Month: July 2023

ChatGPT maker Open AI , startup Anthropic and tech giants Google and Microsoft have forged an alliance to create a framework for safety standards and the responsible development of what they’re calling “frontier AI” models.

The four tech companies on Wednesday announced the formation of the Frontier Model Forum in a blog post and shared the group’s main areas of focus. The announcement comes less than a week after top executives of those four companies, along with others including Meta and Amazon, met with President Biden and pledged to reduce the dangers that unrestrained artificial intelligence may pose and to abide by AI safety measures which prioritize the public’s security and trust.

The Frontier Model Forum has outlined its blueprint for the coming year with three areas of priority. They include determining best practices for developing and launching AI applications, furthering AI safety research, and having transparent discussions on vulnerability, risks and security with lawmakers, academic institutions and industry peers.

As part of its larger strategy, the group is open to other organizations joining as members if they meet the criteria regarding frontier models, which they defined as “large-scale machine-learning models that exceed the capabilities currently present in the most advanced existing models.” The founding companies plan to assemble an advisory board in the coming months as well.

“Companies creating AI technology have a responsibility to ensure that it is safe, secure, and remains under human control,” said Microsoft’s president and vice chair, Brad Smith, said in a statement. “This initiative is a vital step to bring the tech sector together in advancing AI responsibly and tackling the challenges so that it benefits all of humanity.”

Concerns about AI safety and security risks have prompted calls for multilateral oversight and the establishment of guardrails for consumers and enterprises. Tech firms are being asked to address issues around deepfakes, cybersecurity threats, discrimination and data collection.

A phone with a replaceable battery sounds great, and legislation aims to make it so. But the reality is complicated, according to a company already selling one.

Once upon a time — by which we mean just a couple of decades ago — if you wanted to swap out your phone’s battery for a new one, all you had to do was slide the back casing open and pop the battery out. The rise of sleek but impenetrable smartphones largely saw an end to user-replaceable batteries. But now, in the mid-2020s, they could be poised for a comeback.

Two separate pieces of right-to-repair legislation working their way through the European Union institutions — one of which was passed by the European Parliament at the end of June — could force phone manufacturers to make significant changes to the way they design phones. Once they come into force (expected to be in 2025 and 2027, respectively) they will put in place regulations that compel makers of phones and other small devices, like portable game consoles, to allow people to replace the batteries themselves.

As a smartphone owner, you’ll likely be familiar with the specific frustrations batteries pose — namely the drop-off in maximum capacity over time and the inability to cheaply and easily do anything to fix it. If you were able to switch the battery out, you could well end up keeping your phone for a prolonged period.

“Battery degradation is a major reason for considering an upgrade,” said CCS Insight Chief Analyst Ben Wood over email.

Increasingly phone manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung and HMD, which makes Nokia phones, are trying to make their devices more easily repairable at home. Since the start of this year, HMD has introduced two phones in which the batteries can be quickly replaced by the owner, although it does require an iFixit toolkit to do so. Repairing smartphones has largely been a specialist job. But with more power to fix devices, the hope is that you’ll be less likely to discard them in favor of newer models, reducing the overall amount of electronic waste that comes from broken or aging products.

“By empowering consumers with the ability to replace a worn-out battery themselves, it means that they can keep hold of their device for longer,” said Lars Silberbauer, chief marketing officer at HMD, which welcomed the EU’s proposals on user-replaceable batteries. “It also makes repairing a smartphone more affordable.”

But abiding by the new rules is going to mean having to solve some tricky engineering challenges for companies aiming to comply. One phone-maker, Fairphone, has pioneered making phones with fully user-replaceable batteries and, as they told me, it’s no easy feat. More on that below.

Any rules that do end up coming into force around user-replaceable batteries will only apply to phones sold within the EU. But there’s precedent for European regulation spurring tech companies to make changes that affect their products wherever they’re sold. A prime example is the European mandate for universal chargers (chargers that can be used across an entire device category), which was finalized in October 2022 and will come into force next year. It’s expected to cause Apple to switch away from using Lightning connectors for the iPhone to the more common USB-C, found on almost all Android phones.

Apple and Samsung didn’t respond to requests for comment regarding the impending regulations.

But it’s reasonable to think that if Apple and other phone-makers are forced to make devices that include user-replaceable batteries for one market, they might also sell those devices elsewhere.

Rethinking the architecture of the phone
To understand the challenges, as well as the pros and cons, of making such a device, I asked Fairphone — a company that already makes a phone with an easily replaceable battery — what’s involved.

To Miquel Ballester, Fairphone’s head of product development and one of its founders, there’s nothing novel about being able to replace a phone’s battery. Instead it’s a choice that manufacturers have made as phones have trended thinner and thinner, he said. And while battery capacities have improved over the years, the basic chemistry that causes them to degrade over time has not.

“That’s a fact and that has not changed since we had the old Nokias that all had the replaceable batteries,” he said.

