and to plant a foot in it, the company needs a different product, or it risks the Quest going the way of feature phones.
The AI gadgets are coming
Image: William Joel / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 9, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, hurray! I’m so happy you’re here, and also, you can catch up on all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I also have for you a new smartwatch, a great new Spotify feature, several new games to dive into, a recipe app, and some new book recommendations.
I also have a specific question for you: What do you use to track all the stuff you want to watch, read, and listen to? Do you have a bunch of apps? Some lists? A wild Excel spreadsheet? Your own memory? Nothing at all? I want to know all your media-tracking tips, and I’ll share a bunch in next week’s Installer. Send an email to installer@theverge.com, text me at (203) 570-8663, or find me on all the socials.
In general, of course, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What app should everyone know about? What show / podcast / game is everyone missing out on? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you want to get every issue a day early in your inbox, you can subscribe here.
Okay, we have a lot to get to this week. Let’s go.
The Drop
Google Pixel Watch 2. Google launched the Pixel 8 phone lineup this week and some cool updates to the Pixel Buds Pro headphones, but I think the new $349.99 watch is the best new thing of the bunch. More battery, more processor, more sensors, more Fitbit software under the hood — this sounds like the Apple Watch competitor the Android world really needed.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage. I haven’t played this one yet, but I hear great things, and I love me some Assassin’s Creed. For years, it’s been basically the same game, only relentlessly bigger and more confusing, but this Egypt-set installment appears to be a return to its relentless form. This is my long-weekend project — one of them, anyway.
Forza Motorsport. My other long-weekend project. An ultra-realistic, ultra-detailed game with endless side quests and upgrade tasks is pretty much everything I can ask for in a racing game. Now I just have to figure out how to sneak a full simulator rig into my house without anyone noticing…
Spotify audiobooks. I don’t love the way audiobooks are integrated within Spotify, but I do love getting 15 hours of audiobook listening a month with a Premium subscription. That’s not a ton, but it’s roughly 1.5 Harry Potter books, almost exactly one listen through Ready Player One, or, you know, 1 percent of a Song of Ice and Fire book. Without any upcharge! That’s something! Audiobooks are too expensive, and this is a nice change.
The Rewind Pendant. This is straight out of sci-fi: a device you wear around your neck that records everything you say and hear, summarizes it, and tells you what matters later. Awesome? Horrifying? Who knows. But Rewind is definitely one of the most interesting companies in AI.
Lokiseason 2.Loki and Wandavision are easily my two favorite Marvel shows from the last few years, so I was psyched to see Tom Hiddleston back as the universe’s favorite long-haired trickster. And unlike so many Marvel things recently, Loki’s second season is pretty good! I might even rewatch season 1 just to be fully ready.
The new Microsoft Lists. Microsoft is quietly building a really great set of simple productivity tools — between the also-new OneDrive, the always-great To Do, and the new Lists app that’s great for everything from shopping lists to to-watch lists, the ecosystem here is looking pretty great.
“This is financial advice.” Someday, I won’t reflexively tell everyone to watch everything Folding Ideas publishes. Today is not that day: this is a 2.5-hour video about GameStop, WallStreetBets, Bed Bath & Beyond, the modern economy, and much more. Watch it. Watch it twice. Take notes. It’s wonderful.
The Pixel 8’s generative wallpapers. I’ve become a big fan of frequently changing my wallpaper ever since Canoopsy recommended it in Installer a few weeks ago. Google’s new tool, which uses generative AI to create a wallpaper based on your prompts, is a super fun way to quickly make a wallpaper to match any mood of the day. It’s Pixel-only for now but should come to more devices soon.
Pro tips
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in Installer that a new app called Orion had come out. It turns your iPad into a display for pretty much anything that uses a display, from a game console to a Windows 98 computer. It’s a simple concept, but Orion is a really fun and clever app.
I heard from a lot of folks (a lot of folks) that you were into Orion. So I asked Sebastiaan de With, the co-creator of Orion and Halide and other apps, to share a few unexpected tips and tricks on how to make the most of Orion. Here’s what he said:
Tether it to your camera. “As a photographer, I use Orion with my camera when I am doing a small video production. We built a Halide update for the iPhone 15 Pro Action Button, and while recording a video tutorial, I set up my large 12.9-inch iPad Pro as a monitor so I can verify my manual focus is sharp and exposure looks great.”
Daisy-chain your screens. “An extra tip with that: I actually sometimes AirPlay my iPad screen to my MacBook Pro or TV if I want to check Orion’s video monitor on an even bigger or closer screen. It works super well, and it’s pretty awesome. I’ve even shared my screen before so a friend could see what I was up to!”
Screen-record all the things. “With Screen Recording on, I tap to hide the Orion chrome and record a full-fledged bit of video from my camera or gameplay for easy sharing. I really dig this feature.”
Bring retro gear back. “It’s a little thing, but I only waited until this week (since it has been iPhone season, a busy time for us) to play some old classics, and the CRT effects included in Orion Pro are a treat on larger iPads.”
Make it a status checker. ”An unexpected use case I saw from people was that lots of folks use it to check on and keep their headless servers / setups running. A monitor that you can just plug in in a pinch is super useful.”
Screen share
Taylor Lorenz is the most online person I know, which makes her extremely qualified to write a book called Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. It also makes it totally unsurprising that the book is excellent. She charts the whole history of the social web and the rise of influencers alongside it. I’ve been following this space closely for a long time, and I still learned a huge amount from the book. It’s out now; you should read it! And if you missed Taylor chatting with us on The Vergecast a few weeks ago, check that out, too.
I asked Taylor to share her homescreen with us, figuring she probably had an app or three I’d never even heard of. I was exactly right.
