Author: News Room

Thinking about upgrading your phone? You’ve come to the right place. With so many models to choose from, it can be tricky to know which one’s worth your money. That’s why we’ve put together this guide, highlighting our top picks based on the things that matter most day to day. Whether you’re drawn to a big-screen Android or Apple’s latest iPhone, these are the handsets we think stand out. We don’t just look at spec sheets – we test phones in real life. That means streaming shows to see how long the battery lasts, snapping hundreds of photos in different…

Lego House is the self-styled ‘home of the brick’. A brick’s throw from the buildings Lego started in, it’s a gleaming institution that dominates the centre of the company’s home town of Billund in Denmark. Although there are plenty of large Lego displays, including an alpine scene, giant dinosaurs, a huge waterfall of bricks and a multi-floor spanning tree, the majority of the 12,000 square metre house’s spaces – all built using the proportions of the original brick – are for people to create stuff in using many of the 25 million Lego bricks on site. But those people haven’t…

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the downward spiral of the internet, follow Adi Robertson. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.Back in 2018, two years after the UK government decided to implement mandatory hard age gates on adult websites, it floated an idea called the “porn pass.” The porn pass was a physical card you’d buy by handing over your ID to a brick-and-mortar shop attendant. It would contain authentication information that would act as a low-tech…

It’s important to remember that two decades ago, text messages cost 10 cents. Each. Back when we measured our cell phone plans in minutes, and when even 3G connections felt fast, text messages were a huge business for wireless carriers and a huge expense for anyone whose kids learned to T9-type just a little too quickly. Then BlackBerry, nearing the peak of its powers, did something remarkable: it cut the carriers out entirely. Before WhatsApp and Telegram, before iMessage and RCS, there was BlackBerry Messenger. And while we don’t use BBM anymore, we owe it a debt of gratitude. And…

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 101, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you like silly accessories, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I’ve been reading about Intel factories and Nobel Prize winners and ATM thieves, watching this pop-punk “Defying Gravity” cover on repeat, reliving my teenage music taste now that The Format is back, catching up on the new Critical Role campaign, taking all my calls with the delightful Pop Phone handset, watching more Love Is Blind than I’m proud…

Introduction Well, you certainly can’t accuse Google of trotting out new affordable wireless earbuds for the sake of it: the original Pixel Buds A-Series are now four years old, and still put up a good fight against wallet-friendly rivals today. That means any successor needed to be quite the evolution – and that’s exactly what we’ve got here with the Pixel Buds 2a. As well as inheriting its shape from the higher-tier Pixel Buds Pro 2, the Buds 2a finally add active noise cancelling into the mix. They’re also the firm’s first with a replaceable battery, which is a step…

Right now, YouTube Shorts are awash with a dual-horned scarlet character making pixel-perfect jumps in a bid to ascend a murky cavern, all the while avoiding spiked floors, making use of shelled enemies to bounce off of and desperately clinging onto tiny safe spaces on walls desecrated with thorns.  This is Hornet, lead character of the latest Metroidvania game Hollow Knight: Silksong, and she needs to ascend the bug-infested land of Pharloom by jumping fiendish platforms, negotiating labyrinthian cave networks and violently parleying with monstrous insectoid bosses.  After ascending continuously using a furious repertoire of double jumps, wall jumps and…

Apple finally decided to pull the plug though, removing Clips from the App Store. The company also updated its support page to state clearly that “the Clips app is no longer being updated, and will no longer be available for download for new users as of October 10, 2025.” If you’ve already downloaded the app you can continue to use it on iOS and iPadOS. But it might also be a good idea to save any videos directly to your Photos library. The support page lays out exactly how to do this, both with and without effects, so that if…

This week the Pew Research Center published a study about how parents managed screen time for their kids 12 and under. The results were not particularly surprising (or enlightening, if we’re being honest). A full 90 percent of parents said their children watched TV, and 61 percent said their kids interact with smartphones at least on occasion. Somewhat surprisingly, only 50 percent said they let them play a game console of some kind. While 42 percent of respondents said they could do better managing their kids’ screen time, 86 percent did say they had rules around screens, even if they…

Right now, you can get the entry-level AirPods 4 for around $89 ($40 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. Apple’s newer wireless earbuds are a solid option for first-time buyers, offering great sound, top-notch voice isolation for calls, and an IP54 rating for water and dust resistance. The open-ear design is comfortable to wear over long listening sessions; however, since they don’t seal in your ear, audio will constantly compete with outside noise in loud environments. The earbuds also lack the more advanced features found in the AirPods Pro 3, including active noise cancellation, adaptive audio, and conversation awareness.That…

Coros’ Nomad is marketed as a “go-anywhere, do-anything” adventure watch. It’s got GPS and offline maps and will track a lot of activities, from yoga to bouldering. There’s an “Adventure Journal,” which the marketing copy promises will help you record “every step, catch, and summit.” While it doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles of a more expensive competitor like Garmin, it’s a product seemingly aimed at campers, backpackers, and other outdoorsy types who aren’t satisfied with something all-purpose like an Apple Watch. So when my colleague Victoria Song flagged the Nomad to me, I took Coros at its…

Apple design has always been famously opinionated. The company does what it thinks is right for you. If you disagree, well, you’re wrong. But lately, chinks have appeared in Apple’s design armour. Customisation options could suggest a lack of confidence at the top, or simple acknowledgment that people like being able to make devices their own. Even so, it’s rare for a major feature to vanish and then claw its way back from the dead. But that’s exactly what happened this week as Slide Over triumphantly returned in iPadOS 26.1. The feature originally debuted in 2015, when Apple first started…