I already had more reasons than expected to keep the Motorola Razr Fold around. While reviewing it, the company’s first foldable genuinely surprised me with its level of polish. A practical outer display, great cameras, strong battery life, and a gorgeous folding screen. All of this made me want to switch to this device as my primary phone.

Now Motorola has added one more reason, and it’s just sweetening the deal for me. The Motorola Razr Fold now supports AirDrop-style sharing through Android’s Quick Share, making it the first Motorola phone to get the feature. That means Razr Fold users can share files directly with Apple devices such as iPhones, iPads, and Macs without relying on cloud links, messaging apps, USB cables, or the usual cross-platform nonsense.

Making life easier between the different ecosystems

Android users do not need every Apple feature. AirDrop, though, has always been one of the annoyingly good ones. It is fast, simple, local, and familiar to people who own Apple devices. The problem is that Android users have long had to work around it. You could upload a file to Google Drive, send it through WhatsApp, compress it over a messaging app, email it like it is 2014, or grab a cable and hate yourself a little.

Quick Share with AirDrop support fixes that. On supported Android phones, you can share locally through Quick Share, while the Apple device receives the file through AirDrop. This was first noticed by Android Authority, who confirmed the feature was working on the Razr Fold with a MacBook.

Why this is big on the Razr Fold

The Razr Fold is not a cheap phone. It is Motorola’s biggest swing at a proper book-style foldable, so it needs more than interesting hardware to justify itself as a daily driver–and this is one of the features that genuinely helps. A foldable is often used as a mini-tablet for editing, reviewing photos, reading documents, multitasking, and handling work files. If you are moving photos from the phone to a MacBook, sending documents to an iPad, or sharing media with an iPhone user nearby, AirDrop support makes the Razr Fold feel far less isolated from the Apple devices around it.

Hopefully, this function rolls out to other recent Motorola phones as well. Other Android brands already have supported models, including Google, Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo, Honor, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices. I already liked the Razr Fold more than I expected, and now, the case for making it my daily driver just got a lot stronger.

Surrounding the cylinder are four arms that help the device float and stay upright. One of the arms contains the power port and on/off button, plus a Bluetooth button used to initiate pairing with the Bublue mobile app. The only additional component is a mesh filter that sits underneath the filter basket. This filter, in turn, is held inside a circular frame, which holds it in place. All told, there are five pieces to the device, a fact that will become more important later when I discuss cleanup.

Put together, the robot is quite tall, needing a full 1.5 feet of water depth in which to operate.

Sorry, No Solar

Your first order of business with the BuVortex V5 is to charge its 7800 mAh battery, as—and this is essential—the unit has no solar-power charging function, a standard feature on traditional pool skimmer robots. The unit takes a sizable four hours to charge and is specified to run for three. I got close to four hours of runtime during my testing.

Photograph: Christopher Null

The lack of solar power alone may be something of a deal-breaker for most. (It is for me, at least.) When I use a pool skimmer, I typically drop it in the pool and have it run for a week or more, letting it sleep overnight when the battery is drained and firing it up again in the morning when the sun is out. The beauty of solar power on a skimmer is that you don’t have to think about it. I can’t remember the last time I plugged mine in. The only time I take the skimmer out of the pool is to periodically clean it.

Even with four hours of running time, operationally, the device makes little sense. Imagine the occasions when you need a skimmer the most—during the fall, especially, when leaves are continually falling. Four hours of skimming won’t put a dent in a day’s worth of debris landing on the surface of your pool, and even if you dutifully retrieve the robot, recharge it, and run it a second time, you’re still accounting for only a third of a 24-hour period. While no skimmer is perfect, with the BuVortex, there’s just no way to prevent most leaves from ending up on the floor of the pool or, at best, in a wall skimmer.

BMW revealed the fifth generation of its X5 at the Spartanburg plant in South Carolina, the same facility that builds these vehicles for markets around the world. The new model keeps the core formula that turned the original X5 into the vehicle that defined the premium Sports Activity Vehicle segment back in 1999, yet it arrives with cleaner surfaces, new lighting details, and a broader set of powertrain choices than any X5 before it.

Clean surfaces and a more vertical front end give the new X5 a more edgy appearance, while still looking unmistakably like an X5. The vertical grilles now light up not only at night, but also throughout the day as part of the Iconic Glow feature. A revolutionary double-X lighting signature combines low beams, daytime running lights, side markers, and turn signals into a single slim device that can also modify its pattern. The iX5 electric does not have the lower air intakes featured on gas variants, resulting in a smoother, more electric-centric front end.