Here’s Taylor’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:
The phone: iPhone 13
The apps: Photos, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Calculator, Weather, Google Docs (I write a lot of stories on my phone), Apple Notes (I write things that I wanna remember and never check again), Messages, Instagram, Settings, Signal, Erewhon (after two years in LA, I finally caved and got the membership), Bluesky (I’m still searching for a good Twitter alternative), TikTok, Mastodon, Discord (one of my favorite social media apps), YouTube, Threads, Spotify, Voice Memos, Hype Machine (I think Spotify is too algorithmic, and I like that Hype Machine gives me music that I would never find elsewhere), Slack, YouTube, Substack, Phone, Camera, Gmail, Safari.
Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant’s new book about the Luddite movement, is phenomenal. I can’t put it down! The Luddites have been so unfairly maligned.
TheOtherworldpodcast, which is basically a This American Life of supernatural stories. The host of it is a phenomenal interviewer, and it’s fantastic storytelling whether or not you believe in ghosts / aliens / unexplained phenomena. It’s the perfect podcast to listen to for spooky season!
Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Emailinstaller@theverge.comwith your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.
“Discover Quickly lets you fall into a rabbit hole of your Spotify library by letting you traverse through music quickly and visually. It displays album covers of all songs and playlists in your library (including the all-important Discover Weekly) and allows you to hear a short clip of each track just by hovering over the album cover of your choice. It’s more like a scavenger hunt than poring over pages of lists.” — Karan
“Currently watching the remake of Rurouni Kenshin anime in Crunchyroll.” — Christian
“I just have to let you know that for whatever reason, Pi is the most slept-on conversational AI there is, by far. It is capable of handling complex searches in the background and formatting the information it’s scanned to present it in a highly digestible and highly human way. My main critique of ChatGPT is that it can bombard the user with information, and most of the time, all I want is the gist.” — Jacob
“Fallout Shelter. Highly engaging strategy game, to just survive against all odds. Played two consecutive nights without dropping the tablet. Once you figure out the overall survival plan, maybe it’s easy. Yet to be determined.” — Prabhat
“Paprika. An app that lets you save recipes from anywhere, Raindrop-style, but it also extracts the ingredients and steps from even the most seo-text-laden of webpages. It’s so good.” — Luke
“I’ve been using and recommending RunPee to people for like over 10 years now. I know the UI / UX leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s an amazing app. When you’re watching a movie and need to pee, you open the app, and it tells you good times you can run to the bathroom. It tells you the cue in the film (whether it’s a visual or audio cue) and the amount of time you have to use the bathroom. It will also tell you a summary of everything you miss while you’re gone. It’s a family that runs it, and they keep it up to date with movies in movie theaters.” — Ryan
“If you’re into challenging puzzle games that also look positively gorgeous and sound absolutely mesmerizing, you cannot miss Cocoon. I just finished it (takes a couple of hours) but was consistently amazed at the art (both visual and audio) and the puzzle design. Not a single word is spoken in the entire game, and there are zero tutorials. You just drop to a planet and start playing. It’s brilliant and the best game I’ve played in a long time.” — Ismar
“For reasons I don’t fully understand, everyone I know seems to be rewatching The Good Wife. Myself included.” — Peter
Signing off
I got an Ember Tumbler this week, the new $200 mug from the company that specializes in temperature-regulating drinkware. The company sent it to me to test, and I’ll end up writing something about it, but using it the last few days has reminded me of why tech is so much fun. So much of “tech” now is stuff we do on screens, specifically our PCs and our phones. Stuff like the Tumbler makes me miss the era of a million different weird gadgets, the single-purpose stuff that makes one tiny sliver of your life better through a huge amount of engineering. The Tumbler makes me think about, like, my very first portable CD player or the first time I brought a Kindle on vacation. Maybe we need more gadgets and fewer apps!
This mug is so expensive it’s ridiculous, but I love it so much already. My coffee, y’all. It’s so warm.
MGM didn’t pay up after hackers broke into its system and stole customer data
K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
The Wall Street Journal wrote on Thursday that MGM Resorts International didn’t pay the ransomware attackers who broke into its systems last month, forcing the company to shut down systems at several of its hotels and casinos. The hack kept many waiting to check into their rooms, including FTC chair Lina Kahn, who was in Las Vegas, Nevada to attend meetings about a merger between Kroger and Albertsons.
MGM said in a press release that hackers made off with customer data, including names, contact information, date of birth, and driver’s license numbers, as well as a “limited number” of customers’ social security numbers, passport numbers, or both.
The company didn’t specify how many people were affected by the hack, but according to its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the data hackers took was for “customers that transacted with the Company prior to March 2019.”
On the bright side, MGM said in its release that it “does not believe” the data thieves stole customers’ passwords, bank account numbers, or card details. It’s the small victories. MGM says it’s notifying customers via email and will give free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to those affected.
The SEC filing says MGM’s domestic operations are back to normal, and “virtually all of the Company’s guest-facing systems have been restored,” adding that it expects the remainder will be “restored in coming days.” The company also wrote that it spent under $10 million on “technology consulting services, legal fees and expenses of other third party advisors” related to the attack, but it expects to lose about $100 million, all told.
If you think you were affected, here is what MGM says you can do:
The Company has set up a dedicated call center at 800-621-9437 toll-free Monday through Friday from 8 am – 10 pm Central, or Saturday and Sunday from 10 am – 7 pm Central (excluding major U.S. holidays). Please reference engagement number B105892 when calling. The Company also has set up a webpage at www.mgmresorts.com/importantinformation with additional information.
The Epic v. Google witness list: Andy Rubin, Sundar Pichai, and more to testify
Illustration: The Verge
It’s been almost 10 months since a trial date was set in Epic’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, and with all of the otherbigtechcases going on right now, including Google’s other antitrust proceedings, you’d be forgiven for forgetting about this one. But believe it or not, the trial will start in less than a month, on November 6th, in the United States District Court in California’s Northern District.
