With its transparent back, light-up details and low-fi ringtones, the Nothing Phone 1 is framed as a playful reinterpretation of the smartphone, a category that (beside foldables) has become staid.

Engadget

It’s an anticipated addition to the world of smartphones, and Nothing would do well to carve out a place for itself against not only the dominant Apple and Samsung, but an array of Chinese manufacturers with a lot of industrial might — and funding.

I wanted to hate Nothing’s first phone, which has gone hard on detail drip feeding, glamor shots and an awful lot of hyperbole. But my early impressions (I’m in the midst of reviewing the Phone 1 right now) are that, behind all that noise, there’s a surprisingly decent smartphone here.

And it’s not prohibitively priced, either. Not competing with flagship cameras, screens and processors has led to prices starting at £399 (roughly $476). Sadly, there’s no plan for US availability, but the challenge for Nothing is proving a new smartphone company can even exist in 2022.

— Mat Smith

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• Meta apparently tells managers to identify people for layoffs

• The best Amazon Prime Day laptop and tablet deals from Apple, Lenovo, Razer and others

• Amazon Prime Day knocks up to $600 off some of Sony's best mirrorless cameras

• The best anti-Prime Day tech deals

The best Amazon Prime Day 2022 deals so far

All the tech deals worth your money for the 2-day shopping event.

Oh god, it’s Prime Day. The Engadget team has been hard at work sorting through the deals worth your time. We’re pooling our best finds right here and updating our story throughout Amazon’s sale season. We’ve got deals on many of our favorite wireless earbuds, an array of Apple gear, including iPads and Watches and, of course, loads of Amazon hardware.

My shopping finger is currently hovering over the DJI Mini 2 drone kit.

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Apple and Jony Ive are parting ways

It's the end of an era.

Apple and Jony Ive are breaking up — and this time, according to The New York Times, it's for real. Ive left the tech giant in 2019 after over two decades and formed his own company called LoveFrom, with Apple as its first and primary client. The publication said both parties agreed not to extend their contract in the weeks leading up to its renewal. Ive reportedly wanted the freedom to take on new clients without needing to ask Apple’s permission.

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Stunning images from the James Webb telescope

Far more detail than Hubble.

NASA

NASA has unveiled the first batch of full-color images the James Webb Space Telescope sent back to Earth. The first image was of the Southern Ring nebula, which is around 2,500 light-years away, captured by JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). NASA says the telescope observed gas and dust from a dying star in "unprecedented detail." We’ve pulled a bunch of the most jaw-dropping images over on the site.

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Spotify is buying daily music trivia game 'Heardle'

The game will remain free to play, and Spotify hopes to use it as a music discovery tool.

Heardle, a music trivia game that popped up following the massive success of Wordle, has a new owner. Spotify has announced it's buying the game but didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

Heardle is simply a game of name that tune. Players get six attempts to guess a popular song and, like Wordle, there's only one game each day to guess.

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Peloton stops building its own products after just 3 years

It’ll switch to third-party manufacturing for fitness gear like Bike and Tread.

Peloton said in a statement that it's "exiting all owned-manufacturing operations" to simplify its supply chain and cut costs. It added: "We believe that this along with other initiatives will enable us to continue reducing the cash burden on the business and increase our flexibility."

The company is still trying to course correct. In January, then-CEO John Foley said the company was "resetting our production levels for sustainable growth" following reports it was putting all production on hold. The following month, Peloton brought in a new CEO and laid off around 2,800 corporate employees, equivalent to 20 percent of the total workforce.

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Testing out iOS 16 beta

A fun, useful and promising update.

Engadget

With iOS 16, the iPhone will get a whole new lock screen, edit and send options in iMessage, improved dictation, a medication tracker, new sharing features and more. iOS 16 is shaping up to be a beefier update than years past, making the beta more tempting than ever. Our highlight so far is the redesigned, customizable lock screen. Read on for all our impressions and check out our iPad OS 16 beta preview.

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Nothing, the company from the former co-founder of OnePlus, is finally ready to reveal its first smart device, and it’s an ambitious one. It’s trying to break into the increasingly samey world of phones. And nothing looks quite like the Nothing Phone 1.