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The usual door handles on the side of the car have been replaced by BMW Winglets integrated directly into the B and C pillars. A simple tap on the sensor opens the door. Holding the button for more than a second causes it to lock tightly. Soft-close is offered as standard, while full-powered doors are available as an option. You also get hidden window seals for flush glass surfaces, sharp wheel arches, and standard matte black side skirts to give the car a rooted, solid appearance. The wheels begin at 21 inches with staggered tire sizes and increase to 23 inches for the first time on an X5. The rear end is large, with flared arches that emphasize the car’s width and power. Slim taillights run across the back and carry their own version of the double-X symbol, while the one-piece tailgate keeps the rear neat. On launch day, there are eleven new exterior colours to pick from, some of which are totally new, with certain BMW Individual finishes arriving later.

Inside, the cabin has a more relaxed, airy appearance, with a higher seating position and some large door panels. The standard panoramic glass roof offers an astounding 28 square feet of sky on top. The instrument panel features a three-dimensional backlit accent strip that runs from door to door and performs some nice dynamic lighting tricks in conjunction with different driving modes, and in the Clear and Bold package, the center console control panel is finished in genuine slate, with crystal glass handling the gear selector, volume control, and seat adjustment switches.

The dashboard information will no longer be grouped behind the steering wheel, as it was previously. Instead, the Panoramic Vision system displays vital information on a darkened glass strip at the base of the windshield. The central touchscreen is a massive 17.9 inches, as it is the main entertainment component, and you can add a 14.6 inch screen enabling the front passenger to watch film or utilize applications without distracting the driver. The standard steering wheel is a vertical spoke design, while higher-spec models have more sporty choices.

Powertrain options have expanded significantly, with the X5 40 and 40 xDrive versions powered by a new 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six with 48-volt mild hybrid assistance. It produces 394 horsepower and 428 lb-ft of torque. The all-wheel-drive variant accelerates to 60 mph in just 5.1 seconds, which is plenty fast. The X5 50e xDrive plug-in hybrid combines the same six-cylinder engine with a 194-horsepower electric motor that is skillfully fitted into the 8-speed automatic. This results in a total 483 horsepower and 516 pound-feet. A rechargeable battery pack with a capacity of 26.5 kilowatt-hours allows you to travel the first 44 miles on electric alone – an improvement over the previous model – and reaches a high speed of 87 miles per hour on electric.

BMW’s first completely electric X5 is the iX5 60 xDrive, which features two motors that provide 570 horsepower and 593 pound-feet of torque. It comes with a 144-kilowatt-hour battery pack made feasible by innovative cylindrical cells and an 800-volt design. This vehicle can go up to 435 miles on a single charge and can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds. If you ever run short on battery, DC rapid charging can give you 80% in just 22 minutes, which is really quick for a vehicle this size.

Prices in the United States begin at $71,250 for the rear-wheel-drive X5 40, $73,550 for the xDrive, $78,950 for the plug-in hybrid 50e, and $81,250 for the iX5. All of these prices include delivery and are slightly higher than we saw last year. The first X5 40 xDrive models will go into production in October 2026, followed by the rear-wheel-drive 40 and plug-in hybrid in the first quarter of 2027, and later that year, a more powerful V8 M Performance variant is expected, as well as a hydrogen fuel cell iX5.

We’ve tested and reviewed the powerful iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, the thin and light iPhone Air, the solid iPhone 17 and the newer iPhone 17E to determine our best picks. After extensive testing, we think the iPhone 17 is the best choice for most people. The features it offers for its price and its battery life make it a standout. Recently, We tested the charging abilities of 33 phones, and the iPhone 17 Pro earned a CNET Lab Award for fastest wireless charging.

What’s the best iPhone right now?

The best iPhone for most people is the iPhone 17. It shares many features with Apple’s pricier 17 Pro models, but at a lower $829 starting price (or $799 if you activate through a carrier). It supports the newest camera capabilities like Dual Capture and Center Stage, and at long last, it has a 1-120Hz variable refresh rate for smoother scrolling and support for the always-on display.

While it’s true that the iPhone 17 shares a striking resemblance to last year’s iPhone 16, there are some key updates that help it stand out. Apart from the upgraded refresh rate, the iPhone 17 also boasts a peak brightness of 3,000 nits, along with an anti-reflective display that makes it easier to see the screen outdoors. 

