Google rolled out significant upgrades for Gmail’s Help me write feature earlier this year, giving users the ability to dictate text prompts to easily draft an email. The company also previewed a new “Polish” feature that could fix drafts to create a structured email at the touch of a button. This feature is now rolling out to users along with new Help me write and Refine my draft shortcuts for Gmail on Android and iOS.

Google announced the rollout in a recent Workspace Updates blog, revealing that the new Polish option will be available as part of Help me write’s Refine my draft feature on Gmail for mobile and web. With this feature, you’ll be able to enter rough notes into a draft and Gemini will “turn the content into a completely formal draft, ready for you to review in one click.”

Original article: Samsung might be better known for its high-end flagships, but it has also produced quite a few budget-minded Android phones in recent years. One of the more intriguing alternatives to a Samsung flagship is its “FE” series, formerly known as “Fan Edition” phones. These phones typically offer specs and performance similar to the mainline Galaxy S series but at much more aggressive prices, thanks to concessions like a polycarbonate body and a few minor spec downgrades. With the next FE on the horizon, here’s everything we know about the Galaxy S24 FE.

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE: At a glance

The Samsung Galaxy S24 FE is expected to launch later this year, and we’ve seen some notable leaks already. Now, it looks like the launch is creeping ever closer thanks to a database filing.

Launched on July 24, 2024, the Motorola Razr Plus 2024 is still less than a month old. We usually don’t start seeing sales on devices so soon, but right now, you can catch a $100 discount on the Motorola Razr Plus 2024. This brings the cost down to $900.

Get the Motorola Razr Plus 2024 for $900

This offer is available from Amazon, as well as the official Motorola page. The discount applies to all color variants of the Motorola Razr Plus 2024: Midnight Blue, Spring Green, Peach Fuzz, and Hot Pink.

The Motorola Razr Plus 2024 is a fantastic foldable phone, competing directly with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6. At $900, though, it might be the best bet in terms of high-end flip phones. Performance is nothing short of amazing, featuring a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor and 12GB of RAM.

The external display has been expanded, covering pretty much the whole front of the phone when folded shut. The main display measures 6.9 inches and features an LTPO AMOLED panel with a 165Hz refresh rate.

We especially like Motorola’s clean software, which is pretty much ad- and bloat-free. The leather and suede exterior finishes look and feel great, too. Not to mention, the hinge has been slimmed down for a much more refined look. The battery is a bit small at 4,000mAh, but such is the nature of flip phones, and the 45W charging ensures you can get it juiced up quickly.

It’s a great overall phone, and I happen to prefer its look and design over Sammy’s alternative. Go buy your Motorola Razr Plus 2024 while the price is low! We’re not sure how long this offer will last, and many would argue it’s the very best flip phone available right now.

Google introduced the Pixel 9 series just last week, and if you’re anything like us, you rushed to get your pre-order in. The first of those orders are just about to start arriving, giving Pixel’s biggest fans their first hands-on look at this new hardware. And while there’s clearly a lot to like about the phones, we’re curious just how far that same enthusiasm will extend to Google’s latest packaging.

For years now, Google’s placed an emphasis on trying to be environmentally friendly when it comes to hardware. That’s involved a lot of recycled plastics, not just in devices themselves, but also for their accessories, like cases. That trend has continued when it comes to packaging, and if you’ve opened any Google products anytime recently, you know to expect a whole lot of cardboard, with minimal plastic.

With the Pixel 9, Google’s taking that approach to its next logical step, and the company shares that all its latest Pixel, Nest, and even Fitbit packaging involves no plastic, whatsoever.

If you’ve caught an early unboxing, though, you might already have some concerns. Rather than the sort of premium-feeling box we had on the Pixel 8, with a top that lifts straight off for a nice presentation, the Pixel 9’s colorful outside packaging slides off like a sleeve. Inside, there’s a much more utilitarian box, which strongly gives off “recycled” vibes.

Google probably hopes that shoppers see that, and understand that it’s communicating the company’s commitment to environmental concerns. But new Pixel 9 owners might also find themselves wondering if there might have been a way to hit those same zero-plastic targets, while also feeling a bit more like there’s something worth $800 (or more) within.

The company goes on to highlight some of the advancements in materials that have empowered it to deliver this packaging design, including new, extra-strong and durable paper for the exterior box, and a reformulated molded fiber pulp formula for the inserts that hold the actual gear.

What do you think about Google’s efforts here? Do you appreciate how it’s trying to be green? Or does this environmentalism feel a bit performative? Let us know in the comments.

We take solid internet connections for granted in major cities, but if you step out of metropolitan areas, your options will quickly drop. This is what makes Starlink so special. You can get internet nearly anywhere in the USA, as well as many other countries. The equipment can get pricey, though. Lucky for you, we’ve found a great deal on the Starlink Standard Kit. It usually costs $500, but you can catch a $200 discount right now, bringing the cost down to just $300.

Get the Starlink Standard Kit for just $300

This offer is available directly from Best Buy, but Starlink’s official website also offers the same deal. The web page also mentions this deal will end on October 5, 2024.

The Starlink Standard Kit is recommended for residential users. The flat antenna is made to be stationary, and can be installed by yourself. The app can help you orient it in the right direction, and will walk you through all the steps to get you connected as soon as possible. It’s IP67-rated, so it should be able to handle the elements just fine.

Also included is a router with Wi-Fi 6 capabilities. While this router is meant to be used indoors, it still has an IP56 rating. You can connect up to 256 devices simultaneously, which is quite impressive. Wi-Fi coverage can be expanded with up to three Starlink Gen 2 and Gen 3 Mesh nodes, too.

Of course, you’ll also have to pay for service. The standard residential plan costs $120 a month. While this may seem a bit expensive to many of us, remember it’s a specialized service for those without many options. To many, Starlink is a lifesaver. It will work in pretty much any remote area, even places with zero cellular coverage.

Ready to get connected? Go get your Starlink Standard Kit. Deals on these Starlink antennas are pretty rare!

You may remember earlier this year, Google announced a feature called “Ask Photos” during its Google I/O event. We have discovered a Google Photos extension for Gemini that could be related to that very feature.

While digging into the Google app (beta version 15.33.36.29.arm64), we stumbled upon a few interesting lines of code. Specifically, there’s a mention of an “ask photos” extension for Gemini. You can see the lines of code we found below.

<string name="assistant_robin_action_ask_photos_single_image_content_description">Google Photos Image</string>
<string name="assistant_photos_card_a11y_description">Results from Google Photos extension</string>
<string name="assistant_photos_card_title_string">Google Photos</string>
<string name="assistant_photos_icon_content_description">Google Photos icon</string>

Just as a refresher, “robin” is the internal codename for Gemini. Based on the code we found, it seems like the extension could have a lot in common with the Ask Photos feature for the Google Photos app.

As Google explained back in May, this feature would allow you to interact with your photo library through natural language queries. For example, Gemini would search through photos containing car license plates if you were to ask it something like, “What’s my license plate number?” Ask Photos’s functionality was also said to extend past basic search functionality, being capable of tasks like organizing and sharing photos.

It appears this ask photos extension is fairly early in development, so don’t expect it to roll out anytime soon. We’ll have to wait a little longer to get more clues about this feature.

On Pixel devices, there’s a service called Wallpaper & Style that gives you a lot of personalization control. Along with the usual smattering of default Android wallpapers, Google will sometimes load in Pixel-exclusive wallpapers that are only around for a short period of time. Today, we saw two new sets of Pixel wallpapers landing, both related to football teams (aka soccer) in the United Kingdom.

The Liverpool and Arsenal football clubs are represented here with eight wallpapers each, for a total of 16 new wallpapers. You can see all of them below. However, please don’t download the wallpapers from these galleries, as they have been heavily compressed and won’t look great on your phone. Instead, scroll down to the bottom of the article and find a button to download all of them in full quality.

Arsenal FC Pixel wallpapers

Liverpool FC Pixel wallpapers

Download these wallpapers for yourself

Don’t own a Pixel or haven’t seen the update yet? You can simply download these wallpapers for yourself and use them on any device you like. Click the button below to get them all in their high-resolution form.

Since Gemini Live became available to me on my Pixel 8 Pro late last week, I’ve found myself using it very often. Not because it’s the latest and hottest trend, no, but because almost everything I hated about talking to Google Assistant is no longer an issue with Gemini Live. The difference is staggering.

I have a lot to say about the topic, but for today, I want to focus on a few aspects that make talking to Gemini Live such a better experience compared to using Google Assistant or the regular Gemini.

1. Gemini Live understands me, the way I speak

English is only my third language and even though I’ve been speaking it for decades, it’s still not the most natural language for me to use. Plus, I have the kind of brain that zips all over the place. So, every time I wanted to trigger Google Assistant, I had to think of the exact sentence or question before saying, “Hey Google.” For that reason, and that reason alone, talking to Assistant never felt natural to me. It’s always pre-meditated, and it always requires me to pause what I’m doing and give it my full attention.

Google Assistant wants me to speak like a robot to fit its mold. Gemini Live lets me speak however I want.

Gemini Live understands natural human speech. For me, it works around my own speech’s idiosyncracies, so I can start speaking without thinking or preparing my full question beforehand. I can “uhm” and “ah” mid-sentence, repeat myself, turn around the main question, and figure things out as I speak, and Live will still understand all of that.

I can even ask multiple questions and be as vague or as precise as possible. There’s really no restriction around how to speak or what to say, no specific commands, no specific ways to phrase questions — just no constraints whatsoever. That completely changes the usability of AI chatbots for me.

2. This is what real, continuous conversations should be like

Google Assistant added a setting for Continuous Conversations many years ago, but that never felt natural or all that continuous. I’d say “Hey Google,” ask it for something, wait for the full answer, wait an extra second for it to start listening again, and then say my second command. If I stay silent for a couple of seconds, the conversation is done and I have to re-trigger Assistant again.

Plus, Assistant treats every command separately. There’s no real ‘chat’ feeling, just a series of independent questions or commands and answers.

Interruptions, corrections, clarifications, idea continuity, topic changes — Gemini Live handles all of those.

Gemini Live works differently. Every session is a real open conversation, where I can talk back and forth for a while, and it still remembers everything that came before. So if I say I like Happy Endings and ask for similar TV show recommendations, I can listen in, then ask more questions, and it’ll keep in mind my preference for Happy Endings-like shows.

I can also interrupt it at any point in time and correct it if it misunderstood me or if the answer doesn’t satisfy me. I don’t have to manually scream at it to stop or wait for it as it drones on for two minutes with a wrong answer. I can also change the conversation topic in an instant or give it more precise questions if needed.

Plus, Gemini Live doesn’t shut off our chat after a few seconds of silence. So I can take a few seconds to properly assimilate the answer and think of other clarifications or questions to ask, you know, like a normal human, instead of a robot who has the follow-ups ready in a second.

Better yet, I can minimize Live and go use other apps while still keeping the chat going. I’ve found this excellent while browsing or chatting with friends. I can either invoke Live mid-browsing to ask questions and get clarifications about what I’m reading, or start a regular Live chat then pull up a browser to double check what Gemini is telling me.

3. TL;DR? Ask it for a summary

As I mentioned earlier, every command is a separate instance for Google Assistant. Gemini Live considers an entire chat as an entity, which lets me do something I could never do with Assistant: ask for a summary.

So if I had a chat about places to run around in Paris and test the new Panorama mode on the Pixel 9 series, I can ask it for a summary in the end, and it’ll list all of them. This is incredibly helpful when trying to understand complex topics or get a list of suggestions, for example.

4. Want to talk more about a specific topic? Resume an older chat

At one point, I opened Gemini Live and said something like, “Hey, can we continue our chat about Paris panorama photos?” And it said yes. I was a bit gobsmacked. So I went on, and it seemed to really know where we left off. I tried that again a few times, and it worked every time. Google Assistant just doesn’t have anything like this.

Another way to trigger this more reliably is to open Gemini, expand the full Gemini app, tap on Recents and open a previous chat. Tapping on the Gemini Live icon in the bottom right here allows you to continue an existing chat as if you never stopped it or exited it.

5. Check older chats and share them to Drive or Gmail

Viewing my Google Assistant history has always been a convoluted process that requires going to my Google account, finding my personal history, and checking the last few commands I’ve done.

With Gemini, it’s so easy to open up previous Live chats and read everything that was said in them. Even better, every chat can be renamed, pinned to the top, or deleted in its entirety. Plus, every response can be copied, shared, or quickly exported to Google Docs or Gmail. This makes it easy for me to manage my Gemini Live data, delete what needs to be deleted, and share or save what I care about.

