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Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

A federal appeals court in California upheld part of a district court ruling on Friday that blocked a landmark online safety bill for children from taking effect.
The panel of judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals objected to a portion of the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act — specifically, a requirement that online businesses “opine on and mitigate the risk that children may be exposed to harmful or potentially harmful materials online.” The rule “facially violates the First Amendment,” the appeals court concluded. As a result, it’s upholding a preliminary injunction on that portion of the law and related aspects.
But it sent another part of the law back to the lower court to reconsider and vacated the rest of the preliminary injunction, saying it was unclear if the rest of the law violated the First Amendment. The panel believes it’s “too early” to say if the unconstitutional parts of the statute could be feasibly cut off from the rest.
The ruling, authored by Judge Milan Smith Jr., singles out the design code’s Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) requirement. The DPIA would compel online businesses to craft reports on whether their designs could harm kids and “create a timed plan to mitigate or eliminate the risk[s].” Smith determined this would likely fail First Amendment scrutiny. California “could have easily employed less restrictive means to accomplish its protective goals,” he wrote, including incentives for voluntary content filters, education for children and parents, and the enforcement of existing criminal laws.
Instead, he added, the state’s law “attempts to indirectly censor the material available to children online, by delegating the controversial question of what content may ‘harm to children’ to the companies themselves.”
That could be an ominous sign for other legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which recently passed the Senate 91–3. KOSA demands platforms take reasonable steps to protect kids from certain kinds of harms, including mental health disorders like anxiety and depression.

Still, the judges ruled that other parts of the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act may not violate the First Amendment in every possible application of the law. Smith pointed to provisions like banning dark patterns that encourage kids to give over more information than what’s necessary to operate the service. “Based on the record developed so far in this litigation, it is unclear whether a ‘dark pattern’ itself constitutes protected speech and whether a ban on using ‘dark patterns’ should always trigger First Amendment scrutiny, and the district court never grappled with this question.”
Smith’s ruling also said that the district court should have evaluated more closely whether other parts of the law could be upheld when applied to non-social media companies covered by the bill.
The ruling is the latest relative victory in NetChoice’s string of lawsuits against state-level internet regulations, including laws aimed at protecting children online. Courts have agreed with many of the First Amendment arguments that the group, which represents companies like Meta and Google, has made against such laws.
It’s also significant as it comes after an instructive Supreme Court ruling earlier this year in Moody v. NetChoice, which affirmed that content moderation and curation by platforms is protected speech. The justices expressed skepticism about bringing facial challenges — which assert that any possible application of a law is unconstitutional — under the First Amendment in such cases. Even so, Smith wrote that the case against the DPIA requirement of California’s law is facially unconstitutional because “in every application to a covered business, [it] raises the same First Amendment issues.”
The California attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. NetChoice Litigation Center director Chris Marchese called the ruling “a victory for free expression, online security and Californian families.” He added, “The court recognized that California’s government cannot commandeer private businesses to censor lawful content online or to restrict access to it.”

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

A federal appeals court in California upheld part of a district court ruling on Friday that blocked a landmark online safety bill for children from taking effect.

The panel of judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals objected to a portion of the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act — specifically, a requirement that online businesses “opine on and mitigate the risk that children may be exposed to harmful or potentially harmful materials online.” The rule “facially violates the First Amendment,” the appeals court concluded. As a result, it’s upholding a preliminary injunction on that portion of the law and related aspects.

But it sent another part of the law back to the lower court to reconsider and vacated the rest of the preliminary injunction, saying it was unclear if the rest of the law violated the First Amendment. The panel believes it’s “too early” to say if the unconstitutional parts of the statute could be feasibly cut off from the rest.

The ruling, authored by Judge Milan Smith Jr., singles out the design code’s Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) requirement. The DPIA would compel online businesses to craft reports on whether their designs could harm kids and “create a timed plan to mitigate or eliminate the risk[s].” Smith determined this would likely fail First Amendment scrutiny. California “could have easily employed less restrictive means to accomplish its protective goals,” he wrote, including incentives for voluntary content filters, education for children and parents, and the enforcement of existing criminal laws.

Instead, he added, the state’s law “attempts to indirectly censor the material available to children online, by delegating the controversial question of what content may ‘harm to children’ to the companies themselves.”

That could be an ominous sign for other legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which recently passed the Senate 91–3. KOSA demands platforms take reasonable steps to protect kids from certain kinds of harms, including mental health disorders like anxiety and depression.

Still, the judges ruled that other parts of the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act may not violate the First Amendment in every possible application of the law. Smith pointed to provisions like banning dark patterns that encourage kids to give over more information than what’s necessary to operate the service. “Based on the record developed so far in this litigation, it is unclear whether a ‘dark pattern’ itself constitutes protected speech and whether a ban on using ‘dark patterns’ should always trigger First Amendment scrutiny, and the district court never grappled with this question.”

Smith’s ruling also said that the district court should have evaluated more closely whether other parts of the law could be upheld when applied to non-social media companies covered by the bill.

The ruling is the latest relative victory in NetChoice’s string of lawsuits against state-level internet regulations, including laws aimed at protecting children online. Courts have agreed with many of the First Amendment arguments that the group, which represents companies like Meta and Google, has made against such laws.

It’s also significant as it comes after an instructive Supreme Court ruling earlier this year in Moody v. NetChoice, which affirmed that content moderation and curation by platforms is protected speech. The justices expressed skepticism about bringing facial challenges — which assert that any possible application of a law is unconstitutional — under the First Amendment in such cases. Even so, Smith wrote that the case against the DPIA requirement of California’s law is facially unconstitutional because “in every application to a covered business, [it] raises the same First Amendment issues.”

The California attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. NetChoice Litigation Center director Chris Marchese called the ruling “a victory for free expression, online security and Californian families.” He added, “The court recognized that California’s government cannot commandeer private businesses to censor lawful content online or to restrict access to it.”

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An inside view of a bedroom during the media visit of Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Village on July 2nd, 2024, in Paris, France. | Photo by Aurelien Meunier / Getty Images

Now that the Paris Olympics are over, the temporary air conditioning units shipped in for athletes are poised to have a second — and hopefully third — life.
There was a good amount of drama around these units. Planners initially didn’t include them in their design for competitors’ housing, opting instead for more energy-efficient options. Moreover, AC just hasn’t been as necessary in cooler climates until lately and is still relatively uncommon in homes across Europe. But heatwaves pose big risks for athletes, many of whom decided to supply their own mobile units to stay cool.
There was a good amount of drama around these units
Thousands of them were reportedly ordered for the Olympic Village, where more than 14,000 athletes stayed during the Olympics. The Games came to a close on August 11th, but the AC units aren’t going anywhere yet. They’ll stay there a while longer for the Paralympics scheduled for August 28th through September 8th.
And while competitors in the Olympics had to pay for their own air conditioning, organizers say they’ll provide units to Paralympics athletes “free of charge for medical reasons, at a ratio of one for every three athletes” in an email to The Verge. The village is expected to host some 8,000 athletes during the Paralympics. Some of the people competing have disabilities that affect their bodies’ ability to regulate temperature, the email notes.
Heat was already a safety concern going into the Olympics. Beyond affecting athletes’ performance, unyielding heat can potentially also lead to exhaustion and heatstroke. Temperatures in Paris reached upwards of 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) in Paris in July as a heat dome suffocated the Games for several days.
Similar concerns have been raised at previous Olympic events, but the risks rise each year with climate change. “The world watched athletes swelter in 35°C heat. If the atmosphere wasn’t overloaded with emissions from burning fossil fuel, Paris would have been about 3°C cooler and much safer for sport,” Friederike Otto, a physicist with an international group of researchers called World Weather Attribution, said on X on July 31st. World Weather Attribution published an analysis that found that the heatwave affecting the region that month wouldn’t have occurred without human-induced climate change.
Paris Olympic organizers faced a conundrum. Air conditioners can help people stay safe during a heatwave, but they also contribute to the climate crisis because of all the energy they burn through. ACs can also stress the power grid during heatwaves, which can lead to dangerous power outages when people need cooling the most. Urban planners around the world are trying to find more sustainable options, including installing energy-efficient heat pumps or topping buildings with gardens or white roofs to avoid trapping heat.
The Paris Olympic Village used a geothermal cooling system that piped cool water underneath the floor. Paired with other insulating design elements, the system was intended “to achieve a target temperature of 23-26° Celsius [73.4-78.8 Fahrenheit] at the hottest time of the day in a heatwave,” the email from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) says.

