We’ve been following Looking Glass for years — it’s one of the few startups dedicated to building 3D displays where digital objects appear to live inside or leap off the screen. In 2020, it introduced a cheaper 7.9-inch desktop model at $349, and today, it’s introducing its most affordable and portable screen yet: the $300 Looking Glass Go.

GIF: Looking Glass

With a six-inch screen that the company claims is 10 times thinner than previous Looking Glass displays, it’s the first one small enough to fit in your pocket — though you’ll need to plug in USB-C power or an optional external USB-C battery dongle, as it doesn’t have a built-in battery of its own. It’s also the first with built-in Wi-Fi (and also Bluetooth) to “receive holograms from the cloud.”

The six-inch screen should have substantially higher pixel density than its 7.9-inch predecessor, too, at a new 1440 x 2560 (491ppi) versus 1536 x 2048 (325ppi). Whether that translates to clarity depends on other factors, too — though Looking Glass says it offers the same 58-degree viewing angles from up to 100 different perspectives as the 7.9-inch model.

(Perspectives: like most autostereoscopic screens, the Looking Glass doesn’t beam a 3D image everywhere simultaneously. Your eyes have to be at certain angles to the screen to see it properly. That’s why some volumetric displays, including 2014’s New Nintendo 3DS, include face tracking, though face tracking can be less desirable when you want to show a screen to multiple people at once.)

The Looking Glass Go is yet again a Kickstarter project, and the pitch is roughly the same as before — it’s a way to see 3D objects without putting on a VR headset, a way to view spatial photos you might capture with your phone, a way to view emerging forms of 3D images like NeRFs and Gaussian Splats, and perhaps even a way to interact with ChatGPT-powered holographic AI characters. You can see one such interaction in the company’s YouTube video atop this story — I’ll reserve judgment until I can try Looking Glass’ “Liteforms” for myself, but it does seem cool!

Looking Glass is invested enough in the 3D content side of things that it’s actually developed a way to view 3D images without a piece of hardware like this, just by dragging your finger or cursor across images on the web. We embedded a few of the so-called “Looking Glass Blocks” into this Verge story.

But you probably wouldn’t just leave a website open on your desk or pop it into your bag to show off on the go. If that’s something you’re interested in, the company is currently offering the Go for an early bird price of $199 on Kickstarter through December 6th, and orders should ship as soon as June 2024.

Image: Looking Glass

Looking Glass says the device is made of steel, glass, and ABS plastic, weighs 235g, measures 0.76 inches (1.9cm) thick, and stands 6.3 inches (16cm) tall and 3.2 inches (8cm) wide. There are forward, back, and pause buttons for slideshows and a 3.5mm audio jack on the side. It doesn’t have a speaker.

Apple just pushed the release candidate of iOS 17.2, and the upcoming update brings support for the Qi2 wireless charging standard to iPhone 13- and iPhone 14-series smartphones, according to the patch notes. Apple says the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro already support Qi2, though there aren’t actually any Qi2 chargers to buy yet (which might change soon).

Qi2 adds a MagSafe-like ring of magnets to the Qi wireless charging standard and brings the charge rate up to 15W. For Android phones, that means faster, more convenient wireless charging and access to the huge ecosystem of magnetic wireless chargers that have sprung up to support MagSafe iPhones. For iPhones, it means MagSafe-speed charging without paying MagSafe prices. Right now, if you charge an iPhone on a magnetic wireless charger that is not MagSafe-certified, the charging speeds top out at 7.5W, but if you use a MagSafe-certified charger (which is more expensive than other wireless chargers), you’ll see speeds up to 15W.

The biggest unknowns are the charging speeds you’ll get when you plop an iPhone 13 or 14 on a Qi2 charger. While Apple previously confirmed to The Verge that the iPhone 15 family will charge at up to 15W on Qi2 chargers, it declined to state at that time whether Qi2 would come to earlier iPhones, and so far, it hasn’t explicitly said that the 13 and 14 phones will charge at 15W on Qi2 chargers. It’s very likely that they will. We’ve reached out to Apple, Anker, Belkin, and the Wireless Power Consortium to see if they can share further details.

Apple usually shares iOS release candidates a few days before releasing the software publicly, so it’s likely that iOS 17.2 will be available for everyone this week or next. The update also adds the Journal app, the ability for iPhone 15 Pro phones to capture spatial video, a fix for iPhone 15 wireless charging issues in certain cars, a setting that lets you change the default sound for notifications, and more. You can read the full patch notes on 9to5Mac.

xAI — the AI company founded by Elon Musk — seeks to raise up to $1 billion in equity investments, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (as spotted by CoinDesk). The company has raised $134.7 million so far.

Founded in April, xAI is Musk’s attempt at jumping on the AI hype train. The company’s purpose is to “understand the true nature of the universe,” according to its website, something the launch of its Grok AI chatbot is apparently supposed to further.

Grok pulls real-time information from X (formerly Twitter) to power some of its responses, but it’s currently only available in early access to X’s Premium Plus subscribers. Despite the close ties between Grok and X, xAI is separate from X Corp., X’s parent company.

The SEC filing notes xAI will only accept a minimum of $2 million from outside investors. The filing also says, “The issuer has entered into a binding and enforceable agreement for the purchase and sale of the Total Remaining to be Sold listed above,” which sure seems like the rest of the billion is already a done deal, as Axios has noted.

Microsoft is readying a new Bing feature that should take the hassle out of coming up with your own AI prompt. The GPT-4-powered capability, called Deep Search, takes your Bing query and expands on it, allowing the search engine to find answers about several topics related to your question on the web.

As an example, Microsoft shows how Bing turns a vague search for “how do points systems work in Japan” into a detailed prompt that asks Bing to:

Provide an explanation of how various loyalty card programs work in Japan, including the benefits, requirements, and limitations of each. Include examples of popular loyalty cards from different categories, such as convenience stores, supermarkets, and restaurants. Show a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of using loyalty cards versus other payment methods in Japan, including current rewards and benefits. Highlight the most popular services and participating merchants.

Bing may also expand that search to include descriptions of immigration policies and public transportation fares, too, as GPT-4 attempts to “find all the possible intents” of a query.

GIF: Microsoft

Whatever topics Bing comes up with will be displayed in a panel on the search results page. You can then choose which one best fits what you’re looking for, and Deep Search will curate its search results by ranking them “according to how well they match the comprehensive description.” Microsoft says conducting a Deep Search could take up to 30 seconds, but if you don’t have that much patience, you can always just continue using Bing’s standard search feature.

Microsoft revealed Deep Search as part of its announcement about Copilot’s support for OpenAI’s GPT-Turbo model. While Deep Search is currently an experiment that’s only available to a small group of users, I’m looking forward to trying it out. Sometimes coming up with a prompt for AI is a task within itself, which kind of defeats the purpose of using it for productivity.

In less than a week, Sony has given us two timely reminders of the tenuousness of digital “ownership” — and both reminders involve things on PlayStation.

Last week, Sony said that, because of content licensing “arrangements,” users wouldn’t be able to watch Discovery content they’ve purchased and that the content would be removed from their libraries as of December 31st, 2023. The resulting list of shows that will suddenly disappear because of corporate agreements is very long. Shows disappearing from streaming services is commonplace, but in this case, people are losing access to shows they bought to watch on demand whenever they wanted.

Then, on Monday, many users were unexpectedly banned from their PlayStation Network accounts, meaning that not only were they blocked from playing multiplayer games or using cloud streaming but they were also locked out of games they purchased digitally from Sony’s PlayStation marketplace. Affected users who may have spent years building a robust digital library were suddenly left without access to content they had bought through no fault of their own. It appears that Sony has since restored account access to people who were accidentally banned, but the company hasn’t explained what happened or said how it might prevent similar unexpected bans in the future. (Sony hasn’t replied to our multiple requests for comment.)