Fairphone isn’t just a phone-maker. Its mission is to challenge the electronics industry to create devices that are longer lasting and easier to repair. All of the phones the company has made are modular, so they can be taken apart and put back together by anyone. Even someone like me, who has little experience of electronics other than some casual soldering, can do it — and I have.

But making a phone this way comes with compromises, as Ballester well knows. Having a fully integrated battery that’s glued into a smartphone creates a very stable connection between the power module and the other components. A replaceable battery can’t boast the same level of stability, meaning that the connection is more likely to be interrupted if the phone is dropped or if a speck of dust finds its way onto the connector.

(In 2016, LG tried its luck with a modular phone, the G5, in the waning days of phones with batteries you could remove. CNET’s reviewer noted that the G5’s removable battery was the most appealing aspect of the design.)

Dust and water can be a problem for modular phones. The Fairphone 4, which just arrived in the US, is the company’s first device to come with a waterproof rating, which at IP54 is lower than most top-end models. (The iPhone 14 has an IP rating of 68.) Ballester sees this as less of an issue, given that most people replace their phones these days not because they got a bit wet, but because of the battery, the software or a smashed screen.

Replaceable batteries also live in bulkier housing to ensure they can match their glued-in counterparts for robustness and reliability.

“You need to think about the architecture of the phone differently, and you may not be able to deliver in those super thin ratios that we are seeing in the market,” Ballester said. With the housing taking up more space, phone-makers also have to opt for lower-capacity batteries, he added.

In other words, replaceable batteries could lead to chunkier phones with less battery life. Despite this, the Fairphone 4 still provides enough juice in one charge to last a full day, according to Ballester. Unlike the flagship phones on the market, it just won’t stretch to one and a half or two days, he added.

Harder to source, easier to recycle
The obvious benefit of having a replaceable battery is that if your existing one is causing you issues and not lasting the full day, you can swap it out for a new one. But this relies on those same exact batteries still being available up to several years after you’ve first bought your phone.

Spare batteries can’t just sit around the shelf waiting to be used, as they too will degrade over time. Persuading suppliers to keep making battery replacements can be a challenge, said Ballester, as the volumes are often too low. He’s confident, though, that if replaceable batteries became the norm for phone-makers, they would be much easier to get hold of.

At the other end of the phone’s lifecycle, having a replaceable battery is hugely beneficial in the recycling process. The most valuable part of a battery is the cobalt, which can be recycled, but often isn’t due to the fact it’s integrated into the phone. This means phones will be recycled in their entirety for the metals, with the cobalt being lost in the process.

See also: A Fully Recycled Phone Is a Lot Harder Than It Sounds, Even for Samsung and Apple

But if batteries are replaceable, they can be easily extracted from the phones and recycled separately. Right now, that’s not happening enough, said Ballester.

“The cobalt recyclers are struggling to have enough volume to have a good business case from cobalt recycling, so we need to increase the amount of batteries that go back,” he said.

He hopes that more phones with replaceable batteries would bolster the amount of cobalt recycling that can take place. Equally he hopes that as battery technology continues to improve, there won’t need to be a discussion about the amount of energy a replaceable battery can hold compared to a fixed module.

For phone manufacturers now thinking about how they might make devices with replaceable batteries, perhaps for the very first time, it’s clear that some compromises may be required along the way. But with cross-industry effort, there are significant opportunities to overcome the hurdles that companies like Fairphone are already facing head on.

In doing so, they might just ensure the next generation of phones stay longer in our pockets and ease the pressure on the planet in the process.

Samsung’s next wave of foldable phones are expected to debut next week.

Samsung is likely revealing a new generation of foldable phones — presumably the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 — at next week’s Samsung Unpacked event on Wednesday, July 26. The event is going to be the first Unpacked event that Samsung will hold from Seoul, Korea, making for a very early launch event if you’re watching from the US.

While Samsung’s entering its fifth consecutive year in the foldable phone market, the devices it’s launching at this year’s Unpacked arrive among a good deal more competition. Google’s $1,800 Pixel Fold is the first Pixel device to adopt a similar style to the Galaxy Z Fold series, in which a traditionally scaled phone unfolds to reveal an inner tablet-sized screen. OnePlus is also rumored to have its own foldable phone on the way, which could further disrupt the space.

And after taking a few years off from the US market, Motorola’s new $1,000 Razr Plus is now eyeing Samsung’s Z Flip series, with the newest entry including a larger cover screen that can run most Android apps. We also know Motorola has a more affordable Razr model on the way with a smaller cover screen.

And it’s not only phones. Samsung’s summer Unpacked events often include an update to the Galaxy Watch series. While the Samsung Galaxy Watch now faces competition with Google’s Pixel Watch, on the software side Samsung and Google remain in a partnership towards the development of Wear OS. However Samsung often differentiates its watches by way of its own software enhancements, and it’s likely a new Galaxy Watch would provide a spotlight for any new Samsung Health updates.