That just wasn’t enough to assuage competing teams’ concerns. The IOC says that the AC units were rented. After the Paralympics, they’re supposed to be refurbished and reused by the supplier.
The village will continue to rely on its built-in cooling system, part of an effort to turn it into a new “sustainable city district” after competitors leave. That includes plans for 2,500 homes, a student residence, and a hotel — all designed with the hopes of minimizing their impact on the environment.
“We tried to find a balance in the design and fit-out of the Village between a long-term objective to create a sustainable neighbourhood; and a short-term responsibility to give high-performance athletes the best conditions in which to prepare,” IOC spokesperson Arthur Fel said in the email to The Verge. “A/C is culturally widespread in some parts of the world, but not in France.”

An inside view of a bedroom during the media visit of Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Village on July 2nd, 2024, in Paris, France. | Photo by Aurelien Meunier / Getty Images

Now that the Paris Olympics are over, the temporary air conditioning units shipped in for athletes are poised to have a second — and hopefully third — life.

There was a good amount of drama around these units. Planners initially didn’t include them in their design for competitors’ housing, opting instead for more energy-efficient options. Moreover, AC just hasn’t been as necessary in cooler climates until lately and is still relatively uncommon in homes across Europe. But heatwaves pose big risks for athletes, many of whom decided to supply their own mobile units to stay cool.

Thousands of them were reportedly ordered for the Olympic Village, where more than 14,000 athletes stayed during the Olympics. The Games came to a close on August 11th, but the AC units aren’t going anywhere yet. They’ll stay there a while longer for the Paralympics scheduled for August 28th through September 8th.

And while competitors in the Olympics had to pay for their own air conditioning, organizers say they’ll provide units to Paralympics athletes “free of charge for medical reasons, at a ratio of one for every three athletes” in an email to The Verge. The village is expected to host some 8,000 athletes during the Paralympics. Some of the people competing have disabilities that affect their bodies’ ability to regulate temperature, the email notes.

Heat was already a safety concern going into the Olympics. Beyond affecting athletes’ performance, unyielding heat can potentially also lead to exhaustion and heatstroke. Temperatures in Paris reached upwards of 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) in Paris in July as a heat dome suffocated the Games for several days.

Similar concerns have been raised at previous Olympic events, but the risks rise each year with climate change. “The world watched athletes swelter in 35°C heat. If the atmosphere wasn’t overloaded with emissions from burning fossil fuel, Paris would have been about 3°C cooler and much safer for sport,” Friederike Otto, a physicist with an international group of researchers called World Weather Attribution, said on X on July 31st. World Weather Attribution published an analysis that found that the heatwave affecting the region that month wouldn’t have occurred without human-induced climate change.

Paris Olympic organizers faced a conundrum. Air conditioners can help people stay safe during a heatwave, but they also contribute to the climate crisis because of all the energy they burn through. ACs can also stress the power grid during heatwaves, which can lead to dangerous power outages when people need cooling the most. Urban planners around the world are trying to find more sustainable options, including installing energy-efficient heat pumps or topping buildings with gardens or white roofs to avoid trapping heat.

The Paris Olympic Village used a geothermal cooling system that piped cool water underneath the floor. Paired with other insulating design elements, the system was intended “to achieve a target temperature of 23-26° Celsius [73.4-78.8 Fahrenheit] at the hottest time of the day in a heatwave,” the email from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) says.

That just wasn’t enough to assuage competing teams’ concerns. The IOC says that the AC units were rented. After the Paralympics, they’re supposed to be refurbished and reused by the supplier.

The village will continue to rely on its built-in cooling system, part of an effort to turn it into a new “sustainable city district” after competitors leave. That includes plans for 2,500 homes, a student residence, and a hotel — all designed with the hopes of minimizing their impact on the environment.

“We tried to find a balance in the design and fit-out of the Village between a long-term objective to create a sustainable neighbourhood; and a short-term responsibility to give high-performance athletes the best conditions in which to prepare,” IOC spokesperson Arthur Fel said in the email to The Verge. “A/C is culturally widespread in some parts of the world, but not in France.”

Read More 

Google design director Claude Zellweger holds up a Pixel 9 series phone in a form-fitting case. “It’s the first time we’ve designed the phone and case hand in hand,” he says. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

There’s one thing about the just-announced Google Pixel 9 that’s hard to convey in photos — its camera bar is prominent. Bigger than ever before. It’s roughly as thick as two US quarters stacked together — nearly a third as thick as the entire rest of the phone. It’s so big even the vanilla Pixel 9 is now roughly as thick as a “Pro” iPhone, with a far more prominent camera module.
“A modern and unapologetic approach”
I’ve never felt a bump quite like it, but I don’t hate it! I argued in 2022 that Google’s camera bar was a good thing: the first major smartphone design element that’s truly Google’s own. In an era when most everyone’s phone is a simple rounded rectangle, it’s a playful way to stand out, giving the phone a cute robot face.
I ask Claude Zellweger what he thinks about the beefier bump — and he says it’s “absolutely intentional.” As a director of design for Pixel phones, he’s the man behind the team behind the camera bar, and he calls it a “modern and unapologetic approach.”

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
The Pixel 9 and its big camera bar.

I don’t bring up the idea that the camera bar gives the Pixel a cute robo-face, and neither does Zellweger — when I ask for his reasoning, he says the bar’s simply “the most efficient way to package these camera modules” and that it’s designed to highlight that minimalist beauty. “There’s a purity to our photography, right? We want it to be reflective of that.” (Elsewhere, Google says the camera bar design is inspired by the shape of the search bar.)
But while he says Google wants to “set a new era for phone design” with the Pixel 9, he doesn’t think a big bar will necessarily dominate Google’s future phones forever. To bump or not to bump? He says it depends on how much future phone buyers need big camera hardware inside.
“The desire to have really good photography is not going to go away,” Zellweger says. Today, that means big sensors and big lenses, which mean big bumps if you want the rest of the phone to stay thin.
But he suggests that designers might someday use thinner hardware because the computational photography and AI post-production techniques that Google and its rivals use could fill in gaps if thicker cameras were to be removed. (One example: Google just released its Zoom Enhance feature, which might someday lessen the demand for a long zoom lens.)
He says designers will likely revisit the ratio of camera hardware to phone hardware, as the entire concept of a “camera” continues to evolve.

Speaking of smaller hardware: I ask Zellweger how he feels about small phones, the ones that have largely died after Apple and Google stopped selling them. (Some would argue they don’t sell well; I maintain these companies have never given gadget enthusiasts a true choice.) Surprisingly, Zellweger says he’s personally a small phone fan — and pulls out his own Pixel 9 Pro, which is the same size as the Pixel 9, to demonstrate that Google’s no longer pushing you to buy the biggest phone to get the best features.
But when I point out that his 6.3-inch phone is nowhere near as small as my beloved old 5.4-inch iPhone Mini, he says modern expectations make that harder. “Building small phones is just fundamentally a bigger challenge,” he says, ticking off battery life, cameras, thermals, and user experience as things that tend to help push manufacturers toward taller and wider handsets. He says many people expect to watch video or play games on phones these days and, therefore, prefer bigger screens.
But it might not always be that way, Zellweger says. “I could see a future in which some people have different priorities about what they use their devices for, and there, some compromises can be made.”

Google design director Claude Zellweger holds up a Pixel 9 series phone in a form-fitting case. “It’s the first time we’ve designed the phone and case hand in hand,” he says. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

There’s one thing about the just-announced Google Pixel 9 that’s hard to convey in photos — its camera bar is prominent. Bigger than ever before. It’s roughly as thick as two US quarters stacked together — nearly a third as thick as the entire rest of the phone. It’s so big even the vanilla Pixel 9 is now roughly as thick as a “Pro” iPhone, with a far more prominent camera module.

I’ve never felt a bump quite like it, but I don’t hate it! I argued in 2022 that Google’s camera bar was a good thing: the first major smartphone design element that’s truly Google’s own. In an era when most everyone’s phone is a simple rounded rectangle, it’s a playful way to stand out, giving the phone a cute robot face.

I ask Claude Zellweger what he thinks about the beefier bump — and he says it’s “absolutely intentional.” As a director of design for Pixel phones, he’s the man behind the team behind the camera bar, and he calls it a “modern and unapologetic approach.”

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
The Pixel 9 and its big camera bar.

I don’t bring up the idea that the camera bar gives the Pixel a cute robo-face, and neither does Zellweger — when I ask for his reasoning, he says the bar’s simply “the most efficient way to package these camera modules” and that it’s designed to highlight that minimalist beauty. “There’s a purity to our photography, right? We want it to be reflective of that.” (Elsewhere, Google says the camera bar design is inspired by the shape of the search bar.)

But while he says Google wants to “set a new era for phone design” with the Pixel 9, he doesn’t think a big bar will necessarily dominate Google’s future phones forever. To bump or not to bump? He says it depends on how much future phone buyers need big camera hardware inside.

