The recently-released OnePlus Open foldable smartphone is already available at a discounted price. Amazon has knocked $200 off the total cost, bringing the device’s price to $1,500. This represents a savings of 12 percent, for those keeping score. If you’ve got a hankering for a flagship foldable, this could be the kick in the pants you need to smash that purchase button.

$1,500 is still a whole lot of cheddar, but this is a whole lot of phone. The OnePlus Open ships with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. This particular model comes unlocked, so you aren’t tied to any particular provider. It also boasts a fantastic Hasselblad camera and a pair of 120Hz displays. The exterior display is 6.3-inches, while the foldable interior screen is 7.8-inches. That’s a lot of visual real estate and one of the primary reasons this model made our list of the best foldable phones.

In our official review of the OnePlus Open, we praised the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, the large battery and the comprehensive Open Canvas software that allows for tile-based multitasking. We also liked the slim form factor and relative lightness when compared to rival flagship smartphones. The folding hinge is solidly built and barely perceptible, unless you’re looking for it.

This isn’t a perfect phone. It’s slightly lower in price than other foldables, like the Google Pixel Fold, but there’s no wireless charging option, which is an oversight for devices launched in 2023. Also, you only get an IPX4 water-resistance rating, which is far short of the IP68 classification on the aforementioned Pixel Fold and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5. Despite these caveats, this is a great foldable for the money.

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Microsoft Teams is finally coming to Android Auto — an app that allows Android phones to connect to the car’s pre-existing infotainment system — next month, nearly a year after being announced by Google at I/O 2023. This is according to a Microsoft 365 roadmap that details future releases.

While the app launches in February, we still don’t have too many details regarding how it’ll be used. Microsoft has stated that you’ll be able to “join meetings and make calls” from the calendar view. There’s no information as to whether or not it’ll integrate with messages from the service or engage in some of the other Teams-specific features, like file and data collaboration. Of course, driving down a highway is probably not the best time to be fiddling with random work files.

Neither Microsoft or Google have offered up any information as to why Teams took so long to release for Android Auto. Google also announced Android Auto integration for Zoom and Webex at I/O 2023. Both software suites launched on the platform back in September. Android Auto also recently got apps by The Weather Channel and YouTube. The platform even offers games for passengers or when the car is parked, including a version of Solitaire and a simple racing game called Beach Buggy Racing 2.

Google says Android Auto currently integrates with 200 million cars, so the addition of Microsoft Teams is certainly a welcome one. Meanwhile, the company has also suggested that the adoption rate of Android Automotive — the similarly named but distinct product which is, unlike the Android Auto app, a full-fledge infotainment operating system — has exploded in the past year, as automobile manufacturers have begun to phase out internal infotainment systems in favor of Google’s operating system. Companies like Chevrolet, Volvo, Polestar, Honda, Renault and even GM have all announced the adoption of Google’s platform.

Tesla has lowered range estimates for two Model Y vehicles, the Model Y Long Range and the Model Y Performance, by six percent. This brings the range of the Model Y Long Range down to 310 miles from 330 miles and the Model Y Performance to 285 miles from 303 miles. The recently-launched and budget-friendly Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive was not affected and retains its 260-mile range rating, according to reporting by Electrek.

Tesla

There’s no official reason why Tesla lowered the range estimates, but it’s long been something of an open secret in the industry that the company tends to exaggerate these metrics. As a matter of fact, South Korea issued a hefty fine to the company for just that reason. There have also been accusations that Tesla keeps a “diversion team” on staff to cancel or minimize range-related service complaints.

In other words, the company likely made this move so its range estimates more accurately reflect reality and not some pie-in-the-sky thinking. It’s not that the old estimates were flat-out lies. The range calculations just assumed perfect weather conditions with a perfect driver operating the vehicle with maximum efficiency. In the real world, that’s very rarely the case.

The EPA conducts many of these tests and acknowledges that the pristine driving conditions will very rarely match up to real-life variables. To that end, the agency gives manufacturers some leeway with raising or lowering range estimates after conducting their own tests. Many manufacturers choose to voluntarily lower the range estimate to better match driver expectations. It looks like Tesla went in the other direction.

Even Tesla’s algorithms acknowledge these inaccuracies. If you fully charge a Model Y and set a destination that’s 260 miles away, the navigation algorithm will automatically route you through a Supercharger, as indicated by Electrek. If the range was truly, say, 330 miles, it wouldn’t have to do that.

For now, these changes only apply to the Long Range and Performance Model Y releases. We don’t know if Tesla’s other vehicles will get revised range estimates. The company doesn’t have a PR/communications department, in typical Elon Musk fashion, so there’s not really anyone to reach out to for more information.

Set your calendars. Martin Scorsese’s latest and greatest, Killers of the Flower Moon, is premiering globally on Apple TV+ in just over a week. The film drops on January 12. It was originally released in theaters on November 20, which means it’ll be 12 weeks before arriving on a streaming service, which has become fairly standard in recent years.