Google Assistant still has a (significant) leg up

Despite everything Gemini Live does well, there are so many instances where I felt its limitations while using it. For one, the Live session is separate from the main Gemini experience, and Live only treats general knowledge questions, not personal data. So I can ask Gemini (not Live) about my calendar, send messages with it, start timers, check my Drive documents, control my smart home, and more, just as I could with Assistant, but I can’t do any of that with Gemini Live. The latter is more of a lively Google Search experience and all the regular Gemini extensions aren’t accessible in Live. Google said it was working on bringing them over, though, and that is the most exciting prospect for me.

Gemini Live still doesn't have access to personal data, calendars, smart home, music services, etc...

Because of how it’s built and what it currently does, Gemini Live requires a constant internet connection and there’s nothing you can do without it. Assistant is able to handle some basic local commands like device controls, timers, and alarms, but Gemini Live can’t.

And for now, my experience with multiple language in Gemini Live support has been iffy at best — not like Assistant’s support of multiple languages is stellar, but it works. On my phone, which is set to English (US), Gemini Live understands me only when I speak in English. I can tell it to answer in French, and it will, but it won’t understand me or recognize my words if I start speaking French. I hope Google brings in a more natural multilingual experience to it, because that could be life-changing for someone like me who thinks and talks in three languages at the same time.

Logistically, my biggest issue with Gemini Live is that I can’t control it via voice yet. My “Hey Google” command opens up the main Gemini voice command interface, which is neat, but I need to manually tap the Live button to trigger a chat. And when I’m done talking, the chat doesn’t end unless I manually tap to end it. No amount of “thank you,” “that’s it,” “we’re done,” “goodbye,” or other words did the trick to end the chat. Only the red End button does.

Google Assistant was a stickler for sourcing every piece of info; Gemini Live doesn't care about sources.

Realistically, though, my biggest Gemini Live problem is that there’s no sourcing for any of the info it shares. Assistant used to be a stickler for sourcing everything; how many times have you heard say something like, “According to [website];” or, “on the [website], they say…?” Gemini Live just states facts, instead, with no immediate way to verify them. All I can do is end the chat, go to the transcript, and check for the Google button that appears below certain messages, which shows me related searches I can do to verify that info. Not very intuitive, Google, and not respectful to the millions of sites you’ve crawled to get your answer like, uh, I don’t know… Android Authority perhaps?

We’re almost two thirds of the way through 2024, and yet there’s only a single Android device that supports Qi2. Qi2, if you haven’t heard, is an evolution of the Qi wireless charging standard developed by the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC). The Qi2 standard was announced back in January 2023 and released in April 2023, but fast forward to today, and none of the major Android brands have released a Qi2-certified mobile device.

Or so we thought, until we learned that the Samsung Galaxy Ring is Qi2 certified. The Galaxy Ring is not only Samsung’s first smart ring product but also its first mobile device with Qi2 certification. We already knew from the launch event that the Galaxy Ring’s case can be wirelessly charged using Qi wireless charging, but we didn’t know until recently that the case is actually Qi2 certified. We learned this thanks to Samsung’s certification filing with the WPC, as shown below (H/T George Economo).

As you can see, the Samsung Galaxy Ring supports specification version 2.0.0 of the Qi wireless charging standard. In other words, it’s Qi2 certified and supports Qi2 charging. Other Qi2-certified products in the WPC database include the HMD Skyline, which is notably the first Android phone to receive Qi2 certification, and every iPhone since the iPhone 12.

The iPhone 12 supporting Qi2 charging isn’t surprising, because even though it was released in late 2021, Apple played a big role in the development of the Qi2 standard. In fact, it’s the reason the new standard even exists in the first place, as the Qi2 standard’s highlight feature is based on Apple’s MagSafe technology.

If you’ve heard of Qi2 before, then you’ve probably heard it described as “MagSafe but for Android.” That’s a mostly accurate description of Qi2 since the new standard is best known for introducing the Magnetic Power Profile (MPP), which uses magnets to align the wireless charging receiver and transmitter. By using magnets to align the charging coils perfectly, Qi2 improves energy efficiency by reducing the energy loss that would otherwise happen when the coils aren’t aligned. The magnets can also be used to attach other accessories, making Qi2 support useful for more than just charging. It’s why MagSafe adapters for Android phones have exploded in popularity in recent years.

It’s also why techies are on the lookout for Android and Android-adjacent products that support Qi2 charging and why there was so much disappointment when we learned about the Pixel 9’s wireless charging capabilities. So when we were sent a tip that the Samsung Galaxy Ring is Qi2 certified, we were naturally really excited by the discovery. Unfortunately, our excitement quickly faded once we tried to attach the Galaxy Ring’s charging case to various MagSafe and Qi2 chargers; the case just would not magnetically snap onto these chargers, suggesting it doesn’t have any magnets in the first place.

That revelation came as a surprise to many of us since the Qi2 standard has been heavily marketed for its magnetic charging capabilities. However, we’ve since learned that the Qi2 charging standard does not, in fact, mandate magnetic charging support. In fact, the Qi2 standard actually consists of two profiles: the new Magnetic Power Profile I previously mentioned as well as an “enhancement to the existing wireless charging Extended Power Profile (EPP) that does not include magnets but complies with the Qi v2.0 standard.”

According to a WPC press release from November of last year, Qi2-certified products that don’t support magnetic charging will be “branded with the existing Qi logo consumers know and use today.” The WPC’s current branding guidelines reveal that only Qi2-licensed products with MPP support can have the new Qi2 logo featured on the packaging, whereas Qi2-licensed products without MPP support cannot use the new logo.

Indeed, the Qi2 logo is nowhere to be found on the Galaxy Ring’s packaging. By digging deeper into the WPC’s database, we can see that the Galaxy Ring only supports the Baseline Power Profile (BPP) of the Qi2 standard. That means that, while the Galaxy Ring does technically support Qi2 charging, it doesn’t support the most useful aspect of the new standard: magnetic charging. Hopefully, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S25 series will support Qi2 magnetic charging, as it’s disappointing that there’s still only one Android phone out there that actually supports the new standard.

The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 are fresh off the factory, and have launched just today. While we don’t typically see discounts on newly released products, OnePlus is one of the few that make some exceptions. The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 actually hit the shelves with a $30 discount on day one. This brings the price down to $150.

Get the OnePlus Buds Pro 3 for just $150

This offer is available straight from OnePlus’ website. The discount applies to both color variants: Midnight Opus and Lunar Radiance, otherwise known as black and white.

OnePlus is known for offering good-value earbuds at a lower price than most of its competitors. Such is the case with the OnePlus Buds Pro 3. These earbuds deliver a dual-driver design, as each earbud has an 11mm woofer, a 6mm tweeter, and two DACs per unit. They are also tuned by the famous music studio Dynaudio.

The case is small, with a lovely matte finish that makes it feel more premium than the price would suggest. It looks and feels much like leather, which also gives it a touch of elegance. OnePlus has added gesture controls, allowing you to swipe and tap on the earbud stems to control audio playback.

The battery life is excellent, at about 43 hours, counting the charge in the case. You’ll also get cool features like Google Fast Pair, dual device connection, wireless charging, and an IP55 rating for water resistance. These even come with spatial audio and noise canceling that is upgraded.

Want in on this sale? You should probably sign up sooner rather than later. The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 earbuds are brand-new, which makes us think this may be a launch offer that will disappear in due time.

Of course, if you want other options, we have a list of the best wireless earbuds you can buy right now. There are plenty of alternatives there!

Setting up a new Android phone can take quite a bit of time, so if you’re in a hurry, you might be tempted to speed through the setup wizard so you can use your new phone. Depending on the device, if you decline to transfer your data from your old phone during the initial setup process, you lose the opportunity to do so at a later time. That’s been the case for Google’s Pixel phones for the longest time, but fortunately, that’s no longer true with the new Google Pixel 9 series.

It’s quite easy to back up your Android phone thanks to the backup service that’s available on every Android device with Google apps. The Google backup service lets you backup your device’s contacts, call history, settings, apps and their data, SMS messages, and MMS messages. This data is automatically backed up over Wi-Fi when your device has been idle and charging for two hours, so you don’t need to worry about keeping it up to date yourself.

When you’re setting up a new Pixel device, you can either restore it from a Google backup in the cloud or move your data from an existing device. The former is helpful for when you don’t have your previous phone anymore, while the latter is helpful for when you do as it’s much faster and allows for more data to be brought over.

If you don’t pick one of these options while you’re going through the initial setup process, they unfortunately can’t be accessed after setup has been completed. The only way to access the Google data restoration page again after completing setup is to perform a factory reset. Thankfully with the launch of the new Pixel 9, Google has finally added a way to copy your data over from your old phone after setup.

At last week’s Made by Google launch event, we spotted a new top-level entry in the Settings app on the Pixel 9 called “Back up or copy data.” Under this option, we spotted a new “copy data” page that lets you “bring data from another device.” Here, you can choose to “copy photos, contacts, messages, and more” from your previous device. The best part is that in doing so, “you won’t lose recent data” as “the data you copy is merged with the data on” your new device. Plus, if you’ve already changed some settings on your Pixel 9, those changes won’t be overwritten while copying your old device’s data.

Since we only briefly had access to the Pixel 9 series at last week’s event, we weren’t able to actually test this new post-setup data transfer feature, but we don’t see why it wouldn’t work as described. Several brands already offer a similar feature to restore data after setup, such as Smart Switch in Samsung’s One UI software, so Google adding it to the Pixel 9 is long overdue. Still, it’s nice to see Google finally include such a feature on its own devices, as it’ll make setting them up even easier for more users. Hopefully, they extend this option to devices from other brands in the future.

Earlier this year Nintendo revealed it was working on a new Pokemon trading card game for mobile, dubbed Pokemon TCG Pocket. Now it seems the game is almost here for Android users.

If you’re at all confused by TCG Pocket, we don’t blame you. On the surface, the game looks a bit similar to Pokemon TCG Live. First released in 2016, Live lets you perform competitive battles, collect cool cards, build decks, and more.

So what’s different about this new one? For starters, this new title is a mobile only experience while Live was available for multiple platforms beyond just mobile. There are also some huge differences in the approach here.

While Live has huge competitive battles and a more “game-like” feel, the idea of TCG Pocket is to replicate the collecting physical card experience. This includes getting two free packs per day of new exclusive cards, as well as the option to buy virtual decks with actual cash. Instead of huge competitive battles, TCG Pocket has more casual card battles. This is more akin to the kinds you might have had with your friends back in high school if you’re as old and nerdy as I am at least.

Pokemon TCG Pocket is available now for pre-registration and looks to be launching on October 30 in 89 different countries. For those in New Zealand, you’ll actually be able to get in on the action sooner as this country will be the test ground for a soft launch sometime ahead of the official launch.

Unfortunately, Nintendo has yet to give us a firm date for the soft launch but we imagine it’s just right around the corner.

Multiview, the feature that allows you to watch up to four screens at once, has long been an exclusive to YouTube TV. Now that feature is finding its way over to YouTube, but there’s a small catch.

Today, Google announced a few new perks it is giving to its NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers. The most notable of which are the improvements to Multiview. On YouTube TV, these football fans will be able to build a Multiview of any combination of two, three, or four NFL Sunday Ticket games. In the past, Multiview only offered preset picks, so this improvement should offer more freedom over what you watch.

The bigger news, however, is that Multiview is coming to YouTube for the first time. Unfortunately, the feature will only be available to NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers for the purpose of watching football games. Google says this option will be available at the start of the football season, which the season starts on Thursday, September 5. Users will be able to use the YouTube Multiview feature on TVs, mobile devices, and tablets.

Outside of Multiview, the company announced that NFL Fantasy and Yahoo Fantasy players can connect their accounts to Fantasy View. This way, fans can keep track of their fantasy teams without having to take their eye off the game. It has also launched a spoiler mode feature that hides scores for specific teams so you can avoid final scores if you plan to watch a game later.

This is all great news for NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers. At the same time, we hope this also means that Multiview on YouTube will eventually open up for everyone else and for other types of content.

Google introduced Ultra HDR with the Pixel 8 series, though it has since made its way to a growing range of higher-end Android flagships. Ultra HDR works similarly to a JPEG image but adds an embedded HDR gaming map in the metadata. While Google might have been the first to bring us the feature on Android, Google Photos ironically doesn’t play nice with it. At least, until now.