The ephemerality of digital “ownership” isn’t a new issue. Even though downloading and accessing digital content is often easier than trudging to a retail store to buy a physical copy of a game, you’re putting your faith in the platform holders to maintain their digital storefronts, the content on those storefronts, and their account systems so that your access keeps working.

The recent closure of Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS eShops was a stark reminder that companies have the power to decide when you can buy digital content. While you can still redownload Wii U and 3DS games that you’ve purchased, it seems inevitable that Nintendo will stop letting you do that one day. (It’s already planning to shut down online services for those platforms, after all.) And remember when Google shut down Stadia?

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

These recent PlayStation incidents are more aggravating, however, because of how sudden and seemingly unfair they are. With the Discovery content, Sony is giving users a matter of weeks to watch their purchased shows for the last time before the shows are yanked from their library entirely. And Sony isn’t offering any compensation for titles you’ve already bought or a way to transfer those purchases to another store. The PlayStation account bans were as swift as they were unexpected, and while resolution for most arrived within a few hours, Sony still hasn’t shared any public communication about what happened or why users should continue to trust the platform.

I’ve been all in on digital content for years. I don’t like the clutter of physical boxes, and I enjoy being able to switch games and movies without having to get off the couch. But after seeing more instances of companies removing “purchased” digital content — essentially making things I buy digitally a long-term rental — I’m seriously considering going back to buying discs and cartridges.

20 things we learned from the Epic v. Google trial.

I have spent 15 days reporting live from the Epic v. Google trial: an antitrust dispute over whether Google's Android app store is an unfair monopoly. I’ve watched a parade of witnesses go by, including Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. We’re now in a weeklong break before both parties return on December 11th to make their closing arguments, after which a jury will decide who’s right. I’ve chronicled every major thrust, parry, and riposte leading up to that in our Verge StoryStream, writing nearly 600 dispatches from the courtroom so far.

But who’s got the time to dig through all that, am I right?

So here are straightforward versions of the 20 most interesting things we’ve learned — starting with the fact that Epic could win the whole thing.

1. Epic could win.

I thought Epic was tilting at a windmill by challenging Google after losing so thoroughly to Apple. If Epic couldn’t prove Apple’s walled garden is an illegal monopoly, how could it beat the company that made Android an open-source project from the start?

After just over a fortnight’s worth of cumulative evidence — loosely speaking — the answer has become clear. A decade after Skyhook, Google still uses a tangled web of contracts and deals to make partners fall in line — incentivizing phone makers and the biggest app developers to share, rather than compete for, an ever-growing pile of app store cash.

Judge James Donato, who’s presiding over this jury trial, thinks Epic absolutely has a chance of winning. On Friday, he declined to hand Google a default victory, saying there’s “more than enough evidence for the jury to find for plaintiff on each of their claims.”

Mind you, it would still be a high bar to clear! A jury would have to decide not only that Google has an illegal monopoly on “Android app distribution” or “in-app billing services on Android devices,” but also that the harms outweighed any competitive benefits.

So let’s start with something easier. Was Google scared for its profits?

2. Google was running scared — of Epic specifically.

I had some doubts on day two, but not anymore: Google internally saw Epic Games as a “contagion” that would infect Android’s biggest game and app developers, turning them into “agitators” that would demand lower fees and ultimately defect from the Play Store. Google’s “biggest Play priority” for Q1 2019 was to address agitators like Epic, and Epic’s name appears many times in internal Google strategy documents we saw.

Google feared as many as 100 percent of top game developers would follow Fortnite’s lead by launching outside of Google Play, denying Google a 30 percent cut of revenue, and that fear doesn’t seem to have been misplaced. Not only were other “agitators” in direct contact with Epic, but many either launched or were internally planning to launch a competing game store on Android — before Google approached them with a deal.

Google called this the “contagion effect” and forecast it might lose $2 billion in revenue by the end of 2022 — perhaps even $3.6 billion. The company estimated it would miss out on $250 million from Fortnite alone, and $243 million a year if Activision Blizzard King (ABK) removed its games like Candy Crush from Google Play.

And so, Google formulated a plan. It would save money by spending fewer billions — perhaps $1.78 billion? — on “Play Risk Mitigation.” It came up with multiple strategies it would pursue in parallel, including “Project Hug,” “Project Banyan,” and “Project Elektra.”

3. Project Hug targeted a who’s who of mobile game developers — and 20 of them signed.

Project Hug was a plan to invest money in game developers that were at risk of “contagion,” we learned in court. Google approached 22 of them in total, including Activision, Aniplex, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Blizzard, Com2uS, EA, King, Mixi, Niantic, NCSoft, Netmarble, NetEase, Nexon, Nintendo, Pearl Abyss, The Pokémon Company, Riot, Square Enix, Supercell, Tencent, and Ubisoft.

At one point, the Google Play biz dev team asked for $575 million through 2022 to make those deals, though it’s likely the final numbers are far higher — Activision alone was offered over $360 million in a deal that’s now apparently worth billions.

Twenty game developers signed. But not Supercell — and not Epic, which got a special $147 million offer designed to convince the company to launch Fortnite on Google Play.

Project Hug was formalized as the Google Games Velocity Program.

4. Epic failed to show Project Hug was a direct “block” or “bribe.”

In Epic’s opening arguments, it promised to show the jury that Google literally pays competitors not to compete — and it seemed like Project Hug would be the way.

But over the course of the trial, we learned that all but one of Google’s “bribes” weren’t direct payments. (It does have a long-standing deal to pay Motorola and may have paid LG.)

Instead, as you can see in this breakdown of a $90 million Project Hug deal with Riot Games, the company generally promises millions upon millions of dollars in support, credits, gift card programs, promotions, and dedicated access to Google staff. And in exchange, it doesn’t block a game developer from shipping on a different store, as long as it arrives on Google Play the same day and at the same quality.

Epic’s economic experts suggested that Google’s deals are effectively the same as giving out money, but Google’s experts suggest it’s more like a discount.

5. Project Banyan would have made Samsung’s Galaxy Store a false choice, but it never happened.

The proposed 2019 deal would have seen Google Play and the Galaxy Store side by side on the default homescreen on Samsung, just like today, only Google would host the games, provide the billing, security, and updates in the Galaxy Store, too. But it never happened.

Epic tried to suggest that Google pushed Samsung into nerfing the Galaxy Store anyhow, raising the specter of handshake deals, but Epic never really provided enough evidence of either to be convincing. All I know is that Samsung did sign three deals valued at $8 billion in 2020, and the Galaxy Store apparently accounts for just 1 percent of Android downloads despite being on an estimated 39.5 percent of Android phones (as of mid-2021).

5. Project Elektra would have seen Google purchase a controlling stake in Epic — but it didn’t happen either.

Over two days in July 2018, Google cooked up a business justification for purchasing enough of Epic Games to “sway them on Epic’s approach to Android.” However, it’s not entirely clear whether a couple of Google execs seriously wanted to prop up a monopoly or were just casually brainstorming an opportunity.

The language certainly does seem suspect, e.g. “investment was the only way people could realistically think of to sway them on Epic’s approach to Android — because it’s easy to imagine us investing billions at some ridiculous valuation.” But there were certainly other reasons Google might have been interested in the Fortnite maker, as the person who wrote that email suggested in court.

Either way, I’m guessing Google quickly abandoned the idea when it found out Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is also the controlling shareholder.

6. Google execs clearly wanted to block other app stores.

While multiple Google executives testified they only cared whether games made it to Google Play — not rival app stores — internal documents told a different story.