“The desire to have really good photography is not going to go away,” Zellweger says. Today, that means big sensors and big lenses, which mean big bumps if you want the rest of the phone to stay thin.

But he suggests that designers might someday use thinner hardware because the computational photography and AI post-production techniques that Google and its rivals use could fill in gaps if thicker cameras were to be removed. (One example: Google just released its Zoom Enhance feature, which might someday lessen the demand for a long zoom lens.)

He says designers will likely revisit the ratio of camera hardware to phone hardware, as the entire concept of a “camera” continues to evolve.

Speaking of smaller hardware: I ask Zellweger how he feels about small phones, the ones that have largely died after Apple and Google stopped selling them. (Some would argue they don’t sell well; I maintain these companies have never given gadget enthusiasts a true choice.) Surprisingly, Zellweger says he’s personally a small phone fan — and pulls out his own Pixel 9 Pro, which is the same size as the Pixel 9, to demonstrate that Google’s no longer pushing you to buy the biggest phone to get the best features.

But when I point out that his 6.3-inch phone is nowhere near as small as my beloved old 5.4-inch iPhone Mini, he says modern expectations make that harder. “Building small phones is just fundamentally a bigger challenge,” he says, ticking off battery life, cameras, thermals, and user experience as things that tend to help push manufacturers toward taller and wider handsets. He says many people expect to watch video or play games on phones these days and, therefore, prefer bigger screens.

But it might not always be that way, Zellweger says. “I could see a future in which some people have different priorities about what they use their devices for, and there, some compromises can be made.”

Read More 

Unlike last-gen models that relied on the slower Qi standard, Anker’s latest MagGo stand offers MagSafe speeds without MagSafe pricing. | Image: Anker

Of all the features Apple has introduced to the iPhone over the last several years, few of them have been as convenient in my day-to-day life as StandBy mode. This docking mode is fantastic if you want to use your phone as a clock or ad hoc smart display — that is, assuming you own the right desk accessory. Fortunately, Anker’s latest 2-in-1 MagGo Wireless Charger is available for $39.99 ($20 off) from Amazon with an on-page coupon or from Anker with offer code WSCPV22GRTOZ.

Like previous models, Anker’s newest charging stand isn’t particularly flashy. The sleek 2-in-1 contraption features a magnetic charging pad on the top for juicing MagSafe-compatible iPhones and a slower charging pad on the bottom for supplying a pair of wireless earbuds and other accessories with up to 5W of power. The difference here is that the larger, adjustable pad supports the newer Qi2 standard, preventing you from having to buy an official MagSafe-certified accessory just to achieve speedy 15W charging speeds. The downside is that, at least right now, the only phones that support the open standard are the iPhone 12, 13, 14, and 15 series phones. Well, that and the recently announced HMD Skyline, which, if I’m being totally honest, doesn’t really count. Get it together, Google.

More deals, discounts, and ways to save

Today is the last day to take advantage of Woot’s apt-titled “Video Game Summer Sale,” which runs through 12:59AM ET tonight. While many of the games we previously plugged from the sale are no longer available, you can still save $20 on what is arguably the best Nintendo Switch game of all time, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (now $39.99), and $30 on the second-gen Backbone One (now $69.99). This is the Lightning-equipped version of Backbone’s PlayStation-style mobile controller, mind you, meaning it won’t work with iPhone 15 or any future USB-C models.
Summer may be winding down, but much of the US will likely see high temps throughout the rest of August. Thankfully, if you’re looking for a way to stay cool, Vornado’s four-speed 660 AE Large Air Circulator is currently down to $107 (about $23 off) at Amazon, which is the best price we’ve seen on the powerful, Alexa-enabled smart fan since the beginning of February.
The Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera, aka the best wireless outdoor floodlight cam you can buy, is on sale for an all-time low of $129.99 ($120 off) at Amazon and Newegg. The battery-powered security camera works with all your major smart home platforms (including Alexa and Google Home) and offers several installation options, along with a motion-activated siren, color night vision, a 160-degree field of view, and two-way audio. It also can capture 2K video with HDR, though sadly, some features are locked behind Arlo’s Secure service, which costs $7.99 a month for a single camera.

Unlike last-gen models that relied on the slower Qi standard, Anker’s latest MagGo stand offers MagSafe speeds without MagSafe pricing. | Image: Anker

Of all the features Apple has introduced to the iPhone over the last several years, few of them have been as convenient in my day-to-day life as StandBy mode. This docking mode is fantastic if you want to use your phone as a clock or ad hoc smart display — that is, assuming you own the right desk accessory. Fortunately, Anker’s latest 2-in-1 MagGo Wireless Charger is available for $39.99 ($20 off) from Amazon with an on-page coupon or from Anker with offer code WSCPV22GRTOZ.

Like previous models, Anker’s newest charging stand isn’t particularly flashy. The sleek 2-in-1 contraption features a magnetic charging pad on the top for juicing MagSafe-compatible iPhones and a slower charging pad on the bottom for supplying a pair of wireless earbuds and other accessories with up to 5W of power. The difference here is that the larger, adjustable pad supports the newer Qi2 standard, preventing you from having to buy an official MagSafe-certified accessory just to achieve speedy 15W charging speeds. The downside is that, at least right now, the only phones that support the open standard are the iPhone 12, 13, 14, and 15 series phones. Well, that and the recently announced HMD Skyline, which, if I’m being totally honest, doesn’t really count. Get it together, Google.

More deals, discounts, and ways to save

Today is the last day to take advantage of Woot’s apt-titled “Video Game Summer Sale,” which runs through 12:59AM ET tonight. While many of the games we previously plugged from the sale are no longer available, you can still save $20 on what is arguably the best Nintendo Switch game of all time, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (now $39.99), and $30 on the second-gen Backbone One (now $69.99). This is the Lightning-equipped version of Backbone’s PlayStation-style mobile controller, mind you, meaning it won’t work with iPhone 15 or any future USB-C models.
Summer may be winding down, but much of the US will likely see high temps throughout the rest of August. Thankfully, if you’re looking for a way to stay cool, Vornado’s four-speed 660 AE Large Air Circulator is currently down to $107 (about $23 off) at Amazon, which is the best price we’ve seen on the powerful, Alexa-enabled smart fan since the beginning of February.
The Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera, aka the best wireless outdoor floodlight cam you can buy, is on sale for an all-time low of $129.99 ($120 off) at Amazon and Newegg. The battery-powered security camera works with all your major smart home platforms (including Alexa and Google Home) and offers several installation options, along with a motion-activated siren, color night vision, a 160-degree field of view, and two-way audio. It also can capture 2K video with HDR, though sadly, some features are locked behind Arlo’s Secure service, which costs $7.99 a month for a single camera.

Read More 

It’s been a while, old friend. | Photo by Callum Booth / The Verge

Is this the tipping point that causes third-party iOS app stores to take off? For the first time since August 2020, Fortnite is back on iOS, and it’s just as exciting and engaging as ever — although a lot has changed in that time.
Following years of legal battles, rumors, and the launch of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Epic Games’ flagship title has reappeared on the newly launched Epic Games Store on iOS and Android, as well as the AltStore PAL third-party marketplace.
There are some caveats. While Android users across the globe can take the plunge, only EU-based iPhone owners can download the store as a result of the DMA prying open Apple’s grip. The launch of the Epic Games Store gives us a glimpse at what’s possible following these regulations and could be a seismic moment for third-party iOS marketplaces in general.
While four alternative app stores have been released since the EU’s March compliance date, none have particularly taken the sector by storm. Setapp Mobile is constantly adding more apps but remains in closed beta; Mobivention is B2B-focused; Aptoide hasn’t fully launched and only allows 500 additional users a day; and AltStore PAL has had minimal success getting apps notarized.
But today’s launch of the Epic Games Store may change all that. The company’s catalog of world-famous titles like Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League may be the spark that ignites a public fervor for alternative app stores.
Before we discuss what that future could look like, we first need to take a step back and actually install the Epic Games Store.
Installation

Getting the marketplace onto an iPhone in Europe is similar to other alternative marketplaces, in that it requires roughly a dozen screen interactions. For new users, this can be daunting, but Epic’s helpful instructions are clear and easy to follow. There is one caveat where the FAQ claims the Epic Games Store can be installed on phones running “iOS 17.4 or later,” but we had to update to 17.6.
The Epic Games Store on both iOS and Android launches with Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and a mobile version of Fall Guys. After you have the marketplace set up, getting a game on your phone is as easy as clicking “install.”
The Fortnite gameplay experience on iOS is brilliant. The game runs perfectly, and I had no issues with the responsiveness of the screen controls, network connection, or graphics. The only element that felt strange was the fact we’ve been denied playing Fortnite in this way for so long.

