The latest tech news about the world’s best (and sometimes worst) hardware, apps, and much more. From top companies like Google and Apple to tiny startups vying for your attention, Verge Tech has the latest in what matters in technology daily.
Jason Bonfig, Best Buy’s chief customer, product, and fulfillment officer, will take over for Corie Barry as CEO on October 31st, the company announced on Wednesday. Barry has served as CEO since 2019, and has contended with layoffs, stagnant sales growth, and tariff-related price hikes.
[The Wall Street Journal]
New AI tools can unlock insights from aerial and satellite images or anchor “imaginative scenes in the real world,” Google says. Pretty niche, but probably useful for urban planners, or putting spaceships in front of New York landmarks.
Dan Crenshaw was supposed to be the future of the GOP. Instead, he proved politicians really can be too online.
Astronauts aboard the ISS are getting new custom HP laptops, an upgrade to an orbital compute setup that already includes HP workstations and printers. But is the company getting a little ahead of itself?
Nathan Friend:
“along with HP printers designed to work in microgravity”
I’d love it if HP designed printers to work in regular gravity first, thank you
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Fairphone reports its smartphone shipments grew by 42 percent in 2025, no mean feat when the rest of the industry has been fairly flat. I thought last year’s Fairphone 6 was a huge step forward in quality, and it’s a good time for its efforts to expand into the US.
Once championed by the Trump family after heavily bankrolling their crypto ambitions, Justin Sun is now unhappy with his chosen bedfellows. Suing Trump-linked World Liberty Financial, Sun alleges in a federal lawsuit that his former allies maliciously froze his $75 million investment, denouncing the platform as “World Tyranny.”
Following a teaser earlier this month, Oppo’s Pad Mini Android tablet has launched in China. Its 8.8-inch OLED screen is larger than the iPad Mini’s, but the Pad Mini has slimmer 2.99mm bezels and is just 5.39mm thick. Pricing starts at 3,699 CNY (around $542) for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Cook’s relentless optimization propelled Apple’s fortunes to new heights and an era of predictable profitability.
Apple’s outgoing CEO and incoming executive chairman addressed employees today about the transition, Bloomberg reports.
John Ternus, who will take over as CEO, also spoke to staff, noting that AI — something that Apple has struggled with, to put it mildly — is “going to create almost unlimited potential.”
Canva CEO Melanie Perkins dodged this question with a lot of charm and verve, but I wonder if the answer is quickly going from Adobe to Anthropic. More on this week’s Decoder!
While hyping up its couch keyboard, Framework CEO Nirav Patel showed images of how people use its computers in the living room. It gave me a Leo DiCaprio moment as I noticed a photo from my time testing Bazzite on the Framework Desktop. How about a photo credit, Nirav?
Did Framework just catch up to premium laptops?
Cook and incoming CEO John Ternus made a computer company the most important audio company of the 21st century.
20 hours of 4K Netflix, says CEO Nirav Patel. It’s got a Core Ultra 3 chip, a 22 percent larger and denser battery, a custom 30-120Hz VRR screen and LPCAMM2 compression mounted memory. Full story coming soon.
That’s Framework CEO Nirav Patel, with a message that’s sure to resonate with his modular computer company’s fanbase. He briefly joked that Framework would announce “Framework AI” today.
After promoting Johny Srouji, I expect Apple to continue focusing on what makes its recent Macs so great: the chips.
Cook once said Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind would be ‘about health.’ If true, he’ll get much of the credit.
We’re here at Framework’s Next Gen event in San Francisco, and you can follow along with the livestream. It’s been teasing a lot of Linux: what do you think we’re about to see?
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The Find X9 Ultra has the best 10x telephoto lens yet, but would be a better phone without it.
When Google launched Gemini for Home, it put one key feature behind a paywall. Continued Conversation became available only on Gemini Live, which required Google Home Premium.
Starting today, users in Early Access can once again ask follow-up questions to Google’s voice assistant on their Google Home devices without saying “Hey Google” every time, and without paying. Another bonus is that the feature now works with all supported languages and in all regions.
[Google Nest Community Blog]
According to journalist Ken Klippenstein, ICE may be working on developing smart glasses capable of facial and biometric recognition. Klippenstein claims the agency wouldn’t just be using this tech on illegal aliens, but all Americans, especially protesters. College students proved this tech is already doable, but thanks, I hate it.
[https://www.kenklippenstein.com]
Not every power adapter needs a screen, but Satechi’s new $99.99 ChargeView, available now through its online store and Amazon, lets you monitor how much power individual devices are drawing from four USB-C ports, and how much of its total output of 140W remains.
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If you haven’t learned enough about John Ternus, this WSJ profile has a note about his race car hobbies, and a pic from his college yearbook.
Software developer Josh Pucket has released Pica: a macOS app for managing fonts that’s currently optimized for latin script. It’s yet another free tool for the design community (yay!) and it even has a fun launch animation that sends characters cascading down your desktop.
The Thread Group has released a new Thread Network Diagnostic app that lets you “explore, monitor, and visualize your Thread network.” It displays network topology, connection status, and device roles to help troubleshoot issues. It’s Android only for now, but an iOS version is in the works.
Thread connectivity problems have been one of Matter’s biggest pain points — most recently with Ikea’s Matter-over-Thread rollout. There are some apps that let you see your network, but a dedicated tool like this could be very useful. I’ll report back after testing it out.
[Google Play Store]
