I smoked an Old Fashioned with the smoking kit my girlfriend got me. I’ve been sipping on it as I write this post. It’s one of those smokers you’d find on your Instagram Story or TikTok Shop that raves about the array of wood chips it comes with, how easy it is to spark it up, and how effortless it is to add an aromatic finish to your bourbon beverage of choice after a long week. Topped off with USB-C charging (a requirement of mine), it’s the perfect device for fixing a drink just the way I like it.

I haven’t written here in a long time. Since I last left you, I joined The Shortcut full-time as an editor, helping to establish our coverage of new phones, the rising trend of AI, launching a live show dedicated to consumer technology, and more. It’s been… a lot, but I’m glad to be back after well over a year and a half.

Writing for the sake of writing has always been one of my passions, so long as the platform exists for me to publish. I enjoy writing for a much larger site than my Substack will likely ever be, but it’s fun to let loose and not care about metrics or subscriber counts when I publish something.

Since I last left you, I fell in love and moved to New York City. I had just traveled internationally for the first time when I published my last piece. It was an exhilarating trip, filled with new adventures and new folks I now call friends. I went for work, obviously, and it changed how I view the significance of what I do every day as a full-time technology journalist.

Since I last left you, I developed a love for an Old Fashioned, hence me smoking one before I sat down to write this article. It’s a classic beverage, one that dates back to the early 1800s, that got its name after folks in the 1880s yearned for the days when cocktails were simpler than they eventually became. It burns your throat just the right way, inspires your creative side to let loose, and sets your spirits up to relax and enjoy what life has to offer.

Since I last left you, my spirits have been enjoying the views of New York City each day I wake up. From Sunday morning to Saturday evening, the sunrise has enveloped the island of Manhattan in a fiery glow that I used to only experience on occasion. I used to travel to the city a lot for work, but now, I get to wake up to God’s exquisite sunshine right next to the love of my life.

Since I last left you, the love of my life has embraced me in more ways than I can count. Her compassion, kindness, openness, loving family, and welcoming personality has made some of the biggest changes in my life feel effortless to adapt to. I’m excited to build a life with her and lean on her through every career shift, every major life event, and every struggle I’ll face. I love you, Little Miss.

Since I last left you, country music has become an even larger part of my life. Writing for Country Central is a dream come true, one that few folks will get to experience in their life. From covering weekly singles to the occasional album review and editorial, I’m blessed to work with a team of experts and influential folks in the business my father always wanted to work in. I’ve met famous artists, PRs, managers, and more, and I’ve learned from all of them what it takes to make it in such a crazy business. I couldn’t be more grateful to my boss and managers for letting me share my insights and manage the company’s website.

Since I last left you, the world has shifted. No, not in the sense of politics or international affairs, but my world. My little sister is expecting her first child any hour at this point, my job continues to change every day from writer to video producer to live show host, my Chloe awaits her ring, and my spirit for writing has grown stronger and stronger. I love putting words in an empty post or document and seeing where my mind wanders, and that’s what I want out of this newsletter.

Legendary Scoop is my personal dedication to the things I love about God’s world. From my love, to my family, to the city I’m living in, to my career and the crazy path I’ve been on, this is my home to tell you all about it. Expect random restaurant reviews, random takes on technology, insights into books I read, albums I enjoy (or don’t), drinks we’ve been sipping, and what it’s like to live in the greatest city in the world.

I’m blessed to be at the point I am. Since I last left you, I’ve grown. Matridox will live in my heart for all eternity, and I’m officially retiring it with this post. It’s time for the next decade of my self-published career to begin. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Max, my Mom’s Legendary Scoop

I spent three full days in Berlin, Germany this August attending IFA 2024, one of the biggest tech trade shows in the world. Granted, I left the day the show floor opened, so I wasn’t able to enjoy the full experience that the annual trade show had to offer.

To be honest, though, it’s completely fine. I was able to visit Showstoppers, a media-exclusive event that’s essentially a miniature version of IFA with product booths, eager executives, a pasta bar, and free drinks. This is where I did most of my scouting for the winners of my IFA 2024 awards, in addition to picking the winners for my new full-time role at The Shortcut (more on that later).

After the whirled of the iPhone 16 launch (and my subsequent iPhone 16 Plus review that followed), I finally had a chance to highlight my favorite new gadgets from the show. Here are 10 of the best products from IFA 2024.

Best Smartphone: Honor Magic V3

Although it debuted a few weeks earlier in China, the Honor Magic V3 stole the show at IFA as the slimmest foldable yet, measuring just 9.2mm when closed. For context, that’s thinner than the Pixel 9 Pro Fold (10.5mm) and the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (12.1mm). Weighing only 226 grams, it’s also incredibly lightweight. Despite its slim profile, Honor didn’t compromise on specs. The V3 features a massive 7.92-inch OLED folding display, a 6.43-inch outer display (both with 120Hz refresh rates), a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, up to 16GB of RAM, and a 5,150mAh battery with 66W fast charging. It also boasts triple rear cameras, AI features, and IPX8 water resistance.

Best Laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Aura Edition

Lenovo made waves at IFA with its innovative twisting laptop concept, but my pick is the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon. The “Aura Edition” features a lighter, sleeker design while retaining the beloved ultra-comfy ThinkPad keyboard. It comes with exclusive software features, including Smart Modes for a more personalized experience, Smart Share for seamless file transfer between devices, and 24/7 customer support. Under the hood, it’s powered by the latest Intel Core Ultra processors and graphics.

The Shortcut

I went hands-on with all of Lenovo's new laptops at IFA 2024 - these are the most exciting

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2 years ago · 5 likes · Max Buondonno

Best Smartwatch: Amazfit T-Rex 3

Amazfit impressed me with the T-Rex 3, a rugged, adventure-ready smartwatch that packs incredible durability at an affordable price. With military-grade drop resistance, 10ATM water resistance, dual-band GPS, and a large 1.5-inch AMOLED display, it’s designed for tough environments. It also comes with AI coaching features to help you get in shape, and its battery can last up to 13 days with heavy use. I’m currently setting up my review unit, so stay tuned for my full thoughts.

Best Speaker: Technics SC-CX700

Technics made headlines with its new SC-CX700 wireless speaker system, and it was quite the show-stopper at IFA. The big story is the fact it’s completely wireless, yet delivers the same hi-fi audio quality you’d expect from the brand. It can be used as a standalone speaker system, a regular hi-fi system, or as TV speakers thanks to the HDMI ARC port on the back. The speakers themselves are housed in a classic design that’ll look good on anyone’s shelf, while inside you’ll find all sorts of new parts to deliver exceptional audio quality. It’s one of the most advanced speakers I’ve come across lately, which helps the £2,399 price tag make sense.

Best Headphones: Anker Soundcore Space One Pro

Are they the most technologically impressive headphones I’ve ever seen? No, but the Soundcore Space One Pros from Anker are some of the most impressive I’ve seen for under $200. Ahead of IFA, the company provided me with a sample, and I’m genuinely blown away by their performance. They deliver great audio quality, battery life, and active noise cancellation. Plus, they’re comfortable to wear and–once again–only cost $200. My full review is coming soon to The Shortcut, so stay tuned.

Best Mobile Technology: Anker MagGo Wireless Charging Station

As a fan of travel accessories, Anker’s 3-in-1 MagGo Wireless Charging Station caught my eye at IFA. The station integrates three chargers: a 15W Qi2 MagSafe charger, a standard Qi wireless charger, and an Apple Watch charger. Each charger folds up and magnetically connects for easy storage. Although it’s priced at $89.99, the MagGo’s compact, portable design and functionality make it a must-have for travelers.

Best Robot: Roborock QRevo Curv

Roborock makes some of the coolest robotic vacuum cleaners I’ve seen, and the company’s new QRevo Curv was a stand-out at IFA because of it. It’s a far more capable vacuum thanks to its increased suction power, which can clean more dirt and muck than ever before. Its new design can accommodate for small objects and bumps on your floor and navigate over them (it literally grows legs when it needs to), and the repositioned LiDAR camera helps to avoid furniture and navigate around it. It also comes with an extendable side arm to help get into corners and other hard-to-reach places. Of course, the QRevo Curv also has a self-cleaning station and all the automation features you could ask for to keep your home clean even while you’re away.

Best Smart Home Device: XGIMI Aura 2

XGIMI had a number of projectors on display at IFA, but I was most impressed by the most expensive one: the Aura 2. At $2,699, this ultra-short throw projector offers some of the company’s most impressive technology including 2,300 ISO lumens, Dual Light 2.0, Dolby Vision, and 99 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut. It’s also IMAX certified so you can enjoy IMAX-formatted films on it. Its design is also sleek as hell; I love XGIMI’s premium aesthetic with all of its products, and the Aura 2 is quite the stunner with its fabric finish and simplistic form factor. It’s a contender for a solid TV replacement.

Best Health Tech: Bebird Smart Ear Cleaners

I randomly stumbled upon Bebird with The Shortcut team at Showstoppers and had to take a beat to check out their smart ear cleaners. The company claims they are the world’s first over-the-counter ear cleaners with cameras. The EarVision Complete and EarVision Pro connect to your phone and offer a view into your ears with impressive clarity. You can then remove the camera and use various attachments to clean your ears, which seems like a huge upgrade for anyone like me who strictly uses Q-tips. I’m very interested in trying this system out for myself.

Best Concept: Ki Wireless Kitchen Charging

The most exciting thing about the new Ki wireless charging standard is the fact that one day, it will become a reality. The Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) unveiled the technology at IFA as a way to eliminate power cords from kitchen appliances like blenders, relying instead on electromagnetic induction which uses magnets to generate electricity. The technology directly powers the appliance instead of a battery, which makes it different from something like Qi2 on smartphones. It supports up to 2,200W of power, it can transmit power through materials like granite and wood up to 1.5 inches thick, and devices will communicate with transmitters using NFC chips. It’ll take a while before the technology replaces good ol’ power cords, but one day it will, which is pretty exciting.

By now, you might’ve heard that Windows on ARM is back in full effect. Thanks to Qualcomm’s surprisingly excellent Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors, using a Windows 11-powered laptop without an Intel or AMD chip is delightfully pleasant, or at least that’s what I heard before I got my hands on one.

I attended a party with a friend who happened to have an early sample of a Snapdragon X Elite laptop, and because I’m a good reporter, I pried them for information on whether the chip actually met all the claims Qualcomm was making. Sure enough, they told me everything they said was true and that soon, using a Windows laptop would be just as good as using a MacBook with an M-series chip in it.

It wasn’t long afterward that Lenovo hit me up and offered a review unit of the Yoga Slim 7x, one of only two laptops in their lineup powered by the Snapdragon X Elite. I immediately replied and said to send it my way, and since then, I’ve been using it on and off alongside my usual workhorse: a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip.

Lo and behold, the Yoga Slim 7x can not only keep up on the performance front but with battery life, too. And it’s quickly become my favorite Windows laptop I’ve ever used, even though it’s by and large a very basic machine.

The Great Reset

Forget everything you know about ARM chips inside Windows laptops. The poor performance, so-so battery life, and app compatibility issues all need to go out the window, at least for the most part. These new Snapdragon chips fix those issues and create an experience that, to put it frankly, makes me want to use Windows again.

The Yoga Slim 7x I have is equipped with the Snapdragon X Elite processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. It’s Lenovo’s standard configuration priced at $1,199, while double the storage will cost you $1,289. And like Apple’s MacBooks with M-series chips, for the money, this laptop punches well above its weight class.

I have never seen this laptop choke, slow down, or otherwise crawl under heavy workloads. I’ve had 6-10 apps open at once, edited photos in Lightroom, used it on top of my comforter in bed, used it on a blazing-hot metal table in the middle of summer in Brooklyn, and never once has it shown any example that it can’t keep up.

Part of that is thanks to the cooling system Lenovo has provided. This laptop has really good ventilation, coupled with fans that rarely spin and—when they do—work efficiently. But the chip itself is also designed to stay cool when you’re doing a lot, something the folks at Intel could take inspiration from.

Everything feels instantaneous on this laptop. Click on something, it opens right away. Navigate a few pages back in Chrome, it moves as fast as your finger does. Open a heavy app like Lightroom and watch it appear in half the time it used to. These aren’t edge cases, either—this is the basic experience of using a laptop with a Snapdragon X Elite. Compared to Intel machines, the performance difference is night and day.

It’s also tough enough to handle most GPU-intensive tasks, like running a bunch of external 4K monitors or editing videos. I didn’t do much of the latter, but I did connect a couple 4K monitors to it at the same time, and performance never dipped. It only got a bit warm on the under side, but that’s to be expected from any laptop. I’ve heard that some reviewers have also tried gaming on it, and while it isn’t designed for gaming, you can certainly run some games on it and it’ll be fine.

I didn’t run a slew of benchmarks on the Slim 7x, but for those curious how it compares under those tests, I’ll point you to XDA who compared the results to other laptops with Intel’s Core Ultra 7. The bottom line? The X Elite is one of the fastest chips on the market, beating the performance of Apple’s M1 series and competing neck-and-neck with the M2 lineup in a variety of ways.

Granted, that means Apple still has Qualcomm beat in raw computing power, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is this chip, along with the X Plus which is similarly powerful, have finally brought a modern computing experience to the Windows laptop space, and it’s about damn time.

What may be even more important is battery life. My MacBook’s 11+ hours of reliable battery life has forced me to bring it with me on every trip I embark on instead of a Windows machine, but the Slim 7x is good enough to make me think twice.

There’s a 70Wh battery inside this laptop despite it being so thin, and when paired with the X Elite, it gives the Slim 7x better endurance than every thin and light laptop I’ve tried powered by Intel.

I’m able to get 10-14 hours of normal to heavy usage, which is simply delightful. Granted, it depends on how many apps I’m using and whether they’ve been optimized well for the ARM processor, but even if your workflow depends on nothing but heavy apps, you can still easily get 10 hours of usage.

One of the biggest issues with Windows on ARM in the past was app compatibility. There used to be very few apps that could run natively on PCs of this caliber, and while that issue hasn’t gone away, it’s the best it’s ever been.

It’s becoming a rarity to run into an app that requires an x64 processor to run. More often than not, the app can either run natively on the ARM chip or through emulation software Microsoft built into Windows. Some of the biggest developers like Google, Spotify, Adobe, Mozilla, and Dropbox all have versions of their apps built for ARM, like hundreds of other developers out in the ether. I’ve only run into two instances where I couldn’t install the software I wanted: once when I tried to install NordVPN, and again when I tried to install a printer driver for a commercial printer that hasn’t been updated in years.

Beyond that, app compatibility issues haven’t hindered my workflow at all, which tells me that you’ll probably experience the same thing (that is, unless your job depends on you running x64-only software). Many of the most popular apps on the market have been updated to run natively on ARM, so you won’t be served any “incompatible with device” pop-ups when you try to install them. Plus, you’ll get better performance and battery life than their x64-based counterparts.

You’ll also get access to new AI features, which have yet to roll out. The Yoga Slim 7x is a Copilot+ PC, which means it meets all of Microsoft’s performance and security requirements for features like Recall, Image Creator, and features inside third-party apps that rely on the neural processing unit (NPU). Full disclosure: my workflow has yet to adopt AI, but I did use Copilot for generating some WordPress scripts and crafting some email, which was nice.

Over time, “Copilot+” will mean a lot more, but for the time, it’s just a way to let you know that these ARM-based PCs are ready for an AI future. The Slim 7x is part of that class, so you can hold onto it for years on end without losing access to the latest features.

I swore off using Windows laptops for my daily routine years ago after I bought my MacBook Pro, simply because there was no laptop that could compete with it on performance and battery life. That conversation has changed. Now, we have these laptops powered by Snapdragon chips that can easily compete with whatever Apple cooks up, and that’s incredibly exciting for the future of the industry.

Will it take a long time for Intel to no longer dominate the Windows laptop market? Yes, but given how Lenovo, HP, Dell, Samsung, Asus, Acer, and Microsoft have already announced Snapdragon X-powered laptops, it’s safe to say the market for Windows on ARM will grow exponentially in the near future, and it won’t be long until you can get one in your price range.

Slim, sexy, sensational

Outside of the chipset, the Slim 7x itself is a great laptop. The biggest thing I enjoy is how thin and light it is. At its thickest point, the laptop is just 0.51-inch thick, and it weighs 2.82 pounds. Throw this sucker in your bag and you’ll forget it’s even there (take my word for it: there were a number of times I had to stop and unzip my backpack to make sure I remembered it before leaving the coffee shop).

What’s also impressive is the keyboard. Lenovo was able to fit keys with 1.5mm of travel, which is by far one of the best design attributes of the entire laptop. It means that typing on the Slim 7x is beyond comfortable. It almost ruins every other laptop I’ve tested recently, which is saying something. The keys are nice and clicky, and it isn’t too loud that it becomes annoying over time. Similarly, the trackpad is spacious and responsive enough that it’s one of the best I’ve used on a Lenovo laptop.

Around the sides, you’ll find a few USB-C ports, one of which uses USB 4 for quicker data transfer speeds. There’s a physical mute switch to disable the microphone, and a reverse notch sits above the display housing the Windows Hello sensors and webcam (which, for the record, isn’t amazing).

The display itself is gorgeous. Lenovo included a 14.5-inch PureSight OLED touchscreen with a 3K resolution, and it looks amazing. Colors are vibrant while avoiding oversaturation, it’s pin-sharp, and black levels are deep as hell. It also comes with a 90Hz refresh rate so everything looks and feels smooth. Honestly, I almost like it more than my MacBook’s Mini-LED screen.

