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Gone are the days in which you needed to spend a fortune to get a good smartphone. In 2026, features once exclusive to high-end smartphones big batteries, multi-camera arrays, high refresh rate OLED displays and more have made their way down to more affordable models. Yes, youll still need to buy a flagship smartphone to get the best camera or fastest processor, but you don't have to make nearly as many compromises as you once did if you have a strict budget to adhere to when you go shopping f

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Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down as president of Lucasfilm. Although she will continue as a producer for several Star Wars projects, including upcoming movie The Mandalorian and Grogu , the company will now be helmed by a duo in Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan. It's a big changing of the guard for Star Wars fans, and marks the start of a fresh chapter for the sci-fi universe. Before taking over at Lucasfilm, Kennedy had seen great success as a producer with a couple little films you may have hea

After a tumultuous 2025 that saw it lose around 4,000 employees , NASA finally has an operating budget for 2026, and one that largely preserves its scientific capabilities. On Thursday, the Senate passed an appropriations bill funding NASA, alongside the National Science Foundation and a handful of other federal agencies. Going into the appropriations process, the president called for a 24 percent year over year reduction to NASA's total operating budget. As part of that plan, the White House wa

The US and Taiwan have signed an agreement that will see a multi-billion dollar investment into domestic development of semiconductors and related infrastructure. The US Department of Commerce announced that Taiwanese businesses will make an upfront investment of at least $250 billion into their US production capacity, while Taiwan's government will provide credit guarantees of at least another $250 billion in support of the semiconductor industry and supply chain in the US. In exchange, Taiwan

After testing the feature in a limited beta , Bluesky is making its Live Now badge for streamers available for everyone on the social network to try. Live Now is included as part of Bluesky's v1.114 update, alongside cashtags, a separate type of hashtag for collecting conversations about publicly-traded companies. Bluesky first started testing its Live Now badge in May 2025 with a limited group of accounts, including the official NBA account. The feature lets Twitch streamers with Bluesky profil

Today, Amazon shared more details about the final chapter of its game New World: Aeternum . The company announced in October that it would wind down support for the MMO, with the Nighthaven season to be its last. New World will be delisted and no longer available for purchase starting today, but the game's servers will not be taken offline until January 31, 2027. People who own the game will be able to continue playing until that date. Nighthaven season will continue through to that end date. Pl

As part of a new agreement, films from Sony Pictures Entertainment will stream on Netflix first, the companies announced via a joint statement . The new deal expands on the exclusive rights Netflix had to Sony films in the US, and means the service will be the first place people will be able to stream upcoming projects like the live-action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda , and a quartet of biopics about The Beatles . Sony's films will stream worldwide on Netflix in what's called Pay-1, the fir

Now would be a good time to update all your Bluetooth audio devices. On Thursday, Wired reported on a security flaw in 17 headphone and speaker models that could allow hackers to access your devices, including their microphones. The vulnerability stems from a faulty implementation of Google's one-tap (Fast Pair) protocol . Security researchers at Belgium's KU Leuven University Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography group, who discovered the security hole, named the flaw WhisperPair. They

YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed is reporting that NVIDIA has effectively discontinued the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. In its most recent video , the channel states ASUS explicitly told it the RTX 5070 Ti is currently facing a supply shortage. As a result, the company has placed the model into end of life status, and no longer plans to produce it. Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is no longer available to p

The second season of Amazon's excellent Fallout show is currently airing , but the company is already looking to expand its programming around the popular franchise. Prime Video has greenlit a unscripted reality show titled Fallout Shelter . It will be a ten-episode run with Studio Lambert, the team behind reality projects including Squid Game: The Challenge and The Traitors , as its primary producer.Bethesda Game Studios head honcho Todd Howard is attached as an executive producer. Amazon's des

The intriguing Africanfuturist heist game, Relooted , is out on February 10. Developed by independent South African studio Nyamakop, the game focuses on a ragtag crew from Johannesburg that liberates real-life African artifacts from a series of fictionalized Western museums. Relooted is best described as a 2.5d side-scrolling action platformer with stealth and puzzle elements. You have to carefully plan each heist with your fellow teammates, knowing where to place each crew member and how youre

For a number of very obvious reasons, we dont want to roll back the clock to early 2020. No thank you. But if there was a feel-good lockdown story, it was the perfectly timed arrival of Animal Crossing: New Horizons , which allowed friends who could no longer meet up IRL to do so virtually on their carefully pruned islands. The game will almost certainly never be as popular as it was back then again, but Nintendo is hoping a good chunk of lapsed islanders will return for its latest DLC drop, whi

Verizon is offering a very small mea culpa after Wednesday's massive outage , which drew more than 1.5 million reports on Downdetector and lasted hours. The carrier posted on X that it will offer a $20 credit, but customers must redeem it in the myVerizon app. This credit isnt meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can, the company wrote. But its a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us. Incensed customers have largely replied with incredulity, both at t