Previously performing photo edits on an Ultra HDR image would strip it of its Ultra HDR technology, but as first spotted by Artem Russakovskii on X, this is no longer the case for basic edits.

You can now perform actions like cropping and rotating without losing Ultra HDR in the process. Artem notes that he’s rocking a Pixel 8 Pro with version 6.95.0.663027175. A quick look at the comments in his post confirms this is working for others as well.

Google has had more than its fair share of issues with HDR photos in its Google Photo app, not just Ultra HDR. In the past HDR images in Google Photos would strip all brightness data that enabled high dynamic range, which led Google to make a workaround where it would duplicate edited HDR photos as copies instead of overwriting the original. Since then, Google has fixed the problem for HDR though it continues to create duplicates.

For its part, Google has previously said (via Android Police) it is aware that the way it handles HDR and Ultra HDR is far from perfect and it said it was working to improve the problem. With this latest update, it seems Google is starting to make good on this promise.

The iPhone 16 launch event should be just around the corner, and the internet is eagerly waiting for Apple to drop some official details. Yesterday, the hype hit a new level when a supposed leaked invite for Apple’s September event made the rounds online. The tech world, naturally, went into a frenzy. But as it turns out, the invite was a complete hoax.

The invite was initially shared on X (formerly Twitter) by Majin Bu, a leaker who has recently been in the spotlight for various Apple-related leaks. The image of the invite looked quite convincing, featuring an Apple logo in a bronze hue that matches the rumored new colorway for the iPhone 16 Pro models. The tagline, “Ready. Set. Capture.,” had everyone thinking it was a clever nod to the rumored Capture button that might be coming to all iPhones this year.

However, another X/Twitter user, @lorevfx, revealed today that they had created the “leaked” invite in under ten minutes using Figma and an AI-generated texture. They admitted to sending it to Majin Bu out of boredom and shared a timelapse video showcasing the image’s creation. They also shared the entire chat, which convinced Majin Bu that the leak was the real deal.

Thankfully, this was all in good fun, but it’s a good reminder that not everything we see online is what it seems — especially when it comes to leaks. While some leaks may be genuine, the ease with which sophisticated fakes can be created makes it increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction. Not to mention, such incidents could have severe consequences if they involve financial scams or phishing attempts.

As we await more reliable details about Apple’s upcoming event, the most credible information we have so far is that the event might take place on September 10, based on educated guesses by industry insiders. Alongside the iPhone 16 series, there’s also talk of Apple launching a few new AirPods models this year. But as always, when it comes to leaks, it’s wise to take them with a pinch of salt — or maybe a whole shaker’s worth.

Titanium phones seem to be all the rage these days, at least for Samsung and Apple. Samsung has made a big deal about the Galaxy S24 Ultra being made with the material, and now reports claim the company may also use the metal for the rumored Galaxy Z Fold 6 “Slim.”

According to The Elec, Samsung’s parts suppliers say the firm is making the final decision on whether to use stainless steel or titanium for the Galaxy Z Fold 6 Slim’s backplate. This would be the first time the tech giant has used titanium for the backplate on any of its foldables.

Up until now, the company has used either stainless steel or carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) for its backplates. Specifically, it used stainless steel up to the Fold 2, then switched to CFRP with the Fold 3 and onward. The reason why this switch was made has to do with the addition of S Pen recognition, which first appeared on the Fold 3. A digitizer is used in these devices to recognize the stylus and a metal backplate can interfere with that recognition.

It’s reported that this slim variant of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 does not have S Pen recognition support. As such, Samsung is free to use metal again for the backplate. Using titanium as the backplate material over stainless steel is not as straightforward as it would seem. Titanium is stronger and lighter than stainless steel, but it’s also harder to process.

Whatever Samsung decides, the outlet says that decision will be made soon. It also claims that the phone will be released in the fourth quarter of this year.

Don’t get your hopes up if you live in the US, however. This foldable is expected to only release in China and possibly South Korea.

In April of 2023 T-Mobile introduced two new plans, dubbed Go5G and Go5G Plus. These plans weren’t dramatically different from the existing Magenta and Magenta Max offerings. The biggest changes were adding more hotspot data and access to killer deals previously reserved for new customers only. T-Mobile isn’t done yet, as it recently announced a third plan called Go5G Next. This new plan goes into affect today. 

This new plan is almost literally identical to Go5G Plus, but it has a secret weapon that helps it stand out: yearly upgrades. In this guide, we take a look at T-Mobile Go5G Next vs Magenta and the other pre-existing T-Mobile plans. Is this finally a plan worth switching to for Magenta subscribers?

T-Mobile Go5G Next vs Go 5G Plus: Are there any differences besides yearly upgrades?

As you can see, Go5G Next has almost nothing different to offer from Go5G Plus. The only exception is the ability to upgrade your phone once a year. Premium data, hotspot data, and all other perks remain identical. Regardless of the number of lines, you’ll always pay around $10 more per line than you would for Go5G Plus. Another big change is the move away from special free phone perks and other bonuses for most T-Mobile plans, except high-tier options like Next. 

Sign up for T-Mobile

How Go5G Next yearly upgrades work

T-Mobile Go5G Next allows you to upgrade your phone in as little as six months; the only catch is you have to pay for half of it first. Unlike AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile phone terms only stretch for 24 months, meaning most folks can upgrade within 12 months of purchasing a device.

Still, there might be reasons why you’d want to upgrade earlier, like if a newer model adds some killer features you’ve always wanted. The good news is you can make additional payments if you want to get to that half-mark faster than twelve months.

Once you’ve paid at least half of your phone and have been an owner for at least six months, you can trade in your existing device and apply it toward purchasing a new one. There are no limits on what devices are eligible, and so this promotion can be used on any iPhone or Android phone.

Is the yearly upgrade perk worth the additional costs?

For most T-Mobile subscribers, it’s probably not worth paying $120 more a year over Go 5G Plus. According to T-Mobile’s own survey, about 10% of subscribers feel upgrading is a majority priority. So unless you’re part of that 10%, you’re paying extra for something you won’t use.

But if you DO like having the latest phone every 6-12 months? You’ll pay $120 more for the Next plan, but you’ll essentially be forgiven half of your phone’s payment. That said, you’ll also have to trade it in and have a new payment on your hands. So really, it depends on how much your phone cost in the first place and how much you’d get if you paid it off and sold it directly through something like eBay or Swappa.

For this thought experiment, let’s say you bought the 128GB iPhone 14 last year for $799. You’ve had it for a year now and, in that time, have paid for about half of it, leaving you with $399.50 left to pay off.

You have two options:

1. Trade-in with T-Mobile and your Next plan, they’ll pay off the remaining balance, and then you’ll get a new phone with a new payment.
2. Pay off your iPhone’s remaining $399.50 and sell it on eBay or Swappa yourself. Based on my research, you’ll get around $100 after you factor in what you still owe to T-Mobile. You can then use that $100 toward a new phone.

In a way, option 2 is cheaper. After all, you’re basically getting the same deal, but you’ll get $100 toward the new phone and skip paying the $120 premium the Next plan charges over the Plus plan. Of course, the second option ignores possible promotions and discounts that might only apply if you went through the Next plan, but I’d argue you’re still likely going to end up in the same spot at worst as far as an investment. 

Again, we’d advise really thinking about the new phone you’re getting and how much trade-in credit you’d get versus selling it yourself. Devices like iPhones retain value for longer, while many Android phones see resale values fall fast. In other words, it might be worth it for some phones but not for others.

Of course, you can’t compete with the convenience of T-Mobile 5G Go Next. Not everyone wants to jump through hoops to just barely make a savings. Ultimately, Go5G Next is a good plan for those who like to switch phones often, but we’d recommend doing your homework before jumping.

Do you have to upgrade from Magenta to a Go5G plan?

Absolutely not! T-Mobile still offers its Magenta plans even to new subscribers, though it’s pretty clear the company’s main focus is Go5G. While it’s certainly possible the Magenta tier could be phased out in the future, the good news is that it wouldn’t matter if you’re already a subscriber. 

T-Mobile will grandfather in old plans and phase them out slowly over time, so even if Magenta goes away, you have no absolute need to switch. 

Okay, but should you upgrade from Magenta to a Go5G plan, including this new next offering? For now, we don’t think there is any reason to upgrade to Magenta. The plans are so similar you should only consider an upgrade unless you are really attracted to Go5G’s larger hotspot data pool, its special deals, or the ability to trade in a phone yearly. 

The Google Pixel 8 was officially announced in late 2023 bringing quite a few improvements with it at the time, though it’s since been succeeded by the new Pixel 9 series. The Pixel 8 can often be found at a sharply discounted price these days, but it’s also pretty similar in specs to the Pixel 8a. Which of these devices should you actually buy? Good question. Let’s dive in and take a brief look at the Pixel 8 vs Pixel 8a.

Google Pixel 8a vs Pixel 8: Specs

In many ways, the Google Pixel 8a and Pixel 8 are so similar that they’re easy to compare. They share nearly identical displays, dimensions, software experiences, and update commitments, many of which we’ll get to in a minute. That said, the similarities also make it far more difficult to find daylight between the two when deciding which one is right for you.

In some ways, however, the similarities pay off for fans of the more affordable Pixel A series. Both phones pack the same Tensor G3 chipset, Titan M2 security core, and identical options for both RAM and storage. As a result, they produced almost identical results in our performance benchmarks and day-to-day usage.

As you can see in the graphs, the more affordable Pixel 8a delivers results nearly identical to those of the Pixel 8 and, in our graphically intensive stress testing, actually maintains its performance better than the flagship. While benchmarking numbers don’t usually mean too much in an average day of mixed usage, they’re often a good indicator of how well a phone will keep up, and the Pixel 8a has no problem cruising through a day of web browsing, social media scrolling, and light gaming just as well as its premium counterpart.

On top of that, the Pixel 8a and Pixel 8 ship with Android 14 out of the box and one of the best update commitments in the industry. Google decided to keep pace with Apple’s lofty promise when it added seven years of Android updates, feature drops, and security patches to the Pixel 8 series in late 2023, and now the Pixel 8a gets the same benefit. That not only puts it on par with the flagships but ahead of its similarly priced rivals.

All of these shared features also mean that both the Google Pixel 8a and Pixel 8 support the same set of AI-powered features and lean heavily on Gemini as Google transitions to its powerful new assistant (with Google also confirming Gemini Nano on-device support that will land in a future Feature Drop). You can tap into helpful extras like Circle to Search, generative wallpapers, Live Translate, and several calling features like Hold for Me, Call Screen, and Smart Replies. Both phones have plenty of photo editing options, too, which we’ll come back to down below.

Google Pixel 8a vs Pixel 8: Design, size comparison, and colors

I don’t blame you if you feel like you’re seeing double looking at the picture above. Google’s Pixel design is pretty well nailed down at this point, with flat displays and camera bars across the board, but the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a are about as close to twins as you can get.

The two devices are nearly the same height, width, and thickness despite the Pixel 8 offering an extra tenth of an inch of display real estate, sitting at 6.2 inches to the Pixel 8a’s 6.1 inches. Yet, despite its slightly smaller display, the Pixel 8a offers almost the same specs as its more polished counterpart. There’s only a weight difference of a few grams between them, something I hardly noticed while carrying both around for a few days. Both phones have 60 to 120Hz Actua Displays with 14 hundred nits of HDR and 2,000 nits of peak brightness, and they feel just about identical if you’re swiping up and down or mindlessly scrolling social media. Just note that the Pixel 8a comes locked at 120Hz by default, so you’ll have to opt in for the variable refresh rate. On top of that, the OLED panels have the same 1,080 by 2,400 resolution, meaning that the more affordable Pixel is just a hair more pixel-dense.

Honestly, I’ve found that the best way to tell the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a apart is the latter’s much rounder corners, making it feel a bit smaller in the hand — something that I thoroughly appreciate as a person with smaller hands. Google’s premium Pixel 8 sports glossy Gorilla Glass Victus on the back, too, while the Pixel 8a has a matte composite (it’s plastic, call it plastic) back that looks a bit more like the Pixel 8 Pro. Personally, I prefer the feeling of the 8a when I reach into my pocket, mostly because I know I won’t pull out a phone that’s covered in smudges. The flagship Pixel 8 is the slightly more durable of the two, using Gorilla Glass Victus on both the front and back and carrying an IP68 rating against water and dust to the Pixel 8a’s IP67.

