I’m not sold on foldable phones. They’re expensive, have questionable durability and — at least so far — don’t offer a compelling reason for the form factor. Having said all that, the Galaxy Z Flip 3, Samsung’s new clamshell foldable, is almost enough to change my mind.

Revealed alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 3, which unfurls into a squarish almost-tablet display, it’s the $1,000 Flip 3 that had me considering buying a foldable.

Maybe it’s because Samsung seems to be trying to address those issues I have. Both phones are cheaper (if not cheap) compared to their predecessors, with the Z Fold 3 now $200 less than the Z Fold 2 was at launch.

Engadget, Mat Smith

After the broken screen debacle of the original Galaxy Fold, Samsung is keen to stress the hardiness of its new premium phone, which it says is 80 percent stronger. I’m not sure how that increase was so precisely measured, but with IPX8 water resistance, a new stronger aluminum hinge and frame and a Gorilla Glass Victus coating, on paper at least, it sounds tougher.

The Z Fold 3 might have the tech advances, with S Pen support and an in-screen selfie camera that can camouflage itself, but the Z Flip 3 is the one that caught my attention when I had the chance to play with the phones at a London preview event. The Flip series seems like the foldable device for now, melding how we use our smartphones in 2021 with foldable screens that are, let’s be honest, still not quite perfect. 

Samsung has expanded the external screen so it functions better for checking notifications or using the cameras without opening the Flip 3. Not that I need an excuse to flip open the satisfying hinge on the thing. I’ll wait for Cherlynn Low’s full review on both phones, however, before I start getting into preorders. Expect those very soon. 

We do have a full review on Samsung’s newest true wireless earbuds to keep you occupied for now.

-Mat Smith

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 hands-on

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 hands-on

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Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic hands-on

Samsung’s new wearable has a built-in body composition scanner.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Alongside the foldables, Samsung also had two wearables to reveal. These are the fruits of its renewed collaboration with Google. For the sake of clarification, Samsung’s getting rid of the “Active” branding from its existing lineup — the Watch 4 is the spiritual successor to the Watch Active 2 (there wasn’t an Active 3), while it’s adding the “Classic” moniker to the previous “regular” Watch line. The big differences between the two? A rotating bezel and a hundred bucks.

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Apple drops its lawsuit against maker of iPhone emulation software

The move comes after Apple suffered a major court loss in the dispute.

Apple has settled its 2019 lawsuit with Corellium, a company that builds virtual iOS devices used by security researchers to find bugs in iPhones and other iOS devices. The terms of the settlement weren't disclosed, but the agreement comes after Apple suffered a major court loss in the dispute in late 2020.

Corellium’s software allows users to run virtual iPhones on a computer browser, giving them deep access to iOS without the need for a physical device. In addition to accusing Corellium of infringing on its copyright, Apple claimed the company was selling its product indiscriminately, and compromising the platform’s security.

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The hacker behind a giant cryptocurrency heist is returning stolen funds

The intruder stole about $611 million thanks to an exploit.

A hacker stole about $611 million in Ethereum, Shiba Inu and other digital currencies from the decentralized Poly Network finance platform on August 10th, by exploiting a vulnerability. Less than a day later, however, the intruder sent a token indicating they were "ready to surrender" and started returning millions in funds. Second thoughts? 

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iOS 15 will offer Find My support for AirPods

At least, if you’re rocking a pair of AirPods Pro or Max.

Code inside the iOS 15 beta better explains how you’ll be able to locate any missing AirPods from your iPhone, at least if you have the Pro or Max versions.

9to5Mac says that those AirPods will be linked with your Apple ID and use Bluetooth to help you locate them when they go missing. Even if they’re not connected to your phone, you should still be able to find them on the map via the Find My network.

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T-Mobile is selling fiber internet in a 'very limited' pilot program

It's promising 940 Mbps upload and download speeds and a WiFi 6 router.

T-Mobile has launched a pilot offering fiber optic home internet service in New York City. It's testing the service in select Manhattan residential buildings, offering 940Mbps upload and download speeds along with a WiFi 6 router. It appears to be a third-party service, and not T-Mobile’s own.

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Finally, WhatsApp will let you transfer your chat history between Android and iOSIt's coming to Samsung phones first.

Facebook piggybacked on Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event to introduce the option of importing your WhatsApp chat history between Android and iOS. It'll initially reach Android devices, starting with Samsung phones running Android 10 or newer (including the new foldables), but it'll eventually be available on both operating systems. The transfer includes photos and voice memos, and should reach users in the "coming weeks." What’s a few weeks after waiting years? 

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But wait there's more

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1Password's latest major update is now available in early access on Macs

How to pre-order the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 5G and the Z Flip 3 5G

Microsoft files complaint after Amazon scores $10 billion government contract

While we wait for Nerf to come to Oculus VR, Hasbro has unveiled a new game featuring its toy blasters. Nerf Legends is a first-person arena shooter with a sci-fi twist that sees players battling robots across 19 single player levels. There's also online multiplayer including four versus four and eight player free-for-all modes.  