As part of Wikipedia's 25th anniversary , parent company Wikimedia announced a slew of partnerships with AI-focused companies like Amazon, Meta, Perplexity, Microsoft and others. The deals are meant to alleviate some of the cost associated with AI chatbots accessing Wikipedia content in enormous volumes by giving the tech companies streamlined access. As noted by The Verge , the timeline on these deals is a little squirrely. The Wikipedia foundation says that several companies became enterprise

The indie RPG Sea of Stars is being released for mobile platforms on April 7. The iOS and Android versions are priced at just $10, which is a steal considering it cost $35 when it was first released for PC and consoles. Heck, it still costs that much on many platforms. This is a mobile release, so it's not an exact port. The interface has been revamped to allow for complete touch control. It's also compatible with controllers, which is always a good thing with smartphone ports. The Android versi

YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed is reporting that NVIDIA has effectively discontinued the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. In its most recent video , the channel states ASUS explicitly told it the RTX 5070 Ti is currently facing a supply shortage. As a result, the company has placed the model into end of life status, and no longer plans to produce it. Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is no longer available to p

If youre looking for something to entertain your kids for the next several months (and potentially longer), YouTube would like you to know that more than 100 classic episodes of Sesame Street are now streaming on the platform. The partnership between Sesame Street creator Sesame Workshop and YouTube was first announced last year and encompasses both old episodes as well as new content. Some of the themed compilations that have also been added to YouTube and YouTube Kids focus on specific educat

Mentra will soon start shipping its first smart glasses , the Mentra Live. At first glance, theres nothing obvious setting Mentras glasses apart from its more well-known competitors , but they come with their own dedicated app store, and employ an open-source OS with an SDK that developers have had access to since early 2025. Mentra says the MiniApp Store is the first app store of its nature for smart glasses, and it will be available to iOS and Android users through the Mentra app. It might be

During CES 2026, Samsung unveiled plenty of new TVs, monitors and other hardware. However, the company is also looking to expand further into video games and has announced a significant refresh to its Gaming Hub on smartphones. Engadget spoke with Samsungs Jong Woo, VP of Game Services, who explained that the update will offer more personalized, faster ways to play and place greater emphasis on up-and-coming titles. Now available on Galaxy devices, with further updates planned, the new hub wants

IO Interactive raised a few eyebrows last week when it announced the minimum and recommended PC specs for 007 First Light . To run the James Bond adventure at in 1080p at 60 fps, IOI initially said you'd need to have a rig with at least 32GB of RAM and a GPU with 12GB of VRAM. The studio has now revised those numbers and other elements of the specs after the community flagged some inconsistencies in an earlier version of the listing. The developer blamed an internal miscommunication which led to

Basketball fans can save on NBA League Pass right now, which lets you catch a bunch of out-of-market NBA games via streaming. The League Pass Premium subscription is on sale for $75, down from the usual $160, and League Pass Standard is marked down to $50 from $110. Considering we're almost halfway though the season, the discount makes sense and is a good deal for anyone who wants to keep a close eye on the rest of the games to be played this year. The Standard plan includes commercials and supp

After a widely hyped and successful Kickstarter campaign , Valerions 4K VisionMaster Max laser projector has finally arrived. Its the companys new flagship model in the VisionMaster series, offering better image quality and more convenience than its other models. However, its quite expensive and has some stiff competition from Ankers Nebula X1 and XGIMIs Horizon 20 Max. I was eager to see how it compared to those models and if it delivers on Valerions promise of pure cinema. It does offer better

President Trump has signed a proclamation imposing a 25 percent tariff on certain advanced computing chips, the White House has announced. As The New York Times notes, the administration previously threatened much bigger and broader tariffs for chips. Trump even said that he was going to impose a 100 percent tariff on companies unless they invest on semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. The new tariff will only affect advanced chips imported into the US and are meant to be re-exporte

Spotify is raising the prices for its premium subscriptions by $1 to $2 across the board, starting this February. Those are similar figures to the companys last price hike in 2024. Subscribers across the US, Estonia and Latvia will soon receive an email, notifying them that theyll be paying a larger amount for their February bill. The streaming service said its raising its prices occasionally to reflect the value that Spotify delivers, to continue offering the best possible experience and to ben

E Ink tablets can provide the best of both worlds, giving you a similar tactile response to writing with pen and paper while also conveniently holding all of your digital files. reMarkable has a new year sale going on right now on its E Ink tablets, where you can save between $70 and $90 on a bundle, depending on the configuration you choose. For example, you can get the reMarkable 2 tablet with the Marker and Book Folio for $449, instead of the usual $568. The company also sells a newer stylus

Apple keeps most of its product pricing on a tight leash, but we do see the company's AirTags go on sale pretty frequently. Another cost cut has come around for this item just in time for the holidays. Amazon is currently selling a four-pack of AirTags for $65. At a third off the regular cost, that price is pretty close to the record low discount of $63 we've seen for these Bluetooth trackers. AirTags can be useful for people who travel frequently, helping you to keep track of essentials like yo

