Technology

As part of its IFA 2020 announcements, TCL is today launching a slew of new gadgets including a pair of tablets, new true wireless earbuds, and a smartwatch for seniors. The Android tablets are perhaps the most interesting products of the bunch, as the higher-end model features a 10.36-inch widescreen (2000×1200) display with slim bezels; it even comes with a stylus. The internal specs aren’t going to come anywhere close to something like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S7, but the company is positioning the TCL 10 Tab Max as an excellent choice for watching videos or conducting video calls thanks to its dual far-field microphones. It’s set to ship in the fourth quarter for €299 (4G model) and €249 (Wi-Fi only). Image: TCL There’s also the TCL 10 Tab Mid for even less money, though you’ll have t...

I write about and review cutting edge tech products for a living, yet every time I pick up a new piece of hardware I always think about my toaster. Not because I’m obsessed with bread, but more that my toaster is designed for how humans actually use gadgets. I use my toaster every week, and it’s a constant reminder of how other products are often badly designed. Most toasters are pretty simple, you drop one, maybe two pieces of bread inside the top, pull a lever, and a few minutes later your toast comes flying out as if it just woke up from a dough-induced nightmare. The results can vary widely, from a perfectly golden slice to a visit from the fire department. My toaster is a little different. The designers have clearly thought about how humans actually want to toast bread, bagels, and cr...

Qualcomm is today announcing Adaptive Noise Cancellation for true wireless earbuds, which it calls “a new technology designed to deliver an improved user experience for earbuds with integrated ANC.” Adaptive Noise Cancellation will adjust sound performance in real time, according to the company, based on how the earbuds fit in a user’s ear. If the fit changes slightly, the Adaptive ANC will adapt to ensure consistent performance. Sound familiar? This is almost exactly what Apple does with the AirPods Pro, which continuously adjust the level of noise cancellation 200 times per second. And the “adaptive EQ” feature of AirPods Pro automatically tunes sound output based on the shape of your ear. Qualcomm is trying to reach par with Apple in terms of these features and says that Adaptive ANC ca...

Acer has announced the newest iteration of its Spin 7 lineup at IFA 2020, and there’s a twist: instead of the usual Intel processor, the new model will be the first laptop with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G chip. It’s also Acer’s first 5G laptop. From the outside, the new Spin 7 appears to be a modestly updated version of the current model, with slightly squared-off corners and gold accents. But the changes are more significant. The ARM-based Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor means that, in addition to supporting 5G (both mmWave and sub-6 GHz), Acer is also promising that it’ll offer “multi-day” battery life. Image: Acer Additionally, Acer is adding an active Wacom pen that offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and can dock into the side of the computer to recharge. The rest of the...

Qualcomm is expanding its 5G portfolio to its budget Snapdragon 4-series chipsets in 2021, which will bring the faster networking standard to the cheapest range of smartphones yet. Qualcomm has steadily been expanding the list of chipsets that it’s offered with 5G compatibility. In 2019, only the company’s flagship Snapdragon 8-series phones offered 5G support. (Even there, it was an optional addition only offered on a handful of phones.) This year has seen that lineup expand significantly, with the current Snapdragon 865 lineup requiring a separate 5G modem, along with cheaper options in the company’s 7-series and 6-series lineups like the Snapdragon 765 and Snapdragon 690. But adding 5G to the next wave of 4-series chipsets could be the most significant expansion yet since 4-series devic...

It’s been almost two years since Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8cx, its flagship ARM processor for Windows laptops, but at IFA 2020, the company is unveiling its successor: the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G, which promises some incremental improvements over the original. Qualcomm wasn’t too forthcoming about what specific performance improvements the 8cx Gen 2 will offer over its predecessor beyond saying that it would provide “generational performance and efficiency gains.” However, Qualcomm is very interested in showing that the new 8cx Gen 2 chipset is more than capable of going toe-to-toe with Intel’s traditional systems. It claims that the 8cx Gen 2 offers significant performance gains over both a comparable 10th Gen Core i5 chip from Intel as well as Intel’s Lakefield chips (which are ...

