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Image: Apple

Apple’s all in on AI — at least Apple’s version. “The next generation of iPhone has been designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said before revealing the iPhone 16. Software chief Craig Federighi pitched Apple Intelligence as a “personal intelligence system” that’s at “the heart of the iPhone 16 lineup.” After the event, Apple even published a whole press release dedicated to Apple Intelligence.
There’s just one catch: when the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro first come out, they won’t have any Apple Intelligence features.
Sure, the new A18 and A18 Pro chips in the iPhone 16 lineup each have a 16-core Neural Engine that Apple says is “optimized for large generative models,” so they will probably be good at handling Apple Intelligence features. Yes, Apple has been testing Apple Intelligence upgrades, like a new design for Siri and tools that can help you improve your writing, remove objects from photos, and summarize notifications, as part of an iOS 18.1 beta for developers. But unless you’re running that beta, you won’t be able to put those features to the test for a while.
A few Apple Intelligence features will arrive soon-ish
A few Apple Intelligence features will arrive soon-ish, as Apple gave a vague October release window for iOS 18.1 as part of its iPhone 16 announcements. But I should note that the Apple Intelligence features will still be called a beta and only available in US English to start. (Apple says it will launch Apple Intelligence in Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish starting next year.) The company’s arguably more powerful Apple Intelligence upgrades, like a tool to make images, a feature that lets you generate custom emoji, Siri improvements that let it understand your personal context, and integration with ChatGPT are rolling out on a very vague timeline of “later this year and in the months following.”
There are some indications about when: Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the image generation features will launch with iOS 18.2 in December, and Apple said at WWDC that the ChatGPT integration is set to launch “later this year.” But despite how much of a spotlight Apple is putting on its AI features, it’s being quite cagey about when those features might actually come out. Apple didn’t reply to a request for comment.

Despite how much the big tech companies have talked about AI over the past year or two, there are still concerns about AI tools, too. There’s the hallucinating and potential generating bad stuff and misinformation. And Apple Intelligence hasn’t exactly wowed beta testers with innovations or must-have tools. Apple’s slow rollout could give it time to work out issues.
But do you want to wait around until it does? If you were looking at Apple’s AI features as the main reason to get a new phone, you probably shouldn’t. Maybe just wait to upgrade until next year — or at least until October.

Image: Apple

Apple’s all in on AI — at least Apple’s version. “The next generation of iPhone has been designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said before revealing the iPhone 16. Software chief Craig Federighi pitched Apple Intelligence as a “personal intelligence system” that’s at “the heart of the iPhone 16 lineup.” After the event, Apple even published a whole press release dedicated to Apple Intelligence.

There’s just one catch: when the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro first come out, they won’t have any Apple Intelligence features.

Sure, the new A18 and A18 Pro chips in the iPhone 16 lineup each have a 16-core Neural Engine that Apple says is “optimized for large generative models,” so they will probably be good at handling Apple Intelligence features. Yes, Apple has been testing Apple Intelligence upgrades, like a new design for Siri and tools that can help you improve your writing, remove objects from photos, and summarize notifications, as part of an iOS 18.1 beta for developers. But unless you’re running that beta, you won’t be able to put those features to the test for a while.

A few Apple Intelligence features will arrive soon-ish, as Apple gave a vague October release window for iOS 18.1 as part of its iPhone 16 announcements. But I should note that the Apple Intelligence features will still be called a beta and only available in US English to start. (Apple says it will launch Apple Intelligence in Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish starting next year.) The company’s arguably more powerful Apple Intelligence upgrades, like a tool to make images, a feature that lets you generate custom emoji, Siri improvements that let it understand your personal context, and integration with ChatGPT are rolling out on a very vague timeline of “later this year and in the months following.”

There are some indications about when: Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the image generation features will launch with iOS 18.2 in December, and Apple said at WWDC that the ChatGPT integration is set to launch “later this year.” But despite how much of a spotlight Apple is putting on its AI features, it’s being quite cagey about when those features might actually come out. Apple didn’t reply to a request for comment.

Despite how much the big tech companies have talked about AI over the past year or two, there are still concerns about AI tools, too. There’s the hallucinating and potential generating bad stuff and misinformation. And Apple Intelligence hasn’t exactly wowed beta testers with innovations or must-have tools. Apple’s slow rollout could give it time to work out issues.

But do you want to wait around until it does? If you were looking at Apple’s AI features as the main reason to get a new phone, you probably shouldn’t. Maybe just wait to upgrade until next year — or at least until October.

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Image: Intrepid Pictures

When Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass) adapts a Stephen King story, you might expect something spooky. That was true with his takes on Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game. It’s not the case with The Life of Chuck, which isn’t trying to creep you out or tap into your darkest nightmares. It’s a story about celebrating what we have while we have it — a feeling encapsulated by a dazzling seven-minute-long dance sequence from Tom Hiddleston.
The Life of Chuck actually starts out as a postapocalyptic tale. When Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a newly divorced high school teacher, is doing his parent / teacher interviews, no one is interested in test scores or behavior issues. Instead, the parents can’t stop talking about whether the internet is really down for good or how California is steadily crumbling into the ocean. One dad is moved to tears thinking about a life without Pornhub. The tragedies are so persistent that they’re impossible to ignore: major cities underwater, wildfires torching huge swaths of land, volcanoes erupting in Germany, and on the very same road that Marty takes to work, sinkholes swallowing up cars.
Then, things get weird. Marty notices a curious billboard thanking some guy named Charles “Chuck” Krantz (Hiddleston) for “39 great years!” There’s no other context. Then the ad appears everywhere. There are TV commercials and radio ads during NPR shows, and at one point, even a skywriter is thanking Chuck for his service. As the ads become more abundant, the world around it gets closer to what seems to be oblivion. Through it all, Marty can’t help but wonder: “Who the hell is Chuck?”
That’s how the film opens, but it’s the third act of The Life of Chuck, which moves in reverse. From there, we learn who Chuck is. He’s a successful accountant nearing 40 who has come to terms with the seeming banality of his life but, every so often, is drawn back to his childhood. That’s when his grandmother instilled a love of dance that blossomed in middle school but ultimately fizzled out.

Image: Intrepid Pictures

Then one day, while wandering the streets of Boston after spending all day at a financial conference, he hears a busker wailing on the drums, and he just can’t help himself: he drops his briefcase and starts to dance. It lasts seven whole minutes, and it’s hard to take your eyes off of Hiddleston when he moves. It’s spontaneous and joyful, and he can even pull off a pretty convincing moonwalk. The final act explores a younger Chuck (Jacob Tremblay) as he’s forced to deal with multiple tragedies and finds a way to cope through dance. Pretty soon, it brings things full circle with the film’s strange opening in a way that I won’t spoil.
What’s most remarkable about The Life of Chuck is the journey this structure takes you on. At first, as the world literally crumbles away, it creates a feeling that we’re all small and insignificant. But the rest of the film does the exact opposite: it shows how every life, even those that end far too quickly, is full of depth and wonder. The metaphor isn’t exactly subtle — this is a Mike Flanagan film, after all. And in some ways, The Life of Chuck indulges many of his worst tendencies, not only the lack of subtlety but also a penchant for lengthy monologues and schmaltz. Those elements can occasionally undermine his horror work, but they happen to suit The Life of Chuck perfectly.
Flanagan has always been a storyteller who uses horror as a way of exploring drama in a more heightened state. Here, he simply does away with the horror. The Life of Chuck doesn’t get away from his well-worn habits; rather, it’s an ideal vehicle for them. It’s also a fitting adaptation for another reason: in its very last moments, it turns out to be a haunting ghost story after all.
This review is based on a screening at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The Life of Chuck currently doesn’t have a theatrical premiere date.