The court released a tentative list of witnesses, mostly executives and leads from both companies, on Thursday. Epic listed 53 witnesses it either will or might call, including Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Google and Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat, and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney.
Andy Rubin, one of the co-founders of the Android operating system and Essential, is also on the list. He worked at Google until 2014 when he left with a reported $90 million payout following allegations of sexual misconduct. He is listed in the court document as a “may call” witness, so it’s possible he won’t take the stand.
Other witnesses include two other Android co-founders — Nick Sears, who left Google in 2013 is on Epic’s list, while Rich Miner could be called by Google, where he still works. Epic also listed Activision CFO Armin Zerza and former Open Handset Alliance head Eric Chu.
Epic is suing Google over its Google Play store practices, alleging that, after Epic departed the Google Play store, Google launched an anticompetitive campaign to keep other developers from following suit, even going so far as to pay millions of dollars to some.
What’s up with the temperature sensor on the Pixel 8 Pro?
Temperature sensor. Temperature sensor? Temperature sensor. | Image: Google
The Pixel 8 Pro has an infrared temperature sensor. Why does the Pixel 8 Pro have a temperature sensor?
For an unusual feature on a $1,000 flagship phone, Google really isn’t saying much about it. The Pixel 8 Pro announcement mentions it almost in passing:
And on the back of the Pixel 8 Pro, a new temperature sensor lets you quickly scan an object to get its temperature. Use it to check if your pan is hot enough to start cooking or if the milk in your baby’s bottle is at the right temperature. We’ve also submitted an application to the FDA, to enable Pixel’s Thermometer App to take your temperature and save it to Fitbit.
Any off-the-shelf infrared thermometer can tell you the temperature of a hot pan or a baby bottle. But the instant you point it at a human being and start saying you’re measuring body temperature, congratulations: that’s medical data, you’re a Class II medical device, and you need Food and Drug Administration clearance.
Here’s where it gets a little bit complicated: Google doesn’t need clearance for the phone itself, or even for the temperature sensor per se. Technically, it doesn’t even need clearance to read your skin temperature as long as it’s using the data for something other than telling you your body temperature. (Several companies already use infrared temperature sensors built into smartwatches for sleep tracking and cycle prediction, but they’re all very careful not to show you that information as body temperature.)
You might think, “Okay, but what if I just take my temperature with it anyway?” While there’s nothing stopping you from pointing it at your forehead today, that won’t tell you your body temperature, just the temperature of the surface of your forehead. Not the same thing! My non-contact infrared thermometer says I have a body temperature of 98.3 degrees Fahrenheit. But when I switch it to surface mode, I’m a cool 94.7 F in the same spot.
There are a couple ways to get FDA clearance (not approval) for Class II devices, and Google wouldn’t tell us which avenue it’s going for or when it filed for approval. De novo authorization — which Apple sought for the Apple Watch’s on-wrist EKG detection back in the day — is for devices that aren’t like anything else on the market and are “reasonably safe and effective.”
There is nothing particularly novel about a non-contact infrared thermometer, though. It’s possible Google has asked for 510k clearance, which means that the company submits a bunch of data about the thermometer, and if the FDA decides it’s functional, unlikely to cause harm, and substantially similar to other approved clinical infrared thermometers, it is cleared for sale. Without that clearance, Google can’t let the Pixel 8 Pro tell you your body temperature, even if it’s perfectly capable of doing so.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The temperature app uses the temperature sensor to tell you the temperature of something. As you’d expect.
Your body temperature is a good indication of whether you have a fever, and a fever is a good indication of whether you’re sick. That is information that can influence what kind of medical care you receive. And since that’s medical data, as part of the FDA clearance procedure, Google also has to show that its data privacy practices comply with HIPAA. That’s probably why body temperature data will be saved to Fitbit instead of your Google account. Fitbit data is siloed, and Fitbit has the capacity to comply with HIPAA.
What’s not clear yet is why Google put a temperature sensor on the Pixel 8 Pro and is going to the trouble of requesting FDA clearance to use it for body temperature readings. We asked four different Google spokespeople, and all four responded (promptly!) with a variant on the following: “All we can share at this time is that we submitted an application to the FDA so you can separately use our Thermometer App to take your own temperature and then save it to Fitbit.”
The Verge’s resident wellness gadget and FDA clearance expert, Vee Song, speculates that data from an FDA-cleared body thermometer could be used for illness prediction and cycle tracking, which other companies have already done with wearable temperature sensors. Or it could just be laying groundwork for future medical tech plans. Maybe Google wants to sell a bunch of Pixels to hospital systems!
The whole situation is reminiscent of the skin temperature sensor on the Galaxy Watch 5 and 6. Samsung encourages you to use it as a contactless thermometer to check the temperature of household objects, and it is used to measure baseline skin temperature changes for sleep tracking and period tracking. But it explicitly won’t give you your body temperature. In both cases, it feels like the company added the sensor in order to track body temperature and is fishing around for other things to do with it that don’t require as much paperwork.
FDA clearance can take a while. The first Withings ScanWatch didn’t go on sale in the US for nearly two years while it awaited clearance for its EKG and blood oxygen features. That took 16 months. It’s worth noting that while the ScanWatch 2 has an infrared temperature sensor, Withings, like Samsung, is only using the data obliquely to avoid having to get FDA clearance. As far as I can tell, no smartwatch or phone has yet been cleared to offer body temperature data via infrared sensor, so who knows how long clearance will take for the Pixel 8 Pro.
In the meantime, at least your $1,000 phone has a cool party trick.