Both Pixels also share matching in-display fingerprint readers and matching buttons and ports scattered around their aluminum frames. To my eye, both fingerprint readers seem to register at the same speed, so it’s nice to see Google keep one standard fingerprint reader instead of going cheaper for the mid-range. Also, you’ll find the power and volume controls on the right edge with a lone SIM tray holding down the left. The USB-C port is also flanked by a pair of stereo speakers.

Google Pixel 8a vs Pixel 8: Camera

Although the camera bars on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a may look the same, they have a few differences across their dual-camera setups. The Pixel 8a’s budget camera setup offers more megapixels to play with, pairing a 64MP primary camera and a 13MP ultrawide sensor. Don’t be fooled by the bigger numbers, though, as the individual pixels are slightly smaller on both sensors, meaning that the cameras aren’t quite as well equipped for lower-light scenarios. The Pixel 8a’s ultrawide sensor also has a slightly narrower 120-degree field of view and misses out on Macro Vision — a software feature that both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro support.

Moving over to the more premium Pixel, it pairs its 50MP primary camera with a 12MP ultrawide sensor, both of which are larger than the options on the Pixel 8a. On top of having slightly larger individual megapixels, the Pixel 8’s primary camera is capable of a 2x in-sensor crop, giving you a little bit more optical zoom range before switching to digital zoom.

Both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a have dual rear cameras, but the flagship packs a bit more punch.

The Pixel 8a has a slightly sharper selfie camera, too, with 13MP to the Pixel 8’s 10.5MP, though the results are pretty similar from both sensors based on our tests.

As you can see in the samples below, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a are just about neck and neck in some of the most common shooting scenarios. They’re well matched in color and details, and even the ultrawide shots are almost identical despite the slightly different fields of view.

Google Pixel 8a Google Pixel 8

There are a few slight differences when it comes to capturing selfies, though. Despite both phones defaulting to 1x zoom when you flip the camera around, not all definitions of 1x zoom are created equal. The Pixel 8a offers a much wider frame than the Pixel 8, making it much easier to fit additional people and background details into your selfie. Both shots look good as far as colors go, but it’s somewhat surprising to see such a difference between the default zoom lengths.

Google’s Pixel 8 also handles its longer zoom lengths much better than the Pixel 8a. Its larger sensor seems to maintain both color and detail better than the smaller sensor on the mid-range phone. The difference is most noticeable on finer lines like the name of the ship below and the details in the wood planks of the dock.

As far as camera features go, Macro Vision is the only major omission from the Pixel 8a — everything else is almost exactly the same. Neither device offers Google’s new Pro controls, but both can tap into Night Sight, Top Shot, Portrait Mode, Cinematic Pan, and punch in with Super Res Zoom up to 8x.

Both phones also offer similar video features, with up to 4K recording from the front and rear sensors. However, the Pixel 8 packs a few more options regarding the frame rate, with 24fps available on both front and back and 60fps on the selfie camera. Google’s Pixel 8a, on the other hand, is limited to 30fps from the selfie camera at both 4K and 1080p.

Google Pixel 8a vs Pixel 8: Battery life and charging

Given their similar overall size and specs, it’s no surprise to see the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a toting nearly identical batteries. The Pixel 8 has the slightly larger cell of the two — 4,575mAh to the Pixel 8a’s 4,492mAh — but our battery testing showed that the mid-ranger stretched its juice further in most cases. In fact, it put up better numbers while on a Zoom call, snapping photos, recording 4K video, and even significantly better 4K playback performance. Outside of the lab, both phones can easily power through a full day of usage. I got into a habit of using adaptive charging overnight and regularly found myself hitting the end of the day with at least 20% remaining.

However, one area where there’s a little bit of daylight between the Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8a is in their charging setups. The Pixel 8 is much quicker, supporting up to 27W wired charging with a compatible USB PD PPS charger, while the Pixel 8a tops out at 18W. There’s a big difference in wireless charging capabilities, too, with the more expensive device capable of up to 18W with the second-generation Pixel Stand and 12W with other Qi-enabled pads while the mid-ranger is limited to 7.5W, no matter the charger.

While the difference in charging speed from 18W to 27W may not sound too vast, our controlled testing showed that the Pixel 8a took about 20 more minutes to reach a full battery than its Pixel 8 counterpart, so it might pay to spend just a little bit more if you need to get back up and running in a hurry.

Google Pixel 8a vs Pixel 8: Price and availability

If you’re close to making your decision between buying the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a, I guess you should know how much each phone will cost you. Well, for starters, both phones are widely available in the US, both unlocked and on deals through major carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.

If you’re leaning toward the Pixel 8a, it starts at $499 with 128GB of storage — the same price as the previous Pixel 7a. It’s also available in four colors: Bay, Aloe, Obsidian, and Porcelain. Should you decide you need 256GB of storage right off the bat, it’ll set you back $559, and you’re limited to the Obsidian finish.

On the other hand, if you’re leaning toward the flagship Pixel 8, it kicks off at $699 with the same 128GB of storage. It launched in three colors, Hazel, Obsidian, and Rose, but Google has since added a fourth Mint color that’s a little softer than the Pixel 8a’s Aloe option. You can upgrade to 256GB of storage for the same $60 fee, bumping your price to $759.

Google Pixel 8a vs Google Pixel 8: Which should you buy?

Now that we’ve gone through every last piece of the Google Pixel 8 and the Google Pixel 8a, it’s about time to decide which one is right for you. Unlike a lot of comparisons where we end up saying that the right one comes down to your personal preference, there’s a pretty clear winner here — but it comes with a caveat.

The easy answer when choosing between the Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8a is to tell you to buy the flagship Pixel 8 — one of the best Android phones around — but only to do so when you can find it on sale. These two phones share so much in common, from the chipset to the camera quality to 90% of their respective designs, that Google is relying on the difference in price to sway people one way or another.

At MSRP, it's a tricky call, but recent sales for the Pixel 8 make the Pixel 8a a tough sell.

When compared at full price, the Pixel 8a seems like a great deal, given how many flagship specs it boasts, but as soon as you factor in discounts, the $200 gap suddenly feels much smaller, and the Pixel 8’s more premium aspects like faster charging and better materials feel that much more attainable.

Google Pixel 8a vs Google Pixel 8: FAQ

Opinion post by

Robert Triggs

Before countless leaks, we all expected Google’s next-gen foldable to be called the Pixel Fold 2. That would be a logical name for the successor to the Google Pixel Fold, after all. Instead, we already have a rebrand — the Pixel 9 Pro Fold aligns the new foldable with the broader Pixel 9 series. It’s a bit odd, though, least of all because it obscures which foldable generation Google is in. Maybe that’s the point?

There’s no clear-cut rule for naming products, of course. Samsung is content with an S and Z distinction between its classic and foldable phones. OPPO has the Find N series for its foldables compared to the traditional Find X flagship range. However, Motorola bundles all of its best phones under the Razr moniker, and HONOR’s Magic series accounts for all its flagships, foldable or not. Still, Google’s sudden about-face is harder to explain. Does it want us to believe the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is just a foldable version of the 9 Pro? Because it really isn’t.

Despite the name, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is not just a foldable version of the 9 Pro.

Perhaps the most exciting change to the range is that the compact Pixel 9 Pro and larger 9 Pro XL sport the very best smartphone technology Google has to offer. The Pro moniker designates feature parity, providing Google’s best performance, camera suite, storage options, build quality and protection, and all the other capabilities you’d expect from a premium flagship. However, that promise only applies to Google’s non-foldable phones.

The Fold dilutes this Pro tag. As is typical for foldables, you trade down water and dust resistance from an IP68 rating to IPX8, meaning no protection against dust ingress. If you’re a heavy media user, you can’t buy the Fold with more than 512GB storage (but at least it comes with 256GB minimum); only the non-foldable Pros come in a 1TB configuration. The 6.3-inch external display isn’t as good as the regular Pixel 9 Pro either; it has a lower resolution, lower peak and HDR brightness, and only drops from 120Hz to 60Hz rather than as low as 1Hz to save power on static content.

The Fold is slower to charge too; it’s capable of just 21W of power versus 27W on the Pro and 37W on the XL. The wireless charging situation is even worse. The Fold is capped at a bog standard 7.5W, far off the 21W available to the 8 Pro via the Pixel Stand (2nd gen) and even slower than the 15W Pixel Stand and 12W Qi charging available to the baseline Pixel 9. The Fold doesn’t support battery share either, so it can’t be used to power up your other flagging gadgets.

But perhaps the biggest offense is found in the camera department. Yes, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold has a competent triple-camera array, but it’s not in the same league as the Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL. The main, ultrawide, and telephoto sensors are all notably smaller in the Fold and offer inferior autofocus, meaning more noise in low-light environments and a greater reliance on Google’s admittedly excellent software to plug the gaps. While probably not noticeable in daylight, these differences are bound to show up in more difficult shooting situations and when using features like Astrophotography.

For a brand that prides itself on photography, the Fold has a lot of downgrades compared to Google's best.

The lower-resolution telephoto camera also can’t take 10x “optical quality” crops and only supports Super Res zoom out to 20x compared to 30x on the other two. That means inferior-looking snaps when zooming in at concerts or trying to snap distant wildlife. Likewise, the selfie camera is closer in resolution to the affordable Pixel 9 than the much-upgraded sensors in the Pro and XL, but it doesn’t list autofocus either, again hinting at weaker performance in difficult lighting.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Fold also doesn’t receive 8K cloud-based video upscaling, putting it in the same basket as the significantly cheaper Pixel 9. It can’t take full-res (48MP) photos, there’s no cinematic blur, no action pan. Ouch. For a brand that prides itself on media capture, the Fold has a lot of downgrades compared to Google’s best setup.

This isn’t to say the Fold is miles off the pace of the non-folding Pros. It still has the remainder of Google’s best software features and Pro camera controls. Plus, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold opens up a whole new world of multitasking and content viewing on that large inner display. It’s also improved over Google’s previous attempt, providing more years of support, a thinner frame, and a portrait-oriented inner display.

This is still a flagship foldable, but with an eyewatering $1,799 price tag and a new Pro moniker, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re buying the absolute best of everything that Google has to offer. However, looking past the rename, it’s clear that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold doesn’t match the rest of the 9 Pro series in every facet, particularly photography. That’s a letdown.

OnePlus’s earbuds have occupied a key spot in the hearts of Android fans. OnePlus has a few options across price points, and they are good value earbuds that pair well with your Android flagship. After launching the OnePlus Buds 3 earlier in the year, the company is now launching the OnePlus Buds Pro 3 as the latest product in its Pro-tier earbud lineup.

The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 has a dual-driver design, with an 11mm woofer and a 6mm tweeter in each earbud. OnePlus has also added two DACs (BES2700ZP) per earbud, focusing individually on the woofer and tweeter. The Buds Pro 3 also feature Dynaudio branding on the case and the earbud, reminding you that the earbuds are tuned by the famous music studio.

The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 also features up to 50dB of active noise cancelation alongside an Adaptive mode that automatically adjusts the noise cancelation level. The company also claims better performance in canceling out voices.

Another highlight of the OnePlus Buds Pro 3 is the new design. OnePlus had been reusing the same design on its past earbuds for some generations. The new Buds Pro 3 changes it up completely with a new case design that houses the earbuds in a vertical position, much like AirPods. However, the CMF (Color Material Finish) on the OnePlus Buds Pro 3 is superior to the AirPods Pro 2, making OnePlus’s earbuds feel more premium than their price tag.

The OnePlus Buds Pro 3’s plastic case has a great matte finish for the holding surface, a leather-like finish for the front and back surfaces, and a glossy finish on the inside.

The earbuds themselves do not change much in shape, though they also have a matte finish on the head and a glossy finish on the stem.

More importantly, the OnePlus Buds Pro 3 now let you swipe on the stem to control the volume and tap to control playback. OnePlus has also switched to Google’s Spatial Audio technology, opening up compatibility with the wider Android ecosystem.

With their case, these earbuds promise up to 43 hours of total listening time. They also support Google Fast Pair, dual device connection, Bluetooth 5.4, and wireless charging and have an IP55 rating. Interestingly, these also support new neck health features to help you not slouch for extended periods of time.

OnePlus Buds Pro 3 pricing and availability

The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 comes in Midnight Opus (black) and Lunar Radiance (cream) colors. The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 costs $179.99 / £199 / €199 / Rs. 11,999 and can be purchased through OnePlus’s website and other retail partners.

Qualcomm has already announced the pseudo-flagship Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 chipset and the less capable Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. Now, the company is ready to take another step down with the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor.