We knew this would drop on Apple TV+, as Apple Studios financed the film and arranged for theatrical distribution. We just didn’t know when, and now we do. Incidentally, this is the first Apple-financed film to get a wide theatrical release.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a great match for streaming, as it's well over three hours long, which made for some frantic trips to the theater bathroom once the credits rolled. The movie stars Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons and is set in 1920s Oklahoma. The narrative is based on a true story and follows the serial murders of members of the Osage Nation tribe. There’s a lot more than that, but we ain’t about to start handing out spoilers like candy. Watch the movie. It’s good.

To that end, Killers of the Flower Moon has been nabbing up award nominations left and right, including 12 Critics Choice nominations and seven Golden Globe nominations. It was also named to the American Film Institute's list of Motion Pictures of the Year. Oscar nominations don’t drop until later this month, but it’s likely to make several appearances across multiple categories.

This is the biggest film to come from Apple Studios, but not the only notable release. Coda, another Apple original, actually won Best Picture at the 2021 Academy Awards. Apple is also behind Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and forthcoming releases by directors Jon Watts and Matthew Vaughn, among others.

Amazon’s Fire HD 10 tablet is on sale for just $80 for today only from QVC. This is the latest iteration, originally released in 2023, and ships with 32GB of storage. You also have your pick of various colorways, including green, lavender and black. The regular price on this tablet is $140, so this represents a discount of $60. Incidentally, the sale price of $80 matches what was found on Black Friday, so consider this a bit of a holiday extension.

This isn’t the lowest price ever for the Fire HD 10 tablet, but it's the lowest for the current eleventh-gen device. We’ve seen this tablet go on sale for $75, but that was for the 2021 release.

The Fire HD 10 is a capable tablet, considering the price, and is a great device for viewing streaming content, browsing the web and playing simple mobile games. It has a USB-C port, which is always nice, and a 2GHz octa-core processor. The HD touchscreen boasts a 1920x1200 resolution, there’s 3GB of RAM and a pair of HD cameras on the front and rear. You can also expand the storage via a microSD slot.

Is this an iPad Pro? Nope. Not even close. But it gets the job done. I used a Fire HD 10 as my primary content streaming device for years and it was just fine. The Wi-Fi was snappy, Alexa was helpful and the actual headphone jack made it so I didn’t have to go digging for an adapter just to have some privacy while I watched Netflix in bed. Again, this deal ends today.

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Qualcomm will be bringing a new VR/MR chip to CES 2024 in Las Vegas next week. The Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 is an update to the standard XR2 Gen 2 that was revealed back in September. The chip is intended for use in virtual reality headsets, mixed-reality headsets and other wearables. 

The Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 supports 4.3K per eye resolution, compared to 3K per eye with the previous version, and can integrate with up to 12 cameras at once, up from 10, for passthrough and body tracking. To that end, Qualcomm promises that devices with this chip will be able to enter full-color passthrough in less than 12ms.

Qualcomm

As for standard specs, the XR2+ Gen 2 will be able to handle content up to 90 fps. This chip also represents an improvement in raw power, with an approximate CPU speed increase of 20 percent and a GPU increase of 15 percent compared to last year’s chip. It’s worth noting that all of this is on one chip to preserve space. There’s not a lot of room for this stuff in many VR headsets.

Qualcomm is bringing just the chip to CES and hasn’t announced any devices to go along with it. It has, however, said that it’s working on something with Samsung and Google that will involve the XR2+ Gen 2. The previous XR2 Gen 2 chip powers the recently launched Meta Quest 3 virtual reality headset, so this upgrade should allow for even beefier standalone headsets in the near future. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

LG just announced that it will bring a brand-new 27-inch 480Hz QHD OLED gaming display to CES 2024 in Las Vegas, which the company is calling an industry first and a “new era of OLEDS.” This panel was developed by LG Display, so it won’t actually be available for purchase. Rather, the tech will be sold to other companies for use in forthcoming gaming monitors.

480Hz is a blazingly fast refresh rate, and may also be something of a bummer if you bought into last year’s 240Hz displays. This latest OLED monitor boasts QHD (2560x1440) resolution and a response time of just 0.03ms, which LG says is the quickest of “any panel on the market today.”

LG also promises enhanced image quality via the company’s proprietary META technology, not to be confused with that other Meta. This tech incorporates a micro lens array to maximize the emission of light from the OLED panel and minimize external reflections. This should be especially helpful when navigating darker-than-average gameplay environments.

The company says this display emits the “lowest level of blue light in the industry”, at around half the amount emitted by standard LCDs. This is useful to minimize eye fatigue, of course, but also works to reduce flicker.

