Technology news

AMD’s third-generation Ryzen processors for laptops have officially arrived at CES 2020, with the announcement of the new Ryzen 4000 series of chips based on the company’s 7nm Zen 2 architecture. They’re the first AMD laptop chips to make the jump: while the company brought that Zen 2 to desktop with the Ryzen 3000 series, its 3000-series laptop chips still used an older process.
The new chips are designed to go head-to-head against Intel’s latest chips, including the nex

Microsoft revealed its Xbox Series X console last month, but the company strangely didn’t show off the rear of the device. During AMD’s CES keynote today, the chipmaker revealed the rear of the Xbox Series X briefly, showing off all of the connectivity ports. While many were wondering if Microsoft would drop its dual-HDMI ports from the Xbox One, there will clearly be two HDMI ports on the Xbox Series X. It’s not clear if Microsoft will continue to use these HDMI ports to suppo

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge TCL plans to release new software upgrades for some TVs that could make them better for gaming and make it easier to manage your home audio setup, the company announced Monday at CES.Later this year, TCL says that it will enable variable refresh rates, which will sync the frame rate of your TV to what’s intended by the game. The update is slated for this spring, and it should arrive for select 2019 TCL Roku TV 6-Series models and select 2020 hig

Photo by David Peinado / NurPhoto via Getty Images The United States government will begin collecting the DNA of detained immigrants through pilot programs this week, according to a privacy impact assessment that was published today by the Department of Homeland Security. The Trump administration’s plans to collect genetic samples from people detained by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was first reported in October.CPB and ICE don&rsquo

The X950H is one of three LCD TV ranges announced alongside Sony’s OLED lineup. | Image: Sony Sony has announced its first TVs of 2020, and among them is the 48-inch Master Series A9S, the company’s smallest 4K OLED ever. At the top of the lineup is a new 8K LCD TV, the 85- or 75-inch Sony Z8H, followed by the A8H OLED, which is available in 65-inch and 55-inch variants. Rounding out Sony’s announcements today are two new LCD ranges, the X950H and X900H, which are available in

Dell may have already announced its big laptop news with the upgraded XPS 13 last week, but the company brought two new prototype laptops to CES 2020: the foldable Concept Ori and the dual-screen Concept Duet. Together, Dell’s two prototypes encapsulate what the future of computers might look like, and it’s one where laptops offer a whole lot more screen space than they do now.Neither of Dell’s devices is entirely new. The foldable Concept Ori looks extremely similar to Lenovo&

Image: Comcast Comcast announced a new version of its xFi Advanced Gateway, one of its modem / router combo products you can lease with your Xfinity internet, today at CES. This new version has support for Wi-Fi 6, which is optimized for faster speeds and to better handle the ever-growing number of networked devices we have in our homes.
In addition to Wi-Fi 6, Comcast says the new router has four dual-band antennas that support both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, one 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port, three

Alienware is best known for its beefy gaming laptops and preconfigured desktop rigs, but at CES 2020, the company showed off a wild new prototype, the Concept UFO. It’s a full Windows 10 gaming PC, shrunken down into a very similar form factor to a Nintendo Switch — complete with detachable controllers and a dock to hook it up to a TV or monitor.
The Concept UFO consists of four pieces: there’s a main “head” unit, which has an eight-inch, 1200p display; the battery;

Photo by Mladen Antonov / AFP via Getty Images People in Thailand are stuffing their T-shirts, luggage, laundry hampers, and buckets with groceries after a ban on plastic bags in select retailers in the country went into effect on January 1st. Creative shoppers brought in wheelbarrows, fishing nets, and even what looks like an impressive piece of pottery to haul their groceries home.Thailand started 2020 with a major plastic bag ban so now Thais have made it a trend to put their shoppings in ra

Toyota wants to give a new meaning to the term “company town.”The Japanese auto giant said it will transform the 175-acre site of a former car factory into a “prototype city of the future” where it can test autonomous vehicles, innovative street design, smart home technology, robotics, and new mobility products on real people who would live there full-time.The site, which will be designed by famed Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, will house up to 2,000 people and will brea

Image: Incipio Incipio announced a line of compostable plant-based phone cases today, joining a growing trend in eco-friendly cases.
Compostable phone cases are nothing new. Several smaller brands have made cases out of skateboards, wood, flax straw, bamboo, cork, and recycled plastic fishing nets. Even major phone case brand Zagg sells cases made from recycled water bottles. But with Incipio joining Zagg, it looks like the eco-friendly trend is going even more mainstream.
Incipio’s new c

Image: LG Even if it’s not a brand-new model, if you have an LG smart TV, you’ll soon have access to Apple’s original TV content. LG announced in a release that its OLED and NanoCell televisions will now support the Apple TV app — and not just the new 2020 models but its 2019 and 2018 versions as well.That means LG TV users won’t need a separate set-top box to get Apple TV Plus, iTunes, or other original Apple programming. LG’s release said only that those wi