The ultrawide camera goes from 12 megapixels on the iPhone 16 to 48 megapixels on the iPhone 17, and Apple says the iPhone 17 has up to 8 hours more of video playback. Indeed, in CNET’s 3-hour streaming test, the iPhone 17’s battery dropped from 100% to 89%, while the iPhone 16 hit 86%.   

A Ceramic Shield 2 display offers three times better scratch resistance, according to Apple, so if you’re susceptible to etching into your screen, it has a little more protection now. The iPhone 17 starts with a higher 256GB storage option, as opposed to the 128GB starting point on the iPhone 16, meaning you get more space for photos and apps. 

Unlike previous iPhone generations, the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro models share almost all the same hardware features, apart from the telephoto lens and bigger battery on the latter. While Apple tends to introduce features like the Dynamic Island and Action button on Pro models first, the two ends of the iPhone spectrum now pack all those same hardware functions. 

The iPhone 17 also features all the new iOS 26 capabilities, such as Live Translation, Call Screening and the new Liquid Glass interface.

Best iPhones of 2026

We test every iPhone in real-world scenarios focusing on its features, design, performance, cameras, battery life and overall value. We document our findings in an initial review that is periodically updated when there are new iOS updates or to compare against new phones from competitors like Samsung, Google and OnePlus.

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Photography

Photography is a major focus for the iPhone, so we take pictures and videos of various subjects in a variety of settings and lighting scenarios. We try out any new camera modes, such as Center Stage on the iPhone 17 series and Air which lets you take a horizontal selfie even if your holding the phone vertically.

Battery life

We conduct battery testing in a variety of ways. We assess how long the iPhone lasts during a typical day of use, and note how it performs during more focused sessions of video calls, media streaming and gaming. We also conduct a video playback test and a 45-minute drain test starting with a full battery, which isn’t always included in the initial review and added later in an update.

Performance measuring

We use benchmarking apps to measure the performance, alongside our own anecdotal experiences using the phone for our review. Of particular note are how graphics and animations look. Are they smooth? Or do they lag or stutter? We also look at how quickly the phone switches between horizontal and vertical orientations and how fast the camera app opens and is ready to take a photo.

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We perform processor-heavy tasks like editing photos and videos, exporting videos and playing games. We evaluate whether a newer version of the iPhone includes enough features to make it worth upgrading from older models. Some of these tests are added later in updates after the initial review is published. 

Read more: How CNET Tests Phones

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Earlier this year, shares of traditional SaaS companies tumbled amid investor fears that software built with AI could eventually displace those businesses. Despite such concerns, Bending Spoons, a company that acquires and revitalizes stagnating but well-known tech firms, saw its shares surge in its market debut.

It closed at $40.50 on Wednesday, nearly 40% above its $29 IPO price. At that price, the 13-year-old Milan, Italy-based company has a market capitalization of $25.7 billion, more than double its last private valuation of $11 billion. The company raised $1.68 billion in its offering.

Bending Spoons has grown rapidly by acquiring aging, but once popular, brands like AOL, Eventbrite, Evernote, Meetup, and Vimeo, then turning them profitable, typically through aggressive cost-cutting, launching new features, and raising prices. While the company’s approach is similar to private equity, there is one key difference: Bending Spoons has no plans to sell these businesses.

The company’s disclosed financials show it has indeed turned its growing portfolio of assets profitable. Bending Spoons reported $601 million in revenue for Q1, generating $27.4 million in net income. That’s a significant turnaround from the same period last year, when the company reported a $112 million net loss on $259 million in revenue, according to the SEC filing.

Bending Spoons, whose name comes from a scene in the science-fiction movie “The Matrix,” generated the majority of its revenue from subscriptions, which accounted for 84% of its business last year.

Before the offering, Baillie Gifford was Bending Spoons’ largest outside shareholder, followed by smaller stakes from buyout fund Renaissance Partners, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price.

The IPO also represents a significant windfall for Bending Spoons’ five co-founders: Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella, and Tomasz Greber.

Besides Bending Spoons, other investors follow the strategy of acquiring, fixing, and holding stalled software firms, often referred to as “venture zombie” companies. These firms include Constellation Software, Curious, Tiny, saas.group, Arising Ventures, and Calm Capital.

