Fail

In a move supposed to help users protect themselves from impersonation and to gain direct access to customer support, Meta Verified is rolling out this week to increase security across the brand's services. Australia and New Zealand will be the first countries to get it, for a monthly price of US$11.99 (web) and US$14.99 (iOS).

GALAX has been promoting a clearance sale of its remaining GeForce RTX 3080 (10 GB) graphics cards. The company is offering the boards, which have a “1-click” overclocking feature, at a price of US$699.99. However, it is possible to pick up various models of the much better GeForce RTX 4070 Ti for around US$150 more.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7730U has turned up on the PassMark benchmark site where it has revealed itself to be basically a Ryzen 7 5825U with a fresh coat of paint. The Ryzen 7 7730U was released in January 2023 but is based on Zen 3 architecture and comes with a Vega 8 graphics part. The Barcelo-R APU has been made for use in thin and light laptops.

An increasing number of Pixel 7 Pro owners are reporting that volume buttons have started falling out of place. Purportedly a hardware issue and not a localised problem, the remedy is more complex than simply returning the errant buttons to their housing.

A 30 TB SSD purchased from Walmart for US$38.99 has been exposed as a 128 GB SD card wrapped in a Samsung rip-off shell. The SSD, which is neither Walmart-branded nor an official Walmart product, has now seemingly been removed from the retailer’s site. In tests carried out by Computer Clan, the SD card ran faster when taken out of the fake 30 TB SSD case.

Apple’s ruthless Trade In service has come under the spotlight after a tech journalist discovered that a Mac Pro that cost US$52,199 three years earlier was given a current trade-in value of just US$970. Disconcertingly, the same Mac Pro was apparently still available via the Apple store at the identical original price of US$52,199.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 have made their Geekbench debut, scoring 114,074 and 101,850 respectively. These results are a tad disappointing and probably not indicative about how the graphics cards will perform in the real world.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of FTX, has been arrested and detained in the Bahamas. The entrepreneur, who has now lost his billionaire status, could end up being sentenced to as much as 115 years in prison after being indicted of eight charges that include wire fraud of various types and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The latest, tenth-gen version of Apple's most vanilla iPad comes upgraded to a relatively new A14 Bionic SoC and (perhaps more importantly) USB type-C for charging and syncing. However, as the famous durability vlog JerryRigEverything has now discovered, it also comes with drawbacks besides its confounding choice of first-party stylus support.

Sony has delivered a new firmware update for the WF-1000XM4 to tackle battery drain issues. Rolling out in Asia first, it seems that firmware V1.6.1 could actually reduce battery life for some WF-1000XM4 units, which may need servicing if certain conditions are met.

Discounted earlier today by 60%, the Asus Chromebook C203XA is now back above the US$100 threshold. For most markets (Asia and the US included), the ongoing discount is 47%. This drives the US$249.99 list price down to a wallet-friendly US$133. Unfortunately, European customers only get to enjoy a 42% price drop.

NVIDIA's latest mid-range graphics card has arrived, with the company electing to re-run the RTX 3060 rather than offering up an Ada Lovelace-based model. While the GeForce RTX 3060 8 GB contains the same GA106 GPU as its 12 GB sibling, NVIDIA's memory changes significantly hamper in-game performance.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has been fined €265 million (~US$275 million) by Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) due to a data breach affecting Facebook during 2019. This breach affected over 500 million Facebook users. This marks the fourth such fine from the DPC since the Fall of 2021.

The popular YouTuber Kyle Hansen (Bitwit) has posted a new video showing how he managed to build a respectable gaming PC on a lower budget than the MSRP for Nvidia’s unloved GeForce RTX 4080. The rig features an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X as CPU and Radeon RX 6800 XT as GPU, and there was even enough in the budget for 32 GB of RAM.

NVIDIA has issued a firmware update to resolve a problem with the new GeForce RTX 4080 and GeForce RTX 4090. Rolling out via the Firmware Update Tool v1.2, the change needed could not be applied with a driver update.

Numerous variants of the GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card have found their way into the hands of unscrupulous scalpers, with prices on eBay already skipping past the US$2,300 mark. Nvidia launched the GeForce RTX 4080 with a starting price of US$1,199, which has already been perceived as a high price to pay for the relative performance.