Broadly, the process of getting the Epic Games Store on Android is similar to iOS. The installation requires fewer steps, but it still requires eight screen interactions. Following that, it was clear sailing. I installed Fortnite and went rampaging. The gameplay was similar to that of the iPhone: smooth and seamless, the only visible difference down to hardware since I tested with a rickety Google Pixel 5 on Android and a more capable iPhone Pro Max 13 running iOS.
The Epic Games Store isn’t the only way to access the company’s titles. Users of AltStore PAL can also download Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and Fall Guys Mobile, with support for Aptoide coming in the future.
Apple makes the installation of AltStore PAL on iOS just as onerous. The marketplace then requires users to add “sources,” which are URLs containing JSON files that hold app metadata. While that might sound complex, it’s simple in practice: you add a link and receive a list of apps from a developer. For Epic Games’ titles, it’s even easier, as the store is included in AltStore PAL’s recommended sources.

Adding Epic Games is easy since AltStore PAL already lists it as a recommended source.

After adding Epic Games as a source, installing the games is easy.

After adding Epic Games as a source, all you need to do is start a download and get cracking. Easy as pie. The major difference is the Epic Games Store is more elegant and capable than AltStore PAL. This is not only in terms of the user interface but also the fact that the Epic Games Store will soon support Parental Controls, something that will enable guardians to restrict access to age-inappropriate titles and block spending. Overall, though, both marketplaces enable the same thing: installing and playing games.
A watershed moment?
Epic is taking a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats approach in its support for alternative app stores that could make it a lot more money — but only if it can convince the public that the water’s safe outside of Big Tech’s ecosystem.
Earlier this week, Epic Games gave AltStore PAL a “MegaGrant,” which made it free to use, thus significantly increasing its chances of going mainstream. And since AltStore PAL doesn’t host developers’ apps itself, it doesn’t take a cut of any downloads or eat into Epic’s profit. Epic, therefore, has little to lose but much to gain by distributing its games on its own store and other third-party marketplaces.
There’s also a PR element to Epic’s actions as it courts the favor of regulators in the EU, UK, and US who are actively looking into antitrust complaints against Apple and Google. Several possible outcomes could positively impact Epic’s coffers.

Screengrab from Android.

Regardless of Epic’s motivations, the sector has been crying out for a big name to come along and attract a wide audience. The Fortnite-owning Epic Games could achieve just that. If people flock to these third-party app stores, it will act as a clarion call to other developers, many of whom would, on paper, rather give Epic Games a 12 percent revenue cut than suffer Apple’s 30 percent cut on the App Store.
However, last week, Apple introduced new rules to take a slice of off-platform sales, which makes third-party app stores less attractive to developers. And mass adoption of these stores will require lots of users not to get scared off by the deluge of warnings they see during installation.
Apple especially doesn’t want alternative marketplaces to take off and threaten its hegemony. It earns an estimated $70 billion in App Store revenue annually, and it won’t give that up without fighting tooth and nail.
Epic Games has put the future of third-party marketplaces on iOS on a knife-edge. Now all we can do is wait and see if it can cut into Apple’s dominance.

It’s been a while, old friend. | Photo by Callum Booth / The Verge

Is this the tipping point that causes third-party iOS app stores to take off?

For the first time since August 2020, Fortnite is back on iOS, and it’s just as exciting and engaging as ever — although a lot has changed in that time.

Following years of legal battles, rumors, and the launch of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Epic Games’ flagship title has reappeared on the newly launched Epic Games Store on iOS and Android, as well as the AltStore PAL third-party marketplace.

There are some caveats. While Android users across the globe can take the plunge, only EU-based iPhone owners can download the store as a result of the DMA prying open Apple’s grip. The launch of the Epic Games Store gives us a glimpse at what’s possible following these regulations and could be a seismic moment for third-party iOS marketplaces in general.

While four alternative app stores have been released since the EU’s March compliance date, none have particularly taken the sector by storm. Setapp Mobile is constantly adding more apps but remains in closed beta; Mobivention is B2B-focused; Aptoide hasn’t fully launched and only allows 500 additional users a day; and AltStore PAL has had minimal success getting apps notarized.

But today’s launch of the Epic Games Store may change all that. The company’s catalog of world-famous titles like Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League may be the spark that ignites a public fervor for alternative app stores.

Before we discuss what that future could look like, we first need to take a step back and actually install the Epic Games Store.

Installation

Getting the marketplace onto an iPhone in Europe is similar to other alternative marketplaces, in that it requires roughly a dozen screen interactions. For new users, this can be daunting, but Epic’s helpful instructions are clear and easy to follow. There is one caveat where the FAQ claims the Epic Games Store can be installed on phones running “iOS 17.4 or later,” but we had to update to 17.6.

The Epic Games Store on both iOS and Android launches with Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and a mobile version of Fall Guys. After you have the marketplace set up, getting a game on your phone is as easy as clicking “install.”

The Fortnite gameplay experience on iOS is brilliant. The game runs perfectly, and I had no issues with the responsiveness of the screen controls, network connection, or graphics. The only element that felt strange was the fact we’ve been denied playing Fortnite in this way for so long.

Broadly, the process of getting the Epic Games Store on Android is similar to iOS. The installation requires fewer steps, but it still requires eight screen interactions. Following that, it was clear sailing. I installed Fortnite and went rampaging. The gameplay was similar to that of the iPhone: smooth and seamless, the only visible difference down to hardware since I tested with a rickety Google Pixel 5 on Android and a more capable iPhone Pro Max 13 running iOS.

The Epic Games Store isn’t the only way to access the company’s titles. Users of AltStore PAL can also download Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and Fall Guys Mobile, with support for Aptoide coming in the future.

Apple makes the installation of AltStore PAL on iOS just as onerous. The marketplace then requires users to add “sources,” which are URLs containing JSON files that hold app metadata. While that might sound complex, it’s simple in practice: you add a link and receive a list of apps from a developer. For Epic Games’ titles, it’s even easier, as the store is included in AltStore PAL’s recommended sources.

After adding Epic Games as a source, all you need to do is start a download and get cracking. Easy as pie. The major difference is the Epic Games Store is more elegant and capable than AltStore PAL. This is not only in terms of the user interface but also the fact that the Epic Games Store will soon support Parental Controls, something that will enable guardians to restrict access to age-inappropriate titles and block spending. Overall, though, both marketplaces enable the same thing: installing and playing games.

A watershed moment?

Epic is taking a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats approach in its support for alternative app stores that could make it a lot more money — but only if it can convince the public that the water’s safe outside of Big Tech’s ecosystem.

Earlier this week, Epic Games gave AltStore PAL a “MegaGrant,” which made it free to use, thus significantly increasing its chances of going mainstream. And since AltStore PAL doesn’t host developers’ apps itself, it doesn’t take a cut of any downloads or eat into Epic’s profit. Epic, therefore, has little to lose but much to gain by distributing its games on its own store and other third-party marketplaces.

There’s also a PR element to Epic’s actions as it courts the favor of regulators in the EU, UK, and US who are actively looking into antitrust complaints against Apple and Google. Several possible outcomes could positively impact Epic’s coffers.

Screengrab from Android.

Regardless of Epic’s motivations, the sector has been crying out for a big name to come along and attract a wide audience. The Fortnite-owning Epic Games could achieve just that. If people flock to these third-party app stores, it will act as a clarion call to other developers, many of whom would, on paper, rather give Epic Games a 12 percent revenue cut than suffer Apple’s 30 percent cut on the App Store.

However, last week, Apple introduced new rules to take a slice of off-platform sales, which makes third-party app stores less attractive to developers. And mass adoption of these stores will require lots of users not to get scared off by the deluge of warnings they see during installation.

Apple especially doesn’t want alternative marketplaces to take off and threaten its hegemony. It earns an estimated $70 billion in App Store revenue annually, and it won’t give that up without fighting tooth and nail.

Epic Games has put the future of third-party marketplaces on iOS on a knife-edge. Now all we can do is wait and see if it can cut into Apple’s dominance.

Read More 

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

At Google’s gadget launch this week, it took almost half an hour before Google actually talked about its new gadgets. There’s a lot to be excited about inside the new Pixel 9 lineup and the Pixel Watch 3, but Google’s event made its true priorities clear. AI matters more to Google than Pixel, more than Android, more than just about anything.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about all of Google’s AI announcements, and what they might mean for how you use your devices going forward. Is this a paradigm shift? Since so much of Google’s focus is on the Pixel’s camera, we also talk about the ongoing “what is a photo” apocalypse, and whether what we’re capturing is even photos anymore.