Of course, the game is another way to sell real-life Nerf products to a generation of kids who have grown up playing Fortnite. As such, there are 15 blasters from the Mega, Ultra and Elite lines, with upgrades and skins, to choose from. To help your side win, you'll be able to use dart power-ups like magnetic push and pull, seeker and freeze on your opponents. The game is rated T for Teen, which suggests it's not quite fit for kids of all ages, possibly due to the futuristic violence.

Nerf Legends will hit all major consoles, including the Nintendo Switch, and PC on October 19th, according to a Best Buy listing. It will be followed by Nerf Ultimate Championship, another arena shooter, on Oculus Quest in 2022. The double whammy of releases signals that Hasbro is serious about the potential of gaming to boost its long-running line of toy blasters.

Zoom has unveiled a new feature called Focus Mode designed to keep students from distracting each in virtual classrooms. When activated, it allows the teacher to see all the students, but each student can only see the teacher or host. That way, a teacher could activate it during lectures to minimize distractions and then turn it on for class discussions. 

On top of seeing the teacher, students will also see their own video and any presentations, along with the names of other students and emoji reactions. With the setting turned off, students can see all the other students and their reactions, as shown below. 

Zoom

The app appears to be available on any Zoom desktop client, presumably including free versions. That could also make it useful for family gatherings, small business meetings and other situations where you might need to keep distractions to a minimum (or provide space for people less comfortable with showing their face on camera). If you want to make the setting mandatory for all users in your account, you can lock it. 

The feature arrives as the new school year approaches with the threat of COVID-19 and particularly the Delta version potentially keeping students out of schools. On top of the Focus mode, Zoom also detailed some back-to-school tips to make distance learning work better, with suggestions like checking your internet connection, creating a learning space and learning about lighting and other app features. 

With the launch of Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 series and Google's new Wear OS version, Spotify has introduced a significant update to its Wear OS app, the company announced. Much like a feature it added to its Apple Watch app last May, Spotify's updated Wear OS app will let you stream and download music straight to your watch, so you can listen to it without the need for a smartphone or even a connection. 

"In the coming weeks, Spotify users will be able to play their favorite playlists, albums, and podcasts with their smartwatches that run Wear OS," the company wrote on its blog. "By having Spotify on your wrist, you’re more free to run, dance, shop, cook, and socialize—and control your music and podcasts at the same time. Plus, we’re excited to unveil one of the most requested features by our users: the ability to download all of your favorite music and podcasts to your smartwatch."

Spotify noted that the update will arrive on smartwatches from Fossil, Mobvoi and Suunto, along with Samsung's latest devices. It should also work on older watches too, as Spotify notes that it "requires your smartwatch to run at least Wear OS 2.0 or higher."

Once you have the latest app on your Wear OS watch, you'll need to have headphones paired directly to your watch. From there, you can stream music, playlists and podcasts directly with no need for a phone. You can also choose content to download directly to your watch, and once that's done, you'll see a green arrow next to the items. Spotify said the new version would be rolling out "in the coming weeks." 

The following contains some spoilers for the second season premiere of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks.’

The first season of Lower Decks was a pleasant surprise to many in the Star Trek fandom. What a lot of people had written off as Family Guy- or Rick and Morty-Trek ended up being a wholesome love letter to the history of the franchise. It was filled with plenty of low-brow humor, sure, but it also showcased characters who genuinely cared about each other and what they do. Thankfully, season two is more of the same.

Lower Decks takes its name from a season-seven The Next Generation episode that revolved around the lives of four ensigns, and the parts they played in a mission that only the bridge crew really understood the full scope of. It’s generally considered one of the best episodes of the franchise, which meant that anything that even vaguely referenced it had a lot to live up to. Luckily, Lower Decks creator and executive producer Mike McMahan was a big fan with deep knowledge of Trek. He is also the creator of the @TNG_S8 parody Twitter account, as well as a veteran of animated shows like South Park, Axe Cop and, yes, Rick and Morty.

CBS

The conceit of a Lower Decks series was that the stories would focus on a core group of four ensigns on the USS Cerritos: Beckett Mariner, Brad Boimler, D’Vana Tendi and Sam Rutherford, also known as “beta shift.” There was a bridge crew, voiced by stars such as Jerry O’Connell and Dawnn Lewis, but their storylines would always be what’s going on in the background, and the ensigns wouldn’t always be privy to what’s happening with the ship.

Unlike the TNG episode, however, even the audience has been kept out of the loop on many occasions, with the ensigns even being forced to testify on their commanders’ behalf in an unexplained trial. (It turned out to be a party in honor of the senior officers, which confused our protagonists even more.)