The Pixel 8 and the what-is-a-photo apocalypse
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
One of the first known photo fakes, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, was made just decades after the dawn of photography itself. Since then, photographers have found themselves in endless arguments about what truly constitutes a photo — what’s real, what’s fake, and when is editing too much? Now, as we head into an era where AI-powered tools are everywhere and easily accessible, the discussion is going to be messier than ever. And with the Pixel 8, Google has turned the question of “what is a photo” right on its head.
Google has been leading smartphone photography down this path for many years now. The company pioneered the concept of computational photography, where smartphone cameras do a huge amount of behind-the-scenes processing to spit out a photo that contains more detail than the camera sensor can detect in a single snap. Most modern smartphones use a system like Google’s HDR Plus technology to take a burst of images and combine them into one computationally-created picture, merging highlights, shadows, details, and other data to deliver a more pristine photo. It’s accepted practice at this point, but it also means that a baseline smartphone photo is already more than just “a photo” — it’s many of them, with their best parts combined.
The Pixel 8 lineup complicates things further by starting to transform how much a photo can be easily changed after the picture is snapped. It presents easy-to-use editing tools powerful enough to create a completely different image from the original photo you recorded when you hit the shutter button, and those tools are marketed as integral parts of the phone and camera. Photo editing tools have existed since the beginning of photography, but the Pixel 8 blurs the line between capture and editing in new and important ways.
This starts with Magic Eraser, a two-year-old feature that Google has overhauled with generative AI for the Pixel 8 Pro. The original version could remove unwanted items from images by “blending the surrounding pixels” — that is, taking what’s already there and smudging it to hide small objects and imperfections. This upgraded version “generates completely new pixels” using generative AI, according to Google hardware leader Rick Osterloh; the result is no longer simply your photo but your photo plus some AI-assisted painting. In one example, Google showed how the tool could seamlessly remove an entire car and fill in details like wooden slats behind it. In another image, Google used the new Magic Eraser to basically Thanos snap two people into oblivion and fill in the horizon behind them.
The Pixel 8 also debuts a reality-defying tool called Best Take, which tries to solve the problem of somebody blinking in a photo by letting you swap in their face from another recent image. It looks like it might work well; based on what I saw from our tests at Google’s event, it can do some seamless face swaps.
And then there’s the big one: Magic Editor. First announced at Google I/O in May, Magic Editor uses generative AI to help you adjust entire parts of the photo in some dramatic ways. You can move a person so that they are in a better position just by tapping and dragging them around. You can resize that person with a pinch. You can even use Magic Editor to change the color of the sky.
Where Magic Eraser and Best Take are more about “correcting” photos — fixing blinks and strangers wandering through — Magic Editor fully goes down the road of “altering” a photo: transforming reality from an imperfect version to a much cooler one. Take two examples from a Google video. In one, somebody edits a photo of a dad tossing a baby in the air to move the baby up higher. Another shows somebody leaping for a slam dunk at a basketball hoop but then removing the bench the person used to get the height for the jump.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with manipulating your own photos. People have done it for a very long time. But Google’s tools put powerful photo manipulation features — the kinds of edits that were previously only available with some Photoshop knowledge and hours of work — into everyone’s hands and encourage them to be used on a wide scale, without any particular guardrails or consideration for what that might mean. Suddenly, almost any photo you take can be instantly turned into a fake.
There are ways for others to tell when Pixel photos have been manipulated, but they’ll have to go looking for it. “Photos that have been edited with Magic Editor will include metadata,” Google spokesperson Michael Marconi tells The Verge. Marconi adds that “the metadata is built upon technical standards from [International Press Telecommunications Council]” and that “we are following its guidance for tagging images edited using generative AI.”
In theory, that all means that if you see a Pixel picture where the baby seems to be too high in the air, you’ll be able to check some metadata to see if AI helped create that illusion. (Marconi did not answer questions about where this metadata would be stored or if it would be alterable or removable, as standard EXIF data is.) Google also adds metadata for photos edited with Magic Eraser, Marconi says, and this applies to older Pixels that can use Magic Eraser, too.
Using Best Take does not add metadata to photos, Marconi says, but there are some restrictions on the feature that could prevent it from being used nefariously. Best Take does not generate new facial expressions, and it “uses an on-device face detection algorithm to match up a face across six photos taken within seconds of each other,” according to Marconi. It also can’t pull expressions from photos outside that timeframe; Marconi says the source images for Best Take “requires metadata that shows they were taken within a 10-second window.”
Small alterations can unambiguously improve a photo and better define what you’re trying to capture. And groups that care a lot about photo accuracy have already figured out very specific rules about what kinds of changes are okay. The Associated Press, for example, is fine with “minor adjustments” like cropping and removing dust on camera sensors but doesn’t allow red eye correction. Getty Images’ policy for editorial coverage is to “strict avoidance of any modifications to the image,” CEO Craig Peters tells The Verge. Organizations like the Content Authenticity Initiative are working on cross-industry solutions for content provenance, which could make it easier to spot AI-generated content. Google, on the other hand, is making its tools dead simple to use, and while it does have principles for how it develops its AI tools, it doesn’t have guidelines on how people should use them.
The ease of use of generative AI can be bad, Peters argued last month in a conversation with The Verge’s editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel. “In a world where generative AI can produce content at scale and you can disseminate that content on a breadth and reach and on a timescale that is immense, ultimately, authenticity gets crowded out,” Peters said. And Peters believes companies need to look beyond metadata as the answer. “The generative tools should be investing in order to create the right solutions around that,” he said. “In the current view, it’s largely in the metadata, which is easily stripped.”
Currently, we’re at the beginning of the AI photography age, and we’re starting off with tools that are simple to use and simple to hide. But Google’s latest updates make photo manipulation easier than ever, and I’d guess that companies like Apple and Samsung will follow suit with similar tools that could fundamentally change the question of “what is a photo?” Now, the question will increasingly become: is anything a photo?
