Technology

Apple’s latest retail store has drawn comparisons to a floating lantern, with a unique design incorporating a glass dome that sits directly on the water of Singapore’s Marina Bay. We first saw a glimpse of the store, the company’s third in Singapore and 512th worldwide, a few weeks ago, and the iPhone-maker has now shared new pictures of the building’s interior, which opens to visitors on Thursday, September 10th. The store is called the Apple Marina Bay Sands, and is located in a luxury district of Singapore full of shops, restaurants, and the Marina Bay Sands hotel and casino. The sphere is constructed from 114 individual pieces of glass held in place by 10 vertical mullions (the architectural term for supporting bars between panes of glass in a window), and Apple says the dome is a firs...

This could be our first look at the Xbox Series S, Microsoft’s cut-down next-gen console that carries the codename Lockhart. An image posted by Thurrott allegedly shows the console’s design and reveals a price point of $299. It’s not immediately clear where the image came from, but leaker WalkingCat followed up with a short video showing off the same design in relation to the Series X. Analyst Daniel Ahmad also corroborated the image, though couldn’t confirm the price. If they’re legitimate, the leaks show a white console that looks somewhat similar to the Xbox One S, as the Series X does to the One X. It’s depicted in vertical orientation, though the rotation of the Xbox logo suggests that may not be the primary configuration. WalkingCat’s video shows that the Series S is much thinner tha...

Xiaomi’s Poco sub-brand has announced its latest phone, the Poco X3 NFC. As you might have guessed from the inclusion of “NFC” in the name of the phone itself, this is not a device targeting a typical flagship audience. But like other recent Poco phones, the X3 NFC looks to be a strong proposition from a price-performance standpoint. This is not a subtle phone, even before you get to the giant glossy “POCO” logo on the plastic back. It’s big and chunky at 9.4mm thick and 215g, with a large camera bump — but that’s just what you get when you make a phone with a massive screen, a huge battery, and a bunch of cameras. The display is a 6.67-inch 1080p panel with a refresh rate of 120Hz. It’s an LCD, which means it’s not quite as contrasty as the OLED screens common in even mid-range devices th...

Protests and calls for boycotts over Disney’s live-action adaptation of Mulan have sprung up again in wake of the film hitting Disney Plus. Hashtags like #BoycottMulan have trended on Twitter following Mulan’s release on September 4th, but protests are tied to an incident that occurred in summer 2019, Vulture reports. Mulan actress and star Liu Yifei made comments last summer showing her support for police forces in Hong Kong at a time when people in Hong Kong were protesting newly suggested policies that would allow citizens to be extradited to mainland China, the BBC reported. Liu shared a message on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, that read “I support Hong Kong’s police, you can beat me up now,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. Liu then added on Weibo in English, “Wh...

Minecraft is getting a free upgrade making the game playable in PlayStation VR later this month, developer Mojang Studios announced in a blog post today. Fans have been asking for PSVR Minecraft for a while now. Although the ever-popular game is already available to play on various virtual reality platforms (it launched on the Oculus Rift back in 2016, for example), Sony’s VR hardware has until now been overlooked. Mojang says the upgrade will come as a free download patch for all players some time later this month. “Everyone who has Minecraft on PlayStation 4 will get that patch automatically,” says the studio. “Download that patch and you’ll get access to the new Minecraft VR functionality. Of course, you’ll need a PS VR setup in order to use it.” Mojang also shared screenshots of what a...

Last month, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Watch 3 as part of its current lineup, and compared to its predecessors, it came with an expensive starting price of $400. Fortunately, the watch is now down to its lowest price yet. You can buy the 45mm size in black for only $365 on Amazon — this version of the watch usually retails for $430. The Galaxy Watch 3 is a successor to Samsung’s 2018 Galaxy Watch, and includes an OLED display with a rotating bezel. Aside from the standard smartwatch functions the Galaxy Watch 3 also includes a fall detection feature that will notify a contact when a fall is detected and later this year, the watch is expected to gain new smarts, allowing you to monitor your blood oxygen levels. If you are looking for a new Samsung smartwatch, but the $365 price tag intimid...

