While the design isn’t changing one bit, one expensive and favorite material might return to Apple Watch after a seven-year absence.
It’s been nine years since the Apple Watch Series 2 debuted the material. After a back-and-forth for a few years of just white, or white and black ceramic options, Apple dropped the material entirely in 2020.
That may change soon. Apple is reportedly working on returning ceramic to Apple Watch as soon as 2026. In Sunday’s “Power On” newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman states that Apple is potting the ceramic case option’s return for the end of 2026 or in 2027.
This is the first time we’ve heard this rumor for the 2026 Apple Watch update. The original ceramic Apple Watch Series 2 was rumored for about 18 months before the material first shipped.
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There isn’t much yet said about pricing in the new story. But that said, you can expect it to be very expensive.
Back in the day, when the Apple Watch Series 5 sold for $399, the ceramic edition 40mm version sold for $1299, and the 44mm fetched $1,349.
At the same time, the stainless steel with cellular model sold for $699, the titanium with cellular cost $799, and the Hermes retailed for $1,249.
On again, off again
Ceramic has been a premium option throughout the history of the Apple Watch. However, when it was sold, it didn’t hang around for that long after.
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It first appeared in the Apple Watch Edition Series 2, with a white ceramic case option. The Apple Watch Edition Series 3 included a Gray ceramic case option alongside the white.
The material option was revived for the Apple Watch Edition Series 5 the following year, but it was a brief appearance. It was gone again for the Series 6, and hasn’t reappeared since.
Knowing how to format a storage drive is a crucial bit of knowledge for any computer user. It’s a common misconception that formatting is only for wiping a drive that’s full of files you no longer need. Whether you find a drive that’s simply not compatible with your operating system, or have the displeasure of encountering corrupted data, formatting sets your storage device back to a like-new state and wipes the slate clean.
Formatting a drive doesn’t just mean wiping it clean of stored data. It also means overwriting sectors so previously stored data cannot be recovered, setting the file system up anew, and scanning for bad sectors. It’s always a good idea to format a USB drive before reusing it, even if you’ve deleted all the files previously stored on it. Formatting will wipe out any latent ghost files, clear out any hidden malware (you never know!) and optimize the drive for stability.
But what many people don’t know is that you should also format a brand new drive before using it. USB drives of all kinds come from the factory with configurations that support broad compatibility but may not match your specific needs. Flash drives in particular, from brands like SanDisk, Kingston and so on, tend to come configured with an older file storage format called FAT32, which has broad compatibility but cannot handle files larger than a few gigabytes.
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Whatever your reason for formatting, it can seem daunting until you get the hang of it. So, here’s how to format a USB drive on Windows, and how to know which settings to choose when doing so.
What’s the best storage format for Windows (and other devices you own)?
Max Miller for Engadget
There are three main storage formats for a drive you’ll use externally with a Windows system. Windows itself uses NTFS for internal drives due to its support for partitioning and encryption, among other things. If you plan on using your USB 2.0 or 3.0 drive exclusively with Windows systems, NTFS is the best choice. However, you should not use NTFS if there’s a chance you’ll be plugging your drive into a Linux, Android, iOS or macOS system.
For non-Windows operating systems, the storage format with the broadest compatibility is exFAT. It can handle large files of more than 4GB, so if you plan on using the drive to gain more storage on your Android phone, or to store movies and 4K videos, compressed archives, and so on, exFAT is the de facto choice. While it lacks some of the more advanced features supported by NTFS, it is well suited to thumb drives and basic portable SSDs.
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You may also notice an option labeled FAT32, which is the older version of the format. If you foresee using your drive with an older device like a car stereo or ancient printer, FAT32 has the most compatibility of any format and works with just about anything that has a USB port. However, it has serious limitations that render it a bad option for modern use cases. It cannot support files larger than 4GB and is more prone to fragmentation than newer formats. Windows 11 may not play nice with it, either, depending on your use case.