Intel teases Windows ‘refresh’ for 2024 amid Windows 12 launch rumors
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Intel has teased a “Windows refresh” for 2024 which it hopes will boost its revenues. During Citi’s analyst conference last month Intel CFO David Zinsner discussed a Windows refresh next year, suggesting that consumers might upgrade their PCs because of a new release of Windows.
“We actually think 2024 is going to be a pretty good year for client, in particular because of the Windows refresh,” said Zinsner at the Citi analyst conference on September 6th. “We still think that the install base is pretty old, and does require a refresh. We think next year may be the start of that given the Windows catalyst.”
Zinsner’s comments from a month ago were spotted by PC Gamer, and come months after references to Windows 12 were leaked from internal Intel documents. Intel is reportedly preparing its Meteor Lake desktop platform for a next generation of Windows, likely to be called Windows 12.
Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 has a chip inside to accelerate machine learning algorithms.
Intel has only officially announced Meteor Lake mobile chips so far, arriving in December with a dedicated AI coprocessor inside. Meteor Lake is Intel’s first CPU with different chiplets for each component and the first on its Intel 4 process node. The addition of an AI coprocessor could be important given Microsoft’s push for AI features inside Windows.
Microsoft hasn’t announced any plans for Windows 12, but there are signs the company is looking to future versions of Windows to integrate AI-powered features. “As we start to develop future versions of Windows we’ll think about other places where AI should play a natural role in terms of the experience,” said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing, in an interview with The Verge earlier this year.
We’ve also seen Microsoft add its AI-powered Copilot directly into Windows 11 recently and focus heavily on AI during its recent Surface event. Microsoft also added a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) chip to its Surface Laptop Studio 2, only mentioning that it will light up Windows Studio Effects like direct eye contact and background noise removal. Microsoft appears to be quietly laying the foundations for a bigger focus on AI in Windows, and Windows 12 combined with a hardware refresh focused on AI coprocessors feels inevitable at this point.
Once a Labor Leader, Butler Angered Unions by Consulting for Uber The new California senator was part of the gig company’s push to avoid having to classify its drivers as employees.
Arkane Studios detailed everything new in Redfall’s Game Update 2 in a blog post on its website. In addition to the performance mode, the update adds things stealth takedowns, more enemies in the open world, some changes to controller settings, improvements to screen narration, and a lot more. It seems like a pretty substantial patch.
Will it be enough for a Cyberpunk 2077-style turnaround, though? I’m dubious about that — I liked the at-launch Cyberpunk2077, which I actually finished, a lot more than I liked the at-launch Redfall, which I stopped playing after a few hours. Fingers crossed, though. And Arkane has already promised that two DLC characters are in the works, so there should be more news about Redfall to look forward to some point down the line.
The best phone to buy right now
Photo Illustration by William Joel / The Verge
Bad news: flagship phones cost a small fortune these days. Good news: we can help you pick the right one and get the most for your money.
It’s high season for new phones, and a fresh crop of new devices — including iPhones — has a lot of people wondering whether it’s time to upgrade. Whether you’re in the market for a new Apple or Android phone, there’s no shortage of great choices right now. Generally speaking, it’s been a year of modest mobile tech updates, but they’ve been important ones.
Foldable phones are getting more useful with bigger cover screens as on the Galaxy Z Flip 5, smartphone camera zoom has reached new heights on Samsung’s top-tier flagship, and the iPhone finally made the jump from Lightning to USB-C. And if you’re coming from a phone that’s three or four years old, you’ll find that the incremental advances over the past few years will add up for a significantly upgraded experience.
If you’re looking to spend a little less and still get the best smartphone on a budget, you can find something really good for under $500. For those recommendations, check out our guide to budget smartphones.
Best iPhone for most people
Screen:6.1-inch 2556 x 1179 OLED, 60Hz refresh rate /Processor:A16 BionicCameras:48-megapixel f/1.6 main with sensor-shift IS, 12-megapixel ultrawide, 12-megapixel selfie /Battery:not advertised /Charging:27W wired, 15W wireless MagSafe, 7.5W Qi /Weather-resistance rating:IP68
Last year, we recommended buying a new iPhone 13 rather than the 14 — the minor updates on the standard 14 just weren’t worth it with the 13 available for $100 less. This year is a different story. The iPhone 15 levels up in several important ways, starting with the adoption of the new Dynamic Island. That’s the free-floating, pill-shaped notch at the top of the screen that expands to show important status and time-sensitive information. There’s still much more it could do, but it’s a useful addition and one that app developers will consider as they design future updates.
There’s also that new port: Lightning is out, and USB-C is in. That might be a bit of a pain at first since you’ll need to swap out old Lightning cables and accessories you were using with your last iPhone, but in the long run, it’s going to be a positive change. You’ll be able to use the same cable that you use to charge your laptop, iPad, and many of your other gadgets, which is awfully handy when you’re packing for a trip. Plus, you can finally share charging cables with the Android phone owners in your life — and that’s sweet, sweet charging harmony.
Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
There are some useful camera upgrades, too, starting with a new high-resolution 48-megapixel main camera sensor. With more pixels available than the previous 12-megapixel chip, it can use the middle of the sensor to offer a lossless 2x crop. That’s especially handy on the standard iPhone 15, which lacks a dedicated telephoto lens.
And this generation of iPhones offers a handy new feature for fans of Portrait Mode — the ability to add the portrait effect after capture. When the phone detects a face in the scene, it will automatically save the depth information needed to create the soft-focus background effect when you’re editing your photo. It’s especially useful for those moments when taking a second to switch to portrait mode would mean missing a cute shot of your kid or pet.