I’d also like to note two small things about the hardware of this laptop:

1. You can open it using just your thumb. The hinge and base are engineered so that you don’t have to pry it open, which is amazing.

2. The cosmic blue color that Lenovo used for the Yoga Slim 7x looks fantastic, but it attracts a lot of finger and hand prints over time.

Nothing to hate

The whole time I was reviewing the Yoga Slim 7x, I struggled to find things I genuinely disliked or hated. Do I wish you could configure it with more than 16GB of RAM? Sure. Would it be nice if the speakers didn’t sound like crap? Yeah, I guess. Are the ports somewhat limiting for creators, who Lenovo says this laptop is designed for? Absolutely.

But none of these are dealbreakers. This is a $1,200 laptop, and in the Windows world, it’s the laptop I’ve used that’s come the closest to replicating the experience of a MacBook Air. Its gorgeous display, fast performance, and reliable battery life are all characteristics of the MacBook Air, and now, Windows users get to enjoy them with their operating system of choice.

Bottom line

While there are other Snapdragon X Elite-powered machines I need to check out, I think the Yoga Slim 7x is an amazing laptop and one that you should consider buying under a few circumstances:

• you don’t need old software to get your work done,

• you don’t need a ton of ports,

• you’re okay with having a blue laptop.

If all of that sits well with you and you have a $1,300 budget for your next laptop, get the Slim 7x. It’s great for business users, college students, and even creators. The Snapdragon chip inside has revolutionized the Windows laptop experience, and you can enjoy all the fruits of its labor in this Lenovo machine.

Last week, a package showed up at my door. I’m used to packages coming to my door (obviously) but this one was particularly interesting. It came in an unmarked box truck and required myself and the driver to get it out of the back and into my house.

This, my friends, is a 98-inch television. It is by far the largest TV that’s ever been inside my house, shattering the previous record of 65 inches. It’s from my friends at TCL who emailed me to let me know that this particular TV, a member of the baseline S5 series, is on sale for $1,000 off its asking price of $3,000, bringing it down to $2,000.

That’s quite the deal for a TV of this magnitude, so naturally, I had to try and procure a review unit of my own. Sure enough, they agreed to send me one and I’ll be publishing a full hands-on piece on ZDNET sometime next week.

I’m saving my full thoughts on the TV for that particular post, but I did want to touch on what it’s like living with a 98-inch television. Living in a single-family home that’s by no means a mansion by the sea, there’s nowhere to put a TV of this size, so we had to get two folding tables to prop it up on and completely block our mantle and fireplace, while our 65-inch TV hangs out in the corner.

It’s a bit unwieldy, but we’ve gotten used to its presence. Our couch can’t go back any further than it is now, so we’ve gotten to see the TV up close and personal. On the plus side, everything you watch feels way more immersive than any conventional TV, ranging from the likes of cinematic masterpieces like Oppenheimer to cable television shows like Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

This 4K, 120Hz, Google TV-powered behemoth will reside in my home for a little while longer until a) my article is done and b) we figure out how to repackage it and send it back to TCL. The packaging itself was complicated to sort out, and it was impossible to lift the lid straight up in our living room due to our drop ceiling. We’ll likely have to take the whole thing outside—or at least into some other room—to wrap it back up for transportation back to wherever it came from.

Rubber ducks and Google Gemini

You may have heard of the controversy that Google’s generative AI model, Gemini, found itself in this week. It was found that the model was overcompensating for an apparent lack of diversity in AI-generated images, with the most famous example being soldiers of all ethnicities in Nazi rallies.

Ars Technica has a great article covering the whole story which I recommend checking out. But being the good journalist that I am, I wanted to explore where some of Gemini’s limits might lie in what it’ll generate and what it won’t. So, I decided to think of a bunch of different historical figures to see if the model would generate images of them, but as rubber ducks.

My takeaway from this completely unscientific and inconclusive test? I’m surprised at the level of hypocrisy Gemini demonstrates when generating rubber ducks dressed as soldiers from different territories and periods. It’s also a little strange the historical figures it chooses to generate and which it won’t; I couldn’t get any rubber ducks to look like Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but I could get some that look like MLK, Nixon, and Reagan.

Again, this means absolutely nothing. But it was kinda fun to see what it would spit out anyway.

Here are some screenshots of the results I got back.

What else is going on?

I have a lot of reviews in the pipeline, but I can’t tell you about them all. What I can say is I’m reviewing the Galaxy S24 Ultra from Samsung (finally), as well as the Withings ScanWatch 2, some neat pillows from Purple, and—eventually—a pizza oven. Oh, and a few more country singles for Country Central.

Yep, I’m finally starting to spread my wings beyond just endless tech reviews, which is really nice. I love a challenge, and writing about pillows and the latest Redferrin EP are just that. Expect a lot more content like this in the near future.

Thanks for reading, as always.

If you thought Samsung was going to redesign its entire Galaxy S lineup for 2024, you’d be wrong. If you thought they would revolutionize the smartphone industry with some new hardware feature, you’d be wrong. If you thought there would be a massive upgrade under the hood, you’d be wrong.

Instead, Samsung is taking a different approach with its new Galaxy S24 series, one that fits the overarching storyline in the tech world of the past 13 months. At Unpacked in San Jose, California, the company unveiled the Galaxy S24, S24 Plus, and S24 Ultra with similar designs, cameras, and specs as last year’s S23 series. The biggest difference? Galaxy AI.

The company has been drumming up hype for its new phones by leaning into artificial intelligence, something Google has done over the past few years with the Pixel series. Samsung is now taking its own approach with a set of features powered by AI in hopes of convincing people that they, indeed, need a new phone because AI is awesome.

I spent a good amount of time reading the press materials for the S24 series the morning of the announcement, and I’m not sure these features will be enough to convince you to switch away from whatever you’re using. But they do make an intriguing case for where Samsung sees its smartphones going in the future, a future where your phone will do more and you will do less.

Galaxy AI

Across the entire Galaxy S24 series, Samsung’s Galaxy AI is defined by several features. The most talked-about thus far is Circle to Search, which is also coming to the Pixel 8 series at the end of the month. Long-press on the home button or gesture bar at the bottom of the screen to bring up a Google search screen. From there, you can circle, scribble, or highlight anything on your screen and the device will use AI to identify what you’re looking at and give you search results based on it. It’s sort of like Now on Tap from 2015, expect a lot more powerful since it has object and scene recognition.

There’s also Live Translate, which is one of the most impressive new features. It lets you have a phone conversation with someone who speaks a different language than you, translating their voice into both text and audio in real-time and vice versa. You can also use your S24 to speak to someone in real life through translations using Interpreter, but having that functionality in phone calls is quite compelling.

Chat Assist, available through the Samsung Keyboard, can help you communicate with others in the tone that you’re aiming for (you can ask it to transform your text into something friendlier, more playful, more serious, etc.). Note Assist uses AI to summarize your notes and keep them organized. Transcript Assist helps to transcribe your voice recordings with others and generate summaries (similar to the Recorder app on Pixel).

Then there’s a bunch of AI tools in the camera, giving you AI-generated edit suggestions to tweak your photos the way Samsung’s algorithms think they should look. You also get a full-fledged Magic Editor competitor called Generative Edit that lets you move people, objects, and more and automatically fill the background with AI-generated content. There’s also Instant Slow-mo which can take a normal video and turn it into a slow-motion clip by generating extra frames to stretch it out.

Some of these AI features are run locally on your device (like the translation stuff), while others rely on the cloud to operate (like the photo editing tools). Samsung says they’ll remain free until the end of 2025 (whatever that means), and I’ve heard rumors that some of them will eventually roll out to older Galaxy S smartphones.

Did any of these features stand out to you? I’m genuinely curious because Samsung is betting big on them helping the S24 series get off to a good start. Hit me up on X or Threads @LegendaryScoop and let me know, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

A Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus breakdown

Elsewhere, the Galaxy S24 tells a very similar tale to the S23 series. The standard S24 and S24 Plus have 0.1-inch larger displays than last year, measuring 6.2 inches and 6.7 inches, respectively. They each have Dynamic AMOLED 2X panels with 120Hz refresh rates, the S24 comes with a Full HD+ resolution, and the S24 Plus gets upgraded to Quad HD+. Both phones also now reach a peak of 2,600 nits of brightness, making them some of the brightest smartphones on the market.

Samsung tweaked the phones’ designs a bit with much flatter sides and edges, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and aluminum. And of course, you still get IP68 ratings on both.

Under the hood, there’s the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor paired with 8GB of RAM on the S24 and 12GB on the S24 Plus. The S24 still starts at 128GB of storage (with an optional upgrade to 256GB), while the S24 Plus starts at 256GB and can go up to 512GB. You also get a 4,000mAh battery in the S24 and a 4,900mAh battery in the S24 Plus, with 25W and 45W fast charging, respectively. And yes, wireless charging is here as well.

On the back, you get the same camera specs as last year with a 50MP main lens, a 12MP 120-degree ultra-wide, and a 10MP 3x telephoto. Samsung didn’t focus on hardware changes to improve its cameras; instead, it says it improved the quality of HDR and nighttime photography, while also bringing full HDR support to apps like Instagram and Snapchat so you can share higher-quality content with your followers.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra goes titanium

The flagship among flagships, the Galaxy S24 Ultra, also makes few hardware improvements compared to last year. It looks almost identical to the S23 Ultra, save for its flat display that is already a hit across social media. It means you won’t have to deal with any annoying curves when writing with the S Pen, and you’ll get less edge reflections when watching videos.

The phone also uses a titanium frame instead of aluminum. Samsung says it’s to make the phone more durable since titanium doesn’t have a weight advantage compared to aluminum, so it’s not exactly taking the approach of the iPhone 15 Pro which swapped hefty stainless steel for the lighter material. It also appears that Samsung isn’t making a huge deal that the S24 Ultra uses titanium, which is fine by me since it’s literally just a build material.

The 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display is still Quad HD+ and still comes with a 120Hz refresh rate, and it too gets boosted to 2,600 nits of peak brightness. Under the hood, there’s a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 “for Galaxy,” which means Samsung made some level of special optimizations to the chip to perform a little better on the Ultra. It’s paired with 12GB of RAM, up to 1TB of storage, and a 5,000mAh battery with 45W fast charging.

Flip the phone around and you’ll find a familiar set of cameras, with one exception. You still get a 200MP f/1.7 main lens (which now comes with 60 percent larger pixels), a 12MP 120-degree ultra-wide, and a 10MP 3x optical telephoto lens. The fourth camera on the back is new for the S24 Ultra: instead of a 10MP 10x telephoto like the S23 Ultra, Samsung swapped it for a 50MP 5x telephoto. This will not only increase the resolution of zoom photos, but it also gives users a more common zoom range; Samsung found that there weren’t a lot of people using 10x zoom, but they were using 5x. Of course, you still get a 10x hybrid zoom button in the camera app if you’re a stickler for 10x.

Samsung also made improvements to its processing algorithms to improve the quality of photos, videos, and more. You’ll get better results at night, too, and you can share the same HDR photos and videos to social media like you can on the regular S24.

Oh, and you still get 100x Space Zoom. It’s one of my favorite features of the Galaxy S Ultra line, so I’m happy to see it return on the S24 Ultra.

Seven years of updates

One of the coolest aspects of the Galaxy S24 series is its software support guarantee. Samsung is promising seven years of OS upgrades and security updates, which means these phones should be supported all the way up to Android 21. It’s the same software plan that Google gave the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, and it’ll make holding onto your smartphone for years on end much easier.

No Qi2 for you

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, there’s no Qi2 support on the Galaxy S24 series. In case you haven’t heard, Qi2 is the successor to Qi, the most popular wireless charging standard in the world. It’ll give you faster charging performance and a magnetic connection for lining up the coils easier, much like MagSafe on the iPhone (Apple had a hand in designing Qi2). But for whatever reason, Samsung decided against including the superior standard and stuck with plain ol’ Qi.

At this point, I have no idea when the first phone with Qi2 support will come out, but I imagine it’ll happen sometime in 2024. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

The rise of AI phones? Yeah… sure…

The S24 series is guided by a similar playbook to the Pixel: make good phones with great hardware and throw in a bunch of super-smart features you can’t quite grasp how they work. And as long as you call it AI, you’re golden.

We’re going to see that a lot throughout 2024 as artificial intelligence continues to invade every sector of the technology industry. Whether it’s enough to drive smartphone sales remains to be seen, but we’re about to find out just how effective these types of features can be.

Pricing, availability, and colors

The Galaxy S24 starts at $799, the S24 Plus starts at $999, and the S24 Ultra starts at $1,299, a $100 increase over last year. All three are up for pre-order now on Samsung’s website and a variety of retailers and carriers. If you want the best deal, you’ve got to go through Samsung who will give you up to $900 if you trade in the right device, driving the cost of any of these phones significantly down. You’ll also enjoy deep discounts on accessories and free storage upgrades.

The S24 and S24 Plus come in Onyx Black, Marble Gray, Cobalt Violet, and Amber Yellow. Meanwhile, the S24 Ultra is available in Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Violet, and Titanium Yellow.

I’m sure I’ll be reviewing at least one of these phones in the near future, so stay tuned.

2023 didn’t end the way I was anticipating. Throughout December, in between work and other responsibilities, I spent tons of time getting ready for Christmas and New Year’s with my family. We always try to go as big as we can while still keeping things quiet and intimate, and the holidays were shaping up to be just that.

And then I got sick the day before Christmas Eve. I don’t know where I caught up, but somewhere in my travels, I picked up a nasty case of the flu. I spent Christmas Eve on the couch watching Christmas movies, barely able to move and spending the evening shivering. On Christmas Day, I kept trying to dodge fevers, chills, sweats, and the urge to cough while we opened gifts and ate what I’m sure was a delicious prime rib (my taste buds were nonexistent by Christmas night). I then spent the next few days getting rest, taking whatever medications I could find, and doing my best to bounce back.

Because I live in a relatively small house with a big family, I handed my flu off to my mother, who’s still sick as I type this post. My siblings are also all sick, so New Year’s Eve was spent on the couch jamming out to the New Year's Eve Live: Nashville's Big Bash special on CBS while we pretended to eat pizza and other fixings. Midnight came and we toasted with champagne prosecco, then we all gradually went to bed.

It certainly wasn’t an ideal way to end the year, but let’s be honest: 2023 was an abnormal year anyway. No matter who I talk to, everyone had a challenge, difficulty, or other bump in the road last year. It didn’t seem easy for anyone, and all the international tensions that constantly project from our phones and televisions didn’t help.

Still, I had plenty of amazing things happen to me in 2023 amidst the chaos. It was the first year that I didn’t go a full month without traveling somewhere. Granted, that only counts for two different locations: Las Vegas in January for CES, then New York every other month of the year. I’ve spent a lot of time in different hotels, Greyhound buses, and the streets of NYC seeing everything I can see, and it’s all thanks to what my job as a freelance technology journalist has afforded me. I worked for years without access to events, briefings, or PR contacts, so I’m grateful to have reached the level I’m at.

I also started writing for a few new sites, including ZDNET, TheStreet, and even Country Central (which I’m wildly excited about). Getting to work with so many editors and their teams is a wonderful feeling, and I consider myself lucky to get to write for them.

I’ve also had a fair share of personal victories, like learning more about budgeting and taxes to get my financials in check. And of course, I learned that sitting around a fire, eating s’mores, and drinking six different types of beers with your friends is the best way to spend a summer night (we did this countless times all summer long, I’m not even sure I could count how many fires we’ve had).

And now, we come to 2024. I’m always excited for a new year to see what’s in store, and I’ve got a good feeling about it. I’m kicking it off with yet another trip to sunny Las Vegas for CES 2024. I’m flying out this Saturday, so my recovery efforts from the flu are full-steam ahead to ensure I’ve got the energy to handle the chaos of Philadelphia International. After that… who’s to say what’ll happen?

I’m ready for it all. Welcome to 2024, my friends. Let’s make this a year to remember.

Shameless plugs

Over the past few weeks, a number of projects I was working on went live that I didn’t share all that much, so I thought I’d list them here for all you kind people to check out.

• I reviewed Lenovo’s Legion Go portable gaming device for ZDNET… and things could’ve definitely gone better.

• I wrote about how good the Pixel 8 is for the money you spend for ZDNET.

• I reviewed Motorola’s Edge smartphone for 2023 for ZDNET, and I was pretty impressed by what you get for the price.

• I finally had time to finish my review of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 6 Classic for CNN Underscored, and as you’d expect, they are very good Galaxy watches.

• I wrote about some tips to follow if you want to get the best pictures out of your Google Pixel smartphone for CNN Underscored.

• I reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE for CNN Underscored, and it’s… eh.

• I reviewed the Google Pixel Buds Pro for CNN Underscored. Yeah, it’s a bit unusual for a review of these buds to go up so late into their lifecycle, but with their new color and software features (and the fact Underscored didn’t have a review yet), I thought it’d be worth diving back in.

• I covered Morgan Wallen’s massive accomplishment of having his 2023 album One Thing at a Time reach nearly six billion individual audio streams for Country Central.

Today’s newsletter is focusing on an issue I’ve been having with my Apple Watch that won’t seem to go away: bad battery life.

When I upgraded my Series 3 to a Series 8 last year, I was delighted to find that the new hardware, combined with watchOS 9, could give me much longer stamina than what I was used to. I could end days with 40-50 percent in the tank, even after using it to track my sleep and 1.5 hours of workouts in the morning. It was a delightful experience, one that stretched well into 2023 as updates to watchOS 9 were shipped.