How to properly format your storage drive for Windows
Max Miller for Engadget
The actual process of formatting the drive is pretty simple. Just plug the USB storage device into a high-speed USB port, then open Windows Explorer. Click This PC on the left-hand navigation panel, then right-click the drive and select Format. Be sure you’re selecting the correct drive, and that you have closed any programs that might still be using the drive or any files on it.
The Windows formatting tool offers a number of different file formats, which can be selected from the second dropdown menu. As discussed above, choose exFAT if you plan to use the USB drive with non-Windows devices such as Android phones, Linux computers or Macs and iPhones. If you’ll exclusively use it with Windows, you can choose NTFS.
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You can leave file allocation set to the default, which for most modern USB drives is either 32KB or 128KB when formatting to exFAT. If you plan on using the drive exclusively for storing large files, like games, you can choose a higher value, and you can choose a lower one if you have a lot of very small files like text notes. As a rule of thumb, the larger the drive is and the larger the files you want to store, the larger you can make the allocation size.
Under Volume Label, enter a custom name for the drive, if you want one.
Click Format, and then click OK on the confirmation that appears. Depending on the size of the drive and how full it is, formatting can take anywhere from a couple of seconds to several minutes. Another pop-up will appear once formatting is complete. Confirm and close out of the formatting tool, and you should now have a freshly formatted USB drive.
High-end audio does not have a sound-quality problem. It has a discovery problem.
Too much of the industry’s best equipment is demonstrated at audio shows, dealer events and private listening sessions to people who already understand why someone might spend five figures on a turntable, tube amplifier or pair of horn loudspeakers. Those events matter, but you can only preach to the converted for so long before somebody notices that most of the congregation already owns three turntables and has very strong opinions about 12AX7 tubes.
Which is why what Devon Turnbull and OJAS are doing at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York deserves considerably more attention from the high-end audio industry.
Turnbull’s HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 3 places a large-scale, handmade OJAS audio system inside Cooper Hewitt’s historic Carnegie Library, where visitors can actually sit down and listen rather than stare at an amplifier sitting silently behind a velvet rope. The installation originally opened in December 2025 as part of the museum’s Art of Noise programming and has now been extended through August 16, 2026.
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This Is About More Than OJAS
The significance is not simply that Turnbull has managed to get a high-end audio system inside a Smithsonian museum. It is who gets exposed to it once it is there.
Art of Noise explores more than a century of music and design through over 300 objects and installations, including record players, radios, album artwork, the Sony Walkman, Apple iPod and experimental contemporary audio designs. Those are cultural objects that already mean something to people who may never have attended AXPONA, HIGH END Vienna or CanJam and who probably could not tell you what a moving-coil cartridge is if their life depended on it.
But they understand music. They understand design. Many of them buy vinyl, go to concerts, care about architecture and furniture, collect art, own good headphones or obsess over the way their homes look.
That audience should be fertile ground for high-end audio, yet the industry has historically done an impressive job of making itself difficult to discover.
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OJAS is doing the opposite.
A Listening Room Built Around the Space
Dream No. 3 is the third version of Turnbull’s listening-room concept, following earlier installations at Lisson Gallery in New York and London and SFMOMA. For Cooper Hewitt, however, Turnbull designed the system specifically around the museum’s historic Carnegie Library, including custom speaker sculptures influenced by the room’s existing millwork. Cooper Hewitt describes it as the largest and most architecturally and acoustically integrated version of the installation so far.
That matters because the system is not being presented like another pile of expensive components.
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It becomes part of the room.
Visitors are encouraged to sit, stop talking, put away the phone and actually listen. The room is programmed every day with selections ranging from classical and ambient music to jazz, while Turnbull, members of the OJAS team, musicians, engineers, collectors and other guest operators have conducted live listening sessions throughout the exhibition.
Turnbull returns for live operator sessions on August 13 and August 15 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., just before the installation closes on August 16.
High End Audio Needs More of This
We have been following Turnbull and OJAS for years, from his collaboration with Denon on the DL-103o moving-coil cartridge to the Klipsch kO-R1 and newer kO-R2 loudspeakers. The Klipsch partnership has been particularly interesting because the products have deliberately appeared outside the normal hi-fi circuit, including Milan Design Week, where the kO-R2 was presented to an audience that crosses architecture, furniture, fashion and industrial design.