There’s a good deal happening on Western Digital’s WD_Black SN750 NVMe M.2 drive with 500GB of storage. It usually floats around $80, but it’s $63 right now at Amazon, B&H Photo, and even at Western Digital’s online store. 500GB is admittedly not a lot of storage, but if you’re in a pinch for something fast and don’t require a bunch of extra space, this is worth checking out. It’s an M.2 2280 form factor drive, so make sure your PC’s motherboard is compatible. Alternatively, stuff it into a USB-C enclosure and make it into a fast portable drive. [embedded content] Another PC-related deal comes from Newegg (via The Inventory), where you can get Intel’s 9th Gen, eight-core Core i9-9900K processor (base clock of 3.6GHz and turbo clock of 5GHz) for $370 when you use the offer code GAMERDAY...

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is one of the best and easiest ways to keep your online accounts secure. They work by issuing an authentication code on your phone when somebody tries to access the account; if that person doesn’t have the code, they (or you) don’t get in. By using a 2FA app, such as Google Authenticator or Authy, you can prevent somebody from accessing your data by getting your password. (You can have a code texted to you, but that is considered far less secure due to the rise of so-called SIM hacking.) There is, of course, a catch. Because 2FA uses a key specific to your phone, if you lose or break your phone, you can’t simply reinstall the app on your new phone and go on from there. You need to transfer the key code for that phone as well as the app itself. Different auth...

On Monday, Dana Simmons came downstairs to find her 12-year-old son, Lazare, in tears. He’d completed the first assignment for his seventh-grade history class on Edgenuity, an online platform for virtual learning. He’d received a 50 out of 100. That wasn’t on a practice test — it was his real grade. “He was like, I’m gonna have to get a 100 on all the rest of this to make up for this,” said Simmons in a phone interview with The Verge. “He was totally dejected.” At first, Simmons tried to console her son. “I was like well, you know, some teachers grade really harshly at the beginning,” said Simmons, who is a history professor herself. Then, Lazare clarified that he’d received his grade less than a second after submitting his answers. A teacher couldn’t have read his response in that time, S...

For Disney Plus subscribers who don’t want to pay an extra $30 to watch Mulan when it drops on September 4th, the company has announced it will be free to all customers on December 4th. A new description on Mulan’s Disney Plus page notes that it will be available to all subscribers on December 4th, 2020. An FAQ page for Mulan on Disney Plus also states that “Premier Access offer will be available until November 2, 2020,” but it’s unclear exactly what that means for people who want to purchase Mulan between November 2nd and December 4th. The Verge has reached out to Disney for more information. With just three months between the film’s initial release and when it becomes available to general subscribers, Mulan has one of the shortest windows in Disney history. Usually it takes many months b...

Verizon is spending nearly $1.9 billion to catch up on 5G spectrum, as the biggest carriers race to roll out higher-speed connections nationwide. This morning, the Federal Communications Commission revealed the winners of an auction for licenses to valuable spectrum that’s especially useful for 5G. Verizon was the biggest spender by far. Dish came in second, spending $912 million. Charter, Comcast, and Cox all spent hundreds of millions on spectrum as well. Companies spent big on this auction because the spectrum, in the 3.5GHz band, can be used for higher-speed 5G deployments. Verizon, in particular, has been in a tough spot: its 5G strategy so far has largely relied on millimeter-wave deployments. Those offer the highest-speed connections, but they only work at extremely short ranges — s...

Nearly nine months after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was released, John Boyega is opening up about the way his character and his role in the films were treated by Disney. In a new lengthy interview with GQ, Boyega spoke about the disappointing direction Lucasfilm and Disney took his character — a Black Stormtrooper who abandons his role within the evil First Order to join a group of fighters in the Resistance — by the end of the third film in the trilogy. Many of the issues Boyega brings up are complaints that Star Wars fans and critics also had with the direction of his character, specifically how Finn was sidelined, and never given a chance to flourish while other characters, like Daisy Ridley’s Rey and Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, did. “What I would say to Disney is do not bring out a b...