CBS

It’s a pretty great idea for a show, one that’s yielded hilarious results. But Star Trek doesn’t have a good track record of sticking to a concept. The majority of shows since TNG have started out as one thing and become something else over the course of their runs. All shows evolve, but the changes in Trek have been obvious and purposeful. Deep Space Nine was intended to be a “frontier outpost” type of show, showing the long-term relationship between the Starfleet and one of the planets it encountered, Bajor. By season three they were given a warship, and season four brought in TNG-veteran Worf and a war with the Klingon Empire.

Star Trek: Voyager operated on the premise of “what if a Starfleet ship was lost far from home?” And it stuck with that, sure, but it also continued to operate like any other Starfleet vessel over seven seasons, and the ship remained in surprisingly good condition despite the lack of spacedocks for repair — something that frustrated writer Ronald D. Moore and later spurred him to create the Battlestar Galactica reboot (the title ship was a wreck by the finale). They also ended up re-establishing contact with the Federation in later seasons, which dampened the whole “alone in a strange quadrant” theme.

Enterprise wasn’t even called Star Trek until its third season. But still, though it was a show that promised to show us the early origins of Starfleet and the Federation, the first two seasons got bogged down in a “Temporal Cold War” and later episodes brought in 24th-century-era baddies like the Borg and Ferengi.

The latest concept switcheroo was the premiere Paramount+ Trek show, Discovery. The producers touted it as the first series where the captain was not the main character, with the program focusing on Commander Michael Burnham instead. This sounded great in theory, as it could show us a different side of Starfleet. In practice, however, even if Burnham wasn’t the captain the entire universe seemed to revolve around her anyway: the mysterious “Red Angel〞of season two turned out to be her mother (and her). The show ended up jettisoning its 23rd century setting after that, traveling to the 32nd century to a galaxy with a Federation in tatters. As of the end of season three Burnham became the captain anyway. So much for any Lower Decks-esque perspective on that show.

CBS

Season two of Lower Decks starts off a bit shaky in that regard — after the events of the last few episodes, Mariner is now BFF with the captain (who is also her mother) and Boimler is a bridge officer on the USS Titan. Neither of them feel like the scrappy underdog anymore. At least Tendi and Rutherford are still pretty minor players, though Tendi is alarmed at sudden changes in Rutherford’s personality and worries she may be losing his friendship.

The premiere finds Mariner having the carte blanche to go on any side missions she wants, and in one of these authorized-unauthorized missions she accidentally turns first officer Jack Ransom into a god-like being set on taking over a planet. The latter event is, at least, a pretty standard plot contrivance for Star Trek. Where Lower Decks stands apart is that as Ransom is threatening the Cerritos and banging away at its shields, the camera cuts to Tendi attacking Rutherford in a corridor, afraid that his new personality traits mean he’s suffering a serious disease, or that he just doesn’t like her anymore. The larger existential threat is background color in this scene (literally, as you can see rainbow beams blasting outside the window) while the show chooses to focus on the individual struggles of these two characters.

CBS

By the end of the episode Rutherford and Tendi sort things out, and even Mariner gets put back in her place, with the partnership between her and her mother dissolved and Beckett back in the brig. The only missing piece of the fabulous four is Boimler and well, he’s not having a great time on the Titan, because maybe things are a bit too exciting up on the bridge. The lower decks of the USS Cerritos are the still place to be, with season two off to a solid start.

Criterion has unveiled its first 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray releases with a six-film slate that includes Citizen Kane, Menace II Society, The Piano, Mulholland Dr., The Red Shoes, and A Hard Day’s Night. The new releases will give film buffs a chance to see some of these films with the highest detail ever, even during their theatrical runs. 

Criterion notes that Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane was its first laserdisc release 37 years ago. "It now rejoins the library after a long absence, making its first appearance in 4K Ultra HD," Criterion wrote in its blog. The other releases represent an eclectic variety of periods ranging from the 1940s with The Red Shoes, 1960s (Hard Day's Night) to the '90s and aughts with Menace II Society, Mulholland Drive and The Piano)

Each title will come in a combo pack that includes both 4K UHD and 1080p Blu-ray versions, along with Criterion's popular special features about each film. Some films will also be available in Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos, though Criterion has yet to say which. 

Criterion's new 4K UHD releases will likely represent the best way to watch classic films at home. If you don't need the super pristine quality, however, it launched the Criterion streaming service in 2019 and now offers over "1,000 important classic and contemporary films," according to the site. 

Medium has announced changes to its Partner Program, offering writers extra incentives for referring new subscribers. At the same time, it's making it more difficult for contributors to join the Partner Program based on follower numbers and other criteria, the platform announced yesterday. 