CNET will be covering the next Samsung Unpacked event live as it happens, and here is how you can watch all of the reveals next week. This will include a live blog and a live watch party, which will cover the leadup to the next phone event and run through all of the new devices as they’re unveiled.

How to watch the next Samsung Unpacked event
Samsung’s next Unpacked event starts on Wednesday, July 26 at 7 a.m. ET, 4 a.m. PT and 12 p.m. in the UK. The early product launch time is because Samsung will be holding the event at 8 p.m. in Korea.

Samsung will be livestreaming the Unpacked announcements on Samsung.com and on Samsung’s YouTube channel.

CNET’s live blog will launch the day before Samsung Unpacked, and our live watch party will stream on CNET’s YouTube channel.

What are we expecting at Samsung’s Unpacked event?
Based on the Samsung Unpacked invitation, foldable phones are almost assuredly the focus of the next event.

Samsung is using the tagline “Join the flip side” to promote the July 26 event while showing a phone that unfolds and flips around in its GIF graphic (watchful eyes may catch two silhouettes; possibly of both series of foldables). This is likely pointing to updates to the Galaxy Z Fold series and the Galaxy Z Flip series.

Samsung also traditionally debuts its latest Galaxy Watch alongside its foldable phones, and that could also come with announcements related to Samsung Health. Samsung has already teased that its upcoming One UI 5 Watch software will include a bigger focus on sleep and heart-rate tracking. Such features could point to the future of the next Galaxy Watch, even if the software updates will also be available to prior Galaxy Watch models.

What are rumors saying about Samsung’s Unpacked announcements?
The presumed Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 might receive minor redesigns to give each foldable phone better advantage of their shape.

An early Z Fold 5 rumor, reported late last year by Korean news outlet The Elec, pointed to the possibility of an S Pen slot that would harken back to the Galaxy Note series. If it does, this could enhance the positioning of the Z Fold 5 as a productivity device more akin to a mini computer. Samsung has already incorporated features like a mini trackpad into the Z Fold series, for use when the device is folded halfway to enable browsing as one would with a laptop.

Following the Pixel Fold’s ability to close completely, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 might also get a new hinge, which would allow for a less noticeable crease and a slimmer profile. That’s according to several Korean news outlets, including The Elec, ET News and leaker Ice Universe.

Meanwhile, rumors about the Z Flip 5 are primarily pointing toward a redesigned, larger cover screen. If true, this would allow the Z Flip 5 to be a lot more useful when closed — ideally using miniature versions of Android apps that fill its bigger screen. Several presumed renderings of the Z Flip 5, which include a SamMobile report from April as well as a more recent report by 9to5Google, purport to show a larger cover screen that can display a keyboard or widgets.

The rumored Galaxy Watch 6 could also have a number of changes to both its design and how it’s sold. According to a 9to5Google report, the Galaxy Watch 6 series could include a 47mm Watch 6 Classic model — which would be the largest Galaxy Watch so far. The Galaxy Watch 6 might also get a bigger battery, with Android Central reporting a possible 300-mAh and 425-mAh capacity for different models.

Leaker SnoopyTech is reporting that the Galaxy Watch 6 might also be sold as part of a “business model,” which could imply a number of possibilities. For instance, Google’s Fitbit Premium subscription unlocks additional features and statistics that aren’t available without being a subscriber. Amazon tried a similar subscription with its Halo wearables, which are now defunct.

Samsung might also show off a new iteration of the Galaxy Buds headphones, or additional features that would arrive to its other Galaxy phones. We’ll find out soon, when Samsung’s Unpacked event arrives on July 26.

“Apple GPT” is being used internally, Bloomberg reports.

Apple has created its own generative artificial intelligence tools to compete with ChatGPT, according to a Bloomberg report Wednesday.

Apple built its own framework that can create large language models, called “Ajax,” as well as a chatbot service that internal engineers are calling Apple GPT, according to Bloomberg citing unnamed sources.

It’s part of the iPhone giant’s bid to compete in the AI space, the report said. Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Large language models are what power generative artificial intelligence chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. Microsoft also launched an AI-powered Bing search earlier this year that makes use of ChatGPT, but Apple has yet to launch anything that competes with these offerings.

The report also follows Meta launching the second generation of its large language model, Llama 2, this week, making it free commercially in a partnership with Microsoft. Qualcomm is also working with Meta to make Llama 2 AI implementations available on phones and PCs starting next year.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.

From more stable multitasking to its new widgets and tools, the OS update looks promising.

The iPad doesn’t go through massive transformations year to year, but it continues to slowly evolve. The latest version of iPadOS, expected to arrive finished in the fall, as it always does, is in public beta now and available to download. I’ve been using it on an M1 iPad Air and so far it’s been a pleasant experience with a few clear benefits out of the gate.