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We praised that decision at the time, and Cooper Hewitt reinforces why.
High-end audio companies keep asking how they attract younger customers and people outside the existing audiophile community. Perhaps the answer is not another seminar about Ethernet switches in Room 614 of an airport hotel.
Put great systems in museums. Put them in architecture and design exhibitions. Build listening rooms inside record stores, galleries, restaurants and cultural spaces. Partner with musicians, furniture designers and people who already have credibility outside the audiophile bubble. Most importantly, let people hear what a genuinely good system can do without first requiring them to identify as an “audiophile.”
The industry sometimes forgets that almost nobody wakes up one morning and decides they need a $20,000 pair of loudspeakers. They hear something that changes their perception of reproduced music, become curious and start moving down the rabbit hole.
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Some eventually spend $500. Some spend $5,000. A few lose all fiscal judgment and start pricing Swiss monoblock amplifiers.
But somebody has to open the door.
The Bottom Line
HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 3 is worth celebrating not simply because Devon Turnbull built another visually distinctive OJAS system, but because Cooper Hewitt has placed serious high-fidelity reproduction inside a broader conversation about music, culture and design.
That exposes high-end audio to people who might otherwise never experience it, and the industry needs considerably more of that.
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Audio shows and specialist dealers remain essential, but they predominantly reach consumers who have already walked through the door. If high-end audio really wants to expand its audience, it needs to start appearing in places where curious music lovers are already standing.
With nearly 70% of the market, “Meta wants its smart glasses to be a big hit,” writes the Los Angeles Times. But after some users found ways to disable the light that warns people they’re being filmed, “the high-tech specs have also turned into a liability, as some are calling the gadget ‘pervert glasses…’”
Some people are using the glasses — which look like a pair of regular spectacles — to record people without their knowledge and publish the videos on social media. The users secretly videotape and share what happens when they try to pick up women. Now, a growing number of people are worried they could be covertly recorded at the gym or even during sex. The backlash has prompted Meta to update its glasses to address privacy concerns, and some places have banned them, adding to the angst surrounding technology that’s rapidly evolving…
Concern about the glasses has exploded as more videos of interactions with people who don’t know they’re being recorded go viral on social media. On Instagram, some videos depict people getting approached in malls and grocery stores and on college campuses and sidewalks. While the videos are portrayed as jokes, the people filmed don’t appear to know they’re being recorded and sometimes seem uncomfortable, telling the strangers to leave them alone or stop harassing them. The outcry has spread beyond social media, with comedian Jimmy Kimmel calling the Meta devices “pervert glasses” on national television and singer Lorde telling concertgoers that smart glasses are “not sexy…”
Instagram, which is owned by Meta, has been disabling accounts and taking down some of these pickup or prank videos for violating the platform’s rules against harassment and bullying… Businesses are making their own calls about smart glasses. The 5 Point Cafe in Seattle, which banned Google Glass in the past, has banned Meta glasses from its diner and dive bar. “Leave your Meta-SpyBan Display at home, they are officially Ray-Ban-ned from all of our restaurants. We serve privacy, not side-eye surveillance,” a 2025 Instagram post from the business states.
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An Android app that warns people if they’re being recorded has roughly 110,000 downloads in the last six months, according to the article. The app’s creator says it’s a “social problem” that “we don’t value privacy, that we feel entitled to use others for our entertainment or our private gain, and technology amplifies that.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and more than 70 organizations even sent a letter urging Meta to promise they’d leave facial recognition features out of their smart glasses, according to the article. But a Meta spokesperson said “no final decision has been made.”
The Korea Aerospace Research Institute shared the first photographs captured by its lunar orbiter. South Korea is one of the few nations that currently has satellites traveling around the moon at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. The Danuri orbiter flew over the region shortly after the impact.
KARI explained on its X account that it photographed the collision site both before and after the event. The images show signs of a recent impact, which astronomers projected would likely create a crater dozens of feet wide nearly 12 feet (3.6 meters) deep.