Image: TCL During its CES 2020 keynote today, TCL announced the Alto 9 Plus Dolby Atmos soundbar, which is among the first to offer full integration with Roku TV televisions. If you own a Roku TV, you can control the soundbar using the TV’s remote, but you can also dig into advanced settings and switch between audio modes through on-screen menus.A Roku TV isn’t required to use this soundbar, however. It comes with its own standalone remote for any TV you’ve already got in the

In its press conference at CES today, LG presented its upcoming lines of TVs and kitchen appliances for the coming year. This year, the emphasis was on AI: in fact, the first 20 minutes of the presentation pushed a speculative look at the future of AI as a consumer service.
Once it got down to its product announcements, LG started with its newest kitchen appliances. First up was the LG ThinQ washer and dryer. According to LG, the washer will not only detect the volume and weight of laundry but a

Image: Lenovo At Computex 2019, Lenovo teased that it was working on a 5G laptop that would feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx processor codenamed “Project Limitless.” At CES 2020, the company showed off a first look at the finished project: the Yoga 5G.From the outside, the Yoga 5G looks fairly bland, barely distinguishable from any of Lenovo’s other midrange laptops. But the internal specs are where things get interesting: instead of an Intel processor, it’s got Q

Last year, Lenovo showed off what it described as the “world’s first foldable PC” — a prototype OLED tablet that could fold up like a book or a tiny laptop. Now, at CES 2020, Lenovo is announcing how it’s going to sell the idea as a commercial product. It’s called the ThinkPad X1 Fold, and it’ll be available this year.
The hardware hasn’t changed too much from what we saw before, beyond the addition of a Windows Hello-compatible camera on an inside

Despite obvious reasons why it wouldn’t be commercially viable, I’ve always wanted an E Ink laptop. What could be better than a reading and writing device with endless battery life that would be comfortable to use in the park on a sunny day? Well, Lenovo’s new ThinkBook Plus isn’t quite that, but it might be the closest thing yet.
The catch is that the 10.8-inch E Ink display is on the outside of the laptop and is mostly designed to be used when the computer is closed. Le

AMD hasn’t even officially announced its Ryzen 4000 processors yet, but Lenovo is already offering us a first glimpse at a laptop that will ship in April with the new chips. The Yoga Slim 7 is new and improved for 2020, and Lenovo is offering two versions of the 14-inch laptop with either AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series chips or Intel’s 10th Gen Core i7.
The choice between Intel and AMD will undoubtedly come down to budget versus performance, as Lenovo is pricing the AMD version of thi

Image: Lenovo Lenovo’s Smart Frame is a new 21.5-inch display that’s designed to mount on your wall and display your photos. The Smart Frame, which Lenovo is announcing today at CES, features a 1080p IPS display, which uses a sensor to automatically adjust its display based on ambient light conditions. Alongside it, Lenovo also has a new 10-inch Android tablet that includes a dock to let you use it like a Google Assistant smart display — the Smart Tab M10.
With the Smart Frame

Last year, in honor of its 10th anniversary, Origin built the Big O — a massive custom gaming PC that also had an Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, and a Nintendo Switch dock built into the same chassis. At the time, it was just a one-off concept, but now, Origin is actually selling it, albeit in a more practical form that combines a gaming PC with a single console: either an Xbox One S or PS4 Pro.It’s not quite as absurd as the original, which crammed all three modern consoles into a single box

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has made the popular chat app ToTok available again for download after the service was banned from the Play Store for reportedly functioning as an espionage tool of the United Arab Emirates.
ToTok was pitched as a secure app that’s available where Western counterparts like WhatsApp may be restricted, and the service quickly gained millions of users after it was introduced last year. But citing classified American intelligence, The New York Ti

Thirty years ago, Nintendo and Sega gave the world the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis, two consoles that defined a generation of video games and gamers.Since their debuts in 1990 and 1989, respectively, those two devices have never left the popular imagination — as much for the games that they offered as the stories those games told. And now, at CES 2020, My Arcade has brought those consoles together in a beautiful synthesis: the Super Retro Champ, a handheld cons

Image: Royole Today at CES, Royole, which is known for its flexible screens and making the first foldable phone, debuted a new smart speaker with a display. But it’s not a flat display like what you’d find on the Echo Show 8. Royole’s cylindrical smart speaker has a display that wraps around the device.
Royole’s Mirage Smart Speaker has an 8-inch AMOLED “fully flexible” touch display that appears to cover most, if not all, of the body of the device:Image: Roy

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube executives have warned creators over the last few months that changes are coming to the platform to comply with a federal children’s privacy law. Today, those changes enter full effect: targeted ads will now be restricted from running on kids’ videos, and kids’ videos will lose access to comments and some other community features. YouTube has said kid-focused channels will see “a significant business impact” due to re

Went to Las Vegas but lost everything at the craps table? There’s now a cheaper way to get from the Strip to the airport. Uber is making a big bet on public transit in Las Vegas. The ride-hailing company’s new Transit feature is going live in Sin City where residents and gamblers alike can use their Uber app to buy tickets for the city’s bus system.Last May, Uber announced that it would begin selling train and bus tickets through its app for customers in Denver, Colorado. It wa