That all came crashing down when I installed the watchOS 10 beta. The slick new UI and Snoopy watch face were enough to draw me in, convincing me that yes, I should be running beta software on my Apple Watch. “After all, why not?” I thought to myself. “So many others do it. I should do it, too.”

So, I installed it, fully expecting to run into a few bugs and glitches as Apple continued to iron out the system ahead of its public release in the fall. I also heard from some early adopters of the beta that battery life had taken a hit, but that was to be expected, too. I’ve been a technology journalist for over eight years, so I’m no stranger to a device’s beta software reducing its battery life.

Here’s the strange part: the reduced battery life never went away. While I ran the watchOS 10 beta, my Series 8 would drop down to 10-20 percent at the end of the day, which is significantly less than what the stable version of watchOS 9 afforded me. And yet well after watchOS 10 exited beta stages and was stable enough to ship to the public, the software still drains my Apple Watch for no apparent reason.

I’ve done gobs of research on why this might be happening. I assumed it was a system-level problem that involved a complication or Apple’s new Smart Stack interface. I cleared anything that could be running in the background, including weather and news widgets. I disabled features like irregular heart rhythms, blood oxygen monitoring, and I even turned off my always-on display for a little while. Hell, I even uninstalled every third-party app just to see if it would make a difference.

And yet, nothing has worked. The watch continues to drain for reasons I can’t explain, and it’s driving me nuts.

Apple even admitted that watchOS 10 was being a battery hog. The company shipped watchOS 10.1.1 as an update specifically designed to fix the battery life issues users were having with their Apple Watches when paired to iPhones running iOS 17. And according to some users, it seemed to work. According to forums on the subject, users of the Series 7 and last year’s Apple Watch Ultra seem to have had their battery life fully restored, while others—including myself—were stuck with the same poor stamina as before.

For about 20 minutes, I considered resetting my Apple Watch to see if that would make a difference. I heard some people had to do that to clear out any junk left over from the transition to watchOS 10 and, in turn, their battery life was back to normal. But I guess I need to learn how to control my urges because instead of resetting it, I installed the watchOS 10.2 beta to see if it would make a difference.

Reader, it has not made a difference. If anything, it’s made battery life worse; I charge my watch to 100 percent before dozing off, then wake up seven hours later with 82 percent in the tank. From there, it drops to 15 percent before I go to bed. Yes, it technically lasts all day, but certainly not as long as it used to.

I’m going to wait until watchOS 10.2 ships to the public before resetting, but I honestly don’t know if it’ll work. I hope it does because otherwise, I’ll have no idea what’s wrong or how to fix it.

Oh, and before anyone asks, my Apple Watch’s battery health is at 91 percent. It’s not ideal for a watch just a year old, but it’s not low enough that I could blame all my issues on it.

So, what’s going on with battery life on the Apple Watch? Is it a fundamental system flaw, some bug with the health sensors, or is watchOS 10 simply more power-hungry than previous releases? I’m asking hypothetically, of course, but if someone at Apple is reading this, I’d love to know.

I’d love to hear from you, too. What’s your experience been like with battery life on your Apple Watch running watchOS 10? Is your watch still lasting all day and then some, or is it dying quicker than it used to? Drop me a line and let’s talk, I’d love to get to the bottom of this.

I haven’t felt this gitty using a smartphone in a long time.

The Pixel Fold, Google’s very first in-house entry into the folding phone landscape, is a knock-out. I’m not afraid to spoil this entire review up front: I love this phone way more than I thought I would. I’ve been waiting years for Google to release a foldable, and now that they have, I can’t stop smiling.

Everything about the Pixel Fold feels like a delight to behold. From the hardware and its size to the software and its fluidity, Google did so much right with the Pixel Fold that it’s quickly become my favorite phone of the year, at least so far.

For $1,799 (the same price as Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 5), you get a phone that feels like a digital notepad when it’s closed and a full-fledged tablet when it’s open. You get Pixel-quality cameras, which are the best I’ve ever tested on a foldable. You get Google’s software experience that’s far more stable than you’d think. And, you get all the same smarts as the other Pixel phones, including Call Screen and Magic Eraser.

It’s my favorite Pixel phone to date. And in classic Pixel fashion, no, it’s by no means perfect. Plus, I hesitate to recommend it to most people, mostly because it’s a first-gen product.

But damn, is it good.

The Correct Foldable Form Factor™ has arrived

I have the Pixel Fold on my desk right next to my Galaxy Z Fold 5 and OnePlus Open, and Google’s phone makes me want to ignore the others at all costs. Google has nailed the design of what a mini-tablet-foldable should look like: it has a short and stubby outer screen, with a tablet-like internal screen.

I understand why people have decided the Open offers the best cover screen on the market. It slots firmly between the Pixel Fold and Z Fold 5 with a wider aspect ratio that isn’t too narrow to feel unnatural. In fact, it’s the most natural feeling of the three. But on the Pixel Fold, there’s just something about its passport-like outer screen that grabs my attention and makes me want to use it. It’s easy to use with one hand, it’s small and compact by today’s standards, and apps fit perfectly fine on it.

The inner display is also my favorite out of the foldables I’ve used. I’m in the minority when I say that when I open my folding phone, I expect it to be in landscape mode, not portrait. Both the Z Fold 5 and Open assume you want apps oriented in portrait mode when you open them up, whereas Google’s horizontal aspect ratio makes for a miniature tablet in your pocket, which you’d obviously want in landscape when you open it. It feels much more natural to me, and I don’t think I’m alone when I say that.

A Pixel by the look and feel

There’s no denying that this phone, despite it offering Google’s most bleeding-edge form factor yet, is still very Pixel-y. You’ve got that huge camera bump on the back that’s an instant indicator this is a Pixel phone, as well as rounded edges and corners which give it a familiar feel to other phones in Google’s lineup, including the Pixel 8.

It’s a pretty hefty device at 283 grams, but it’s also razor-thin at 5.8mm when open. I know I just went on a rampage complaining about how much I don’t like big heavy phones, but I honestly don’t mind the weight of the Pixel Fold. It adds a level of premiumness that I think it needs; many people associate the Pixel with a price tag of around $700, so you have to make the $1,800 one feel like it’s $1,800, and they definitely did that. (I will say, if you want everyone to know you have an $1,800 phone without opening it up, don’t get the Obsidian one: Porcelain is a much flashier color.)

One more note about the design: Google gave it an IPX8 rating, which protects it from water submersion at up to one meter. However, there’s no dust resistance, which means this is still a lousy phone to take somewhere like the beach.

Nice screens, smooth performance

The 5.8-inch OLED cover screen, with its 2092x1080 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, is beautiful. It can reach up to 1,550 nits of brightness, it’s covered in Gorilla Glass Victus, and the 17.4:9 aspect ratio gives you that excellent reachability like I was talking about. I love this screen to death, it’s basically perfect for a folding phone.

Similarly, the 7.6-inch OLED folding screen is also fantastic. It boasts a 2208x1840 resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, and 1,450 nits of peak brightness. It’s plenty colorful with rich contrasts, and the 6:5 aspect ratio gives you a great canvas for watching videos and movies (or just interacting with full-screen apps).

I said it before and I’ll say it again: this is my favorite combination of displays for a folding phone. Google kept the front screen perfectly usable while making the folding screen excellent for content consumption. I have yet to use another foldable with this great balance of form and function.

You’ll find Google’s Tensor G2 processor inside the Pixel Fold, which was used in last year’s Pixel 7 series as well as the Pixel 7a. I’ve used those devices in the past, and none of them performed as smoothly as the Fold did in my testing. I have no clue what Google did to get the G2 to run so smoothly (software optimizations?), but whatever it is, it paid off—this thing runs like a dream.

Paired with 12GB of RAM, the Pixel Fold can handle any task you throw at it, whether it be running a couple of apps at once or playing heavy games like Asphalt 9 and Call of Duty. I will say, after using the Pixel 8 Pro for a while, the Pixel Fold doesn’t feel quite as snappy (the 8 Pro has the fancy new Tensor G3, after all), but it’s still plenty powerful for whatever you wanna do on it.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Tensor lineup is still behind the competition when it comes to raw performance. While it excels at processing all of the AI stuff intertwined with the Pixel’s software experience, it’s not the supercar that the A17 Bionic or Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is. That being said, it’s a fine chip that serves up smooth performance, and at the end of the day, isn’t that all you need?

Pixel cameras… that normally cost $500

Google did two distinct things with the cameras on the Pixel Fold: they promised to deliver the best cameras on a foldable, and they gave it worse camera hardware than what you’d find on last year’s Pixel 7 Pro. While that sounds contradictory, the story with folding phones has been that their form factors and internal specs are great, while the cameras take a quality hit to keep costs down. Fortunately, that trend started to shift in a positive direction this year, and the Pixel Fold helps to drive it.

Granted, the bar is pretty low for any company to come in and claim they have the best camera on a foldable, but it’s easy to assume Google is telling the truth. Time and time again, the company has impressed me with the quality of photos and videos its cameras can pull off, no matter the price range of the Pixel you’re using.

In the case of the Pixel Fold, we’re looking at a 48MP f/1.7 main lens, a 10.8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide with a 121.1-degree field of view, and a 10.8MP f/3.05 telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom. While that looks good on paper, it’s important to note that these sensors are very similar to the ones on another Pixel.

No, not the Pixel 7 Pro or fancier Pixel 8 Pro. On the contrary, they have similar sizes and specs as the Pixel 7a, a phone that costs less than a third of the price of the Pixel Fold. That isn’t to say they’re the exact same sensors, mind you; the Pixel Fold makes different choices for megapixel count and straps an extra telephoto lens to the back. But in terms of how much detail and light the sensors can pick up, the Pixel Fold and Pixel 7a are very similar.

That’s why every photo you take with the Pixel Fold is a beat behind the best Pixel phones you can get. No photo or video will offend you with poor quality, of course, but it’s clear that these photos aren’t as sharp or vivid as they would be if taken on a 7 Pro or 8 Pro.

On the other hand, compared to other folding phones, the Pixel Fold is top-notch. I vastly prefer photos taken on the Pixel Fold over the Galaxy Z Fold 5, and I can regularly produce results similar to—if not better than—the OnePlus Open. I’ll admit, OnePlus has Google beat in terms of hardware capabilities (more megapixels, greater zoom on the telephoto), but OnePlus doesn’t have Google’s photo processing pipeline, which can help tremendously in challenging lighting conditions.

Overall, the cameras on the Pixel Fold are perfectly fine. I wouldn’t call them $1,800 good, but they’re far from the worst aspect of this phone. Video quality could be better, though, and I wish the main sensor was at least as good as what the Pixel 7 Pro has. But in the end, for a folding phone (and it being Google’s first foldable at that), these cameras aren’t too shabby.

Just don’t expect to be blown away with your photos or videos like you would with an iPhone 15 Pro or Galaxy S23 Ultra.

Some final notes:

• The Pixel Camera app remains largely unchanged compared to other Pixel phones, save for the ability to prop your device up half way to use it like a tripod and flip the viewfinder to the front screen to take high-quality selfies.

• I really wish this phone had the Pixel 8 Pro’s manual controls—it would be wildly enjoyable to dial in the precise settings you’d like on such a large screen.

• The selfie cameras are average at best, so maybe try to take all your selfies with the rear cameras if you care about their quality.

Battery life is pretty good

“What does ‘pretty good’ mean, Max?” I’m glad you asked!

It means I can get through a full day on a charge and… that’s about it. This is definitely not a two-day phone, unless you aren’t taking a lot of pictures or using the inside screen very often. Since the cover display is so spacious, you really don’t need to open the phone for everyday things like inbox management or texting, so you’ll likely have a few days where the phone drops to 50 percent before going to bed.

But on normal days with medium to heavy usage, you’re looking at 10-20 percent at bedtime with the device’s 4,400mAh cell. That was the case for me and my 16-hour days. You’ve got both 30W wired charging and 7.5W wireless charging for juicing back up which, admittedly, could be much faster given the price of this thing. OnePlus has 67W fast charging on the Open. Just sayin’.

If I had to rank them, I’d say the OnePlus Open can last the longest on a full charge, then the Pixel Fold, then the Galaxy Z Fold 5.

Is this the best version of Android ever? Yes

I stand by my decision to deem Google’s take on Android, complete with the Pixel experience on top, as the best version of Android on the market. There are things to appreciate in skins like One UI, OxygenOS, and even Motorola’s stock-like experience, but nothing can top the utter smoothness and friendliness of the Pixel’s software. It’s too damn good.

From Now Playing to Call Screen, Magic Eraser to Photo Unblur, the Pixel Launcher to the Recorder app, Google’s Pixel software experience is simply unmatched. I have yet to find another Android phone with this much charm, silkiness, and inviting feeling. When I do, I’ll let you know, but it’ll probably just be another Pixel phone.

The Pixel Fold was recently updated with Android 14 which includes a handful of nice features. I haven’t noticed much of a difference compared to Android 13, but what I have noticed is that the phone remains virtually bug-free. Typically, with any new Pixel phone, there’s a series of bugs that come with it. Whether it affects the stability of apps, the display, power, or other areas of the device, Google hasn’t been able to escape a buggy software experience at their phones’ launch.

Fortunately, the Pixel Fold was exempt from this problem when it went on sale this past summer, and it remains true today. Like the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, you’d be hard-pressed to find any area of the Pixel Fold that doesn’t feel refined stable. It’s the best experience I’ve ever had on a Pixel device to date, which is saying something given the adaptations needed for the quirky hardware.

Oh, one more thing: Google says the Pixel Fold will get major software upgrades until 2026 (think Android 17), while security patches won’t stop until 2028. That’s not the same seven years of software updates that the Pixel 8 series is getting, but it’s still pretty good in the world of Android phones.

Is it good for multitasking? No

If I had to pick on the Pixel Fold’s software in a single area, it would be multitasking.

Google lets you run two apps side by side and pull the app dock up from the bottom to open something else, but that’s it. You can’t run three apps at once, open apps in floating windows, or divvy up the split-screen view in any other way. You’re only allowed to run two app side-by-side, and if that isn’t enough for you, too bad.

Granted, I think this will be enough for most people. If you aren’t a huge smartphone multitasker but want to enjoy the big screen that comes with a foldable, you might be fine with the limiting multitasking experience on the Pixel Fold. But if you really want to take advantage of its big display, only having the option to run two apps next to each other seems kind of lame.

It seems really lame when you consider what the OnePlus Open is capable of, which I think makes it the best foldable to buy for multitasking. OnePlus did a great job at integrating the ability to search for files quickly, run three apps side-by-side, use floating windows, and more on its device. It’s far more capable than the Pixel Fold, which will appeal to hardcore power users who might be searching for something more than just another slab-style smartphone.

Should you buy a Pixel Fold?

The Pixel Fold is a great first attempt at a foldable from Google, and it’s a stand-out thanks to its passport form factor, excellent software and performance, solid cameras, and decent battery life.

You may not like the weight of it, you might want better multitasking tools, or you could hate the chunky bezels around the display. That’s all valid criticism, and I can see how some folks might not care for the Pixel Fold at all since other foldables on the market fix a lot of its shortcomings.

But as Google’s first foldable, the Pixel Fold is a smash hit, and it makes me even more excited to see where it goes in the future.

If you’d rather wait for Google to refine it over the coming years, I don’t think you should pick it up. It’s a first generation smartphone, and you’d be right to feel weary about that. But if you like living on the edge or have been on the fence about buying one and can live with its quirks and quibbles, I think you should go for it. It’s the most delightful foldable you can buy, and every Pixel fan will find something to enjoy.

A special Black Friday note

If you want to pick up a Pixel Fold for someone this holiday season, it’s on sale for Black Friday for $1,399, $400 off. That makes it an even better value and the folding phone I’ve recommend over all the others. I included an affiliate link below just in case you wanna pick it up. :)

Buy Google Pixel Fold

• Amazon

• Best Buy

I’m taking a break from writing all the reviews and Black Friday posts I have to finish by Thanksgiving to bring you some pretty huge news: Apple has confirmed that it will bring RCS to the iPhone in 2024.

In a statement sent to 9to5Mac and TechRadar, the company says it will adopt the RCS Universal Profile “later next year.” The company says the new standard will provide “a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS,” to which many folks will say, “no shit.” Obviously, this doesn’t mean iMessage is going anywhere—in fact, Apple will continue to stress how much more secure it is than RCS once the feature’s rolled out.

And no, iMessage isn’t coming to Android.

Here’s Apple’s full statement, for reference.

Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.

So, how did we get here?

Over the past several years, RCS has sprouted up as the clear path forward for all device manufacturers to transition to in order to retire SMS once and for all. The technology dates back to the Stone Age (well, 1992) and limits character counts, image and video quality, and supported file types to the point where it’s only good for sending a quick “on my way” text and nothing more.

RCS offers a much richer messaging experience, hence its name Rich Communication Services. With features like typing indicators, high-res photo and video sharing, read receipts, and more, RCS is the preferred method of communication among many Android users. Google ushered the technology into the mainstream by making it the default messaging standard in the Android Messages app, and others like Samsung have also adopted the standard in their own texting apps.

But not Apple. Infuriatingly, Apple has never felt compelled to upgrade the texting experience in the iPhone’s Messages app with RCS, instead relying on SMS for users who don’t take advantage of iMessage. This has led to not just complaints from users, but a discriminatory attitude toward “green bubbles,” a.k.a. texts sent using SMS.