As the name implies, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is the least capable chip of the trio. But it still looks like a solid upgrade over the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 seen in mid-range Android phones like the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion and Redmi Note 13 Pro.

Qualcomm says the new processor’s CPU is 20% faster than the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 CPU. That’s largely due to the new CPU cores, featuring four Cortex-A720 cores and four Cortex-A520 little cores. We’ve got one Cortex-A720 core running at 2.5GHz, three A720 cores at 2.4GHz, and those four little cores clocked at 1.8GHz. Either way, we’re glad to see newer CPU cores in a mid-tier chip.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 brings a significant CPU upgrade over the older chip.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 also brings a much faster GPU, claiming a 40% speed boost over the last-generation processor. Qualcomm is also tossing in related features like its Adaptive Performance Engine for improved sustained performance in games, Adreno HDR Fast Blend for faster rendering, and 144Hz refresh rate support at WFHD+ resolution.

There was also a leak that the internal name for the new chip’s GPU was the Adreno 810. This would be a major rejig for the Adreno naming convention and bizarrely suggests a higher positioning than the Snapdragon 8 series. The company refused to confirm the internal name but may have hinted at a reason for a change.

“Regarding naming, the Adreno GPU in Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is simply the next generation of Adreno. It doesn’t mean that it is a premium tier GPU, simply that it’s a new architecture,” a representative told us. This answer suggests that the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 GPU is a new design for the segment but (unsurprisingly) isn’t a flagship-tier part.

What else does the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 offer?

The new processor also brings plenty of AI-related functionality as you’d expect in 2024. Qualcomm claims 30% better AI performance than the previous generation, along with support for “multi-language translation/transcription” and on-device AI models like Llama 2 at one billion parameters.  One notable AI model missing from Qualcomm’s announcement was Gemini Nano.

“We support a wide range of LLMs. We are working with Google towards enabling the next generation of Gemini models for Snapdragon mobile platforms,” the company told us when we asked whether the chip supported Gemini Nano.

The chip also touts two camera-focused AI features in the form of AI Remosaic (a process typically used to produce ultra-high-resolution images) and AI Video Retouch for real-time tone-mapping. Staying with the camera specs, you can expect support for 200MP snapshots, 64MP single capture, up to 21MP+21MP+21MP triple camera capture, and 4K HDR video support. Unfortunately, 4K/60fps support isn’t listed while slow-motion video still tops out at a measly 120fps at 1080p.

Qualcomm also says the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 brings 12% better power savings compared to the previous generation. That’s good news if all you want out of your mid-range phone is a no-frills yet long-lasting device.

Other notable details include a 4nm TSMC design, Bluetooth 5.4, support for various AptX codecs (Adaptive, Lossless, Voice), peak downlink speeds of 2.9Gbps, Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ tech, and Wi-Fi 6E.

Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 will first be adopted by Xiaomi with the first device slated for launch in September. However, the chipmaker added that Realme, Samsung, and Sharp are also working on devices with this chip.

We’re particularly keen to see what Galaxy device uses this mid-range processor. Samsung has typically used Exynos chips in its most prominent Galaxy A phones, but we have seen mid-range Snapdragon chips used in devices like the M and F series. We can’t rule out this chip coming to a cheap Galaxy tablet, either.

Update, August 20, 2024 (07:25 AM ET): Google is finally rolling out the “Show less” option to hide unwanted faces from surfacing Memories without completely blocking them from group photos. Google has a new support page that explains the difference between the Block and Show less options. People who are Blocked will not appear in memories or group photos, while the Show less option will hide them from memories but keep them around in group photos.

Original article, May 1, 2024 (03:30 AM ET): Google Photos has several neat features that make it one of the best photo storage apps around. The service has an uncanny ability to spot faces, and it gets it right most of the time, even in very challenging situations. These faces are then used for several features, like People Search and Memories. But sometimes, as your life evolves, you’d want to see less of some faces, especially in Memories. Google Photos is preparing to make that happen, giving you more control of which faces you see regularly through the Memories feature.

Android Authority contributor Assemble Debug spotted an upcoming feature in Google Photos v6.81.0.628906483. You will soon be able to use a “Show less” option to have a face not show up in your Memories but still be visible in your group photos. This appears to be a milder version of the “Block face” option, which makes faces completely disappear from Memories and group photos.

The “People & Pets” section in Google Photos, where you name the faces that appear in your photos, will have a new “Hide face from memories” section, as you can see in the first screenshot above. Adding a face to the section will open the dialog box in the second screenshot.

A new settings flow will also be created to accommodate the change. You will be able to access it through Settings > Preferences > Memories > Hide people & pets.

This new feature is not currently live within the app. Google is currently testing the feature within the app, so it may roll out in the future. It’s not clear if and when this rolls out, but considering its utility in keeping some unpleasant memories away, we hope to see it roll out soon.

Alongside the new Pixel 9 series, Google rolled out its redesigned Pixel Weather app, which aims to please pluviophiles and minimalists alike. Google has a penchant for creating copies of apps it already has, especially since it only recently updated the older weather app. However, Pixel Weather will eventually trickle down to older Pixel models.

Beyond the visual changes, the app also introduces Gemini-powered summaries that reduce the swathe of weather factors and figures into a sentence or two that anyone can understand. The idea is to make checking a forecast as easy as possible without combing through numbers and icons across multiple hours.

That all sounds great, but what do our readers think of the Pixel Weather app?

Yes, the frog is gone

For the most part, the app’s reception has been positive. In a poll visited by over 2,600 readers, 45.4% of respondents like the look of the new app, despite the changes. However, the doubters follow close behind. 38.5% of readers don’t like the app, which once again highlights how divisive app design can be. The remaining 16% of readers are “indifferent.”

The vote is on a knife-edge, but the comments explain why that might be the case. Those in the positive camp are happy with the inclusion of some metrics, like the air quality index (AQI), while others were won over by the “simple looks.” Others were more reductive: “I like it,” writes one reader.

On the other hand, those who dislike the app seem to focus on two absent features. “Noooo, let me keep my frog, please,” cries one reader, while another writes, “I demand for the frog to stay.” Unfortunately, Google’s fan-favorite frog has been relocated from the simplified design, and so has its cutesy, animated, weather-related habitat.

Others lament the lack of a weather radar, which would allow them to view conditions in real-time throughout the day. “As a person who works outside, I just need an easy-to-access radar section. I hate the Weather Channel, but I’m forced to use it because it has the best radar I’ve seen,” notes one user.

My biggest bugbear with the app is its lack of granular information. Yes, it offers plenty of immediate and long-term forecast information, but it lacks extended wind, rain, and pressure visualizations. The movable widgets are also an odd choice. They don’t display as much information as the cards on the outgoing app and take up far too much real estate on screen. If minimalism was the goal, these elements suggest otherwise.

This is a new app, so expect Google to implement updates and tweaks throughout its lifetime. It will be interesting to see which elements the company focuses on going forward.

It’s worth noting that those running Android 14 devices can also snag the APK and experience the app for themselves. I’ve installed it on a foldable, and the hourly and 10-day forecasts are surprisingly serviceable on larger displays. However, owing to the issues I raised in the previous paragraph, I don’t think I’d trade this app for my favorite weather apps anytime soon. It seems many readers feel this way, too.

The iPhone 15 arrived late last year. If you haven’t picked it up yet it will set you back quite a chunk of change, depending on the model and storage size. Is there a way to get a free iPhone 15? Actually yes. There is a catch, though.

Where can you get a free iPhone 15?

So back to that catch we mentioned. No one is going to give you a free iPhone for nothing. The only way to get it is through your carrier and there might be a few hoops to jump. Also, be aware you’ll typically see these ‘free phones’ in the form of credit discounts over a long period of months. If you cancel your plan or change up phones sooner than expected, you may end up owing back some money.

Below we take a quick look at the carriers and retailers currently offering an iPhone 15 for free when you sign up.

Verizon

Verizon is actually offering a few iPhone 15 deals. First, if you trade in an eligible iPhone you can get up to $830 offer. That’s not enough to cover an iPhone Pro model, but it’s enough to cover the base iPhone 15 and almost completely cover the Plus as well.

There’s another deal that doesn’t require a trade-in, but you do need to add a new line. Both new and existing accounts are eligible, but this really only works for existing customers if you are planning to add a new family member. This deal will give you $830 off. This price is enough to cover the base iPhone 15 Pro, but you’ll still likely have to shell out a few hundred for the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile is also offering quite a few free iPhone 15 deals. The best deal gives new customers four lines and four iPhone 15 units for just $25 a month per line. Don’t need four lines? You can also get just one iPhone 15 via 24 monthly credits if you add a new line and port a new number over to the Go5G Next plan.

AT&T

AT&T no longer offers the latest iPhone for free but you can get it for as little as $4 a month by trading in an eligible phone and signing up for one of its unlimited plans. You’ll get up to $830 with qualifying trades. Your phone didn’t make the cut? Some older models will qualify for smaller discounts as well, such as the older iPhone X series.

Boost Infinite

Boost Infinite is also offering a free iPhone 15 deal, specifically the Pro model. All you need to do is sign up for the Boost Infinity Access Plan. No trade-in is necessary. This makes Boost’s offer the best iPhone deal, though not everyone will be willing to make a switch to a whole new carrier to take advantage. Nonetheless, this is a heck of an offer.

FAQ

One of the most disappointing things about the original Pixel Watch was that it couldn’t actually be repaired. Instead, users would need to get a replacement watch. This trend seemingly continued with the Pixel Watch 2, and it now turns out the brand-new Pixel Watch 3 can’t be repaired, either.

In response to an Android Authority query, a Google representative revealed the steps you need to take if your Pixel Watch 3 is damaged:

If your device is damaged, you can contact the Google Pixel Watch Customer Support Team to check your replacement options.

The above statement didn’t mention repairs, so does that mean the Pixel Watch 3 can’t be repaired at all?

“Correct! Pixel Watch 3 is replacement only,” the representative told us in response to a follow-up question.

The Google representative also noted that Preferred Care is available in the US. This insurance program covers accidental damage and out-of-warranty issues, although Pixel Watch 3 owners still have to pay a $49 service fee. Needless to say, you’ll be getting a replacement smartwatch instead of a repaired device.

This is nevertheless a disappointing turn of events as it strongly suggests that any broken Pixel Watch 3 units could end up in landfills. This is also bad news if you were hoping to keep your new Google smartwatch for years and wanted to swap out the battery or conduct any repairs yourself.

Budgeting for a smartphone is an expensive undertaking. Do you fork out and grab one of the best phones around, or do you opt for something more affordable? There’s a lot to weigh up, but something that isn’t always considered alongside new hardware is the carrier plan. Whether you’re paying off your handset monthly or leaning on those voice minutes or high-speed 5G data, every modern user and handset needs a plan.

We’re spoiled for choice of phone plans in 2024, but one thing’s certain: no one wants to spend more than they really need. With that in mind, we want to know how much you spend monthly on your personal phone plan. We’re only interested in personal plans for a single user, not those covering multiple users or families. How much do you spend per month? Be sure to let us know by voting in our poll below.

We’re well aware that many of the feature-filled plans are priced above the $15 mark. Limited data and other cons often hamstring those paying less. After all, not all of us can afford unlimited plans. Moving to a postpaid plan is often a more attractive arrangement, especially if you don’t require a new handset. There are several plans at or below this price point worth your consideration, as detailed in our best prepaid deals for $15 or less guide.

When we last ran this poll in 2022, most users were paying $40 or more, with the $10 to $19.99 mark also proving quite popular. Importantly, we didn’t exclude family plans from that particular poll, but it’ll be interesting to see how inflation and other financial trends have changed users’ willingness or ability to spend.

Of course, our comments are always open. Be sure to include more details about your particular plan in the comments, including carrier, data, and other limits, and how it has treated you.

Google’s Pixel phones have been powered by semi-custom Tensor processors since 2021, but these chips have never really been a major threat to rival flagship processors in most benchmarks. Now, a Google executive has reportedly claimed that the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 series isn’t designed for benchmarks.

“When we are designing the chip, we’re not designing it for speeds and feats. We’re not designing it to beat some specific benchmark that’s out there. We’re designing it to meet our use cases,” Google Pixel product manager Soniya Jobanputra told the Financial Express.

The executive also noted that improving app launch speeds were a priority with the new chip:

We knew that we had a pain point with opening apps. And so as we built G4, we really focused on, okay, what do we need to do to make sure that experience is better for users.

Google Tensor: A history of AI over benchmarks?

