The best smartphone you can buy for under $500
The Verge
You can get a great smartphone at this price, whether you want an iPhone, a 120Hz screen, or water resistance
The current state of inflation has a lot of us looking harder at price tags lately. While your grocery receipt may be full of bad news, we’ve actually got some good news: you can get a very good phone for under $500 these days.
Many of our picks run about $400 or $500, but there are great options for $300 and under, too. You can find a bright, high-definition OLED screen or a built-in stylus or a battery that lasts for days. If you can hone in on the one or two features that are most important to you and you’re willing to compromise elsewhere, you can get a phone that suits your needs for half the price of a flagship.
What compromises can you expect from a budget phone? Some combination of the following: slower processors, less storage, and lousier cameras than flagship phones, almost across the board. Many have lower-resolution screens, and most lack official water-resistance ratings, wireless charging, and NFC chips for contactless payment.
And while we usually recommend buying unlocked phones to maximize flexibility, you might find better deals — and much lower up-front costs — by buying through a carrier and signing up for a wireless plan. There’s a fresh crop of new flagship phones likely coming very soon, so it might be worth waiting to see what your trade-in options look like, particularly if you’re on Android.
The best smartphone for under $500 in 2023
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The 2022 iPhone SE is a low-cost entry point to the iOS ecosystem.
The 128GB iPhone SE is the best value on the smartphone market, period. It’s a great deal at $479 when you consider that it will continue receiving iOS updates for upwards of five, even six or seven years.
But before you pick up an SE expecting to coast through most of the next decade without buying a new phone: make sure you can live with its very small, very dated 4.7-inch screen. It’s the same size as the one on the iPhone 6, and it’s starting to feel cramped in an age when apps and web pages are designed for bigger screens. The SE’s big bezels make the device look dated, too, but the usability of a small screen will be a bigger factor over the years to come.
That’s the biggest knock against the SE. Otherwise, it’s a fantastic midrange device. Its A15 processor is the same as iPhone 13 Pro Max, so performance is excellent. There’s IP67 waterproofing and wireless charging — both uncommon in this price range — and even though it uses the same 12-megapixel camera that iPhones have used since the dawn of time, it takes very nice photos and high-quality video clips. The camera has no night mode, which is a curious omission — many other midrange phones offer some sort of low-light photo mode, and the phone’s processor is certainly up to the task. Apple gonna Apple.
This generation SE offers 5G connectivity — just low- and mid-band, which is fine. You won’t get the fast millimeter-wave 5G you might encounter in an NFL stadium, but it’s nothing to lose sleep over. Battery life is also improved over the last generation, and it will generally last a full day unless you really push it with demanding tasks like gaming and streaming video.
If you can live with the small screen and you aren’t bothered by the lack of night mode, we recommend picking up the 128GB version. The base model’s 64GB of storage isn’t quite enough, and you’ll be glad you spent the extra $50 when you’re using this phone for years into the future.
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The Pixel 6A offers the right mix of essential features plus a top-shelf chipset.
The Pixel 6A comes with a $449 MSRP, but it’s often marked down for much lower than that. It’s a good buy at its full retail price, but if you catch it for less than $400 — as is often the case now — it’s a screaming deal.
The phone’s biggest asset is Tensor, the custom-built chipset Google used in the company’s 2021 flagships, the 6 and 6 Pro. Not only does it enable very good overall performance now, but it also means that the 6A will keep up for many years to come. Google promises five years of security updates for the 6A, and with an IP67 water resistance rating, it’s a good all-around bet if you want a budget phone that will last.
The 6A’s least impressive feature is its screen — a 6.1-inch 1080p OLED with a standard 60Hz refresh rate. It’s not bad; it’s just not the best screen you can get for the money. The fingerprint sensor under the display is also on the slow side. Again, it’s not unusable, but it’s noticeably a beat slower than the best fingerprint sensors out there.
And unlike previous Pixel A-series phones, the 6A doesn’t include the same cameras as the flagships, but that’s okay. It uses the same 12-megapixel standard wide camera as the Pixel 5A, which is still a very good camera — especially for the midrange class. The phone’s 4,410mAh battery is on the small side, but overall battery performance is better than its size would suggest.
All that said, the 6A offers the best all-around package of essential features plus a top-tier processor that you can buy right now for around $450.
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The Samsung Galaxy A53 5G provides some uncommon budget-class features like waterproofing and a stabilized main camera.
The Samsung A53 5G offers an outstanding value for its $449 MSRP. It has one of the best screens in its class — no surprise from display maker Samsung — with a 6.5-inch 1080p OLED that provides richer contrast than the LCDs that are common in this category. It also uses a top refresh rate of 120Hz, which makes for smooth scrolling and a little bit more of a “premium” experience.
The A53 5G’s battery lasts a full day of use, and the Exynos processor gets through daily tasks fairly smoothly. The phone’s main 64-megapixel camera is a cut above the usually unremarkable cameras in this class, with optical image stabilization to help get more sharp shots in poor lighting conditions.
It stands out from other budget Android phones in a lot of ways, but the A53 5G’s best feature may be its excellent software support policy. Samsung has promised four years of Android OS version updates and five years of security updates. That gives the A53 5G an exceptionally long shelf life, especially among Android phones, where two or three years of security updates is more common. Considering that the phone is also IP67-rated for dust and water resistance, it should last a long time.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The OnePlus N20 5G includes a 1080p OLED screen, with richer contrast than the LCDs common in this class.
The OnePlus N20 5G is a $280 phone that feels like it should cost a lot more. It offers a 6.4-inch screen with good 1080p resolution. Better yet, it’s an OLED panel in a category where lower-contrast LCDs are much more common. You’ll have to make do with a standard 60Hz refresh rate, but unless you’re coming from a phone with a faster 90Hz or 120Hz screen, you won’t know the difference. Refresh rate aside, it’s a good screen that’s enjoyable to use. Plus, there’s a good fingerprint scanner under the display that makes unlocking the phone a frustration-free experience.
The N20 5G is sold unlocked but take note: it does not work on Verizon. It’s also limited to 4G on AT&T, which isn’t the end of the world given the carrier’s slow expansion of their mid-band 5G network (that’s the good 5G). The unlocked N20 does work on T-Mobile’s 5G as well as 4G, and you can buy a network-locked version of the phone directly from T-Mobile if you want to take advantage of a free phone offer or bundle the cost with your monthly phone bill.
The N20 5G is equipped with a good Snapdragon 695 processor and generous 6GB of RAM for very good daily performance. It also supports 33W wired fast charging — another feature you’d be hard-pressed to find in any of the N20’s competitors — with the included charger. You can charge the phone from 0 to 30 percent in just 20 minutes, which is really helpful if you’re in a jam and need a quick battery boost. NFC is also included for contactless payment; many cheaper phones exclude it to cut costs.
Camera quality is a bit of a weak point for the N20. The main rear 64-megapixel camera is fine; the other two cameras (a low-res macro and a monochrome sensor) are best ignored. The phone also ships with Android 11, which is a version behind most other new Android phones at this point. But on the brighter side, OnePlus is promising three years of security updates — a pretty good policy in a class where two years isn’t uncommon.