After that, Nilay tells us about his adventures judging the TV Shootout, which included two days of squinting at incredibly impressive displays trying to figure out which one is truly the best. He learned a lot about how to look at a screen, and about the state of the art in TV tech, and he has lots to share.
Next we run down a bunch of the week’s regulatory news, as Apple continues to pick odd fights with developers and the Epic / Google judge continues to threaten to tear the company apart. It’s remarkable how much the winds have shifted in the Big Tech regulation fight, and it seems change is only going to come faster now.
Finally, we do a lightning round of stories, on everything from Flipboard’s fediverse moves to Eric Schmidt’s very telling comments on AI to the fastest phone charger you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Watts for days.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with Google:

Google Pixel 9 launch event: all the announcements and products
AI overshadowed Pixel at the Pixel event

All the AI features coming to Google’s Pixel 9 series
Google debuts Pixel Studio AI image-making app
Google makes your Pixel screenshots searchable with Recall-like AI feature
Every time Google dinged Apple during its Pixel 9 launch event
Google Gemini’s voice chat mode is here
Using Gemini Live was faster than Google, but also more awkward
From Wired: For Google’s Pixel Camera Team, It’s All About the Memories

And on the TV Shootout:

Inside the competition that named the Sony A95L the best TV of 2024
And on app store regulation:

Patreon adds Apple tax to avoid getting kicked out of the App Store
Apple is finally going to open up iPhone tap-to-pay
Apple relents and approves Spotify app with EU pricing
Epic judge says he’ll ‘tear the barriers down’ on Google’s app store monopoly

And in the lightning round:

Alex Cranz’s pick: Realme’s 320W fast charging can fully charge a smartphone in four and a half minutes

David Pierce’s pick: Halide’s Process Zero feature captures photos with no AI processing

David’s other pick: Flipboard is going to let you follow fediverse accounts right inside the app

Nilay Patel’s pick: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP, hire lawyers to “clean up the mess”

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

At Google’s gadget launch this week, it took almost half an hour before Google actually talked about its new gadgets. There’s a lot to be excited about inside the new Pixel 9 lineup and the Pixel Watch 3, but Google’s event made its true priorities clear. AI matters more to Google than Pixel, more than Android, more than just about anything.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about all of Google’s AI announcements, and what they might mean for how you use your devices going forward. Is this a paradigm shift? Since so much of Google’s focus is on the Pixel’s camera, we also talk about the ongoing “what is a photo” apocalypse, and whether what we’re capturing is even photos anymore.

After that, Nilay tells us about his adventures judging the TV Shootout, which included two days of squinting at incredibly impressive displays trying to figure out which one is truly the best. He learned a lot about how to look at a screen, and about the state of the art in TV tech, and he has lots to share.

Next we run down a bunch of the week’s regulatory news, as Apple continues to pick odd fights with developers and the Epic / Google judge continues to threaten to tear the company apart. It’s remarkable how much the winds have shifted in the Big Tech regulation fight, and it seems change is only going to come faster now.

Finally, we do a lightning round of stories, on everything from Flipboard’s fediverse moves to Eric Schmidt’s very telling comments on AI to the fastest phone charger you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Watts for days.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with Google:

Google Pixel 9 launch event: all the announcements and products
AI overshadowed Pixel at the Pixel event

All the AI features coming to Google’s Pixel 9 series
Google debuts Pixel Studio AI image-making app
Google makes your Pixel screenshots searchable with Recall-like AI feature
Every time Google dinged Apple during its Pixel 9 launch event
Google Gemini’s voice chat mode is here
Using Gemini Live was faster than Google, but also more awkward
From Wired: For Google’s Pixel Camera Team, It’s All About the Memories

And on the TV Shootout:

Inside the competition that named the Sony A95L the best TV of 2024

And on app store regulation:

Patreon adds Apple tax to avoid getting kicked out of the App Store
Apple is finally going to open up iPhone tap-to-pay
Apple relents and approves Spotify app with EU pricing
Epic judge says he’ll ‘tear the barriers down’ on Google’s app store monopoly

And in the lightning round:

Alex Cranz’s pick: Realme’s 320W fast charging can fully charge a smartphone in four and a half minutes

David Pierce’s pick: Halide’s Process Zero feature captures photos with no AI processing

David’s other pick: Flipboard is going to let you follow fediverse accounts right inside the app

Nilay Patel’s pick: Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP, hire lawyers to “clean up the mess”

Read More 

Image: Verity

Ikea has launched an upgrade to its stock-counting drone system — and now it’s coming to the US, too. The Swedish furniture chain announced that the autonomous drones will soon operate alongside workers in its Perryville, Maryland, distribution center, where Ikea started installation this summer.
The Verity-branded drones also come with a new AI-powered system that allows them to fly around warehouses 24/7. That means they’ll now operate alongside human workers, helping to count inventory as well as identify if something’s in the wrong spot. Previously, the drones only flew during nonoperational hours.

Image: Ikea

Parag Parekh, the chief digital officer for Ikea retail, says in the press release that flights are prescheduled and that the drones use a “custom indoor positioning system to navigate higher levels of storage locations.” They also have an obstacle detection system that allows them to reroute their paths to avoid collisions. Ikea is also working on several upgrades for the drones, including the ability to inspect unit loads and racks.
So far, Ikea’s fleet consists of more than 250 drones operating across 73 warehouses in nine countries. Ikea first launched its drone system in partnership with Verity in 2021 and expanded it to more locations throughout Europe last year. Now, Ikea plans on bringing its AI-upgraded drones to more distribution centers in Europe and North America, which the company says will help “reduce the ergonomic strain on [human] co-workers, allowing them to focus on lighter and more interesting tasks.”

Image: Verity

Ikea has launched an upgrade to its stock-counting drone system — and now it’s coming to the US, too. The Swedish furniture chain announced that the autonomous drones will soon operate alongside workers in its Perryville, Maryland, distribution center, where Ikea started installation this summer.

The Verity-branded drones also come with a new AI-powered system that allows them to fly around warehouses 24/7. That means they’ll now operate alongside human workers, helping to count inventory as well as identify if something’s in the wrong spot. Previously, the drones only flew during nonoperational hours.

Image: Ikea

Parag Parekh, the chief digital officer for Ikea retail, says in the press release that flights are prescheduled and that the drones use a “custom indoor positioning system to navigate higher levels of storage locations.” They also have an obstacle detection system that allows them to reroute their paths to avoid collisions. Ikea is also working on several upgrades for the drones, including the ability to inspect unit loads and racks.

So far, Ikea’s fleet consists of more than 250 drones operating across 73 warehouses in nine countries. Ikea first launched its drone system in partnership with Verity in 2021 and expanded it to more locations throughout Europe last year. Now, Ikea plans on bringing its AI-upgraded drones to more distribution centers in Europe and North America, which the company says will help “reduce the ergonomic strain on [human] co-workers, allowing them to focus on lighter and more interesting tasks.”

Read More 

Kids just learning to ride a scooter can use a power assist mode that doesn’t require them to master the throttle controller. | Image: Segway

Segway’s new Ninebot eKickScooter C2 Lite is targeted at kids who have not yet mastered operating a throttle control, and nervous parents who want to limit the top speed of a young rider who’s still learning.
Designed for kids aged six to 10 years old who are still under 110 pounds, the eKickScooter C2 Lite has a smaller frame that’s easier and safer for children to operate than a larger scooter designed for adults. The eKickScooter C2 Lite also offers three different speed modes designed to match a child’s riding proficiency.

Standard mode includes a less aggressive acceleration when the throttle is activated, and is limited to a top speed of 7.5MPH.
Sport mode increases the acceleration for kids who are more experienced, and boosts the scooter’s top speed to 9.9MPH.
Power assist mode is similar to sport mode with a top speed of 9.9MPH, but instead of using the throttle control, kids power the scooter by pushing off the ground with one foot. Every push is boosted by the scooter’s electric motor, so kids glide farther between them.

Image: Segway
Under scooter LEDs light up the ground and make young riders easier to see in the dark.

After a full 5.5 hour charge the eKickScooter C2 Lite has a range of around 5.6 miles in sport mode, and a runtime of about 70 minutes. It includes a mechanical hand brake which kids may already be familiar with using on a bicycle, and LEDs on the underside that can project one of 256 different colors on the ground as it’s being ridden, improving visibility when it’s darker outside.
It’s available now through Segway’s online store for $199.99, with one additional peace of mind feature for parents. The scooter is also IPX4 water resistant so if it gets abandoned on the driveway after a ride and caught in a light rain, there should be no risk of damage.

Kids just learning to ride a scooter can use a power assist mode that doesn’t require them to master the throttle controller. | Image: Segway

Segway’s new Ninebot eKickScooter C2 Lite is targeted at kids who have not yet mastered operating a throttle control, and nervous parents who want to limit the top speed of a young rider who’s still learning.