It’s been a conundrum in the United States for over 10 years: many folks believe that anyone they communicate with using “green bubbles” must be poor or of low social status since they don’t use an iPhone. Similarly, Android users get upset when trying to communicate with iPhone owners since they can’t send high-quality photos or longer texts.

From bullying classmates in school who use Android phones to attempts to permanently leave Apple’s walled garden and iMessage behind, the text messaging mess between iPhones and Android phones has boiled over more times than one could count, and it wasn’t until just a few years ago companies started to do something about it.

Google started running ads shaming Apple’s unwillingness to support SMS, Samsung followed suit just last month, and Nothing (the London-based startup founded by Carl Pei) announced this week that it was adding a hacked version of iMessage to the Phone (2) simply to try and solve the blue bubble vs. green bubble debacle.

The pressure hasn’t just stemmed from Apple’s competitors, however; regulators in the European Union are ready to sign new legislation that would essentially force the Cupertino tech giant to open iMessage to other platforms. Apple has argued that at least in Europe, iMessage isn’t big enough to require a law to open it up, but it’s clear that people are tired of Apple’s unwillingness to improve the non-iMessage experience.

So, in what seems like an effort to calm everyone down, Apple has announced RCS support for the iPhone. It’s a big change of tone for the company, what with Tim Cook publicly saying last year to just “buy your mom an iPhone” if you want a better messaging experience. Reports from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg also indicated that Apple wasn’t even thinking about RCS in the past, so today’s news is a monumental shift.

The company said it’s not coming until later next year, which sounds to me like it’ll be a feature in iOS 18. What the feature will look like is anyone’s guess; I’ve already seen some people on X and Threads claim it’ll be the death of the green bubble, but I don’t think that’s right. If anything, it’ll be a redefinition of the green bubble, one that’s associated with features like high-quality media and typing indicators. it’ll still mean you aren’t using iMessage, but at least you can talk to your friends with tech from a few years ago and not from 30+ years ago.

RCS is also end-to-end encrypted, which means your messages will be far more secure than they ever were over SMS. Apple still claims iMessage is more secure, likely referring to Advanced Data Protection which can lock all of your texts away and basically let you take them to the grave. Still, at least you’ll get to enjoy some level of security when messaging your Android friends.

The weirdest part of the whole story is just how randomly it happened. Apple sent a statement to two tech blogs, told them to keep a lid on it until 1 p.m. ET today, and called it a day. There’s no press release announcing the news, a big feature in The Verge or WSJ, or a public acknowledgment of the news from an executive. Just the statement and nothing more. I’m not saying there’s something wrong with this approach, but in my journalist/blogger brain, it makes zero sense given the magnitude of the announcement.

It’s unclear when we’ll get an idea of an exact ship date for RCS on iPhone, but I’ll let you know when we do. If you want some more insight into the whole blue bubble vs. green bubble argument, MKBHD’s video from last year is worth a watch.

As I sit at Starbucks sipping a pumpkin spice latte, I glance down at my Apple Watch. Much to my delight, I see Snoopy and Woodstock up to… something. It’s really unclear what they were just doing: I caught them mid-act and it seems to me like they were chasing each other, or Snoopy was chasing Woodstock, or vice versa. Either way, something happened, and all the rushing around my screen makes me glad I upgraded to watchOS 10 so I could enjoy these charasmatic characters right on my wrist.

If you haven’t heard, with the update to watchOS 10, the Apple Watch picked up a new Snoopy watch face that features the iconic beagle from Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts comic strips, brought to life in spectacular and–oftentimes–unexpectedly playful animations that also feature the pup’s trusty companion, Woodstock. I recently switched to the face full-time and I’m delighted each time I watch it play out on my wrist, but as the days get darker and the coffee gets more spiced and mocha-fied, a burning desire ignites in my head: I really hope this face gets a holiday makeover.

There are 148 different animations in the Snoopy face, all of which are contextual to what you’re doing with your watch. If you’re just chilling out, so is Snoopy, lying atop is dog house. If you’re going for a swim, Snoopy’s coming with his scuba gear. If you’re moving around a lot, you might catch the beagle at the gym or flying into enemy territory as the Red Barron. These animations come to life throughout the day and can even adjust themselves based on the position of the clock’s hands. I read an amazing summary of how the watch face came to life in GQ, which I think everyone should check out.

In that piece, the designers went over their process for developing the Snoopy face for Apple Watch and the challenges that came with it. They also mentioned just how many versions of the watch face there were–148, like I said earlier–and noted how they all play very well within the square confines of the Apple Watch’s screen. But there’s one detail that was missing from the piece and, for that matter, everyone else’s coverage of the new face: a list of the different scenarios you’ll find Snoopy in.

You could keep track of them over time and write up your own list, sure, but who has time for that? Instead, I sifted through dozens of articles covering the new watch face and couldn’t find an exact list of all the scenarios you’ll find Snoopy and Woodstock in. That’s a bummer since it would be cool to see all the different ways Snoopy will pop up on your wrist, and it further mystifies the question of whether Snoopy will don a pilgrim’s uniform or Santa’s suit come the holiday season.

After all, these scenarios are some of the most iconic for Charlie Brown’s dog in the watch world. Timex has had a partnership with the Schulz estate for decades, allowing them to ship Peanuts-themed watches with Snoopy front and center for holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, the 4th of July, and even Valentine’s Day. There hasn’t been enough time between now and watchOS 10’s release for us to see if the Snoopy face will include special animations for those occasions, and I can’t seem to find any proof that those variations exist.

So, consider this my public plea for the Snoopy face on the Apple Watch to dress itself up for the holiday season. So far, I haven’t seen him walk proudly with his musket and capotain,or red suit and jingle bells, though it’s still early. I hope that one day in the coming weeks, I catch a glimpse at Snoopy doing something festive for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It would instill that same charm of the Timex watch collection, and it would make rocking the Snoopy face all the more worth while.

If you work at Apple and know whether there are holiday-themed Snoopy animations, write me a line. I’d love to know either way.

This week, I reviewed the new Motorola Razr and OnePlus Open, two smartphones that each fold in half and expand the range of foldables that North American customers have access to. Long gone are the days when the only bendable phones you could buy were ones with Samsung logos; now, we have flexible phones from Samsung, Google, Motorola, and OnePlus.

Of course, this only matters if each foldable does something to stand out from the pack. And so far, they have. Each manufacturer has a different design language, different priorities when it comes to features, and different software features to take advantage of their unique hardware.

But only two companies seem to be making a conscience effort in one key area: the price. The Open and Razr are both considerably cheaper than their categorical rivals, which is a big step toward making foldables a mainstream product instead of a specialty item only the most enthusiastic smartphone users will appreciate.

Granted, the prices aren’t that much lower. The Open is $1,699 (or $1,499 with the trade-in of any smartphone through OnePlus.com), while the Razr is priced at $699. That’s a range of $100-$300 less than what you’d pay for a Pixel Fold or Galaxy Z Flip 5. But not only is it nice to be able to save a few bucks if you want a folding phone, it’s nicer—and more important—to know that we’ve reached the point where companies are becoming more aggressive about lowering the price of foldables, which have largely cost the same extravagant amounts of money since their inception over four years ago.

To get the price down, both brands had to make some sacrifices, and the Razr makes the most by far. It shares a lot of similarities with the more expensive Razr+ like its hinge, 6.9-inch AMOLED screen (although it’s a little dimmer and has a slightly slower refresh rate), 8GB of RAM, and charging speeds. There are even some advantages the Razr has over its pricier sibling like a bigger battery and a more durable design (vegan leather won’t crack like glass).

But look elsewhere, and it’s easy to see where Motorola cut corners to drive the price down. The most obvious is the cover screen, which is significantly smaller than the one on the Razr+. It gives you basic functionality like notification management, the weather, your calendar, music controls, and a stopwatch. By contrast, it’s much more dated than what the Razr+ and Z Flip 5 have, but like older flip phones, you can learn to live with it.

The Razr is also slower than the Razr+ thanks to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor. It’s not terrible, but the difference is very noticeable when using them side-by-side. You also get considerably worse cameras; while the main 64MP sensor might be higher resolution than the 12MP sensor on the Razr+, photos take a step down in quality and processing, leaving much to be desired in virtually every lighting condition.

But with multi-day battery life, a good-looking design, and an IP52 certification for dust and splash resistance, the Razr is the quintessential baisc Android phone that happens to fold in half. And if all you want is a phone that can fold in half (and don’t mind living with subpar cameras and a tiny cover screen), the Razr might be worth a look.

On the other hand, there’s the OnePlus Open, which challenges the high-end of the folding phone market with a compelling package that almost makes no sacrifices at all, yet still costs less. OnePlus has done this before; it used to be famous for making flagship phones at mid-range prices, and while the Open is by no means priced like a mid-ranger, that same philosophy carries over to their first foldable, at least to some extent.

You really wouldn’t notice you were missing anything on the Open in spite of its lower price. The 7.82-inch folding display is beautiful with the smallest crease I’ve ever seen on a foldable, while the 6.31-inch cover screen has a great aspect ratio that sits somewhere between the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Pixel Fold. Performance is off the charts thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and 16GB of RAM, and OxygenOS’ new Open Canvas feature may just be the best implementation of multitasking I’ve ever seen on an Android device.

The cameras are also surprisingly solid. With great hardware and solid processing, photos look great in daylight and perfectly serviceable at nighttime. You would, of course, hope that these cameras were half-decent given the size of the camera bump on the back, and luckily, OnePlus delivers.

It’s also really thin and light, which I wasn’t expecting from this phone. Take a quick glance at it and you’d think the industrial flat sides and shiny edges meant the Open weighed almost 300 grams, but on the contrary, it’s only 239 grams (or 245 grams if you get the version with a vegan leather back). It’s just as comfortable to hold as any other large-format smartphone, and the slim form factor means it feels like holding the OLED panel itself when it’s open.

So what’s missing from this phone that helped OnePlus drive down the price? Wireless charging, for one thing, which a lot of my friends in the tech media have been complaining about since the embargo lifted on reviews. Is it a bad decision on OnePlus’ part? Yes. Is their “focus” on fast wired charging a bad excuse for not including wireless charging? Absolutely. But I know there are plenty of people who never use wireless charging and will be perfectly fine with the 67W charger that’s included in the box, so it’s kind of up to you to decide whether it’s a dealbreaker.

The Open also got an IPX4 certification, which means it has no official dirt protection and very little water resistance. If you watch MrMobile’s deep dive into the durability of the device (which I highly recommend), you’ll see that the Open can survive quite a bit before konking out. There’s a chance the Open could’ve earned a better IP rating, but it would’ve cost OnePlus more money to get it.

You also don’t get mmWave 5G on the Open. I’ve seen companies charge a $10 premium at certain carriers to get mmWave, so it makes sense to see OnePlus leave it out here (especially since it’s still very scarce throughout the country).

Other than that, the OnePlus Open is a very complete-feeling foldable, a lot moreso than the Razr does. And as long as you trade in a phone when you order, it’ll only cost you $1,499, which is a big deal for the foldable market.

The Moto Razr may sacrifice more features than the OnePlus Open to drive down its price, but at $700, it’s really hard to argue with the value you get. In a similar way, saving any money you can on a big-screen foldable is nice, and with the Open’s lower-than-average starting price, I can see a lot of people considering it if they don’t want to spend over $1,800.

For the first two folding phones conscience about their cost, Motorola and OnePlus have done a good job at focusig on the right features and creating a well-rounded experience. As time progresses, we’ll see even more aggressive options pop up with more features, better durability, and nicer designs. Until then, these are two solid options if you’re in the market for your first—or next—foldable smartphone.

My week feels like it’s consisted of one long binge-writing session and some strange sensation of writer’s block purgatory. That’s how Google Pixel Week goes every year: I get the phones, I have a week to review them, I frantically test everything, I write two full-length reviews over the course of 48 hours (at varying times of day), and I hope to God I didn’t miss any important points. Then, afterward, my brain decides it’s had enough and shuts down for the remainder of the week.

This year, I repeated this process for the Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2, two devices I was very excited to review. After being handed both devices (plus a few other goodies) at Google’s event, I set up the phone and watch and got to work, diving into all their new features to see if Google would have two winners, losers, or something in the middle.

I’m happy to report that both of these devices are tried-and-true winners. The Pixel 8, by every account, may be the best $700 phone of the entire year. Meanwhile, the Pixel Watch 2 might look the same (and still doesn’t come in more than one size), but the upgraded internals improve the experience so much that it feels like an entirely new watch.

I have full reviews of both devices up on CNN Underscored, but for those who just want the highlights, I broke them down (admittedly briefly) below. I’d also like to give you a glimpse into what I’m paying attention to with the Pixel 8 Pro, which I’ll review exclusively for you, my loyal subscribers.

Brief reflections on the Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2

Okay, let’s start with the Pixel 8.

• This whole phone comes off as much friendlier and inviting than the Pixel 7, which already had a certain “welcome home” vibe. The rounder corners, flat screen, and slim bezels help it feel premium and high-end, while the matte aluminum sides and camera bar remind you that Google didn’t intend for this to be the shiny one (that’s reserved for the oh-so-glossy Pixel 8 Pro).

• The screen is damn near perfect. 6.2 inches is a great size for a phone, and combined with the 120Hz refresh rate and 2,000 nits of peak brightness, the Pixel 8 has one of my favorite screens of the years. It’s just as good as what Apple and Samsung are putting out, which isn’t a common thing to say in regards to Pixel phones.

• Yes, the cameras are excellent, as you’d expect from a Pixel phone. And no, I’m not going to sit here and ask “what is a photo?”. I’m aware that the AI camera stuff calls into question whether you want to capture reality or a preferred reality, but that’s a very subjective opinion to have. Here’s what I’ll say: Magic Editor works surprisingly well in most situations (and falls apart in others), Audio Magic Eraser is a nice convenience for cleaning up your video’s sound, and Best Take will undoubtedly be the most popular AI feature on this entire phone.

• The Tensor G3 feels speedy and fast, at least in my testing. I’m sure gamers and serious multitaskers might not appreciate the somewhat limiting clock speeds and unusual warmth from the chipset, but everyone else will be just fine. It’s paired with 8GB of RAM and keeps everything fast and responsive.

• Battery life can last all day, although if you’re a particularly heavy user, you might run into a dead phone before you go to sleep.

• Seven years of software updates is crazy. That’s longer than any smartphone that’s ever come out (including iPhones). We’ll obviously have to see if Google keeps this promise, so I guess I’ll check back in with you all in 2030.

If you want to read all my thoughts and opinions on the Pixel 8 (including some details on a weird camera focusing bug), check out my review.

Alright, time for the Pixel Watch 2.

• This thing is so much faster than the original. Like, it’s night and day. Using the Pixel Watch 2 feels like using an Apple Watch, which is to say menus scroll quickly, apps open fast, and workouts can be tracked automatically. It’s a massive, massive improvement.

• Speaking of workouts, fitness tracking has gotten a big upgrade, too. Heart rate readings are more accurate thanks to a new multi-path heart rate sensor and algorithm, calorie counts are more precise, and Active Zone Minutes are more accurately represented. You also get stress management tools, temperature tracking when you sleep, and a lot more in the redesigned Fitbit app.

• The new safety features are nice to have in case of an emergency or you just want to ensure your close friends and family know you’re okay.

• Would you believe me if I said the battery life actually lasts a full day? Because it does. Google conjured some serious voodoo to get this thing to last a full day on a charge, and I’m here for it. Plus, it charges quicker and the charging puck won’t pop off as easily as before.

• Wear OS 4 is a fine operating system. I’m not the biggest fan of it, but if Google wants the Pixel Watch to be the Apple Watch of the Android world, they’re certainly on the right path.

• I want a bigger one. The 41mm case size is a fine middle ground for most people, but I’m used to wearing larger watches with bigger screens, and every time I use the Pixel Watch 2, I’m annoyed at its petite size. Plus, the bezels are still freaking massive.

For all my thoughts on Google’s latest smartwatch, here’s my review.

Pixel 8 Pro is up next

Next to my keyboard on my desk is the Pixel 8 Pro, which I’ve inserted my data-only T-Mobile SIM into. I’ll be spending a week or two getting to know it better, after which I’ll share my thoughts here.

To give you a peak into what’s going through my mind heading into this review, here’s a breakdown of the areas I’ll be focusing on the most.

• The display has 2,400 nits of peak brightness. That’s insane. I’m gonna use it every single sunny day I can to see how well you can see things in direct sunlight.

• I’m a sucker for a good camera, and I want to see if there are any huge differences between it and the iPhone 15 Pro (y’know, beyond the 5x telephoto, which my normal 15 Pro doesn’t have). I’ll also be looking closely at video quality, which I wasn’t a huge fan of on the regular Pixel 8. People are saying it’s really good on the 8 Pro, but I haven’t recorded enough to tell just yet.

• Battery life is said to be some of the best in town on the Pixel 8 Pro. But with such a huge (and bright) screen, I’m not so sure how long it can last on a full charge. Stay tuned.

• I’m assuming performance will feel just as good (if not better) than it is on the Pixel 8 since they share the same Tensor G3 processor. Still, I’ll be looking at that long-term to see if the Pixel 8 Pro suffers from the same bugs and performance hiccups of previous Pixels.

• I really want to see if I can latch onto all the AI craziness of these phones. Will I leave photos as-is, or will I bend each one I take to my every will? We shall see.