Ashley Carman / The Verge There’s something called a “Visual Visor” here at CES. It comes from Bosch, and it can detect when there’s sunlight shining on your face, directly into your eyes, and block out the rays. It’s designed to keep your vision clear while you drive without you having to move the visor around and potentially block your view of the road. The visor, which is just a transparent LCD with 166 hexagonal pixels, relies on an RGB camera and a proprietary

Ikea Shortcut Button next to Home Smart Gateway. | Image: Ikea Ikea’s Home Smart product portfolio continues to grow with the first in-store appearance of the Tradfri Shortcut Buttons, and the long-awaited rollout of HomeKit support for Ikea’s smart blinds. Both developments were first spotted on the Tradfri and HomeKit subreddits.
Ikea’s €7.99 ($7.99) Shortcut Buttons previewed last month on The Verge are currently listed on the Dutch Ikea store. The smart buttons can be

Yukai Engineering Three years after Yukai Engineering’s headless robotic cat first wagged its way into our hearts, the therapy pillow is getting a smaller, portable sibling called the Petit Qoobo. Like its predecessor, the Petit Qoobo is meant for seniors in nursing homes or people who can’t own pets because of allergies or apartment rules but still want the loving embrace of a soft, cuddly friend. The idea proved to be so comforting that Qoobo owners asked for a miniature version t

Image: Corsair Elgato’s 4K 60 S+ is a new capture card that promises to make it much easier to record and stream your gameplay at the highest possible quality, meaning it can record 4K HDR at 60 fps from your PS4, PC, or Xbox One. It can either record directly to an SD card, connect to a PC over USB 3.0 to let you to live stream, or record directly to your hard drive using its external processing power instead of tapping into your computer’s gaming performance. The device, which was

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Now that holiday sales have ended, most deals have slowed down a bit. But we still managed to find some good deals that are active now. If you’re looking to save on the Fire TV Stick, MacBook Pro, pr iPad Pro, there are several deals available from different retailers right now.Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Amazon has a couple of Fire TV Stick bundles on sale. There’s a bundle with the Fire TV Stick and an Echo Dot (third-gen) for $74.9

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge An FCC filing released today suggests that Peloton is working on a new monitor of some sort. The listing classifies the product as a “console,” the first from Peloton to hit the FCC listings since 2018, after its treadmill launched. The only accompanying photo is a label that seems to go on the back of the screen, with display and power ports along the center.
Current Peloton bike monitors follow a model number starting with “RB&rdqu

Image: JBL JBL’s latest soundbar is the audio company’s first to support Dolby Atmos, and it’s taking a novel approach to its rear speakers that might make it a more convenient device for your living room. Rather than relying on running cables to your rear speakers, or using wireless rear speakers that need to be plugged into the wall for power, the JBL Bar 9.1 has entirely wireless, battery-powered rear speakers.
The two speakers charge by being plugged into the main soundbar

Image: LG It was always going to be hard to follow up on a TV that can roll up when it’s not being used, and so LG has come to CES 2020 with a new lineup that prioritizes elegance and thinness over bending screens. The company is launching new “Gallery Series” OLEDs that hang flush against the wall (thanks to a new custom mount) and can double as both a TV and “a piece of art.”The Gallery Series will be released in 55, 65, and 77-inch sizes, and LG says the 65-inch

Asus is following up last year’s excellent Chromebook Flip C434 with the even higher-end Chromebook Flip C436. As the name might suggest, the C436 is only taking a small step forward in terms of specs and build. There’s nothing super impressive here as far as changes go — but since last year’s model was already our recommendation for the best Chromebook you can buy right now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The C436 appears to have roughly the same magnesium all

Image: Diesel Diesel, a sub-brand of Fossil, is launching a new, bold-looking Wear OS smartwatch today at CES, dubbed the Diesel On Fadelite.The Fadelite looks slick, and Diesel says it’s designed to be worn by both men and women. The watch has four different colorways, and Diesel says most of them feature fading colors (hence the “Fadelite” name). There’s one that fades from red watch to black, one from black to clear, one from blue to clear, and one that’s clear

We all work from our phones more than ever, but typing out emails and long messages is still slow compared to using a keyboard. Samsung has a solution: use AI and your phone’s camera to track your hands as they type on an invisible keyboard right in front of you.
It’s called SelfieType, and although it’s only a demo at the moment, it’s a very intriguing one. It’s been developed under the aegis of Samsung’s C-Lab program, a sort of in-house incubator for weird

Asus’ ZenBook Pro Duo was one of the most interesting-looking laptops of 2019, and at CES 2020, the company announced the ZenBook Duo (no Pro this time), its smaller cousin that comes in a more manageable 14-inch size.Like the 15.6-inch ZenBook Pro Duo, the new ZenBook Duo also features a secondary “ScreenPad Plus” display (this time, a 12.6-inch panel, compared to the 14-inch panel on its larger cousin), enabling the dual-screen experiences that made the original a compelling