This isn’t a new stance from Google, though. Company representatives have long asserted that the Tensor chips weren’t designed with raw horsepower in mind. Google Silicon executive Monika Gupta noted back in 2022 that the company was “comfortable” not winning benchmarks because the Tensor chips were built for AI features.

Fellow Google Silicon executive Phil Carmack also told Ars Technica back in 2021 that they opted for two big CPU cores in the original Tensor chip as it was the best solution for efficiency. He claimed that one big CPU core — seen in rival chips of the era — was only useful for winning single-thread benchmarks. So there’s a clear history of Google dismissing benchmarks as a consideration, subsequently lagging behind rivals in this category.

However, Google’s claim that it prioritizes efficiency and AI use cases does deserve closer scrutiny. For one, owners of Tensor-powered Pixels have complained about battery life for years, although the Pixel 8 series seemed like a step in the right direction. Furthermore, we’ve seen phones with non-Tensor chips offering impressive AI features too, such as the Samsung Galaxy S24 series. So you clearly don’t need a Tensor-powered phone if you want nifty AI use cases.

There’s also evidence that the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 series was supposed to be a more ambitious chip. According to previous reports, Google initially wanted the Pixel 9 chip to be a fully custom design manufactured by TSMC instead of long-standing partner Samsung. However, these same reports suggest that Google missed a deadline for this ambitious chip and decided to go for a Tensor G4 chip that was an incremental upgrade over the Tensor G3. These claims seem to bear out as the Tensor G4 shares plenty in common with the Tensor G3 (i.e. GPU, media decode blocks, TPU), with the exception of the CPU and modem.

Google introduced a new set of ringtones, alarms, and notification sounds with the Pixel 9 series earlier this month. The collection, dubbed “Sound Matters,” is composed of “the beautiful and diverse sounds of birdsong,” and it’s now rolling out to older Pixel models.

The Sound Matters collection includes six new ringtones, six alarm sounds, and four notification sounds that will be available on Pixel 4 and newer models. The collection is rolling out with version 3.1 (642123347) of Google’s Sounds app (via 9to5Google), and it should reach all users in the coming days.

You can find these ringtones and notification sounds by navigating to the Sound & vibration option in the device settings and selecting the Sound Matters collection in the Phone ringtone, Default notification sound, and Default alarm sound options. It includes the following ringtones, alarms, and notification sounds:

• Ringtone sounds:
  • Cape Turtle Dove at Dawn
  • Botswana Bushveld at Dawn
  • Limpopo Riverbed at Dawn
  • Zimbabwe Savannah at Dawn
  • Arrow-Marked Babbler at Dawn
  • Water Thick-Knee at Dawn
• Alarm sounds:
  • Limpopo Savannah at Dawn
  • Botswana Bushveld at Dawn
  • Zimbabwe Savannah at Dawn
  • Limpopo River at Dawn
  • Limpopo Riverbed at Dawn
  • Zimbabwe Hills at Dawn
• Notification sounds:
  • Meyer’s Parrot at Dawn
  • Limpopo Riverbed at Dawn
  • Crested Francolin at Dawn
  • African Fish Eagle at Dawn

Google says that it partnered with award-winning wildlife sound recordist George Vlad to capture these sounds in the remote and wild areas of Botswana and Zimbabwe. The company has released a one-hour recording of the Full Dawn Chorus on the Made by Google YouTube channel. This recording will also be available in the Fitbit app.

WhatsApp has been working on supporting usernames for months. The messaging app could soon allow users to opt for unique handles to reach others without sharing their phone numbers. A new WhatsApp beta build has now revealed that the company may also let users set PINs to limit spam and unwanted interactions.

According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.24.18.2 references PIN support when setting up a username. If the feature comes to fruition, you will be able to select a PIN as an optional safety measure. This way, those with your WhatsApp username will still need the chosen digits to initiate a chat with you.

This feature could make it challenging for spammers and other bad actors to contact you, as you will always be able to change your PIN if someone posts it publicly. WhatsApp may also let you turn off the PIN altogether if you want to make your profile more easily accessible.

Beyond PINs, WhatsApp will likely let users choose whether new chats reveal their usernames or phone numbers. By opting for the former identification method, users can conceal their phone numbers completely, making WhatsApp a more private messenger.

Keep in mind that WhatsApp usernames and PINs are still under development, and these features are unavailable to beta testers yet. As a result, there’s no telling when and if the company will roll them out to its users.

Google has been working on adding dual-SIM support for RCS chats in Google Messages for quite a while. Code related to the feature first appeared in a beta version of the app in January this year, after which the feature briefly rolled out for a few users. Google subsequently pulled the feature, but it might now be ready for rollout.

According to a recent report on Reddit (via 9to5Google), dual-SIM support for RCS chats has appeared again with the latest Google Messages beta (version 20240813_00_RC00) for a Nothing Phone 2 user in India. A screenshot of the RCS chat settings page shared by the user shows two connected SIM cards underneath the option to enable RCS chats.

The screenshot also includes a new “Backup format for sending attachments” setting with a description stating “SMS with a link.” This setting seems to be related to the Google Photos integration that was removed from the Messages app last year, which allowed users to upload media to the cloud and share it as a link to avoid compression. It’s not clear if this feature is making a comeback, as it’s not live in the beta release.

Dual-SIM support for RCS chats, on the other hand, is live in the beta release and will likely reach users on the stable channel with a future update. However, Google has yet to announce the rollout officially, so we may have to wait a while before it’s widely available.

Update, August 20, 2024 (12:22 AM ET): Users are reporting that the Song Search/Audio Search feature in Circle to Search is now rolling out.

The feature has been spotted on Samsung Galaxy flagships, but it should soon become available on all phones that support Circle to Search.

Original article, August 12, 2024 (02:44 PM ET): There are plenty of ways to identify a song these days. There are apps like SoundHound and Shazam that can help, or you could even use the Pixel’s Now Playing feature to have the song’s name and artist displayed on your lock screen. Soon there could be one more method you can use to figure out what music you’re listening to.

Back in June, we discovered through an APK teardown that Google is working on a new function for Circle to Search (CTS). This new function is called “Audio search,” and it’s an ability that can identify music. When we found this feature, we surmised that it would help identify songs playing on your device, but it appears that was only half of the story.

In beta version 15.32.36 of the Google app, we were able to activate this feature and provide a first look to show how it works (see video above). In addition to identifying songs playing on the device, it appears it can also identify music that’s playing ambiently, even if you’re just humming it.

To use the feature, you just have to bring up CTS as you normally would. To the right of the search field, you’ll now see a button with a music note icon. Tapping on this button initiates a “listening” overlay where Google will then perform a search for the song.

When using the feature, an alert will inform the user that CTS can search for songs now. This alert is likely a one-time thing to ensure users are aware of the new feature.

In our demonstration, the search fails, but this is likely due to a server-side issue. Although we performed the search while in YouTube Music, it should work anywhere as evidenced in the above screenshots.

Google lets you customize the Discover feed on your device to show news and updates based on your interests. In addition, it lets you add four cards at the top of the feed that show you the current air quality and weather in your location, along with stock prices from a customized company watchlist and score updates from your favorite sports teams. Soon, Google could add another card to the mix that will provide updates on new and upcoming movies and TV shows.

We spotted the upcoming card in a teardown of the latest beta update for the Google app (version 15.32.37.28) and managed to enable it ahead of the official rollout. As you can see in the attached screenshots, the Customize menu for the Discover feed will show a new TV and Movies option when the card rolls out.

Enabling the TV and Movies option will add a new card at the top of the feed underneath the Search bar, which will show information about new and upcoming movies and TV shows. For movies, the card will include the title and runtime, along with a small preview of the movie’s poster. The card will also highlight if the movie is playing in theaters or if it’s available on another platform.

We were not able to surface a similar card for a TV show, so we can’t confirm if it will be any different. But we expect it to include basic information like the title, a poster, the platform on which the show is available, and perhaps the number of episodes. We’ll have to wait until the official rollout to know for sure.

Most smartphones no longer come with chargers, leaving us all with the burden of having to find a charger to use with our new electronics. Not only that, but you have to worry about picking the right charger, and finding one that can reach the speeds we need to fast-charge our smartphones. The Anker 713 Charger is a charger we usually recommend, and it is available at a 51% discount right now. This brings the total price to a mere $19.59.

Get the Anker 713 Charger for just $19.59

This offer is available directly from Amazon. It is labeled as a “limited time deal,” which tells us the sale should end relatively soon.

Multiple things make the Anker 713 Nano II 45W a great charger for most people. For starters, it is super small. Thanks to GaN technology, Anker can make this charger just 1.49 x 1.38 x 1.62in and weighs just 2.44oz. Despite its tiny size, it is a mighty powerful charger.

There is a single USB-C port available, which can reach up to 45W. That is enough to fast-charge most modern high-end phones, including the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL. It also has support for Power Delivery PPS, which is a necessity to reach maximum charging speeds with many of the best smartphones.

While we are focusing on smartphones here, this charger can do more than juice up handsets. It can also power tablets and even many laptops, even if not always at full speeds.

At just under $20, this could be the best charger you can find. You should probably sign up for one soon, as we’re not sure how long the offer will last. If you want to consider some alternatives, though, you can also take a look at our list of the best wall chargers.

Extra charger deals from UGREEN and GravaStar!

While the Anker 713 Charger is great for most people, some of you will want more out of your wall charger. Here are some hot deals we also found today.

If you want the most power possible, the UGREEN Nexode Pro 160W USB-C Charger has a max output of 160W and can charge a single device at a maximum of 140W. It also has enough ports to charge four devices at once. You can pick this one up for $102, down from $120. The only caveat is that the deal is only available for Prime subscribers.

If you prefer something a bit more fun, the UGREEN Uno Charger 65W is also 28% off, bringing the cost down to $36. It has two USB-C ports, a USB-A port, and a 65W max output. Not to mention, it is one of the coolest chargers we’ve seen! Sadly, this offer is also only available to Amazon Prime customers.

The GravaStar Alpha65 GaN 65W Wall Charger is available to everyone for just $35. Its features are nearly identical to those of the UGREEN Uno Charger 65W. It also has two USB-C ports, a USB-A connection, and a 65W output. The robot design is also much more aggressive and anime-styled, though some of you might prefer it.

Compared to how people got their entertainment 25 years ago, our modern era of streaming just feels so much more civilized. Beyond having access to a greater variety of content than probably any other audience has enjoyed in history, we’re actively in charge of what we’re watching, in a way that feels particularly empowering. But for as far as we’ve come from the days of messing around with rabbit ears to get a weak station to come in, problems still happen, and it looks like Google TV ran into some major issues over the weekend.

In a thread over on the Android TV Reddit sub, user PDPopper shared word of a Google TV outage, ultimately being joined by dozens of voices confirming with their own issues (h/t Johnathan Saunders). Problems look like they first started popping up sometime around Saturday mid-day (Eastern), and we see users reporting the situation resolving by the small hours of Sunday morning.

During that time period, viewers were able to access Google TV services, including both the mobile app and the TV platform. The app basically stopped showing anything at all, while on affected sets, users were still able to stream with third-party apps, but the For you screen no longer worked, and they couldn’t access Google’s Live linear streams.

Some users were able to figure out a work-around to still access their previously purchased media, by way of going through YouTube, which hopefully got them through the afternoon just fine. By Sunday morning, reports had dried up, and it looked like everything was working just like normal.

We’ve reached out to Google to see if we can get any further insight into what happened with this outage, and will update this post to share any statement the company provides.

Google has just rolled out the Pixel Watch 3, and it’s already being hailed as the company’s best smartwatch yet. The Pixel Watch now offers a unique blend of Google’s top-tier software and Fitbit’s legendary fitness tracking, making it one of the most well-rounded smartwatches to date. But here’s the kicker: it might be the only smartwatch you’ll be seeing from Fitbit moving forward.

In an interview with Engadget, Sandeep Waraich, senior director of product management for Pixel Wearables, hinted at the future of Fitbit’s smartwatch lineup. When questioned about the potential for new Fitbit smartwatches, Waraich stated, “Pixel Watch is our smartwatch part of the portfolio.”

Before you gasp, Fitbit isn’t disappearing altogether. The report notes that while the Fitbit brand will stick around, its focus will be solely on fitness trackers like the Inspire, Luxe, and Charge series, leaving the smartwatch game to the Pixel Watch line.

