The latest tech news about the world's best (and sometimes worst) hardware, apps, and much more. From top companies like Google and Apple to tiny startups vying for your attention, Verge Tech has the latest in what matters in technology daily.
Featured stories
We got some answers from Intel, and more are on the way.
Google continues to blur the line between what’s real and what’s not.
The company claims its triple laser PX3-PRO is the world’s first UST projector to be “Designed for Xbox.” What that means isn’t entirely clear given the Xbox can’t take advantage of the projector’s 240Hz maximum refresh rate.
More useful may be the $3,499.99 PX3-PRO’s ability to automatically optimize its settings for gaming when it detects a console powering up.
The company will officially reveal the new addition to its A-series lineup on July 31st at 5AM ET, but continues to tease new features on X.
After revealing the 2A Plus will be using a faster MediaTek Dimensity 7350 Pro processor last week, yesterday Nothing confirmed the Plus’ front camera will get a bump to 50-megapixels, up from 32-megapixels on the 2A.
One thing about having the idea of AI clones attending meetings in Zoom presented to you for the first time in a conversation with the CEO on your podcast is that other people get to react to said idea in a much funnier way, like Angela Collier does here.
A little over a week after the CrowdStrike outage brought down mobile orders at Starbucks, the app had some trouble again today.
For most of the morning, around the globe weren’t been able to place orders, with the app saying, “We’re having trouble with store locations right now.” It looks like the feature is back online now though, so we won’t have to wait in line for our drinks.
Update, July 30th: Noted that mobile ordering works again.
Some saw a lower-than-usual email open rate beginning July 24th — which Substack tied to last weekend’s iCloud Private Relay outage.
With Private Relay, user data is routed through multiple servers, increasing privacy but possibly counting each open more than once. In other words: what newsletter writers saw is a more accurate number.
Have you noticed a dip? Shoot me an email at mia@theverge.com.
A global IT outage grounded flights and resulted in outages at the London Stock Exchange and other systems early Friday morning.
A new option spotted in the Chrome 128 beta lets you search with Google Lens by clicking and dragging a box around the area of a website you want more information about. Google will then pull up search results based on the image or text you’ve highlighted — sort of like Circle to Search.
Wired editor-in-chief (and notable Verge alum!) Katie Drummond flags this incredible stack of sourcing and disclosure notes in Semafor’s piece about Perplexity’s new revenue-sharing agreements with publishers. Well done, all around.
AES has given its Atlas solar robot some AWS smarts and redubbed it “Maximo.” It helped complete an Amazon-backed solar farm in Louisiana and is now moving on to Bellefield, California, home of the largest solar-plus-storage project in the US. According to Amazon, it can “reduce solar installation timelines and costs by as much 50 percent:”
Besides automating heavy lifting, Maximo can also perform in nearly any weather or lighting condition, which is especially useful for the Bellefield project, which is located in a sandy desert area known for extreme heat. Once Maximo arrives there later this year, the robot will work alongside crews to lift hundreds of heavy solar panels into place.
Delta was hit particularly badly by the CrowdStrike outage that impacted millions of Windows-based machines earlier this month. Now, CNBC reports that Delta has hired an attorney to seek damages from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft after it had to cancel nearly 7,000 flights due to the IT outage. The outage may have cost Delta up to $500 million.
Reviews
Echo Spot review: this smart alarm clock hits a sweet spot
Ultimate Ears Everboom review: the right size
This $56 Casio watch is a retro step tracking dream
The Galaxy Ring keeps you in Samsung’s orbit
The Financial Times takes a look at the latest generation of shoes with carbon-fiber plates that have helped deliver an uptick in record-smashing long-distance performances ever since the Nike Vaporfly was released in 2017. Other brands are now catching up with their own shoe tech:
Nike and Adidas are not the only brands with super shoes. Asics, New Balance, On, Puma, Saucony and Under Armour have all developed competitive models with carbon fibre and springlike foam cushioning.
The piece includes CT scans and independent analysis of the latest Nike and Adidas models worn by many of the top Olympians in Paris.
You can buy the tablet from OnePlus.com for $549.99 and from Amazon this coming August.
I’m still in the testing process, but so far I like it. It offers the same value as its predecessor but is faster and more powerful, with six stereo speakers that sound phenomenal. It’s still not the best for work, though. My full review is coming soon, so stay tuned.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission.
Meta’s CEO got a little heated while talking with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the SIGGRAPH conference today in Denver.
The topic turned to Meta’s approach to AI with Llama. Zuckerberg made clear that investing so much in foundational models is strongly influenced by not wanting to relive his history with Apple and the App Store:
“One of my things for the next 10 or 15 years is I just want to make sure we can build the fundamental technology that we’re going to be building social experiences on. Because there have just been too many things that I’ve tried to build and then have just been told, ‘Nah, you can’t really build that,’ by the platform provider that, at some level, I’m just like, ‘Nah, fuck that.’”