• One Google Play exec boasted she got Riot to halt development on its own app store by promising the company $10M in marketing.
• Another exec wrote that one of Google’s two objectives with Riot was “have Riot choose Play vs. launching their own Android store.”
• Despite its own stated goal of launching “on as many platforms as possible” to maximize its margins and deciding it would be fairly easy, Riot clearly felt Google didn’t want that and doing so would jeopardize a deal.
• Another Google exec suggested that sharing revenue with Samsung would be “better at disincentivizing other app stores from being preloaded.”
• What Google thought it would get from a proposed deal with Samsung: “No Galaxy Store.”
• Like Riot, Samsung understood that Google wanted it to “get out of the store business,” too.
• Google wanted to offer a 16 percent Google Play revenue share to key Chinese OEMs to “secure Play exclusivity” — and wound up giving them 20 percent.

7. And on some phones, Google arguably did.

During the trial, we learned that Google’s RSA 3.0 — those Revenue Sharing Agreements it signed with key Chinese OEMs among others — have a “Premier Tier” that does in fact keep phone makers from preinstalling alternate app stores without getting a special exemption from Google.

OnePlus, for example, gets:

• 20 percent of “net basic ad revenue”
• 10 percent of “net optimized ad revenue”
• 5 percent of “net optimized Play transaction revenue”
• 15 percent of “net premier ad revenue”
• 20 percent of “net Play transaction revenue”

Epic was not able to prove this was a “block,” because we learned that phone makers like OnePlus are completely free to decide how many of its phones fall into each “tier” of the agreement. One Google exec suggested fewer than 25 percent of new Android phones are RSA 3.0 Premier, and only 0.4 percent of Fortnite-capable phones were RSA 3.0 Premier as of November 2021, according to a Google expert witness.

But Epic astutely suggested that an alternate app store would have to offer similar dollars to phone makers to get traction — and Google’s expert conceded that point.

8. Google’s contracts arguably had some pro-competitive benefits.

We at The Verge have long decried Android fragmentation and longed for closer-to-stock Android experiences. It’s historically been easier for OEMs and carriers to get their phones updated and patched if they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel with their own platforms and apps.

Google pointed out that its contracts do things like that, helping Android phones compete with the iPhone, and a Motorola exec highlighted its “Pure Android strategy” as a competitive strength and differentiator from other Android phones. Google CEO Sundar Pichai himself pointed out there’s not a single OEM selling phones without MADA contracts (outside of China, presumably) because people want Google apps and services. I can't disagree; I'm one of them!

9. This trial destroyed any notion that Google treats developers fairly and equally.

I’ll just leave these headlines right here.

• A secret Google deal let Spotify completely bypass Android’s app store fees
• Google offered Netflix a sweetheart deal to pay just 10 percent on Google Play
• Google explains why some developers were able to get away with paying less on Play
• “I don’t know if ensuring fairness was part of my job. I never thought of it that way.”
• Spotify: “We have never been forced by Google to accept Play Billing.”

The first one is particularly important: Spotify can pay 0 percent (yes, zero) to get all the benefits of Google’s Play Store save payments.

Not only did Epic show Google cuts sweetheart deals with the biggest app and game developers, Google itself revealed that it wanted to keep things unfair to keep profits high. While the fact that Spotify had a deal with Google was public, Google’s lawyers fought hard to keep the numbers involved secret because they’d be “very, very detrimental for the negotiation we’d be having with [...] other parties.”

And when a Google lawyer asked why it might be bad to compete on price outside of “strategic partners" more generally, VP Paul Gennai responded: “If that were to become known, other developers would come to us to do the same, and ... negotiate it down, and that would play out badly for us.”

Oh, and that’s before we even get to the fact that Google didn’t force its own YouTube app to use Google Play Billing at times it was encouraging (and later, forcing) other app developers to do so.

The best defenses Google has been able to muster is that Spotify was so important that people wouldn’t buy Android phones without it, and that companies like Spotify qualify as “partners” because they help invest in new hardware platforms.

“A small number of developers that invest more directly in Android and Play may have different service fees as part of a broader partnership that includes substantial financial investments and product integrations across different form factors,” Google spokesperson Dan Jackson told The Verge.

What Google doesn’t say, and I weirdly didn’t hear Epic suggest either: if some companies get sweetheart deals, everyone else effectively has to pay more to compete. Can you imagine trying to compete with Spotify with your new music app while paying Google 11 percent, at the same time Spotify is paying zero?

Apple is just as self-serving, of course — if not more.

10. Google’s “User Choice Billing” is all but a fake choice.

This one leaves a bad taste in my mouth, too. Spotify is effectively getting a 15 percentage point discount to use its own billing system (paying Google nothing for any customer that picks Spotify payments). Ordinary developers only get 4 percentage points off — even though Google knows full well that 4 percentage points isn’t enough of a discount to make that a real choice, because you still have to pay your alternative payment processor.

Epic found the receipts and even an internal graph showing that Google knows this: “A key element of this optionality proposal is we don’t want to give any artificial reasons to incent devs to switch off Play Billing,” a Googler wrote.

It's not entirely a false choice. Dating app Bumble seems to have tried User Choice Billing because it found users prefer one-day subscriptions, something Google Play didn't offer on its own.

11. Epic lost the sideloading and security arguments IMO.

Epic has repeatedly tried to suggest it’s not true that apps can simply bypass the Google Play Store, because of all the friction involved in installing an app downloaded directly from the web. It also won some points when it revealed internal documents showing that Google believed the friction might “drastically limit” the reach of Fortnite.

But that was 2018. In court, Google showed us it literally takes 25 seconds to install the Epic Games Store on a modern Android phone, and Epic was never able to show that Google intentionally designed earlier friction to keep rival app stores down. In fact, Amazon’s failure with the Amazon Appstore increasingly looks like a self-own. But I guess it does turn a tiny (for Amazon) profit.

While Epic won some points IMO for pointing out that Google’s “Unknown Sources” scare screens could and should be less scary and less discriminatory, Google made Epic look like a bit of a hypocrite, too. Google’s head of Android security repeatedly made it seem like practical, common sense that Google would have a far easier time protecting against threats within its app store rather than without, and drove home that the threats do exist.

I did like this Epic argument that Google’s broader ecosystem stacks the deck against sideloading, but Epic didn’t spend a lot of time on that.

12. Google had a hell of a time justifying its up to 30 percent fee.

It’s not easy to justify something publicly when your own employees are questioning it internally. Epic showed that time and again — starting in 2008 when Google promised it wouldn’t take a percentage at all while quietly taking 5 percent, then in 2009 when it decided to pocket the extra 25 percent it had publicly earmarked for carriers whenever it could.

• “Things could get ugly once people find out.”
• “We are now lying... we are now lying to our developers by not making this change public (for 6 months now!)”

A decade later, Google internally estimated many app devs overpaid as much as $1.43 billion per year compared to the value they received. Though Google argued that was just one way of doing the math, these figures seem to have influenced business decisions.

After concluding that “Tinder is now deriving only 10 percent of the revenue share value versus the 30 percent they pay,” one exec suggested Google should offer a special 15 percent rev share deal to Tinder’s parent company.

And while Google calculated that the value of Google Play to developers was in discovery, payment processing, and mass distribution, that discovery bit is in question: “Our value prop is limited to that of a data pipe,” wrote one Play bizdev lead, adding, “Play Store offers little value for app discovery.” Google never wound up meaningfully challenging that in court.

13. Google’s profit margins sound unreal.

Another reason it’s tough for Google to justify 30 percent: it appears that Google Play has become exactly the “profit center” it promised not to be. In the first half of 2020, the company internally bragged that it was “one of the most profitable businesses” in the world, and “very close to being a Fortune 100 company all by itself.”