Screen:6.6-inch 1080p 120Hz OLED /Processor:Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy /Cameras:50-megapixel F1.8 main with OIS, 10-megapixel 3x telephoto with OIS, 12-megapixel ultrawide, 12-megapixel selfie /Battery:4,700mAh /Charging:45W wired, 15W wireless /Weather resistance:IP68
The S23 Plus is a minor update to its predecessor, but the upgrades are good ones. It still has a large 6.6-inch display with a smooth-scrolling 120Hz top refresh rate, and it’s a lovely screen to use — not as high-res as the Google Pixel 7 Pro’s 1440p display, but it’s top-notch. Some tweaks to the display tech and a bigger 4,700mAh battery give the S23 Plus stronger battery performance than its predecessor, so you can get through a full day of heavy use with a little more wiggle room than the outgoing model afforded.
There’s also a new chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It’s included in all models sold across the globe, and that’s a good thing — it is whip-fast. It handles daily tasks without a problem and heavier tasks like gaming with remarkable ease. Otherwise, there’s a lot that’s familiar about the S23 Plus. It still starts at $999, though the base model now comes with 256GB of built-in storage.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The S23 Plus includes a big screen and a highly capable Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset.
The rear triple-camera system is also recycled from last year’s model, and for the most part, that’s fine. The 50-megapixel main sensor produces punchy, vibrant 12-megapixel photos by default. Portrait mode photos from either the main sensor or 3x telephoto camera are fantastic, with excellent subject isolation. Outside of portrait mode, the 3x camera looks a lot more average. It’s a shorter focal length than the 5x telephoto on the Pixel 7 Pro, so it’s a bit less useful for distant subjects.
Our least favorite part of a Samsung phone is the out-of-box software experience, as it comes with a lot of duplicate apps to replace or accompany Google’s stock apps like Messages, Google Calendar, and Google Assistant. Unless you’re a Bixby fan, you’ll need to take a little time to de-Samsung the S23 Plus. The Pixel 7 Pro offers a much more streamlined experience right out of the gate. But there’s good news: the phone ships with One UI 5.1 and is slated to receive four more OS platform upgrades and five years of security updates. That means you can keep using the phone safely well into the future and get the most out of your investment.
The iPhone 15 Pro manages to do something rare in the premium class: it actually got a little smaller year over year. It’s just a millimeter less on the width and height, but it makes the phone a little more comfortable to hold. The new titanium build that you’ve surely heard so much about by now in Apple’s ads makes a significant difference, too: the 15 Pro is 19 grams lighter than the 14 Pro. That’s a welcome change because the 14 Pro was awfully heavy.
There’s the new Action Button on the side of the phone replacing the mute switch, and it’s incredibly useful if you have the patience to program a shortcut for it. Otherwise, you can map it to one of a few preprogrammed functions like jumping straight into the camera app in video mode or turning on the flashlight. It’s also easier to reach on the 15 Pro than the bigger Pro Max, where it’s more of a reach on the taller frame.
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The 15 Pro is the smaller of the two Pro models and doesn’t come with the longer telephoto lens of its bigger sibling, but it’s an excellent choice for most people who want a great device with plenty of bells and whistles.
The regular 15 Pro misses out on the longer 5x lens on the Pro Max; you get the familiar 3x zoom lens instead. That’s something to consider if you’re a photographer who’s fond of longer telephoto shots. But you do get access to two new digital “lenses”: a 28mm and a 35mm equivalent. They’re available by tapping the 1x icon in the camera app, and they’re not the result of simple up-rezzing or cropping, so the quality is a bit better than you’d get just cropping your shot after the fact. If the phone’s native 24mm equiv. lens feels too wide to you, then you have a couple of great alternatives now.
The 15 Pro comes with Apple’s newest mobile chipset, the A17 Pro, enabling console-quality gaming. That’s not a feature everyone will use, but it’s there if you want it, and the A17 Pro is a powerful processor on the whole. The phone inherits the always-on display introduced in last year’s Pro models, and we’re really liking it with iOS 17’s new StandBy mode feature — just set the phone to charge in landscape orientation, and you’ll get a handy bedside clock.
None of this comes cheap at $999, but if you can splurge, then the Pro model really does get you some worthwhile upgrades over the standard 15.
Screen:6.8-inch 1440p 120Hz OLED /Processor:Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy /Cameras:200-megapixel main with OIS, 10-megapixel 10x telephoto with OIS, 10-megapixel 3x telephoto with OIS, 12-megapixel ultrawide, 12-megapixel selfie /Battery:5,000mAh /Charging:45W wired, 15W wireless /Weather resistance:IP68
The S23 Ultra is Samsung’s kitchen sink flagship phone. It’s a maximalist experience with a built-in stylus, four rear cameras (including two telephotos), a massive 6.8-inch screen, and the top-shelf Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. It’s hard to imagine what you could cram into this device without turning it into a foldable (please turn it into a foldable, Samsung).
All that hardware comes at a high starting price of $1,200, so it’s not our top pick for just anyone looking for a great Android phone. But if you’re looking for the best of the best — particularly if you live in the US where choice is limited — it’s at the very top of our list. The camera system is impressive; portrait mode photos are excellent, and it’s capable of very good images all the way to 30x zoom. There’s a new 200-megapixel main camera sensor at the heart of the rear camera array, and it does a good job of bringing out fine details in both good lighting and low light conditions.
Image: Allison Johnson / The Verge
The Galaxy S23 Ultra stands alone with a maximalist feature set.
The integrated S Pen isn’t new or updated for 2023, but it’s still a nice tool to have at the ready when you need to jot down a quick note. That massive screen is detailed, and scrolling is smooth, with a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz all the way down to 1Hz. The sizeable 5,000mAh battery powers it through a day of heavy use, but don’t count on getting a lot more than one day out of it.