More reviews are coming

I have so many gadgets to get to before the end of the year, so you can bet that I’ll be churning out reviews left and right until the holidays. If you enjoy reading my stuff, be sure to share it with a friend and ask them to subscribe. Look, I even have a handy subscribe button below!

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Okay, back to writing…

The iPhone 15 Pro has been my daily phone for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve got to be honest with you: it’s one of my favorite phones of the entire year.

But what makes it my favorite phone might not be appealing to you or to everyone else. I switched to the 15 Pro from a 14 Pro Max (I’m a tech journalist—I’ve gotta have the latest stuff, ya know?), primarily because I wanted a smaller phone. I got tired of lugging around a 240-gram brick of stainless steel and glass everywhere I went, and it annoyed me that I couldn’t type out messages with one hand.

So, the iPhone 15 Pro was dropped into my shopping bag at T-Mobile on preorder day, eight days prior to receiving it on a rainy New Jersey day. It isn’t technically the best iPhone you can buy, but for fans of smaller flagship phones, it’s probably the most well-rounded device you’ll find on the market.

For this year, I’d like to share a much shorter version of my typical iPhone review. In the midst of all the chaos of Techtober (the tech community’s shared nickname for October, one of the busiest months for product launches), I don’t have time to plunk out a full 3,200+ word review. And by now, many of you have sifted through the reviews of the iPhone 15 series and decided which one is right for you.

But I still want to be part of the conversation, and so typed while in the back of a Greyhound bus heading to New York City for the Google Pixel 8 event (and finished the Saturday afterward), here’s what I have to say.

TITANIUM BABY

That’s all Apple seems to care about with the iPhone 15 Pro: titanium. It’s a fine material, sure, but it’s nothing revolutionary. On the device, it feels really nice, mostly because it makes the phones lighter than they were last year. That’s my primary reason for liking titanium so much: personally, I think the stainless steel of the 14 Pro series looked more premium, but there’s no question that the titanium frame of the 15 Pro feels high-end.

Y’know, as long as you don’t strap a case to it, which is exactly what I did. Luckily, you can find plenty of high-quality cases out there that give you a premium feel in the hand, like Nomad’s Modern Leather case, my immediate go-to for the new 15 Pro. It’s sleek, covered in genuine Horween leather, and comes with fancy aluminum buttons. This isn’t an ad, by the way—I genuinely am obsessed with their cases.

Oh, and I know there was some controversy around the colors this year, so let me clear that up: the best ones are White Titanium (the finish I chose for my personal phone) and Natural Titanium. The Black Titanium looks super stealthy, so I can see why some would choose it, but the Blue Titanium picks up so many fingerprints that it’s simply impossible to keep it from looking gross. If you use your phone naked, I recommend a brighter color.

I wish the Action button did more

I love the Action button! I really thought I was gonna miss the mute switch since it always was one of the reasons I liked iPhones so much, but I really don’t. Being able to program it to do whatever I want is fantastic, and all it takes to jump whatever action you want is a long-press.

But like many other reviewers, I wish it did more. When you press it once, it barks at you and tells you to hold it down. Apple was obviously smart to block the single-press gesture so you don’t get any accidental triggers, but how about a double-press? Keep the long press for certain actions, and a double-press for another action. It would be abundanty useful to have multiple functions programmed to this thing.

Until then, I’ll keep long-pressing it to open the camera app and visiting Control Center to toggle between ring and mute.

USB-C All The Things

I’ve been saying it for years, but for the people in the back—USB-C ALL THE THINGS.

I’m obviously very happy there’s a USB-C port on the iPhone, something I never thought I’d be able to say. I can finally use all the USB-C cords I carry around to charge my other stuff to charge my iPhone, which is a bigger convenience than I can sum up into words.

The port also enables a few neat tricks like the ability to output your iPhone’s screen to an external monitor without an adapter, the ability to charge other devices you own like an Apple Watch or AirPods with your phone’s battery, and the ability to store photos and videos to external drives as you capture them. That also means you can plug in basically any USB-C external drive you want to read the files on it in the Files app, which is pretty cool.

It’s not perfect, as is typical for new iPhone features. You don’t get faster charging speeds with the new port, which means you’re stuck at 20W-29W depending on the iPhone you buy,. Data transfer speeds are capped at 10Gbps which won’t please everyone, but should be enough for most creative professionals.

An iPhone display with the perfect size

The 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display on the iPhone 15 Pro is stupendous. Because of course it is. It’s one of the most color-accurate smartphone screens on the market, it’s bright (reaching 2,000 nits, to be exact), it’s fast thanks to the 120Hz refresh rate, and it’s sharp as a tack. Apple continues to deliver my favorite screen on any smartphone.

Plus, it’s the pefect size. 6.1 inches is the best smartphone size, and I’ll fight anyone who disagrees. I’m with my buddy Allison here—if you want a good default phone size, this is it.

I love the cameras, and you will too

Is there a huge difference between the iPhone 15 Pro’s cameras and last year’s 14 Pro cameras? No, not really. Every time I open the camera app and snap a photo, the resulting image is one that feels like it came out of my 14 Pro Max. But there are some key improvements in the details, which help make this camera system one of the best on the market.

The 48MP main lens got an upgrade so it can let in more light than before, which also means it can capture more detail. It’s also being binned and processed differently than it was on the 14 Pro: now, instead of a 12MP image, the iPhone 15 Pro will capture a 24MP image, which takes up slightly more room on your phone. With this setting, Apple is able to snag a few extra details and help photos look crisper and more pleasing, especially when you look at them on a larger screen.

That’s always been a problem for me. When I take a picture on my phone and look at it on my phone screen, it looks great. But blow it up on a 27-inch 4K monitor? It looks kinda crappy, mostly due to the poor processing and low-ish resolution. With the 15 Pro, some of that crappiness goes away: colors aren’t as bland or mushy, fine detail in things like clothing or brick buildings is maintained, and every photo feels brighter and more vibrant.

I also appreciate Apple’s new “lens” options in the camera app. Tap on the 1x button and you’ll jump between 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm equivalent shooting modes, all of which can give you a different look and feel to the photo you capture. According to Apple, each mode has its own processing pipeline that utilizes the megapixels in the middle of the sensor. Without going too far into the weeds, photo quality is consistent across each mode.

You also still get a 2x button that uses the middle 24 megapixels for a lossless crop, as well as a 3x zoom option that uses the 12MP telephoto. I didn’t notice many differences in quality with the telephoto on the 15 Pro, which means each picture I captured was just as good—if not better—than they would’ve been on the 14 Pro.

That’s good, but if you wanted more from your zoom lens, you’re out of luck. Apple reserved its fancy 5x telephoto lens for the 15 Pro Max, which the company said it was able to do thanks to the extra space in the bigger phone. I’d bet a lot of money that the feature comes to the standard-size 16 Pro next year, but for this year, those with the standard Pro are stuck with 3x. Whatever.

The 12MP ultra-wide camera is basically unchanged from last year, save for a new coating on the lens that reduces lens flairs. That’s a really nice upgrade, but for anyone looking for a sharper ultra-wide to play with, you’re not getting it here. Still, photo quality is perfectly fine.

Across all three lenses, you’ll be perfectly happy with nighttime shooting. Apple still doesn’t match the Google Pixel in the world of astrophotography, but for casual captures in a dim bar or while on a boat in the Hudson, you’ll get some great shots.

Portrait photos got an upgrade this year to make blurry backgrounds look nicer, and I’m here to say that they do. It’s also great that you can go back to a photo you captured in standard mode and turn it into a portrait photo after the fact—it’s a feature other phones have had for years, so it’s great to see Apple finally bring it to the iPhone.

Okay, here are some more samples.

Some final notes:

• Video quality is still excellent, and you can now shoot in LOG format if you’re a serious videographer and use your iPhone to shoot films.

• The selfie camera is unchanged, for better or worse.

• Where is the professional shooting mode for photos? I feel like that should be a thing by now.

Performance is exactly what you’d expect

The 3-nanometer A17 Pro processor is a world-class chipset, hands down. I’m not sure how to use the full extent of its power since iOS is a pretty simple operating system and there aren’t a lot of apps that require this much horsepower (I guess X feels a bit snappier? I don’t know), but it’s blazing-fast and reliably snappy—just as you’d expect.

I ran Geekbench 6 on the A17 Pro versus Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 from the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and… yeah, the iPhone won by a pretty big margin. Apple’s A17 Pro encroaches on numbers we’ve seen from its M1 processor, which is crazy to think about since this is a phone processor.

Obviously, the big pitch with the A17 Pro is improved gaming performance thanks to a new six-core GPU. I am not a mobile gamer by any means, so if you want some thoughts from actual gamers, IGN has some in its review. The tech that Apple packs in is quite impressive, though: there’s hardware-accelerated ray tracing for improved graphics fluidity, MetalFX UPscaling for higher-resolution graphics, improved efficiency, and more.

Of course, there’s plenty of cool tech for doing regular stuff, too. Like I said, this is a 3-nanometer processor, the first for any smartphone. It’s about 10 percent faster than the A16 Bionic processor and boasts a 2x faster Neural Engine for performing more on-device tasks per second (Apple says it’s capable of nearly 35 trillion operations per second).

In day-to-day usage, it feels like a new iPhone should: fast—really fast. Because of all this power, the 15 Pro series has enough headroom to last well into the future.

Battery life and overheating

I’m not disappointed by the iPhone 15 Pro’s battery life, but it’s a bit underwhelming. I thought the combination of the A17 Pro’s increased efficiency and the 15 Pro’s physically larger battery would make it last considerably longer than the 14 Pro, potentially matching the excellent battery life of the 13 Pro from a couple of years ago.

Nope. At the beginning of my day to the time I go to bed, I can get this phone down to 15-20 percent, sometimes even less if I take a lot of pictures. Yes, this is technically all-day battery life, but it’s pretty tight and doesn’t give you a lot of wiggle room if you have a longer-than-average day. The 15 Pro Max remains the Pro iPhone to get if you want long battery life.

One of the most viral topics around the iPhone 15 Pro is the conversation around overheating. There have been plenty of reports of 15 Pros sporatically overheating over no apparent reason, such as when scrolling Instagram or streaming music over Bluetooth. I’ve personally experienced both of those problems, as well as other instances where my iPhone shouldn’t get hot by any means (how much power does it take to check the weather?).

Fortunately, Apple didn’t let this issue go to the wayside unaddressed. Not only did it start pushing app developers to fix issues within their apps that caused overheating, but it also sent out iOS 17.0.3 with a root fix for the problem. Since I installed the update, I haven’t had a single instance where my phone got warm, other than times it normally gets warm like when I’m checking Apple Maps in the blazing New York City sun.

Other users continue to report issues with heat on the 15 Pro even after updating to iOS 17.0.3, but at least on my unit, it seems that those issues have been patched up.

iOS 17 is… fine

This will be shortest part of the review because I literally don’t care about iOS 17 almost at all. It hasn’t made any significant improvements in my day-to-day life, and none of the new features have resonated with me. I guess StandBy is pretty cool, as is Live Voicemail for screening calls. But, like, that’s kind of it. I only recommend upgrading so you stay current with the latest security patches and bug fixes.

I think Apple made another great phone in the iPhone 15 Pro. It’s extremely well-rounded, it has amazing cameras, the best performance on any smartphone, a beautiful screen, and nice bonuses like a titanium frame and USB-C.

Will this be the iPhone to convince Android users to switch? I have no idea, but I will say that the inclusion of the USB-C port could do just that. I know a lot of folks who hate Lightning and don’t want anything to do with it, and those folks might find sovereignce in one of Apple’s latest smartphones. It’s not as big a deal as, say, Apple adopting RCS (which will never happen, let’s be honest), but it’s an important change that could convince users of Google’s platform to give the iPhone a shot.

For everyone else, it’s another iPhone. If you own an iPhone 13 Pro or 14 Pro, I don’t think it makes sense to buy an iPhone 15 Pro—unless you’re in dire need of a higher-resolution camera or a USB-C port. But if you own an iPhone 12 Pro or earlier, this is the time to buy. You’ll get Dynamic Island, the USB-C port, better cameras, faster performance, and a refreshed design.

The iPhone 15 Pro is another iPhone—the best iPhone, according to Apple. They say that about every new iPhone, but with the USB-C port and excellent camera system, I can see why they think that. It’s one of my favorite iPhones I’ve ever used, and I’m excited to use it for the next year as my daily driver.

I’m in New York City once again, this time for Google’s big Pixel 8 launch event. It was my first time getting to attend such an event, so there were plenty of times that I took a second to soak it all in.

Of course, you’re here for the phone, but you might already know what I’m going to say. The Pixel 8 and 8 Pro were leaked extensively leading up to their unveiling, so my biggest question was whether Google managed to save any surprises for the event itself.

Reader, they did not. But it was a great time nonetheless.

Pixel 8 and 8 Pro

The big takeaway I had with the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro is the sheer amount of AI stuff in them. That’s nothing out of the ordinary for Google, mind you; the Pixel series has always been abundantly smart in the artificial intelligence area. But with this generation, there seems to be more AI than ever, perfectly fitting the trendiness throughout 2023 of the acronym.

One of the features I’m looking forward to most is the Assistant with Bard integration. If you recall, Bard is Google’s ChatGPT equivalent which came out after OpenAI and Microsoft went viral for shipping consumer versions of the generative AI chatbot in products like Bing Chat. Bard didn’t seem to catch on quite like Google hoped, but it looks like it has a chance to get a lot more popular thanks to the Google Assistant.

On the Pixel 8 series, Google will be integrating Bard’s generative AI and machine learning technologies directly into the Assistant, so you can do things like ask the Assistant to summarize a webpage, generate a shopping list of ingredients for a party, or manage other features on your device. It’s not only a strong signal that Google wants to reduce the attention Microsoft is getting with Bing Chat, but it also wants to beat Amazon to the punch with generative AI in voice assistants.

Google is also using AI to improve Call Screen. Now, when you get a call from an unknown number, it’ll silently answer those calls using a more natural-sounding voice so it doesn’t seem like the other person called a robot by mistake. It’ll then use generative AI to recognize what the person on the other end is calling about and give you contextualized prompts on the screen to take action through the Assistant. According to Google, this feature can help reduce up to 50 percent of the spam calls you receive regularly.

Google has also improved its voice recording algorithms so that it ignores words like “um” or other filler phrases that don’t add anything to a request or recording.

The flashiest AI features of them all involve the cameras, because of course they do—this is a Google phone, after all.

The feature I think most people will use is Best Take, which can look at a burst of group photos and let you pick and choose the expressions of you and your friends in each for the final image. That way, if someone blinks in photo 3 or another one isn’t smiling in photo 5, you can go back and select an expression from another image so you can get the photo you want.

Magic Eraser is getting upgraded with smarter object recognition, as well as the ability to select objects and move them around or resize them. There’s also Audio Magic Eraser, which can eliminate a very significant amount of background noise in order to isolate the person speaking in the frame or the specific sound at the foreground. Like Best Take, I think a lot of folks will be trying this feature out to clean up their video.

There’s also Zoom Enhance, which uses AI to sharpen digitally-cropped photos to maximize their resolution and detail. I’m not so sure how well this feature is going to work in the real world, but Google seemed pretty confident in it onstage.

The camera feature I’m most curious about is Video Boost, which seems kind of insane. Exclusive to the Pixel 8 Pro, the feature looks at every individual frame of your video and sends it to Google’s network of data centers in the cloud, processes each frame to improve things like noise and highlights, and sends it back to your phone. In Google’s presentation, it kind of looked like it was just using aggressive HDR and saturation tricks to make it seem like video quality was substantially improved, but that was just a quick demo. We won’t get access to the feature until later this year when it ships in one of Google’s Feature Drops, but you better believe I’ll be toying around with it the moment it drops (pun definitely intended).

All of these AI tricks are powered by Google’s Tensor G3, the latest generation of its in-house processor which is said to offer meaningful improvements to performance over the G2. It’s able to process much more complex machine learning algorithms than before, and general performance when opening apps and multitasking should also be improved. Google didn’t specifically call out any efficiency or heat improvements, but I would bargain there will at least be some: the G2 inside the Pixel 7 tends to get pretty hot and drain the battery quickly, so there’s bound to be some change for the better in the newer chip.

The rest of the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro are as you’d expect: Pixel phones with a tweaked design and a few neat tricks. The Pixel 8 gets a 6.2-inch “Actua Display” with a Full HD+ resolution and 2,000 nits of brightness. It also gets a 120Hz refresh rate, which is an improvement over the 90Hz refresh rate of the Pixel 7, something I’m sure will entice many people shopping for a phone in the $700 range. The Pixel 8 Pro has a “Super Actua Display,” which means having a variable 120Hz refresh rate that can drop down to 1Hz when not in use. The panel itself is 6.7 inches, has a 2992x1344 resolution, and can go all the way up to 2,400 nits of brightness (400 nits more than the latest iPhones).

I’d also like to mention that both phones come with flat displays, which a lot of people are excited about. I didn’t really mind the curves on the left and right of the Pixel 7 Pro’s screen, but I’m glad that flat is back in style in Google’s hardware design department.

Speaking of which, the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro look like curvier, softer versions of the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro from last year. The corners are a lot rounder this time, the camera bars are still plenty prominent, and the edges are slightly rounded for comfort. I held both phones at Google’s event, and yes, these are very nice phones to hold without cases. The Pixel 8 gets glossy glass on the back, while the 8 Pro has a new frosted finish that is a lot slipperier but nicer to look at.