Epic’s expert calculated the Google Play Store grew from 26 percent operating profit margins to 71 percent in 2021, generating north of $12 billion in operating profit that year.

While Google suggests that doesn’t account for the $40 billion R&D costs of developing the Android operating system, among other things, we saw that Android’s costs are seemingly accounted for in its own profit and loss statement (P&L).

14. Google did successfully argue it deserves something for Play.

If not 30 percent or 15 percent, how much? That’s not exactly a question before the court — but Google did repeatedly and successfully point out that its Google Play service fee is the primary way it gets paid for downloads.

While Google does sell ads on Google Play, and ads in Google Search (the default search engine on most phones), one of Epic’s economists conceded Google would get paid nothing to distribute apps across the world if a developer chose an alternative payment processor. Sweeney himself agreed that “a payment processor doesn’t make it possible to distribute a game to 60 million users,” to use Google’s words, and that “there’s nothing wrong with making your revenue off a limited number of customers.”

And while Epic tried to show that Google’s actual cost of payment processing is 6 percent and developers could get the same by ditching the middleman, Google successfully pointed out that you’d pay more than 6 percent for the most common microtransactions at rivals because they often charge a per-transaction fee in addition to their cut.

Google concedes it could have figured out a different way to charge for its many services but felt this was the simplest.

15. Epic’s attempt to show Google and Apple getting cozy looks like a nothingburger.

Epic talked a big game about how Apple and Google’s vision was “that we work as if we are one company,” based on a direct meeting in 2018 between Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google’s Pichai.

But when we got down to brass tacks, it turned out that Epic only had secondhand notes from that meeting — and that the “quote” was simply a paraphrase. Google explained away the CEO meetup as a one-time thing and pointed out there’s no record of the meeting having anything to do with Google Play or app stores.

Pichai did admit that Google pays Apple a 36 percent revenue share for search results, in exchange for Google being the default search engine on the iPhone, however.

16. Both Google and Epic planted unfair stories in the press to advance their agendas.

We saw the receipts proving that Google decided to single out Epic by embarrassing the company with news stories about a (potentially nasty) bug in the Fortnite Launcher even though Epic fixed that bug in a single day — and even though Google never publicized the same kind of vulnerability in apps of its own. Here’s how Google seemingly justified it internally.

Epic accused Google of planting a second story, too.

But Epic’s hands aren’t clean: the company’s Coalition for App Fairness was actually solely created by Epic to lobby for its desired outcomes, and we learned in court that Spotify, Basecamp, Match, Tile, Blix, Deezer, and others weren’t actually founding members despite what it told press.

17. Google tried and failed to establish the conditions for an easy victory.

Google’s core argument didn’t land. “You cannot separate the quality of a phone from the quality of the apps in its app store, and that means Google and Apple compete against each other,” said Google lead attorney Glenn Pomerantz in his opening argument.

But Epic showed that Google had an “existential question” that had nothing to do with Apple — and that again and again and again, Google wasn’t thinking about Apple when it was thinking about securing the future of Google Play. The court docs we saw almost always showed it thinking about the potential contagion of rival app stores on Android instead.

Google did find a couple oblique mentions of Apple in the end and spent quite some time explaining all the ways it does compete with the iPhone maker on pricing, features, and security. Execs insisted that many of Google’s actions were pro-competitive because they helped Android phones compete with the iPhone at a time when Google was concerned that Android may be weak — “losing users it really doesn’t want to be losing” like teens and wealthier users, Google’s economist Catherine Tucker pointed out.

But Judge Donato wasn’t buying her arguments that Apple directly participates in the markets we’re concerned with — and has said he wasn’t willing to apply aftermarket theories that Apple might be a participant because people buy their phones for apps. He said we hadn’t seen evidence of that.

That’s tough for Google because Tucker’s proposed market definition — “the facilitation of digital content transactions” — is close to the one that helped Apple win several years ago. Instead, the jury will likely decide whether Google has monopoly power within the Android ecosystem.

18. Epic will likely pay Google $398,000 even if it wins.

Epic didn’t even try to suggest it didn’t breach its contract with Google, which means Epic probably owes Google money for the short period of time that Epic managed to sneak its own billing system into Fortnite before it got booted off the Play Store. Epic owes $398,931, according to Google’s calculations.

Epic didn’t substantively challenge that amount, either — simply asking if it factors in payment processing fees.

But in court documents filed Monday, we learned that Epic does want the court to decide whether the contract was even valid before Epic pays up.

19. Epic didn’t sue just out of the goodness of Sweeney’s heart.

“Epic decided to stand up because that’s what you do to a bully,” claimed Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein in his opening arguments — and it’s true that Epic isn’t suing for cash. The company’s asking for an injunction that stops Google from blocking alternative app stores and billing systems, not damages.

But Sweeney deflated some of the hero narrative when he took the stand, agreeing that his company stands to make billions of dollars by paying Google nothing. He did turn it around a bit, though, when he pointed out that’s how PC applications have (largely) worked for ages.

20. Everything could hinge on missing chats.

On Friday, Judge Donato vowed to investigate Google for intentionally and systematically suppressing evidence, calling the company’s behavior “a frontal assault on the fair administration of justice.”

He decided to stop short of telling the jury in this case that they should assume Google deleted damning evidence. But he did so partly because Epic has already suggested that countless times during this case. Epic grilled executive after executive, lawyer after lawyer, about why they didn’t change the default setting that would auto-delete their Google Chats after 24 hours — or worse, intentionally got colleagues to turn off chat history to keep things from being preserved — despite their legal obligations to preserve any relevant evidence.

The jury will be told that they may assume Google deleted important evidence, and that may make all the difference.

This was perhaps the most stunning exchange in the entire trial:

“You cannot guarantee that the documents that were destroyed will contradict the testimony we’re going to hear?” Lopez couldn’t.

“We’ll never know that,” Moskowitz replied.

Earlier this year, Disney CEO Bob Iger expressed his displeasure with how the studio was ultimately monetizing its Disney Plus projects which, while popular, have not been attracting as many subscribers as investors would like. Since then, Disney’s taken steps like airing Ms. Marvel on ABC to make some new advertisement revenue from its streaming catalog, but its next move is probably going to have a much bigger impact, financially speaking.

Today, Disney and Pixar announced that Pete Docter’s Soul, Domee Shi’s Turning Red, and Enrico Casarosa’s Luca — all of which ended up premiering on Disney Plus due to the covid-19 pandemic — are all coming to theaters in 2024. Beginning January 12th, Soul will screen along with director Madeline Sharafian’s short Burrow; on February 9th, Turning Red will start screening with Rosana Sullivan’s short Kitbull; and on March 22nd, Luca will begin screening alongside Ralph Eggleston’s For the Birds. Tickets for the “special engagement theatrical runs” go on sale January 2nd, 2024.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker and a laggard in vehicle electrification, announced two new EVs today that offer a glimpse of what the company’s future battery-powered lineup will look like when it actually gets around to building it.

Yep, that’s right: more concepts from the company that environmentalists accuse of stymying the transition to an all-electric future through its government lobbying.

The two concepts announced were the Urban SUV and Sport Crossover, which Toyota insists will be formally introduced as real cars within the next two years. The EVs are slated for Europe, though, with no word on whether they will eventually be made available in North America.

The compact Urban SUV is “a close-to-production design for a model that next year will enter what’s expected to become one of Europe’s largest BEV market segments,” the company said. Toyota modeled it on the Yaris Cross, which is one of the automaker’s top sellers in Europe.

The Sport Crossover, meanwhile, is a high-riding fastback sedan that’s meant to serve as an alternative to the compact SUV. Toyota said a production version of the model will come out in Europe in 2025.

A total of six EVs are slated for Europe by 2026. The Toyota bZ4X is already on sale there, and a compact SUV concept was revealed last year. The company plans on revealing two additional EVs in the months to come to round out the lineup.