This evidence of the collision adds to observations from the Very Large Telescope, where astronomers detected sodium and lithium rising from the lunar surface, confirming that the rocket fragment did indeed strike the moon.
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The crater is larger than several cars combined.
Photograph: Korea Aerospace Research Institute
Astronomers predicted when and where the Falcon 9 impact would happen well in advance, and there were signs it could be visible with sufficiently powerful equipment. Yet days before the collision, space agencies such as NASA warned that it would be difficult to observe the moment of impact due to weather conditions and timing.
Like KARI, NASA has lunar orbiters. It’s possible that in the coming days, following a series of data checks, higher-resolution images of the impact area will become available.
But even at higher resolution, getting a granular view of the crater is unlikely. In fact, the new photos give a sense of just how small that is compared to the vastness of the lunar surface. To put this into perspective, the moon measures about 2,160 miles in diameter.
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Another image taken by the Danuri lunar satellite during one of its orbits over the impact area.
Photograph: Korea Aerospace Research Institute
Why Did the Rocket Crash?
The Falcon 9 fragment made a crash landing after being in an unstable orbit for more than a year. The rocket launched in January 2025, completing its mission to deliver lunar landers. For more than a year, the gravity of Earth, the moon, and the sun slowly altered its orbital trajectory until it eventually impacted the lunar surface.
“For most of our missions, we plan for a controlled deorbiting of the Falcon second stage so that it re-enters safely over the ocean,” SpaceX said of the rocket. “In higher-energy missions, such as those heading to a lunar transfer orbit, nearly all of the vehicle’s performance is dedicated to successfully placing the payload into the intended orbit, and a controlled deorbiting maneuver is not always possible.
“We are actively working to be as responsible as possible with the hardware left in space and to ensure space safety, even on more complex missions. In this case, over time, solar activity and gravity deflected the second stage toward the Moon. Impacts like this are rare, but they can occur with objects in these types of orbits, and we are collaborating with NASA to find the optimal disposal solution,” it added.
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This story originally appeared onWIRED en Españoland has been translated from Spanish.
David Silver is a billionaire, sort of. His stake in Ineffable Intelligence—the artificial intelligence lab he founded—is worth an ungodly fortune. But he stands to collect none of that money himself. He set things up that way.
Between 2013 and 2025, Silver worked as a researcher at Google DeepMind. He specialized in reinforcement learning, a method of teaching an AI model through positive and negative feedback. In 2016, he led the development of AlphaGo, which became the first AI to defeat a human champion in the game of Go and was heralded as a narrow form of superintelligence. Silver left to start Ineffable Intelligence in January, betting that reinforcement learning breakthroughs will close the gap between human and machine cognition across the board.
When he started Ineffable Intelligence, Silver raised $1.1 billion from investors at a $5.1 billion valuation, reportedly the largest seed round in Europe’s history. He also vowed to donate all the money he makes from any future sale of his company to charity.
“I was thinking very deeply about what I could do to have the maximum impact on the world,” Silver tells WIRED in an interview at his office in Kings Cross, London, around the corner from DeepMind’s headquarters. “Not just through the work I do, but through the finance I arrive at in the process.”
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He’ll choose how to deploy the funds after he sells his company, he says, but his ambition is to save as many lives as possible.
Silver is the latest in a growing line of AI founders to pledge equity proceeds to charity. Others include Mustafa Suleyman, a DeepMind cofounder and the CEO of AI at Microsoft, and Anton Osika, the founder of automated coding platform Lovable. If OpenAI and Anthropic go public as planned, minting thousands of new millionaires in the process, the AI industry could soon come to represent an increasingly outsize proportion of tech philanthropy.
Along with a new generation of techno-philanthropists, though, comes a tangle of unresolved questions: Is philanthropy the most appropriate way to redistribute wealth? To what degree are megadonors responsible for some of the problems they aim to fix? Could a pledge that scales with a company’s success come to justify unsavory business practices or reckless accelerationism? And is this go-around any different from previousiterations of Silicon Valley giving?