You’ll either love or hate how the Phone 1 looks. Regardless of whether you pick up the white or the black model, the back of the phone is a transparent Gorilla Glass slab that lets you see an array of components, LEDs, a charging coil, camera and, wait, is that an elephant?

This is just our early look at the phone (it’s only been a couple of days), but I’ve already noticed some clever design choices and features in both the hardware and software. Having said that, flagship phone obsessives that love a spicy spec sheet may be underwhelmed. This is the first smartphone from a new company – it’d be impossible to compete with Samsung and Apple, so it’s focused elsewhere.

From the start, the Phone 1 has been framed as a playful reinterpretation of the smartphone, a category that (beside foldables) has become staid, to put it kindly. At the same time, not competing with flagship cameras, screens and processors has ensured the price is surprisingly reasonable, starting at £399 (roughly $476). Sadly, there’s no plan for US availability, but the price puts it in the mid-range phone category, alongside Google’s Pixel A series, Samsung’s Galaxy A53 and Apple’s 2022 iPhone SE.

The most eye-catching part of the phone are all the light-up details on the back. Nothing calls these its Glyph interface. And despite my reservations, it’s not just an eye-catching design choice – though, let’s be honest, it’s mostly that.

You can assign unique light patterns to specific contacts (there’s also a raft of perfectly synced ringtones) and different app notifications. Thankfully, you can adjust the brightness – it’s a little too aggressive at max power. The lower light-up strip also represents the charging status of the phone when it’s plugged in. This means you won’t need to wake the device – or even look at the screen – to check the battery level. You can also use the Glyph Interface to light close-up subjects, like a short-range ring-light without the punch of the flash.

Mat Smith / Engadget

Unrelated to the Glyph interface, Nothing has also added a red indicator light when the phone is recording, which is a nice, and somehow retro, touch. The white panels underneath the Gorilla Glass backing have a papery-looking texture to them, repeating a design choice found on the Nothing Ear(1) wireless buds charging case. It’s a nice touch of family resemblance.

The frame is made of recycled aluminum (over 50% of the plastic components come from bio-based and recycled sources), and the flat edges make it feel a lot like an iPhone – not a bad thing. The Phone 1 has a small, but noticeable bezel around the 6.55-inch OLED screen, a dead giveaway of its midrange nature. The screen seems bright and responsive enough so far, with adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz.

Perhaps a curse of a gorilla glass shell: both the screen and the back will pick up fingerprints incredibly easily – especially frustrating when it looks this good.

The phone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 778G+ chip. This is a custom twist on the midrange Snapdragon chip we’ve seen in other devices, which means that the Phone 1 can offer wireless charging capabilities. A Nothing spokesperson told me that there are also Nothing’s own custom algorithms for app optimization, which should, as you use the device, optimize launch speeds for your most-used apps.

The Phone 1 features 33W fast-charging to top up the 4,500 mAH battery, and can also reverse charge at up to 5W – perfect for those companion Nothing Ear(1) buds, the company hopes.

On to another important spec: the cameras. The Phone 1 has a dual-camera system with a f/1.88 50-megapixel primary camera with optical and electronic image stabilization. This comes with all the usual features like HDR, Portrait mode, night mode, 120 frames-per-second slow-mo video capture and more. Zoom is limited to 2x optical zoom, with some digital zoom thrown in if you’re desperate.

Mat Smith / Engadget

The primary shooter is joined by a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera with a 114-degree field of view. There’s a front-facing 16-megapixel selfie camera, too, with face unlock capability. (There's an in-screen fingerprint reader too). Expect us to give some more meaningful insights on the camera in our review, coming soon, but for now, early samples suggest that the cameras are pretty capable, offering image quality that wasn’t too far off flagships like the Pixel 6 and the iPhone 13 Pro.

Nothing is going hard on the aesthetic angle, and I’m pleasantly surprised that the phone seems, at least on first impressions, plenty capable. The price is tempting, and it’s certainly eye-catching. I’m looking forward to seeing how it fares against the similarly priced competition.

Apple is trying to reshape the way people work on Macs. Stage Manager in macOS Ventura might seem like a quick visual way to swap between your recently used applications, but according to Devindra Hardawar, who’s been testing the first Ventura public beta over the past week, Apple may have solved the window management issues that have plagued Macs since OS X.