Downloading public beta OS software is always a bit of a risk, though, and for sure you should back up your device and data before doing this if you’re curious, but beta software is also becoming a lot more of a standard way that all software works now. Regardless of the beta’s benefits, you should probably still wait until the final, more bug-free version is ready later this year.

iPad multitasking is finally… good?
Stage Manager, Apple’s multitasking system for the iPad that parallels what’s on the Mac, comes closer to feeling like the MacOS version. On iPadOS 16, I found Stage Manager to be weirdly restrictive of how you arrange your four app windows on the iPad. I only found it useful when connected to an external monitor.

In iPadOS 17, you’re still limited to four apps onscreen at one time, and Apple continues to restrict the sizing and position of apps to some degree. But the options are a lot more fluid. I can drag and stagger apps more easily one by one, from narrow panes to flat panels to larger, nearly full-screen options. Apple also gets other interface junk out of the way, allowing the Stage Manager dock and Apple’s iOS app dock to minimize so you can fill the screen with just the apps you want. On an 11-inch iPad, that’s extremely useful.

The stability also seems better so far. I played Settlers of Catan while checking Slack and writing a story and browsing Twitter and Outlook, and everything worked fine. I might actually keep Stage Manager on all the time now.

Keep in mind, Stage Manager’s external monitor features — adding four more apps to browse — requires an M1- or M2-equipped iPad, and the on-iPad Stage Manager feature is limited to iPad Pro models and the M1 iPad Air.

Better lock screens and better widgets? Sure, why not
Finally, the upgraded iPhone lock screens from last year have made it over to the iPad in 2023, although I don’t think it’s quite the killer app it is on the iPhone. New iPhones have always-on displays made for quick glances, while the iPad is a turn-on-when-you-need-it device, and its display is off by default. I unlock it faster than I see the lock screen on most days.

Widgets on the Home screen are also more useful, adding more interactive controls for a number of apps on a larger canvas than the iPhones can offer. Some of the widget controls don’t always work smoothly on iPadOS 17 public beta, but over time these larger, more app-like widgets will help the iPad feel more fluid. I’d actually like to see the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island move over in some form, too; having notifications that morph into useful readouts has turned out to be really useful on my iPhone.

Health app on iPad: Great idea, but no Watch support
It’s surprising Apple didn’t have its Health app on iPads before iPadOS 17; it’s become a key repository of medical and fitness information, medications and tons of other insights. The iPad version works the same way as the iPhone app does, just on a larger canvas.

Mood logging, a new iOS 17 feature, is here as well. If you feel up to it, you can mark down how you feel any moment, and tag what is connected to those feelings. Similar features have been on other health platforms like Fitbit, too.

Even though there’s a Health app, the iPad won’t pair with the Apple Watch. An iPhone paired with your watch can relay the data and the Health app should show relevant details like heart rate, blood oxygen, fertility tracking and sleep, but the Apple Watch’s activity ring information and achievements aren’t here.

Apple also has a Journal app that’s coming later in the year, promising therapeutic daily day-logging, mixing writing, photos and other daily activities, but it’s not part of the iOS or iPadOS 17 public betas.

Other hidden features: Improved PDF support, more Stickers and a way to replicate your voice
I use PDFs all the time, and dump a lot of my documents in Apple’s Files app via iCloud. Retrieving and viewing PDFs is easier now — the PDFs pop up in new windows while keeping the Files app open. The Notes app can also absorb PDFs, and the PDFs can be annotated pretty easily. None of this is surprising, or new to computers in general, but it’s easing the “Mac-like” flexibility of iPadOS further.

Apple’s also made filling out PDF forms less of a hassle, which hopefully will make signing documents and medical forms a little easier for me this year.

On a less essential note, Apple’s Stickers, a part of the Messages app before, are popping up across the OS. Photos can be easily turned into stickers and added to a GIF-like personal collection, including animated ones pulled from Live Photos. It’s cute, and maybe I’ll find myself using it more?

Apple’s most fascinating-slash-creepy feature is an assistive-focused way to replicate your own voice for situations when someone may not be able to speak. Called Personal Voice, it’s in the Accessibility settings. It requires setting up by recording your own voice samples into a profile that eventually can generate an AI synthesis of what you sound like for anything you type out. I had problems setting up my profile, but maybe I just have early beta bad luck. I’m looking forward to hearing what I sound like.

A good gradual step
IPadOS 17 doesn’t feel revolutionary, or even all that remarkable, but so far I’m surprised how relatively stable and useful its new features seem. It’s an additive plus to what’s becoming an ever more capable iPadOS, even if it’s not exactly a Mac. By the time Apple finishes iterating iPadOS in years to come, the differences may start to become so small that you’ll forget what device you’re even working on. I’ve started forgetting I’m on an iPad… and maybe that’s the whole point.

As VisionOS starts to bleed the iPad experience into mixed reality, and blend with Macs even further, the iPad’s destiny may be a linking connection between an increasingly melted-together ecosystem of computers, phones, VR and AR. At this moment in 2023, however, the iPad’s just getting a bit better in all the right places.

