When Jabra launched its $80 Elite 3 wireless headphones last month, it also announced the pricier, more-premium Elite 7 Active and Pro models, which cost $180 and $200. But it actually also released another sub-$100 product called the Elite 2 — we just can't buy it here in the US. The company's product page says "This product is not available in your country" when accessed from America.
Our senior news editor Billy Steele noticed when he was reviewing the Elite 3 that there was a listing for what appeared to be an unannounced Elite 2 in Jabra's app. We've since learned that the Elite 2 actually did get released, but only in countries like India, China, Russia and Turkey for now. According to the company, the Elite 2 indeed launched in "select markets worldwide."
These buds are similar to the Elite 3, keeping the same overall shape and a similar design but with small differences. There's one fewer microphone per side for calls, no ambient sound mode or sidetone and the case only holds two charges instead of three. Otherwise, the Elite 2 is basically the same as the pair we reviewed, with 6mm speakers, EQ presets, Alexa support, one-touch Spotify playback and Google's Fast Pair for those using it with Android.
According to Tavesper.tech, the Elite 2 is available in Malaysia for RM299, which is about $72. That's only about $8 cheaper than the Elite 3. Plus, prices could be different in other regions. On this South African website, for example, it's going for about 1,200 Rand, which is close to $85. For now, we can't directly compare prices without knowing what it could cost stateside, and just because it's not currently available in the US doesn't mean it won't ever come here eventually. You can find out more about the Elite 2 on its instruction manual published on European retailer Argos' website.
After months of testimony and deliberation, we got an initial decision earlier today in the legal battle between Apple and Epic. As a Fortnite player, you may wonder what it all means in terms of playing the game on an iOS device. The short answer is not much.
The long answer is neither side came away from the contest with a decisive win. Judge Gonzales Rogers may have ruled in Epic’s favor when on the issue of allowing App Store developers to direct users to alternate payment systems, but on every other count, she sided with Apple. That includes the question of whether the company was right to terminate Epic’s App Store developer account when it added a direct payment option in Fortnite last year.
On that matter, Judge Gonzales Rodgers said Apple’s decision was “valid, lawful and enforceable.” It’s therefore up to the company whether or not to allow the game back on the App Store. Based on the fact the tech giant rejected Epic’s request to reinstate its developer license after South Korea passed a law that will require both Apple and Google to allow alternative payment systems on their app stores, and the fact Epic says it will appeal the ruling, it’s unlikely the game will return to iOS anytime soon.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney made that much clear following the decision. “Fortnite will return to the iOS App Store when and where Epic can offer in-app payment in fair competition with Apple in-app payment, passing along the savings to consumers,” he said on Twitter.
It’s hard to put a timeline on when we might see a new development in the situation. Court cases involving tech companies can take months and sometimes years to resolve. In the meantime, Fortnite is still available on other platforms, including PC, PlayStation and Xbox.
Ikea's Symfonisk lamp is a neat way to add a Sonos speaker to your space without it necessarily sticking out from the rest of your decor. But what if you want to jazz it up slightly? You may have that option in the future in the form of swappable shades.
According to a Reddit post spotted byProtocol's Janko Roettgers, it seems a new version of Symfonisk is in the offing. User u/shoicey said they spotted a different Symfonisk lampshade at their local Ikea. They found a document (archived version) on the company's website that notes the second-generation speaker will let customers pick their own glass or fabric cover.
White and black options will be available, according to the document, which is in Portuguese. The textile cover is listed at €20 (approximately $24) and the glass one is €30 ($35). The base, which houses the WiFi speaker, costs €129 (roughly $152). The document lists other Symfonisk products, including the picture frame speaker Ikea announced in June.
“We're excited about the products we're working on together and are looking forward to sharing more soon,” Sonos said in a statement. Engadget has contacted Ikea for more info, including details about availability. Given that this document is on the Ikea website though, it may not be long before these new Symfonisk lamps are out in the wild.
ASM's Hydrasynth made a splash when it was announced in September of 2019. The company was fresh face on the market, but it included luminaries of the electronic instrument world who worked on Akai's MPC line and Arturia's 'Brute line. So there was understandably some hype. And consensus is that it's lived up to it.