It’s unfortunate that the N20 isn’t an option for Verizon subscribers, but if you’re on T-Mobile or AT&T, it’s a heck of a deal — with or without 5G support.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The Samsung A13 5G offers a good, basic feature set and works on all major US carriers.
The best basic Android phone for Verizon customers
Samsung recently announced the A13’s successor — you guessed it, the Galaxy A14 — which we haven’t been able to test yet. It comes with some promising updates, including an additional year of security updates, but the Galaxy A13 5G remains a good deal if you can still find it on a retailer’s shelf. It’s a no-frills $249 phone that delivers the basics.
Its screen is nothing special, but battery life and performance are very good considering the price, and the device is backed up by a solid support policy promising three years of security updates. It’s not as polished as the N20 with its fancier OLED, but it’s also a bit cheaper and works on all major carriers (the N20 doesn’t work on Verizon).
The A13’s 6.5-inch screen is certainly big, but it’s a fairly dim, low-contrast LCD with a resolution of just 720p. Related: battery life is very good since the screen drains less power than brighter displays. Overall performance from the MediaTek 700 5G chipset and 4GB of RAM is very good, too.
On the camera side, the A13 lacks a couple of features you can find on other budget phones — namely, a night mode and an ultrawide camera. What you do get is a good 50-megapixel main rear camera that takes reliably good photos in daylight and dim indoor light. Just don’t expect much in very low light.
If you can live with a mediocre display and a basic camera, then the A13 will deliver on performance and battery life — pretty important stuff. Just make sure you budget a little extra for a MicroSD card because the phone’s 64GB of built-in storage is a little skimpy.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The Moto G Stylus has an approachable stylus feature set.
This year’s 4G-only edition of the Moto G Stylus continues to offer the excellent balance of features and cost-saving measures as last year’s model. It’s a good phone for the price, whether you’re a stylus devotee or just want a big cheap phone, and it works on all three major US networks.
The Moto G Stylus has a big 6.8-inch 1080p LCD display, good battery life with its 5,000mAh cell, and ample internal storage with 128GB of capacity. With a capable MediaTek Helio G88 processor and a healthy 6GB of RAM, the G Stylus performs well with everyday tasks. The cameras, though flawed, are good enough to get by. You won’t find an amazing night mode or top-notch picture quality here, but for a sub-$300 phone, it does the job just fine. The G Stylus is missing an NFC chip for contactless payment, and it doesn’t have wireless charging or an IP rating for water resistance, which are all common omissions at this price.
The Moto G Stylus’ stylus lives in the device, like the one on the Galaxy S22 Ultra. Popping it out brings up a quick menu of shortcuts to stylus-friendly apps, like its coloring book app. It’s a feature set intended for a more casual user than the likes of the S22 Ultra and, as a result, feels more approachable.
Other budget phones we tested
We also tested the OnePlus Nord N300, which doesn’t make an appearance among our recommendations. The N300 is very affordable at $228 but cuts too many corners to include fast charging. The slightly pricier N20 that snags our recommendation above is a generation behind but offers better overall performance and a nicer screen.
We’ve also looked at two TCL phones over the past year: the TCL Stylus 5G and 30 XE 5G. The latter provides fairly good daily performance for its very low $200 price, but ultimately neither TCL phone is worth recommending over the competition from Motorola and Samsung.
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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.
Modern flagship smartphones are little engineering marvels. And they should be since they start around $800 and can cost well over $1,000. They tend to last upwards of four or five years, so the high cost is a little easier to swallow, but it’s still a major purchase for most of us.
To make sure you get the most for your investment, we’ve picked out the best of the best. The phones highlighted below may be pricey, but they deliver excellent daily performance and great cameras and will keep on running well into the foreseeable future. Just bear in mind that a new crop of flagship phones are likely right around the corner — along with the trade-in deals and carrier freebies that go along with them. Android fans especially may want to hold off and see what the next few weeks bring.
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, you can check out our guide to budget smartphones.
The best phones of 2023
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The 6.7-inch Pro Max (left) and the 6.1-inch Pro (right) both introduce some worthwhile new features to the iPhone lineup.
For a lot of iPhone owners, this isn’t an upgrade year, especially if you’re coming from a 12 or a 13. But if you do need a new iPhone right now and you want the very best device, then Pro is the way to go. The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max usher in some new ideas from Apple that the standard 14 doesn’t get, like the “Dynamic Island,” a playful mash-up of hardware and software that turns the notch into a shape-shifting status indicator. There’s also a new high-resolution camera and an always-on display.
The iPhone 14 Pro, which starts at $999, is the very best iPhone you can buy right now. But it’s a bit of an early adopter special. There’s plenty that’s good but a lot of room for Apple to fine-tune and improve these features over the coming years. If you’re not ready to spend a thousand dollars on the first iteration of a new design, then look at the previous-gen iPhone 13. The standard iPhone 14 is an incremental upgrade over the 13 and doesn’t get you that much more; the 13 is still available and starts at $699. That’s our choice for most people, but the 14 Pro does have a lot to offer.
The 14 Pro comes with a 6.1-inch screen, and the Pro Max has a 6.7-inch screen. They’re both ProMotion displays like the 13 models, with adaptive refresh rates that go up to 120Hz for smooth scrolling and animations. New to this generation is an always-on display: when you lock your phone, the screen dims and drops into a low-power mode, with frame rates as low as 1Hz, but the clock, widgets, and wallpaper all remain visible. This means you can check the time or see if you have notifications without having to wake the display.
The display’s other new trick is, of course, Dynamic Island. Apple took the notch — the area of the screen that houses the front-facing camera and Face ID sensors — and turned it into a pill-shaped cutout that appears to expand dynamically (get it?) to show system indicators and notifications. It’s a handy place to quickly see what your phone is doing, whether it’s playing back music, sending files via AirDrop, or using navigation. It’s nice, but it’s something Apple and third-party developers will keep making more useful over the next few years — definitely not something to upgrade for right now.
The 14 Pro also has a new 48-megapixel main camera, which uses pixel binning to maximize light sensitivity and produce 12-megapixel images. The real-world improvements are subtle, with more fine detail in shadows and in low light, but the differences compared to a standard 12-megapixel sensor in the iPhone 14 are hard to see unless you’re looking really closely. The higher-resolution sensor also enables a 2x telephoto mode that’s essentially a 12-megapixel crop from the middle of the sensor. It’s the new default view for portrait mode, and it’s one that feels like a happy medium between the wide and 3x telephoto that have been the only options on iPhones past.
Outside of the new stuff, there’s a lot that’s familiar. The phone’s battery gets through a moderate day of use, though it seems to run down a little faster than the 13 Pro. The camera may not be the leap forward in photography that Apple claims it is, but it’s still one of the best in the game and records stunning video clips. And the new A16 Bionic chipset handles intensive tasks like gaming without a problem.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Google’s Pixel 7 Pro addresses its predecessor’s shortcomings and delivers consistently good photos.
The Pixel 7 Pro feels like the phone its predecessor should have been. It’s better late than never: the 7 Pro (and the 7, in its own right) is a high-quality device with good battery life, a consistently excellent camera, and great daily performance. Best of all, at $899, it costs a little less than the thousand-dollar flagships.