Xbox Game Pass Core will launch in September and offer a library of 25 games, along with access to online multiplayer, for the same $10 monthly price.

Microsoft on Monday announced that it’s replacing Xbox Live Gold with a new Game Pass plan. Starting Sept. 14, Xbox Live Gold will become Xbox Game Pass Core.

The new service will cost $10 a month or $60 a year, the same price as Xbox Live Gold. Game Pass Core will include member discounts and access to online multiplayer gaming, but unlike Xbox Live Gold, there won’t be free monthly games. Instead, Xbox Game Pass Core will come with a library of 25 games, with new titles added two to three times a year.

Microsoft has already announced 19 titles for the service, including Halo 5: Guardians, Psychonauts 2 and Forza Horizon 4, with more to come at a later date.

Game Pass is a subscription service that lets Xbox owners play a library of games for a single flat fee, billed monthly, quarterly, annually or even as part of the Xbox hardware purchase price. Game Pass Core will be the new base tier of the subscription service, joining Console, PC and Ultimate plans.

Current Xbox Gold members will have their subscription automatically moved over to Xbox Game Pass Core on Sept. 14, though Games with Gold comes to an end on Sept. 1. At that point, only Xbox 360 games downloaded from the service will remain for free in your library. You’ll need an active subscription to Game Pass Core or Ultimate to continue playing Xbox One games that were downloaded from Gold.

See Also: Best Xbox Series X or Series S Accessories for 2023

The new Xbox Game Pass Core offering comes at a time when Microsoft is raising prices on its more robust Game Pass Ultimate subscription. Game Pass Ultimate, which includes a library of hundreds of games on PC and Xbox X console, jumped from $15 a month to $17 a month for new members on July 6. People who already use the service will see the same increase on their bills on Aug. 13.

“We found that the answer to the most compelling catalog was to leverage select titles from our Xbox Game Pass catalog,”Jerret West, the corporate vice president of Microsoft gaming, said in a blog post on Monday. “Our launch collection of more than 25 titles from Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, and our content partners will offer something for everyone to play on their Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles.”

The confirmed titles at launch are:

Among Us
Descenders
Dishonored 2
Doom Eternal
Fable Anniversary
Fallout 4
Fallout 76
Forza Horizon 4
Gears 5
Grounded
Halo 5: Guardians
Halo Wars 2
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Human Fall Flat
Inside
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Psychonauts 2
State of Decay 2
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited

The public beta version of iOS 17 is out. Here are some of my favorite parts so far.

On my home desk is an iPhone 14 Pro running iOS 17 on a MagSafe charger. The screen shows a giant clock that every so often fades into an alert for a new message from my friend. I can swipe up and down to change the style of the clock between one that looks chic to one that’s more artistic and another that’s straight out of the ’80s. Apple calls this screen StandBy, and I adore it. StandBy is different from using your phone’s always-on display. It transforms the iPhone into a bedside clock or a smart display showing photos and widgets. It’s versatility is compelling because it feels contemporary and looks more like a miniature iPad than my iPhone.

The new feature is one of many additions coming in iOS 17 that Apple announced last month and just publicly launched in beta. Though iOS 17 was largely overshadowed by Apple’s Vision Pro headset announcement, there are many new features worth your time and attention in this upcoming iPhone update. The software is in beta and you shouldn’t install it onto your primary iPhone as you may experience the occasional bug or glitch.

For me, nearly everything in iOS 17 falls into one of four categories that I made up: delightful features, intuitive improvements, personal additions and helpful tools. Those sound like Jeopardy categories, but they all add up to an iOS that’s a major quality of life improvement.

Like the last few years of Apple software updates, iOS 17 doesn’t alter your iPhone in major ways and instead adds a bunch of customizations and features you can choose to use or just plain ignore. There are still features I’d like to see Apple add, like an onscreen volume button for the iPhone’s virtual Apple TV remote. The final version of iOS 17 will be out this fall, likely when the rumored iPhone 15 is announced. For a more comprehensive deep dive into everything that’s new in iOS 17, check out my previous story here.

iOS 17 delightful features
The iPhone has a number of features, apps and utilities that are just plain fun to use. And iOS 17 adds even more to what’s already available.

With iOS 17, your iPhone has a home screen, a lock screen, an always on display (if you have a 14 Pro) and that new StandBy screen. When I turn my iPhone on its side while charging, the StandBy screen automatically pops up in lieu of the always-on display. It’s basically a giant clock that can also show photos, a calendar, widgets and notifications. It’s perfect for a nightstand, desk or kitchen counter.

I’ve been using the Belkin Boost Charge Pro 2-in-1 stand, but any physical stand that charges via MagSafe should work.

I like how everything flows in StandBy mode. If I receive a notification while the clock is on screen, my phone displays a simple animation that transitions between the two. If I want to change up the StandBy screen, I can swipe up to select a different style or layout. It can display my photos and live activities, too. When it’s dark (like when you’re sleeping) the StandBy screen turns red, reminiscent of a red light in a darkroom for developing photos.