Now the company is taking its unique wavemorphing engine, a keybed with polyphonic aftertouch, plus its full raft of sound design tools and putting them in the portable, battery-powered and more affordable Hydrasynth Explorer.
The Explorer has 37 semi-weighted, mid-sized keys. So it's a bit more generous than your average mainstream synthesizer. And just like it's big siblings — the $1,299 Hydrasynth and $799 Hydrasynth Desktop — it has eight voices of polyphony and three oscillators. It also has two "mutators" which can mangle oscillators one and two in various ways from pretty standard (FM and pulse width modulation) to more out there (PhazDiff and harmonic sweep).
There's also two filters that can be combined in series or parallel and five — yes five — LFOs and envelope generators. And those envelope generators aren't your standard ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) envelopes either. These are six-stage DAHDSR envelopes (delay, attack, hold, decay, sustain, release). There's also built-in delay and reverb effects, a 32-slot modulation matrix and a pretty advanced arpeggiator.
All of that sound design power comes in an instrument that can be powered by eight AA batteries and costs just $600. Granted at 7.5 pounds it's definitely pushing the boundaries of "portable". You're definitely not going to lug the Hydrasynth Explorer on your commute, but it's not too much of a hassle to drag it to an impromptu jam session or set up in a park for an afternoon.
Alongside the Explorer, ASM also announced the Hydrasynth Deluxe which has 73 full-sized keys and bumps the voice count up to 16. Of course, it also comes at a premium with a price of $1,799.
For much of the last month and a half, Twitch has fought a losing battle against a phenomenon called “hate raids.” These attacks see malicious individuals use an army of bots to spam a streamer’s chat with hateful language, and almost always they target creators from marginalized communities. This week, Twitch filed a suit against some of those involved in the harassment campaigns.
The legal action comes after a variety of Twitch streamers stepped away from the platform on September 1st in protest of the company’s ineffective handling of the situation. The suit, first spotted by Wired, only names two defendants: CruzzControl and CreatineOverdose. Twitch does not identify the two individuals beyond their usernames but notes it believes they’re both based out of Europe.
In the complaint, Twitch alleges CruzzControl is responsible for a network of approximately 3,000 bots that have been involved in hate raids against streamers in the Black and LGBTQIA+ communities. In addition to overwhelming those channels with racist, homophobic and sexist spam, the company says CruzzControl has shown how the bots work so that others can deploy them toward a similar end. Of CreatineOverdose, the company alleges it has directly linked them to several incidents, including one August 15th episode in which they claimed they were a member of the “K K K.”
“We hope this complaint will shed light on the identity of the individuals behind these attacks and the tools that they exploit, dissuade them from taking similar behaviors to other services, and help put an end to these vile attacks against members of our community,” a spokesperson for Twitch told Wired.
The company told The Verge the lawsuit is only one part of the response it has planned to hate raids, with more platform-level action forthcoming. “Our teams have been working around the clock to update our proactive detection systems, address new behaviors as they emerge, and finalize new proactive, channel-level safety tools that we’ve been developing for months,” a Twitch spokesperson said.
While the legal action has yet to stop hate raids from occurring, some of those most affected by them say it’s a step in the right direction for the company. “I feel hopeful,” Raven, a streamer whose Twitch handle is RekItRaven, told Wired. “The people who are behind this need to be held accountable for their actions. They've terrorized hundreds if not thousands of people. If this were to happen in a physical location we'd expect the same. It shouldn't be any different online.”
The Vivo brand may not immediately ring a bell in the West, but its recent mobile photography ambitions are worth paying attention to. The company's latest flagship, the X70 Pro+, is the world's first smartphone to feature optical image stabilization (OIS) across all four of its rear cameras. Like the previous model, these all have Zeiss optics and Zeiss T* lens coating, but the main camera is further enhanced by an SLR-grade high-transmittance glass lens to reduce chromatic aberration.