We reached out to Google for a comment, and the company had this to say:

“We are very committed to Fitbit, and even more importantly to the customers that use and depend on those products and technology. It’s also worth noting that many of the health and fitness features we launched in Pixel Watch 3 were because of Fitbit’s innovation and ground-breaking fitness advancements. In addition, we just launched Fitbit Ace LTE, and you’ll continue to see new products and innovation from Fitbit.”

Now, while this statement shows Google’s love for Fitbit, it doesn’t really address the elephant in the room. The statement keeps things vague about whether we’ll actually see any new Fitbit *smartwatches*. Instead, it talks up Fitbit’s fitness features being integrated into the Pixel Watch — a detail that, while true, leaves the original report’s assertion basically unchallenged.

When you look at what Google's been doing with Fitbit recently, it kind of makes sense.

The company never explicitly announced any plans to phase out the brand. However, there have been clear signs, like the Fitbit Sense 2 being an objective downgrade from the original Sense. Ever since the Pixel Watch came along, it felt like Fitbit smartwatches were being nudged out of the spotlight. The older Fitbit Versa 3 and Sense models boasted features like third-party app support, Wi-Fi connectivity, and Google Assistant integration, which are absent in the newer Versa 4 and Sense 2.

Given these developments, one could argue that rather than continuing to release diluted versions of Fitbit smartwatches, Google might be better off retiring the Fitbit smartwatch line entirely. This would preserve the brand’s reputation rather than risking it with subpar offerings. For fans of Fitbit, there is still hope that the brand’s legacy will continue through its fitness trackers, like the Fitbit Charge 7.

Dispatch, a new launcher for Android and Google TV devices, has rolled out and is ready for public use. Initially announced on Reddit over a year ago, Dispatch recently closed its beta testing phase, and the launcher is now available for download on the Google Play Store.

This announcement was made by Paul Dhaliwal, the developer of Dispatch, via a Reddit post. A noteworthy highlight of the launcher is that it is completely ad-free, giving users access to a far cleaner interface than what is found on most other launchers today. Additionally, Dispatch also integrates with Plex, which is great for users who prefer tailored watchlists that are based on their existing media libraries.

Another standout feature of Dispatch is its extensive customization options, including the ability to hide content that doesn’t interest you as well as the option to toggle on or off any row of content you see on Dispatch’s homepage. So, for instance, if you’re not subscribed to Prime Video, you can hide that particular row so it doesn’t appear on your homepage and clog up your feed.

The launcher includes other user-focused features as well, which can either be enabled or disabled. This level of customization ensures you’re able to consume your preferred content in an environment that’s free of distractions and in line with your exact preferences.

If you’re interested in signing up for Dispatch, you can currently take advantage of the free 14-day trial and explore all the features of this launcher. After the trial period, you can purchase a lifetime license for $9.99 or a monthly license for $0.99.

Many of the latest Samsung devices support seven years of OS and security updates, which means the phones will still be safe to use and feature all the best new software improvements for a long time to come. There’s just one issue: there’s a good chance your battery won’t make it that long before you run into serious degradation. Is there anything you can do to slow this process down? Actually yes, and there’s a simple routine to help you do it, as first suggested on Reddit.

What we want to do is limit your phone from charging past 90%, or 80% (or even lower) if you prefer. Why does this help?  Simply put, charging a battery from zero to 100 percent is pretty hard on a phone. There are many who recommend never letting your phone drop below about 20% and never charging it more than 80 to 90%, such as sources like Battery University. In fact, charging your phone multiple times from 20 to 80% is just as detrimental to battery life as charging from zero to 100 once.

I always try to get my phone onto the charger when it gets about below 2, personally, though I admit I tend to fully charge to 100% most of the time. To limit your charging to 90% you’ll need to actually set up two different routines. And yes, we tested this ourselves to ensure it works as it should.

Let’s jump in and show you how to limit your battery life using Samsung routines:

1. To set up the first routine, you’ll start by going to Settings > Modes and Routines > Routines.

2. Next, you’ll want to click on the Plus symbol at the top to create a new routine.

3. A new window will pop up with If and Then fields. Click the Plus on If, and in the search box enter Charging Status. Make sure you select the wired and wireless options under charging if they aren’t already on. Select done.

4. Next, we’ll hit the Plus symbol next to If once more. Search for Battery Level and set the interval to 90 (or whatever you wish to cap your battery at) and ensure the Below option is selected. Hit the Done button on your touchscreen.

5. Go to the Then column in your Routine and hit the Plus button. You’ll want to select the action Battery Protection by typing it into Search.

6. Set Battery protection to On, and Maximum. This will ensure your battery will stop charging at the specified percentage. Hit Done.

Now it’s time to set up the second routine:

Follow the same steps as before to start creating a new routine:

1. Start by clicking the Plus symbol on the If section.

2. Put Charging Status into the search box. Just like before, you’ll want to make sure you set the Charging status for both wired and wireless.

3. Next you’ll want to add the condition battery level as well, setting it to above or equal to 90%.

4. Finally, you’ll want to go to the If set and select the action Battery Protection. Set the action to Max and ensure Battery Protection is set to On.

If you were successful you should now have two different charging routines. In the example above we used the Green and Red power symbols and Charging Protection on/off to identify them, but again you can use whatever works best for you.

Let’s be honest here: Even with careful planning it’s still very likely you won’t make it a full seven years without noticeable battery impact, but limiting your charge capacity can potentially buy you a few more years with it than you’d have otherwise. Of course, the best move is to replace the battery yourself or through a professional repair service after a few years.

Google’s next major mobile OS release is on its way, with Android 15 expected to formally arrive a little later this year. That’s going to introduce plenty of tweaks and new additions, like support for Satellite SOS during emergencies. One particular change we’re looking forward to involves the platform’s integration with note-taking apps, allowing users to quickly access their preferred note app right from the lock screen. Today we’re checking out the progress one of those apps is making towards adding support for this new Android 15 feature.

As we mentioned back when first sharing news of Android 15’s note-app lock screen support, this isn’t just going to work by default with whatever app you use to take notes now (and no, saving notes as drafts in Gmail doesn’t count). Developers have to intentionally build support for this new way of accessing their software, including the appropriate steps towards preserving privacy, considering we’re doing all this right from the lock screen. Google Keep has been ready to go for ages already, and now we think we’ve spotted what could be the next major app to do its own preparations.

We’re checking out Microsoft OneNote version 16.0.17928.20054 beta, in which we observe the presence of the following strings:

<string name="feature_notes_role_description_when_permission_disabled">Allow to make OneNote as "Default Notes App"</string>
<string name="feature_notes_role_description_when_permission_enabled">Add Lock Screen Note Taking shortcut from settings</string>
<string name="feature_notes_role_enable_button">Enable Lock Screen Notes</string>
<string name="feature_notes_role_title">Lock Screen Notes - Take notes over lock screen</string>
<string name="permission_notes_role_disable_description">Are you sure you want to remove OneNote as “Default Note Taking App” ?</string>
<string name="permission_notes_role_enable_description">We need permission to make OneNote as “Default Note Taking App” to enable this.</string>
<string name="setting_notes_role_summary">Turn this on to quickly jot down notes over Lock Screen.</string>
<string name="setting_notes_role_title">Lock Screen Sticky Notes</string>

Indeed, being able to choose an app as your default notes app is fundamental to Android 15’s lock screen support, and further strings here confirm Microsoft’s work towards preparing that compatibility. But even on Android 14, we should be able to set a primary notes app (after enabling it in developer settings, anyway) — and despite the progress we seem to be seeing here, you’re still not able to do that with OneNote. That suggests to us that Microsoft’s still working on setting OneNote up with the permissions and roles it will ultimately need.

With Android 15 still in beta, Microsoft has at least a few more weeks to get OneNote ready if it intends to have lock screen support ready for the platform’s release. Right now, our best estimate places that as happening sometime this fall.

Are you looking for the best headphones around? We have a sister site dedicated to audio, and our coworkers at SoundGuys deem the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones the best for most people. That said, these are pretty pricey at the usual $400 price point. Waiting for the right sale to hit makes all the difference, and right now, the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones are at the same record-low prices we saw during Prime Day: $298.

Get the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones for just $298

This deal is available from Amazon. The discount applies to all color versions of the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones: Black, Midnight Blue, and Silver.

We have a list of the best headphones available over at SoundGuys.com, and the #1 spot belongs to the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones. This is because this model offers great performance across the board. The audio quality is outstanding, and it is still one of the headsets with the best ANC quality around. Even the microphone is excellent.

Additionally, battery life is stunning at nearly 32 hours with ANC on, according to our standard battery test for headphones. Turn off ANC, and that time will go up to an insane 53 hours. Of course, you’ll also get cool features worthy of a high-end headset. These include touch controls, Find My Device support, and Bluetooth multipoint capabilities.

Again, this is the same discount we saw during Amazon Prime Day, and it also happens to be a record-low price for these fantastic headphones. If we were you, we wouldn’t think too long about buying the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones. The price might go back to normal soon, and these are still the best headphones around.

The Google Pixel 9 series will arrive with Android 14 instead of Android 15, but there are still plenty of software improvements to be found here, especially when it comes to AI. There are at least ten new AI features that we are aware of, with some of the most exciting additions being Gemini Live, Add Me, and Pixel Studio.

Historically Google has announced new software and AI features but not all of them have rolled out right away. The good news is that most of the new features are arriving at launch, though at least a few won’t be ready at launch. With that in mind, let’s jump right in and take a brief look at some of the biggest new AI features on the Pixel 9 series.

Pixel 9 AI features that are ready from day one

Let’s start with all the Pixel 9 features that are live from day one. All of these are available for the entire Pixel 9 series unless otherwise indicated.

Magic Editor adds auto frame and Reimagine

There are two new Magic Editor features, both of which will at least be temporarily exclusive to the Pixel 9 family. The former automatically frames your selected target, even if that requires expanding the photo using AI. The second feature lets you swap out backgrounds to add fireworks, pink clouds, and more.

Google Keep Magic List

You can now talk to Gemini and have it make you a grocery or to-do list using Google Keep. You don’t even have to put specific list items, just say the meals, and it can do the rest. Obviously, how well this works will probably depend on how specific you get. We hope that you can even give it specific sites with the recipes you want, and it will do the work, but for now, that remains unclear until we have more hands-on time with the devices.

Gemini Live

You can now have live natural conversations with Gemini using Gemini Live, with your choice of ten different voices to pick from. While it will be available from day one, it is initially exclusive to Gemini Advanced users. We’ve tested Gemini Live out for ourselves and found it to be very impressive so far.

Pixel Screenshots

Pixel Screenshots uses on-device AI to analyze all your screenshots. You can then ask Gemini questions and it can pull up information from the screenshots in the form of easily digestable answers.

Call Notes

Call Notes is built into the phone app and lets you record your calls. From there it will create a transcript and use Gemini to create a brief summary of the call. You can even search for these summaries and transcripts at any time in the future just by asking Gemini. This feature may not be available at launch in all regions, so your mileage will vary.

Pixel Studio

Pixel Studio is a brand new AI-powered app using Imagen 3. You can create new images through text prompts easily, but that’s not all. There’s even the ability to edit and modify these images after they are created. This allows you to better refine the image on the fly without having to completely generate a new one.

Pixel Weather

This isn’t just a regular weather app, as it adds a few extra AI features to the mix including the ability to make AI weather summaries about the expected conditions and more. Pixel Weather is far from the most exciting addition to Google’s Pixel AI feature set, but it’s still a nice extra.

Add Me

Add Me is arriving at launch but will initially be listed as Preview (beta) feature. Add Me lets one user take a group photo, and then another user swaps out while the first user takes the spot they would have occupied if they could have been in the image with everyone the first time. Gemini then takes these two images and stitches them together, making it look like the whole group was all present in the shot at once.

Pixel 9 AI features that won’t be ready until later

While most of the features above will be ready right away, it seems that a major update to Video Boost is on its way in the future, but won’t be ready for launch.

Video Boost was introduced last year as a way to improve video quality, so it’s technically not new, but we’re counting it due to just how big an update this is. Rendering is now 2x faster, it works on zoom up to 20x, and there’s even support for AI 8K scaling. There’s also HDR Plus support in the works.

When you use Google’s search engine, you can choose to have it tailor your search results based on your activity. The point is to provide results that are more relevant and helpful to you. It appears Google plans to change the way you access and manage this feature.

As Google describes on its help page, Search personalization isn’t something that affects all results. Only some results are personalized while others aren’t. If a result is personalized, you’ll find a message saying so in the “About This Result” panel. This is an optional feature, so you can turn it off if you don’t want your results personalized. This can be done by going to the Google app settings > Privacy & Safety > Search Personalization, or you can access it at https://myactivity.google.com/personal-results.