Our usual gripes with Samsung software apply here, too, and if anything, they’re a little more glaring on such a pricey phone. The phone will happily download a bunch of extra apps you probably don’t want during setup, although you can opt out of a fair chunk of them and hide most of the ones you can’t uninstall. But Samsung’s healthy software support policy is fitting of a $1,200 phone: you’ll get four OS platform upgrades and five years of security updates. Not quite as good as Apple, but among the best on Android.
At $499, the Pixel 7A is one of the pricier midrange phones you can buy, but the extra features it provides are well worth the money. It offers a nice 6.1-inch OLED with a 90Hz top refresh rate for smooth scrolling — not quite as nice as the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G’s 120Hz screen but a step up from the 6A’s 60Hz display.
Other new features this year include the Tensor G2 chipset from Google — the same on 2022’s flagship 7 and 7 Pro — with a healthy 8GB of RAM, an updated 64-megapixel main camera, and wireless charging. Factor in the 7A’s hearty IP67 dust and water resistance, its sturdy aluminum frame, and the fact that it continues to offer the best photo quality in the class and that $499 price tag starts to look like a pretty sweet deal.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
It’s on the pricey side for a midrange phone, but the Pixel 7A is a heck of a good deal for its feature set.
Battery life on the Pixel 7A is just average. It will get through a day of moderate use with a bit left in the tank, but if you add in a battery-draining activity like gaming or an extended video streaming session, you’ll probably need to top it off before the end of the day. Otherwise, the 7A is an easy pick if your budget is modest. It’s scheduled to get three OS upgrades and five years of security patches, so it’s well positioned to go the distance, too.
There are other phones under $500 worth considering, and they’re all covered in our guide to the best inexpensive phones. But if you’re looking for the absolute most you can get from a $500 phone, then look no further than the 7A.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 has two things that the Flip 4 didn’t: a large cover screen and a legitimate competitor. The Motorola Razr Plus is another worthy flip-style foldable, and there are good reasons to consider it, but for the same $999 price, the Flip 5 simply offers more for your money.
The Flip 5’s 3.4-inch cover screen provides a lot of useful ways to interact with your phone without having to open it up. There are widgets for checking your calendar and the weather, and a full QWERTY keyboard allows you to send quick messages and emails right from the cover screen. You can run any app you like if you’re adventurous, but Samsung makes you jump through quite a few hoops to do this. If you want to run apps more easily, then the Razr Plus is the better option.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
A bigger cover screen makes a world of difference on a flip-style foldable.
On the inside, the Flip 5 continues to offer a good 6.7-inch display that’s ready to handle all of the usual stuff you do with your phone. There’s a capable camera system, too, and using the rear-facing cameras with the phone folded partway or with the cover screen is a lot of fun. Long-term durability is a bit uncertain as it is with all current foldable phones, but the Flip 5 is at least fully water-resistant with an IPX8 rating. That’s better than most foldables, including the merely splash-resistant Razr Plus.
Samsung promises four years of OS upgrades and five years of security updates for the Flip 5 — a year longer than Motorola plans to support the Razr Plus and one of the best software support policies on Android. That’s one of several good reasons to pick the Flip 5 over the Razr Plus, and it’s enough to keep Samsung’s flip phone ahead of the competition for now.
We’ve recommended Samsung’s Galaxy Fold as the best folding phone for several years now — partly because it’s really good, but partly because competition was practically non-existent. The latest edition in the series, the Fold 5, now has a worthy challenger: the Google Pixel Fold. We think that the Fold 5 is still the best folding phone for the money (and at $1,800, it’s a lot of money), even though Samsung still has some room for improvement.
For starters, the Fold 5’s tall and narrow aspect ratio isn’t our favorite. Using the phone’s 6.2-inch cover screen with the device closed still kind of feels like using a remote control. But the real action is on the massive 7.6-inch inner screen, where Samsung’s robust multitasking software sings. You can run up to four apps at once with a floating window on top — Google only allows you to run two apps in split-screen on the Pixel Fold. That kind of flexibility opens up a ton of possibilities for what you can do with the Fold 5.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The Fold 5 is an incredibly powerful multitasking tool.
On the downside, the Fold 5’s camera system isn’t quite as good as the Pixel Fold’s. In fact, Samsung’s own Galaxy S23 Ultra offers a much better camera system overall and is $600 cheaper than the Fold 5. As it stands, the Fold 5 is capable of good photos, but its processing is somewhat inconsistent, and its 3x telephoto lens feels a bit limited.
The Fold 5 is rated IPX8 — as is the Pixel Fold. That means it’s fully water resistant, but there’s no guarantee against dust intrusion. Dust is the enemy of a foldable phone, so that’s something to take into account if you’re a first-time foldable buyer. But Samsung has steadily improved the overall durability of its folding phones over the years, whereas the Pixel Fold is very much a first-gen product without a proven track record.
There are a lot of points in favor of the Fold 5, but there are plenty of people who would be happier with the Pixel Fold. If the Fold 5’s narrow aspect ratio will drive you bananas, you’re a fan of Pixel image processing, and turbo-charged multitasking isn’t a priority, then the Pixel Fold is a better choice. For everyone else, the Galaxy Fold still can’t be beat.
Screen:6.7-inch 1080p 120Hz OLED /Processor:Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 /Cameras:50-megapixel F/1.9 main with OIS, 50-megapixel ultrawide, 32-megapixel selfie /Battery:4,700mAh /Charging:45W wired, 15W wireless /Weather resistance:IP54
The Nothing Phone 2 isn’t for everyone, but for the right kind of person, it’s a very good alternative to the Galaxies and Pixels of the world. It’s a style-driven device, from the dot-matrix-inspired UI to the flashing light strips on the back panel. Will its unique hardware and software features help you take back your attention span as Nothing claims? Eh, probably not. Mostly, it’s just a cool-looking gadget and a thoughtfully designed device.