Image: Intrepid Pictures

When Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass) adapts a Stephen King story, you might expect something spooky. That was true with his takes on Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game. It’s not the case with The Life of Chuck, which isn’t trying to creep you out or tap into your darkest nightmares. It’s a story about celebrating what we have while we have it — a feeling encapsulated by a dazzling seven-minute-long dance sequence from Tom Hiddleston.

The Life of Chuck actually starts out as a postapocalyptic tale. When Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a newly divorced high school teacher, is doing his parent / teacher interviews, no one is interested in test scores or behavior issues. Instead, the parents can’t stop talking about whether the internet is really down for good or how California is steadily crumbling into the ocean. One dad is moved to tears thinking about a life without Pornhub. The tragedies are so persistent that they’re impossible to ignore: major cities underwater, wildfires torching huge swaths of land, volcanoes erupting in Germany, and on the very same road that Marty takes to work, sinkholes swallowing up cars.

Then, things get weird. Marty notices a curious billboard thanking some guy named Charles “Chuck” Krantz (Hiddleston) for “39 great years!” There’s no other context. Then the ad appears everywhere. There are TV commercials and radio ads during NPR shows, and at one point, even a skywriter is thanking Chuck for his service. As the ads become more abundant, the world around it gets closer to what seems to be oblivion. Through it all, Marty can’t help but wonder: “Who the hell is Chuck?”

That’s how the film opens, but it’s the third act of The Life of Chuck, which moves in reverse. From there, we learn who Chuck is. He’s a successful accountant nearing 40 who has come to terms with the seeming banality of his life but, every so often, is drawn back to his childhood. That’s when his grandmother instilled a love of dance that blossomed in middle school but ultimately fizzled out.

Then one day, while wandering the streets of Boston after spending all day at a financial conference, he hears a busker wailing on the drums, and he just can’t help himself: he drops his briefcase and starts to dance. It lasts seven whole minutes, and it’s hard to take your eyes off of Hiddleston when he moves. It’s spontaneous and joyful, and he can even pull off a pretty convincing moonwalk. The final act explores a younger Chuck (Jacob Tremblay) as he’s forced to deal with multiple tragedies and finds a way to cope through dance. Pretty soon, it brings things full circle with the film’s strange opening in a way that I won’t spoil.

What’s most remarkable about The Life of Chuck is the journey this structure takes you on. At first, as the world literally crumbles away, it creates a feeling that we’re all small and insignificant. But the rest of the film does the exact opposite: it shows how every life, even those that end far too quickly, is full of depth and wonder. The metaphor isn’t exactly subtle — this is a Mike Flanagan film, after all. And in some ways, The Life of Chuck indulges many of his worst tendencies, not only the lack of subtlety but also a penchant for lengthy monologues and schmaltz. Those elements can occasionally undermine his horror work, but they happen to suit The Life of Chuck perfectly.

Flanagan has always been a storyteller who uses horror as a way of exploring drama in a more heightened state. Here, he simply does away with the horror. The Life of Chuck doesn’t get away from his well-worn habits; rather, it’s an ideal vehicle for them. It’s also a fitting adaptation for another reason: in its very last moments, it turns out to be a haunting ghost story after all.

This review is based on a screening at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The Life of Chuck currently doesn’t have a theatrical premiere date.

Read More 

Image: Mubi

Director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance goes full David Cronenberg body horror with a gruesome parable about the violence of youth-obsessed beauty standards. As much as studios love hyping up their latest scary movies as being so terrifying that they traumatize audiences, it is rare for features to live up to that kind of buzz. But The Substance writer / director Coralie Fargeat’s new body horror is infinitely more disturbing (a feature, not a bug) than any of its early trailers have let on.
Films about the agony of living up to female beauty standards aren’t new, but The Substance weaves them into an incisive feminist parable that feels jacked directly into the moment that has given us on-demand Ozempic and Brat. And what the film lacks in subtlety, it makes up for with an inspired — if stomach-turning — story that’s meant to get all the way under your skin no matter how secure in your body you might feel.
After years of hosting her popular aerobics TV show, fitness icon Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has almost everything she’s ever dreamed of. She’s wealthy, famous, and her face is plastered all over Los Angeles, where her name has become synonymous with the overt sexiness of her long-running series. On the day Elisabeth turns 50, though, her piggish boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) informs her that her time with the studio is coming to an end. He insists that Elisabeth’s dismissal is just a consequence of viewers’ changing tastes in programming, but she knows that it’s her age.

Elisabeth understands how, especially in show business, women can become personae non grata the moment men in power decide they’re no longer physically desirable. And the reality that she’s being sunsetted alarms Elisabeth so much that she barely thinks twice when presented with the opportunity to try a mysterious drug that promises to transform her into a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself. The Substance works, and Elisabeth gives a twisted kind of birth to Sue (Margaret Qualley) — a gorgeous 20-something whose looks send men into cartoonish fits. But as happy as Elisabeth initially is with her secret double life, she soon finds herself at odds with Sue as “they” struggle to follow the strict rules about how The Substance is supposed to be used.
It doesn’t take many licks to get through The Substance’s glossy candy coating down to its powerful messages about the ways society pushes women to aspire and conform to unrealistic ideas of femininity. The Substance repeatedly explains that Elisabeth and Sue are the same person and must alternate between physical forms for a week at a time in order to remain stable. The conceit itself is an effective metaphor for the way that our youth-obsessed culture drives people to drastically alter themselves with drugs, cosmetic surgeries, and extreme lifestyle changes that all come with some degree of risk.
It’s excruciating to watch The Substance’s visceral shots of skin being ripped apart and bodily fluids being drained through twisted tubing. But as Sue steps out into the world, Fargeat presents it as an intoxicating wonderland of sex and power intoxicating enough to make the pain of her transformation worth it. Though The Substance features a handful of other characters, Moore and Qualley command the film with dueling performances. Together, they paint a complex picture of a woman at war with herself for control of a life that they’re both responsible for but have drastically different experiences of.

Moore brings a desperate weariness to Elisabeth, whose status as a spandex-wearing fitness icon reads as a nod to the actor’s rise to fame in the early ’80s. And there’s a sociopathic quality to the way Qualley inhabits Sue as a woman merely playing at being a guileless “girl next door” type to befuddle boorish men. As the drug continues to open more and more doors for Sue that were once closed to Elisabeth, The Substance begins to echo many of the beats that shaped All About Eve while channeling a dark eroticism evocative of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls. But as Elisabeth and Sue’s fight for more control over their life becomes more pointed, the movie drives head-on into territory reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s Crash and Crimes of the Future, which Fargeat makes her own with buckets of artfully splattered viscera.
While there’s a pronounced comedy streak running through it, The Substance is not at all a movie for the squeamish. Many of its most stunning scenes are soaked in blood spurting from unnatural orifices and bodies becoming warped in nightmarish ways. They’re spectacularly nauseating. Fargeat wants you to feel the fantasy and witness the suffering that comes with trying to maintain it. The Substance might very well leave you feeling sick and a little woozy, but that’s how you know it’s working.
The Substance also stars Hugo Diego Garcia, Philip Schurer, Joseph Balderrama, Tom Morton, and Robin Greer. The film hits theaters on September 20th.