There’s an updated version of Google’s custom chipset on board, called Tensor G2. It’s behind some minor improvements to the phone’s intelligence and speech recognition. But mostly, it just delivers seamless performance for everyday tasks. It’s battery-efficient, too. In our testing, it was hard to push the Pixel 7 Pro into single-digit percentages by the end of the day. Most users can easily call this all-day battery life, and only very heavy users will need to recharge to get to the end of the day.
The 6.7-inch screen is very big, and with a boost in peak brightness, it’s comfortable to use even in direct sunlight. One of the best updates on the Pixel 7 Pro is a faster under-screen fingerprint scanner. It’s a tad faster than Pixel 6’s (sluggish) system, and it’s now joined by face unlock. It all makes for a smoother experience unlocking the phone, whether you use one or both of these methods.
The Pixel camera system is still one of the best in the game. There’s a 50-megapixel main camera — no change from the previous generation there — and a telephoto camera, slightly boosted from 4x to 5x zoom. Google’s using a new sensor crop method to offer 2x and 10x zoom settings that don’t rely on digital zoom. The result is surprisingly good image quality; the 10x can’t quite match the true optical 10x lens on the Samsung S23 Ultra, but it’s good in a pinch.
Most of all, the Pixel offers a consistent photography experience. While the Galaxy S22 series offers a better portrait mode, it’s harder to predict when it will go overboard with saturation and color shifts. The Pixel 7 Pro delivers photos that are a little more contrasty and cool and can lack the punchiness of Samsung and Apple’s photo processing, but you can rely on it to get good-quality shots even in very challenging circumstances.
As always, the software experience on the Pixel is among the best in Android — unsurprising, given that it comes from the same company. It remains a strength, with timely updates arriving every month, three years of new OS versions guaranteed, and a healthy five-year software support policy. There are some gems among the intelligence-based software features, too, like the creepily good live transcription in the Recorder app. Other features fall a bit short of Google’s lofty claims. Magic Eraser, which tries to automatically remove distractions from the background of your images, isn’t that magical. Photo Unblur, which is new to the Pixel 7 series, is only sort of good at sharpening blurry photos. But more importantly, the Pixel 7 Pro gets the basics right — and at the right price.
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
If you aren’t concerned with getting the very latest features, then the iPhone 13 is a great buy in 2022.
The iPhone 14 seems like the obvious choice for anyone who needs a new iPhone but doesn’t want to step up to the 14 Pro. But hear me out: the iPhone 13 does almost everything that the 14 does, and it’s $100 cheaper. Sure, if your carrier is offering you a good trade-in offer or dirt-cheap financing for the 14 or you want the (slight) year-over-year upgrades, then go ahead and get that one. It’s great! But if trade-in deal season is over or you’re paying out of pocket, we think the standard iPhone 13 is the better buy; the $799 14’s improvements are so minor that they’re not worth the extra money.
By opting for the 13, you don’t miss out on anything as far as the screen or processor is concerned. The iPhone 13 features a 6.1-inch screen with a standard refresh rate — no smooth-scrolling ProMotion here — as does the 14. There’s an A15 Bionic chipset in both phones, and although the 14’s is a slight upgrade with an extra GPU core, they both deliver excellent performance. They’re both MagSafe compatible for wireless charging and IP68-rated for robust water and dust resistance.
Upgrading to the 14 does get you a slightly better camera system, but the improvements are subtle. The ultrawide and front-facing cameras do better in low light compared to the 13, and the main camera features a bigger sensor that’s able to hold on to detail in dim conditions a little better. But for the most part, you have to go looking for these differences in fine details — most people viewing their images at web- and social-media-friendly sizes won’t see what’s changed.
You’ll miss out on a couple of emergency features, too. The 14 includes a new Crash Detection feature that uses specialized sensors to recognize when a car crash has happened and automatically call emergency services. There’s a satellite-based emergency messaging service, too, for when you’re out of cell range. For a small group of people, these services might be worth upgrading for, but they’re likely things that most of us can do without.
From the outside, the iPhone 14 and 13 look almost identical. There are some physical differences to note, though. The first is that you can’t just use an iPhone 13 case on the 14 because the camera bump is a bit bigger. And below the glass and aluminum surface of the iPhone 14, Apple made some changes that enable much easier repairs to the back panel. That means out-of-pocket repairs will likely cost less, and if you’re a DIYer, it’s a much less daunting task to take on yourself.
There are a handful of other interesting new iPhone features this time around, but they’re reserved for the Pro models. If you consider yourself an early adopter or you just want the best iPhone you can buy right now, it’s worth stepping up to the Pro. But if you’re just looking for a reliable device to get you through your day, take great photos and video, and keep the blue-bubble chat a-flowin’, then the iPhone 13 will serve you just as well as the 14 — for a little less money.
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The S22 Ultra inherits the Note’s boxy shape and built-in S Pen stylus.
The “Ultra” moniker in Samsung’s Galaxy lineup no longer means you’re just getting the biggest phone; now, it means you’re getting the biggest phone and everything but the kitchen sink. The S22 Ultra will likely be replaced very soon by the S23 Ultra, which is rumored to include a more advanced camera.
If you’re after the best of the best (and you probably are if you’re looking at the Ultra), then it’s probably best to hold off. But even with its successor on the way, the S22 Ultra will remain an extremely capable device for many years. It offers no fewer than five cameras, a huge, bright 6.8-inch OLED with up to a 120Hz refresh rate, and, oh yeah, a built-in stylus. It’s the successor to the Note series, but more than that, it feels like the endgame of slab-style smartphone development. Related: it costs a steep $1,200.
At the heart of the S22 Ultra is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset paired with 8 or 12GB of RAM. Performance is, not surprisingly, excellent; you’ll rarely see the phone stutter or hesitate, even while running graphics-intensive games. Samsung is also promising up to four generations of OS version upgrades, so the Ultra should remain a very good phone for years to come.
The included S Pen stylus pops out of a dedicated silo on the bottom of the phone, and Samsung says it’s been improved with lower latency than the S Pens of previous years. It’s hard to judge a few milliseconds of improvement, but it’s certainly responsive and easy to use. You can go deep into the stylus features with handwriting-to-text recognition options and slightly gimmicky “Air Actions” that turn the stylus into a magic wand / remote control combo. Or you can just scribble notes to your heart’s content or ignore the stylus entirely. The choice is yours.
The cameras are largely the same as the S21 Ultra’s, including a 108-megapixel main camera accompanied by 3x and 10x telephoto lenses, plus a couple of software-based improvements. The Ultra’s portrait mode photos are some of the best in the game, with excellent subject isolation, and you can use night mode with high-res mode or portrait mode now. But the bottom line is that the solid camera system the S21 Ultra offered is still just as good here, and 10x telephoto is about the best you’ll find on any smartphone, anywhere.
With so many power-hungry features, the S22 Ultra’s battery life is a bit lackluster. It will last a day of moderate use with a little in the tank, but power users may need to keep an eye on battery percentage and top off the 5,000mAh cell toward the end of the day. Fast 45W wired charging makes this a quick job, though.