Despite its plans on paper, Toyota is trailing many of its rivals in EV models. The company said it would release 30 electric vehicles and sell 3.5 million battery EVs by 2030. Toyota also plans on transforming the luxury brand Lexus into an EV-only marque by 2035.

Despite these big promises, the company has stymied EV adoption efforts, opposing the US’s efforts to slash air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions, and pushing for policies that prioritized hybrids over battery-electric vehicles.

Toyota was an early pioneer in electrification, helping pave the way for companies like Tesla and others by proving that vehicles with alternative powertrains could be immensely popular. But the company has since fallen far behind its competitors.

The recent debate over EV demand in the US — is it rising? falling? flatlining? — has given Toyota an opportunity to boast about its strategy. “People are finally seeing reality,” Toyota chairman and former CEO Akio Toyoda told reporters at the Japan Mobility Show recently, according to The Wall Street Journal. “There are many ways to climb the mountain that is achieving carbon neutrality.”

Microsoft will allow consumers to pay for Extended Security Updates (ESU) for Windows 10 when support ends for the operating system in 2025. The software giant usually only offers paid security updates for organizations that need to keep running older versions but now plans to offer them to individuals for the first time through an annual subscription service instead of extending the end of support date for Windows 10.

“While we strongly recommend moving to Windows 11, we understand there are circumstances that could prevent you from replacing Windows 10 devices before the end of support date. Therefore, Microsoft will offer Extended Security Updates,” explains Microsoft in a blog post. “The ESU program for Windows 10 will include critical and/or important security updates. ESUs do not include new features, customer-requested non-security updates, or design change requests. Technical support beyond the ESU itself is also not available.”

Windows 10’s end of support date is October 14th, 2025, just over 10 years after Microsoft first launched the OS. Many had expected Microsoft to extend Windows 10 support, particularly because it’s still widely used and there was such a big gap (nearly six years) between Windows 10 and Windows 11. So it’s a surprise that Microsoft is offering regular users the same ESU program available to businesses for three years of additional security patches.

“If you are an individual consumer or an organization who elects to continue using Windows 10 after support ends on October 14, 2025, you will have the option of enrolling your PC in the paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) program,” explains Microsoft on a FAQ page. Microsoft isn’t detailing pricing for its extended Windows 10 security patches just yet. “More details including pricing will be provided at a later date,” says Microsoft.

Image: Microsoft

It’s a surprise move on the consumer side that comes just weeks after Microsoft revealed it was “revisiting” its approach to Windows 10. Microsoft is adding its AI-powered Copilot to Windows 10 and making “additional investments” that could include additional AI features in the future. Microsoft isn’t planning any major updates to Windows 10, though.

Windows 10 is still an incredibly popular operating system, particularly because there are less than two years of support left until you’ll need to switch to Windows 11 (or whatever comes next) or pay for security updates. Windows 7 support ended in 2020, a little over 10 years after its launch, and extended security updates ended earlier this year. Mainstream support for Windows XP ended after just eight years, with extended support ending after nearly 13 years.

Microsoft may be forced to offer free Windows 10 security updates beyond the end of support date anyway. Windows XP received a highly unusual patch in 2017, three years after extended support ended, to prevent a large ransomware attack. If Windows 10 falls victim to something similar in the future, we could see a similar step repeated.

Many of the earliest Instagram videos have lost their sound. More than a year of videos posted to the platform are now silent, displaying an error that says “video has no sound” when you try to play their audio. The issue appears to affect videos posted before late 2014.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what’s going on, but here’s what we’ve noticed: it seems that videos posted from June 2013, when Instagram first added video, to October 2014 are now missing their audio. The audio isn’t working regardless of platform, whether the clip is played on desktop, iOS, or Android. And because this seems to affect most — if not all — videos in that timeframe, this appears to be an issue on Instagram’s end rather than some sort of takedown issue regarding copyrighted audio.

Here, you can see audio missing from a clip posted by Sam Sheffer, then The Verge’s social media manager, on the day Instagram first launched video:

For longtime Instagram users, no longer having audio on their older videos could be a big loss. Part of why people post on Instagram is to preserve moments in time, and audio is often a huge part of what might make a video special or memorable.

The issue seems to have started earlier this year. “Recently lost a good friend of mine and have videos of us on [Instagram] that I would like to hear him in,” one Reddit user wrote in June. Another user wrote in May that they lost sound on a video of their dog that passed away. Another said in May that they don’t have sound on old videos of their infant daughter.

We were tipped off to this unexpected issue thanks to a reader, and we’ve noticed this phenomenon with Verge staffers’ videos, too.

Meta says that it’s fixing the issue but didn’t provide a timeline for when it will be resolved. “We’re aware that a bug caused some people to have trouble accessing audio on older feed posts,” spokesperson Seine Kim tells The Verge. “The issue is being resolved, and we apologize for the inconvenience.”

The Razr 2023 folds, and it costs well under $1,000 — neat! But its small screen is too limiting to make it worth your time.

There are several things I like about the Motorola Razr, starting with the price: its MSRP is $699, which already makes it the least expensive modern flip phone you can buy in the US. It’s currently knocked down to $499, and discounts will likely be easy to find throughout its life, too.

I’m a fan of my review unit’s handsome green “vegan leather” finish, too. And in theory, I like the concept of the small external display. It measures just 1.5 inches on the diagonal, so it’s only really designed for checking notifications or glancing at the next event on your calendar. You get the essentials and nothing more, so you can read a text or check the weather without getting dragged into an unplanned scrolling session. When you really need to get into something, you simply unfold the Razr, and there’s your regular phone screen — sounds great!

But here’s what I don’t like: doing almost anything with the Razr requires you to open the phone up, which largely defeats the purpose. In daily use, you quickly reach the limits of what you can use the outer screen for, and its prompt to “flip open to continue” when you want to read more than the subject line of an email gets tiresome.

The thing is, using a teeny-tiny screen just to check your notifications actually takes more work in some cases than a standard slab phone. You have to scroll up and down the tiny letterbox display to see them, and if you want more context, you need to tap through multiple screens. It’s a lot less efficient than just glancing at a lock screen, expanding notifications when you want to read more, and quickly dismissing the ones you want to ignore. I was often tempted to leave the phone unfolded on my desk when I wasn’t using it so I could catch up more quickly, which again, defeats the purpose of the phone folding in half.

The 2023 Motorola Razr was announced alongside the Razr Plus, which is a great device with a very large (well, relatively speaking) external display. You can read and respond to emails, access Spotify, play games, and even run full apps on the outer screen if you so choose. It also costs $999. This non-Plus Razr (Razr Minus?) comes with the aforementioned teeny-tiny cover screen as well as a few other spec downgrades.

This Razr comes with a serviceable 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. It uses a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chipset, which is a midrange processor that’s well over a year old, rather than the flagship 8-series in the Razr Plus. Does that make a big difference in daily life? Not really, though the one place I noticed it struggling was scrolling through the phone’s ad-festooned weather app. The phone got toasty during an extended Pocket City 2 session, though I didn’t see that impact performance in any way.

There’s up to 30W fast charging with a compatible wired charger (sold separately, like they are these days), and wireless charging is supported, though only at a very slow 5W. Still, I appreciate having it at all, and slow charging doesn’t bother me when I plop it down on my charger at bedtime. Battery life is very good overall; I never had a problem making it through a full day on a single charge, even with heavy use.

And that “vegan leather” finish? It’s a fancy name for plastic, but don’t let that throw you: it’s nice. It’s textured and a little grippy, so it feels a little more secure in my hand. It holds onto dust and lint more easily than glass or plastic, but it brushes clean without much effort. For my money, it looks better than the smudgy mess of fingerprints so many glass-backed phones turn into.