Image: Mubi

Director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance goes full David Cronenberg body horror with a gruesome parable about the violence of youth-obsessed beauty standards.

As much as studios love hyping up their latest scary movies as being so terrifying that they traumatize audiences, it is rare for features to live up to that kind of buzz. But The Substance writer / director Coralie Fargeat’s new body horror is infinitely more disturbing (a feature, not a bug) than any of its early trailers have let on.

Films about the agony of living up to female beauty standards aren’t new, but The Substance weaves them into an incisive feminist parable that feels jacked directly into the moment that has given us on-demand Ozempic and Brat. And what the film lacks in subtlety, it makes up for with an inspired — if stomach-turning — story that’s meant to get all the way under your skin no matter how secure in your body you might feel.

After years of hosting her popular aerobics TV show, fitness icon Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has almost everything she’s ever dreamed of. She’s wealthy, famous, and her face is plastered all over Los Angeles, where her name has become synonymous with the overt sexiness of her long-running series. On the day Elisabeth turns 50, though, her piggish boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) informs her that her time with the studio is coming to an end. He insists that Elisabeth’s dismissal is just a consequence of viewers’ changing tastes in programming, but she knows that it’s her age.

Elisabeth understands how, especially in show business, women can become personae non grata the moment men in power decide they’re no longer physically desirable. And the reality that she’s being sunsetted alarms Elisabeth so much that she barely thinks twice when presented with the opportunity to try a mysterious drug that promises to transform her into a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself. The Substance works, and Elisabeth gives a twisted kind of birth to Sue (Margaret Qualley) — a gorgeous 20-something whose looks send men into cartoonish fits. But as happy as Elisabeth initially is with her secret double life, she soon finds herself at odds with Sue as “they” struggle to follow the strict rules about how The Substance is supposed to be used.

It doesn’t take many licks to get through The Substance’s glossy candy coating down to its powerful messages about the ways society pushes women to aspire and conform to unrealistic ideas of femininity. The Substance repeatedly explains that Elisabeth and Sue are the same person and must alternate between physical forms for a week at a time in order to remain stable. The conceit itself is an effective metaphor for the way that our youth-obsessed culture drives people to drastically alter themselves with drugs, cosmetic surgeries, and extreme lifestyle changes that all come with some degree of risk.

It’s excruciating to watch The Substance’s visceral shots of skin being ripped apart and bodily fluids being drained through twisted tubing. But as Sue steps out into the world, Fargeat presents it as an intoxicating wonderland of sex and power intoxicating enough to make the pain of her transformation worth it. Though The Substance features a handful of other characters, Moore and Qualley command the film with dueling performances. Together, they paint a complex picture of a woman at war with herself for control of a life that they’re both responsible for but have drastically different experiences of.

Moore brings a desperate weariness to Elisabeth, whose status as a spandex-wearing fitness icon reads as a nod to the actor’s rise to fame in the early ’80s. And there’s a sociopathic quality to the way Qualley inhabits Sue as a woman merely playing at being a guileless “girl next door” type to befuddle boorish men. As the drug continues to open more and more doors for Sue that were once closed to Elisabeth, The Substance begins to echo many of the beats that shaped All About Eve while channeling a dark eroticism evocative of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls. But as Elisabeth and Sue’s fight for more control over their life becomes more pointed, the movie drives head-on into territory reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s Crash and Crimes of the Future, which Fargeat makes her own with buckets of artfully splattered viscera.

While there’s a pronounced comedy streak running through it, The Substance is not at all a movie for the squeamish. Many of its most stunning scenes are soaked in blood spurting from unnatural orifices and bodies becoming warped in nightmarish ways. They’re spectacularly nauseating. Fargeat wants you to feel the fantasy and witness the suffering that comes with trying to maintain it. The Substance might very well leave you feeling sick and a little woozy, but that’s how you know it’s working.

The Substance also stars Hugo Diego Garcia, Philip Schurer, Joseph Balderrama, Tom Morton, and Robin Greer. The film hits theaters on September 20th.

Read More 

The Iodyne Pro Mini. | Photo: Iodyne

Do you know what’s on your portable drives? Or where you saw them last? Are they ready to store and share massive gobs of video? Are they blazing fast?
The Iodyne Pro Mini is designed to be the (pricey) answer to all of that.

It’s the first external SSD with a pair of Frore AirJet Mini Slim inside, a solid-state cooling chip that, the company says, helps it transfer data at a sustained three gigabytes per second with a drive no bigger than an iPhone.
It’s the first I’ve seen with a built-in e-paper display that can automatically keep track of remaining storage and the last time it was used — plus your project name, lost-and-found phone numbers or emails, QR codes, or anything else you type in.

Image: Iodyne
Iodyne’s Digital Label sounds incredibly useful.

It’s the first drive I’ve heard of with optional Find My location tracking, and not just for iPhones — Iodyne says it’s working with Chipolo to make it the first trackable SSD on Google’s new Find My Device network, too. Unlike an AirTag, it doesn’t have UWB precision finding, but it also doesn’t need you to swap a coin battery after a year; the tracker has a rechargeable battery that should automatically charge whenever you plug the drive in.
Once you find it with your phone, Iodyne says it’ll be the first portable storage drive you can unlock with your phone’s passkeys, too, no internet connection required, and with built-in NFC so you can tap-to-unlock just like tapping to pay at retail.

Image: Iodyne

Your credentials are stored in a dedicated Secure Enclave chip like with a modern phone, too, the company says — and the drive has always-on XTS-AES-256 encryption, plus RAID 6 redundancy to potentially save your data even if part of the storage fails.
And if you pay extra, Iodyne says you can remotely manage a fleet of these drives from the web or a phone whenever they’re plugged in. You could keep track of which devices are assigned to which projects, one-click provision them for new ones, get alerts if transfers are interrupted, and even remotely revoke credentials or wipe a drive when it’s next connected.

Image: Iodyne
Tap for larger image.

The 131mm x 69mm x 13mm drive (thicker than an iPhone but roughly the same size by volume) will come in 4TB and 8TB capacities; you’ll need Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4 for its transfer rates, though it also supports USB 3.2 and below as well.
The company claims this is all unheard of, and I’m inclined to agree. Even a 3GB per second sustained read and write speed sounds substantial — while many premium SSDs can burst at up to 7GB per second, even 12GB per second, Tom’s Hardware has found many popular pocketable external SSDs only offer sustained transfer speeds of 1.5GB/s or less. Most drives throttle quickly.
Waiting for a catch? Well, those of us who don’t work for video production companies may not be able to justify the price.