When Medium launched its Partner Platform, it used a Netflix-like model that let subscribers access all content for $5 per month of $50 per year. Contributors would then get paid based on how much time members spent reading their content — if a member spent 10 percent of their time on one writer's work, that writer would get 10 percent of the subscriber's payments. At the same time, if a reader converted to a paying member within 30 days of reading a writer's work, the writer would credit for that time. 

Under the new model, writers in the Partner Program will have a personalized referral landing page. If a reader purchases a subscription via a writer's page, the writer will get half the fee for the entire life of the subscription — minus payment processing fees. So, for every 100 members who sign up via a partner's referral landing page, that partner will make $201 per month. 

You can leverage your landing page however you’d like: share it on social platforms, link to it on Medium post pages, or include it on your profile. Directing your readers to this page is completely optional.

At the same time, when a non-paying reader subscribes to a writer's email, they'll automatically be given the option to convert to a Medium member. If they do, that will count toward the writer's referral earnings. 

Medium noted that subscriber referral earnings will be in addition to Partner Program earnings based on member read time. Presumably, however, there would be less money to go around from referred subscribers, since half their revenue would be going to the referring partner. 

At the same time, Medium has made it a bit more difficult to become a partner. Going forward, writers must have at least 100 follower and one published Medium story. Even if you meet all those requirements, you might lose your status if you don't publish anything within a six month period. Existing partners will retain their status until the end of 2021, and if they haven't reached the requirements at that point, they'll be removed.  

Medium's new model appears to be a response to Substack in particular, which pays writers based on their paid subscriber totals. Substack is more generous to individual writers, taking just 10 percent of their revenue compared to the 50 percent for medium, according to TechCrunch. Unlike Substack, though, Medium readers get access to everything on the platform, not just a single writer's work. 

The Munich Animal Welfare Association has taken a unique approach to matching its resident adoptable pets with their new forever homes: putting their profiles on popular dating app, Tinder. The shelter hired a local advertising agency to snap professional headshots for 15 cats and dogs, then posted them with astonishing results.

"The response is insane," Jillian Moss of the MAWA told Reuters. "It's exploding everywhere."

The move comes amid concerns from animal welfare groups that the high rates of adoptions seen during the COVID lockdowns are slowing and could reverse as the pandemic ebbs. By putting posting the profiles on Tinder, the shelter can potentially connect these pets with motivated adopters. 

Benjamin Beilke, who works on Tinder's communication team, added, "we hope that these animals really find a new partner, a 'purrfect match' in the long term and not just for a few weeks."   

A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced legislation that seeks to reshape how app marketplaces operate in the US. Penned by Senators Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and co-sponsored by Amy Klobuchar, the chair of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, the proposed legislation would "prevent app stores from disadvantaging developers."

The Open App Markets Act reads like a wishlist of items groups like the Coalition for App Fairness have advocated for in their fight against Apple and Google. So it should come as no surprise the organization has come out in support of the proposed legislation. One of the most noteworthy provisions included in the bill's current iteration is a clause that would prohibit app marketplace owners from forcing third-party developers to use a payment system they own. Another provision aimed almost exclusively at Apple would force platform holders to allow consumers to sideload software and install third-party app stores.

Payment systems have been one of the issues at the heart of the recent antitrust movement. Apple kicked Epic Games off the App Store after the studio implemented a way for Fortnite players to skirt its 30 percent fee. Google, meanwhile, announced at the end of 2020 that it would give developers until later this year to make their apps compliant with the Play Store's billing system.

"The legislation would help create a more competitive app marketplace that will ignite innovation in the digital economy, and provide more options for American consumers," the Coalition for App Fairness said in a statement.

Outside of the CAF, organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Internet Accountability Project support the bill. Of course, introducing legislation and passing it are two very different things. You can be sure Apple and Google will lobby to soften the Open App Markets Act since it threatens the way they do business.

If you went to scroll through your Twitter timeline today, you may have noticed that things look a bit different. That’s because Twitter has started rolling out a handful of design tweaks to its web client and mobile apps. The company’s Design account detailed them in a thread it posted earlier today.

The most visible (and controversial) change involves Chirp, Twitter’s first proprietary typeface. The company introduced the font back in January. According to Twitter, one of the main advantages of Chirp is the way it can align the text of tweets written in Western languages to the left-hand side of the interface. The company says that’s something that should make it easier to read content as you scroll through your timeline.

The company also tweaked its use of color. It says it went out of its way to use less blue and increase contrast so that both frequently used icons and visual content like images stand out. If you're a fan of customization, Twitter plans to roll out additional color palettes soon. “This is only the start of more visual updates as Twitter becomes more centered on you and what you have to say,” the company said.

Separate from the redesign, the company is also rolling out a feature to the Spaces app on iOS that allows users to change how their voice sounds when they speak during a presentation. “We know people often feel uncomfortable by the sound of their own voice,” the company said. “Giving people fun effects and useful ones might lower the threshold.”