Apple finally brought 128 GB of storage to the Apple TV 4K with the 2022 model. While the most expensive Apple TV 4K also supports Ethernet and Thread networking, tvOS 16 currently prevents it from accessing more than 64 GB of storage. The current tvOS 16.2 beta does not address this bug, either.

Samsung has released a new update for the Galaxy Watch4 and Galaxy Watch4 Classic to fix a major issue that it introduced with last month's software update for the pair. Rolling out as GVK4, the new update includes a 'power operation-related stabilisation code' to prevent units from bricking when they power off. Unfortunately, it seems that the new update causes other issues for the Galaxy Watch4 generation.

Google has started to issue refunds for purchases related to its Stadia game streaming service, which will officially halt in January 2023. While the search giant is avidly working to get refunds rolling, it stated that the process could take until January for some.

The ROG Phone 6 Pro is an Android flagship with a class-leading 165Hz display, a rear-facing RGB secondary display and an increasingly rare 3.5mm jack. However, it also has a predecessor that failed the ever-popular JerryRigEverything test of structural integrity. Can the ~US$1,300 gaming smartphone do any better in 2022?...apparently not.

Samsung has acknowledged that the latest update for the Galaxy Watch4 and Galaxy Watch4 Classic can cause some units to stop working entirely. Although the company has not necessarily resolved the software issue, it claims to have halted the update rollout and is taking steps to remedy affected smartwatches.

Santa Monica Studio has posted a polite message asking God of War Ragnarök spoiler sharers to restrict their online behavior in the aftermath of a US retailer purportedly selling the game well before its official launch date of November 9. However, key players in the creation of God of War Ragnarök, especially Cory Barlog, have been vocal in their frustration with the matter.

According to some Pixel Watch owners, early units could be affected by display burn-in, a well-known issue on AMOLED and OLED panels. Although reports have mounted since the smartwatch's launch, Google has quickly dismissed claims with an innocuous explanation.

There has been good news for those waiting for AMD’s upcoming series of RDNA 3-based graphics cards, widely known as the Radeon RX 7000 range. It has been confirmed by one of Team Red’s executives that RDNA 3 (and Radeon RX 6000) GPUs will not require the use of the 12VHPWR power connector involved in multiple reports of damaged GeForce RTX 4090-based PCs.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X has been unceremoniously dumped outside the top 10 best-performing processors in UserBenchmark’s average bench chart. While the much-praised Intel Core i9-13900K sits at the top, the Zen 4 part has to settle for a lowly position behind the i7-12700K, despite seemingly scoring much higher test marks than the Alder Lake chip.

Although the users in some markets are not facing the new figures yet, it looks like some YouTube Premium Family subscribers are receiving notifications of drastic price changes. While Romanian subscribers still can grab a Family plan for roughly US$8, the cost went up to US$22.99 in other markets.

The iPhone seems the weapon of choice for most social media brands of Apple's competitors. In the past, this happened to brands like Huawei and Samsung. Now, the time has come for Google's social media team to post on Twitter using an iPhone and, although the post has been deleted, it won't be forgotten.

Reportedly, Apple is having as little luck shifting iPhone 14 Plus units as it did with the iPhone 13 mini. Such is the apparent lack of demand for the new model that Apple has already ceased production just two weeks after launching the device.

In an unprecedented move, Nvidia has announced that the GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB graphics card has been "unlaunched". The company has also confirmed that the GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB will be purchasable starting on November 16.

Although the decision is not final and Apple will fight back, a Brazilian court has decided to fine the Cupertino-based tech giant with the equivalent of roughly US$19 million for selling phones without chargers. Even more, the court ruled that chargers must be bundled with new iPhones sold in the country.

Although AMD promised a starting price of US$125 for the B650E & B650-based mainboards, the first batch to hit the market is far from it. Prices start around US$160 and go up to over US$400, depending on the features added by the third parties involved (US$449.99 for the ASRock B650E Taichi, for example).

The Sony Xperia 1 IV may have a lot going for it, but battery life is not one of them. With comparatively slow charging too, the Xperia 1 IV falls short of expectations, particularly given its 5,000 mAh battery. As detailed battery life analysis demonstrates, the Xperia 1 IV needs recharging significantly sooner than its peers.

An Apple Watch Series 7 has recently started overheating, and less than a day later, it began emitting smoke, and finally blew up. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in the process, but Apple tried to convince the user in question to stay silent on this matter, which he refused to do.