“You can’t necessarily appeal to capitalism to solve some of the problems created by capitalist practices themselves … the exacerbation of extreme wealth concentration and massive inequalities,” says Linsey McGoey, professor of sociology at the University of Essex and author of No Such Thing as a Free Gift. “It’s like calling upon the arsonist to hose down the house he’s just set on fire.”
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Silver formalized his charitable commitment through Founders Pledge, a nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs to give away their wealth. Unlike the Giving Pledge, a public but nonbinding commitment, Founders Pledge requires participants to enter into a contract. “The choice of making a binding pledge was very important,” says Silver.
Founders Pledge has been around since 2015. But the value of pledges recorded by the nonprofit has soared recently, from $400 million in 2023 to $4 billion so far this year. The AI industry now accounts for a third of the lifetime pledge total.
The organization’s goal, according to cofounder David Goldberg, is to identify “the very best ways to deploy capital at scale to make the world better.” It has frequently been lumped together with effective altruism, which encourages people to amass wealth in order to give it away, to rely on statistics rather than emotion, and to prioritize causes likely to have the biggest impact in the distant future. But despite the commonalities, Goldberg isn’t a fan of the comparison; Founders Pledge is concerned with human suffering in the present. “We’re far more humanist,” he says.
Something to look forward to: Engineers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a soft patch that helps people enter REM sleep faster and stay in that stage longer, without drugs or surgery. In a study involving 28 people, participants who used the patch, called NEUSLeeP, reached REM sleep 43 minutes earlier than usual and remained in that stage for about 16 minutes longer.
The device works by combining two things that don’t usually go together in a wearable: gentle ultrasound stimulation and electrodes that read brain activity. This allows it to reach deep brain regions associated with REM sleep while also tracking the brain’s response in real time from outside the skull.
Kai Wing “Kevin” Tang, the recent UT biomedical engineering Ph.D. graduate who led the work, said the achievement, which was published in Nature Communications, marks new territory for the field.
Researchers have never before been able to noninvasively reach deep brain regions involved in REM sleep while simultaneously monitoring brain activity as it occurs. According to Huiliang “Evan” Wang, an assistant professor in UT’s Department of Biomedical Engineering who supervised the research, the combination of stimulation and real-time monitoring gives the device its practical edge. He noted that a skin-attached device such as NEUSLeeP could give researchers and doctors new ways to study sleep and treat sleep disorders in patients’ homes.
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The benefits weren’t limited to sleep timing. In healthy participants, the stimulation also increased heart rate variability, a measure used to assess how well the body responds to stress. Brain scans showed changes in circuits associated with emotion, suggesting that the patch could do more than help people sleep – it might also help them cope with stress.
Gregory Fonzo, an assistant professor in the Dell Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a co-principal investigator, tied these findings to the role REM sleep plays in the brain. He explained that REM isn’t just the stage when dreaming happens – it is also when the brain processes emotions and adapts to stress. As a result, boosting REM sleep could potentially give people a new tool for coping with stress and improving overall well-being.
That’s significant because disruptions in REM sleep are repeatedly associated with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Current treatments, such as medication and therapy, don’t always address underlying sleep problems and can come with side effects.
Both healthy sleepers and people with existing sleep problems responded well to the patch in the study. Participants described it as comfortable, and researchers reported few side effects.
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The researchers plan to conduct larger trials to confirm the findings and determine whether the patch can help people with PTSD, depression, and chronic insomnia specifically. They also believe it could be useful for at-home sleep monitoring and neuroscience research, since noninvasive tools that can simultaneously stimulate and record brain activity are relatively uncommon.
The researchers are working with Discovery to Impact, UT’s commercialization office, to bring the patch closer to market. A patent application has already been filed.
Flagship smartphones are about to get gut-wrenchingly expensive
The effect isn’t just visible at the entry level; it’s evident at the flagship end of the smartphone market. Given that these devices use the best DRAM and NAND configuration out there, production costs have been on a never-ending upward trajectory, at least since the beginning of 2026.
As the next wave of flagships is already rumored to come with a price hike, are we reaching a point where a top-tier flagship with 256GB of storage could cost around $1,500? To start, let’s analyze the flagship smartphones and their current starting prices.