Another delightful feature is Stickers in Messages. Though message stickers aren’t new, iOS 17 brings many more of them, including emoji stickers. These are useful when you want to be more specific with your expression rather than just responding to a message with a Tapback thumbs up, thumbs down, heart, laugh, question mark or exclamation points.

iMessage apps are no longer located above the keyboard. Instead, they now have their own dedicated menu, which is where you’ll find the Stickers section. Tap the plus sign button on the bottom left of the Messages app to pull it up, and then select Stickers. A Stickers tray pops up with tabs for all your existing iMessage stickers, another tab for emoji stickers and, my favorite, one for customized stickers. And it’s the customized stickers that are truly amazing.

To make a new one, I tapped the Stickers drawer’s plus sign, selected a photo and tapped the Add Sticker button. The subject of my photo was then lifted out of the picture and transformed into a sticker, while the original photo remained unchanged. From there, I could add an effect right away or edit the sticker later. And it’s now saved in my Stickers’ drawer for future use.

You can use a live photo to make an animated sticker, which might now be the best part of Stickers. This is addictive, and I foresee a future where there are hundreds, thousands, millions(?) of customized animated stickers being sent between iPhones. I exaggerate, but you’ll see once you try it. I have definitely bombarded most of my friends with a bunch of these already.

iOS 17 intuitive improvements

In iOS 17, Apple improved a number of existing features and added a number of new tools that make using your iPhone more intuitive and easier. One of these is the ability to swipe to reply in the Messages app. Inline replies are nothing new, and they definitely help keep group threads from turning into a mess. But being able to swipe to respond to a specific message in iOS 17 is something I can’t believe we haven’t had before. It seems quite obvious.

Then there are home screen widgets, which have been available on the iPhone since 2020. Up to now, widgets have mainly been useful for showing glanceable information or serving as app shortcuts. With iOS 17, widgets become interactive. I can start or pause a podcast straight from the widget, and the same goes for music. Right now in the beta, most of the interactive widgets are Apple’s own apps, so I’m excited to see how non-Apple apps take advantage of the function. Here are the apps that have an interactive widget element so far:

Apple Music.
Apple Podcasts.
Safari.
Home.
Contacts.
Books.
Apple News.
iOS 17 personal additions

Apple added a number of new tools and utilities on iOS 17 that make your iPhone more of a reflection of your style. One of these is contact posters, which basically turn your mundane contact card into a mini movie poster. You can select from a few different templates, like ones that show your initials, a Memoji or a photo of your choosing. This reminds me a lot of the lock screen customizations we got in iOS 16. Your contact card can have a contact poster and a contact photo. And you can share your contact poster using Name Drop, which is a cross between AirDrop and Apple Pay (sans the credit cards). I can hover my iPhone over someone else’s (similar to how you trigger Apple Pay at a contactless payment terminal) and share my contact poster.

I can select the specific phone number or email address I want to share when Name Drop is triggered, which can be helpful if I’m sharing my contact details with a professional colleague and don’t want to hand over my personal email address. And there’s an option to just receive someone else’s contact information, and not share your own.

There’s also another personal addition, aimed at people with pets. The Photos app can now identify and find pet photos better. If I type the word “cat” into the Photos search field, it pulls up all the photos of cats on my phone. Locating pet photos isn’t exactly new, but apparently it works better in IOS 17. For the record, I had 562 cat photos on my phone, which sounds like a lot, but I would’ve thought there were more.

Also, when you pull up a photo of a cat, there’s a new Visual Lookup icon with a tiny cat silhouette on it. There’s a similar icon for dog photos, too. The new icon doesn’t add any functionality but it’s just a nice touch.

There’s also another personal addition, aimed at people with pets. The Photos app can now identify and find pet photos better. If I type the word “cat” into the Photos search field, it pulls up all the photos of cats on my phone. Locating pet photos isn’t exactly new, but apparently it works better in IOS 17. For the record, I had 562 cat photos on my phone, which sounds like a lot, but I would’ve thought there were more.

Also, when you pull up a photo of a cat, there’s a new Visual Lookup icon with a tiny cat silhouette on it. There’s a similar icon for dog photos, too. The new icon doesn’t add any functionality but it’s just a nice touch.

Over 16 years, the iPhone has evolved from being three revolutionary devices in one, as defined by Steve Jobs, into an essential part of our daily lives that serves dozens of different roles, like showing you the weather, letting you hail a ride or letting you pay for a meal. iOS 17 adds even more useful tools, and one of the most conspicuous is live voicemail transcription; basically a modern day equivalent of screening phone calls using an answering machine in the ’80s, ’90s and early-2000s.

As someone who reviews both iPhones and Android, it reminds me of the Call Screen feature on Google Pixel phones. Essentially, when someone calls and starts to leave you a message, you’ll see a live transcription of the voicemail as the person speaks. You can pick up the call to talk to them at any time. I don’t get a ton of phone calls from people I don’t know, but this can go a long way toward minimizing the anxiety that rises when I get a call from an unfamiliar number.