Vivo
Vivo continues to offer one of the more versatile sets of cameras I've seen lately. The X70 Pro+ comes with a 48-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide camera, which is further stabilized by Vivo's now-signature micro gimbal; a 50-megapixel f/1.57 main camera powered by a large Samsung GN1 sensor (as featured on the X50 Pro+); a 12-megapixel f/1.6 portrait camera with the much newer Sony IMX663; and an 8-megapixel f/3.4 5x zoom periscopic camera.
All four rear cameras support electronic stabilization for video shooting, and if you really want to, the main camera can film at up to 8K resolution. The X70 Pro+ also packs Vivo's very own "V1" AI imaging chip for better noise reduction in low-light video recording, as well as more efficient motion smoothing in video playback and gaming.
I don't usually spend much time in the camera filter section, but Vivo's selection of bokeh effects look fun, as they were apparently meant to mimic classic Zeiss lenses. The X60 series already introduced the "swirly" Biotar filter, and with the new X70 series, you also get the "anamorphic" Distagon, the "genuine" Planar and the "creamy" Sonnar. Apparently Zeiss took part in developing these bokeh effects, so that should speak for their faithfulness.
On the other side of the X70 Pro+, you get a 32-megapixel f/2.45 punch-hole selfie camera at the top of a 6.78-inch screen. This 3,200 x 1,400 AMOLED panel offers better colors (10-bit or 1 billion colors) and brightness than before, thanks to Samsung's latest E5 LTPO tech. It also delivers a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of up to 300Hz, which should deliver some silky smooth scrolling and gaming.
Vivo
The Android 11-based X70 Pro+ comes with many other flagship elements, namely a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888+ processor, fast LPDDR5 RAM, IP68 dustproofing and waterproofing, stereo speakers and a dedicated Hi-Fi chip. There's even an infrared remote feature to let you control home appliances the old-fashioned way.
As for charging, the 4,500mAh battery here supports Vivo's 55W FlashCharge and 50W Wireless FlashCharge. The latter requires a special charging stand, which packs two coils to handle both portrait and landscape orientations. You can also use any Qi pad, with the trade-off being a slower charging rate, obviously. The phone itself does 10W reverse wireless charging, should you need to revive other phones, smartwatches or wireless earbuds.
Vivo
The X70 series includes two other models: the quad-cam X70 Pro and the tri-cam X70. Both models are powered by MediaTek's Dimensity 1200-vivo chipset, and their smaller 6.56-inch AMOLED screens (2,376 x 1,080, 120Hz) translate to smaller batteries as well. But hey, you still get an infrared remote on either model.
While the X70 Pro and X70 also receive the Zeiss treatment, they baked the micro gimbal into their main cameras (50 and 40 megapixels, respectively) instead of their 12-megapixel ultra-wide cameras. It's also worth mentioning that their 12-megapixel portrait cameras lack OIS. Given their missing V1 imaging chip, it'll be interesting to compare their low-light shots with the X70 Pro+.
Vivo X60 Pro and X60 Pro+.
Vivo
For what it's worth, the version of the X70 Pro sold in China will be powered by a Samsung Exynos 1080, and it also includes a V1 chip.
Outside of China, Vivo's X70 series will initially roll out in markets like India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates, among others. There's no word on a European launch just yet, but Vivo might want to plan one soon to keep up with the likes of Oppo and Xiaomi. Meanwhile, stay tuned for our upcoming X70 Pro+ hands-on.
Apple has fired Ashley Gjøvik, a senior engineering program manager who's been outspoken about her experiences working for the tech giant. Gjøvik said she has experienced sexism and a hostile work environment while working for Apple and spent months talking to the company about it. According to tweets from Gizmodo's Dell Cameron, Apple asked Gjøvik for a talk this afternoon. When she asked for the conversation to take place via email so there would be a written record, though, Apple replied that she had "chosen not to participate in the discussion." She was then fired hours later.
Emails shared w/ @Gizmodo show Apple asking to speak w/ Gjøvik this afternoon. Gjøvik agreed but asked the convo take place via email so there'd be a written record. Apple then replied saying Gjøvik had "chosen not to participate in the discussion." Within hours she was fired.