Inside the camera bar of the Pixel 8, you’ll find a new 50MP main camera with an f/1.7 aperture. It’s the same sensor as the 8 Pro, so you’ll get identical photos and videos from both. In addition, the Pixel 8 gets a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide with a 125.8 field of view and autofocus, which enables macro photography. Meanwhile, the 8 Pro gets a 48MP ultra-wide camera with an f/1.95 aperture, a 125.5 field of view (ever so slightly tighter than the 8), and autofocus for macro shots. It also comes with a 48MP f/2.2 telephoto lens that enables 5x lossless zoom.

The Pixel 8 and 8 Pro get slightly larger batteries than the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, so there’s a chance they’ll last longer on a charge (although Google still says to expect “all-day” endurance from both). You also get Wi-Fi 7 support, a physical SIM card slot, a USB-C 3.2 port, and an IP68 certification for dust and water resistance.

They each ship with Android 14, which is starting to roll out to all Pixel phones now. But here’s the real kicker: Google says it’ll support the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro with up to seven years of OS, security, and Feature Drop updates, which is simply insane. No other manufacturer has ever supported a smartphone with regular updates for this long, including Apple (unless I’m missing something, the longest-supported iPhone was 2015’s iPhone 6S which got updates all the way to iOS 15 in 2021). That’s a huge flex for Google, which it says is only possible because of the Tensor processor.

Oh, there’s one more thing: the Pixel 8 Pro has a temperature sensor in its camera bar. Why a temperature sensor, you ask? To measure the temperature of things, of course! Rumor has it this was a feature the company was working on during the age of COVID-19 when temperature screening was a daily occurrence for a lot of people. Now that it’s a lot less frequent, it’s hard to imagine many people will be taking their temperature with any degree of frequency, especially since Google is awaiting FDA approval to measure the temperature of humans. In the meantime, you can take the temperature of inanimate objects, which I guess is cool.

Okay, final note: the Pixel 8 Pro comes in Obsidian, Porcelain, and Bay, the latter of which is clearly the best color. The Pixel 8 comes in Obsidian, Rose, and Hazel, the latter of which is the best color. Both phones launch October 12th.

Pixel Watch 2

Alright, the Pixel Watch 2. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like much. It still only comes in one 41mm size like before, it still has super thick bezels around the display, and you still get a side button and digital crown (which now sits a bit more flush with the rest of the watch). But look inside the watch, and you’ll find a number of improvements that should make it much easier to recommend than the original.

There’s a new quad-core CPU that comes with a 40 percent performance boost and better efficiency, so much so that Google says the watch will last comfortably for 24 hours even with the always-on display enabled. Charging is also much faster; Google switched from using a wireless charging puck to one with contact pins, so the Pixel Watch 2 can recharge up to 50 percent in 30 minutes.

There’s a new heart rate sensor on the watch that uses multiple LEDs to read your heart rate with improved accuracy (Google says high-intensity workouts can see a 40 percent improvement in heart rate tracking). It works in conjunction with an improved AI heart rate algorithm for increased accuracy, which can help keep better track of the calories you burn as well.

Google also includes a skin temperature and continuous electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor, which can track your stress levels throughout the day by detecting your wrist’s temperature and any molecular levels of sweat. If it detects a spike, it’ll send you a notification and ask how you’re feeling, giving you the ability to track your stress levels throughout the day and meditate for a bit using breathing exercises to calm down. It’s the same Body Response feature as the Fitbit Sense 2.

The Pixel Watch 2 is also getting improved automatic workout detection with certain workout types, an improved stats interface during workouts, and skin temperature monitoring while you sleep. Google is also including a number of safety features like Safety Check, which will ask you to check in after a set period of time. That way, if you’re traveling and want to ensure you stay safe, you can set a timer for when you expect to be home. Then, if you don’t respond to the timer when it rings, your emergency contacts will be contacted automatically with your location. It’s powered by Safety Signal, which keeps the feature online 24/7 and eliminates the need to have an LTE watch. (You will need to have a Fitbit Premium subscription to use it, however.) There are also various new ways to share your medical information in case of an emergency.

The watch runs Wear OS 4 which comes with a number of new apps like Gmail and Google Maps, new customization options, new watch faces, new accessibility features, and more. The software also makes it easier to reset your Pixel Watch 2, transfer it to a new phone, or restore it from previous backups. And of course, the Watch 2 still ties deeply in with the Fitbit app, so you can take advantage of Daily Readiness Scores, Sleep Profiles, Active Zone Minutes, and more.

One final note: the Pixel Watch 2 now uses 100 percent recycled aluminum for its construction, which will make it slightly lighter than the original Pixel Watch and its stainless steel case. It’s available in Polished Silver, Champagne Gold, or Matte Black. It launches on October 12th for $349.99, the same price as the original Pixel Watch.

Pixel Buds Pro

There were also some updates to the Pixel Buds Pro during Google’s event. No, this isn’t a new generation or anything, although they do come in a gorgeous Bay blue now (in addition to Porcelain, as seen above).

The updates strictly apply to the software, and they sound pretty cool. When paired with a Pixel 8 or 8 Pro, the Buds Pro can now take advantage of Bluetooth Super Wideband, which doubles the standard bandwidth for voices so your voice sounds clearer, fuller, and more natural. Clear Calling, Google’s AI trick to reduce background noise when on calls, is also being improved on the Buds Pro with even better noise reduction.

Google is also adding Conversation Detection, which can detect when you start speaking and automatically pause your music and turn on transparency mode. When you stop speaking, your music will resume and Active Noise Cancellation will turn on. The Pixel Buds Pro also get improved latency while gaming (only on the Pixel 8 series), guided suggestions to mitigate hearing loss when listening to music at high volumes, and a companion app for Chromebooks.

In case you were wondering, they still start at $199.99. The new colors, Bay and Porcelain, will start shipping on October 12th. You can preorder them today.

There’s nothing quite like traveling for tech events. Getting to go hands-on with all the products, meet up with my fellow creators, and watch major executives introduce their products in real life (Rick Osterloh! My man!) is something I’ll never get tired of.

I’ll be back with more thoughts and opinions on the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, Pixel Watch 2, Pixel Buds Pro, and Fitbit Charge 6 very soon. ;)

We’re in the middle of iPhone season, but that hasn’t stopped Amazon and Microsoft from hosting their own events to show off what they’ve been working on. I wasn’t invited to either of them in person, but I caught up on all the news afterward, and I can tell you that my favorite announcement was a pair of smart glasses.

Why smart glasses, you ask? I’ve been fascinated by the category for years, mostly because no one seems to know what to do with them. Some companies have decided Bluetooth music is the only thing people care about, while others strive for an ambient computing experience with augmented overlays for information at a glance (a la Google Glass).

Amazon’s approach? Make glasses that look normal with Alexa built-in.

It’s sort of a happy medium, somewhere between the ultimate face-worn computing platform and a basic pair of spectacles with speakers in their stems. The new Echo Frames, Amazon’s second iteration after their debut in 2020, want to fit into your everyday style, while the technology fades into the background.

That’s why they look so good. In these press images Amazon provided, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between these glasses and a normal, non-smart pair. (Okay, I suppose if you look at the stems of the glasses you could tell, but still—progress!)

Amazon says instead of developing the technology first and designing glasses around it, it worked backward, creating aesthetically pleasing glasses with the computing bits tucked neatly away. It had to take a different approach to the engineering of the Echo Frames to make these changes, which included moving the circuitry from the front frames to the temples.

The result is a lineup of eyewear that looks like the same stuff you’d get at the eye doctor or a fancy boutique. In fact, that’s exactly what you’d get: mixed in with Amazon’s own styles are two designs by Carrera Eyewear of Safilo Group, giving you even more variety and further stressing Amazon’s commitment to style with this generation.

Of course, the tech inside is getting an upgrade, too. Amazon says the sound quality from both speakers is improved with better bass and clarity than before, although they probably won’t be replacing your earbuds anytime soon. They use an open design which secludes the sound to your ears and can’t be heard by others (unless you crank the volume way up).

Alexa should be a lot faster to process requests thanks to new custom-built speech processing, which Amazon says also helps in recognizing requests in loud or windy conditions. This way, there should be less friction between you and the voice assistant which, hopefully, will increase your daily usage of Alexa. I know Amazon would love it if we all used it just a little bit more.

Amazon also says it’s increased the battery life of the Echo Frames to six hours of continuous usage, which should be enough to get through a full day. There are also a few new features thrown in the mix like multi-device pairing (helpful if you’re using your laptop at home for a video call and want to listen to music on your phone when you leave), a double-tap gesture on the back button to start a playlist, notification filtering, and the ability to ask Alexa where you placed your glasses if you lost them.

And in case you were wondering, the lenses can be simple blue-light filters for computing or be swapped for your prescription. Amazon also offers UV400 sunglass lenses. The lenses are scratch-resistant, and the entire package is IPX4 certified in case you step out into the rain.

These new Echo Frames seem like they could be the first pair of truly good smart glasses, if only because they look so good. I can’t stress this enough: if you’re going to put technology in a pair of glasses, people don’t want to wear them because they think they’ll look like a nerd. The tech has to fade into the background and be forgotten about until you want to use it. And while the design isn’t perfect, Amazon has gotten the closest I’ve ever seen to making a pair of smart glasses folks might actually want to wear.

With a starting price of $389.99, it might be tricky to convince a lot of people to buy them, especially if you ask them to make them their primary eyeglasses, prescription lenses and all. The market is still in its infancy, and many people will need to get used to the idea of Alexa living on their face. But this is an important step in the right direction for the future of smart glasses.

Most of them suck, but maybe Amazon’s don’t, and that’s pretty enticing as it is.

Other Amazon announcements

In typical Amazon fashion, there was a flurry of other announcements during its event. Here’s a quick rundown of them all.

• Alexa is getting upgraded with generative AI. Soon, you’ll be able to say “Alexa, let’s chat” and have a conversation with Alexa like you would with ChatGPT or other AI bots. The technology will help Alexa feel more natural to interact with, backed by an improved voice that sounds far more human than you’d think. Oh, and if you own an Echo Show and enroll in a facial detection system, you’ll be able to speak directly to the screen to start chatting with Alexa, which is pretty cool. It’s unclear when this feature will ship.

• There’s a new Echo Show 8 and Echo Hub. Amazon’s Echo Show 8 gets upgraded with a centered camera above its display, better background noise suppression when speaking, spatial audio, Thread and Zigbee support, 40 percent better performance, an updated home screen with improved menu functions, and more. Meanwhile, the Echo Hub is a new addition to Amazon’s lineup, and it’s basically an Echo Show 8 minus the speaker. You can mount it to your wall and control all of your smart home appliances with it, with latency as low as 300 milliseconds. It supports all of the same smart home protocols as the Echo Show 8 and can be powered using power-over-ethernet with a compatible USB-C adapter. The Echo Show 8 costs $149.99 while the Echo Hub costs $179.99. Both launch later this year.

• Fire TV gets an upgrade. The new Fire TV Stick 4K (2nd Gen) gets 30 percent better performance than the previous model and supports Wi-Fi 6 for $49.99. Meanwhile, the slightly more expensive Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Gen) has support for Wi-Fi 6E, Dolby Vision, HDR, HDR10+, Dolby Atmos audio, and the new Fire TV Ambient experience which can transform your TV into an always-on smart display. It’s priced at $59.99, making it the obvious one to get between the two. Amazon also introduced a $119.99 Fire TV Soundbar that supports DTS Virtual:X and Dolby Audio, and can be paired with any Fire TV device. They’ll all start shipping over the coming weeks.

• Need some new home security gadgets? Amazon’s got you covered. There’s the new Blink Outdoor 4 Floodlight Camera that combines an HD security camera with an LED floodlight (and it has two-year battery life using its default settings), as well as the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro that can give you an aerial view of the inside or outside of your home, while also packing features like 3D Motion Detection, Bird’s Eye Zones, and Bird’s Eye View. The former costs $159.98 while the latter is priced at $179.99. They each launch in mid-October.

• Gadgets for the kids were also showcased. Amazon unveiled the new Echo Pop Kids speakers with Marvel and Disney Princess themes for the little ones, priced at $49.99. There’s also a new Fire HD 10 Kids tablet that can be configured with age filters for 3-7 year olds or 6-12 year olds (you can obviously adjust these filters during setup). It comes with a 10.1-inch display, 32GB of storage, up to 13 hours of battery life, and a 25 percent performance boost over the previous generation. It’s priced at $189.99 and ships with a Mickey Mouse or Disney Princess-themed protective case in the box.

Microsoft’s big NYC event

Just one day after Amazon, another event occurred in New York City hosted by Microsoft. It wasn’t immediately clear what the company had in store, with some speculating it would be an introduction to the next major Windows update or an upgrade to the Surface Pro lineup.

Turns out, it was a lot more software than hardware. The biggest headline was Copilot, Microsoft’s AI chatbot that’s going to be woven throughout the next major Windows 11 update. Copilot is basically Bing Chat, which uses ChatGPT for AI-generated search results and responses to queries, but for all the other things you do on your Windows machine. That could mean organizing your files, sorting data in an Excel sheet, generating a starter paragraph for a new Word document, and more.

Copilot supports both typed requests and voice requests, which could turn your Windows PC into quite a powerful generative AI platform. The feature is shipping with the Windows 11 2H23 update, which is set to start rolling out on September 26th to supported users.

The update, which has been in testing for a number of months, is set to be a pretty significant upgrade for Windows 11 users. Beyond Copilot, Microsoft is introducing a lot of new features for Paint, Snipping Tool, Outlook, File Explorer, and more. It’ll feel a bit fresher, too, with tweaks to the UI throughout the system. No, it’s not going to substantially change the Windows 11 experience, but your interactions with your PC may change thanks to Copilot.

Of course, with a big new update, you need some hardware to feature it on. Microsoft didn’t do anything crazy on the surface (get it? Surface?), but the updates it made to the Surface Laptop Studio 2 and Surface Laptop Go 3 seem pretty neat.

The Surface Laptop Go 3 is basically the same as the Go 2, just with a newer chip: Intel’s 12th-generation Core i5. The previous version had the 11th-generation, so you’ll be getting better performance from the newer model (which Microsoft says is 88 percent better than before). It’s paired with up to 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

Beyond that, it’s the same ol’ Surface Laptop Go. You’re still getting a 12.4-inch display with a 3:2 aspect ratio, a decent amount of ports (including USB-C, USB-A, and a headphone jack), Wi-Fi 6, and a fingerprint scanner. Microsoft says it has 15-hour battery life, but that’ll obviously need to be tested in the real world. The laptop still starts at $799 and goes on sale October 3rd.

Meanwhile, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is a bit more exciting, if only because it’s Microsoft’s vision of a premium Windows laptop. Granted, it’s not changing much compared to the original model, but it’ll hopefully patch some of the shortcomings.

That includes performance, which tends to choke once you start doing heavy stuff on it. Microsoft has upgraded the internals with Intel’s 13th-generation Core i7 H-series processors, along with your choice of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 or 4060 GPU. This combination should help speed things up when your workloads get heavier, but only time will tell. You also get up to 64GB of RAM and 2TB of storage.

One of the biggest spec upgrades is the inclusion of a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) from Intel, which helps to speed up AI tasks. With Copilot on the way and plenty of other AI-related goodness in the rumored Windows 12 upgrade, Microsoft is laying the groundwork for improved AI performance on its flagship laptop.

Other changes include an upgraded trackpad with new accessibility options, a USB-A port, a microSD card slot, a charger for the Surface Slim Pen 2, and a little extra thickness and weight to accommodate the updated internals. Beyond that, we’re looking at a nearly identical Surface Laptop Studio design with a 14.4-inch display that can be pulled forward and docked for drawing or watching content. It still has a layered build with plenty of space for the fans to cool things down, and it’s still far from the most portable laptop on the market.

Microsoft is pricing it at $1,999, which puts it head-to-head with Apple’s redesigned MacBook Pro. It’s going on sale October 3rd. I’m getting a chance to review the Surface Laptop Studio 2 for a new site, so stay tuned for my thoughts.

Epiloge

I realize this newsletter is a bit late. I’ve been dealing with some serious writer’s block as I try to sort out my upcoming content schedule. I’ve got quite a number of reviews to pump out, and I’ll be attending two events in New York City in the next 10 days: one of them I can’t tell you about, and the other happens to be hosted by Google.

Expect plenty of content from me in the next couple of weeks. We’re in the thick of New Gadget Season, so buckle up.

A lot of people count down to Apple’s yearly event when the new iPhones come out, but not me: I count down until the embargo lifts on the devices and reviewers can share their thoughts on what it’s like to use them. That’s ultimately what matters to me. Being a tech journalist, I’m always curious to hear what my peers have to say, and I’m far from the biggest fan of marketing copy and talking points that executives like to regurgitate over and over again when talking about their new products.

What matters to me—and what’s the most beneficial to consumers—are the reviews themselves. What are they like to use in real life? Do they have any weird quirks that we should be concerned with? Are any of the new features up to Apple’s promises? What about camera quality, battery life, and performance? Is that of that good, or is it the same as last year?

It’s Review Day, and the subsequent weeks that follow, when we get answers to those questions. And I had a lot going into the iPhone 15 cycle, like whether the cameras would have meaningful upgrades over the iPhone 14 and if battery life has gotten any better. I was also curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on the Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro, as well as the charging experience with USB-C.

In my head, I guessed how reviewers would react to these sectors of the iPhone 15 experience, and while fully acknowledging I can’t prove it in any way, most of my predictions were correct. These are iPhones for iPhone’s sake, not a reinvention of the modern smartphone or a complete overhaul of the form factor.