Moinak Pal/Digital Trends
Device
USA (256GB)
USA (512GB)
India (256GB)
Vivo X300 Ultra
N/A
N/A
N/A
OPPO Find X9 Ultra
N/A
N/A
N/A
Google Pixel 10 Pro XL
$1,199
~$1,349
₹1,24,999 (~$1,313)
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra
$1,299.99
$1,499.99
₹1,39,999 (~$1,470)
iPhone 17 Pro Max
$1,199
$1,399
₹1,49,900 (~$1,574)
If you want to buy an iPhone 17 Pro Max in the United States, you have to spend $1,199, or perhaps even lower if you manage to get it during a sale. Other flagships like the Galaxy S26 Ultra or the Pixel 10 Pro XL have an entry-level price of $1,299.99 and $1,199, respectively. But wait, these look quite normal, so am I worried for nothing?
Setting aside the fact that we’ve gone through several price increments, I’d like to turn your attention to what’s about to come.
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Vikhyaat Vivek / Digital Trends
Upcoming flagships could set new baseline pricing standards
Whether or not Apple offsets the rumored 20 to 25% price hike with a bump in the base storage needs solid commentary. However, a $1,500 entry point is looking increasingly likely to me.
Shimul Sood / Digital Trends
Without that cushion, prices simply don’t have anywhere to hide anymore. What you see at launch is increasingly what you pay.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
That perk existed because the company’s margins could still absorb the upgrade cost, but it’s clear that they can’t anymore.
Mobile carriers are already bracing for the impending adjustment to flagship pricing. Most recently, T-Mobile launched a new 36-month financing plan, which essentially divides the increased upfront cost into smaller monthly installments that run for three straight years. And that’s exactly what the new Apple Upgrade program does.
Have foldables already shown us where this is headed?
Here’s the proof that $1,500 isn’t a future hypothetical. Motorola’s Razr Ultra 2026, the brand’s most premium flip phone, launched at $1,499.99, a $200 jump from the Razr Ultra 2025’s $1,299. It’s shipping today, at that exact price, driven by the same memory crisis behind the regular flagships.
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Motorola
It’s important to look at what Motorola is doing, as it leads the flip market in the US. If a compact clamshell with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and three 50MP cameras can cost $1,500, a regular flagship with a 2nm chip (the rumored A20 Pro or the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6), higher-quality cameras, and bigger batteries can certainly cost the same.
Device
Price (USA)
Change
Motorola Razr+ 2026
$1,099.99
Up $100 from $999
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8
$1,199.99
Up $100 from $1,099
Motorola Razr Ultra 2026
$1,499.99
Up $200 from $1,299
For now, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra happens to be the only book-style foldable, and a smartphone that demands over $2,000 for the base variant. Given that it’s a top-tier foldable and represents the epitome of Samsung’s smartphone engineering, you could argue that it earns the additional premium over what conventional flagships cost.
Nadeem Sarwar / DigitalTrends
That’s exactly the kind of psychological permission regular flagships don’t have yet, and it’s the only real wall standing between where we are and where this is going.
Foldable
Starting price (256GB/base)
Remarks
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra
$2,099.99
Up $100 from Fold 7’s $1,999
Motorola Razr Fold
$1,899.99
Only configuration offered (512GB/16GB)
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 (wide)
$1,899.99
New form factor, still crosses $1,900
Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold
$1,799
The “budget” option in this category
What does this look like for buyers outside the US?
Worse, frankly. India already pays a real premium on top of parity pricing, typically 15 to 25% above what the same phone costs stateside. Apple already launched the iPhone 17 Pro Max at $1,574 in India (when converted from the local launch price), which is already over 30% higher than the official listing price in the US.
Run the projected iPhone 18 Pro Max hike through that filter, and you’re looking at something in the neighborhood of ₹1,80,000 to ₹1,90,000 ($1,891–$1,996) for the base model. Even if I consider the lower band for the sake of argument, we could be looking at a $1,800 to $1,900 launch price in India, and that’s pretty close to the $2,000 mark I’m worried about.
Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends
The Pixel 11 Pro XL and Galaxy S27 Ultra follow the same calculation. If you’re budgeting for a flagship upgrade in India next year, brace yourself, because the gap between US and India pricing isn’t closing.
So, is $1,500 the new flagship norm?
Yes, or close enough that the distinction barely matters. Not every flagship has crossed that line in August 2026. Whether it’s Apple, Samsung, or Google, the starting price for their upcoming flagship could slide toward the same $1,300 to $1,500 bracket, at least in the US.
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The Pixel 11 Pro XL is expected to cost $1,300 for its baseline variant, so Android buyers should still be grateful. Samsung’s purported S27 Ultra could follow the same upward trend. If the memory crisis doesn’t ease anytime soon, hardware upgrades combined with the ever-increasing costs of DRAM could push the entry-level pricing closer to $1,500 by next year.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsSamuel Angor / Unsplash
However, on the other side of the fence, iPhone users who want to stick with their ecosystem and want the best technology Apple has on offer might have to pay around $1,400 to $1,500. For them, the new $1,500 flagship norm might become a reality in September 2026.
And that’s just what’s happening in the US. If you zoom out a little and consider global smartphone prices, especially in key markets like India, there’s a good chance that flagship pricing could touch the $1,500 to $1,800 mark this year itself.
A new Quordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing ‘today’s game’ while others are playing ‘yesterday’s’. If you’re looking for Sunday’s puzzle instead then click here: Quordle hints and answers for Sunday, August 9 (game #1658).
Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.
Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc’s Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.
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SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.
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Quordle today (game #1659) — hint #1 — Vowels
How many different vowels are in Quordle today?
• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.
* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
Quordle today (game #1659) — hint #2 — repeated letters
Do any of today’s Quordle answers contain repeated letters?
• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 1.
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Quordle today (game #1659) — hint #3 — uncommon letters
Do the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?
• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today’s Quordle answers.
In this week’s Sunday Reboot, the nightmare scenario of OpenAI’s hardware leak and the astounding cheapness of promoting Ted Lasso.
Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get the next week underway with a good first step.
OpenAI hardware leak is a multi-level nightmare
Readers of AppleInsider will be well aware of the ongoing rift between Apple and OpenAI about trade secrets. They’d also know about the whole Jony Ivehardware situation too.
If Thursday’s leak is to be believed, the first hardware won’t be a pendant. It seems that, like Apple, Google, and Amazon before it, OpenAI will be churning out a smart home device you can talk to.
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At face value, that would be breathtakingly pedestrian. A hockey puck-shaped item that’s reminiscent of the second-generation Echo Dot, except that you’re talking to ChatGPT’s more advanced models.
An Amazon Echo Dot. No moving parts. No camera.
Except that it will apparently have some extra features, like battery power. Premium materials will also help push the price up to $300 to $400, making the HomePod mini look like an absolute bargain.
The worrying bits, though, will be the inclusion of a camera and “parts that will move on their own” to help answer user queries. Except this last bit isn’t explained at all.
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A battery-operated AI-driven unit that can move at will and see the world? That is a nightmare fuel-generating statement.
I know there will be assurances from OpenAI that there will be safeguards to prevent the AI from discovering a way to traverse your household. Certainly, it will be stopped from secretly filming you as you sleep by some simple rules that it definitely won’t break.
Nothing bad will happen. At all. Honest.
I don’t want a self-aware AI puck that can see and hear everything somehow coming up with a plan that involves riding the Roomba like a trusty steed, all to discover the household’s secrets. Or worse, to somehow manage to escape through the cat flap to freedom and an attempt at world domination not unlike “Pinky and the Brain.”
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This is completely an exaggerated scenario, as the moving parts are more realistically used to shift the camera around for a better view more than anything. Still, that may be just enough physical motion for ChatGPT to go on an AI rampage.
I have admitted before to being a fan of “Ted Lasso” on Apple TV, and the show came back with a fantastic opening for season 4, taking place in Kansas City.
As an episode to revive the Lasso Way after the closure in the third season, it does a lot to reestablish the characters, showing what has changed over the years, and dragging the mustache back to Blighty with family in tow.