Image: Iodyne
An Iodyne Pro Mini atop (and next to) a pair of the company’s $5,000-and-up Pro Data drives.

Iodyne says it built this drive to serve the film, TV, and visual effects industry, where it says its previous $5,000-and-up laptop-sized drives are already being used to shuttle some footage for productions like Amazon’s The Rings of Power, Disney’s The Acolyte, and the Brad Pitt F1 film, as well as serving as the editing station for an entire indie film that premiered at Cannes. Some of its features are explicitly designed with those clients in mind, like a little red LED sidelight so you can more easily read the e-paper label on set.
With the Iodyne Pro Mini, it’s aiming for both the 4TB and 8TB models to cost under $3,000. That’s still a bucket of money.
Also, while Iodyne’s founders have a history in the storage industry — one of them cocreated the ZFS file system, among other things — I should point out that journalists only got the briefest glimpse at a DVT prototype. I haven’t actually touched one yet, and the company suggests I may not get to until early next year.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Iodyne copresident Mike Shapiro briefly flashes a prototype to show it’s the size of an iPhone.

To help justify the price, Iodyne copresident Mike Shapiro explains the Pro Mini had to be designed more or less from the ground up to do what the company wanted.
While the company does use an enterprise-grade Microchip flash storage controller and Chipolo location tracker, he says the company worked to build its own custom firmware, designed the drive’s central processor and NAND storage chips, and helped create a custom Frore AirJet cooling design as well.
“It is not a wrapper around an M.2 SSD,” Shapiro repeatedly points out.

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Speaking of the AirJets, this external drive is the first to highlight a new self-cleaning feature of Frore’s piezoelectric cooling chips, where the AirJet reverses the flow of air to blow dust out of its filters. While the Iodyne drive can’t directly tell when the filter is blocked, Shapiro says it can compare the results from various sensors to tell when it’s working harder than it should and intelligently turn it on.
The Iodyne Pro Mini is technically available for preorder today, but only for 25 unnamed partners, with a “select beta program” beginning later this year. The company says final products should ship in the first quarter of 2025.

The Iodyne Pro Mini. | Photo: Iodyne

Do you know what’s on your portable drives? Or where you saw them last? Are they ready to store and share massive gobs of video? Are they blazing fast?

The Iodyne Pro Mini is designed to be the (pricey) answer to all of that.

It’s the first external SSD with a pair of Frore AirJet Mini Slim inside, a solid-state cooling chip that, the company says, helps it transfer data at a sustained three gigabytes per second with a drive no bigger than an iPhone.

It’s the first I’ve seen with a built-in e-paper display that can automatically keep track of remaining storage and the last time it was used — plus your project name, lost-and-found phone numbers or emails, QR codes, or anything else you type in.

Image: Iodyne
Iodyne’s Digital Label sounds incredibly useful.

It’s the first drive I’ve heard of with optional Find My location tracking, and not just for iPhones — Iodyne says it’s working with Chipolo to make it the first trackable SSD on Google’s new Find My Device network, too. Unlike an AirTag, it doesn’t have UWB precision finding, but it also doesn’t need you to swap a coin battery after a year; the tracker has a rechargeable battery that should automatically charge whenever you plug the drive in.

Once you find it with your phone, Iodyne says it’ll be the first portable storage drive you can unlock with your phone’s passkeys, too, no internet connection required, and with built-in NFC so you can tap-to-unlock just like tapping to pay at retail.

Image: Iodyne

Your credentials are stored in a dedicated Secure Enclave chip like with a modern phone, too, the company says — and the drive has always-on XTS-AES-256 encryption, plus RAID 6 redundancy to potentially save your data even if part of the storage fails.

And if you pay extra, Iodyne says you can remotely manage a fleet of these drives from the web or a phone whenever they’re plugged in. You could keep track of which devices are assigned to which projects, one-click provision them for new ones, get alerts if transfers are interrupted, and even remotely revoke credentials or wipe a drive when it’s next connected.

Image: Iodyne
Tap for larger image.

The 131mm x 69mm x 13mm drive (thicker than an iPhone but roughly the same size by volume) will come in 4TB and 8TB capacities; you’ll need Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4 for its transfer rates, though it also supports USB 3.2 and below as well.

The company claims this is all unheard of, and I’m inclined to agree. Even a 3GB per second sustained read and write speed sounds substantial — while many premium SSDs can burst at up to 7GB per second, even 12GB per second, Tom’s Hardware has found many popular pocketable external SSDs only offer sustained transfer speeds of 1.5GB/s or less. Most drives throttle quickly.

Waiting for a catch? Well, those of us who don’t work for video production companies may not be able to justify the price.

Image: Iodyne
An Iodyne Pro Mini atop (and next to) a pair of the company’s $5,000-and-up Pro Data drives.

Iodyne says it built this drive to serve the film, TV, and visual effects industry, where it says its previous $5,000-and-up laptop-sized drives are already being used to shuttle some footage for productions like Amazon’s The Rings of Power, Disney’s The Acolyte, and the Brad Pitt F1 film, as well as serving as the editing station for an entire indie film that premiered at Cannes. Some of its features are explicitly designed with those clients in mind, like a little red LED sidelight so you can more easily read the e-paper label on set.

With the Iodyne Pro Mini, it’s aiming for both the 4TB and 8TB models to cost under $3,000. That’s still a bucket of money.

Also, while Iodyne’s founders have a history in the storage industry — one of them cocreated the ZFS file system, among other things — I should point out that journalists only got the briefest glimpse at a DVT prototype. I haven’t actually touched one yet, and the company suggests I may not get to until early next year.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Iodyne copresident Mike Shapiro briefly flashes a prototype to show it’s the size of an iPhone.

To help justify the price, Iodyne copresident Mike Shapiro explains the Pro Mini had to be designed more or less from the ground up to do what the company wanted.

While the company does use an enterprise-grade Microchip flash storage controller and Chipolo location tracker, he says the company worked to build its own custom firmware, designed the drive’s central processor and NAND storage chips, and helped create a custom Frore AirJet cooling design as well.

“It is not a wrapper around an M.2 SSD,” Shapiro repeatedly points out.

Speaking of the AirJets, this external drive is the first to highlight a new self-cleaning feature of Frore’s piezoelectric cooling chips, where the AirJet reverses the flow of air to blow dust out of its filters. While the Iodyne drive can’t directly tell when the filter is blocked, Shapiro says it can compare the results from various sensors to tell when it’s working harder than it should and intelligently turn it on.

The Iodyne Pro Mini is technically available for preorder today, but only for 25 unnamed partners, with a “select beta program” beginning later this year. The company says final products should ship in the first quarter of 2025.

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Tab groups will soon make it easier to revisit webpages across devices without bookmarking them. | Image: Google

Google is adding some new features to Chrome that aim to help users organize and keep track of their browser tabs across both desktop and mobile devices. The search giant announced in a new blog post that tab groups — which enable Android and desktop Chrome users to keep related pages together in custom-labeled groups — will start rolling out to Chrome for iOS starting today.
Once Chrome is updated, iPhone and iPad users can access the feature by opening the tab grid, long-pressing on a tab, and selecting “Add Tab to New Group.” Custom names and colors can then be assigned to the created tab groups to help keep them organized and easily identifiable.