I’m particularly intrigued by Stage Manager’s ability to group apps together and, crucially, remember exactly where you position your windows. I’m sure Windows users are rolling their eyes as they read this.

And if you’re intrigued, Apple's iOS 16, macOS Ventura and watchOS 9 public betas are ready to download. The usual warning applies with OS betas: There may be some bugs Apple hasn't detected and resolved. Be sure to back up your data before installing, please! And let us know how you fare.

— Mat Smith

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• The Apple TV 4K falls to a new all-time low of $120

• Sony's new portable speakers are waterproof and better with calls

WhatsApp now lets you use any emoji as a reaction

Even more taming of your group chats.

Nothing has helped WhatsApp feel more contemporary than emoji reactions to messages, ensuring your group chats don’t descend into barrages of heart or crying-laughing icons. Now, the messaging app is boosting that number to the entire emoji lexicon, an increase from six to 3,500.

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Amazon offers 'Mass Effect Legendary Edition' and over 30 other games free for Prime Day

‘Need for Speed Heat,’ anyone?

BIOWARE

Amazon's free Prime Gaming downloads for Prime Day include BioWare's Mass Effect Legendary Edition. The compilation bundles all the single-player base games of the original Mass Effect trilogy, remastered with improved 4K graphics and adjusted gameplay. It also comes with over 40 items of downloadable content, including some pretty substantial DLC story campaigns. Amazon’s barrage of free games also includes Need for Speed Heat, and three Star Wars games, namely Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy,Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Republic Commando.

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Meta made a fact-checking AI to help verify Wikipedia citations

The tool could one day allow editors to correct footnotes at scale.

Meta has developed an AI model to automatically scan Wikipedia citations at scale to verify their accuracy. It can also suggest alternative citations when it finds a poorly sourced passage. When Wikipedia's human editors evaluate citations, they rely on common sense and experience. When an AI does the same work, it uses a Natural Language Understanding (NLU) transformation model that attempts to understand the various relationships of words and phrases in a sentence. Hopefully, such AI tools will help avoid problems like when a US teen wrote 27,000 Wikipedia entries in a language they didn’t speak.

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The best laptops for college students

Our favorite machines for classes on campus, online and everywhere in between.

Engadget

Whether you’re heading to a physical campus, taking classes online or a mix of both, a laptop is sure to be the control center for your studies. Getting a new machine can help you stay on top of your schedule and handle your furious multitasking with dozens of tabs devoted to research while you write your essays.

Given we’re still dealing with ongoing inflation and the global chip supply shortage, you might be concerned about rising prices or what might be in stock. The good news is companies are still making a ton of new laptops, and there are plenty of models for you to consider. We compiled this guide to help you make the right choice, alongside a list of this year’s best laptops.

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A trove of leaked documents has shed an unfavorable light on the early days of Uber. Dubbed the Uber Files, the leak covers 2013 to 2017 and includes roughly 124,000 internal company documents and 83,000 emails.

In 2016, Kalanick reportedly ordered French employees to encourage local Uber drivers to counter-protest the taxi strikes in Paris at the time. When one executive warned Kalanick that “extreme right thugs” were part of the protest, the former CEO pushed back. He said: “Violence guarantee[s] success. And these guys must be resisted, no?”

In a statement published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Travis Kalanick’s spokesperson said any suggestion that the former executive “directed, engaged in, or was involved” in “illegal or improper conduct” is “completely false.”

There’s an awful lot more coming to the surface, expect even more bad headlines for Uber.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

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• Apple's 10.2-inch iPad is back on sale for $299

• Hitting the Books: Modern social media has made misinformation so, so much worse

Elon Musk is officially trying to kill his Twitter takeover

Twitter's board said it was prepared to take Musk to court to keep the deal in place.

Elon Musk is officially trying to pull the plug on the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. In an SEC filing, Musk’s lawyers said the Tesla CEO wishes to terminate the agreement because of “false and misleading representations” made by Twitter. It's not clear what happens next, but it seems Musk and Twitter are likely heading toward a lengthy legal battle.

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Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2 headphones review

A lot of upgrades at no extra cost.