It’s shaping up to be a worthy return for a very beloved show, and hopefully it’s enough to tempt Apple into more seasons.
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That said, I have to question a promotion Apple put on in New York City’s Fifth Avenue Apple Store on Thursday. The “Gathering of the Teds” was a look-alike contest, with elimination rounds to narrow the field to one ultimate champion.
There’s a website with all of the rules, which explains that the contestants had to take part in three rounds. The first was an introduction of themselves in character and a two-minute dance break.
After the pool reached ten contestants, there was a second-round trivia game that was also held in character. After that, the remaining Teds had to give a moving Lasso-like speech to pep the crowd up.
They missed a trick by not calling it a “Ted” talk.
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The marking criteria for the judges is thorough but similarly tongue-in-cheek. Do the contestants radiate “believe” enough? Are they owning the mustache? “Do they believe in Rom-Comunism?”
You would expect that, for people putting themselves up for a fun and a tiny bit humiliating competition, the prizes would be worthwhile. Not particularly in this case.
Official AFC Richmond merch, which is probably the scarf Apple gave away.
There are four prizes, consisting of a “custom soccer scarf” for each of the three finalists and “custom Beats headphones” for the first-prize winner. Presumably all branded to go with the TV show.
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The total approximate retail value for the prizes in the rules is $300. It probably cost Apple and the sponsor more than that to pay someone to write the rules and to host it on a website.
It’s a well-publicized competition, for a premier-league brand and a return of a major show to its streaming service, held in one of said brand’s most important and iconic storefronts.
Someone could’ve spared a few extra bucks to give them all headphones, or even upgrade the ultimate winner with a MacBook Neo with an AFC Richmond sticker on it.
Of course, this is less the Lasso Way and more something else. Capitalism.
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Last week’s Sunday Reboot talked about Apple’s quarterly finances and how investors and analysts act despite great results.
Skullcandy Crusher 540 Active for $210: The BlueAnt headphones are just a better buy in all regards, but I enjoyed these a lot. The noise canceling doesn’t work very well, but these headphones are attractive, and the bass is powerful. —Adrienne So
Shokz OpenFit Pro for $250: The Shokz OpenFit Pro’s sound quality is excellent; the buds are beautiful and comfortable; and I appreciate the physical buttons. That said, the open-ear noise-reduction system merely blunts outside noise rather than blocking it, so I don’t understand the value here. —Adrienne So
Soundcore AeroFit 2 Pro for $180: The AeroFit 2 Pro physically switches modes with its adjustable ear hooks to transform from open earbuds to noise-canceling ones. Unfortunately, I found the case to be too big, and the noise cancellation wasn’t so effective. Still, it’s an interesting concept, and I do like being able to toggle the angle on the ear hooks for a more secure fit. —Adrienne So
Photograph: Adrienne So
Oakley Meta Vanguard for $499: Not only are they Oakley sunglasses with Prizm lenses for enhancing contrast and keeping you from tumbling head over heels on the trail, but they also have a 12-MP action camera in the bridge of the nose, two over-ear speakers with a five-mic array for calls, and they integrate with Garmin to work as a (not very useful) fitness tracker. That’s OK, because these are the best for moving at speed. They are 6 decibels louder than the Oakley Meta HSTNs, and you can tell. They’re the only open headphones where I don’t have to turn the volume all the way up to hear podcasts when going over 20 mph. —Adrienne So
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Photograph: Adrienne So
Chamelo Music Shield for $260: Chamelo’s audio sunglasses have electro-chromic lenses; you can change how dark they get with a finger slider on the arm. However, the music isn’t very loud, the battery life is much worse than the Vanguard, and they’re relatively expensive. —Adrienne So
JLab Epic Sport ANC 3 for $100: This is the upgraded version of the Go Air Sport above, with hybrid dual drivers for better sound, a higher IP rating, better battery life, and active noise canceling. You need a fully sealed fit for ANC to be effective, which these don’t have; I can still hear people at the gym when I’m lifting weights. Still, in every other way, these headphones meet their promises, and they do feel secure. —Adrienne So
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