Designed for kids aged six to 10 years old who are still under 110 pounds, the eKickScooter C2 Lite has a smaller frame that’s easier and safer for children to operate than a larger scooter designed for adults. The eKickScooter C2 Lite also offers three different speed modes designed to match a child’s riding proficiency.

Standard mode includes a less aggressive acceleration when the throttle is activated, and is limited to a top speed of 7.5MPH.
Sport mode increases the acceleration for kids who are more experienced, and boosts the scooter’s top speed to 9.9MPH.
Power assist mode is similar to sport mode with a top speed of 9.9MPH, but instead of using the throttle control, kids power the scooter by pushing off the ground with one foot. Every push is boosted by the scooter’s electric motor, so kids glide farther between them.

Image: Segway
Under scooter LEDs light up the ground and make young riders easier to see in the dark.

After a full 5.5 hour charge the eKickScooter C2 Lite has a range of around 5.6 miles in sport mode, and a runtime of about 70 minutes. It includes a mechanical hand brake which kids may already be familiar with using on a bicycle, and LEDs on the underside that can project one of 256 different colors on the ground as it’s being ridden, improving visibility when it’s darker outside.

It’s available now through Segway’s online store for $199.99, with one additional peace of mind feature for parents. The scooter is also IPX4 water resistant so if it gets abandoned on the driveway after a ride and caught in a light rain, there should be no risk of damage.

Read More 

Image: The Verge

AT&T and Verizon have taken issue with SpaceX and T-Mobile’s upcoming direct-to-cell satellite offering, arguing that SpaceX’s implementation will harm their respective mobile broadband networks. Filings that urge the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reject SpaceX’s request to waive out-of-band emission limits were submitted by AT&T and Verizon this week, joining similar opposition from satellite companies EchoStar and Omnispace.
T-Mobile announced the SpaceX partnership in 2022, pledging to eradicate dead zones by allowing mobile phones to connect to Starlink satellites. SpaceX is now seeking a “ninefold increase” to current power flux-density limits for out-of-band emissions to enact the Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) offer, which, according to AT&T, “would cause unacceptable harmful interference” to terrestrial mobile operations.
Specifically, AT&T’s technical analysis shows that SpaceX’s proposal would cause an 18 percent average reduction in network downlink throughput in an operational and representative AT&T PCS C Block market deployment. Primary terrestrial licenses and networks must be protected from SCS interference, and operations under SpaceX’s Waiver Request would fail to do so.

AT&T raised similar concerns in a previous complaint filed with the FCC in May of last year. Both Verizon and AT&T have also announced their own satellite-to-phone services with AST SpaceMobile, which are unlikely to roll out before 2025. The T-Mobile and SpaceX service is expected to launch sometime this fall, provided these complaints don’t create delays.

Image: The Verge

AT&T and Verizon have taken issue with SpaceX and T-Mobile’s upcoming direct-to-cell satellite offering, arguing that SpaceX’s implementation will harm their respective mobile broadband networks. Filings that urge the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reject SpaceX’s request to waive out-of-band emission limits were submitted by AT&T and Verizon this week, joining similar opposition from satellite companies EchoStar and Omnispace.

T-Mobile announced the SpaceX partnership in 2022, pledging to eradicate dead zones by allowing mobile phones to connect to Starlink satellites. SpaceX is now seeking a “ninefold increase” to current power flux-density limits for out-of-band emissions to enact the Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) offer, which, according to AT&T, “would cause unacceptable harmful interference” to terrestrial mobile operations.

Specifically, AT&T’s technical analysis shows that SpaceX’s proposal would cause an 18 percent average reduction in network downlink throughput in an operational and representative AT&T PCS C Block market deployment. Primary terrestrial licenses and networks must be protected from SCS interference, and operations under SpaceX’s Waiver Request would fail to do so.

AT&T raised similar concerns in a previous complaint filed with the FCC in May of last year. Both Verizon and AT&T have also announced their own satellite-to-phone services with AST SpaceMobile, which are unlikely to roll out before 2025. The T-Mobile and SpaceX service is expected to launch sometime this fall, provided these complaints don’t create delays.

Read More 

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics

Crowning the ‘King of TV’ is no small task. Mini LED TVs have a long way to go.
That was my big takeaway from a weekend spent judging the 20th annual Value Electronics TV Shootout, in which the best OLED TVs from Sony, Samsung, and LG went head-to-head with their Mini LED counterparts. The Sony A95L OLED won the competition for the second year in a row, while the new Sony Bravia 9 Mini LED was the best of the Mini LED TVs. (The winners are crowned “King Of TV,” which is a real trademark owned by Value Electronics — the certificate of which was proudly displayed during judging. It was serious!)
Value Electronics is a boutique high-end home theater store in Scarsdale, New York — owners Robert and Wendy Zohn founded it in 1998, and they’ve been running the TV Shootout since 2004. It gets covered in the world of high-end TVs every year, and the TV makers themselves all show up to hear the feedback. As a longtime TV nerd, I’ve been following the results of the Shootout for quite a while, so it was a thrill to meet Robert when I bought an A95L from the store after moving to the area last year and an even bigger thrill when he invited me to join the judging panel.
On the first day, we reviewed professionally calibrated 65-inch versions of the highest-end OLED and Mini LED TVs from each manufacturer; on the second day, we looked at the largest available sizes of those models in their out-of-the-box filmmaker modes with energy-saving features turned off. The TVs, listed at their 65-inch MSRPs, were:

Sony A95L, QD-OLED, $3,499
Samsung S95D, QD-OLED, $3,399
LG G4, OLED, $3,399
Sony XR90, Mini LED, $3,299
Samsung QN95D, Mini LED, $3,299
LG QNED90T, Mini LED, $1,899

Interestingly, Robert told the group that TCL and Hisense had specifically asked not to be included in the Shootout. “You can imagine what that means,” he said. “We had Vizio one year, and it was, respectfully, embarrassing for them.”

All the TVs were calibrated for the competition by Cecil Meade and DeWayne Davis, who are both professional ISF calibrators. (If you’re a devoted AVS Forum reader like me, you’ll know Meade and Davis as ClassyTech and D-Nice. Meeting them was also a thrill.) Content came from a Magnetar disc player, a Kaleidascape streamer, and an Apple TV, routed through a switching system built and operated by AVPro’s Jason Dustal.
The first day of the Shootout was meant to be extremely objective: Meade and Davis had calibrated each of the six TVs as best as possible, and our job as judges was to compare them to two $43,000 Sony BVM-HX3110 reference monitors and rate them on how well they matched across various categories. A lot of categories: we were each handed a clipboard with a stack of six testing scorecards, one each for things like 4K HDR Dark Scene, 4K HDR Bright Scene, and 1080P SDR Reference, with a grid of specific attributes to score, like Color Accuracy, Shadow Detail, and Low Color Luminance. We watched various movie clips that showcased these attributes and scored the TVs from 1–5 based on how closely they matched the reference monitors. All in all, we gave each TV over 60 total scores on the first day — it took nearly six hours.

Photo: Nilay Patel / The Verge
My scorecard for the 1080p SDR Reference tests. You can see I changed my mind a lot!

The TVs were set up in two groups of three in the front of the showroom, one for the OLEDs and one for the Mini LEDs, with a BVM in each group for comparison. Judges moved between the two groups, standing at various distances and angles while muttering about brightness levels and scratching out scores on our sheets, while the audience whispered amongst themselves.
We did know which TVs were which — Meade told me that “doing it blind is just for show” since we could see operating system elements as content was switched, and up close, the two QD-OLEDs from Samsung and Sony had their characteristic color fringing. “Anyone who’s a judge should be able to tell these apart,” he said.
It’s important to note that all of this means we were judging a very specific, objective definition of success for these TVs: how closely they could be calibrated to match a reference display. The closer the image was to what we saw on those BVM reference displays, the higher the score, and the farther from the reference, the lower the score. There were moments where some TVs might have looked subjectively better than the reference displays, particularly in dark scenes where the shadow detail was pumped up to be more visible, and we were still meant to give a lower score because it didn’t match the reference.

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics
OLEDs on the left, Mini LEDs on the right. Note that the photo doesn’t show colors accurately.

I’m stressing this because “can be calibrated to closely match a reference display” is but one thing to consider when evaluating a TV, and we did not touch on anything else, like gaming features, number of HDMI inputs, operating systems, or even Dolby Vision support (which the Samsungs do not have). This whole thing was about the limits of picture quality, and picture quality alone. There are a lot of reasons you might pick any of these TVs that have nothing to do with how closely they can be calibrated to match a reference display; Vergecast listeners know how often I talk about the Samsung Frame TV, which outsells all of these TVs, often at similar prices, with a picture quality best described as “whatever.”