Engadget

Bowers & Wilkins might be a name many associate with high-end home audio gear, but the company has been steadily chugging along with headphones, too. Its latest model, the Px7 S2 ($399), is a completely overhauled version of the PX that debuted in 2019. Bowers & Wilkins tweaked the design while enhancing the active noise cancellation (ANC). There are a few gripes, but on ANC performance and sound quality, the Px7 S2 rivals the best headphones you can buy right now.

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx landed on an asteroid with a surface like a ‘pit of plastic balls’

The spacecraft left a 26-foot-wide crater.

NASA

Nearly two years ago, NASA made history when its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly tagged the asteroid known as 101955 Bennu to collect a regolith sample. While the mission won’t return to Earth until late next year, NASA shared new information about the celestial body.

"It turns out that the particles making up Bennu’s exterior are so loosely packed and lightly bound to each other that if a person were to step on to Bennu they would feel very little resistance, as if stepping into a pit of plastic balls that are popular play areas for kids," NASA said.

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New York law requires gun permit applicants to submit social media accounts for review

To show they have the 'character and conduct' to be trusted with a firearm.

As of September 1st, New York residents who want to carry concealed handguns will need to submit their social media accounts as part of their permit application. They'll need to provide details of active and inactive accounts from the previous three years, along with at least four references. Critics have taken issue with the social media provision of the legislation. It's unclear how the state will address concerns over privacy and free speech.

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EU will require all new cars to include anti-speeding tech by 2024

This will cover every new car sold.

The EU regulation (part of the broader General Vehicle Safety Regulation) goes into effect today and states that all new models and types of cars introduced to the European market must include an ISA (intelligent speed assistance) system.

The European Commission said in a press release: “The roll out of ISA is a huge step forward for road safety and has the potential to dramatically reduce road traffic injuries and fatalities.” According to a projection by the EU-funded PROSPER, if ISA became mandated, it could reduce fatalities by between 26 and 50 percent.

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When Tesla first launched its network of Supercharger stations, they were just for Teslas. But with increasing rival EVs, demand for charging station access has steadily risen, prompting Tesla to begin opening its existing charger network to third-party EVs.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted last year that the company's open-access Supercharger pilot program — already in 13 European countries — would head to the US.

Now, InsideEVs spotted in a recent White House fact sheet that open chargers could arrive by the end of the year: “Later this year, Tesla will begin production of new Supercharger equipment that will enable non-Tesla EV drivers in North America to use Tesla Superchargers.”. To access it, American EV owners will need to use the latest Tesla app and select the Charge Your Non-Tesla option from the menu.

The challenge will be ensuring interoperability. While open superchargers are operating in more than a dozen countries in Europe, only some stations are actually available to non-owners. Only in the Netherlands is every Supercharger open access. 

For compatibility in North America, Tesla will need to install adapters at its stations to get around the company's own proprietary charging plug, as well as consider the software interactions between the charger and non-Tesla EVs.

— Mat Smith

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ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 review

When are two screens better than one?

Engadget

ASUS’ ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 is the latest push from the laptop maker to make dual-screen laptops happen. And it’s getting there. According to Engadget’s Sam Rutherford, this is an innovative option if you want to maximize screen space in a laptop, with a 16-inch main panel and a 14-inch secondary display. The main downsides include weak battery life, a somewhat bulky chassis and a high price. The costs of an extra screen.

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Hydrow made a smaller and cheaper smart rowing machine

It still aims for the same close-to-realistic rowing experience as the original.

Hydrow

When it debuted back in 2019, Hydrow’s creators said they were building the Peloton of smart rowing machines. Now, the company is unveiling its second-generation ergometer, Hydrow Wave, with a lower price and a smaller footprint.

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‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ cements its first season with a strong finale

‘A Quality of Mercy’ takes us to tomorrow’s Enterprise.

We’re living in the age of the prequel, says Engadget’s Dan Cooper. Ever since Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was announced, it was blighted by this same hard stop, one dictated back in November 1966: Captain Pike’s fate in the original Star Trek series. How does the latest show deal with that? 

Warning: Significant spoilers ahead.

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VW is getting into the EV battery business

It's committing $20 million and building its own factory in Germany.