If you know the stylus life is for you and you’d use a 10x zoom regularly rather than a handful of times out of curiosity, then look no further than the S22 Ultra. Its specialty features are somewhat niche — if powerful — which is why it’s not our overall pick for the best mainstream Android phone. But if you’re looking for a phone that can do just about anything, the S22 Ultra is in a league of its own.
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The iPhone 13 Mini has all the same cameras and features as its siblings but packs a smaller battery for light users.
The iPhone 13 Mini is one of very few small phones on the market with top-tier features and specs; you don’t have to compromise on performance, build quality, or cameras. Apple didn’t announce a new Mini with the 14 series, instead opting for a big-and-bigger approach with the 6.1-inch 14 and 6.7-inch 14 Plus. The 13 Mini is likely your last shot at a small, highly functional iPhone, so get it while you can.
Though it’s much smaller in size than pretty much every other modern smartphone, the Mini’s 5.4-inch screen is still big enough for text messaging, email, web browsing, apps, video, and games, and if you’re coming from an iPhone 6, 7, or 8, it will feel quite spacious. But it’s also small enough that most adults, even those with small hands, will be able to comfortably reach all of the screen with their thumb. You won’t need a PopSocket on this one.
One important downside to a smaller phone: the iPhone 13 Mini has a smaller battery that probably won’t last a power user through a whole day without a charge. It’s really designed for someone who isn’t glued to their phone all day. Otherwise, the Mini is the same phone as the iPhone 13: it has the same design, processor, cameras, 5G support, and build quality as the larger model. It’s just smaller and has a smaller price tag — about $100 less.
If you prefer Android, the Asus Zenfone 9 is a good alternative. It’s a little bigger than the 13 Mini, with a 5.9-inch screen, and it doesn’t work on Verizon, but it’s otherwise a very similar proposition: great build quality, top-notch processor, and high-end features like a 120Hz screen are all tucked into a pocket-friendly device.
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The less expensive 6A offers most of what the pricier flagship models include, starting with the custom Tensor chipset.
The Pixel 6A follows the same budget phone recipe Google has used for years: deliver core Google features in a stripped-down device with just the basics. In previous years, that meant getting the same camera system as the flagships. That recipe changed slightly with the 6A. Now, you get the same Tensor custom chipset as the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro but an older camera system. It’s a recipe that works: the Pixel 6A is a great all-around budget device, and even without the latest hardware, it still offers one of the best cameras in its class. And although its processor is one generation behind the very newest Pixel phones, you’re not missing out on much in terms of new features, and performance is still top-notch.
The 6A includes a 1080p 6.1-inch screen with a standard 60Hz refresh rate, and this is one area where Google made a sacrifice to hit a lower price point. The 6 and 6 Pro feature faster refresh rate screens, and you’ll even find other budget phones with faster refresh rates, like the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G. This is only something you’ll miss if you’re coming from a phone with a high refresh rate screen, so don’t worry about it if your current phone has a regular ol’ 60Hz display. There’s also no wireless charging, and it’s rated IP67, so water resistance isn’t quite as robust as on the Pixel 6.
The cameras are a step behind Google’s current flagships, but the stabilized main 12-megapixel camera and 12-megapixel ultrawide are still highly capable — especially compared to the rest of the midrange class. Google’s image processing is smart, and Tensor enables some interesting software features, like Face Unblur, which uses information from both rear cameras to keep human photo subjects looking sharp, even in dim lighting.
Most of all, Tensor puts the Pixel 6A’s day-to-day performance on par with the 6 and 6 Pro. And it should keep up for a long time: the phone will get security updates through July 2027. Sure, the 6A misses out on a few nice things, but it’s got it where it counts.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The Flip 4 is a modern take on the classic flip phone format.
When the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is flipped open, you get a big 6.7-inch screen that handles just like the slab-style smartphone you’re used to. But fold it in half, like the flip phones of yore, and you can use its small outer screen to see basic widgets and read notifications. It’s unconventional, but it’s also fun and kinda stylish. It’s a great choice if you’re feeling a little bit adventurous — it’s still the early days for this form factor — and you’d appreciate a way to quickly check info on your phone without having to fully engage with it.
The Flip 4 is the definition of an incremental upgrade, but when you’re talking about a phone that folds in half, that’s still a pretty impressive achievement. It’s the same basic size and shape as the Flip 3, with a slightly slimmer hinge and some squared-off corners. It’s still IPX8 water resistant (no dust resistance, so please don’t take it to the beach), and the cover screen is still a tiny 1.9 inches — big enough to read an email subject line or check the current weather but not big enough to do much more than that.
The inner screen is protected by stronger ultrathin glass than the Flip 3. There’s a non-user-replaceable screen protector in place, as there was on the previous model, but the adhesive that attaches it is stronger this time around. That will hopefully avoid the bubbling problem seen by some owners of previous-gen foldables.
The Flip 4’s cameras are mostly the same as the Flip 3’s, and they’re still a bit behind what you’d expect from your garden-variety flagship phone. There’s a 12-megapixel main camera with slightly bigger pixels than the last one, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and a 10-megapixel selfie camera. Most other phones priced at $999 will throw in a telephoto lens of some kind, but not the Z Flip 4. Still, it’s a lot of fun taking pictures and recording videos in the phone’s L-shaped Flex mode. (Just try and name another phone that comes with its own built-in kickstand.)
If you’re a Flip 3 owner, there’s nothing about the Flip 4 worth upgrading for. In fact, many of the new software-based features introduced with the 4 are already making their way to the 3. And there are still plenty of ways Samsung could improve on its design: making it slimmer, more durable, and increasing the size of the cover screen, for a start. The Flip 4 offers some valuable refinements over the 3 that make it feel like a more mature product and less of a concept. There are likely significant improvements coming down the line for the Flip series, but right now, it’s undeniably fun and different.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The Z Fold 4 is pricey, but there’s nothing else quite like it on the market.
The Fold 4 is Samsung’s latest folding phone, and it is a pricey multitasking powerhouse — a phone and a tablet wrapped up in one device. Like the Fold 3 before it, it’s sized like a skinny smartphone that fits in your pocket, but it unfolds to reveal a tablet-sized 7.6-inch display on the inside.
That inside screen makes everything from reading books and browsing the web to watching videos and playing games more enjoyable and immersive. When you’re done using it, just fold it back up and stick it in your pocket just like any other phone. You can use the 6.2-inch outer screen for simpler tasks like you would on a slab-style smartphone, but the big screen is there when you need it. The Fold 4 is undeniably a gadget person’s gadget, best suited for someone who wants to get the absolute most out of their mobile device, cost be damned.
The Fold 4’s outer screen looks and handles like any other slab-style smartphone screen; unfold the device and you’re looking at something quite different. For starters, there’s a non-user-replaceable screen protector glued to the inner display to protect against scratches — the ultrathin glass that allows it to fold is easily damaged without it. The whole device is IPX8-rated, meaning it offers robust water resistance but no dust resistance. Folding phones: not recommended for the beach.