They’re incremental, while not being incremental at all. They’re vastly different from last year, yet somehow feeling all too familiar at the same time.

I say all this without having used any of the new iPhones in my everyday life; my iPhone 15 Pro doesn’t come until Friday, and I haven’t demoed any at a carrier store or Apple location. I’m simply judging by what my fellow reviewers have stated, and it all makes total sense.

These are the new iPhones for this year, which makes them the best iPhones ever. Surprised?

Here’s what we’ve learned

They feel thinner and smaller, when they really aren’t

Both the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro feel like they’re thinner and slightly smaller than their predecessors, according to reviewers, but they really aren’t.

Okay, well, that might not be totally true. If you look at the dimensions of each phone, Apple has shaved off a 100th of an inch here and there, depending on the phone you’re looking at. But the illusion primarily comes down to the sides and bezels. Apple contoured the edges of every iPhone 15 model so that it sits more comfortably in your hand, while the bezels have been trimmed for a more modern aesthetic.

Reviewers seem to dig these attributes of the iPhone. But if we’re talking about their favorite design changes, it’s probably the titanium build of the 15 Pro and Pro Max: both are dramatically lighter than their predecessors. Weight was an issue on the 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max due to their inclusion of stainless steel, and by the looks of it, the 15 Pro’s reduced weight thanks to its transition to Grade 5 titanium is a huge hit.

Plus, it’s more durable and is separate from the rear glass, which helps make it more repairable than the 14 Pro. Cool, right?

Performance is better across the board

Both the standard iPhone 15 and 15 Pro got processor bumps, which means better performance for all.

For the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, it’s the A16 Bionic chip, which debuted last year in the iPhone 14 Pro. It’s a very capable processor, one that can still beat most flagship Android phones in both real-world performance and benchmarks.

In the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, you get Apple’s 3-nanometer A17 Pro chipset, which reviews say gives you the very best performance from an iPhone ever (obviously). It also seemed that gaming performance was up to snuff, just as Apple promised, although we’re still waiting for certain games to come out to really put it through the ringer.

The 5x zoom on the 15 Pro Max seems to be a hit, but not as much as portrait mode

Good news—the camera section of each review seems to be really positive. The new 48MP cameras across both the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro series seem to be excellent performers in every lighting condition, particularly thanks to the new default 24MP resolution which captures more detail than before. The 5x telephoto camera on the 15 Pro Max is also a great addition, with reliable quality and stabilization.

But I’m not sure any of this was as excessively praised as the new portrait mode features, which let you add a blurry background after you’ve taken a standard photo using machine learning. Reviewers loved the ability to turn any picture they wanted into a portrait, as well as the ability to readjust where the blur was positioned. It’s a feature I’ll be paying close attention to when I review the 15 Pro.

The Action button needs to have more… action

On the iPhone 15 Pro, it seemed that people were fine with the Action button replacing the physical mute switch. After all, its default action is to do just that—mute your phone.

But a lot of reviewers pointed out that it could do more. Many asked for something like a double-press to program another function, in conjunction with the long-press gesture. I’m totally in favor of this: I would want my Action button to mute my phone with a long press and open a Shortcut or trigger the flashlight with a double-press.

Maybe Apple will add it to a future iOS 17 update. Who knows.

USB-C is appreciated by all, while battery life seems to be the same

In case you were worried, no, no one actually misses Lightning. Every reviewer had something nice to say about the USB-C ports added to the iPhone 15 series, albeit while listing off some of the shortcomings of the particular ports Apple included.

For instance, you only get USB 2 data speeds on the iPhone 15 and USB 3 speeds on the 15 Pro. You also don’t get faster charging: the iPhone 15 Pro still maxes out at 27W, which is a shame. Still, many point out how convenient it is to carry around one cable to charge all your stuff, and regardless of whether a government entity is forcing Apple to include the port or not, that’s reason in and of itself to make the switch to USB-C.

While on the subject of charging and power, battery life appears to be the same for the regular 15 and 15 Pro, perhaps with a slight improvement depending on your usage. Meanwhile, the 15 Plus and 15 Pro Max are the best for endurance, with the 15 Plus being particularly impressive. In some tests, it could last a couple more hours than the 14 Plus before dying.

Reviewers have only had the phones for a few days, so it’s hard to take any of what’s been published with something more than a grain of salt. That being said, at least the battery life story appears to be relatively positive for Apple’s new phones.

Oh, one more note on battery and charging: you can use the USB-C port to charge other devices like AirPods or your Apple Watch, as well as Android phones. MKBHD did a test with the included USB-C cable and found that any device with USB PD can be recharged using your iPhone, while others will be recognized as an accessory.

Reviews I’ve been reading/watching

Here are some of the reviews I’ve been reading and watching all day which I recommend checking out for the full iPhone 15 and 15 Pro picture.

iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

• Jacob Krol, TheStreet

• Mark Spoonauer, Tom’s Guide (15 Pro, 15 Pro Max)

• Allison Johnson, The Verge

• Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch

• Raymond Wong, Inverse

• Joanna Stern, The Wall Street Journal

• Julian Chokkattu, Wired

• Cherlynn Low, Engadget

• Kif Leswing, CNBC

• Patrick O’Rourke, MobileSyrup

• Patrick Holland, CNET

• Michael Josh, GadgetMatch

• The Tech Chap

• iJustine

• Dave2D

iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus

• Mike Andronico, CNN Underscored

• Jacob Krol, TheStreet

• Dan Seifert, The Verge

• Lauren Goode, Wired

• John Velasco, Tom’s Guide (15, 15 Plus)

• Lisa Eadicicco, CNET

• Stefan Vazharov, Best Products

• Simon Cocks, Good Housekeeping

• Patrick O’Rourke, MobileSyrup

As more reviews are published, I’ll update these lists to highlight my favorites.

My iPhone 15 Pro review

Obviously, I won’t be leaving you hanging with a bunch of other people’s reviews, although I fully encourage reading/watching them. My iPhone 15 Pro should arrive at the end of the week, at which point I’ll begin my review process to see whether the smaller Pro model is worth picking up.

If you want to know why I decided to order the 15 Pro and not the larger 15 Pro Max, I refer you to my previous posts.

Stay tuned, dear reader—iPhone season is officially underway.

Another Apple event has come and gone, and leading up to today, I had just one question: should I preorder the Blue Titanium or White Titanium iPhone 15 Pro?

I made the decision to go for the smaller Pro iPhone ahead of the Wonderlust event on Tuesday, and with rumors indicating it would be lighter, faster, have better cameras, and (potentially) longer battery life, I just needed Apple to show me the colors the 6.1-inch device came in so I knew what to do come preorder time.

The iPhone 15 Pro is the smaller sibling of the 15 Pro Max, and these two devices are a third of the seven new devices Apple announced during the event. We also got the standard iPhone 15, an iPhone 15 Plus, the Apple Watch Series 9, a second-generation Apple Watch Ultra, and a new pair of AirPods (sort of).

I don’t plan on buying any of the other gadgets Apple announced. I bought an Apple Watch Series 8 last year which will last me at least until the mysterious Series X drops, and my AirPods work totally fine (although I’m pretty jealous of their new feature). I’m most excited for the 15 Pro, and I’m looking forward to its arrival next Friday.

A quick recap

If you somehow missed the frenzy of Apple coverage from news outlets this week, allow me to fill you in.

• iPhone 15 and 15 Plus: Apple’s new baseline iPhones have a lot of Pro-grade features (minus a 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate, of course). The notch is replaced by the Dynamic Island, the old 12MP main camera was upgraded to a larger 48MP sensor, the Lightning port was replaced by USB-C, and the design was tweaked to feel more comfortable to hold. There were also a few smaller upgrades like Roadside Assistance, which can help if you experience an issue while in your car. You still get 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch sizes, with the same $799 and $899 starting prices.

• iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max: The tagline of the new iPhone 15 Pros is “Titanium,” at least if you check Apple’s website. That’s thanks to their new titanium design, which looks both cool and kinda ugly at the same time since it seems to attract more fingerprints than we thought. Beyond that, there are a lot of upgrades here, like the A17 Bionic chip (the world’s first 3nm processor inside a smartphone), revamped cameras with a 5x telephoto lens on the 15 Pro Max, USB-C with USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds, and a programmable Action button that replaces the mute switch. They also come with skinnier bezels, which help the 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch displays seem even bigger. The 15 Pro sticks with the same $999 starting price as the 14 Pro, while the 15 Pro Max starts at $1,199, a $100 increase over last year, while doubling the base storage to 256GB.

• Apple Watch Series 9: Perhaps one of the most boring Apple Watch updates in recent memory, the Series 9 doesn’t do a lot that’s different compared to the Series 8. There’s a new S9 chip inside that gets you on-device Siri response processing, faster dictation speeds, and a new feature called Double Tap that lets you use your index finger and thumb to select things on the watch without touching the screen. You also get Apple’s second-generation Ultra Wideband chip for finding devices with better precision. Beyond that, the displays are brighter (up to 2,000 nits), there’s a pink color, and there are some new bands. You still get 41mm and 45mm sizes, and the starting price remains $399.

• Apple Watch Ultra 2: The Ultra 2, Apple’s first sequel to the original Ultra that came out last year, is also a pretty boring update. It carries the same S9 processor, which also means it gains Double Tap. Apple also throws in automatic Night Mode for using certain watch faces in the dark, up to 3,000 nits of peak brightness (which is, admittedly, insane), and offers some new colors for each of the Ultra’s first-party bands. It, too, keeps its starting price of $799.

• AirPods Pro (2nd-gen) with USB-C: Did you know Apple had new AirPods? Well, they’re not technically “new,” but they do new things. There’s now a USB-C port on the bottom of their charging case, which will come in handy for all future iPhone 15 owners. Apple is also including improved dust resistance and lossless audio support… when paired with an Apple Vision Pro. I recommend checking out David Phelan’s piece on Forbes covering the new AirPods for all the details. What you need to know is they still cost $249.99, and it doesn’t look like Apple will be selling USB-C charging cases for existing AirPods Pro (2nd-generation) users. Womp womp.

Why I’m getting an iPhone 15 Pro

I wrote about my divorce from big phones last week, partly because I wanted to get my thoughts out and partly because I wanted to offer a different perspective. Big phones are a bit overrated to me, which I learned after using the iPhone 14 Pro Max for a year. And after seeing so many excellent folding phones come out this year, I’m convinced that you should only buy a big phone if it folds in half.

So, I’m going small this year. I wanted something that could fit in one hand, which I value tremendously when on the move and want to send a quick text or refer to directions in Apple Maps (yes I use Apple Maps and I’m not ashamed to admit it).

I also wanted to maintain the “iPhone Pro” experience, or whatever that means. I was thinking about just using an iPhone 13 mini, but I like having a 120Hz screen, bleeding-edge cameras, and the latest processor too much. Plus, I want USB-C on my iPhone. I’ve waiting for it for years, and now that it’s finally here, I will never go back to Lightning.

You may think that to maintain the “iPhone Pro” experience, you have to have every single “Pro” feature Apple offers, and I agree with that. But in order to do that, I’d need to buy the 15 Pro Max, which comes with a more complex 5x telephoto lens. As nice as that would be to have, it’s not worth an extra $100 to me, especially since it would mean I’d have to lug around a huge phone for another year.

What sealed the deal was the lack of a price increase: the iPhone 15 Pro Max now starts at $1,199 instead of $1,099, while the standard 15 Pro remained $999 just like last year. That meant the 256GB storage configuration I was eyeing it would be $1,099, which is fine by me for the phone you get in exchange.

The cherry on top? My preorder experience was effortless. I get my iPhone every year through T-Mobile’s JUMP! program, which gets you a phone upgrade after you’ve paid off half your lease, which works out to be 12 individual payments (the perfect amount to jump to the new iPhone every year). Last year, T-Mobile’s website was a buggy mess on preorder day, but this year—for whatever reason—it worked like a charm. I got the 15 Pro in White Titanium with 256GB of storage, signed my paperwork, and had my order processed in under 10 minutes.

Preorder nightmares

A lot of my friends were having issues with their preorders through Apple’s website, which seems to crash and bug out when you first try to preorder every single year.

And that’s a shame, because shipping dates for the new iPhones have slipped quite substantially: the iPhone 15 Pro Max in every color (especially Natural Titanium) and storage configuration won’t be arriving at doorsteps until mid-October and, in some cases, November. The iPhone 15 Pro is also facing delays until October through Apple’s site. The regular 15 and 15 Plus are also facing shipping delays, but only in certain colors and storage capacities (the Pink, Blue, and Green models seem to be the most delayed between both phones).

If you want to get a phone on launch day, you might be able to visit an Apple store to pick one up, although inventory is shrinking by the day at most locations across the country, so you’ll want to get your order in as soon as possible.

It’s best to wait anyway

If you’re not like me and you like to make sensible purchasing decisions when it comes to upgrading your phone, it’s probably best to avoid all of this preorder drama and wait to pick up an iPhone 15.

Reviewers are likely getting their hands on devices as I type this email, with some already using the new phones in their everyday lives. I’m not one of them, so I’m just guessing based on past iPhone rollouts, but we won’t know whether they’re good or bad until early next week.

And if you can’t quite trust a slew of good reviews (which some people can’t and I’m empathetic to that), the safest option is to wait a few weeks after the new iPhones launch to see if there are any issues. Whether it affects the new titanium build of the iPhone 15 Pro, the contoured glass of the iPhone 15, the new anti-reflective coating on the ultra-wide cameras, or the new USB-C ports, it’s usually best for the early adopters to spot any hardware or software problems before pulling the trigger.

They’re coming

Whether you’ll be preordering, waiting to pick one up at a later date, or plan to skip this generation entirely, the iPhone 15 lineup is almost here.

Just six more days until we find out how good Apple’s latest iPhones are, folks. Stay tuned—I’m sure I’ll have a lot of thoughts.

Shameless plugs

• I covered the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max for dlmag, working alongside industry veteran Vincent Nguyen.

• I compared the iPhone 15 to the iPhone 14 for CNN Underscored, to help paint a clearer picture of what the differences are year-over-year.

• I compared the Apple Watch Series 9 to the Series 8 for CNN Underscored, which was a tough comparison to make because they’re so similar to one another.

Every year, I upgrade my iPhone to whatever the newest model is. No, it's not the wisest way to spend my money, but T-Mobile has a great program that lets me upgrade every year as long as I trade in my current phone. Plus, I like having access to whatever new stuff Apple puts in its phones (read: I'm still not on Apple's PR list for review units). For the past year, I've been using the iPhone 14 Pro Max, and I've decided that this year, I'll be going with the smaller iPhone 15 Pro, because I am done having a huge phone.

It's a debate for the ages: are big phones overrated or simply better than their smaller counterparts? Many people prefer the extra screen real estate that's afforded by a physically larger smartphone, which is great when you're on the go and want to enjoy some gaming or YouTube streaming. It's also nice when you're multitasking and don't want to squint to see important information. The public's admiration of big phones led to the creation of the iPhone 14 Plus, which killed the iPhone mini series. And regardless of how well the iPhone Plus is selling, it's clear that Apple saw enough demand from the market to develop it.

I've never been a fan of big phones. They've always felt unnatural to use and a pain to lug around. Most of them are heavy, too wide to type on with one hand, and far too tall to reach anything that floats to the top of the screen. I rarely watch videos on my phone when I'm on the go (I have an iPad for a reason), and after a while, my hand gets tired from using them.

But after advocating for smaller phones for years, in classic hypocritical fashion, I upgraded my iPhone 13 Pro to the 14 Pro Max last year. I wanted to see if I was truly missing out on anything by not having a big phone. I was also a little worried about battery life; rumors suggested the 14 Pro would be worse than the 13 Pro, so I wanted to make sure I'd still get all-day battery life from my phone.

I was okay with the increase in size for a while. It was a good change of pace after using smaller phones for a couple of years, but that quickly faded. After the first month, I was beginning to realize that I picked the wrong phone. After month four, that was even clearer. After month six, all I wanted to do was make enough payments to “upgrade” to a standard 14 Pro.

I obviously didn’t and decided to stick with the 14 Pro Max, but I’ve resented it. The 6.7-inch screen is a much more drastic change than I was anticipating since I couldn’t do common things like send texts with one hand or reach the top corner as easily to pull down Control Center. Use it long enough and your thumb starts to hurt from all the reaching around you have to do. Plus, it’s heavy: at 240 grams, it’s one of the heaviest phones I’ve used every day in a long time.

But here’s the real kicker: the battery life wasn’t even that great. Compared to my 13 Pro, I was getting roughly the same endurance, if not slightly worse. There have been days when I drain the battery to 20 percent with four hours of screen-on time. That never happened with my 13 Pro, which would regularly have 50 percent in the tank after four hours of screen time. I wasn’t alone in battery life disappointment, either; many 14 Pro and Pro Max users complained about the endurance of their phones once they entered the real world.

Rumor has it the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max will both offer longer battery life and lighter designs. That’s thanks to two important elements: the 3-nanometer A17 Bionic processor and a new titanium frame. I’m glad to see these improvements coming to the 15 Pro Max, but I’m even more excited that they’re also making their way to the regular 15 Pro. It gives me all the more reason to choose the smaller model over its larger sibling.

