The latest tech news about the world’s best (and sometimes worst) hardware, apps, and much more. From top companies like Google and Apple to tiny startups vying for your attention, Verge Tech has the latest in what matters in technology daily.
If you’re working on a video with others, the new feature should make it much easier to share specific feedback. You can only leave timestamped comments on the web, but on mobile, you’ll see those comments “as standard file-level comments,” Google says.
In a new video on Monday, you can catch brief and shadowy glimpses of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, which is set to be fully revealed at an event on August 12th.
But the phone’s design has already leaked, if you want to see it ahead of time.
Leaker Evan Blass posted what appear to be marketing renders of the Pixel 11 Pro, including a few showing off an excellent matte gray / black model. In the renders, it looks great.
Apple is also rumored to launch a gray / black option for this year’s Pro lineup. But the shade on this Pixel 11 Pro might be hard to top.
The Cupertino company has reportedly launched another legal challenge against the UK government’s attempt to force Apple into providing it with backdoor access to encrypted iCloud data. While the UK dropped its initial demands in August 2025, it apparently issued a second order last October that specifically targets British user data.
CEO Toni Schneider on protocols, community, and control.
Some Amazon shoppers have had limited access to customer reviews since late last year because the shopping platform is mistakenly flagging them as bots in its attempt to restrict unauthorized data scraping. Amazon hasn’t disclosed how many customers are affected, or what behaviors are getting people flagged.
Apple is struggling to keep the laptop in stock, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, with new orders on some configurations experiencing “essentially unprecedented” delays of roughly a month. This joins the shortages for the Mac Mini and Studio, all of which are seemingly connected to the ongoing memory crisis.
Using Antrophic’s Claude to exploit a security flaw that’s existed for decades, researchers successfully added and removed DNA profiles from files, meaning bad actors could theoretically frame an innocent person or erase a suspect. Equipment manufacturer Thermo Fisher has issued a software patch. There’s no evidence the vulnerability — which requires local lab access — had ever been exploited.
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Verge Score
But it’s decent enough for 1080p gaming in our RAMageddon world.
Music-playing robots are nothing new. It’s been 13 years since Compressorhead went viral, after all. But this DIY project from Reddit user MegCell is still pretty impressive. The melody isn’t hard-coded, either. Instead, the robot can read MusicXML files, meaning, theoretically, it can play almost any song you want.
Folding screens are no longer novel, but they’re finally good enough for an iPhone.
Trump Media announced the plan earlier this month for paid, real-time access to its most influential accounts. Today the API went live, with subscriptions as high as $100,000 per month. Other platforms offer similar API services, but none of those count the sitting US president as its most influential user and its largest shareholder.
From necessities to nice-to-haves, we’ve gathered 28 products that will make this year at school the best it can be.
Instead, the company is just going to build its vibe coding tool directly into Gemini. Around 800,000 pre-ordered the mobile app after it was announced in May, but Google has decided to just make Gemini its one-stop AI shop. The robust web platform isn’t going anywhere, though, for those with bigger vibe-coded aspirations.
And that’s a good thing, because its own 8GB Surface Laptop 13 struggles so much that it’s a tough buy. Microsoft’s other new areas of “focus” include making Windows onboarding and family controls easier to set up and making “voice [control] more natural and fluid” across apps.
[Windows Insider Blog]
Batman: Caped Crusader - Chronicles lets you and up to three friends tackle mysteries based on the Caped Crusader Prime Video show. It’s a clear example of Amazon’s recent push to tie its gaming efforts more closely with its streaming properties.
As spotted by Android Authority, the new, unofficial Gen1Recomp port for the trio of classic Pokémon games also lets you easily add mods, like one that updates the games with cool 3D voxel graphics. You’ll need to use your own game ROM, though.
At $75 early bird Kickstarter or $90 retail, the Sharge Disk Pro 2 Ultra is a magnetic USB-C hub that doubles as a Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 dock, triples as a bring-your-own-SSD, and unlocks speedy ProRes storage for iPhone. Update: Here’s my full hands-on preview.
A judge rejected Perplexity’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which accuses the AI startup and three data-scraping services of vacuuming up Reddit’s content without permission. Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, says in a statement to The Verge that the ruling “brings us one step closer to holding bad actors accountable:”
Reddit supports responsible access to public content, but we oppose companies that bypass our protections, ignore our rules, and profit off our communities without permission.
As Dexerto reports, Green says he wasn’t reading an AI prompt in a clip from a recent Ask Hank Anything video, but confessed that he’s been using AI “to locate papers and other resources for learning about topics.” In a Reddit post, he said he needs to “readjust” now.
I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs...with doing more and more and more and more...is not healthy for me or good for the world. It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this.
Saw this on 9to5Google. Bad name, IMO. I prefer the previously-rumored “Pixel Glow” is better.
[9to5Google]
You’ll have fewer robot floor cleaners to choose from and higher prices.
“As low-quality, repetitive, AI-generated content becomes increasingly common across the internet, we want Spotlight to remain a place where people can discover authentic creativity from real people,” Snap says.
Content that’s been “enhanced or edited using Snapchat’s AI creative tools” may still be recommended, and they include “transparency indicators.”
”Stop the Slop!” says CEO Evan Spiegel. “We’re keeping it real on Spotlight.”
Update: Added Spiegel’s post.
[Snap Inc.]
The Wall Street Journal gets into the “staggering” fundraising efforts launched by President Donald Trump and his team, including the tech giants making multimillion-dollar donations:
SoftBank donated $50 million toward Trump’s presidential library. Apple cut a check for around $25 million toward his White House ballroom project, while Microsoft gave around $10 million and Amazon chipped in around $5 million, according to people familiar with the contributions. Meta Platforms recently gave $10 million to a Trump-aligned political committee, people familiar said, on top of a multimillion donation to the ballroom and a prior $22 million payment to the planned presidential library.
[The Wall Street Journal]
The servers for Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, which launched in 2024, will close down on October 30th, Kotaku reports. The shutdown follows an earlier announcement that the game would “progressively transition away from blockchain functionality.”