Xiaomi has sought to assure fans of the extent of software coverage for the Xiaomi 12T and Xiaomi 12T Pro, such is the importance of software support among Android OEMs these days. While Xiaomi promises four years of software support for the Xiaomi 12T series, its decision to launch the pair on Android 12 leaves a lot to be desired.

Multiple users have taken to Twitter to complain about the Instagram app not working on their iPhones. The only workaround is to uninstall and reinstall the app and keep it running in the background until Meta issues an official fix.

According to multiple owner reports, Fitbit's latest update for the Versa 2 has rendered some units practically useless. Believed to be a bug missed during testing, the issue leads to touchscreens no longer working in affected Versa 2 smartwatches.

After testing up to 10 unskippable ads before videos, YouTube is now apparently investigating another way to increase revenue. In the future, 4K videos could only be available for YouTube Premium users. Google declined to comment so far, so we can only hope this is just another experiment that will stay that way.

After less than a decade since its release for iOS, which took place in September 2014, the Microsoft-owned virtual keyboard app SwiftKey (originally developed by TouchType) will be removed from the Apple App Store on October 5. This move comes after over a year without updates, but there is no official reason yet.

iFixit has disassembled the AirPods Pro 2, Apple's latest flagship earbuds. Sadly, the AirPods Pro 2 is basically unrepairable and is at odds with Apple's apparent embrace of right to repair. As iFixit found out, destroying the AirPods Pro 2 is the only way to access some components.

YouTuber Arun Maini aka MrWhoseTheBoss discovered that several of his Samsung phones had their batteries bloated. Other creators such as MKBHD and JerryRigEverything also reported similar problems with their old Samsung devices.

Multiple users have taken to internet forums to complain about the lack of compatibility between wireless chargers and their iPhone 14 Pro smartphones. Its large camera bump causes some devices to not charge outright, while others don't fit as well as older devices.

The corrupted (water damage, cracks, various distortions) old images noticed by many Google Photos users lately are only the result of a bug which, fortunately, doesn't alter the original photos. Google has just acknowledged this problem, also revealing that a fix is in the making and it should roll out soon.

Although it launched with a price tag of US$1,599, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is often spotted for prices of around US$2,000, although still two weeks away from the official market launch. The latest price record? The equivalent of over US$2,500, for a Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 GAMING OC sold in Hong Kong.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X has made its first appearance on UserBenchmark and in the process has not only destroyed every contender in the average bench chart but has also exposed the site’s labyrinthine scoring system. The Zen 4 Ryzen 9 7900X managed to outpace an unnamed Raptor Lake rival that may have been an Intel Core i7-13700K engineering sample.
Update: An even faster Ryzen 9 7900X UserBenchmark run has now been posted.

Apple may have introduced the Watch Series 8 and Watch Ultra with its Apple S8 SoC, but a higher chipset number is no guarantee of any significant improvements. Instead, it turns out that the Apple S8, Apple S7 and Apple S6 are identical with no CPU or GPU improvements between generations.

An early Apple iPhone 14 analysis report has offered up a rather negative opinion of Cupertino’s decision to replace the iPhone 13 mini in the lineup with the iPhone 14 Plus. While things may not be looking too bright for the iPhone 14 Plus at the moment, at least the iPhone 14 Pro Max seems to be pleasing die-hard Apple fans.

When it comes to new hardware, it is often wise to wait a bit with a purchase, as some firmware issues may still be present in a new product. Sometimes there are devices that are more problematic than others - for the expensive Lenovo ThinkPad Z16, frequent random restarts are the reason why our review is not finished yet.

Cyberpunk 2077 is all set to receive a major update in the form of Patch 1.6. It adds new weapons, cosmetics and several QoL improvements, many of which are not accessible on last-gen consoles. Even the Phantom Liberty DLC will be limited to the PS5, Xbox Series S|X, PC and Stadia.

A 5-second video clip of a supposed real Apple iPhone 14 Pro has been making the rounds on social media. Where this latest video stands out from many other likely fake clips is the notch-toggling function shown on the so-called iPhone 14 Pro’s display. Most seem to agree that the video is fake but many have opined that they would like to have this choice.

The expected Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra’s design has been compared with that of the S22 Ultra, with a leaker utilizing power banks to give a visual representation of how the S23 Ultra will look. Ironically, this rather small design difference has been pointed out just as Samsung has been busy mocking Apple’s slow innovation process in a new Galaxy S22 Ultra and Z Flip4 promo video.