Messages gets a new arrow button that lets you instantly jump to the first unread messages in a conversation. It’s great for long threads where you need to catch up fast. Just tap the arrow to go to the first unread message.

And then there’s Check In, which lets a friend know automatically when you’ve arrived at a destination safely. It’s location sharing taken to another level, and I found it easy to use. In my tests, I found it straightforward, especially since it’s right there in that new Messages pop-up menu.

iOS 17 arrives in full this fall
iOS 17 still has a month or two of testing and tweaks before it’s fully ready for prime time, but I’m impressed with it so far. Like previous iOS releases, there are far more features, tools and improvements that are still waiting to be discovered. But if you have an old iPhone lying around (iOS 17 works with the iPhone XR and newer), or don’t mind dealing with a few glitches here and there, it’s worth downloading the public beta. iOS 17 pushes your iPhone experience forward not by being a radical reimagining of phone software, but rather by refining and expanding on a number of features we already enjoy.

The Nothing Phone 2’s lights stand out, but it’s not without its problems.The first Nothing Phone impressed us with its solid all-round performance, its low price and of course its flashing lights. But it never officially made it to the US, aside from an unusual beta program. This second-generation phone is here to change that.

When it goes on sale in the United States and the wider world from July 16, the Nothing Phone 2 will have a range of upgrades, from the processor to the design. But at $599 and £579 (with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage) it’s $100 more than the first generation, and the competition at this price point has never been more fierce. Especially as my test model with 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage actually costs $699.

Google’s Pixel 7A in particular has a slightly better dual camera, and its pure Android 13 software is slick to use. The Pixel 7A’s processor isn’t as powerful as the Nothing Phone 2’s, but the Google phone’s much more affordable $449 price tag more than makes up for that. Then there’s the Pixel 7 Pro — Google’s flagship — which has one of the best cameras it’s possible to find on a phone and is currently on sale (with 128GB of storage) for only $649 at Best Buy. If photography is important to you, I’d recommend spending the small amount extra.

There’s also the OnePlus 10T, which boasts the same powerful Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor as the Nothing Phone 2, has a similar camera setup, and can currently be picked up directly from OnePlus for only $400. Even the OnePlus 10 Pro with its superb camera system is only $480.

The Nothing Phone 2’s flashing LED lights are the main thing that separates it from the competition, and while they’re certainly an interesting quirk, they’re arguably something of a gimmick and not a feature I can see myself genuinely using over time. The phone’s large screen, powerful processor and decent battery life are better reasons to consider buying this device, but at $599, it’s difficult to justify the Nothing Phone 2 over the increasingly strong competition.

A familiar, flashy design
Visually, there hasn’t been a big departure from the first generation. The back is still transparent, letting you see a little of what’s inside the phone, including the exposed screw heads and various connecting segments. The glass is gently curved at the edges now to give it a slightly more premium feel when you hold it.

But it’s the flashing lights — or glyph, as Nothing calls it — that’s the big family resemblance here. Those LEDs light up the back of the phone and can alert you to incoming notifications. Or you can use them for alarms, to show battery charge status, or simply as basic fill light when you’re recording video.

The Phone 2 provides a bit more customization over the glyph this time around, letting you create custom light patterns for certain contacts or apps. There’s also a glyph timer that’ll gradually tick down as it reaches zero, and it can also give a convenient visual cue about other time-related things, such as when your Uber is going to arrive, so you can put it down and focus on sorting out your hair while keeping an eye on its progress. Nothing says it’ll be working with other app developers to integrate this functionality.

The glyph lights certainly made the original phone stand out against the competition, and though they’re arguably something of a gimmick, it’s nice to see a bit of fun and flair in phones. Especially in midrange phones like this, where interesting designs tend to take more of a back seat to keep prices down. The glyph lights have turned heads when I’ve used the Nothing Phone in front of my friends, but interest quickly fades once the initial curiosity is satisfied. Can I genuinely see myself making use of the lights over time? Honestly, no.

But the glyph lights aren’t the only physical things to care about. The aluminum frame is 100% recycled. There’s a fingerprint scanner hidden beneath the display, which works well most of the time. And the phone is IP54 rated to help keep it safe when you have to take calls in the rain. The 6.7-inch display is big and bright enough to do justice to vibrant games or to YouTube videos you’re watching while on the move, and its adaptive refresh rate lets it drop down to only 1Hz to help preserve battery life or ramp up to 120Hz for smoother gaming.

Older chip with big potential
Powering the Nothing Phone 2 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor backed up by either 8GB or 12GB of RAM (as reviewed). That’s a slightly older generation processor, but it’s still a potent chip that can fully handle most things you’d ever want to throw at it, from video streaming to photo editing to gaming. It chalked up some great scores on our benchmark tests, and it handled demanding games like PUBG and Genshin Impact perfectly well at max settings.