Volkswagen Group held a groundbreaking at the site of its forthcoming EV battery cell plant in Salzgitter, Germany, and announced the formation of a new company, PowerCo, responsible for the VW Group's burgeoning battery business. PowerCo will handle the group's global battery activities, from producing the batteries themselves to conducting R&D on new battery technologies to "products such as major storage systems for the energy grid," according to the announcement.

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Samsung’s Galaxy Watch5 leaked

The leak shows every angle of the new wearable.

A leak from 91Mobiles shows two new Samsung wearables, apparently confirming a higher-end Pro model that will top the range. That unit, codenamed Project X, will come in black or gray titanium. The vanilla Watch5, meanwhile, will supplant the Watch4 as the more fitness-focused device in the lineup. Much like its predecessor, it’ll apparently have two case sizes and the option of an LTE modem, as well as a far broader variety of colors to choose from.

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Apple has announced Lockdown Mode, an "extreme" level of security designed for a "very small number of users who face grave, targeted threats." It’ll be available this fall. The company says it created Lockdown Mode to protect high-profile people who, because of their status or job, might be personally targeted by malware developed by the likes of NSO Group, which is behind Pegasus, or other state-backed groups. Switching on Lockdown Mode will severely restrict the functions of an iPhone, iPad or Mac to limit possible entry points for spyware.

Alongside this, Apple plans to expand its Security Bounty program. Researchers who find weaknesses in Lockdown Mode and help Apple make it more secure will be eligible for rewards of up to $2 million. Apple sued the NSO Group last year to "hold it accountable" for states that target and spy on its users.

It’s part of several security features Apple’s teeing up for its operating systems this year. iOS 16 will automatically install security fixes, while the company claims its passkeys offer increased safeguards against phishing attempts and data breaches. Even on the physical front, USB-C devices will have to ask for permission to send data in macOS Ventura.

Given all the cybersecurity issues we’ve reported on in the last few years, these are probably all good things.

— Mat Smith

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• Netflix says a 'Stranger Things' stage play and spin-off series are on the way

• This 'sand' battery stores renewable energy as heat

Everything you need to know about Amazon Prime Day 2022

When and where to find the best deals.

With Amazon Prime Day less than a week away, Engadget will be surfacing the best tech deals we can find — both on Amazon and elsewhere — but there are some important things to know ahead of Prime Day itself, which begins at 12 AM PT on Tuesday, July 12th.

And to stay in the loop with all the best Prime day deals, try our regular new deals newsletter — don’t worry The Morning After is going nowhere. You can subscribe now to get the latest deals on our favorite consumer tech delivered to your inbox.

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Apple's MacBook Air M2 pre-orders open July 8th

The redesigned Air should ship July 15th.

Engadget

Good news if you’re waiting for Apple's colorful laptops: The new M2-powered, slightly redesigned MacBook Air will be available for pre-order on July 8th at 5 AM PDT/8 AM EDT. You won’t have to wait long to get your laptop after pre-order because Apple will start shipping worldwide on July 15th.

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Watch the new cinematic trailer for 'God of War Ragnarök'

It hits PS5 and PS4 on November 9th.

Sony

Phew. The next God of War game won’t be delayed till 2023. Sony has confirmed God of War Ragnarök, the sequel to 2018's dramatic spin on the franchise, will launch on the PS5 and PS4 on November 9th. To celebrate, there’s a new trailer, with Kratos’ son stepping up to fight.

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Toyota runs out of federal EV tax credits, pushing prices higher

The automaker joins Tesla and GM in losing access to the subsidy after hitting a sales cap.

Toyota is the latest automaker to run out of US federal tax credits, and it will join Tesla and GM in losing access to the $7,500 subsidy. The company surpassed the qualifying sales threshold for EVs and hybrids in June, according to Bloomberg.

The government limited each carmaker to 200,000 EV tax credits, though Toyota and other companies have been lobbying to lift that cap. Toyota says losing the credit will mean its EVs are more expensive for consumers, which will slow the transition from combustion-engine cars to EVs.

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NASA regains communications with its wayward CAPSTONE satellite

The lunar spacecraft had gone dark for nearly a full day.