Like the Razr Plus, the Razr is IP52 rated, which means it’s only water-repellent and lacks full resistance to water immersion. There’s also no guarantee against dust intrusion, which is a serious concern with folding phones. Nobody’s figured out how to fully dustproof a phone with moving parts, so that’s understandable, but Samsung and Google make folding phones with full IPX8 ratings for robust water resistance. A drop in a puddle or, god forbid, the toilet could spell doom for the Razr — bear that in mind if you’re comparing it to the pricier-but-waterproof-ier Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5.

The 2023 Razr’s small outer screen comes with a few customizable clockface options. All of them display the time, date, and the device’s battery level; one style called “dashboard” shows you the current temperature, too. You can enable a handful of panels, including a calendar and a timer, which are accessed by swiping left and right on the main clock screen.

Swiping up shows your notifications (signaled by a blue dot on the main screen), and swiping down accesses control panel settings like your flashlight and airplane mode. If all you ever want to do with it is set a timer and check the occasional text, it’s great. But for most people, I think it would need to do a little more to be really useful.

It’s telling how often the Razr prompts you to open the phone to continue doing whatever it is you want to do. Want to read the first few lines of that email? Reply to a text? Pick an album to start playing on Spotify? You’ll need to flip the phone open to continue. Once you have something playing, media controls appear on the corresponding panel, but the display is so small that controls are limited to pause, play, or skip tracks — there’s no option to jump forward 15 seconds, which is essential if you want to skip the ads in the podcast you’re listening to (sorry, Vergecast advertisers).

There are a few quirks too, like the fact that the cover screen timer apparently has nothing to do with the phone’s main clock app. If you set a timer on the outer screen and open the phone, it’s nowhere to be found. Likewise, you can’t view a timer set in the main clock app on the cover screen.

But my number one complaint with the cover screen is that it just isn’t useful enough. You can do more — and do it faster — with a traditional lock screen or even a smartwatch. The cover screen should help you do things so you can avoid opening the phone and coming face-to-face with the main screen; instead, I found it introduced more frustration than anything.

I wish I had better news about the Razr’s camera. Photos in good lighting are fine, but anything from moderate indoor lighting to very low light is bad. You can coax some decent pictures out of the system, but generally, it doesn’t seem to handle noise very well. Photos during storytime in my son’s dim bedroom are a blurry mess of noise reduction-induced watercolors. HDR photos show a lot of noise that would have been better off remaining in the shadows. Video exposure is squirrelly and prone to flickering, even when there’s not much changing in the scene.

One of the reasons I look forward to testing a flip phone is that the camera is so versatile — you can set it down and take pictures hands-free or snap selfies with the main camera using the cover screen to preview framing. You can do those things with the Razr, but when image quality is so unreliable, it’s not really a selling point.

I’m all for features that help me use my phone more intentionally, but the Razr’s minimalist approach is just too minimal. A well-constructed focus mode schedule or a good lock screen interface would help you weed out unimportant notifications and surface the important ones with less frustration. Add on concerns about its durability and an unreliable camera, and I just can’t see a good argument for the Razr.

If your heart is set on a flip phone, then I’m sorry to say that you’ll need to pay up for either the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 or the 2023 Razr Plus — both are good, though Samsung has the better track record for durability and software updates. The Google Pixel 7A is an excellent budget choice if price is more of a concern than foldability. But if you’re after a truly affordable foldable? It looks like you’ll just have to keep waiting.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Discord rolled out a long-awaited mobile redesign on Tuesday that is a noticeable departure from its desktop version, with the focus being on communicating and sharing with friends — including in group and individual direct messages. With the revamp, the Discord app will display navigation tabs as soon as you open the app, including a separate tab for servers, messages, and notifications and a “You” tab that lets users edit their profile and settings.

There’s also a new global DM search function that searches through all your messages, pins, attachments, and other files — in other words, you don’t have to open up a friend’s individual direct message to find the specific thing you were looking for. And that long-rumored dark mode for OLEDs is finally here — and officially dubbed “Midnight.”

It’s a lot of big changes, and if you’re familiar with Slack, Teams, or even the latest Google Chat you’ll recognize some (for better or worse). Regardless, there will definitely be some grumbling as people get used to the new layout.

As a growing group of Gen Z and millennial users spend more time on their smartphones than on desktops, Discord’s mobile refresh is a long time coming. “Over time, the amount of *stuff* that Discord can do has grown exponentially. And yet, the mobile app was forced to just shove it all in a tiiny version of the desktop app. The world has also changed — as more of you spent time using Discord on the go, what was lacking on mobile became more apparent,” wrote Discord’s group product manager, Francesco Polizzi, in a blog post announcing the update.

Image: Discord

The new app has done away with the confusing lineup of tabs at the bottom and narrowed things down to just your servers, messages, notifications, and your own member tab. That means that weird “Friend” tab you’d click on just to see who was online is now gone, as is the not so useful “Search” tab.

Here’s a look at how your server list will look on the new app. Look how clean and easy to understand those tabs are!

Image: Discord

Under the “Messages” tab, you’ll find all your group and individual direct messages and not just your friend’s statuses (i.e., if they’re in a voice channel or playing a group activity).

Media sharing should also be quicker and easier in the new app. Discord gives users a 25MB free file upload limit, and tweaks like a newly organized grid view for photos will likely be easier on the eyes. The mobile app can also now store the recent messages of up to 700 text channels and DMs, which means the app will likely load more quickly — and scrolling will go faster (i.e., no buffer).

Finally, opening the Discord app should take less time now. The company claims that with the latest update, the app open time is reduced by 43 percent on iOS and 55 percent on Android. Android users can expect fewer crashes. Since the app now caches messages in the background, Discord estimates that it uses four times less data.

For more on Discord’s new mobile experience, feel free to check out the video below.

Mechanical keyboard specialist Keychron has launched a Kickstarter for its first keyboard with Hall effect switches, the Keychron Q1 HE. A fully assembled model costs $214 if bought as part of the Kickstarter, and there’s also a bare-bones model available without switches or keycaps for $194.

Compared to traditional mechanical switches, Hall effect switches are notable for being analog and thus able to tell the difference between a slight and full press of each key. So with the Q1 HE, you can take advantage of this by customizing how far you want to press each key before it actuates, and there’s also a “rapid trigger” feature that’s able to register a keypress the second you re-press a key — rather than having to lift up past the reset point. If you want to get really fancy, you can even assign as many as four commands to the same key to take advantage of this analog sensitivity.

Image: Keychron

Keychron isn’t the first keyboard manufacturer to use Hall effect switches, which have previously appeared in models from Wooting, SteelSeries, and Corsair. But it’s notable when Keychron is making some of the best mechanical keyboards around, meaning the Q1 HE has the potential to combine great typing feel with an exhaustive set of Hall effect-powered features.

Customizing the analog features of the Keychron Q1 HE is done via Keychron’s web app, which can also handle other key remapping duties. That’s a departure from the excellent Via app that Keychron’s keyboards typically work with, and it remains to be seen if Keychron’s software can match Via’s power and ease of use.

The Q1 HE can be used either wired or wirelessly, and if you’re going down the wireless route then there’s the option of connecting via Bluetooth or with an included 2.4GHz USB dongle. The latter offers a responsive 1,000Hz polling rate, while Bluetooth benefits from being able to connect to up to three devices.

In terms of construction, the Q1 HE hues close to Keychron’s existing Q1 Pro. It uses a compact 75-percent layout with a fully aluminum case and gasket-mounted construction. Its keycaps are made of durable double-shot PBT and use Keychron’s own retro-styled OSA profile, and it comes equipped with PCB-mounted screw-in stabilizers. Its linear Gateron 2.0 Magnetic switches are technically hot-swappable, but you’ll only be able to replace them with other Hall effect switches. It’s equipped with a volume knob, obviously, as well as south-facing RGB backlighting on each key.