On the software side, the Fold 4 provides a lot of ways to get the most out of that big screen. There are new multitasking interface options that make it easy to open apps in multiple windows or use it in an L-shape like a laptop. These features are already becoming available to the Fold 3, so nobody should run out and upgrade from the previous-gen folding phone just for the software improvements.
The Galaxy Fold 4 is just brimming with cameras, including a 3x telephoto zoom lens, upgraded from a 2x zoom on the outgoing model. There are also 12-megapixel standard wide and ultrawide cameras on the rear panel, plus a 10-megapixel selfie camera on the outside and a 4-megapixel under-display camera on the inside. Image quality is on par with the S22 and S22 Plus, including a great portrait mode. You’d get a more powerful set of cameras on the significantly less expensive S22 Ultra, but the Ultra doesn’t fold in half.
The Fold 4 has evolved beyond the early hardware hiccups of the first Fold phones in the series, and it’s a device you could actually use as your daily driver — not just as a cool gadget that stays at home. The refinements over the Fold 3 are minor, like slightly wider aspect ratios on the screens and better adhesive on the non-user-replaceable inner screen protector, but they push the Fold a little closer to the mainstream. With apologies to the also-ran Microsoft Surface Duo 2, there’s just nothing else like it on the market — if you’re willing to pay the very high $1,800 premium.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
The OnePlus 10T includes wicked fast charging and a high-end processor.
The 10T feels like OnePlus coming back to its premium-hardware-at-midrange-price roots. It’s a $649 phone with Qualcomm’s very latest mobile processor, the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, with a side of extremely fast wired charging. That’s its whole deal: top-tier performance and unreal charging speeds, all for less than $700.
The 10T includes a nice screen, too: a big 6.7-inch display with a top 120Hz refresh rate. But you can’t have everything on a sub-$700 phone, and the 10T lacks a few things you’ll find on the slightly pricier flagships. That list includes wireless charging and a robust water resistance rating (it’s IP54 only). Camera quality isn’t quite up there with the best, either. It can be inconsistent, though photos in good lighting generally look fine.
Wired charging is exactly as advertised: fast as heck. In the US, it’s capable of 125W charging, and you need to use the included USB-C cable and brick. With them, you’ll see the phone charge from zero to 30 percent in under five minutes. In 10 minutes, it will charge up to 60 percent, and a full charge takes about 20 minutes. It’s downright impressive.
The 10T isn’t for everyone, and that actually makes it a better phone. If you want a great all-arounder, then the 10T isn’t it. You can get a device with better water resistance, a better camera system, and maybe even wireless charging for around the same price. But if you want top-tier performance for a midtier price, then the OnePlus 10T is the way to go.
Other good phones
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 $999 Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus was our pick for the best Android phone for most of 2022, and it remains an excellent device (though presumably, very soon to be replaced by the S23). We think the Pixel 7 Pro is a better value overall for $899, but for someone who’s invested in the Galaxy ecosystem and doesn’t need all of the features of the Ultra model, the S22 Plus is the flagship to buy.
The iPhone 14 Plus is worth considering if you prefer iOS and you like a bigger phone. If the 14 Pro feels like overkill but you want a big screen and a big battery, then the 14 Plus is a good alternative. It costs less than the $1099 Pro Max, though its $899 price isn’t exactly cheap. But like the iPhone 14, the 14 Plus offers very few appreciable updates over the iPhone 13 and doesn’t quite lend itself to a broad recommendation.
Can video games change people’s minds about the climate crisis?
A new wave of game makers are attempting to influence a generation of environmentally conscious players. Will it work, and is it enough?
“It was scary. It made you realise how, despite all the sophistication of modern society, we’re still reliant on water falling from the sky.” Sam Alfred, the lead designer at Cape Town-based video game studio Free Lives, vividly remembers his city nearly running out of water. During 2018, the area surrounding South Africa’s second largest city suffered months of dwindling rainfall. Dams were unable to replenish themselves at the rate its inhabitants required. Water was rationed. Businesses shut. The situation even called for its own grim version of the Doomsday Clock: hour by hour, the city ticked ever closer to Day Zero, marking the end of its fresh water supply.
Terra Nil, the video game that Alfred has been developing since 2019, is a response to these terrifying events. Dubbed a “city-builder in reverse”, it foregoes the consumption and expansion of genre classics such as Civilisation and SimCity to paint a picture of environmental restoration. Starting with arid desert, it’s up to the player to rewild a landscape using various technologies – a toxin scrubber, for example, or a beehive. At light-speed, and with eye-massaging flushes of emerald green and azure blue, the environment transforms into lush vegetation. Terra Nil’s simplicity is as beautiful as its visuals, offering the satisfaction of a colouring book while doling out a clear-eyed critique of environment-wrecking extraction.
TikTok’s New Defense in Washington: Going on the Offense Keeping its head down has not paid off for the company, which now faces regulatory pressure on many fronts. So it is starting to speak out.
Twitter to launch ad-free subscription tier, Elon Musk says
Tesla boss hopes for rise in revenue after advertising downturn in wake of takeover
Twitter is planning an advertising-free version of its subscription product, as the company attempts to raise revenue and increase demand for its premium offering.
Elon Musk has targeted an increase in subscription revenue as a key part of the social media platform’s business plan under his ownership.
Elon Musk testified it’s ‘easy’ to raise money, so where are his Twitter investors?
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Photo: Getty Images
Elon Musk is trying to cut back on costly unsecured loans tied to his $44 billion Twitter purchase by selling $3 billion worth of Twitter shares, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. But despite what Musk has said recently about his “track record” of raising money, the paper claims investors aren’t immediately getting in line to grab the pieces of Twitter he’s offering.
Sources tell the WSJ that in December, the billionaire’s team sent out emails to potential investors trying to raise $3 billion to pay off “an unsecured portion” of Twitter’s $13 billion debt with the highest interest rate. The WSJ reports some backers “balked at the terms” due to the state of Twitter’s finances but also notes it couldn’t determine the current state of fundraising talks.
When asked on Twitter whether the WSJ’s report is accurate, Musk answered simply, “No.”
In sharp contrast to the reports, Musk has boasted about his ability to secure strong investments during his securities fraud trial. Testifying on Tuesday, the billionaire bragged that it’s “relatively easy” for him to secure investments:
Every time we’ve raised money, it has been at a higher price. So investors have done extremely well. That is why it is relatively easy for me to get investor support because my track record is extremely good... It is accurate to say that I probably have the best track record with investors.
Fittingly, the trial centers around Musk’s notorious 2018 tweet that said he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla private. Messages revealed as part of the lawsuit suggest that Musk eventually became frustrated with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — one of the investors Musk claims promised to provide Tesla with funding — after it didn’t vouch for his statement.
Shortly after taking over the platform in November, Musk complained about losing $4 million per day and didn’t rule out the possibility of bankruptcy.
Still, if you’d like to help out the former world’s richest man and you can’t afford to spend $250,000 on ad space and enable a free matching deal or to purchase a few thousand shares of Twitter at Elon’s price, there’s always the annual Twitter Blue subscription for $84.