I’m also adopting a new feeling toward larger phones, mostly thanks to how the industry has shifted over the past 12 months: they should fold. If I want a big phone, I want it to fold in half. I don’t care if it folds vertically or horizontally—if I’ll be carrying around a large smartphone all day, I don’t want it to feel like I have an iPad in my pocket.

The Pixel Fold is mostly responsible for this new-found appreciation of flexible phones. I got my review unit not too long ago, and from the second I started using it, I was convinced that this is the form factor every large smartphone should follow. It’s big when I want it to be (7.6 inches to be exact), and it’s small and compact when I’m on the go (thanks to the 5.8-inch cover screen). It’s literally the best of both worlds.

Apple will probably never ship a foldable iPhone, at least not for a long while. So until they do, I’ll be sticking with phones I can actually hold in one hand.

It’s safe to say the 14 Pro Max left a bad taste in my mouth, so at the very least, I’ll be leaving the big phone world for a while. It’s not really Apple’s fault I feel this way. On the contrary, I’m just tired of huge phones. We have better ways to implement huge screens on our mobile devices—using OLED screens and hinges. Obviously, you may prefer a traditional slab smartphone with a big screen, and I can understand why. But if I want a big screen to carry around in the future, I’ll be buying one that folds in half.

And it’ll have to have an Apple logo on it—I’m just too deep into iMessage to escape. I’ll be going even deeper into the walled garden on my comfortable, normal-sized iPhone 15 Pro in a couple of weeks.

So long, massive smartphones. I won’t miss you at all.

In non-Apple news…

• Yeah, Google just leaked its own phones again: Google announced an event last week scheduled for October 4th where the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro will be unveiled. And to spoil any sort of surprises leading up to it—and to combat the usual all-too-revealing leaks—Google went and published images and videos of both phones, as well as a look at the Pixel Watch 2. We don’t learn anything we didn’t already know; they’ll come with tweaked designs with rounder corners, new colors (including pink on the Pixel 8), and have updated specs like a Tensor G3 processor. If you want to see them in all their glory, check out the official Google Store landing page.

• Never mind, BMW will give you heated seats for free: It was never a thing in the United States, but in other markets like the UK and Germany (among others), BMW was charging people ~$18 per month for heated seats and steering wheels in their cars. It’s an odd business model for a feature that, typically, is either bundled with the car you buy or available as an add-on at point of purchase. Luckily, BMW is getting rid of it, as discovered through an interview between Autocar and BMW’s board member for sales and marketing, Pieter Nota. From Nota: “We thought that we would provide an extra service to the customer by offering the chance to activate that later, but the user acceptance isn’t that high. People feel that they paid double – which was actually not true, but perception is reality, I always say. So that was the reason we stopped that.”

• Android gets a new logo: Well, not entirely new. Google has announced a tweaked version of the Android wordmark that capitalizes the “A” in “Android” and looks a bit more modern. It’s also redesigned the “bugdroid,” everyone’s favorite green robot, with a new 3D look. Google said they’re going to start integrating the refreshed branding into the Android operating system this year. I’d bet they’ll debut on the Pixel 8, but what do I know?

Shameless plugs

I went hands-on with Nomad’s new Base One Max 3-in-1 for CNN Underscored:

I pit the new Galaxy Watch 6 against the Pixel Watch for CNN Underscored to help you decide which is right for you:

I shared my 12 favorite gadgets from IFA 2023:

Now, if you’ll excuse me… it’s time to get ready for September 12th.

Your pal,
Max

Apple’s big event is scheduled for next Tuesday where we’ll finally get to see the iPhone 15 series for the first time. But that hasn’t halted the rumor mill, as Bloomberg‘s Mark Guman has just shared some new details on what to expect from the two highest-end models, the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.

According to Gurman, the two phones will use titanium for their casing instead of stainless steel. That’s been reported numerous times in the past, but what we didn’t know was how much of a weight difference it would make. Gurman says both phones should be about 10 percent lighter than their predecessors, which is pretty significant. For context, the iPhone 14 Pro weighs about 206 grams while the 14 Pro Max weighs 240 grams. This would mean the 15 Pro could drop down to about 186 grams, while the 15 Pro Max would weigh around 216 grams.

The new titanium frame will also aid in durability and come with a brushed finish, opposed to a glossy one that collects fingerprints (look at you, iPhone 12 Pro, 13 Pro, and 14 Pro).

Despite the weight difference, the batteries inside both phones are expected to grow, while also taking advantage of new efficiencies in the 3-nanometer A17 Bionic processor. Gurman says the “biggest enhancements are the battery life savings” in regards to the A17, which is a big deal. Many users have reported poor battery performance from the 14 Pro series, including myself. Any improvement is welcome at this point, so it’s nice to hear we’ll be getting that next week.

In his report, Gurman reiterates a lot of the same rumors we’ve heard before. The bezels on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max are expected to shrink by a third, thanks to a new manufacturing process. The ultra-wide and telephoto cameras will see upgrades, while the 48MP main camera from the 14 Pro will stick around. The 15 Pro Max will get a new periscope telephoto camera with 5-6x optical zoom. The mute switch is being replaced by an “action button,” there will be a USB-C port on both models, and there are two new colors: a silver-ish gray and dark blue.

We’ll know everything about the iPhone 15 Pro and cheaper iPhone 15 come next Tuesday, so stay tuned.

You’ve probably heard me talk about CES plenty of times in this newsletter. It’s the biggest technology trade show in the world, and I have the privilege of getting to attend as a journalist in the industry.

But that’s not the only trade show that happens during the year. There are plenty of others you may not have heard of, including IFA, which happens every September in Berlin, Germany. The conference, formally known as “Internationale Funkausstellung”, has been around since the 1920s when its primary focus was detector devices and tube radio receivers. It eventually expanded to other emerging technologies like television broadcasts, including one of the first color TV broadcasts. Over the years, it’s welcomed many visitors, hosts, and speakers, including Albert Einstein.

Nowadays, it’s home to numerous announcements and emerging technologies in the consumer space, generating almost as much hype as CES in the tech space. This year, I once again covered the show from my home in New Jersey, but that didn’t stop me from finding the very best the show had to offer.

So, without further ado, I present to you my 12 favorite gadgets from IFA 2023.

This list originally appeared on Matridox and has been syndicated here.

Best Smartphone: Honor Magic V2

While it originally debuted back in July, Honor hosted the global launch of the Magic V2 at IFA. And it easily stole the show, earning my Best Smartphone award.

The Magic V2 is one of the most interesting foldable phones of the year, if only for how thin it is. When closed, the device is just 9.9mm thick, two millimeters thinner than the thinnest foldable in the United States, the Google Pixel Fold. Speaking of which, the phone isn’t coming to the States, unfortunately, but Honor says it will be sold in parts of Europe and the UK in addition to China.

For the 8,999 yuan (~$1,250) asking price, you’re getting some of the best specs on the market for a folding phone. There’s a big 6.43-inch cover screen, an even bigger 7.92-inch folding screen (with a nearly square 9.78:9 aspect ratio), a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, triple rear cameras, 16GB of RAM, gobs of storage, a 5,000mAh battery, and 66W SuperCharge fast charging. It’s powered by Magic OS 7.2, based on Android 13, with Google’s full suite of services in tow.

The current state of folding phones is exciting, to say the least, and Honor is responsible for a lot of that hype thanks to the Magic V2. Even though it’s not coming to the US, it’s an example of what folding phones are capable of now and where the rest of the industry could go in the future.

Best Laptop: Lenovo Legion 9i

When I saw the Legion 9i gaming laptop from Lenovo for the first time, I knew instantly it would be taking my Best Laptop award. I’m a sucker for a cool design, and that’s exactly what Lenovo provides here: the lid is made of carbon fiber, there are RGB lights everywhere, and it’s massive thanks to the 16-inch screen.

But another reason why this laptop impressed me so much was the cooling system. Inside, Lenovo built a liquid cooling system that runs right over the VRAM to keep graphics performance steady even as the laptop begins to heat up. Liquid cooling is usually found in external packs that, more often than not, are sold separately from the main laptop. It’s the first time I’d seen a system like that in person, and Lenovo was able to do it while keeping the total weight below six pounds (still heavy, I know, but better than seven or eight).

At $4,399, the Legion 9i doesn’t come cheap. In exchange, you’ll get some very beefy specs with an Intel Core i9-13980HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics, up to 64GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, a 99.99Wh battery, and a mini-LED display with a 165Hz refresh rate. Will all of that add up to a gaming laptop worth double the money most people would probably spend? I’m not sure, but I am sure that the Legion 9i is a very cool laptop that’s taking chances with innovative cooling techniques and a unique design.

Best Smartwatch: Withings ScanWatch 2

The best hybrid smartwatch in the world is getting better thanks to the ScanWatch 2 from Withings. At IFA, the company debuted its next-generation high-end wearable with new health-tracking tools, an updated design, and a revamped OLED display. Given how much I love the original ScanWatch, it makes sense to give this new version my Best Smartwatch award.

The ScanWatch 2 doubles down on the fact you can wear it all day long, every day of the week thanks to its 30-day battery life with features that track your health whenever it’s on your wrist. There’s a 24/7 body temperature monitor (the first of its kind in the smartwatch world), menstrual cycle tracking, proactive heart health notifications, and auto workout detection. It’s all powered by new sensors Withings built into the watch that not only bring new capabilities to the table, but also better precision and accuracy when tracking your health metrics.

Of course, it’s still a smartwatch, so you’ll get all of your smartphone’s notifications on your wrist, alarms, a stopwatch, and more, all bundled into a design that’s far more enjoyable to look at than anything with a touchscreen. If you’re tired of fitting in with the crowd and want to stand out with your next smartwatch, the ScanWatch 2 might be the one to get.

Best Speaker: JBL Authentics 200, 300, and 500

There were a lot of speakers at IFA this year, which prompted me to create a Best Speaker category for this year’s award ceremony. It was tough to decide which one would get it, but ultimately, the JBL Authentics series took the crown.

On the outside, the Authentics lineup seems pretty standard in the world of Bluetooth speakers. Dig right below the surface, however, and you’ll find that these speakers support both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa… simultaneously. That’s right, you can use both voice assistants in conjunction with one another on any member of the Authentics series, which is something I’m not sure any of us saw coming. This means you could ask Alexa to play a song and tell the Assistant to pause it, ask the Assistant the weather while Alexa adds toothpaste to your Amazon cart. The joining of forces stems back to Google and Amazon’s need to grow its voice assistant user bases, and having both of them at the ready on a set of speakers is definitely one way to do that.

The JBL Authentics 200 ($329.99) and 500 ($699.99) are designed to be used in your home, while the Authentics 300 ($429.99) is the sole portable model in the lineup with an eight-hour battery. They come with a variety of sub, woofer, and tweeter setups depending on their size, so for those who want the most power, you’ll want the 270W Authentics 500. They’ll go on sale in North America on September 17th and in Europe on the 15th.

Best Mobile Technology: Anker Qi2 MagGo Power Bank

I love the Mobile Technology category because of how all-encompassing it is. Anything that helps you stay mobile can make the list, and this year’s winner is Anker’s new Qi2-equipped MagGo Power Bank.

What’s so special about a power bank, you may ask? For one, it comes with Qi2 support, the new wireless charging standard that requires devices to support a minimum of 15W fast charging and strong magnets to help align the charger when connected. Anker is one of the first manufacturers to release a product of this caliber. It’s here just in time for the iPhone 15, which is rumored to support Qi2 and, in a way, ditch MagSafe.

The new MagGo Power Bank is one of seven new accessories in Anker’s lineup that support Qi2, and it’s my favorite one thanks to its portability and huge 10,000mAh battery. There’s a display on the side that shows you how much charge is left, and when it comes time to juice back up, you can do so via 27W USB-C fast charging. I’m not sure what the price is yet, but expect to find out when it ships later this year.

Best Robot: SwitchBot S10

There were a lot of robotic vacuum cleaners at IFA, and the one that impressed me the most was SwitchBot’s new S10 cleaner, earning my Best Robot award.

The SwitchBot S10 is one of the most capable robotic vacuum cleaners I’ve ever seen. Not only does it vacuum and mop the floors all around your house by itself, but it also disposes of all the muck automatically into a battery-powered water station that hooks right up to your plumbing. It then sources fresh water from your plumbing so you don’t have to worry about filling it back up when you need your floors cleaned.

Beyond the initial setup of the S10 itself, the only thing you’ll need to do is empty its dust bag once every 70 days, making this one of the most autonomous robot cleaners you can get.

It’s an amazing concept, one that seems blatantly obvious yet ignored by most manufacturers up until now. The best part? You’ll be able to actually buy the SwitchBot S10. Granted, you’ll need to do so through Kickstarter when it goes on sale in October, but for $1,199, you’ll get one of the most advanced robot vacuums/mops out there.

Best Smart Home Device: Aqara Ceiling Light T1M

Matter, the new smart home standard, took center stage at IFA as many companies begin to flesh out their smart home lineups with the tech onboard. While product demonstrations of different ecosystems talking to one another were on full display, brand-new products were a bit harder to come by. However, we still got a handful of really cool ones, and my favorite was the Aqara Ceiling Light T1M, earning my Best Smart Home Device award.

What’s so special about a ceiling light, you ask? For one, it’s Matter-over-bridge compatible, so it can work with other Matter-enabled devices. It supports over 16 million different colors so you can get the exact look you want, and–here’s the kicker–it has an independent RGB ring light around its 50-cm diameter. This ring light can be used to alert you of specific notifications, like if a door is unlocked or one of your connected sensors detects a leak. What’s more, the ceiling light includes low idle consumption, so it’s plenty energy-efficient.

There’s no word on a launch date just yet, but I’ll be curious to see how much attention it can garner. The extra ring light seems like a great feature to have in an office or living room so you can keep tabs on what’s going on around your home without the need to rely solely on your phone.

Best TV: LG StandbyME Go

Yes, I’m giving my Best TV award to LG. It’s not every day you see a television stuffed inside a briefcase, but that’s just what they brought to IFA.

Called the StandbyME Go, the TV is a 27-inch 1080p LCD panel that runs webOS, supports AirPlay and screen mirroring, has Dolby Vision, and is completely portable thanks to its carrying case. That case bundles a three-hour battery, stereo speakers, and a stand that can prop the TV up either horizontally or vertically. LG sees this as something you can take camping, tailgating, or outdoors at a barbecue or by the pool. And with its $999.99 price tag, it’s not wildly expensive.

It’s up for preorder now if you want to buy one. I’ll be honest, I’m kinda tempted to get one myself in time for football season.

Best New Innovation: XGIMI Horizon Ultra

For my Best New Innovation award, I’ve got to hand it to XGIMI. The Horizon Ultra, the company’s newest high-end projector, looks like nothing more than a fancy 4K projector with a few neat color correction tricks up it sleeve. But dive a little deeper and you’ll realize it’s much more than that.

XGIMI engineered an incredibly complex projection system called Laser-LED Dual Light technology. The system combines laser and LED light into a single unit, allowing the Horizon Ultra to utilize the varying strengths and weaknesses of both technologies to deliver the most accurate color reproduction, brightness, and picture quality possible. It can reach up to 2,300 lumens bright (which is brighter than most high-end projectors on the market), it supports over 95.5 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, there are a bunch of automatic color and brightness correction tools, it supports Dolby Vision, and it’s powered by Android TV.

For $1,699, the Horizon Ultra is one impressive feat of engineering.

Best Concept: Honor V Purse

The Honor Magic V2 is taking home two awards this year, with the second being for Best Concept. No, you’re not mistaken, the Magic V2 will be shipping to customers and isn’t a concept itself. But the Honor V Purse? Well, that’s the epitome of a concept.

The Honor V Purse is another attempt at blending fashion with tech, and Honor definitely has something interesting here. It’s a Magic V2 folding phone with hooks on the side to connect a strap, turning it into a “purse” of sorts. You can then use the outward-facing display to show a wallpaper that emulates the stylings of a clutch or handbag, with various different pre-loaded options to get the look you want. It also comes with an extra clip to keep the two halves of the display folded while you carry it around.

Will this be a success among those who want a more fashion-focused smartphone? I don’t know, and it doesn’t help that Honor doesn’t seem to want to evolve it beyond a concept stage. However, it’s interesting nonetheless that Honor seems to see a market that something like this could do well in.

Editor’s Picks

Okay, time for a couple quick editor’s picks.

JBL PartyBox Ultimate

Who doesn’t love a party speaker? Another member of JBL’s latest swath of Bluetooth speakers is the PartyBox Ultimate, a $1,699.95 unit with two high-sensitivity mid-range drivers, dual tweeters, and dual 9-inch subwoofers that JBL says can “rock the size of two basketball courts.” It has Dolby Atmos, it has Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 for streaming, it has RGB lights, it has IPX4 splash resistance, and it has all the EQ settings you could want through JBL’s companion app.

Yes, I will be asking for a review unit. Did you really think I wouldn’t?

CASETiFY Ultra Bounce Case

CASETiFY, one of my favorite phone case brands (if only because they made Spider-Man cases once), was at IFA where they unveiled the Ultra Bounce Case. It’s another case designed to protect your iPhone at all costs, with a very unique design that can withstand drops of up to 10 meters (32 feet), which is kind of nuts. The case uses a 6-Layered Rugged Protection System with Ultra Bounce Corners that absorb the shock from falls and tumbles using compression ribs with air cavities. The result is one of the most durable cases you’ll find. You also get integrated camera protection.

In classic CASETiFY fashion, you’ll be able to customize the Ultra Bounce Case with your own text, fonts, and colors. It’s launching later this month. Pricing has yet to be announced.