GIF: Google
Here’s a quick demo showing how to access tab grouping on Chrome for iOS.

Another feature that’s rolling out across Android and desktop Chrome apps is the ability to sync those saved tab groups across multiple devices. This should help users keep track of any in-progress activity without losing any work or specific tabs. If Chrome users start making vacation plans on a phone, for example, they can then group those open tabs together and automatically sync them to their desktop account if they want to move to a larger screen. Google says this update is coming to Chrome on iOS “soon.”
Chrome is also testing a feature that proactively suggests websites that were opened on other devices, which should reduce the need to bookmark them. The experimental feature will direct users to revisit specific webpages when they open a new Chrome tab on Android, iOS, and desktop. Google says it will begin testing “in a couple of weeks” but didn’t provide an ETA for general availability.

Tab groups will soon make it easier to revisit webpages across devices without bookmarking them. | Image: Google

Google is adding some new features to Chrome that aim to help users organize and keep track of their browser tabs across both desktop and mobile devices. The search giant announced in a new blog post that tab groups — which enable Android and desktop Chrome users to keep related pages together in custom-labeled groups — will start rolling out to Chrome for iOS starting today.

Once Chrome is updated, iPhone and iPad users can access the feature by opening the tab grid, long-pressing on a tab, and selecting “Add Tab to New Group.” Custom names and colors can then be assigned to the created tab groups to help keep them organized and easily identifiable.

GIF: Google
Here’s a quick demo showing how to access tab grouping on Chrome for iOS.

Another feature that’s rolling out across Android and desktop Chrome apps is the ability to sync those saved tab groups across multiple devices. This should help users keep track of any in-progress activity without losing any work or specific tabs. If Chrome users start making vacation plans on a phone, for example, they can then group those open tabs together and automatically sync them to their desktop account if they want to move to a larger screen. Google says this update is coming to Chrome on iOS “soon.”

Chrome is also testing a feature that proactively suggests websites that were opened on other devices, which should reduce the need to bookmark them. The experimental feature will direct users to revisit specific webpages when they open a new Chrome tab on Android, iOS, and desktop. Google says it will begin testing “in a couple of weeks” but didn’t provide an ETA for general availability.

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Image: Insomniac Games

Sony finally confirmed the PS5 Pro this morning, and in addition to enhanced features like Wi-Fi 7 and 8K gaming, PlayStation execs shared new info on how recent and older games will perform on the system and all the current games that can take advantage of the Pro’s power.
One feature the PS5 Pro will include is called Game Boost. The official PlayStation blog says PS5 Pro Game Boost “may stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games.” It also said that the Pro’s “enhanced image quality” can improve the resolution for certain PS4 games.
Sony shared a short, non-comprehensive list of games that will receive free patches to take advantage of the Pro’s graphical and performance features. The games that will be noted with a “PS5 Pro Enhanced” label include:

Alan Wake 2
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Demon’s Souls
Dragon’s Dogma II
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Gran Turismo 7
Hogwarts Legacy
Horizon Forbidden West
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
The Crew Motorfest
The First Descendant
The Last of Us Part II Remastered

We don’t know how games not optimized for the Pro will look on the system. In an interview with CNET, Sony said that around 40 to 50 games will receive the PS5 Pro update patch when the system launches in November.

Image: Insomniac Games

Sony finally confirmed the PS5 Pro this morning, and in addition to enhanced features like Wi-Fi 7 and 8K gaming, PlayStation execs shared new info on how recent and older games will perform on the system and all the current games that can take advantage of the Pro’s power.

One feature the PS5 Pro will include is called Game Boost. The official PlayStation blog says PS5 Pro Game Boost “may stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games.” It also said that the Pro’s “enhanced image quality” can improve the resolution for certain PS4 games.

Sony shared a short, non-comprehensive list of games that will receive free patches to take advantage of the Pro’s graphical and performance features. The games that will be noted with a “PS5 Pro Enhanced” label include:

Alan Wake 2
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Demon’s Souls
Dragon’s Dogma II
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Gran Turismo 7
Hogwarts Legacy
Horizon Forbidden West
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
The Crew Motorfest
The First Descendant
The Last of Us Part II Remastered

We don’t know how games not optimized for the Pro will look on the system. In an interview with CNET, Sony said that around 40 to 50 games will receive the PS5 Pro update patch when the system launches in November.

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Image: Sony

Sony just announced the $699.99 PS5 Pro, a beefed-up version of the PS5 that includes a larger GPU and advanced ray tracing support. But if you want to play your physical games on the new console, you’ll have to pay extra: a disc drive isn’t included, so you’ll have to buy and install one separately for an additional $79.99.
“PS5 Pro is available as a disc-less console, with the option to purchase the currently available Disc Drive for PS5 separately,” Sony’s Hideaki Nishino writes in a PlayStation Blog post. That means if you are buying both the console and the disc drive together, you’ll be paying a whopping $779.98.
While very annoying — it sure seems like an expensive “Pro” console should come with a disc drive! — this move from Sony isn’t entirely out of left field. Sony first released the separate PS5 disc drive alongside the “slim” PS5 redesign, giving you the option of adding a drive to an all-digital PS5 slim if you wanted after the fact. (Sony also sells a PS5 slim with the disc drive included.)
The PS5 Pro launches on November 7th, and preorders start on September 24th.

Image: Sony

Sony just announced the $699.99 PS5 Pro, a beefed-up version of the PS5 that includes a larger GPU and advanced ray tracing support. But if you want to play your physical games on the new console, you’ll have to pay extra: a disc drive isn’t included, so you’ll have to buy and install one separately for an additional $79.99.

“PS5 Pro is available as a disc-less console, with the option to purchase the currently available Disc Drive for PS5 separately,” Sony’s Hideaki Nishino writes in a PlayStation Blog post. That means if you are buying both the console and the disc drive together, you’ll be paying a whopping $779.98.

While very annoying — it sure seems like an expensive “Pro” console should come with a disc drive! — this move from Sony isn’t entirely out of left field. Sony first released the separate PS5 disc drive alongside the “slim” PS5 redesign, giving you the option of adding a drive to an all-digital PS5 slim if you wanted after the fact. (Sony also sells a PS5 slim with the disc drive included.)

The PS5 Pro launches on November 7th, and preorders start on September 24th.

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The GMMK 3 is quite the modular mechanical keyboard, as its initialism-style name implies.

The GMMK 3 and GMMK 3 Pro are easy to configure and customize, though you can quickly blow your budget. The enthusiast mechanical keyboard scene has constantly evolving tastes and trends, and once you order a fancy bespoke board through a limited-run group buy, another one springs up for hyped-up fans to clamor over. Glorious is looking to streamline a touch of that fervor with a pair of new gaming keyboards, each decked out with a boatload of user-selectable customizations, and they may be perfect for the keyboard sicko-curious out there — no tedious group buys necessary.
The new Glorious models consist of two keyboards, the GMMK 3 (starting at $119.99 bare-bones, meaning no switches or keycaps included) and GMMK 3 Pro (starting at $239.99 bare-bones), with each available now in three sizes (full-size 100 percent, 75 percent, and 65 percent) and with either traditional MX style hot-swappable switches or magnetic Hall effect (HE) switches. Boards equipped with the latter are also compatible with MX switches, allowing you to use any of your existing collection, but the choices keep going if you want Glorious to build you something more unique through its new Boardsmith configurator site.