It probably isn’t surprising that the Sony A95L was the TV that could be most closely calibrated to match a Sony reference display — although the Samsung S95D only came in second by .1 and really only lagged in general HDR performance. The LG G4 did much more poorly than I expected, with muddy shadow details and poor color in dark scenes and the odd color issue in bright scenes. I was really expecting more, given that the G4’s micro lens array OLED tech should allow for higher peak brightness, but the image processing really let it down during the calibrated test. (In a fascinating twist, the 83-inch G4 performed much better on the second day — we’ll come to that.)
All that said, the three OLEDs were extremely close to each other — you can really tell how mature OLED is as a display technology and how good calibrators have gotten at coaxing the maximum performance out of these panels. Perhaps the most telling thing about the Shootout was how quickly the judges could evaluate the Mini LEDs compared to the OLEDs — the OLEDs took vastly more time because the fine differences were ultimately so hard to see.

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics
That’s the $43,000 Sony BVM-HX3110 reference display on the bottom right. Again, the camera doesn’t capture colors accurately.

In comparison to the tight refinement of the OLEDs, the Mini LED sets were all over the map. There’s a lot of excitement for Mini LED as a technology to compete with OLED — Robert told us that he’d gotten more requests to compare the 83-inch LG G4 OLED to the 85-inch Sony XR90 Mini LED than he’d ever heard — but frankly, the picture quality just isn’t there yet, from any of the manufacturers. The Sony XR90 was by far the closest competitor to the OLED displays, but it still finished well behind the LG G4 in the overall scoring, and the (in fairness, much cheaper) LG QNED90T was so thoroughly outclassed on the first day it wasn’t even included on the second day.
The issue is that Mini LED TVs are still fundamentally LCD TVs, and they have familiar LCD issues — especially off-axis color and brightness shifts, which are pretty noticeable with TVs of this size. Moving just a few inches side to side would result in color shifts; we had to stand fairly far back from all the LCDs to see a uniform picture. Beyond that, the Mini LEDs all had less accurate, more washed-out colors than the OLEDs — going back to look at the OLEDs after judging the Mini LEDs was like a breath of fresh air.
In terms of Mini LED backlight performance, Sony’s determination and investment in this tech is clearly paying off — the XR90 had the least amount of blooming and the fastest response times and could hit peak brightness more consistently than the other sets. The Samsung put up a capable fight, but its backlight response times were clearly slower, and there was much more blooming — at times, it looked like a regular full-array LED backlight instead of a Mini LED set. The LG — which, again, is vastly less expensive than the others — was basically not in the game at all.
Having spent so much time looking at consumer displays from these companies over the years, it was fascinating to see how each company retained its signature looks even after calibration and even across display types. The Samsung had the most intense colors — color brightness is a big strength of the company’s quantum dot OLED tech — and aggressive upscaling, the LG prioritized contrast and seemed hungry for more brightness, and the Sony was the most restrained and confident. Outside of a direct calibrated comparison, it would be hard to fault any of the OLEDs, and a casual viewer probably wouldn’t pick out huge problems with the XR90. But there’s still a long way to go before Mini LEDs can catch up to OLED — or even hit the same sort of consistent performance ceiling that the OLEDs seem to have achieved.

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics
The setup for the second day. The 85-inch Sony XR90 and the 83-inch LG G4 were placed right next to each other for direct comparison.

The second day of testing was much more subjective and casual — the largest sizes of each TV were set up in their out-of-the-box filmmaker or professional modes with energy saver settings turned off. That combination disabled any extraneous motion or image processing while allowing the TVs to hit their peak brightness. We watched a variety of clips and compared them to the reference displays again, but instead of grading individual attributes, we merely ranked our top three sets for each clip.
The most immediate surprise here was that the larger 83-inch LG G4 was vastly more competitive in this test than the 65-inch version had been the day before. More than one judge commented that things would have been very different if the 65-inch version had looked like the 83-inch, especially in low-light scenes. According to the calibrators in the room, this is a common issue with the G4 — the 65-inch model often looks worse than the other sizes. It’s disappointing, but it does mean the 83-inch G4 compared much more favorably to the 77-inch A95L — in this test, it came in second place overall.
The out-of-the-box test also made it clear that none of these TVs render color particularly accurately from the factory. The OLEDs were generally more accurate, although the Samsung was oversaturated — the QD-OLED panel has a bigger color gamut than the rest, and Samsung appears to be overdriving it a bit too enthusiastically. The A95L was a little too magenta, and the LG was a bit too yellow. (Meade told me that his basic calibration for the A95L is to turn the reds down one click and the blues down four. You can see how close things are getting.)
The Mini LEDs were uniformly too pink, and my note for the Sony XR90 for the out-of-the-box test was simply that “the colors are all over the place.”
The uncalibrated test also allowed these sets to showcase their brightness — the LG G4 came closest to the reference display during a particularly brutal black-and-white Dune: Part Two scene, and the Sony XR90 was the brightest and most intense of all during the Vader lightsaber sequence in Rogue One. But the Mini LEDs struggled with blooming and responsiveness overall: the Samsung backlight was less accurate than the Sony’s and continued to look like a regular full array backlight at times, while the Sony backlight could be seen ramping brightness up and down during Aquaman 2. Neither Mini LED TV could render a full-screen starfield during Rogue One’s end credits — some stars caused blooming, while others were too dim to trigger the backlight, so they simply didn’t appear. (All three OLEDs obviously handled this just fine.)
All that said, I found myself debating whether to put the Sony XR90 Mini LED in third place over the Samsung S95D OLED in the out-of-the-box test. The Sony can get so bright, and the Samsung colors are so oversaturated, that it felt like a tradeoff either way. On top of that, I did not love the matte finish on the S95D screen, which some others in the room quite liked. In the end, though, I picked the S95D in third place — I’d rather have the true blacks and crisper image of the OLED, and it was not lost on me that the Samsung could be calibrated closer to reference than the Sony Mini LED.

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics
Serious business!

I don’t think there’s any doubt that OLED TVs remain the standard after judging the Shootout — the Sony A95L in particular can be calibrated to match a reference display so closely that complaining about its picture quality requires an almost obsessive devotion to image rendering arcana. (As an A95L owner, I can say it’s much easier to complain about the fact that it sometimes restarts itself for no reason.) But it’s also exciting to see Mini LED put up meaningful competition — I’m very curious to see how all of these companies do again next year.

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics

Crowning the ‘King of TV’ is no small task.

Mini LED TVs have a long way to go.

That was my big takeaway from a weekend spent judging the 20th annual Value Electronics TV Shootout, in which the best OLED TVs from Sony, Samsung, and LG went head-to-head with their Mini LED counterparts. The Sony A95L OLED won the competition for the second year in a row, while the new Sony Bravia 9 Mini LED was the best of the Mini LED TVs. (The winners are crowned “King Of TV,” which is a real trademark owned by Value Electronics — the certificate of which was proudly displayed during judging. It was serious!)

Value Electronics is a boutique high-end home theater store in Scarsdale, New York — owners Robert and Wendy Zohn founded it in 1998, and they’ve been running the TV Shootout since 2004. It gets covered in the world of high-end TVs every year, and the TV makers themselves all show up to hear the feedback. As a longtime TV nerd, I’ve been following the results of the Shootout for quite a while, so it was a thrill to meet Robert when I bought an A95L from the store after moving to the area last year and an even bigger thrill when he invited me to join the judging panel.

On the first day, we reviewed professionally calibrated 65-inch versions of the highest-end OLED and Mini LED TVs from each manufacturer; on the second day, we looked at the largest available sizes of those models in their out-of-the-box filmmaker modes with energy-saving features turned off. The TVs, listed at their 65-inch MSRPs, were:

Sony A95L, QD-OLED, $3,499
Samsung S95D, QD-OLED, $3,399
LG G4, OLED, $3,399
Sony XR90, Mini LED, $3,299
Samsung QN95D, Mini LED, $3,299
LG QNED90T, Mini LED, $1,899

Interestingly, Robert told the group that TCL and Hisense had specifically asked not to be included in the Shootout. “You can imagine what that means,” he said. “We had Vizio one year, and it was, respectfully, embarrassing for them.”

All the TVs were calibrated for the competition by Cecil Meade and DeWayne Davis, who are both professional ISF calibrators. (If you’re a devoted AVS Forum reader like me, you’ll know Meade and Davis as ClassyTech and D-Nice. Meeting them was also a thrill.) Content came from a Magnetar disc player, a Kaleidascape streamer, and an Apple TV, routed through a switching system built and operated by AVPro’s Jason Dustal.