Following the lunar satellite's successful launch from Rocket Lab's site July 4th, ground control lost contact with the spacecraft shortly after it escaped Earth's gravity. Yesterday, after nearly a full day in the dark, NASA announced its engineers managed to reconnect to the petite 55-pound satellite.

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In a nutshell, ASUS’ new powerful gaming phone is all about bigger specs and faster performance. It has a 165Hz 6.78-inch display, with 720Hz touch sampling rate, up to 18GB of RAM and a bigger 6,000mAh battery.

Engadget

The most notable change is the revamped clip-on cooler that's arriving alongside the ROG Phone 6. You can toggle between four cooling settings in the updated Armoury Crate app's console, with a "Frozen" mode that pushes its Peltier chip to the max. This is only available when there's external power plugged into the device but ASUS claims the AeroActive Cooler 6 can lower the ROG Phone 6's surface temperature by up to a staggering 25 degrees Celsius (that’s 77 Fahrenheit), which sounds more like a portable air cooler than a smartphone accessory. As far as availability goes, ASUS says the ROG Phone 6 series will start from €999 (around $1,000) in Europe. US availability remains TBC.

-Mat Smith

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NASA's CAPSTONE satellite has gone dark

This wasn't part of the plan.

NASA

Well, that’s taken a turn. Just yesterday we reported on NASA’s latest steps towards getting a human back on the Moon, but the agency has lost contact with CAPSTONE, a tiny satellite that left Earth's orbit on July 4th. The small satellite stopped communicating with engineers shortly after deploying from an Electron rocket bus and exiting Earth's orbit. Handlers are attempting to re-establish contact with the cubesat.

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European Union passes landmark laws to rein in big tech

The Digital Markets and Services Acts are designed to level the playing field.

The European Union has passed a pair of landmark bills designed to rein in Big Tech’s power. The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are intended to promote fairer competition, improve privacy protection, as well as banning many forms of targeted advertising. The EU has given both bills plenty of teeth, and can dole out a maximum penalty of 10 percent of its total worldwide turnover from the previous year, should regulators find non-compliance. This figure will, however, jump to 20 percent of worldwide turnover if officials find “repeated non-compliance.”

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Meta sues a site cloner who allegedly scraped over 350,000 Instagram profiles

The company also filed a complaint against a scraping-for-hire firm.

On Tuesday, Meta filed separate federal lawsuits against a company called Octopus and an individual named Ekrem Ateş. According to Meta, the former is the US subsidiary of a Chinese multinational tech firm that offers data scraping-for-hire services to individuals and companies.

Octopus also sells software that allows people to carry out their own data collection campaigns. According to Meta, this program first compromises the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the user by providing their authentication information to Octopus before proceeding to scrape all the data accessible to that individual’s accounts.

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Ubisoft will drop details on Assassin's Creed and more games on September 10th

‘Beyond Good and Evil 2’, please?

Ubisoft

Back in June, Ubisoft confirmed it would share information about the future of Assassin's Creed during a special event in September, and this appears to be that. The company is currently working on two Assassin's Creed projects: one is a live multiplayer experience spanning multiple time periods code-named Infinity, and the other is a standalone series installment code-named Rift.

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Just six months after its last flagship launch, Xiaomi has announced another one. The Xiaomi 12S Ultra packs a massive one-inch, 50.3-megapixel Sony IMX989 main sensor. And unlike the Sony Xperia Pro-I, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra apparently uses the entirety of its one-inch sensor. And the camera unit itself? Well, it looks gigantic.

Xiaomi

Inside, there’s a Leica Summicron 1:1.9-4.1 / 13-120 ASPH camera system that combines three rear cameras: a 50.3-megapixel main camera (23mm, f/1.9), along with the 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera (13mm, f/2.2) and the 48-megapixel periscopic camera (120mm, f/4.1). Both 48-megapixel cameras use a half-inch Sony IMX586 sensor. The circular camera island (continent?) has a special coating to mitigate lens glare and improve image consistency. Oh, and there's a 23K gold rim as well. Because excess.

The Xiaomi 12S Ultra is now available for pre-ordering in China, ahead of retail launch on July 6th. The 12S Ultra starts at 5,999 yuan (around $900).

