Technology

This newsletter was sent out on Thursday afternoon before it was reported that the hearing would likely be delayed so lawmakers can attend Rep. John Lewis’s funeral. The hearing is now expected to take place the following week. On Monday at noon ET, one of the more notable Congressional hearings in Silicon Valley history is set to take place. The 15-member House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will ask questions of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The event is what’s known as an evidentiary hearing: members of Congress are gathering evidence as part of a 13-month investigation into competition and digital marketplaces. The outcome could be legislation that seeks to rein in the market power of these giants, limiting thei...

Microsoft has spent the past few weeks teasing the Surface Duo on Twitter, and it now looks like the dual-screen device is ready to launch. Microsoft’s new Android-powered device first appeared at the FCC earlier this week, and today it has shown up on the Bluetooth SIG certification page. Devices typically appear in FCC and Bluetooth listings just a few weeks away from launch. Recent rumors had suggested the Surface Duo might appear in July, but it’s clear the device isn’t ready to launch this month. Instead, it looks increasingly likely that Microsoft will launch the Surface Duo in the coming weeks. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the company had originally planned to focus on the Surface Duo and dual-screen devices at Build earlier this year. These plans chan...

LG Display has started mass-production at its second OLED panel production plant, the company announced Thursday. The new plant, located in Guangzhou, China, has the capacity to initially produce 60,000 OLED sheets a month, which combined with LG’s existing plant in Paju, South Korea means that LG Display’s total OLED production capacity has almost doubled to 130,000 sheets monthly. According to LG, the panels produced at its new plant will be used to create displays ranging in size from 48 to 77-inches. They’re for TVs, in other words. LG Display is a major supplier of OLED panels for TVs across the industry. 19 brands, including LG, Vizio, Sony, Panasonic, Hisense, Bang & Olufsen, and Toshiba, use LG Display OLED panels in their TVs according to FlatPanelsHD. LG Display’s OLED panels...

Google is adding a number of new features to its Messages app for Android, including the ability to reply to messages with emoji reactions, something that’s long been available in other messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and iOS’s built-in Messages app. The feature was first spotted in testing in May, but Google has now officially rolled it out as part of the latest version of its Messages app. To use an emoji reaction, just tap and hold the message you want to react to and a short list of cute animated emoji will pop up that you can pick from. You’ll only be able to use emoji reactions if you have RCS chat turned on, however. Here’s a GIF from Google showing how to use emoji reactions and what the emoji will look like: Google is also adding a new feature to Smart Reply, which already ...

One of the biggest complaints Quibi received upon its initial launch was subscribers being unable to screenshot what they were watching and share it with the world. For a mobile-first streaming service, it seemed like a bit of an oversight. Now, Quibi has introduced screenshot capabilities, but it’s not as easy as holding down the right buttons on your iPhone. Quibi built its own screenshot tool inside the app that subscribers must use to get the image they want instead of the blacked out photo that would appear in their photos folder otherwise. To use it, users have to touch and hold the screen until a pop-up menu appears. There’s an option to take a screenshot, and sliding your finger over to that option will produce the screenshot people want to take. Quibi’s chief product officer, Tom ...

In a widely anticipated move, Disney has once again delayed its live-action adaptation of Mulan, this time indefinitely. “Over the last few months, it’s become clear that nothing can be set in stone when it comes to how we release films during this global health crisis, and today that means pausing our release plans for Mulan as we assess how we can most effectively bring this film to audiences around the world,” a Disney spokesperson told Variety. This marks the latest round of delays for Mulan; it was originally supposed to be released on March 27th, but was pushed to July 24th. Then, Disney delayed it again to August 21st — one week before Disney is still set to debut The New Mutants. Disney has also moved around a number of other titles, including the upcoming Avatar and Star Wars film...

Did Microsoft convince you that you wouldn’t need to next-gen hardware to play Xbox Series X games? Think again: fully half of the next-gen games that Microsoft showcased at its Xbox Series X showcase today, including Forza, probably aren’t coming to Xbox One. Which suggests either some of those games aren’t actually coming out for a long time — or Microsoft has already broken a big promise it made just last week. For years now, Microsoft has been working toward a future where you don’t need to buy the latest console to play the newest games — many now run on a spectrum of hardware including Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, and Windows PCs — and the upcoming Xbox Series X was touted as the culmination of that vision. It will play almost every Xbox One game, as well as Xbox 360 and some or...

StarCraft II has been out for almost a decade now. To commemorate the game’s tenth anniversary, Blizzard is publicly testing an anniversary update, introducing new campaign achievements for every mission in StarCraft II’s base game and its three expansions, in addition to changes that empower players to create their own custom campaigns. One reason StarCraft II has stuck around so long is that fans have kept it alive by creating custom campaigns in the game. Blizzard has now absorbed several elements from Warcraft III’s game editor, making the interface in StarCraft II easier to use — there’s an entire gigantic blog post from the company detailing everything that’s new for the game’s map editor. The anniversary patch also introduced a new transitioning lobby, making it easier to move betwe...

Remember when AT&T told customers their phones would stop working and encouraged them to buy new ones during a pandemic? T-Mobile is reportedly going to be sending out some messages like that too, but it seems like the company could be going about it a little differently (and hopefully less aggressively) than AT&T, according to an apparent internal document from T-Mobile shared by Android Police. T-Mobile will reportedly require phones on its network to support voice over LTE (VoLTE) starting in January 2021. That means if your phone doesn’t currently support VoLTE, you’ll need to upgrade if you want to be able to keep making calls with that phone on T-Mobile. And T-Mobile is apparently so intent on phasing out older technologies that it’ll reportedly stop activating new devices th...

In 2020, everything is cake — including Android 11. Android VP of engineering Dave Burke revealed the internal codename “Red Velvet Cake” in an interview with All About Android, via Droid Life. Google’s alphabetical dessert naming scheme was an Android tradition for years, dating back to Android 1.5 Cupcake in 2009. But last year, instead of naming Android Q after an obscure pastry tart or candy, Google made the choice to desert desserts entirely for its public releases in favor of numerical names instead, beginning with Android 10 and continued with the upcoming release of Android 11 this fall. Everything is cake But that’s not the whole story. As Google’s Sameer Samat, VP of product management for Android, told The Verge last year, the company is still using alphabetical, dessert-based c...

The Department of Homeland Security says US authorities have banned drones from flying near federal buildings in Portland because they believe drones are surveilling federal officers at protests there, Reuters reports. The order comes a few weeks after federal agencies were discovered using surveillance drones themselves, over peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other US cities. The agency said unidentified drones have flown over crowds of people protesting near federal buildings in Portland on several occasions. For the past eight weeks, protesters have marched in downtown Portland to push for police reforms, and in recent days have been joined by federal troops guarding the federal buildings. The troops have used tear gas and pepper spray and say the protesters have thrown projectiles a...

The New Mutants is apparently still on track to hit theaters on August 28th, even as Tenet and Mulan face indefinite delays. Details on the film’s theatrical plans come from The New Mutants’ panel at ComicCon@Home, the digital version of the annual San Diego festival, where the cast gathered to talk about the film. The panel opens with a cheeky reminder the movie would open in theaters on August 28th. They also brought the movie’s opening scene, which can be seen above. The opening scene kicks in at 24:10, with a panel discussion about the movie playing beforehand. Fans seemed to anticipate that Disney would move The New Mutants to a digital release in light of recent delays. Warner Bros. delayed Tenet indefinitely earlier this week and, at the same time as The New Mutants panel, Disney an...