Smartphones don't seem to shy away from labeling features as “smart” or “AI.” The last few years have seen an incredible push to put AI/smart features in every nook and cranny of the phone OS. My Samsung Galaxy S21 FE is a slightly old smartphone by today's standards, but it has most of the “smart” features that claim to extend its battery life or improve performance. These settings and features are scattered throughout the phone, and they do their best to give it a few more hours on each charge.

The Clip Pro are the first clip-style earbuds from CMF, Nothing’s budget sub-brand. Clip earbuds are an exercise in compromise. It's an inherent aspect of their design - and physics. They can be more comfortable for people that don't like something jammed in their ear, but sound response suffers. Ambient awareness is great because you can easily hear the sound around you, which means to hear your own music the buds need to be turned up and potentially leak sound out to your neighbors. For what they offer, they can also get pricey, with popular pairs from Bose, Sony, and Shokz reaching $200. The CMF Clip Pro, though, are under $100, and while they still have those compromises, they handle them well.CMF Clip ProScore: 7Pro …Read the full story at The Verge.

I was born in 2000, which incidentally happens to be the year Nokia released the 3310. Long before the phone became an internet meme for being indestructible, it was simply a solid, affordable phone for its time, and naturally, my parents owned one.

Google will now allow you to remove visible watermarks from the images, videos, and music made with AI tools. With the update, you can toggle off a new "Media watermark" setting in Gemini and Google's AI video generator, Flow.When toggled off, Google will remove the "sparkle" watermark that appears in the bottom-right corner of content generated with the company's Nano Banana and Omni models. Though visible watermarks are now optional, AI-generated content will have invisible SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata embedded in the background, according to Josh Woodward, the vice president of Google Labs, Gemini, and AI Studio. That means you …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Claw EX. I rather like the purple. 3D-printed stand not included. As The Verge's resident handheld reviewer, I have nearly every portable gaming PC on a shelf in my house. The MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus is now the first one I reach for. Thanks to a next-gen Intel chip and improved MSI design, the Claw EX is the most powerful handheld that truly feels portable. It's the handheld with the longest battery life, and the first Windows handheld I can trust to sleep and wake reliably. Like the Steam Deck, when I press the power button, my game is always right where I left off. Unlike the Steam Deck, it can hibernate for days without losing a significant amount of charge. Performance and battery? Windows and sleep? …Read the full story at The Verge.

Hoto is introducing its first soldering iron through its modular Snapbloq collection that lets you assemble your own custom toolbox by stacking magnetic cases and tools together. The new I-A06 Cordless Soldering Iron can heat to just over 200 degrees Celsius in about three seconds and offers an adjustable temperature range from 100 to up to 450 degrees with customizable presets you can quickly jump to.The full kit version of the soldering iron is available starting today for $99.99 and includes a C245 knife tip plus additional tips that can be used for other tasks such as wood burning. If you just want the tool you can buy it on its own fo …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you're a Linux user and you value stability over new features, there's a good chance you reach for a Long-Term Support (LTS) build over normal ones. These essentially "freeze" a distro in time, preventing it from receiving any new features while still receiving bug fixes and security patches.

Apple has reportedly trained a custom AI model for the China market alongside domestic tech giant Alibaba, a rare cross-border partnership that cuts across growing tensions between Beijing and Washington.The China-focused large language model was developed in partnership with Alibaba and trained with the company's support, Reuters reports, citing three unnamed people familiar with the matter. Developing a custom model of its own marks a departure from Apple's previous strategy in the country and would give the company more control over its products in the competitive Chinese smartphone market. Historically, Apple has used domestic Chines …Read the full story at The Verge.

“Build the perfect monument to force a moment of introspection upon the world’s richest, ugliest little bitch.” | Image: Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images Cards Against Humanity is gearing up to build "something that will annoy Elon Musk," and it's crowdfunding the project with its usual flavor of vulgarity. The company behind the card game announced plans to build "a grand monument" to Musk on the parcel of land it owns near Starbase, Texas, with the aim to "make him wonder, for a brief moment, 'Wait, am I a sad little bitch with no friends?'"Cards Against Humanity is known for these kinds of stunts, having purchased the land in question back in 2017 specifically to disrupt President Donald Trump's plans to build a US/Mexico border wall. The card game company later sued SpaceX in 2024 for a …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've spent months wondering why my RTX 4070 Ti seemed to have forgotten how to idle. With nothing running, it would sit at around 38–40W power draw, with the memory clock pinned at a whopping 1337MHz. This doesn't sound catastrophic — in fact, even my GPU fans weren't turning at idle — but when a GPU is doing nothing, watching it pull that sort of power 24/7 is hard to ignore.

With a few notable exceptions, modern technology updates itself automatically. Your phone updates monthly, Windows wants to reboot to install updates at the least convenient times, and even robot vacuums update their firmware without asking first. You know what rarely does? The router that those update files flow through.

For RPG fans who dig Persona-style turn-based action and who are pursuing games with original stories and fantastic tunes, look no further than Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This praise might come off sounding weird, but I really like that Sandfall Interactive’s breakout hit isn’t overly long compared to RPGs it was inspired by. It’s worth buying while it’s $33.17 at Amazon (requires you to clip the coupon, originally $49.99). This is a rare opportunity to save quite a bit on one of 2025’s best games, though it’s on Xbox Game Pass if you subscribe to that. Unfortunately, the deal is only available for the Xbox Series X version and doesn’t extend to PlayStation 5. On PC, you can grab a Steam code from Fanatical for $35.49, which is also a nice deal. Read our review.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33Where to Buy: $49.99 $33.17 at Amazon (Xbox Series X)Other great Verge-approved dealsThere are some great preorder incentives for Google’s Pixel 11 phones, especially if you also want its new Pixel Watch 5. The base Pixel 11 with 256GB of storage includes the watch at $130 off the usual combined amount. Normally $1,298, Amazon is offering the bundle for $1,168, which essentially reduces the price of the watch from $399 to $269. Buying the pricier Pixel 11 Pro that’s bundled with the watch will save you even more. Normally $1,499 together, the bundle is $1,248 — $250 off the watch and now just $100 more than the base Pixel 11 bundle. If you want more camera features, you should get the Pro. Read our hands-on previews.I like including good deals on gaming laptops when I find them, and I found another one at Walmart. Gigabyte’s 16-inch A16 laptop that packs Nvidia’s capable RTX 5070 (8GB VRAM) graphics chip, among other powerful components, is down to $1,249 ($600 off). It’s a great value based on its gaming performance alone; Considering it has Intel’s Core i7-13620H and 32GB DDR5 RAM to go alongside the GPU, there isn’t much you won’t be able to play at the highest graphical settings. The laptop also has a 1200p IPS screen that has a 165Hz refresh rate, and it has a 1TB SSD installed. Its RAM and storage can be upgraded to 64GB and 4TB, respectively.Gruv is hosting weekend deals on a range of 4K Blu-ray sets through Monday. The Matrix Deja Vu set that includes all four films (minus The Animatrix) is $34.99, which matches the best price I’ve seen (it’s currently $50 at Walmart). Chernobyl, the haunting five-part miniseries from HBO, is $14.99. Jurassic World: Ultimate Collection contains all Jurassic movies through Jurassic World Dominion and costs $49.99. Best of all, if you’re a new shopper at Gruv, using the code FIRSTGRUV15 will knock 15 percent off your first purchase of a single item.