State-linked hackers in Russia and Iran are targeting UK groups, NCSC warns
Sophisticated campaigns against politicians and media aim to steal secrets or embarrass high-profile figures rather than to extort money
Russian and Iranian state-linked hackers are increasingly targeting British politicians, journalists and researchers with sophisticated campaigns aimed at gaining access to a person’s email, Britain’s online security agency warned on Thursday.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) issued an alert about two groups from Russia and Iran, warning those in government, defence, thinktanks and the media against clicking on malicious links from people posing as conference hosts, journalists or even colleagues.
Meta allows Trump back on Facebook and Instagram
Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Meta announced Wednesday that it will allow former President Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram two years after his initial suspension.
In a Wednesday blog post, Meta announced that it would reinstate Trump’s accounts sometime over the next few weeks. If Trump once again violates Meta’s content policies, the company said that his accounts would be subject to additional suspensions, ranging from one month to two years, “depending on the severity of the violation.”
“As a general rule, we don’t want to get in the way of open, public and democratic debate on Meta’s platforms – especially in the context of elections in democratic societies like the United States,” Clegg said in Wednesday’s blog post. “The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying – the good, the bad and the ugly – so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box.”
As part of Wednesday’s announcement, Meta updated its policies to account for content that doesn’t explicitly violate its rules but could encourage violent or harmful behaviors similar to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. If this content is identified in the future, Meta said it restrict its distribution, like limiting a user’s ability to share a post. The company could also restrict an account’s access to advertising tools.
Trump was banned from Facebook and Instagram following the deadly January 6th attack on the Capitol two years ago. At the time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Trump was suspended for provoking violence and praising the rioters’ actions. Meta was one of the first platforms to ban the former president, effectively removing all of his accounts from mainstream social media services.
Ending Suspension of Trump’s Accounts With New Guardrails to Deter Repeat Offenses https://t.co/M6U6MIoEl2
At first, Meta indefinitely banned Trump, but the company later revised that decision after receiving guidance from its Oversight Board, an internal panel of experts that advise the company’s content moderation decisions. The board argued that an indefinite ban was inappropriate and called on Meta to prepare new policies governing harmful speech from public figures. By June 2021, Nick Clegg, Meta’s vice president of global affairs, announced that Trump’s suspension would last two years, and the company would decide whether to reinstate his accounts once “the risk to public safety has receded.”
In that same June blog post, Clegg said that the company would roll out a “strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in the future,” up to and including permanent removal of his pages and accounts.”
Trump’s Twitter account was reinstated last November. After purchasing the company, Tesla CEO Elon Musk ran a Twitter poll asking whether the former president should be allowed to return to the site. Trump has yet to make an official return to Twitter, exclusively using his personal social media platform, Truth Social, as his primary means of communication.
Responding to Meta’s announcement Wednesday, Trump tore into the company on Truth Social. “FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since ‘deplatforming’ your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account,” he said. “THANK YOU TO TRUTH SOCIAL FOR DOING SUCH AN INCREDIBLE JOB.”
The account reinstatements come months after Trump formally announced that he would be running for reelection in 2024. Throughout his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, the Trump team spent millions on Meta platform ads alone. While Trump was kicked off his most-favorite platform, Twitter, his campaigns have spent significantly more money on Facebook and Instagram. Twitter banned political ads from its platform in 2019.
Earlier this month, Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign petitioned Meta to unblock the former president’s access to his accounts.
“We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” the campaign said in a letter to Meta last week.
In anticipation of Meta’s decision, two Democratic lawmakers urged the company to continue Trump’s bans in a December letter. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), head of the House’s investigation into the January 6th attack, signed onto the letter writing, “For Meta to credibly maintain a legitimate election integrity policy, it is essential that your company maintain its platform ban on former president Trump,” according to CNN.
More than a year after being banned from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, Trump launched his own social media platform called Truth Social in February 2022. As of publication, Trump has amassed over 4.5 million followers on Truth Social compared to the nearly 34 million Facebook followers and 90 million Twitter followers before his bans.
UPDATED January 25th, 2023 at 5:59PM ET: Added a statement from Trump on Truth Social.
The base M2 14-inch MacBook Pro has an SSD downgrade
A previous-generation 14-inch MacBook Pro with a potentially faster SSD than the the latest models. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The base level 14-inch M2 MacBook Pro reportedly has a slower SSD than its predecessor, according to tests done by 9to5Mac. In BlackMagic’s Disk Speed Test, the 512GB SSD in Apple’s latest flagship achieved read speed scores of around 2,970 MB/s and write speed scores of around 3,150 MB/s, compared to 4,900 MB/s reads and 3,950 MB/s writes that the M1 Pro with a 512GB SSD was capable of.
That means the 2023 base model has around 39 percent slower reads and 20 percent slower writes than the one released in 2021.
The reason for the difference is likely down to chips. According to 9to5Mac, the 512GB SSD in the previous-gen 14-inch had four NAND storage chips, whereas the one on the M2 Pro seems to have two. Those are obviously higher-capacity chips, so the computers have the same amount of storage but with worse performance because they can’t parallelize reads and writes as much.
Building newer generations of computers with fewer NAND chips isn’t new for Apple. Both the 256GB M2 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro had slower storage than the M1 versions of those machines. (The situation was even worse with those machines, which had a single NAND chip.) But those are relatively entry-level laptops; the 14-inch MacBook Pro is a $2,000 computer aimed at creative professionals and developers — it’s not a place you’d expect Apple to cut corners or sacrifice performance.
It’d be even more annoying if the $2,500 16-inch model with a 512GB SSD also has this setup, though, as far as I’m aware, no one has confirmed this one way or the other. We asked Apple about it, and the M2 Mac Mini with a 256GB SSD, but didn’t immediately get a response.
However, MacRumors reports that the 256GB M2 Mini does indeed only have one NAND chip, similar to Air and 13-inch Pro. Again, I’d argue that’s more acceptable on a machine that costs $599. But while it’s unfortunate that the base M2 Mini has a slower SSD than M1 one did, there is a tradeoff — the M2 model starts at $100 less than its predecessor. Given everything the computer offers in terms of real-world performance, perhaps it’s hard to complain.
Thankfully, it seems like MacBook Pro models with upgraded storage don’t come with the same performance hit. Tom’s Guide and Laptop Mag tested a 14-inch M2 Pro-equipped laptop with a 2TB SSD, as well as one with an M2 Max processor (which is only available with a 1TB SSD and up), and the storage turned out to be roughly as fast or faster than the previous-gen models. MacWorld found a similar situation with the 16-inch models.
Just for reference, Tom’s Guide notes that the 2TB SSD paired with an M2 Pro was capable of 5,293 MB/s reads and 6,168 MB/s writes, a substantial leg-up from the 512GB model (as you’d hope, given that the 2TB SSD option adds a cool $600 to the price of the computer).
This isn’t to say that newer Macs with base-level SSDs will be unusably slow. The benchmark screenshots posted by 9to5Mac show that the one in the 14-inch still has enough bandwidth to play back 12K ProRes 422 HQ footage at 60FPS. It also still handily beats the 1TB SSD in my 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, which has been totally sufficient even when I ask it to do heavy video editing tasks, and is faster than the 256GB SSD in the M2 MacBook Air and 13-inch Pro.
Still, it’s a bit of a bummer to see that, in at least one aspect, the base-level M2 Pro machines are measurably worse than their predecessors.