This build may not be everyone’s style, but the colorful dual-tone metal chassis really has some presence.

Boardsmith is where the real magic for the curious lies. It includes myriad options for all kinds of the GMMK 3’s internal and external components, and tinkering with wild (or ugly) configurations is half the fun of this keyboard. It’s like going to Porsche or Lamborghini’s site and seeing how ridiculous a supercar you can put together. You can customize the materials and colors of the top and bottom halves of the board’s chassis, switches, keycaps, cables, knobs, the switch plate (the supportive internal plate base that sits beneath the switches), gasket mounting materials (little swappable pegs that sit low inside the case to give the top deck and keys a firm or pillowy feel), and Glorious’ logo badges.
While there are many aesthetic choices to make based on colors and keycaps, the chosen construction of the board can greatly affect the typing feel and sound. This isn’t new if you already engage in any group buys from companies like Meletrix, Qwertykeys, or Owlab. The difference here is that Glorious has a greater focus on gaming and will build and ship your configured keyboard without making you wait the better part of a year. Plus, the keyboard arrives fully built, as opposed to a DIY kit.

Both sides of all GMMK 3 models have RGB accent strips.

The RGB across the board is bright and colorful, with this model’s white switch plate nicely spreading the light.

The process is also much more novice-friendly, as choices on Boardsmith have brief tooltips to help you weigh minutiae like switch plate material and Glorious’ various switches. It should be helpful for those without tons of prior mechanical keyboard experience. And if you end up with a bit of FOMO after your board arrives you can order additional parts to easily swap out yourself (including the whole top and bottom frames).
Glorious aimed to make the new GMMK generation fairly easy to open up and tinker around inside, with case screws accessible beneath rubber feet that pop off and back on. It’s a promise Glorious really delivered on, as the GMMK 3 is one of the simplest keyboards I’ve ever disassembled. Once you remove those case screws the chassis simply separates in half, and you instantly have full access to just about everything — without having to remove a single keycap or switch.
Lots of keyboards out there require you to remove all the keycaps every time you want to dive into it, and that’s a huge pain point if you’re a little lazy like me or don’t want to spend a chunk of time to test out one small tweak like seeing how your keyboard sounds with less foam. Here, you can be trying out mods or different gaskets in mere minutes.

Much of what Glorious is tapping into with the GMMK 3 and 3 Pro are the trappings of the enthusiast mechanical keyboard community, where feel, aesthetics, and sound are top priorities on boards used for typing and productivity. But Glorious’ pedigree comes from PC gaming (the brand’s name used to be the cringe-inducing “Glorious PC Gaming Race”), and the new GMMK boards maintain a gaming angle — particularly the Hall effect models.
If you opt for HE versions of the GMMK 3 or GMMK 3 Pro, you gain all kinds of unique tricks through the Glorious Core software. You can customize theactuation point from a range of a super shallow 0.1mm to bottoming-out at 4mm (the default is set to 2mm), and this can be set across the whole board or on a per-key basis. You can also set up to four bindings to a single key travel, two on the way down and two on the way up, with selectable actuation points for each. There’s a lot of fine-grained settings you can tweak and customize here, though Glorious Core is incredibly clunky and poorly designed (which is sadly par for the course among Glorious’ competitors like Razer and SteelSeries too). You can likely hammer your way through it with a bunch of trial-and-error testing, but it’s a far cry from the beginner-friendly intuitiveness of Boardsmith.

I’ve been testing a full-size, 100 percent GMMK 3 Pro in a highly-specced configuration with an all-metal case (it weighs a hefty 5.6 pounds), HE Fox switches (Glorious’ go-to for linears), 2.4GHz wireless, firm silicone gaskets, and FR4 switch plate. I usually prefer a deeper, punchier typing sound on much smaller boards, but this config has a half-throated clacky tone that’s softly deep upon bottoming-out but brighter when each key is released. It’s not quite the “raindrops on a window” sound that some people covet, but it’s playing in that ballpark.

The exact configuration of GMMK 3 Pro I’ve been testing, configured in Glorious Boardsmith.

I may personally loathe full-size keyboards (I’ve grown accustomed to the number pad-free life), but it’s cool to see a 100 percent board with so many customizable options and aesthetics. Most other “gaming” keyboards this size are ugly all-black or all-white monstrosities where RGB lighting is the only aesthetic color choice.
I’m coming away mostly impressed by the GMMK 3 Pro, but going all-out with the Glorious Boardsmith is going to really cost you. This board soared up in price to $490.99 once fully configured, which is a far cry from the starting kit price of $149.99 for a wired GMMK 3 complete with MX switches and keycaps, and getting dangerously close to Angry Miao territory. At least, if you go a little wild with the configurator and spend a lot on your dream GMMK 3 it seems you’re getting a quality keyboard with a smattering of the latest innovations in the mech keyboard space, as well as a two year warranty and actual customer service — not just a Discord server and a GitHub repository to sort through for DIY troubleshooting. You can come to the GMMK 3 for the specs and aesthetics, but you may want to stay for the simplicity and peace of mind.
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

The GMMK 3 is quite the modular mechanical keyboard, as its initialism-style name implies.

The GMMK 3 and GMMK 3 Pro are easy to configure and customize, though you can quickly blow your budget.

The enthusiast mechanical keyboard scene has constantly evolving tastes and trends, and once you order a fancy bespoke board through a limited-run group buy, another one springs up for hyped-up fans to clamor over. Glorious is looking to streamline a touch of that fervor with a pair of new gaming keyboards, each decked out with a boatload of user-selectable customizations, and they may be perfect for the keyboard sicko-curious out there — no tedious group buys necessary.

The new Glorious models consist of two keyboards, the GMMK 3 (starting at $119.99 bare-bones, meaning no switches or keycaps included) and GMMK 3 Pro (starting at $239.99 bare-bones), with each available now in three sizes (full-size 100 percent, 75 percent, and 65 percent) and with either traditional MX style hot-swappable switches or magnetic Hall effect (HE) switches. Boards equipped with the latter are also compatible with MX switches, allowing you to use any of your existing collection, but the choices keep going if you want Glorious to build you something more unique through its new Boardsmith configurator site.

Boardsmith is where the real magic for the curious lies. It includes myriad options for all kinds of the GMMK 3’s internal and external components, and tinkering with wild (or ugly) configurations is half the fun of this keyboard. It’s like going to Porsche or Lamborghini’s site and seeing how ridiculous a supercar you can put together. You can customize the materials and colors of the top and bottom halves of the board’s chassis, switches, keycaps, cables, knobs, the switch plate (the supportive internal plate base that sits beneath the switches), gasket mounting materials (little swappable pegs that sit low inside the case to give the top deck and keys a firm or pillowy feel), and Glorious’ logo badges.