The Phone 2 is equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, which is a slightly older but still very capable processor. Its 6.7-inch 1080p screen supports a fast 120Hz top refresh rate, and its lowest 1Hz refresh rate allows it to offer an information-rich always-on display. The camera system is good, though not quite as consistent as the Pixel 7’s. There’s wireless charging, fast 45W wired charging, and an all-day battery.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The dot-matrix theme is carried out through the entire interface.
That’s all of the good news. The bad news is that it’s only rated IP54, meaning it’s not fully dustproof, and it’s only resistant to splashes rather than full immersion in water. Most other phones at this price offer a full IP68 rating, and a couple of cheaper midrange phones, like the Pixel 7A, even include a more robust IP67 water resistance. The Phone 2 also lacks official support for Verizon’s network, which rules it out for a lot of people in the US.
There’s the glyph interface, too — those lights on the back of the phone. It’s a neat idea with some interesting applications if you invest a little time in tweaking it. You can flip it over to silence notifications when you need some time to focus and hand-pick certain “essential” alerts to light up the glyph. Personally, I find it less helpful than a traditional focus mode or even the Phone 2’s always-on display. But others might find it useful, and if nothing else, it looks neat.
The Phone 2 isn’t the best choice for sheer value — the Pixel 7A is a much better value proposition. It’s not the best choice for someone who just wants a phone to get them through their day with minimal hassle. But it’s undeniably different, and if you’re looking for something outside of the ordinary with a certain visual appeal, then it’s a worthy candidate.
There are a few other devices that didn’t quite make the cut for any of the above categories but are still worth mentioning. The Samsung S23 Plus just edged out the Google Pixel 7 Pro as our pick for the best Android phone for most people. The Pixel 7 Pro is still a great device, and the $899 price tag is attractive (and often marked down). We like its software out-of-the-box better than Samsung’s, and its camera system sometimes outdoes the S23 Plus’ — especially with its longer 5x telephoto lens. But while its custom Tensor G2 chipset is capable, it’s unclear how it will hold up in the long run.
Pixel 6 and 7 owners have also reported their fair share of software bugs and unusual hardware problems. Google seems to be doing the right thing and repairing phones under warranty, and the Pixel series’ frequent updates mean that bugs are usually fixed in a timely manner. Samsung, on the other hand, is pretty much on cruise control with the S23 Plus.
The iPhone 15 Plus is worth considering if you prefer iOS and you like a bigger phone. Its $899 price isn’t exactly cheap, but the entry price of Apple’s other big phone — the 15 Pro Max — went up to $1,199 this year. The 15 Plus also offers outstanding battery performance; even a heavy user can manage to squeeze two full days out of a single charge.
The Asus Zenfone 10 is a delightful little phone that’s engineered with one-handed use in mind. It comes with a 5.9-inch screen, a highly capable Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, and a capable camera system with robust gimbal-like stabilization. It will only be sold unlocked in the US and won’t fully work on the Verizon network, but for a few dedicated small phone fans, it’s a winner.
Update October 6th, 6:50PM ET:Replaced the iPhone 13 with the iPhone 15, replaced the iPhone 14 Pro with the iPhone 15 Pro, and replaced the iPhone 14 Plus with the iPhone 15 Plus as an also-consider.
Save $65 on Google’s Pixel Buds Pro ahead of their big software updates
The Pixel Buds Pro will be getting software updates with new features over the next few weeks. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
What a perfect time, then, for the Pixel Buds Pro to drop to a new low price. You can get Google’s flagship wireless earbuds for just $134.99 ($65 off) at Wellbots when you use code VERGE65 at checkout until October 11th. The Pixel Buds Pro are some of the best earbuds you can buy today, particularly if you’re a Pixel phone owner and want to take advantage of exclusive features like Google’s Clear Calling. But they’re not just about software tricks — they also offer very good noise cancellation, multipoint connectivity, lengthy battery life, and a decent transparency mode. Sadly, today’s deal does not include the upcoming blue color option that Google just announced, but Wellbots has the charcoal and fog colors on offer.
The latest Nest Doorbell records a wide, 145-degree angle view at 960 x 1280 resolution with HDR, and it also offers a 6x zoom when you need to look closer at details. If you subscribe to Google’s $3.99 per month membership, you get added features like package detection and facial recognition that tells you when familiar people appear at your door. It also syncs up with the Google Home app for easy access via Google Assistant smart devices, so you can see who is at your door on a connected Nest Hub, for example. The wired Nest Doorbell comes in four simple colors to best blend in with your home decor.
Google’s Nest Wifi Pro mesh router is on sale in a one-pack for $159.99 ($40 off) at Wellbots with code VERGE40 or in a two-pack for $219.99 ($80 off) with code — you guess it — VERGE80. The Nest Wifi Pro is an excellent Wi-Fi 6E-compatible router if you don’t need speeds beyond one gigabit. Plus, its rounded design with light and soft colors looks less overtly tech-y, making it easier to blend in with your home decor.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is once again back down to $39.99 ($30 off) at Target (PS5, Xbox). That’s as low as the lightsaber-wielding action-adventure game gets, and it recently received a large patch that fixed some performance and graphical issues.
The latest Apple Watch SE in its smaller 40mm size is on sale at Amazon for $219.99 ($29 off) when you click the on-page coupon. If you don’t care if you’re missing an always-on display on your smartwatch, it’s hard to beat the SE’s value. It’s got the same processor as last year’s Apple Watch Series 8 and has just a few fewer sensors (blood oxygen, EKG, and temperature sensor), but it’s more than capable of notifications and basic fitness tracking.
The Razer Kishi V2 is selling for its lowest price of $79.99 ($20 off) at Amazon. The mobile game controller comes with Lightning (for iPhone 14 and older) or USB-C (Android / iPhone 15), allowing you to play mobile and streamed console / PC games on your phone with a proper gamepad.
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