While investigating the Google app (beta version 15.32.37.28.arm64), we found that the company has redesigned the account switch menu to add a new Search Personalization option. No changes have been made to the feature itself, but it seems Google has completely redesigned the personalization page.

This redesign brings pretty much everything into one place. It also introduces yet another way to access this setting. It appears this will indeed roll out eventually as no flags were needed to show the redesign.

Wireless charging has been around for years now, and it only keeps getting better. While early days were plagued by slow charging speeds and poor charger alignment, things have come a long way since then, and modern standards like Qi2 are robust enough to compete with wired solutions. We’ve been excited to see phones start embracing wireless charging advancements, so we were a little disappointed when it looked like the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 didn’t support Qi2. As it turns out, that may not be quite the case, and it all stems from some common misunderstanding about what Qi2 really is.

Apple fans have been enjoying the luxury of magnetically aligned wireless charging since the iPhone 12, and with MagSafe working as well as it does, it’s little surprise that the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) developed Qi2 to replicate a lot of that functionality. Now, Qi2 is a whole lot more than just a magnetic ring, and the protocol includes upgrades like adaptive charging that actively communicates between device and charger. But it feels like everyone (ourselves included) got the impression that magnetic connectivity was a baked-in, core component of Qi2. Turns out: not so much.

Over on X, Mishaal Rahman highlights the distinction, and it turns out the WPC even prepared alternate iconography to let shoppers easily tell the difference between Qi2 devices that do, and those that don’t support Qi2’s Magnetic Power Profile (MPP):

This sounds like what could be going on with the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro, with hardware that supports all the energy-transfer and communication standards that make up Qi2, but Google not electing to extend that to the full MPP and give the phones magnets on their back.

For users who are interested in a magnetically attached wireless charging solution, Google tells us that they can always outfit their Pixel 9 with a case that has magnets. Just keep in mind which phone you’re shopping for; while normal cases may swap back and forth between the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro with ease, the charging coils aren’t in the same place on this pair, so you’ll need to make sure you’re buying the right case for your phone.

At least, that’s the best-case scenario here, as while Google has confirmed to us that despite the lack of magnets, the Pixel 9 phones are Qi2-compatible, we have some further questions about just how far that support extends. Critically, the company has used language like “compatible with Qi2” and “work with Qi1 and Qi2 chargers” in its communication with us, but Qi2 chargers are backwards-compatible with Qi1 devices.

That leaves the door open for more ambiguity than we’re comfortable with, so we’ve reached back out to the company for clarification. We’ll update this post with any further information we learn.

This is a developing story. Please check back later for more information.

Your patio or outdoor living spaces aren’t usually places you would consider putting a TV in, but it can make your football weekends and BBQ days amazingly fun! An outdoor TV has special needs, though, and it can get expensive. You might want to wait it out before pulling the trigger. Here’s a really good deal for you: Samsung’s The Terrace 55-inch TV is currently a whole $1,000 off. This brings the price to a more reasonable $2,500.

Get the Samsung The Terrace Partial Sun 55-inch 4K QLED TV for $2,500

The deal is available directly from Samsung. This specific discount only applies to the 55-inch model, which is the smallest The Terrace option. That said, the discount gets bigger as you start upgrading. However, the MSRP also increases by far more.

The Terrace is a great TV, featuring a nice 55-inch QLED panel with a 4K resolution. Because it is made to be viewed outdoors, it also reaches levels of over 2,000 nits. This is enough to watch the TV comfortably under partial sun. The TV was also optimized to reduce glare. Because it is made to be outdoors at all times, The Terrace gets an IP55 rating, which means it is dust-protected and can withstand water jets coming from all directions.

Of course, being a Samsung TV, it runs Tizen, so you can enjoy all your favorite streaming apps directly. It supports Quantum HDR 32X, and even has voice assistant support through Bixby or Amazon Alexa.

If you are looking for an amazing outdoor TV, you really can’t go wrong with a Samsung The Terrace. Go get it before it goes back to its usual price! You don’t want to spend $1,000 more if you can avoid it!

The Apple iPad 9th Generation is the cheapest iPad you can find in most retailers. In fact, Apple’s website only stopped selling it recently, in May 2024. That said, it’s still a great tablet we know many of you will enjoy, especially at its new all-time low price point. Right now, the 9th-gen Apple iPad is available from Amazon for just $199, a 40% discount on the original $329 price.

Get the Apple iPad 9th Generation for just $199

This deal is available from Amazon. The discount applies to both color versions of the 9th-gen iPad: Space Gray and Silver.

Despite being from 2021, the Apple iPad 9th Generation is still a respected tablet that will offer much more value than its cost. The Apple A13 Bionic chip and 3GB of RAM keep the tablet running smoothly. It can handle any visual task and mobile game without issues. In fact, I’ve used this model to edit RAW photos and never experienced a single hiccup.

The 10.2-inch display has a very nice 2,160 x 1,620 resolution, even by 2024 standards. Its 8,557mAh battery offers 10 hours of video streaming on a single charge. If you care about stylus compatibility, this device supports the 1st-generation Apple Pencil. There’s also Touch ID support baked into the home button.

At just $199, this is definitely the best tablet you can get at this price range. You should go buy it while you can. Since Apple has discontinued it, we can assume it’s only a matter of time before the Apple iPad 9th Generation disappears from other retailers, as well.

If you’re looking to get the latest and greatest, the 10th-generation Apple iPad is also discounted right now, but by much less. You can get it for $321 from Amazon, instead of the full $349 price point. You can also buy the iPad Mini for $380, which is equivalent to a 24% discount.

Accidentally flashing your password or credit card info is always a worry when you’re sharing your screen. Google is looking to address this concern with an experimental feature for Chrome on Android. When available, Google will automatically detect and redact sensitive data when you’re sharing or recording your screen.

As shared on X by Leopeva64, the feature appears as a new Chrome Flag called “Redact sensitive content during screen sharing, screen recording and similar actions.” Chrome Flags are experimental features that Google has yet to roll out fully, but anyone can try them.

They captured an image of the Chrome Flag and its description that explains how the feature will work. It outlines that “if sensitive form fields (such as credit cards, passwords) are present on the page, the entire content area is redacted during screen sharing, screen recording, and similar actions”

As the description lays out, if you’re sharing your screen or recording it in a way that others might view, this optional tool will add an extra layer of privacy. This level of data protection has hitherto only been available in Chrome’s Incognito Mode, which prevents screen capture by default.

You can’t try out the new Chrome Flag just yet, but it should be available on Chrome Canary in the coming weeks and will work on Android 5 and above. Check out our article on Chrome Flags to learn more about what they are and how to try them.

Samsung has been working hard to roll out the August security update to a wide range of devices including the Galaxy S24, several members of the Fold series, and even some older devices like the Galaxy S22, S22 Plus, S22 Ultra, and the aging Galaxy Note 20. While security fixes aren’t particularly exciting, this update is a pretty significant one and so we’re happy to report it has now reached the Galaxy S23 FE and several members of the Z Flip family — as first spotted by SamMobile.

The August security patches bring fixes for roughly 50 security vulnerabilities, including 35 fixes directly from Google, one of which is marked as critical. Samsung also has several higher-priority fixes in place as well, most of which relate to access control in several system services. You can read the full log of fixes over at Samsung’s Mobile Security site.

The Galaxy S23 FE update is currently only available for the US carrier-unlocked version of the phone, which has the model number SM-S711U1.

Next up we have the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Flip 4, which are both seeing the updates for international versions right now. The update is currently rolling out in several countries across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Even the Galaxy Z Flip 5G is getting in on this fix, as it has been confirmed the update is rolling out in select European nations right now.

It’s expected the August update will reach more regions for the above devices in the coming days and weeks. For example, the Z Fold 5 launched its August update last week in the US, and just a week later started to roll it out in other several countries across the globe.

Samsung recently unveiled its latest foldable smartphones and the innovative Galaxy Ring, but the flagship Galaxy Tab S10 series was notably missing from the event. The company has since confirmed that the Tab S10 series will be coming later this year. Current rumors are pointing to a possible October release for the new tablets, and a recent sighting on the 3C certification website seems to support this timeline.

MySmartPrice has identified two of these upcoming devices — the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus and the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra — appearing on the 3C certification platform. The Galaxy Tab S10 Plus carries the model number SM-X820, while the S10 Ultra is listed as SM-X926C. These certifications reveal that the tablets will continue to support 45W wired charging, but we don’t see any other specifications appearing in the listings.

However, the real noteworthy news is around what’s not appearing in leaks and rumors. The 11-inch Tab S10, a staple in previous Galaxy Tab lineups, seems to be conspicuously absent from all the leaks so far. This has fueled speculation that Samsung may be discontinuing its smallest flagship tablet, and the 3C listing takes it one step closer to being true. The company also offers the lower-spec Tab FE series, which includes an 11-inch model (at least for now). Perhaps Samsung has recognized that users who prefer smaller tablets are typically casual users who don’t require all the advanced features of the flagship Tab S series.

In terms of specifications, another significant change expected in the Galaxy Tab S10 series is a shift to the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 Plus processor. This would mark a departure from the Snapdragon 8-series chips that Samsung’s flagship tablets have traditionally used.

For now, we’ll have to wait for official confirmation from Samsung to see if the 11-inch Tab S10 model is indeed absent this year and what other surprises the company has in store for its tablet lineup.

Of all the Google apps we rely upon day after day, does any go more underappreciated than Clock? Clock does everything from waking us up in the morning to keeping track of how much longer our dinner’s going to take in the oven. It’s even learned how to predict the weather. Today we’re giving Clock a little overdue attention, as we spot a new widget Google’s got in the works.

Right now, Google’s Clock app offers five widgets you can choose to deploy on your phone’s home screen. There’s the usual assortment of clock faces, plus the option to show multiple time zones at once, but the only really interactive widget is one that gives you access to the app’s stopwatch. If you thought that one was a useful widget to have, you’re going to like what’s coming next.

There’s a new update for Clock out today, version 7.9.1, and within it we discover Google’s work towards what should be a sixth widget. Like the stopwatch, this one brings Clock functionality straight to your home screen, giving you shortcuts to start a timer.

Here you can see it defaulting to options for 1, 5, and 10 minutes. Even with one timer already active, you’re free to tap another button on the widget to get a second one going at the same time — which looks perfect for quickly getting tasks going in something like a busy kitchen. We still need to spend some time playing around with the widget’s options, but a quick look suggests this should be plenty configurable, presumably with the option to choose the presets you want.

Considering the existing availability of the stopwatch widget, it’s almost surprising that it’s taken Google as long as it has to match that energy for timers. Better late than never!

Venu Sports was officially announced in August 2024. The new streaming service promised a variety of sports content from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery. There would also be a huge range of live games and events, thanks to partnerships with nearly every major sports association. Fubo immediately took issue with the service, filing an antitrust lawsuit citing “extreme suppression of competition in the U.S. sports-focused streaming market.” Now, they’ve scored the first victory in this battle thanks to a new ruling from a US District Judge.

Fubo has argued that the companies’ massive combined control would create a virtual monopoly over sports services, negatively impacting businesses like theirs and limiting consumer choice. As noted by CNBC it seems U.S. Judge Margaret Garnett believes the case has merit, and she has now temporarily blocked the service from launching. It seems the new service might be in violation of the Clayton Act, which governs mergers and acquisitions.

In her ruling, the judge states, “It appears to the Court that Fubo is likely to succeed on its claims that by entering into the [joint venture], the [joint venture] Defendants will substantially lessen competition and restrain trade in the relevant market,” in her preliminary injunction order.

The service was supposed to launch just weeks ahead of the NFL season and would have been available for $42.99. While this is a significant asking price, the service would have offered a ton of content. As noted by Judge Garnett in court documents, the three companies involved in Venu Sports control roughly 54% of all U.S. sports and at least 60% of all nationally broadcast U.S. sports rights. The judge also suggested that this figure may actually be even higher.

Fubo’s co-founder and CEO, David Gandler, applauded the decision, saying it will “help ensure that consumers have access to a more competitive marketplace with multiple sports streaming options.” Unsurprisingly, the three companies behind the service were less thrilled with the response, with a representative for all three stating, “We respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling and are appealing it.”

At least until an official ruling or agreement can be reached, it looks like Venu Sports is on hold. Only time will tell if this is temporary, or if Venu Sports will be killed off before it could ever live.