LG Display says this panel will begin showing up in products during the first half of the year, though partner companies have yet to be announced. This isn’t the only 480Hz panel that LG is showing off at this year’s CES. There’s a new monitor that runs at 480Hz in HD and 240Hz in 4K.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Tetris is one of the most popular and enduring video games of all time, with versions on just about every console, computer and gadget. Many of these iterations have endings baked into story modes and the like, but the original endless mode was considered unbeatable by humans, until now. A 13-year-old boy has become the first person to ‘beat’ the NES version of Tetris, 34 years after it originally released back in 1989, as announced by YouTuber aGameScout.

The reason we put ‘beat’ in quotes is due to the nature of the achievement. Oklahoma teenager Willis Gibson, also known as Blue Scuti on YouTube, didn’t access an authorized ending, as there isn’t one. Instead, he played the game so perfectly for so long that it forced a kill screen that crashed the game. These kill screens are usually caused by an overflow error that occurs when you speed the game up so much that the software can’t keep up.

The teen achieved this feat after 38 minutes of gameplay and captured the moment on video. He’s the first person to do this, but not the first, uh, entity. An AI program called StackRabbit forced a kill screen with the NES Tetris back in 2021. Score one for the humans!

This was done by incorporating a gameplay style called the rolling technique, which has players glide their fingers along the bottom of an NES controller and use that momentum to roll the controller into the other hand. When done correctly, you can hit the D-pad up to 20 times per second. The method revolutionized competitive Tetris play a couple of years back. Prior to this achievement, the 13-year-old had already broken the game’s high score record, level achieved record and the total number of lines cleared by using the rolling technique.

Gibson, aka Blue Scudi, told another YouTuber that he’s dedicating the achievement to his late father, who recently passed away in December. He also said that the gameplay session was so frantic that he couldn’t feel his fingers afterwards.

Achieving the mythical kill screen is something of a rite of passage for old-school games. If you’ve seen the documentary King of Kong, involving the arcade cabinet Donkey Kong, you know just how competitive it can be to snag those bragging rights. Players have hit the kill screen on Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Duck Hunt, and many others.

TLG just announced a new lineup of OLED TVs just ahead of CES 2024. The LG Signature OLED M4 and OLED G4 TVs are, surprise, packed with an updated AI processor that offers four times the performance of last year’s models. The Alpha 11 AI processor works to enhance picture and audio quality, offering a 70 percent improvement of visual performance when gaming compared to its predecessor.

The AI chip upscales objects and backgrounds to reduce blur and allegedly analyzes and adjusts colors to “best convey the mood and emotional elements intended by filmmakers.” LG also promises a more “three-dimensional” image, thanks to its proprietary Dynamic Tone Mapping Pro technology that fine-tunes brightness and contrast on the fly. The AI chip also allows for virtual surround sound and even separates vocals from soundtracks to enhance the dialogue.

The resolution remains 4K but the refresh rates have gotten a glow up. Last year’s models capped out at 120Hz, but the M4 and G4 now offer a refresh rate of 144Hz. Obviously, high refresh rates are great for watching action-packed content and for gaming. To that end, each TV offers access to LG’s webOS platform for viewing streaming content and playing games via the cloud.

LG

The M4 ships with LG’s proprietary Zero Connect Box that streams audio and video wirelessly, eliminating the need for connected cables. The tech provides real-time video and audio transmission up to 4K with a 120Hz refresh rate. This is for people absolutely committed to a clean living room aesthetic.

Each of LG’s new OLED TVs offers support for both NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, which is great for gamers. The panels also come with LG’s Game Optimizer selection screen, allowing users to instantly switch between display presets designed for different gaming genres.

Pricing and availability are both still up in the air. Maybe we’ll get more information at CES 2024 next week. In addition to this reveal, LG also announced an absolutely massive 97-inch M3 OLED display and a 98-inch QNED model.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Samsung’s Unpacked event is coming early this year, so set your calendar for January 17 at 1PM ET. Typically, these events drop the first week of February, so this is an interesting switch-up, given the proximity to CES 2024. This will be an in-person event, at the SAP Center in San Jose, but will also be live streamed across Samsung’s various channels, including YouTube.

This is Samsung, so it’s not advertising any details regarding this year’s Unpacked. We do, however, have some ideas. It’s highly likely the company will not only announce the arrival of the Galaxy S24 flagship smartphone series, but will open up pre-orders immediately following the event. To that end, the company has already started a “pre-reserve” program in which you plop down your name and email address to pre-order, well, something.

You won’t know what you’ve pre-ordered until January 17. Thankfully, there’s no commitment here and you even get a $50 credit toward whatever devices Samsung has got cooking up. The company made a similar offer last year, so it must have worked out.

Speaking of last year, we got the Galaxy S23 line in all of its glory. The Galaxy S23 and S23+ were minor refreshes, so perhaps the S24 will up the ante a bit. In 2022, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S22 smartphone line. Are you seeing a pattern? Just like Apple tends to use September for new iPhone announcements, Samsung drops new Galaxy smartphones at Unpacked.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the presentation will just be Galaxy S24 smartphones. Samsung tends to also announce new laptop iterations at the first Unpacked each year, so we could get the Galaxy Book4 or something similar.