Musk tells court he lacked ‘specific’ funding to take Tesla private
CEO of electric carmaker says finance was ‘not an issue’ but he did not have binding commitments from investors
Elon Musk expected strong financial support when he tweeted that he would take Tesla private in 2018, but lacked specific commitments from potential backers, according to testimony he gave on his third day of questioning in a San Francisco federal court.
Musk is accused of defrauding investors by driving up the price of Tesla stock by tweeting on 7 August 2018 that he had “funding secured” to take the electric carmaker private.
Meta’s flagship VR app is catching up to the NES by making A the jump button
I, too, am throwing my hands in the air for this change. | Image: Meta
Meta is making a big improvement to controls in its social VR platform Horizon Worlds: jump is being remapped to the A button, according to a blog post about the app’s new v94 update.
You might be surprised to hear that wasn’t the case before, especially given that the A button has been widely used for jumping in video games for decades. But before now, you jumped in Horizon Worlds by pressing the right thumbstick as if it was a button. If you ask me, that wasn’t ideal; not only is jump not where you might expect it to be but the right thumbstick is already used to rotate your character, so pushing down the stick to jump could also lead to accidental turns.
The A button as the default will be in effect for “all players and worlds” with the update, according to Meta. The update is already available for me. When I loaded into Horizon Worlds after updating, I got a notification about the change, and it was immediately in effect; I learned that by accident by pressing A without thinking about it and, well, my character jumped. If you want to switch back to the old way, you can do so from settings.
It’s a basic change, but one that could make Horizon Worlds more inviting for players, which is already struggling to keep users despite the billions Meta is investing in its metaverse efforts. As of last year, Horizon Worlds wasn’t very popular with Meta employees, either, and the company’s metaverse VP sent a memo to staff instituting a “quality lockdown” through the end of the year to fix “quality gaps and performance issues.” Earlier in January, the company also added some new moderation features to Horizon Worlds, including a way to prevent vote-to-kick spam.
Microsoft Revenue Up 2 Percent, but Profit Drops 12 Percent The company, which announced plans to lay off 10,000 workers last week, had warned that is was facing a significant slowdown in the growth of its sales.
Elon Musk is theoretically sad that Tesla investors lost money because of his tweets
Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge
In testimony that was at times fiery and combative, Elon Musk came extremely close to expressing regret that Tesla investors lost money as a result of his tweets.
Musk took the stand for a third day of testimony in a lawsuit brought by a class of Tesla investors who claim that Musk cost them millions of dollars with his tweets about taking the electric car company private in 2018.
The jury will need to decide whether Musk is liable for potentially billions of dollars in damages to Tesla investors. Musk has already agreed to a $40 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the tweets that required him to relinquish his position as chair of the company but not admit to any wrongdoing. (Musk has since argued that he was coerced into the settlement.)
Asked by the plaintiffs’ attorney Nicholas Porritt whether he had any regret about the harm caused by his tweets, Musk’s first response was to disparage Porritt and his law firm.
“The reality is that Tesla investors are extremely happy and you don’t represent them,” Musk said, prompting a sharp rebuke by District Court Judge Edward Chen to answer the question.
Trying again, Musk said, “I never want an investor to lose money. If he did on the basis of the tweet, obviously I would be sad about that. But investors in public markets buy and sell stock all the time. On balance, they have done extremely well.”
It wasn’t the first time that Chen had to stage-manage the petulant billionaire. Several times, Musk attempted to slip into his testimony a mention that “Tesla today is worth 10 times” what it was in 2018, despite an order from the court to refrain from commenting on the company’s present value. He also continued to jab at class action lawsuits and the law firms that bring such cases to court, even though Chen warned him that he was out of line.
Over the course of two full days of testimony (with an added 30 minutes on the stand last Friday), Musk seemed bored, stilted, often muddled, and occasionally in duress (he complained of back pain), with flashes of the abrasiveness he often displays in his tweets. He seemed annoyed to be in a situation where he was forced to answer questions about his tweets, which he maintained were in good faith and for the benefit of Tesla’s investors.
Even before Musk took the stand, Judge Chen ruled that the jury should consider Musk’s 2018 tweets to be false. With that assumption, jurors will need to decide whether Musk deceived shareholders with his tweets and caused them to lose money.
But it was easy to get lost in the swirling mass of meetings, phone calls, text messages, blog posts, tweets, and other forms of communication that make up the bulk of the evidence of the case. Neither side has done a good job of laying out the timeline of the case, which could make it difficult for the jury to parse all the details.
Some moments stuck out, such as when Alex Spiro, Musk’s celebrity lawyer, repeated over and over — likely for the benefit of the jury — that Musk had no intention of misleading or defrauding shareholders with his tweets.
Quite the opposite, Musk said. “My intention with the tweet was to make sure that all investors were aware of what the board was aware of and what the Saudi Investment Fund was aware of” — which was his plan to take the company private at $420 a share.
But in his cross-examination, Porritt grilled Musk over whether he had discussed a specific amount of funding with the Saudi Public Investment Fund or other investors that would be needed to take Tesla private. After a series of disassembling answers, Musk said, “Effectively yes.”
But when asked by Porritt to cite the specific number that he had discussed with the Saudis, Musk eventually admitted there was none — while adding that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was so wealthy they could “buy Tesla many times over.”
Porritt also took Musk to task for his previous claim that he also considered his stake in SpaceX, one of his other companies, when he tweeted “funding secured.” Musk made no mention of his shares in SpaceX when answering written questions from the plaintiffs about the tweet in April 2021, which he signed under risk of perjury. That prompted a rare admission of wrongdoing from Musk.
“I should have mentioned SpaceX here, I did mention it in the SEC testimony but it was an error on my part in not mentioning it here,” he admitted.
The case is expected to last through the week, with additional witnesses from Tesla’s past and present set to take the stand. If he loses, Musk could be liable for billions of dollars in damages.
Emailing Your Doctor May Carry a Fee More hospitals and medical practices have begun charging for doctors’ responses to patient queries, depending on the level of medical advice.
I’m a corporate fraud investigator. You wouldn’t believe the hubris of the super-rich
While the fraudsters I’ve encountered are often cunning, sooner or later they get carried away
FTX’s HQ, we now know, was not your typical one. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried ran his business from a $40m Bahamian penthouse named the Orchid, complete with Venetian plaster walls and a grand piano. The lot was nestled beside a championship golf course and a mega-yacht marina. Since Amazon doesn’t deliver to the Bahamas, private jets did the job instead.
It wasn’t your typical corporate HQ – but then, FTX is not your typical corporation. It’s bankrupt, dragged down by its own financial abuses, with its chief executive facing prison. Yet while FTX has made headlines, its tale is not as unusual as you might think.
Surprise, surprise: the cell carriers didn’t get rid of passwords
Remember this logo? I bet you don’t. | Image: ZenKey
Do you remember ZenKey, the app that AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint (gone, but not forgotten) pushed as the future of logging in to services without a password? If you do, you may be one of the only ones — as LightReading points out, it appears as though the joint venture quietly crumbled after the service started rolling out in 2019.
