Technology

Lenovo has announced a ThinkPad like no ThinkPad you’ve ever seen before: the ThinkPad X1 Fold. Think Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, but a 13-inch OLED laptop screen. It’s available for preorder now, starting at $2,499. The idea is that you can use the Fold like a large tablet when it’s fully unfolded (or divide the screen into two adjacent displays). You can prop the Fold up horizontally to use it like a full 13-inch notebook, with an optional detachable keyboard and easel stand. You can fold the thing up 90 degrees, turn it vertically, and use it like a miniature laptop (a touchscreen keyboard pops up on the bottom half). You can turn it horizontally and use it like a book, with an optional stylus. Or you can fold the whole thing up, and easily carry it around without it taking up much space in ...

Hyper, a gadget maker known best for its small and ultra-fast gallium nitride (GaN) chargers under the HyperJuice brand, is back on Kickstarter with a new plug that’s even more impressive than its last: a stackable GaN charger that can support an eye-popping 1600W of passthrough power. This follows Hyper’s first 100W GaN charger released via Kickstarter last fall and made available for purchase back in July. The charger, which comes in a 65W option with three plugs (two USB-C and one USB-A) and a 100W option with four plugs (three USB-C and one USB-A), has a built-in plug of its own rated at 1500W, so the charger can be plugged into a second unit to multiply the passthrough power available and double the ports. (Or in the event you just don’t want to lose an outlet.) Hyper says you can act...

If you’re with any major US phone carrier other than Verizon, you’ll know you couldn’t mix and match phone plans between different lines on your account. Starting today, AT&T is finally allowing customers to mix and match which unlimited plan they choose and potentially save some money on their phone bill each month, with a program it’s calling Unlimited Your Way. For instance, if previously your parents were looking for more hotspot data or a bundled subscription to HBO Max, they would likely have chosen the Unlimited Elite plan, and pay $50 each for four lines (or $200 a month) for a family of four. With mix and match, those parents can choose an Unlimited Elite plan for themselves and put two kids on the cheaper Unlimited Starter plan, saving $30 a month on their phone bill. Now tha...

Bang & Olufsen’s Beoremote Halo is beautiful & expensive, but it’s not totally clear why it’s necessary, or what it actually… is. Here’s what we do know: It costs $900, and is a round device with a rectangular touch screen that lets you control the Bang & Olufsen music system you obviously have in your home. And of course it looks sexy as hell because B&O doesn’t do ugly. Why do I need this?Bang & Olufsen Bang & Olufsen says the Halo “gives you all the convenience of a simple user interface,” lights up when you get close, and offers a one-button press to select your music. So it’s a speaker? A radio? “There is no need to use your mobile device or to pull anything out of your pocket and fiddle around trying to find the right app to get started.” OK, no apps. Th...

Google is rolling out its impressive noise cancelation in Google Meet to Android and iOS, but unfortunately, it won’t be available to everybody — you have to be a G Suite Enterprise or G Suite Enterprise for Education customer to take advantage of the handy feature, Google says. Google rolled this out first for the web in June. The technology is designed to dampen background noise like a keyboard or a barking dog while you’re on a Google Meet call. If you want to get an idea of how effective it can be, check out this VentureBeat video from June of Serge Lachapelle, a G Suite director of product management, demonstrating how the noise cancelation technology quiets a crinkling bag of snacks, a clicking pen, and a clinking glass (skip to 1:50 for the noise cancelation demo): [embedded content...

Some Microsoft services, including Outlook, Office 365, and Microsoft Teams, are currently experiencing an outage, according to Microsoft’s Office status page. “Users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services,” a notice on the page reads. The company first acknowledged issues at 5:44PM ET via the Microsoft 365 Status Twitter account, and said it had rolled back a change thought to be the cause of the issue at 6:36PM ET. But just 13 minutes later, the company tweeted again to say that it was “not observing an increase in successful connections after rolling back a recent change.” We’re not observing an increase in successful connections after rolling back a recent change. We’re working to evaluate additional mitigation solutions while we investigate the root cause....