I’ve been low-key obsessed with Darren Aronofsky’s AI-drenched video project On This Day…1776 since it landed out of the blue on YouTube in late January.

As a narrative, the ongoing series of short videos tracks select events throughout the United States’ birth year, when the outcome of the looming revolution was truly precarious. As a Hollywood-adjacent initiative, it’s also meant to be a proving ground for what creative professionals might be able to accomplish with generative AI tools that are evolving by leaps and bounds.

Through the first half of 2026, and especially as we’ve closed in on the country’s 250th anniversary on July 4, what has emerged has been an increasingly surreal blend of technical ambition, snapshot patriotism and a penchant for the grotesque.

It’s that TV show that you’re sure is the worst thing ever, but you can’t stop hate-watching because you want to see what weird twist comes next. And some of it is truly bonkers.

Produced by Aronofsky’s AI-centric Primordial Soup studio and promoted by Time Studios, On This Day…1776 drew a burst of media attention — and backlash — with the simultaneous debut of its first two episodes. People hated it simply because it was heavily AI-generated. The flaws in the execution were all too apparent. It was a betrayal of the humanity of Aronofsky’s own films. As much as I tried to be open-minded, I couldn’t help but sum it up as “a hellish broth of machine-driven AI slop and bad human choices.”

For a while, it seemed like the criticism had been too much to bear and the project had been shelved. Time Studios had promised weekly episodes, but nearly a month went by before the third one dropped. (No splash — it simply appeared on the YouTube page, as every episode has done since.)

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It seemed to have fallen off everyone’s radar. The initial episode garnered 199,000 views — not exactly a viral sensation, but not nothing. The four episodes from mid-May to mid-June each have under 2,000 views as of this writing. 

For every episode since the start — 11 so far, most well under five minutes long — a handful of those views are mine.

Like I said, I’m obsessed. My compulsive viewing has centered on three things: whether the series could meet the weekly schedule (hard fail), how it presents the history (wacky, and getting wackier) and how the AI looks (often impressive, often dubious).

In May, speaking about the 1776 project at the Cannes Film Festival’s AI Summit, Aronofsky said this: “I encourage you to watch it because it’s an experiment to see how it’s gonna progress.”

Challenge accepted.

Before I get into those particulars, though, let me also say that regardless of my judgment of this one series, this isn’t a referendum on AI video as cinema or its general place in the arts. Whether you like it or not, generative AI is on the verge of becoming a fixture in movie-making, from storyboarding to providing the settings and scenery around human actors to creating full-on feature films.

I’m here to look at whether On This Day…1776 is succeeding or failing on its own terms. The series is a given, and I’m here to review it as I would any other show, like, for example, Widow’s Bay. What is the story that it’s telling? And is it telling that story well?

AI meets the Great Man of History theory

On This Day…1776 is not your high school American history class. Textbook it is not, even if it has more than a few stodgy, leaden moments.

It does — as promised — work through 1776 in chronological order, hitting some greatest-hits moments, including the fledgling Continental Army scaring the British fleet out of Boston Harbor, while often digging up deep cuts that don’t have specific dates attached to them, such as the forced recruitment of German villagers into the Hessian army. It cheats a bit with the calendar, though. The March 5: Massacre Day episode focuses on the Boston Massacre, even though that bloody event happened six years earlier. (It also didn’t appear on YouTube until March 17, a date that was actually significant in 1776 because it marked the fleet’s departure.)

There’s a global perspective woven into the series. We see the developments throughout that year from multiple angles: American revolutionaries, British soldiers, French royalty, Hessian mercenaries. Extended sequences are spoken in French and German — with subtitles — or with a tangy Scottish accent. (The production takes pains to point out that SAG-credentialed human voice actors handle the dialogue. Other humans involved include writer, director, editor and composer, all of whom are credited at the end of the each episode, starting with the fourth.)

It’s got an ensemble cast that’s largely a Great Men of History parade: Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George III, John Adams. If there’s a lead character, it’s George Washington, who was a towering and central figure in 1776. A rare exception is the curiously two-episode saga featuring an unfortunate, unknown German conscripted into the Hessian ranks just after his wedding.

We spend time with Betsy Ross in the Flag Day episode (which landed a few days late), but she has no lines. She’s too busy sewing.