Nothing says it used an older chip because it wanted something tried and tested that would offer a more stable platform at a more reasonable price, and I think that’s probably a fair trade-off. Motorola’s foldable Razr Plus is doing the same thing. It might not be the most recent chip Qualcomm makes (that would be the 8 Gen 2), but it’s still something of a powerhouse that’ll cope with almost anything you’d ever want to do with it.

The Phone 2 runs Android 13 at its core, but Nothing has done a lot to customize the interface. It’s a very monochrome experience, with a heavy reliance on dot-matrix style texts and icons. There are a variety of widgets that use these designs, and even the app icons are black and white to keep with that minimal monochrome aesthetic. That could make it quite difficult to find the apps you want if you rely on those color cues, but you can turn this off in the settings if you want.

A feature that I can see being quite handy is creating folders of apps on your homescreen and hiding them behind an icon — I’m imagining filling this folder with my work-specific apps like Outlook, Zoom and Slack and then covering them up with the briefcase symbol so I don’t have to look at them on my weekend. Lovely stuff.

I don’t often like UIs that heavily customize the look of Android, but there’s something quite stylish about the design that Nothing uses on its phones. If you’re into that kind of stark minimalism, then you’ll no doubt enjoy it.

Nothing promises that the Phone 2 will receive three years of OS updates and an additional fourth year of security updates. That’s a little below the five years that Samsung offers on its phones, but it could certainly be worse. Still, I’d hope to see all manufacturers extending their support period up to and beyond five years to keep phones safe to use for longer and therefore keep more of them out of landfills.

Same cameras, better processing
The back of the phone is home to a 50-megapixel main camera and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. Hardware-wise, that’s pretty much the same setup we saw on the Nothing Phone 1. But the improved Snapdragon processor allows for a lot better software processing, with Nothing promising improved colors, exposure and better HDR techniques to help you take nicer-looking shots.

I’ve spent some time testing the camera, and I’m pleased to see vibrant, sharp images that look better than the ones I saw from the first generation phone. Still, it isn’t perfect, with some bright skies still being blown out in the highlights and a heavy-handed sharpening that results in odd image anomalies. Against the cheaper Pixel 7A, I generally prefer the shots from the Pixel.

Some users reported issues accessing some websites, according to Apple.

On Monday, Apple released iOS 16.5.1 (a), a Rapid Security Response update to its iPhone software, but then the tech giant removed access to the RSR. Apple said Tuesday that the RSR, which was meant to address a WebKit vulnerability, might have caused some websites to display incorrectly.

If you downloaded iOS 16.5.1 (a) and are having issues loading websites, you can downgrade from the update by going to Settings > General > About > iOS Version and following the onscreen prompts.

Apple also said iOS 16.5.1 (b) will be available soon to address these issues.

Apple is also expected to release the first public beta version of iOS 17 this month. The company made the developer beta available after announcing the software at WWDC 2023.

For more iOS news, check out what iOS 17 features I’m excited about, which iPhones iOS 17 will work on and what might be coming to your iPhone with iOS 16.6.

The rear light glyph has plenty more to do, like custom blinks for ringtones and timer countdowns.

We’re weeks away from the release of the Nothing Phone 2, and its design has finally been revealed — to show a very similar phone with some distinct changes.

YouTuber Marques Brownlee exclusively unveiled the design in a video earlier today with a helpful side-by-side comparison to the original Nothing Phone 1 released in June 2022. The sneak peek didn’t reveal any changes in the software, and concerned the look of the upcoming phone — which inherited the flat-sided iPhone-esque look of the original Nothing Phone 1 — and an update on the light-up glyph design on the back.

Aside from swapping out the old phone’s black rear cover for a gray one, the biggest change to the Nothing Phone 2’s design is in the LEDs, which are still in the same general glyph shape as the original, but split apart into many smaller ones. To wit, the Nothing Phone 1 had 12 LEDS on the back, while the new one has 33, which can still be programmed using the phone’s software, Brownlee said.

Nothing seems to have focused on these LEDs, as 16 of the 33 are located in one long arc near the top of the back cover, which can be programmed as a progress bar — for instance, if you turn the volume up and down using the buttons on the phone’s side, the bar fills and depletes, respectively. You can also set a timer and watch the arc darken bit by bit. Nothing plans to open this functionality up for notifications by third parties, Brownlee said, with signups from ride-sharing app Uber and India-based restaurant app Zomato so far.

You can do more with other parts of the glyph, like keeping one strip lit until you address notifications or programming a sequential light-up pattern as your own custom ringtone.

And that’s it for reveals about the Nothing Phone 2, but fans won’t have long to wait to discover the rest, as Nothing set a July 11 launch date for its next big smartphone — which has already been confirmed to be getting a US release.

If you’re looking to buy a new phone, here’s CNET’s advice on the best phones this year and the best cellphone carrier plans (though you may want to consider waiting for Amazon Prime Day before getting that new phone).