While there are many aesthetic choices to make based on colors and keycaps, the chosen construction of the board can greatly affect the typing feel and sound. This isn’t new if you already engage in any group buys from companies like Meletrix, Qwertykeys, or Owlab. The difference here is that Glorious has a greater focus on gaming and will build and ship your configured keyboard without making you wait the better part of a year. Plus, the keyboard arrives fully built, as opposed to a DIY kit.

The process is also much more novice-friendly, as choices on Boardsmith have brief tooltips to help you weigh minutiae like switch plate material and Glorious’ various switches. It should be helpful for those without tons of prior mechanical keyboard experience. And if you end up with a bit of FOMO after your board arrives you can order additional parts to easily swap out yourself (including the whole top and bottom frames).

Glorious aimed to make the new GMMK generation fairly easy to open up and tinker around inside, with case screws accessible beneath rubber feet that pop off and back on. It’s a promise Glorious really delivered on, as the GMMK 3 is one of the simplest keyboards I’ve ever disassembled. Once you remove those case screws the chassis simply separates in half, and you instantly have full access to just about everything — without having to remove a single keycap or switch.

Lots of keyboards out there require you to remove all the keycaps every time you want to dive into it, and that’s a huge pain point if you’re a little lazy like me or don’t want to spend a chunk of time to test out one small tweak like seeing how your keyboard sounds with less foam. Here, you can be trying out mods or different gaskets in mere minutes.

Much of what Glorious is tapping into with the GMMK 3 and 3 Pro are the trappings of the enthusiast mechanical keyboard community, where feel, aesthetics, and sound are top priorities on boards used for typing and productivity. But Glorious’ pedigree comes from PC gaming (the brand’s name used to be the cringe-inducing “Glorious PC Gaming Race”), and the new GMMK boards maintain a gaming angle — particularly the Hall effect models.

If you opt for HE versions of the GMMK 3 or GMMK 3 Pro, you gain all kinds of unique tricks through the Glorious Core software. You can customize theactuation point from a range of a super shallow 0.1mm to bottoming-out at 4mm (the default is set to 2mm), and this can be set across the whole board or on a per-key basis. You can also set up to four bindings to a single key travel, two on the way down and two on the way up, with selectable actuation points for each. There’s a lot of fine-grained settings you can tweak and customize here, though Glorious Core is incredibly clunky and poorly designed (which is sadly par for the course among Glorious’ competitors like Razer and SteelSeries too). You can likely hammer your way through it with a bunch of trial-and-error testing, but it’s a far cry from the beginner-friendly intuitiveness of Boardsmith.

I’ve been testing a full-size, 100 percent GMMK 3 Pro in a highly-specced configuration with an all-metal case (it weighs a hefty 5.6 pounds), HE Fox switches (Glorious’ go-to for linears), 2.4GHz wireless, firm silicone gaskets, and FR4 switch plate. I usually prefer a deeper, punchier typing sound on much smaller boards, but this config has a half-throated clacky tone that’s softly deep upon bottoming-out but brighter when each key is released. It’s not quite the “raindrops on a window” sound that some people covet, but it’s playing in that ballpark.

The exact configuration of GMMK 3 Pro I’ve been testing, configured in Glorious Boardsmith.

I may personally loathe full-size keyboards (I’ve grown accustomed to the number pad-free life), but it’s cool to see a 100 percent board with so many customizable options and aesthetics. Most other “gaming” keyboards this size are ugly all-black or all-white monstrosities where RGB lighting is the only aesthetic color choice.

I’m coming away mostly impressed by the GMMK 3 Pro, but going all-out with the Glorious Boardsmith is going to really cost you. This board soared up in price to $490.99 once fully configured, which is a far cry from the starting kit price of $149.99 for a wired GMMK 3 complete with MX switches and keycaps, and getting dangerously close to Angry Miao territory. At least, if you go a little wild with the configurator and spend a lot on your dream GMMK 3 it seems you’re getting a quality keyboard with a smattering of the latest innovations in the mech keyboard space, as well as a two year warranty and actual customer service — not just a Discord server and a GitHub repository to sort through for DIY troubleshooting. You can come to the GMMK 3 for the specs and aesthetics, but you may want to stay for the simplicity and peace of mind.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

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Image: Sony

The PS5 Pro is official. After months of leaks, Sony just announced a more powerful PS5 console during a special technical presentation. Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PS5 console, says the PS5 Pro improves on the original console in three key ways: a larger GPU, advanced ray tracing, and custom AI-driven upscaling.
The PS5 Pro will launch on November 7th, priced at $699.99, and it looks similar to the slim version of the PS5 — just like recent leaks suggested it would. It has three stripes down the side, and it doesn’t come with a disc drive. You’ll be able to purchase a 4K Blu-ray disc drive separately and optional console covers.
“It’s the most powerful console we’ve ever built,” says Cerny. The hardware upgrades inside will result in 45 percent faster rendering, according to Cerny, and should improve the detail of certain games and frame rates. One of the key reasons for the PS5 Pro is to allow PS5 Pro players to not have to choose performance modes over fidelity ones. “Players are choosing performance about three quarters of the time,” says Cerny.

Sony has upgraded the GPU inside the PS5 Pro with 67 percent more compute units that the current PS5 console, and it has 28 percent faster memory, too. That all adds up to the 45 percent faster rendering of games, and the ability to improve frame rates in titles without having to lose visual fidelity.
This extra power should also improve ray-traced games, with Sony suggesting that developers will be able to allow “the rays to be cast at double, and at times triple, the speeds of the current PS5 console.”
The PS5 Pro also includes Sony’s new AI-powered PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) feature, which is essentially an upscaling technique similar to Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR to improve frame rates and image quality for PlayStation games. This custom PSSR upscaling is designed to replace a game’s existing temporal anti-aliasing or upsampling implementation.
Cerny briefly demonstrated a few games running on the PS5 Pro, including The Last of Us Part II with more detail while still targeting 60fps instead of the 30fps fidelity mode on PS5. Sony’s goal of fidelity-like graphics at performance frame rates will be available in games like Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Sony is also including a PS5 Pro “Game Boost” option which will apply to more than 8,500 backward compatible PS4 games for the PS5 Pro. “This feature may stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games,” says Hideaki Nishino, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s platform business group. “Enhanced Image Quality for PS4 games is also available to improve the resolution on select PS4 games.”
The PS5 Pro will also support Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, VRR, and 8K resolutions, and CNET’s Scott Stein, who got an early hands-on with the console, says it now comes with a larger 2TB solid state drive and swaps one of its rear USB-A ports for a second USB-C port instead. It’ll also still include an extra SSD slot for expansion, he says.
Games will need to be patched to take advantage of some of the PS5 Pro’s features, and Sony says developers are readying free software updates to existing titles that will be labeled as PS5 Pro Enhanced games — up to 50 of them by its November 7th launch, according to CNET.
The first PS5 Pro Enhanced games will include Alan Wake 2, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Demon’s Souls, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Gran Turismo 7, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, The Crew Motorfest, The First Descendant, and The Last of Us Part II Remastered.
Of the initial batch of titles, most should now simply feature 4K resolution and 60fps framerate, but CNET also got to try Gran Turismo 7 in a new 8K mode and a 4K ray-tracing mode. Developers can also reportedly add volumetric lighting or even show you more characters in the background of a scene.
The PS5 Pro is also compatible with the PlayStation VR2 headset — where Cerny told CNET it will eventually support higher-resolution games — the PlayStation Portal handheld, and existing PS5 controllers. Sony says it’s not changing the UI or network services for the PS5 Pro, so those will be identical to the existing console.
Preorders for the PS5 Pro will start on September 26th, ahead of the launch at retailers on November 7th.