The Joe Biden campaign is taking over a popular Instagram account from a teen supporter, who built a huge following over their summer break. Formerly a fan account, @VoteJoe account will now serve as the campaign’s primary point of grassroots outreach on Instagram, supplementing Biden’s personal account. The account began as @TeamJoeBiden and launched earlier this year by a 15-year-old supporter from California. The young supporter spent their summer creating content for the account which quickly grew to over 85,000 followers. The campaign contacted the owner of the account earlier this year asking if they could acquire it and switch it over as an official campaign channel. Now, the account’s former owner will be volunteering for the campaign and will continue to make content after school ...

TikTok is trying to remove graphic videos circulating the app that show a man shooting himself with a gun, and banning accounts from people who are re-uploading the clip. TikTok says the clip was originally streamed on Facebook and has appeared on other apps. As the TikTok community became aware of the clip, many creators started posting videos warning their followers to look out for an image — a man sitting in front of his desk with a grey beard — and swipe away from the video. Other creators spoke about the most disturbing part of the video being hidden inside more innocuous looking TikToks. A TikTok representative confirmed to The Verge that “clips of a suicide” started circulating on Sunday night. “Our systems have been automatically detecting and flagging these clips for violating our...

Before Nintendo released the Switch, the company had early plans to create a similar handheld based on its iconic GameCube console, leaked internal documents suggest. There’s also a leaked presentation which suggests that Nintendo explored the idea of releasing a high-definition console that would have competed more directly with the PS3 and Xbox 360. Eurogamer notes that the documents appear to have come from the same source as July’s “gigaleak.” A technical diagram outlines a portable console that could be attached to a TV via a dock featuring GameCube controller ports, memory card slots, and a port for an SD card. However, it’s unclear if the project ever made it past this early planning stage. The GameCube had a small carrying handle, meaning that it was technically more portable than ...

After much confusion, LG has confirmed that AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support will be coming to some of its 2018 TV models, in addition to its newer 2019 and 2020 TVs. “LG’s 2018 TVs will add support for Apple AirPlay 2 and HomeKit later this year,” the company’s official UK Twitter account tweeted, and said more details would be shared as the features become available. LG UK also said that the Apple TV app is also now available worldwide for the company’s 2018 OLED and Super UHD LCD TVs. AirPlay 2 allows iPhone and iPad users to easily stream content from their devices to compatible LG TVs, while HomeKit support lets you control and integrate a TV with Apple’s smart home ecosystem. According to a tracker put together by FlatPanelsHD, various combinations of the features are already available ...

After a two-month delay following an underwhelming trailer, Crysis Remastered is finally launching on PC, PS4, and Xbox One this month. Ahead of its release, Crytek has unveiled the system requirements needed to run the game on your computer, and shockingly you won’t need a supercomputer this time. While the recommended specs only require a 7th-gen Intel CPU or an AMD Ryzen 5, 12GB of RAM, and either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti or AMD Radeon Vega 56 GPU, it’s unlikely you will take full advantage of the game’s new features, such as ray tracing. Crytek unveiled a new graphical setting in the game called “Can it Run Crysis?” But, if you have a higher-end PC, you’ll leverage a lot of that horsepower to run the game. If you really want to test how powerful your build is, Crytek unveiled a ne...

It looks like Motorola is about to announce a second entry in its budget G9 phone lineup, just weeks after it revealed the Moto G9 Play. The Moto G9 Plus has appeared in a listing on Orange Slovakia’s website that was spotted by WinFuture’s Roland Quandt. According to the listing, the €255 (about $300) phone will have four rear cameras, including a 64-megapixel main camera, and a massive 5,000 mAh battery. Although Motorola’s recent flagship phones like the Edge Plus and foldable Razr have been average at best, its budget lineup of G-series phones like the recent G Stylus and G Power have continued to offer great value. Their cameras are generally good for the price, battery life is excellent, and the company makes sensible tweaks to the Android operating system in its software. The Orange...