Leica has spread its bets over the years in mobile imaging partnerships. It has previously collaborated with Sharp, Huawei and Panasonic — Chinese phone makers are quick to pal up with renowned photography brands. In late 2020, Vivo joined forces with Zeiss, while Oppo and OnePlus released handsets jointly developed with Hasselblad.

The result has, broadly, meant better smartphone cameras from these companies looking to go toe-to-toe with the iPhones and Galaxy Ss of this world.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Crosby, Stills and Nash return to Spotify after COVID-19 misinformation boycott

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• The best midrange smartphones out there

• How to survive the inevitable CD revival

• WhatsApp may soon let you hide your online status

• We're heading for a messy and expensive breakup with natural gas

Hacker claims they stole police data on a billion Chinese citizens

A sample of the data included crime reports going back to 1995.

A hacker (or group of hackers) claims to have stolen data on a billion Chinese citizens from a Shanghai police database. The hacker is attempting to sell 23 terabytes of data for 10 bitcoin, worth just over $198,000 at the time of writing. The data includes names, addresses, birthplaces, national IDs and phone numbers. The Wall Street Journal reports the hacker provided a sample of the data, which included crime reports dating as far back as 1995.

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Amazon starts making deliveries by e-bike and on foot in London

It’s opening several hubs across the UK to replace some van trips.

Amazon

Amazon UK is now delivering packages by cargo e-bike and on foot as it progresses toward its climate goals. The company has opened a micro mobility hub in Hackney, central London, and says the walkers and e-bike riders will make more than a million deliveries a year. It claims those trips will replace thousands of van deliveries. The e-bikes and on-foot couriers will deliver across more than a tenth of the city's ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ).

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HBO Max halts original productions across large parts of Europe

Part of cost-cutting measures following its split from AT&T.

HBO Max is halting original productions across much of Europe, according to Variety. The streaming service confirmed it’ll no longer produce originals in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Central Europe, the Netherlands and Turkey, leaving only Spain and France untouched. The step is part of a plan from parent Warner Bros. Discovery to cut some $3 billion in costs following its split from AT&T.

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NASA's CAPSTONE satellite breaks from Earth's orbit and heads toward the Moon

The CubeSat is critical to the first Artemis mission.

NASA's grand plan to take humans back to the Moon for the first time in over half a century has taken another step forward. The 55-pound CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) CubeSat has broken free of Earth's orbit and is on its way to the Moon. Rocket Lab launched CAPSTONE on an Electron rocket last week. Following six days of orbit-raising burns to build up enough speed, the pathfinding satellite set out toward the Moon. It's a slow trip. It won't reach the Moon until November.

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The next Apple Watch may have a body temperature sensor to warn you when you’re coming down with a fever, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The Series 8 won’t provide an exact reading, but it could notify you to see a doctor or use a dedicated thermometer.

The feature has been a rumor for a while now but is more likely to appear than a blood sugar monitoring, which uses more elaborate sensors and technology. Gurman says he believes the body temperature feature is “a go” for the standard Series 8 and the oft-rumored rugged edition Apple is creating for extreme athletes.

If you’re hoping for next-gen AirPods Pro with heart rate or body temperature monitoring features, while we might get a new pair this year, they won’t pack health monitoring tech this time around.

— Mat Smith

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British Army Twitter and YouTube accounts were compromised to promote crypto scams

The Army is investigating.

The British Army is investigating an apparent hack of its official Twitter and YouTube accounts on Sunday. The breach was first reported by Web3 is Going Great, which noted both accounts were simultaneously compromised to promote two different cryptocurrency scams.

Although it has since been scrubbed, the Army’s verified Twitter account was briefly changed to look like a page for The Possessed, a project involving a collection of 10,000 animated NFTs with a price floor of 0.58 Ethereum (approximately $1,063). During that time, the account tweeted out multiple links to a fake minting website.

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How to survive the inevitable CD revival

For better or worse, the compact disc could make a comeback.

The compact disc turns 40 this year, and there are already signs of its mini-revival. For the first time in 17 years, CD sales went up — by almost 50 percent. It’s still a long way from the format’s peak. In 2021, 46.6 million CDs were shipped in the US — compared to nearly a billion back in 2000. Some reports claim the uptick in CD sales is mostly due to mega-artists like Adele and BTS releasing new albums (the former’s ‘30’ accounted for two percent of total CD sales alone). There’s also an increasing appetite for CDs as memorabilia and many good albums are structured experiences to enjoy from start to finish.

