Technology

Realme has launched its latest flagship phone for India, the GT Neo 2. It’s similar to the impressive Realme GT that came to Europe a few months ago — this one is better in some ways but worse in others. Depending on your taste, you’ll probably feel quite strongly about which bucket the neon green version pictured above falls into. (It also comes in black and blue.) While the GT has a Snapdragon 888 processor, the GT Neo 2 is built around an 870. This is basically Qualcomm’s speed-bumped version of the 865 Plus, which was itself a faster version of last year’s flagship chip — the main core now runs at 3.2GHz. Realme says the GT Neo 2’s new vapor cooling system is 30 percent larger and 20 percent more efficient, making use of stainless steel as well as copper. The phone does include 5G conn...

Coinbase announced Monday that it plans to sell, trade, and mint NFTs in an expansion from the marketplace’s cryptocurrency-based roots. Details on how “Coinbase NFT” will do all of that are slim, but the company sees an opportunity. “Just as Coinbase helped millions of people access bitcoin for the first time in an easy and trusted way — we want to do the same for the NFTs,” Coinbase vice president of product Sanchan Saxena writes. The big idea seems to be social engagement. Coinbase wants to “curate your personal feed” of NFTs and display the NFTs you own on your profile so you can make connections with like-minded fans of digital cats, punks, apes, and beyond. At launch, Coinbase NFT “will support Ethereum based ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards,” all NFTs will be on-chain, and there are p...

On Monday, I wrote about leaked details of an unannounced HTC Vive Flow VR headset that’s expected to be announced at an event on Thursday. Just one day later, we now know what it looks like thanks to images shared by prolific leaker Evan Blass, who has been actively posting new photos over the course of the evening. According to a slide in a more recent tweet, the device will cost $499 and start shipping in November. Here’s the first batch: Overall, the images in Blass’ first tweet match many of the details reported by Protocol on Monday, but they give a much better idea of what the final device may look like. (And I’m just going to say it: the leaked promo kind of makes the wearers look like bugs.) It’s hard to tell if the big yellowish spots on the front of the headset are see-through; ...

Netflix’s hugely popular series Squid Game has become its biggest title ever at launch, the company said Monday. The company’s Netflix Geeked account tweeted Monday that Hwang Dong-Hyuk’s survival thriller reached 111 million global accounts in its first 17 days on the service. Additionally, Squid Game is the first Netflix series to surpass 100 million in its first 28 days on the service, a spokesperson told The Verge. Netflix typically uses 28-day windows to measure the performance of a title on its platform. The spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the figures it shared are based on the number of accounts that watched the series for at least two minutes, its standard metric for ranking titles (though it has used additional measurements to track the success of titles in the past). It ...

Some customers of Verizon’s Visible service are using social media to say that hackers have accessed their accounts, changed their information to lock them out, and in some cases even ordered phones using their payment info (via XDA). If you’re not familiar, Visible is a cell service owned and operated by Verizon that pitches itself as a less expensive, “all-digital” network, meaning there aren’t any physical stores like you’d get with a traditional carrier. Starting on Monday, customers on both Twitter and Reddit reported en masse that they’d been getting emails from the company about changed passwords and addresses, and that they’ve had difficulties contacting the company’s chat support. Visible’s customer service account on Twitter seemingly hasn’t addressed the issue, besides directing...

Netflix is adding the original Cowboy Bebop anime series to its catalog on October 21st, giving you about a month to watch it all ahead of the live-action series’ debut on November 19th. This is great news for me personally. I’ve been extremely intrigued by what Netflix has shown from the live-action series — which so far has included a series of images and the opening title sequence, which is inspired heavily by the one from the anime — but I haven’t seen the original show for myself. Now that the whole show will be on Netflix, I can see it all with a subscription to just one streaming service. It’s unclear if the move to Netflix means that Cowboy Bebop will be removed from Hulu, Funimation, or any of the other streaming platforms where it’s currently available. It’s also unclear based on...