The Keychron Q1 HE is available to back on Kickstarter now, and the company expects to start shipping keyboards to backers in February before selling them through its own online store.

New World Interactive, developer of Day of Infamy and the Insurgency series, is the next studio affected by Embracer Group layoffs. Earlier today, there were unconfirmed rumors that Embracer Group had completely shuttered the studio, but in an email to The Verge, New World’s parent company, Saber Interactive, clarified the studio would remain active.

“There have been restructuring changes involving the New World Interactive subsidiary,” wrote Arman Teimouri, head of public affairs, in an email to The Verge. “Unfortunately, this reorganization has resulted in layoffs at the studio.” Saber did not share how many or what percentage of employees were let go.

The statement also said that the company was working to place affected employees elsewhere within Saber Interactive and that development would continue on Insurgency: Sandstorm as well as other as yet unannounced projects.

Studios under the Embracer umbrella have been devastated by layoffs and project cancellations. Earlier this year, the Swedish holding group failed to secure a $2 billion investment, reportedly from the Saudi-owned Savvy Games Group, after Embracer had gone on a buying spree, gobbling up game studios, popular game franchises, Dark Horse Media, and the IP rights to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Immediately after the deal collapsed, Embracer announced that it would undergo restructuring involving the shuttering of some studios, layoffs at others, and project cancellations galore. The company has already closed Campfire Cabal and Saints Row developer Volition Games and had layoffs at Crystal Dynamics and Beamdog. The company is also looking to sell Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment and could possibly close TimeSplitters developer Free Radical Design. Overall, over 900 employees have been let go from the company, not including the layoffs today at New World Interactive.

While many of us rely on cloud storage these days for backing up photos, videos, and other files, every iPhone that can run iOS 17 also supports external storage devices: that’s every iPhone back to 2018, so it includes the iPhone XR, the iPhone XS, and the iPhone XS Max.

Maybe you would rather manage file backups manually than via iCloud. (It’s always worth remembering that cloud storage isn’t completely infallible.) Maybe you need to access photos taken with a DSLR on your iPhone. Or maybe someone has given you a drive with files that you’d like to move to your phone. There are a few reasons you’d want to save files via an external storage device, and it’s not difficult to do.

With the arrival of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, there’s a new reason: you can record video on these handsets using Apple’s high-definition ProRes video format at 4K resolution and 120 frames per second — but only if an external storage device is attached. If you want the best video quality, you need an external drive.

Here’s what you need to know about which external drives you can plug into your iPhone and what happens when you do.

How to choose an external drive

The good news is that Apple isn’t too picky when it comes to which drives will work with your iPhone. Most flash drives, portable SSDs, external HDDs, and memory card readers are going to function okay, but there are caveats: you need to make sure you’ve got the right cable in place, and you need to make sure the drive is sufficiently powered.

Photo: JSL JDTDC

As a general rule of thumb, if a device doesn’t need an external power source when it’s connected to a laptop, it won’t need one with your iPhone — but if it does have its own power cable (like large-capacity HDD drives do), then you’ll also need this when connecting it to your iPhone. Just bear in mind that if a drive isn’t powered separately, it’s going to drain power from your iPhone in order to run.

You then need the right connecting cable: whatever the external device uses at one end, and then Lightning or USB-C at the other end. If you can’t find the right cable (some external drives use proprietary connectors, for example), then an adapter might be needed, but this shouldn’t affect the functionality of the device.

When it comes to drive formats, you do have to be specific. There must only be one partition on the drive, and it must be formatted as APFS, APFS (encrypted), macOS Extended (HFS Plus), exFAT (FAT64), FAT32, or FAT in order to work. If the drive or memory card you’ve got isn’t in one of these formats, then you’ll need to reformat it via a computer.

When it comes to recording 4K resolution, 60fps ProRes video, external drives need to offer write speeds of at least 220MB per second and have a maximum power draw of 4.5W, so be sure to check the specs carefully. Ideally, get yourself a drive that’s advertised for this purpose or that you know other users have had success with.

How to use an external drive

Assuming you’ve taken all of the above considerations into account, you should find that your phone shows up under Locations in the Browse tab of the Files app in iOS when you connect it to the external drive. If it doesn’t, it’s not been identified — it might be underpowered or set to an incompatible file format.

To access files on the external device:

• Tap its entry in the left-hand menu on the Browse tab. (It’ll be called whatever name it was given when it was formatted.)
• Tap on files and folders to open them, and use the back arrows (top left) to go back.
• Tap the three dots (top right) to change the way files and folders are shown on-screen (as icons or as a list) and how they are ordered.

The same options you get in Files for local iPhone storage are available for external storage too. Tap the three dots in the top-right corner, and you’ll be able to create a new folder, for example. Long-press on a file or folder, and you can duplicate or rename it.

To copy and move files from the external device:

• For single files and folders, press and hold on the item to see a menu with the Copy and Move options.
• For groups of files and folders, tap the three dots (top right) and then Select, which enables you to make a group selection. You can then press and hold on any item in the selection to find the same Copy and Move options.

• If you’ve chosen to Copy one or more files, you need to navigate to the destination folder, press and hold in a blank area of the file browser window, and choose Paste.
• If you’ve chosen to Move one or more files, a new window appears inviting you to choose a destination folder before you can do anything else — find the folder, then tap Move.

Note that if your external device is set to read only, you can only copy files. If you try and move them, you’ll see Copy rather than Move on the final step.

For photos and videos, likely to be something a lot of people are working with in these scenarios, you can tap on the file to open it, then tap its file name (at the top) and choose Save to Photos to copy it over to your iPhone’s main gallery.

It’s all relatively straightforward, and if you’re already comfortable with the ins and outs of the Files app, you shouldn’t have any trouble working with external devices, too.

Whether you want to outshine your neighbors with the best light display or simply bring some holiday cheer into your home, Philips Hue’s Festavia string lights can help you do both. And right now, Amazon Prime members can buy the 65-foot string lights, which feature 250 color-changing LEDs, on sale for $186.99 ($33 off) when they clip the on-page coupon. The 130-foot string features double the number of smart LEDs and is also on sale when you buy it with the Hue Bridge directly from Philips Hue for $314.99 ($104.99 off) — a discount you’ll see at checkout after separately adding both to your cart. You can also buy it without the Hue Bridge from Amazon for $305.99 ($54 off) when you clip the on-page coupon.

With their gorgeous colors and enchanting preset festive effects and scenes, Philips Hue’s Festavia are our favorite smart holiday string lights. It helps, too, that they’re Matter-compatible and thus can work with all major smart home platforms when you buy the $59.99 Hue Bridge. You can also use them indoors and outdoors for up to 90 days. You can even sync the lights to music with the Hue Bridge.

Alternatively, if the Philips Hue lights are too expensive, you can buy Nanoleaf’s Essentials Matter Smart Holiday String Lights for $99.99 ($20 off) from Nanoleaf. These smart string lights are also compatible with Matter, come with festive preset scenes, and sync with music. However, as Nanoleaf doesn’t have any other outdoor lighting options you can pair them with, they’re better suited for decorating the Christmas tree than a big outdoor display.

Yesterday we highlighted an excellent deal on the Google Pixel Watch 2, but if a $300 smartwatch is outside your budget, there are other discounted wearables to consider. Right now, for example, you can buy the Amazfit GTR 4 for $164.99 ($35 off) from Amazfit when you apply promo code GTR4HS at checkout, which drops the smartwatch to the all-time low first set during Black Friday.