The first day of the Shootout was meant to be extremely objective: Meade and Davis had calibrated each of the six TVs as best as possible, and our job as judges was to compare them to two $43,000 Sony BVM-HX3110 reference monitors and rate them on how well they matched across various categories. A lot of categories: we were each handed a clipboard with a stack of six testing scorecards, one each for things like 4K HDR Dark Scene, 4K HDR Bright Scene, and 1080P SDR Reference, with a grid of specific attributes to score, like Color Accuracy, Shadow Detail, and Low Color Luminance. We watched various movie clips that showcased these attributes and scored the TVs from 1–5 based on how closely they matched the reference monitors. All in all, we gave each TV over 60 total scores on the first day — it took nearly six hours.

Photo: Nilay Patel / The Verge
My scorecard for the 1080p SDR Reference tests. You can see I changed my mind a lot!

The TVs were set up in two groups of three in the front of the showroom, one for the OLEDs and one for the Mini LEDs, with a BVM in each group for comparison. Judges moved between the two groups, standing at various distances and angles while muttering about brightness levels and scratching out scores on our sheets, while the audience whispered amongst themselves.

We did know which TVs were which — Meade told me that “doing it blind is just for show” since we could see operating system elements as content was switched, and up close, the two QD-OLEDs from Samsung and Sony had their characteristic color fringing. “Anyone who’s a judge should be able to tell these apart,” he said.

It’s important to note that all of this means we were judging a very specific, objective definition of success for these TVs: how closely they could be calibrated to match a reference display. The closer the image was to what we saw on those BVM reference displays, the higher the score, and the farther from the reference, the lower the score. There were moments where some TVs might have looked subjectively better than the reference displays, particularly in dark scenes where the shadow detail was pumped up to be more visible, and we were still meant to give a lower score because it didn’t match the reference.

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics
OLEDs on the left, Mini LEDs on the right. Note that the photo doesn’t show colors accurately.

I’m stressing this because “can be calibrated to closely match a reference display” is but one thing to consider when evaluating a TV, and we did not touch on anything else, like gaming features, number of HDMI inputs, operating systems, or even Dolby Vision support (which the Samsungs do not have). This whole thing was about the limits of picture quality, and picture quality alone. There are a lot of reasons you might pick any of these TVs that have nothing to do with how closely they can be calibrated to match a reference display; Vergecast listeners know how often I talk about the Samsung Frame TV, which outsells all of these TVs, often at similar prices, with a picture quality best described as “whatever.”

It probably isn’t surprising that the Sony A95L was the TV that could be most closely calibrated to match a Sony reference display — although the Samsung S95D only came in second by .1 and really only lagged in general HDR performance. The LG G4 did much more poorly than I expected, with muddy shadow details and poor color in dark scenes and the odd color issue in bright scenes. I was really expecting more, given that the G4’s micro lens array OLED tech should allow for higher peak brightness, but the image processing really let it down during the calibrated test. (In a fascinating twist, the 83-inch G4 performed much better on the second day — we’ll come to that.)

All that said, the three OLEDs were extremely close to each other — you can really tell how mature OLED is as a display technology and how good calibrators have gotten at coaxing the maximum performance out of these panels. Perhaps the most telling thing about the Shootout was how quickly the judges could evaluate the Mini LEDs compared to the OLEDs — the OLEDs took vastly more time because the fine differences were ultimately so hard to see.

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics
That’s the $43,000 Sony BVM-HX3110 reference display on the bottom right. Again, the camera doesn’t capture colors accurately.

In comparison to the tight refinement of the OLEDs, the Mini LED sets were all over the map. There’s a lot of excitement for Mini LED as a technology to compete with OLED — Robert told us that he’d gotten more requests to compare the 83-inch LG G4 OLED to the 85-inch Sony XR90 Mini LED than he’d ever heard — but frankly, the picture quality just isn’t there yet, from any of the manufacturers. The Sony XR90 was by far the closest competitor to the OLED displays, but it still finished well behind the LG G4 in the overall scoring, and the (in fairness, much cheaper) LG QNED90T was so thoroughly outclassed on the first day it wasn’t even included on the second day.

The issue is that Mini LED TVs are still fundamentally LCD TVs, and they have familiar LCD issues — especially off-axis color and brightness shifts, which are pretty noticeable with TVs of this size. Moving just a few inches side to side would result in color shifts; we had to stand fairly far back from all the LCDs to see a uniform picture. Beyond that, the Mini LEDs all had less accurate, more washed-out colors than the OLEDs — going back to look at the OLEDs after judging the Mini LEDs was like a breath of fresh air.

In terms of Mini LED backlight performance, Sony’s determination and investment in this tech is clearly paying off — the XR90 had the least amount of blooming and the fastest response times and could hit peak brightness more consistently than the other sets. The Samsung put up a capable fight, but its backlight response times were clearly slower, and there was much more blooming — at times, it looked like a regular full-array LED backlight instead of a Mini LED set. The LG — which, again, is vastly less expensive than the others — was basically not in the game at all.

Having spent so much time looking at consumer displays from these companies over the years, it was fascinating to see how each company retained its signature looks even after calibration and even across display types. The Samsung had the most intense colors — color brightness is a big strength of the company’s quantum dot OLED tech — and aggressive upscaling, the LG prioritized contrast and seemed hungry for more brightness, and the Sony was the most restrained and confident. Outside of a direct calibrated comparison, it would be hard to fault any of the OLEDs, and a casual viewer probably wouldn’t pick out huge problems with the XR90. But there’s still a long way to go before Mini LEDs can catch up to OLED — or even hit the same sort of consistent performance ceiling that the OLEDs seem to have achieved.

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics
The setup for the second day. The 85-inch Sony XR90 and the 83-inch LG G4 were placed right next to each other for direct comparison.

The second day of testing was much more subjective and casual — the largest sizes of each TV were set up in their out-of-the-box filmmaker or professional modes with energy saver settings turned off. That combination disabled any extraneous motion or image processing while allowing the TVs to hit their peak brightness. We watched a variety of clips and compared them to the reference displays again, but instead of grading individual attributes, we merely ranked our top three sets for each clip.

The most immediate surprise here was that the larger 83-inch LG G4 was vastly more competitive in this test than the 65-inch version had been the day before. More than one judge commented that things would have been very different if the 65-inch version had looked like the 83-inch, especially in low-light scenes. According to the calibrators in the room, this is a common issue with the G4 — the 65-inch model often looks worse than the other sizes. It’s disappointing, but it does mean the 83-inch G4 compared much more favorably to the 77-inch A95L — in this test, it came in second place overall.

The out-of-the-box test also made it clear that none of these TVs render color particularly accurately from the factory. The OLEDs were generally more accurate, although the Samsung was oversaturated — the QD-OLED panel has a bigger color gamut than the rest, and Samsung appears to be overdriving it a bit too enthusiastically. The A95L was a little too magenta, and the LG was a bit too yellow. (Meade told me that his basic calibration for the A95L is to turn the reds down one click and the blues down four. You can see how close things are getting.)

The Mini LEDs were uniformly too pink, and my note for the Sony XR90 for the out-of-the-box test was simply that “the colors are all over the place.”

The uncalibrated test also allowed these sets to showcase their brightness — the LG G4 came closest to the reference display during a particularly brutal black-and-white Dune: Part Two scene, and the Sony XR90 was the brightest and most intense of all during the Vader lightsaber sequence in Rogue One. But the Mini LEDs struggled with blooming and responsiveness overall: the Samsung backlight was less accurate than the Sony’s and continued to look like a regular full array backlight at times, while the Sony backlight could be seen ramping brightness up and down during Aquaman 2. Neither Mini LED TV could render a full-screen starfield during Rogue One’s end credits — some stars caused blooming, while others were too dim to trigger the backlight, so they simply didn’t appear. (All three OLEDs obviously handled this just fine.)

All that said, I found myself debating whether to put the Sony XR90 Mini LED in third place over the Samsung S95D OLED in the out-of-the-box test. The Sony can get so bright, and the Samsung colors are so oversaturated, that it felt like a tradeoff either way. On top of that, I did not love the matte finish on the S95D screen, which some others in the room quite liked. In the end, though, I picked the S95D in third place — I’d rather have the true blacks and crisper image of the OLED, and it was not lost on me that the Samsung could be calibrated closer to reference than the Sony Mini LED.

Mark Jessamy Photography / Value Electronics
Serious business!

I don’t think there’s any doubt that OLED TVs remain the standard after judging the Shootout — the Sony A95L in particular can be calibrated to match a reference display so closely that complaining about its picture quality requires an almost obsessive devotion to image rendering arcana. (As an A95L owner, I can say it’s much easier to complain about the fact that it sometimes restarts itself for no reason.) But it’s also exciting to see Mini LED put up meaningful competition — I’m very curious to see how all of these companies do again next year.

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