Not included: a desk that’s a country mile wide. | Image: Samsung A running gag here at The Verge and on The Vergecast is that ever since Samsung switched to a six-day workweek for its executives, it’s made some particularly wild decisions — like throwing out its own unique earbud design for glorified Apple knockoffs with light strips. And right now, Samsung will not only sell you its impressive 49-inch Odyssey OLED G9 (G95SC) 49-inch curved ultrawide gaming monitor for $1,099.99 (a discount of $700), but it’s also including a second, 24-inch Odyssey G30D monitor for free (a $150 value).The deal price is being matched at Best Buy and Amazon but without the freebie second monitor. And why wouldn’t you want a second baby monitor to compliment your wraparound surfboard of a main monitor?The 49-inch... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Disney and DirecTV are back in business with each other after a carriage dispute that has kept ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned networks off of the cable provider since the beginning of September. ESPN and other channels Disney had blocked have been restored, giving DirecTV subscribers access, once again, to Monday Night Football, college football games, and other programming from Disney’s channels.As part of the deal, DirecTV will offer packages that include Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus as bundles or a la carte options. It’ll also include “Disney’s upcoming ESPN flagship direct-to-consumer service” when it launches, for no extra cost. And DirecTV will be able to “offer multiple genre-specific options — sports, entertainment, kids... Continue reading…

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Courtesy of iFixit, a new teardown video of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold reveals what the repairability advocate organization’s Shahram Mokhtari says is “the most exciting foldable we’ve seen on the iFixit teardown table.” iFixit offers very clear shots of the phone’s internals in the video and its accompanying blog post, along with some very detailed Lumafield CT scans of the foldable. Mokhtari notes in the video that Google is offering official repair guides and replacement parts for the phone. iFixit found impressive modularity in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, including easily removable wearable parts like the USB-C port and SIM card tray, and the site praised the use of 3IP screws throughout. The repair experts were also able to pull off... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge The iPhone 16 lineup has 8GB of RAM, from the base model to the 16 Pro Max, and it’s all thanks to Apple Intelligence. Apple VP of hardware tech Johny Srouji confirmed as much in an interview with Geekerwan, published yesterday, that 9to5Mac spotted. Srouji explained in the interview that “DRAM is one aspect” when it comes to deciding hardware characteristics needed for Apple Intelligence, saying that the feature “led us to believe we need to get to 8GB.” He added that the extra RAM would also “help immensely” for tasks like high-end gaming on devices. Apple hadn’t previously stated how much RAM the iPhone 16 line has, but MacRumors discovered references to the 8GB number in Xcode after the phones were announced. Apple, which isn’t... Continue reading…

A GameCube controller, post-mod. | Image: 8BitDo 8BitDo announced it’s taking preorders for a new mod kit that lets you retrofit a wired GameCube controller with Hall effects joysticks and Bluetooth connectivity. The company is charging $25.98 for the kit, which it says is a simple, solderless mod.8BitDo has made a few of these in the past for old Nintendo controllers, including those for the N64 and earlier consoles, and now it’s the GameCube’s turn. The kit replaces your controller’s existing PCB with a drop-in board that has Hall effects joysticks and a USB-C-rechargeable 300mAh battery attached. It also comes with a trigger pack, and 8BitDo says the battery will get 6 hours of playtime between charges. It’s compatible with the Switch and Android, according to the product page.I... Continue reading…

At this point, I'm deep down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole, always searching for the next great keyboard to review. I've tried almost every keyboard layout, from full-sized to 40%, reviewed both expensive and budget keyboards, and even experienced Hall effect keyboards. While it's heartening to see manufacturers try to pack keyboards with as many features as possible, I don't find all of them necessary.

Whether you have the latest iPhone or any other flagship phone, you likely depend on your smartphone's camera to document your everyday life. After all, many of us have stopped using dedicated cameras to immortalize our memories. However, phones get dirty, and this can impact the quality of these moments. A smudged or dusty camera lens can blur and ruin the overall image quality. That's why you should clean your phone's camera occasionally. Below you will find the steps you need to follow to clean your smartphone's camera lenses properly.

Single-Board Computers have changed a lot since the days of the first Raspberry Pi, though performance is still an area where most ARM-powered SBCs tend to falter. Even the all-powerful Raspberry Pi 5 can be brought to its knees if you try to build a resource-intensive project with the board. Thankfully, there are a couple of ways to grant some much-needed oomph to your adorable Raspberry Pi if you want it to perform better in your DIY projects.

Image: Capcom Capcom’s Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is a fine addition to the lawyer game canon. Continue reading…

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore spoke about their continued stay aboard the International Space Station during a press conference held yesterday. The two are now fully incorporated into the ISS crew, as the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that was meant to take them home last week was instead sent back to Earth uncrewed.Early on, the two were asked if they felt “let down” by Boeing. “Absolutely not,” said Wilmore:“This operation is not easy. NASA does a great job — the people at Nasa do a great job — of making a lot of things look easy. Sending probes beyond the edge of our solar system; going in [and] getting samples from asteroids; humans in space. It’s a very risky business and things do not always turn out the way you... Continue reading…

A demo of Visual Intelligence from Apple’s iPhone 16 announcement video. | Image: Apple Apple’s new “Visual Intelligence” feature was one of the most impressive things shown at Monday’s iPhone 16 event. The tool lets users scan the world around them through the iPhone’s camera to identify a dog breed, copy event details off a poster, or look up just about anything around them.It’s a handy-looking feature that fits right in with the iPhone’s new camera button. But it may also be setting the stage for bigger products down the road: it’s the exact kind of thing Apple will need for future tech like AR glasses.It’s not hard to imagine how Visual Intelligence could help you out on a device that sees everything you see. Take the idea of learning more about a restaurant, like Apple showed for Visual Intelligence on an iPhone:... Continue reading…

You can wear the NotePin or clip it almost anywhere — which is pretty much its whole appeal. | Image: Plaud Kudos to Plaud for one thing: in a year otherwise marred by high-profile failures and oh so much AI vaporware, it made an AI gadget that does exactly what it claims to do and does it pretty well. The gadget is called the NotePin, and it’s a $169, pill-shaped voice recorder that can transcribe, summarize, and pull important information out of your audio. This is something current AI systems can actually do well! There’s good and mature tech at every step along the pipeline here, from tiny microphones to speech-to-text transcription to natural-language processing and AI summarization. The NotePin does it well.But the reason the NotePin works is also the reason I wouldn’t recommend buying one. AI voice recording is great and handy and... Continue reading…