After more than a year of teasing and occasional streams, G4 will make its return as a linear TV channel on November 16th. So far, the channel is confirmed to appear on Comcast/Xfinity, Verizon Fios, Cox, and Philo. Since announcing its return last year, G4 has put out some reunion content plus occasional streams on Twitch, where the network will maintain a “multi-year promotional and commercial partnership.” Though the original G4 faded out when it got rebranded as the Esquire Channel about eight years ago, the network’s new mantra is that “we never stopped playing.” Network president Russell Arons writes in a statement that G4 “can’t wait to have our fans join us in our hilarious and fairly preposterous sandbox.” When G4 comes back next month, some of the programming and hosts should be ...

Samsung has just sent out invitations for an event it is holding online on Wednesday, October 20th at 7AM PT / 10AM ET. It’s called “Galaxy Unpacked Part 2,” which is possibly an indication that rather than all new Galaxy phones, we may be seeing iterations on existing ones. With Samsung’s announcement, we’ll now have an Apple event on Monday (where we are expecting new MacBook Pros), Google’s Pixel 6 launch on Tuesday, and now Samsung’s apparently smaller event on Wednesday. In addition to the invite’s image, Samsung’s newsroom post announcing the event hints at some kind of personalization for Galaxy devices: “Our users are multifaceted and live life in so many colorful, interesting, and unique ways. As such, the technology they use every day should reflect their individuality. Join Gala...

The trans employee resource group at Netflix is planning a company-wide walkout on October 20th to protest statements made by co-CEO Ted Sarandos regarding Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy special The Closer. “Trans Lives Matter. Trans Rights Matter. And as an organization, Netflix has continually failed to show deep care in our mission to Entertain the World by repeatedly releasing content that harms the Trans community and continually failing to create content that represents and uplifts Trans content. We can and must do better!” wrote a leader of the trans ERG in an internal organizing message. The event comes even as Netflix has reinstated Terra Field and two other employees who were suspended after attending a director-level meeting they were not invited to. Field had recently posted a ...

On Tuesdays for the remainder of the year, The Verge’s flagship podcast The Vergecast will be featuring additional new episodes, with each focused on a specific topic usually discussed on our regular Friday shows. Today, we start our run with a discussion on the reviews we haven’t talked too much about yet on the show: this year’s software and hardware endeavors from Microsoft. In this episode, Dieter hosts a roundtable on reviews for the Microsoft products launched this fall: Windows 11, Surface Pro 8, Surface Laptop Studio, and Surface Go 3. Dieter is joined by Verge reviewers Tom Warren, Monica Chin, and Dan Seifert, who have all reviewed the products, respectively. The show answers questions like: Why does Windows 11 feel unfinished? How do the new Surface products fit in with a new op...

The chip shortage is hitting the iPhone 13, with Apple reportedly unable to get enough parts to hit its planned manufacturing goals, according to a report from Bloomberg. Apple had originally planned to produce 90 million iPhones in the final months of 2021, but it’s reportedly slashing that number by 10 million (or around 11 percent) due to supply issues with chips from Broadcom and Texas Instruments. While the primary A15 Bionic SoC on the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro is manufactured by TSMC, there are plenty of other chip-based components inside the phone that come from other sources. As iFixit’s thorough teardown of the iPhone 13 Pro’s logic board shows, Texas Instruments and Broadcom are responsible for several key components, including chips that handle display power management, Face ...

After rejecting over one million e-cigarette related products, the Food and Drug Administration announced today that it authorized its first e-cigarette: the Vuse Solo, made by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company. The agency is allowing the company’s tobacco-flavored e-liquid pods on the market but rejected its flavored pods. It’s been over a month since the FDA’s deadline for its review of vapes and e-cigarettes. Early September marked the end of a yearlong period where companies were allowed to keep selling their products, even though agency regulations said that any new tobacco products need authorization before they can be marketed. Now, anything sold without authorization is being marketed illegally. Companies submitted applications for 6.5 million vaping and e-cigarette products, and the age...