The Morning After: Apple's iOS 26 beta is ready for the public
I've been testing the iOS 26 beta, which (like the rest) centers on a major design shift to Liquid Glass, with transparent overlapping elements and fluid animations. While it looks different, Apple's focus seems to be familiarity and guiding the user in how to use its hardware, across mobile, PC and the rest.
In iOS 26 specifically, key updates include a relocated search bar, improved Visual Intelligence for screenshots and boosted performance across many Apple Intelligence features, like voice note transcription, Genmoji and Image Playground (even if it thinks I'm entirely bald).
The Camera app has been redesigned, Apple Music gains AutoMix and Messages offers more engaging options, with custom backgrounds and live translation. However, while the update focuses heavily on design and system consistency, new Siri enhancements aren't here yet.
Check out the full previews on the beta builds of iOS 26 here, macOS 26 here and iPadOS here.
— Mat Smith
Get Engadget's newsletter delivered direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here! Maingear's new PC is beige '90s desktop meets raytracing
Maingear's Retro95 is a new custom desktop PC that blends the aesthetic of '90s beige desktops with modern, high-performance components. While its exterior evokes a 30-year-old machine that introduced many of us to dial-up internet, the Retro95 can be equipped with powerful internals, such as NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 graphics and the latest processors from Intel and AMD.
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After creating the first ever (unofficial) USB-C iPhone back in 2021, Ken Pillonel has created an iPhone case that can give older device models a USB-C port, welcoming them to 2025. You can browse the options in his shop. The cases cover all 20 iPhones with Lightning ports and support data transfer.
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The Nebula X1 is an odd proposition. While Anker has produced multiple projectors in the past, it has never reached the $3,000 mark. For that money, though, it beams out a category-leading 3,500 ANSI lumens at 4K resolution. It also features never-before-seen innovations in home projectors, including liquid cooling to reduce fan noise and a motorized lens gimbal that automates setup.
It's framed as a portable outdoor projector, but it's also just one of the best indoor projectors we've ever tested. With a sharp, high-contrast and color-accurate image, the video quality is stellar. It's also easy to set up and incredibly versatile.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Rare Earth Magnets Market Report 2026-2036, with Detailed Analysis of 29 Leading Companies Across the Rare Earth Magnet Value Chain
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Tom's Guide
2 hours ago
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Tom's Guide Awards 2025: Our favorite phones of the year
Whether you want a phone with a massive screen, one that takes beautiful photos or one you can quickly fold up, this has been an amazing year for smartphones, and we've tested the best ones out there. From flagship phones with top of the line specs, camera phones with high-resolution sensors, flip or tablet-style foldables to budget phones that punch above their weight, you have loads of options when it comes to choosing the right smartphone for you. Our team of experts has tested and reviewed all of the latest smartphones for the Tom's Guide Awards 2025. Below, we highlight our favorite phones from the last 12 months whose design, features and pricing impressed us the most and we believe have earned a spot in your pocket. Samsung came back hard with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which set the tone for all flagship releases this year. This year's Ultra made a big leap thanks to its mighty Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset that powers many of its new Galaxy AI features. Specifically, it introduced cross app actions with Gemini that allows users to perform complex actions all with voice commands — it's like having a personal assistant that can manage your day-to-day duties. The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy is a powerhouse unlike anything out there, proving it's a gaming champ with its incredible performance. But what makes it even better is how it's much more power efficient, resulting in a boost in battery life over its predecessor. At the same time, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is a productivity powerhouse thanks to its support for Samsung DeX and the S Pen. With the latter, it offers users a desktop PC-like experience when it's connected to an external display. We've tested out this feature and it makes for a decent laptop replacement. Meanwhile, the S Pen gives it that paper meets pen experience that some people prefer. And finally, the Galaxy S25 Ultra offers an astounding camera experience thanks to the four cameras on the back of the phone. This is a versatile camera system that lets you capture subjects near and far, but it also has a robust set of AI tools that can enhance your photos and videos after the fact — like Audio Eraser and LOG video recording. No other phone can match its performance and features, making it the best phone you can buy for the money. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. While Apple equipped its standard iPhone with plenty of new features and enhancements last fall, the Pro lineup continues to receive the lion's share of the company's attention. And that makes the iPhone 16 Pro — the more affordable of Apple's two Pro iPhones — the top model right now. Everything the iPhone 16 Pro Max can do, the iPhone 16 Pro can do as well, from showing off the power of Apple's A19 Pro chipset to supporting the new Apple Intelligence features Apple has been rolling out to its phones over the past nine months. And if you've ever looked at the Pro Max model's bigger screen with envy, the iPhone 16 Pro addresses that, thanks to a larger 6.3-inch display than its predecessors. The cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro get a nice upgrade, too, — one that really stands out when we shot photos with Apple's phone. This version picks up the 5x optical zoom feature introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro Max, while improvements to both the ultrawide and main cameras help the iPhone 16 Pro produce vivid, detailed images. A new Camera Control button — an addition to every iPhone 16 mode — puts a Visual Intelligence feature that turns the camera into a search tool right at your fingertips. And we appreciate how the new Audio Mix feature can seamlessly remove background noise from the video you've captured. In short, the best features of the iPhone are very much on display in the iPhone 16 Pro. And while that $999 starting price isn't cheap, it's within reach for anyone who wants the best that Apple has to offer in a phone. Despite debuting almost a year ago in August 2024, the Pixel 9 Pro has clung onto its status as our favorite Android phone. More powerful and capable devices have appeared since, but the overall value offered by the Pixel 9 Pro is still hard to beat. Encased in a compact 6.3-inch body that's smaller than almost all other devices in the category, you'll find an incredibly bright Super "Actua" display. But despite the brightness, the Pixel 9 Pro has decent battery life, at least compared to other smaller flagship phones. The three cameras embedded in the distinctive rear horizontal bar are capable of brilliant photos, and you might have more time to use them thanks to the included free year of Gemini AI Pro (worth $20 a month) with your purchase opening up a huge range of AI features. Abilities like Pixel Screenshots and Gemini Live can prove to be especially useful to keen chatbot fans. Perfection eludes the Pixel 9 Pro due to its lower-powered Tensor G4 chipset, and the fact it's effectively a price increase over previous pro Pixels, giving you less phone for the same money. But those quibbles aside, it's a deserving recipient of this award. Hope you've got space on your mantlepiece, Google. Being the best camera phone takes more than just having pixel crunching specs, it needs to have a versatile camera software as well to meet the demands of power users. No other phone meets the criteria that we look for than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra — and with good reason. First of all, its quadruple camera setup means it has all the range covered. Whether you're shooting something far off in the distance, or a super closeup of something, it has you covered. Its 200MP main camera might seem overkill, but the sensor pulled out bright shots under low light conditions, which is evident in our 200 photo shootout with the Galaxy S25 Ultra vs Pixel 9 Pro XL. Meanwhile, we put its 10MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and 50MP telephoto with 5x optical zoom against the iPhone 16 Pro Max in a zoom shootout — and Samsung wins the zoom conversation. We've also used its camera to capture professional looking portrait photos that almost look like they're captured by a mirrorless the performance, the S25 Ultra is the best camera phone due to the amount of modes and features it offers with its camera app. From dedicated manual modes for photos and videos, to its ability to support external audio recording sources, it has the most robust native camera app around. We don't just think that Google has the best AI features of any phone maker — we know it, after putting the Pixel through a series of tests with the latest iPhones and Galaxy flagships to find out which one excelled at the most tasks. In our AI phone face-off, the latest Google devices came out on top in four of our six tests, and they gave the Galaxy S25 series all that it could handle in the image generation and photo editing tasks, too. That's about as definitive a win as you can get. All of Google's Pixel 9 phones support the same AI capabilities, meaning the standard Pixel 9 is every bit as capable as the premium Pixel 9 Pro XL when it comes to make the most of Google's AI-friendly Tensor chipset. And since the $799 Pixel 9 costs several hundred dollars less than the Pro XL, it's the phone to turn to when you want the best AI features without breaking the bank. The Pixel 9 has plenty going for it besides AI, from top-performing cameras to a compact design. But if you're looking for a phone that can translate text into other languages on the fly, summarize recordings and notes and tap into the power of Gemini for performing everyday tasks, the Pixel 9 is just about impossible to beat. Samsung looked too complacent the last couple of years, as its foldable phones saw heated competition — but it came roaring back with the Galaxy Z Flip 7. This flip-style phone sees bigger upgrades than previous years, including a much larger Flex Window display, longer battery life, multimodal AI features, and the introduction of Samsung DeX. What also helps is that despite having a larger 4.1-inch Flex Window display and 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2x main display, Samsung keeps the same compact form factor and thin construction as before. The new Armor FlexHinge design is stronger and smoother than before, ensuring that it closes and opens with that satisfying snap. Over on the productivity side, the new multimodal