It’s fall, so that means it’s time for the annual refresh of Roku hardware. In addition to the Streambar announced today, the company’s streaming player lineup is led by a refreshed Roku Ultra. For the first time, the flagship device now supports Dolby Vision HDR. Many Roku TVs already offer the format, but so far Roku’s standalone devices have not. (They’ve had Dolby Atmos audio, however, which the Ultra retains.) The company is also adding support for the AV1 codec, which video platforms are increasingly starting to adopt. Roku says the new Ultra also features significantly improved wireless performance with 50 percent greater range than the prior model. There’s still an Ethernet port if you want a hardwired connection, though. The 2020 Ultra costs the usual $99.99. You can get a great s...

The surprise success of InnerSloth’s game Among Us was one of the bigger Twitch stories that happened this summer: over the last month, the game shot up a full 650 percent in hours watched on the site. (It has gotten so popular so suddenly that the developers at InnerSloth have canceled Among Us 2 to focus more on the first game.) Its success has spawned other successes, too. Among Us’ spike in popularity has led to Discord’s mobile app downloads hitting new heights. As Apptopia’s Adam Blacker recently observed: “Discord has been hitting a new lifetime high for mobile app downloads every day since September 5th.” That’s around 800,000 installs a day. Image: Apptopia The reason Discord’s downloads and Among Us’ popularity are linked, of course, is because the game requires voice chat to fun...

On Tuesday night, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will face off in the first presidential debate of the 2020 cycle, and cable channels will be lit up with analyses of which candidate beat expectations and which lines landed best with audiences at home. But 60 years after the first televised presidential debate, the post-event spin isn’t limited to television anymore. The moment the event finishes, a new class of pundits on YouTube and Instagram will be digging through the footage for memorable moments to clip, remix, or outright manipulate. And just as candidates in previous cycles played to cable pundits, the 2020 campaigns are increasingly planning their message with an eye to how it will play on YouTube. On YouTube at least, the early advantage is to Trump. Over the last four years of Trump’...

I’ve never been interested in buying a smartwatch. I’m fine getting notifications on my phone, and I don’t want to obsessively monitor my step count. I stick with my normal, analog watch, where I can check the time without seeing email notifications or getting sucked into Instagram. That’s probably why I liked wearing the new Withings ScanWatch so much — it gave me the benefits of a smartwatch, with fewer of the features that I think are stressful. The $279-plus ScanWatch isn’t available for sale in the United States yet because it needs clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for certain health features, like its enhanced sleep monitoring. But I got to test it out ahead of time, and I used it as an opportunity to check in with some experts about how well smartwatches can actually ...

A one-year subscription to PlayStation Plus normally costs $60, but it’s available for almost half that price at CDKeys.com. You’ll need this service to play PS4 games online right now, and it’s an especially good deal if you’re planning to upgrade to the PS5 this year. On the new console, this subscription will grant you access to the PlayStation Plus Collection, a suite of several acclaimed PS4 classics (including Persona 5, Bloodborne, God of War, and more) that will be available for you to download a la Xbox Game Pass. Any price drop is welcome for a service that’s essential for most PlayStation gamers, so hop on this, whether you intend to use it now or stow away the code for when you need it next. You can still get a good deal on the 128GB version of Apple’s latest iPad. Normally $42...

Google’s Pixel 5 event is scheduled for this Wednesday, but some of the company’s other new gadgets are already appearing on store shelves. That includes its all-new Chromecast, which some savvy buyers have been able to purchase directly in-store from retailers like Walmart and The Home Depot over the course of the last week. The Verge has purchased one such device from The Home Depot and can confirm the retailer is not stopping customers from checking out and taking the pre-release product home. The device is selling for $49.99 under the codename Sabrina-Abbey Not all stores appear to be selling the item; we tried two and only found the new Chromecast at a second location. And inputting the universal product code listed on the receipt into the retailer’s website returns no results, so it ...