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Ducati's first electric motorcycle is designed for MotoE racing

The V21L has 150 horsepower and a top speed of 171MPH.

Ducati

Ducati has unveiled not just its first electric motorcycle but a key piece in the 2023 season of MotoE e-motorcycle racing. The V21L prototype has that classic Ducati look but is swathed in carbon fiber and packs a 150HP electric motor with a 18kWh battery. Ducati will be the exclusive supplier of all 18 bikes used for FIM MotoE World Cup racing from 2023 to 2026.

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German traffic watchdog says 59,000 Tesla cars affected by safety bug

Some vehicles couldn't automatically call emergency services after an accident.

Germany’s Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt traffic regulator is calling on Tesla to recall 59,000-plus vehicles over a software issue. On June 29th, the KBA published a notice on its website telling Model Y and 3 owners of a bug with the eCall safety system on those cars, according to Reuters. The glitch prevents the tool from automatically calling first responders in the event of a serious accident. 

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Major League Baseball will "likely" introduce an Automated Strike Zone System starting in 2024, commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN. These robot umpires may call all balls and strikes then relay the information to a plate umpire, or be part of a replay review system that allows managers to challenge calls.

The comments come following outrage over umpires' missed calls in recent games, including a brutal low strike error during a Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins game. MLB has been experimenting with robo-umpires in the Atlantic Triple-A minor league since 2019, using similar technology to golf speed-measurement devices.

There may be other benefits to introducing the tech. According to MLB data, mechanical systems have already made Atlantic league games mercifully shorter by a full nine minutes. And I say mercifully from the perspective of a Brit who’s watched cricket matches.

—Mat Smith

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The best smartphones you can buy right now

Not just flagships.

Engadget

Here at Engadget, we test smartphones all year round and can help you make sense of what’s available and what to look out for. It’s time for our updated Best Smartphones guide and we’ve included all our favorite phones to help you whittle down your shortlist.

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An update makes the DJI Mavic 3 a much better drone

From ActiveTrack to Quickshots to an improved telezoom camera.

When it launched last year, the DJI Mavic 3 grabbed a lot of headlines with features like a Four Thirds sensor and a second 7X telephoto camera. But it launched without ActiveTrack and QuickShot features which meant potential buyers couldn’t get a full picture of the drone before paying up to $5,000 for one.

Following three major firmware updates in December, January and May, all the promised functions and more are finally here. How do they fare?

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Samsung Gaming Hub goes live today with Twitch, Xbox Game Pass and more

The game-centric menu is rolling out to 2022 Samsung smart TVs and smart monitors.

Samsung’s Gaming Hub is now live on its 2022 smart TVs and smart monitors, and it's adding two services from Amazon to its game-streaming lineup: Twitch and Luna. Twitch is available today, while Luna is coming soon. Gamers will also be able to access Xbox Game Pass now, as well as apps for NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Google Stadia and Utomik in the same designated area on their TVs. The company plans to release details about the gaming hub's rollout to earlier Samsung smart TV models at a later date.

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Boring Company's underground Loop just hit the Las Vegas Strip

Why walk less than a mile?

The Boring Company

The Boring Company and Resorts World Las Vegas announced the official opening of the latest Loop station at the Las Vegas Convention Center. This spur off of the Boring Company's existing Loop network (which runs underneath the North and South halls of the LVCC) connects the convention center directly to a sister station underneath the World Resorts property on the other side of South Las Vegas Blvd. The trip should take just a few minutes.

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A swarm of Cruise robotaxis blocked San Francisco traffic for hours

The service launched last month.

A small fleet of Cruise robotaxis in San Francisco suddenly stopped operating on Tuesday night, effectively blocking traffic on a street in the city's Fillmore district for a couple of hours until employees were able to arrive. Cruise — which is General Motor’s AV subsidiary — only launched its commercial robotaxi service in the city last week. The rides feature no human safety driver, are geo-restricted to certain streets and can only operate in the late evening hours.

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