In a tweet from early August, Gjøvik said she was put on indefinite paid administrative leave after raising concerns about sexism in the workplace and having an unsafe and hostile work environment. Further, she was discouraged from using the company Slack where she'd been openly criticizing Apple. Her complaints against the tech giant include being asked to make her tone less authoritative during presentations. She was also allegedly told that it was "ok" that she received complaints for her diversity training, including ones finding her "too hard on the white man." The former Apple engineer also said in a tweet that the company told her it was "fine" that a male director colleague asked her out for drinks and talked about cheating on his wife and mistresses entire time.
By the end of August, Gjøvik filed a complaint against Apple with the US National Labor Relations Board, alleging 13 instances of retaliation against her. In her filing, she said she experienced workplace harassment. She also said her supervisory responsibilities were re-assigned to colleagues, while she was given undesirable tasks.
In a statement she told The Verge, it seems wasn't unprepared to be fired. She said: "When I began raising workplace safety concerns in March, and nearly immediately faced retaliation and intimidation, I started preparing myself for something exactly like this to happen. I’m disappointed that a company I have loved since I was a little girl would treat their employees this way."
When the news about Gjøvik first broke, Apple said in a statement: "We are and have always been deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace. We take all concerns seriously and we thoroughly investigate whenever a concern is raised and, out of respect for the privacy of any individuals involved, we do not discuss specific employee matters."
Add Facebook to the list of companies that could be trying to reduce its dependence on Intel and Qualcomm. According to The Information, the social media giant is developing a suite of custom chips for its data centers. One of the processors is reportedly designed to power machine learning tasks, including the algorithm that handles Facebook’s content recommendations, while another would assist in transcoding videos to improve the quality of livestreamed videos.
In addition to helping reduce its dependence on outside chipmakers, the move to custom silicon could help Facebook lower the carbon footprint of its data centers. The new chips would work alongside the third-party processors the company currently uses in its servers, and reportedly aren’t meant to completely replace what it already has.
“Facebook is always exploring ways to drive greater levels of compute performance and power efficiency with our silicon partners and through our own internal efforts,” a spokesperson for the company told Engadget when we reached out to the company about the report. “We have nothing new to share on our future plans at this time."
It wouldn’t be a stretch for Facebook to dip its toes in custom silicon. The company has already dabbled in semi-custom chips. In 2019, for instance, it announced it was working on an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for video transcoding and inference work. It also wouldn't be the first company to look at designing its own chips to improve efficiency and save on costs. Google has had its Tensor chips since 2016, and, as of last year, Microsoft was reportedly exploring custom chips for its own servers as well.
Apple has reportedly appointed a new executive to lead the development of its secretive self-driving car division. According to Bloomberg, the company has tapped Kevin Lynch to oversee Project Titan following the departure of executive Doug Field, who left the iPhone maker for Ford earlier this week.
The name may not be familiar, but if you’ve watched any Apple event in recent years, you’ve seen Lynch on stage. After a stint at Adobe, he joined Apple in 2013 to oversee the company’s wearable and health unit and has frequently been the one to present whatever new features Apple is working on for watchOS.
Bloomberg reports Lynch joined the division earlier in the year but is now overseeing the entire unit. The outlet notes Lynch’s appointment suggests Apple is likely focusing on underlying software that a self-driving car would need to navigate the road, instead of a vehicle that we could see the company release anytime soon.
Early-aught headliner Radiohead has teamed with Epic Games, makers of Gears of War and Fortnite, to compose "an upside-down digital/analogue universe created from Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood’s original artwork and audio design by Nigel Godrich. It commemorates the coming of age of Radiohead’s records, Kid A and Amnesiac," per an Epic Games rep.
The project, developed by namethemachine and Arbitrarily Good Productions, will be available on multiple platforms including PS5, PC and Mac this November. The news follows earlier reports of upcoming reissues for Kid A and Amnesiac this fall (and as soon as late this month) along with Kid Amnesiae, an LP of b-sides, which you can listen to one of below.
Insomniac Games is working on Marvel's Wolverine, a standalone game coming exclusively to the PlayStation 5. There's neither a release date nor many details about the project for now, but the studio showed off a teaser during today's PlayStation showcase. Check it out here:
Insomniac is the studio behind Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Sunset Overdrive and other iconic franchises. The developer is known for building agile, rapid-paced games with slick movements and gorgeous environments, so we'll see how that translates to Wolverine.