With multiband GPS and a nice OLED display, the Amazfit GTR 4 offers features we don’t typically find in wearables in this price range. It also includes more than 150 sports modes, Amazon Alexa support, and better battery life than we see in pricier flagships from Apple, Samsung, and others. Add in the fact the GTR 4 is platform-agnostic and you can see why it remains our favorite budget-friendly Android smartwatch.

Read our Amazfit GTR 4 review.

More deals that are worth a look

• You can pick up a pair of Meross Matter Smart Wi-Fi Plug Minis at Amazon for $27.99 ($7 off) when you clip the on-page coupon. The connected plugs allow you to add smarts to traditional outlets and stand out because they’re some of the few that support the new Matter protocol, making them compatible with a range of smart home platforms.
• Sony’s SRS-XB100 speaker is still available for around $48 ($12 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. The small speaker delivers impressive sound quality for its size, along with IP67 dust and water resistance and long battery life. Read our review.
• You can buy the 14-inch MacBook Pro with 1TB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and the base M3 chip for $1,599 at Best Buy, which is even better than the Black Friday discount we saw for this configuration. My Best Buy Plus and Total members can also get an additional $50 off. The new entry-level MacBook Pro is faster than its 13-inch, M2-powered predecessor with better battery life and — thankfully — no Touch Bar. Read our review.
• The Ember Mug 2 is on sale at Best Buy in blue for $99.99 ($50 off). The 14-ounce smart mug is a favorite at The Verge, one that lets you control the temperature of any hot beverage via an accompanying app and a coaster that keeps it warm indefinitely.

It’s a Wonderful Life culminates the disembodied spirit of Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey realizing the value of his life after seeing how his friends and family would suffer if he wasn’t around. It’s a Wonderful Life’s celebration of the human spirit is a big part of why it’s become a holiday classic, but everything about sleep app Calm’s latest project inspired by It’s a Wonderful Life feels kind of antithetical to the movie’s story.

Through a Variety report, Calm today announced the launch of “It’s a Wonderful Sleep Story.” It’s “a heartwarming new holiday tale” based on director Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life and will star the AI-generated voice of Jimmy Stewart, who has been dead for 26 years. Stewart’s modern-day voice acting turn comes by way of Respeecher, the Kyiv-based startup that recreated Mark Hamill’s voice for The Mandalorian and worked to bring the performance of deceased voice actor Miłogost Reczek to Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty DLC. Though the voice in “It’s a Wonderful Sleep Story” sounds a lot like Stewart’s, the performance is actually provided by another living actor doing an impression — a process Respeecher co-founder and CEO Alex Serdiuk described as adhering to “high ethical standards”

“James Stewart is one of the most remarkable actors in U.S. history,” Serdiuk said. “Recreating his voice with AI was both a huge responsibility and an honor for Respeecher. It was a way to pay tribute to his incredible career and all the good memories he left to people.”

To Calm’s credit, it received the express consent of Stewart’s family and estate to move forward with the project before actually doing so, which should seem like a given considering the actor is not around to verbalize whether he wants his voice used to put people to sleep. But in this era where it’s become crystal clear just how keen studios are to lock actors into deals meant to turn their digital likenesses into everlasting revenue streams, Calm’s latest move feels like a pretty telling sign of the times.

The universe of Foundation is set to expand. Apple announced that the sci-fi streaming series, based on the classic stories by Isaac Asimov, will be coming back for a third season. There aren’t many details yet on what to expect — or when to expect it — but in a statement, showrunner David S. Goyer had this to say:

I’m thrilled Apple has given us the opportunity to continue chronicling Asimov’s pioneering galactic saga. This time, the stakes for Foundation and Empire are even higher as the Mule takes center stage, along with fan-favorites Bayta, Toran, Ebling, and Magnifico Giganticus.

Foundation first debuted in 2021 as perhaps the most ambitious series on Apple TV Plus; a lush, expansive epic with a cast including Lee Pace, Jared Harris, and Lou Llobell. It also got off to a very slow start as it tried to squeeze a huge amount of stage-setting into a single season — which is something that Goyer tried to rectify in season 2. “I just felt like this massive weight had been lifted from our shoulders,” he told me ahead of the season 2 premiere. “We were unburdened by all of this expositional pipe-laying.”

Foundation is part of a growing lineup of excellent sci-fi series on Apple’s streaming service. There’s also the alien invasion drama Invasion that just wrapped up its second season; the end-of-the-world thriller Silo, which has been renewed for season 2 after premiering earlier in 2023; the brand-new kaiju spinoff Monarch: Legacy of Monsters; and the alternate history drama For All Mankind, which is in the midst of its fourth season.

Google’s Files app is testing a handy new upgrade that could make finding documents on your phone a lot easier. As first spotted by Android Police, the app’s listing on the Google Play Store says it’s testing a new Smart Search capability you can use to search for images and PDFs based on what’s in them.

With the Smart Search feature turned on, Google says you can search for the text and images inside PDFs. That means if you’re searching for a restaurant menu you know you’ve saved on your phone, you should be able to find it by typing in the restaurant’s name if it’s included in the document. Files is also testing the ability to search for photos based on the objects pictured within them as well as the locations where they were taken. Google Photos has long had this capability, but it’s nice to see it hopefully coming to Files, too.

Google Files currently only lets you search through documents based on their file names, which isn’t particularly useful when the majority of file names on your phone are just a mishmash of random letters and numbers.

It looks like the update isn’t rolled out to everyone, but the folks at Android Police got to try it out themselves and found that they couldn’t search for images based on location just yet, nor could they label and find people within pictures like you can do in Google Photos.

In a support page on Google’s website, the company says Smart Search runs in the background to scan your documents. It notes that “scanning happens on your device” so your information doesn’t leave it. To check if you have the feature, update the Files app and look for Smart Search in the app’s settings. Google notes it may take a “few days” for on-device scanning to be available. If you don’t see it yet, you’ll have to put up with searching through documents by file name just a little longer, but it can’t hurt to keep checking back for updates.

Microsoft is detailing a number of new features coming to its Copilot service soon, including OpenAI’s latest models. Copilot will get support for GPT-4 Turbo soon, alongside an updated DALL-E 3 model, a new code interpreter feature, and deep search functionality inside Bing.

Copilot will soon be able to respond using OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 Turbo model, which essentially means it will “see” more data thanks to a 128K context window. This larger context window will allow Copilot to better understand queries and offer better responses. “This model is currently being tested with select users and will be widely integrated into Copilot in the coming weeks,” explains Yusuf Medhi, EVP and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft.

Image: Microsoft

While you’re waiting on the GPT-4 Turbo model to appear in Copilot, Microsoft is now using an improved DALL-E 3 model in Bing Image Creator and Copilot. “You can now use Copilot to create images that are even higher quality and more accurate to the prompt with an updated DALL-E 3 model,” says Medhi.

Microsoft Edge, which includes a Copilot sidebar, is also getting the ability to compose text within websites’ text input to rewrite sentences inline. You can also now use Copilot in Microsoft Edge to summarize videos you’re watching on YouTube.

Image: Microsoft

Coders and developers might be interested in a new code interpreter feature coming to Copilot soon. This new feature will allow Copilot users to get more accurate calculations, data analysis, or even code from the AI chatbot. “Copilot will write the code to answer your complex, natural-language requests, run that code in a sandboxed environment and use the results to give you higher quality responses,” explains Microsoft. “You can also upload and download files to and from Copilot, so you can work with your own data and code as well as Bing search results.”

On the Bing side, Microsoft is adding “Deep Search” into its results. “Deep Search harnesses the power of GPT-4 to deliver optimized search results for complex topics,” says Medhi. “Activating Deep Search expands search queries into more comprehensive descriptions to deliver more relevant results.”