“Mindblowing” improvements, Aronofsky says

In his May comments at Cannes, Aronofsky called the production advances from January to the April 29 episode (the sixth one, and the most recent at that moment) “mindblowing.” It wasn’t just the AI models getting better, he said, but also the Primordial Soup pipeline and the unspecified artists working on the project.

I’m not convinced. Maybe it’s more of a back-end thing, as the production team gets more comfortable with the tools. But on the business end, where I’m watching? Sorry, no.

Faces remain inconsistent from both scene to scene and from frame to frame within the same scene. Ben Franklin looks a little more doughy, then less so; a little older, then a little younger. Lip sync is also maddeningly off almost all the time, like a badly dubbed foreign film. The historical figures still feel too much like props: Washington striding into a room feels staged, not lived. And there’s often a plasticky quality to the images.

There’s a constant feeling that Primordial Soup is showing off: Look at the macro detail in this fabric! Watch someone blow picture-perfect bubbles! It’s technically impressive, but also wicked distracting. Time Studios refers to On This Day…1776 as an “animated series,” which feels like an odd description given its relentless pursuit of photorealism.

Yet somehow the more recent episodes do feel improved in a way that’s hard to pin down.

Episode 10, the Betsy Ross one, has a stirring montage of red, white and blue flag threads forming and reforming into Uncle Sam, Amelia Earhart and her airplane, the moon landing, the flag raising at Iwo Jima, an elephant and donkey facing off, Jimi Hendrix, Arlington Cemetery. It feels like something you’d see on the Jumbotron at a political rally. It’s one of the most impressive sequences in the series so far.

I think it’s confidence. The Primordial Soup team seems to be feeling more and more empowered to get weird. To indulge their inner David Lynch. To move beyond diorama history and toward a specific vision, however demented. 

One of the early episodes gave us George Washington having a bad dream, playing out the misgivings that he really did record in private correspondence. As he’s getting ready for bed, we get an all too vivid look at his false teeth. In the extended dream sequence, a musket ball hits him squarely in the forehead, lingers a moment and falls off. 

That Boston Massacre callback? It’s done in a vertical video format, as if someone had recorded the episode on a smartphone. That’s hardly the only anachronism. In later episodes, we get glimpses of “Join or die!” spray-painted on a statue, and in another, a call for “No more kings.”

Trippy and getting trippier

The April 29 episode was trippy from start to finish. An account of debates within France’s ruling class over whether to aid the American colonists, it opens with a tracking shot of a housefly zipping through palace rooms before it’s finally swatted onto a map with a gruesomely comic flourish. In another scene, a fish flops across a table in front of a dismayed royal. Bewigged ministers debating in a palace room suddenly find themselves aboard a ship on a roiling sea, table and chairs included. (The episode ends with a guillotine beheading. Whee!)

The June 5 episode gives us a stressed-out John Adams who is perilously close to being a clone of Larry from the Three Stooges.

But nothing prepared me for the newest episode, which dropped June 30 as I was wrapping up this review. It is, I kid you not, rendered in a thoroughly 21st-century anime style, complete with a garish WWE-style showdown between Thomas Jefferson and George III as Jefferson wrestles with the soul-stirring phrases that would make the Declaration of Independence the defining document of the American experiment. Your high school history teacher probably never paired “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” with:

George III: “Kneel before your king!” 
Jefferson: “Kneel before this, bitch.”

In this episode, as in the real events of history, Jefferson does get the last word, and the W.

On This Day…1776 is less a history lesson than a work of historical fiction, staying largely faithful to the real people and events while never hesitating to veer off in service of the story it wants to tell. It’s a costume drama that’s still getting comfortable in its breeches, buckle shoes and tricorne hat, a period piece eager to prove its relevance to the present day.

Aronofsky has described On This Day…1776 as an “experiment” being carried out with generative AI models and tools whose “potential as storytelling instruments has become undeniable.”

Unfortunately, there are many, many unanswered questions about how much of what we’re seeing is the unvarnished product of the AI tools themselves (how elaborate the prompts must be!) and how much is the work of the human artists and technicians using them. Is an episode’s director an auteur or a spectator? What goes into the post-production process? Where is the line between human creativity and AI automation? Will it ever be more than glorified slop?

On This Day…1776 stumbles and falters repeatedly. And while it may never win over the large “AI-isn’t-art” camp, its better moments are aren’t half bad. 

Not every experiment succeeds. But maybe, hopefully, we learn something along the way.

Sam Altman is in talks with the US government in a bid to clear political hurdles, says the Financial Times.