Insomniac's head of franchise strategy Ryan Schneider shared how Wolverine came to be greenlit in a PlayStation Blog post directly following today's showcase.
"Our goal here is to not only respect the DNA of what makes the character so popular, but also look for opportunities to make it feel fresh and truly reflect the Insomniac spirit," Schneider said. "Even though Marvel’s Wolverine is very early in development, from what I’ve seen of its emotional narrative and cutting-edge gameplay (see what I did there?), the team is already creating something truly special."
It's been about a year since Sony first said that God of War Ragnarök was officially on its way, and today we're finally getting our first look at the game. As expected, it look like God of War, with the familiar dual-weapon wielding that Kratos excelled at in the 2018 game. His son, Atreus, looks like he's grown up in the last few years, and he's challenging his dear old dad's decisions as well as proving to be a more capable fighter.
As for the game's story, it looks to be setting up a conflict with the Norse pantheon of gods — just as Kratos destroyed all of the Greek gods in the first trilogy of games, he might be on that path again here. But he's definitely fighting it, while Atreus sounds like the one who is more convinced that full-on war is necessary here. As noted in an extensive blog post about the new game, a lot of the conflict seems to come from Atreus trying to understand what his now-dead mother wanted for him, after it was revealed he was part-giant at the end of the first game.
As for the enemies, Freya, an ally-turned-foe, will be a main antagonist, as will Thor. We only saw brief teases of each character, but both characters have lost family to Kratos and Atreus, and they seem about as thirsty for revenge as Kratos used to be when he was a Greek god. Particularly intriguing is the news that veteran actor Richard Schiff (The West Wing) will play Odin, king of the Norse gods.
Unsurprisingly, the game looks fantastic, with a variety of new environments and enemies as well as more ways to use Kratos' Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos. But the familiar boat returns, as does the disembodied head Mimir, so get ready for more story time and cutting remarks about Kratos' perpetually grumpy mood.
Sony unfortunately didn't have a release date to share; a year ago, the company said God of War Ragnarök would arrive in 2021, but the blog post said "see you next year" at its end.
We did learn in a post-show interview that Eric Williams, a longtime Santa Monica Studio veteran will be directing God of War Ragnarök, rather than Cory Barlog, who helmed the 2018 title. Williams has worked on every God of War title so far, so he seems a logical choice for the job. Williams mentioned that each game has historically had a different director, with Barlog the only one doing two installments. "You're really exhausted at the end of finishing one of these things," Barlog said, "so you've gotta con someone else into doing it, like him."
Sony is working on not one but two new Marvel games. During its PlayStation Showcase, the company revealed Insomniac Games is developing a sequel to 2018's Marvel's Spider-Man and 2020's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Slated to come out sometime in 2023 exclusively on PS5, Spider-Man 2 will feature both Peter Parker and Miles Morales, with the two set to face off against Venom.
Sony didn't share many other details on the project, but based on the trailer it looks Spider-Man 2 may support co-op play. In a post over on the PlayStation blog published following the event, Insomniac's Ryan Schneider said much of the original team that worked on the first game is back for the sequel. He also revealed Tony Todd, best known for his role in the Candyman films, will voice Venom. Both Yuri Lowenthal and Nadji Jeter will also reprise their roles as Peter and Miles.
Polyphony Digital has narrowed down the release date for Gran Turismo 7 following its delay in February. The developer now expects its next big racing game to reach PS4 and PS5 on March 4th, 2022. Appropriately, the company has released a gameplay trailer that shows what you can expect from the PS5 version's visuals — this will definitely be a showcase for the console.
While the title still has that almost-too-polished sheen you've seen in many racing games, it's considerably closer to real life than you might expect. That's particularly true in low light and rain, where there's an eerily high level of realism.
Whether or not that translates to gameplay is another story. Polyphony said after the PlayStation Showcase that it was bringing back many familiar modes, and you can expect a range of past GT experiences that include off-roading and rallying. But will the physics, AI and other elements take a step forward? You might not get those answers until much closer to release.