Originally announced as “Project Verify” in 2018, ZenKey was meant to be a single sign-on system, similar to the sign in with Google or Apple buttons that you see on various websites. The idea was that each carrier would offer an app that could verify your identity, then act as a pass whenever you went to log into a supported website or carry out something like a bank transfer. In theory, it could be more secure because it used data from your SIM card and location to make sure it was really you trying to log in.
It doesn’t seem like ZenKey got very far though, and now it’s mostly disappeared. LightReading reports that the website for it is down, AT&T stopped supporting it last year, and the “ZenKey powered by Verizon” app is no longer available in app stores (at least in the US). T-Mobile’s website seems to have almost no references to the system as far as Google can find, though there is one article from mid-2020 on its business site that mentions it.
To those who are familiar with the history of multi-carrier joint ventures, this outcome isn’t necessarily a surprise. LightReading called it when the service was announced in 2019, running the headline “Meet ZenKey: Telcos’ Doomed Single Sign-On Service.” The Verge’s Dieter Bohn called ZenKey “the right idea from the wrong companies” when he wrote about the Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative that attempted to replace SMS with the then-burgeoning RCS. He based his opinion on past products like SoftCard, which aimed to compete with Google Wallet and Apple Pay. (It succeeded about as well as CCMI did, which is to say not at all — though it probably didn’t help that when it launched in 2013 it was called “ISIS,” a name that was about to mean something very bad to a lot of people).
In the end, the usefulness of a service like ZenKey is going to rely on how much third-party support it gets — even if your app is great, most people aren’t going to bother with it if they can only use it to log in to three or four sites. And why would developers add ZenKey to their sites when there are other options from the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta, which all have their own single sign-on solution with accounts people already use? Those would also likely have much better brand recognition when a user hits a login page.
Case in point: here are all the sites and apps that worked with ZenKey in July 2022, according to a Wayback Machine archive of its now-defunct website:
Image: ZenKey via The Wayback Machine
Realistically, how many of these services would one person be signed up for?
A press release from late 2020 mentions that other companies like Proctorio and DocuSign had “plans to trial or go live” with support for the service, but it seems like that didn’t exactly work out.
Even if the cell carriers (predictably) weren’t able to get rid of passwords, I do hope that they eventually become a thing of the past. But getting rid of them will require a much harder push from a much bigger group; perhaps passkeys, a FIDO-powered passwordless authentication system pushed for by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the like, will end up being the thing. But unless it becomes widely adopted (which isn’t exactly for sure), we’ll likely be stuck with the patchwork of successful single sign-on options, password managers, and scattered sticky notes we know we shouldn’t use but do anyhow.
Elon Musk gets serious about 420 at securities fraud trial
Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge
Elon Musk insists that 420 isn’t a joke to him.
In testimony during his ongoing securities fraud trial on Monday, Musk argued that the $420-a-share price he proposed back in his infamous “funding secured” tweet from 2018 wasn’t a weed joke but actually just a coincidence — with a dash of karma.
Musk was asked about the proposed share price by Nicholas Porritt, an attorney for a class of Tesla investors who are suing the billionaire CEO for the loss of millions of dollars that they say resulted from his bungled attempt to take Tesla private. And it prompted an eyebrow-raising response from Musk regarding what he considered a serious proposal despite nearly everyone else taking it as an obvious reference to cannabis.
“You rounded up to 420 because you thought that would be a joke that your girlfriend will enjoy, isn’t that correct?” Porritt asked. “No,” Musk said, adding, “there is some, I think, karma around 420. I should question whether that is good or bad karma at this point.”
Porritt, sounding incredulous, asked again whether the $420 was meant to be a joke. “420 was not chosen because of a joke,” Musk said. “It was chosen because there was a 20 percent premium over the stock price.” He also argued that it was a “coincidence.”
Musk posted the ill-fated tweet on August 7th, 2018, based on what he argued was a “firm commitment” from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) to take Tesla private. At the time, the company was under “attack” from “Wall Street sharks” and short-sellers who were betting on the failure of his company, and Musk said he was simply trying to protect its future.
But Porritt pointed out that there were no signed documents with the Saudis, nothing more than a handshake really, and that Musk posted the tweet without consulting his own board and without considering how it could negatively affect Tesla’s shareholders.
“Before tweeting out ‘investor support is confirmed,’ you didn’t learn about whether investors support was actually confirmed, did you?” Porritt asked. At a later point, he stated, “By tweeting ‘investor support is confirmed,’ you meant to communicate that ‘Elon Musk support is confirmed.’”
The trial hinges on whether the jury thinks Musk should have to pay out potentially billions of dollars in damages to shareholders for the money they lost as a result of his tweets. Musk has already agreed to a $40 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the tweets, though that settlement did not require him to admit to any wrongdoing. (Musk has since argued that he was coerced into that settlement.)
Even before Musk took the stand, Judge Edward Chen ruled that the jury should consider Musk’s 2018 tweets to be false. With that assumption, jurors will need to decide whether Musk deceived shareholders with his tweets and caused them to lose money.
Speaking in a soft, halting tone and at times complaining of “severe” back pain, Musk argued that he was not exclusively relying on a commitment for the Saudi PIF when he tweeted “funding secured.” He argued that his shares in SpaceX would also help fund the deal to take Tesla private, noting that he sold nearly $23 billion in Tesla shares to fund his acquisition of Twitter — a deal he unsuccessfully tried to get out of — as evidence of his willingness to use his various companies to finance his business deal.
“Just as I sold stock in Tesla to buy Twitter... I didn’t want to sell Tesla stock, but I did sell Tesla stock,” he said. “My SpaceX shares alone would have meant that funding was secured.”
There were some brief fireworks when Musk accused Porritt of failing to subpoena any PIF officials to get the Saudis on the record about conversations with Musk. “The interesting question for you, sir, is why did you not subpoena him? Because if you did, it would destroy your case,” Musk said. Porritt said the plaintiff’s team did send court processors to Saudi Arabia, but Judge Chen quickly shut down the brawl.
A moment of levity came when Porritt accidentally referred to Musk as “Mister Tweet,” which Musk conceded was “appropriate.”
During his testimony, Musk likened the deal to buying a house with PIF as his mortgage lender. “There were no documents signed, but they agreed to buy 5 percent of Tesla,” Musk said of the PIF.
“So you would expect less documentation for a multibillion-dollar taking private transaction of a public company than for buying a house?” Porritt responded. “Is that your testimony?”
Musk was also cross-examined by his own attorney, Alex Spiro, who sought to portray his client as a scrappy immigrant who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps to become one of the most successful businesspeople in the world. But much of that narrative may be lost on the jury, as Musk seemed uninterested in responding to questions about his childhood.
“Not good,” Musk responded when asked about his upbringing, declining to elaborate.
But when it came to grandiose statements about his own business acumen, Musk was unreserved. “I’ve done quite a few things that have been unprecedented,” he said, responding to a question from Spiro about the characterization of his scheme to take Tesla private as “unprecedented.”
“I think I’ve raised more money than anyone in history at this point by a significant margin,” Musk boasted while arguing that he has never lost any of his investors money. The plaintiffs may disagree.
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