Image: Sony

The PS5 Pro is official. After months of leaks, Sony just announced a more powerful PS5 console during a special technical presentation. Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PS5 console, says the PS5 Pro improves on the original console in three key ways: a larger GPU, advanced ray tracing, and custom AI-driven upscaling.

The PS5 Pro will launch on November 7th, priced at $699.99, and it looks similar to the slim version of the PS5 — just like recent leaks suggested it would. It has three stripes down the side, and it doesn’t come with a disc drive. You’ll be able to purchase a 4K Blu-ray disc drive separately and optional console covers.

“It’s the most powerful console we’ve ever built,” says Cerny. The hardware upgrades inside will result in 45 percent faster rendering, according to Cerny, and should improve the detail of certain games and frame rates. One of the key reasons for the PS5 Pro is to allow PS5 Pro players to not have to choose performance modes over fidelity ones. “Players are choosing performance about three quarters of the time,” says Cerny.

Sony has upgraded the GPU inside the PS5 Pro with 67 percent more compute units that the current PS5 console, and it has 28 percent faster memory, too. That all adds up to the 45 percent faster rendering of games, and the ability to improve frame rates in titles without having to lose visual fidelity.

This extra power should also improve ray-traced games, with Sony suggesting that developers will be able to allow “the rays to be cast at double, and at times triple, the speeds of the current PS5 console.”

The PS5 Pro also includes Sony’s new AI-powered PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) feature, which is essentially an upscaling technique similar to Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR to improve frame rates and image quality for PlayStation games. This custom PSSR upscaling is designed to replace a game’s existing temporal anti-aliasing or upsampling implementation.

Cerny briefly demonstrated a few games running on the PS5 Pro, including The Last of Us Part II with more detail while still targeting 60fps instead of the 30fps fidelity mode on PS5. Sony’s goal of fidelity-like graphics at performance frame rates will be available in games like Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Sony is also including a PS5 Pro “Game Boost” option which will apply to more than 8,500 backward compatible PS4 games for the PS5 Pro. “This feature may stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games,” says Hideaki Nishino, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s platform business group. “Enhanced Image Quality for PS4 games is also available to improve the resolution on select PS4 games.”

The PS5 Pro will also support Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, VRR, and 8K resolutions, and CNET’s Scott Stein, who got an early hands-on with the console, says it now comes with a larger 2TB solid state drive and swaps one of its rear USB-A ports for a second USB-C port instead. It’ll also still include an extra SSD slot for expansion, he says.

Games will need to be patched to take advantage of some of the PS5 Pro’s features, and Sony says developers are readying free software updates to existing titles that will be labeled as PS5 Pro Enhanced games — up to 50 of them by its November 7th launch, according to CNET.

The first PS5 Pro Enhanced games will include Alan Wake 2, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Demon’s Souls, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Gran Turismo 7, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, The Crew Motorfest, The First Descendant, and The Last of Us Part II Remastered.

Of the initial batch of titles, most should now simply feature 4K resolution and 60fps framerate, but CNET also got to try Gran Turismo 7 in a new 8K mode and a 4K ray-tracing mode. Developers can also reportedly add volumetric lighting or even show you more characters in the background of a scene.

The PS5 Pro is also compatible with the PlayStation VR2 headset — where Cerny told CNET it will eventually support higher-resolution games — the PlayStation Portal handheld, and existing PS5 controllers. Sony says it’s not changing the UI or network services for the PS5 Pro, so those will be identical to the existing console.

Preorders for the PS5 Pro will start on September 26th, ahead of the launch at retailers on November 7th.

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Like past Pocket colorways, the GBC-inspired collection will be available in limited quantities. | Image: Analogue

Analogue is back with another collection of new colorways for its Pocket handheld, now drawing inspiration from Nintendo’s first color screen handheld. The Pocket GBC Colors Edition introduces six new colors — teal, berry, kiwi, grape, and dandelion — which were the five launch colors of the Game Boy Color in 1988, plus a gold version based on a special edition of the GBC created for Pokémon Gold.
The GBC Colors Edition collection will be available to preorder in limited quantities starting on September 12th at 8AM PT / 11AM ET for $249.99 each, with shipping expected within 24 to 48 hours.

To ensure the new collection was closely matched in color to Nintendo’s original hardware, the company used the highest-quality “equipment, tools, and processes to achieve accuracy,” says Analogue’s CEO and founder, Christopher Taber. Those processes included referencing Game Boy Color units from “different years of production runs” and taking measurements inside the handhelds, where the colors of the plastic housings hadn’t faded from extensive use and light exposure.
The Analogue Pocket originally launched in 2021 and has been able to play original Game Boy Color cartridges since its debut, as well as carts from other handhelds like the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and the Sega Game Gear (using an adapter). Since its debut, Analogue has introduced several special editions of the Pocket, including a glow-in-the-dark version, several with transparent shells, and an aluminum version with a steeper $499 price tag.
The company’s next product will be a recreation of another Nintendo console. The Analogue 3D is expected to have “100 percent compatibility” with N64 cartridges from every region along with 4K output. In addition, it should play games more accurately than emulators can since it uses field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology, allowing it to function just like the original N64 hardware.

Like past Pocket colorways, the GBC-inspired collection will be available in limited quantities. | Image: Analogue

Analogue is back with another collection of new colorways for its Pocket handheld, now drawing inspiration from Nintendo’s first color screen handheld. The Pocket GBC Colors Edition introduces six new colors — teal, berry, kiwi, grape, and dandelion — which were the five launch colors of the Game Boy Color in 1988, plus a gold version based on a special edition of the GBC created for Pokémon Gold.

The GBC Colors Edition collection will be available to preorder in limited quantities starting on September 12th at 8AM PT / 11AM ET for $249.99 each, with shipping expected within 24 to 48 hours.

To ensure the new collection was closely matched in color to Nintendo’s original hardware, the company used the highest-quality “equipment, tools, and processes to achieve accuracy,” says Analogue’s CEO and founder, Christopher Taber. Those processes included referencing Game Boy Color units from “different years of production runs” and taking measurements inside the handhelds, where the colors of the plastic housings hadn’t faded from extensive use and light exposure.

The Analogue Pocket originally launched in 2021 and has been able to play original Game Boy Color cartridges since its debut, as well as carts from other handhelds like the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and the Sega Game Gear (using an adapter). Since its debut, Analogue has introduced several special editions of the Pocket, including a glow-in-the-dark version, several with transparent shells, and an aluminum version with a steeper $499 price tag.

The company’s next product will be a recreation of another Nintendo console. The Analogue 3D is expected to have “100 percent compatibility” with N64 cartridges from every region along with 4K output. In addition, it should play games more accurately than emulators can since it uses field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology, allowing it to function just like the original N64 hardware.

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