experience of Gemini Live paired with its camera and Flex Window display lets you ask questions about what you're seeing. For example, you can ask it to translate a sign you see in front of you — all by just using voice commands. The Z Flip 7 also gets Samsung DeX support, which is a first for the series and brings that desktop-PC like experience to the phone. It wouldn't be the best foldable phone either if it couldn't take good photos. While the camera hardware remains unchanged, its new ProVisual Engine does enhance photos to draw out more detail. Meanwhile, its various Flex Modes allow creators to use the camera hands-free — making it the perfect phone for vlogging and selfies. There are a lot of practical benefits to foldable phones, like the fact you basically have a more portable version of a tablet. The problem is they felt too much like tablets, and lugging around what is effectively two screens in one was kind of a chore. But that's changed, and the ingenious design of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is to thank. The Z Fold 7 is much thinner and lighter than its predecessor, weighing just 7.5 ounces and measuring a mere 4.2mm (unfolded). To the point where you might actually forget you're holding a foldable at times. It's like Samsung took a bunch of lessons from the Galaxy S25 Edge, and used them to solve some of the issues it's had with past foldables. Plus it's all been done without sacrificing durability, thanks to stronger display glass, a newly reinforced hinge and a titanium lattice. So this is a phone that looks as good as it gives. There's an argument that there are a lot of factors to look into when it comes to gauging battery life on a phone. However, when it's all said and done, the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro simply outlasts all the competition. Asus has always delivered when it comes to battery life, and the latest addition takes that to the next level. When we tested the phone, it achieved a time of 20 hours and 34 minutes on TG's custom battery test while the phone's display was set to an adaptive refresh rate. This impressive battery life is achieved thanks to the massive 5,800 mAh battery alongside the stellar power management afforded by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. The ROG Phone 9 Pro doesn't just have a great battery life, it also recharges quickly thanks to 65W charging support. In our tests, we managed to get the phone back to 74% charge from 0% after only thirty minutes. If we take all of this combined, then it's easy to see why the ROG Phone 9 Pro takes the battery life prize. With phone prices climbing ever upward, it's refreshing to see Google's A Series of Pixel phones bringing a little pricing stability to the market. But even though the Pixel 9a retains the $499 starting price of its predecessor while other phones go up in cost — looking at you, iPhone 16e — Google ushered plenty of other changes with this new model. It starts with the Tensor G4 chip inside the Pixel 9a, allowing this midrange phone to offer many of the same AI features that makes the Pixel 9 lineup stand out from other devices. (A couple features, like Pixel Screenshots, require a more powerful version of Gemini Nano than the Pixel 9a has.) You're able to tap into Gemini Live, generate images using text prompts and access a full array of smart photo editing tools on a device that costs a fraction of what you'd pay for pricier flagships. As always, the reason for bargain hunters to turn to the Pixel A device is camera performance. And while the Pixel 9a doesn't feature big camera changes from its predecessor, it still turned in better photos than the iPhone 16e in our camera face-off. The Pixel 9a's support for astrophotography impresses, too. Google has long proven that a low price on a phone doesn't have to mean big sacrifices on features. The Pixel 9a drives that point home once again. 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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Snapchat can automatically let a trusted friend know you got home safe
Snapchat can now let your friends know if you're back home from an outing safe and sound without you having to send a message. The app has launched a new feature called Home Safe, which sends one-time alerts to contacts of your choice. You can only send these alerts to people you already share your location with, and since that off by default, you'd have to activate it on Snap Maps for all your friends or for specific ones. Your friends will only get the notification once, and it will shut off afterward. Home Safe sounds especially useful if you and your friends typically check in on each other after meeting up, if you want to let your parents know you'd gotten back home after going out or if you're a woman who's asked a friend to make sure you got back safe after a first date. To switch the feature on, tap your Bitmoji on the Snap Map and then "My Home" to set your home location. After that, whenever you want to send someone a notification, just open your conversation with then, tap on the Map icon and then tap the "Home Safe" button. The app has had location sharing for a while now, but it has built up the safety feature over the years. It added live location sharing that allows you to share your exact whereabouts to friends in 2022. And last year, it introduced new location tracking abilities to its Family Center, allowing parents to get notifications if their child leaves school or home. Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Engadget's parent company Yahoo, joined the board of directors at Snap on September 12, 2024. No one outside of Engadget's editorial team has any say in our coverage of the company.