After reaching a proposed settlement last year, the FTC has banned General Motors from sharing specific consumer data with third parties, TechCrunch reported. The finalized order wraps up one of the more egregious cases of a corporation collecting its customers' data and then using it against them. Two years ago, the New York Times report released a report detailing how GM's OnStar Smart Driver program collected and sold detailed geolocation and driving behavior data to third parties, including

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying the Crew-11 astronauts has splashed down into the ocean after they left the ISS a month earlier than planned due a medical issue. Its the first time NASA cut a mission short due to a medical concern . The agency didnt name the crew member and their condition but stated that they were stable and that it wasnt a case of medical evacuation. NASA merely decided to end the mission early out of an abundance of caution, because the ISS didnt have the tools for a pr

You dont need to spend a fortune to stay on top of your health goals while tracking your fitness. These days, even cheap fitness trackers come packed with features that help you monitor your heart rate, track your steps and even analyze your sleep stages. Many budget options now include GPS tracking for those outdoor runs, real-time heart rate tracking to keep you in the right zone during workouts and, thankfully, most work with both iPhone and Android devices. Some even go beyond basic metrics,

Verizons network is experiencing technical issues that are impacting calls and wireless data. Verizon customers on X have reported seeing SOS rather than the traditional network bars on their smartphones, and even the network providers own status page struggled to load, likely due to the number of customers trying to access it. Based on the experience of Verizon users on Engadgets staff, the services that are impacted appear to be calls and wireless data. Text messages continue to be delivered n

X says it is changing its policies around Groks image-editing abilities following a multi-week outcry over the chatbot repeatedly being accused of generating sexualized images of children and nonconsensual nudity. In an update shared from the @Safety account on X, the company said it has implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis.. xAI is also moving all of Groks image-generating features

Netflix is continuing to double down on podcasts, with the streaming service's announcement that it has hired talent to host two original shows for its platform. The first show stars NFL Hall of Famer-turned-analyst Michael Irvin and the second is a talk show for former Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson. The White House with Michael Irvin premieres January 19. The abode in the title refers to a building near the Dallas Cowboys facilities rather than the seat of US presidential power,

Elon Musk isn't the only party at fault for Grok's nonconsensual intimate deepfakes of real people, including children . What about Apple and Google? The two (frequently virtue-signaling) companies have inexplicably allowed Grok and X to remain in their app stores even as Musk's chatbot reportedly continues to produce the material. On Wednesday, a coalition of women's and progressive advocacy groups called on Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai to uphold their own rules and remove the apps. The open let

Amazon's upcoming God of War live-action TV adaptation has cast Ryan Hurst as its Kratos. Sony announced the casting today on X with a brief post and an image of both Hurst and Kratos in full scowl mode. Hurst is already sporting a very Kratos-style beard, so he's already got the right vibe going for him. He has past credits on familiar shows such as Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead . The upcoming Amazon series also isn't his first rodeo acting in this universe; Hurst voiced Thor in the vide

In a chaotic world, one thing you can count on is your own common-sense steps toward better cybersecurity . January is a great time to grab a subscription for yourself or a loved one, as a few holiday sales are (inexplicably) still happening. With access to a virtual private network (VPN) , you can stream TV shows and events from all over the world, protect your information from hackers and thwart online trackers. We strongly recommend using a VPN , but you might get stuck with a substandard app

The App Store is a home for many kinds of apps (including, inexplicably , one that lets users undress strangers without their consent ). But hey, it also has games! And soon the store's Apple Arcade service will include one more: the not-so-highly rated Civilization VII . Apple announced on Wednesday that Sid Meier's Civilization VII will arrive almost exactly a year after launch . The game is already available for Apple devices, but its arrival on Apple Arcade will be a first. Civilization VII

California authorities have launched an investigation into xAI following weeks of reports that the chatbot was generating sexualized images of children. xAI appears to be facilitating the large-scale production of deepfake nonconsensual intimate images that are being used to harass women and girls across the internet, including via the social media platform X, California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office said in a statement . The statement cited a report that more than half of the 20,000 image

ExpressVPN is back on sale again, and its two-year plans are up to 78 percent off right now. You can get the Advanced tier for $101 for 28 months. This is marked down from the $392 that this time frame normally costs. On a per-month basis, it works out to roughly $3.59 for the promo period. Weve consistently liked ExpressVPN because its fast, easy to use and widely available across a large global server network. In fact, it's our current pick for best premium VPN . One of the biggest drawbacks h

Verizons network appears to be having technical issues that are impacting calls and wireless data. Verizon customers on X have reported seeing SOS rather than the traditional network bars on their smartphones, and even the network providers own status page is struggling to load during the outage. Based on the experience of Verizon users on Engadgets staff, the services that are impacted appear to be calls and wireless data. Text messages continue to be delivered normally, at least for some users

Sony just announced January's Game Catalog additions for PS Plus subscribers and it's a fantastic lineup. All of these titles will be ready to play on January 20. First up, there's Resident Evil Village . This is a direct sequel to 2017s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard . It's a full game with plenty of jump scares and an engrossing narrative. It's set in a spooky village, thus the name, and a nearby castle. This shouldn't disappoint fans of the franchise and will be available for both PS4 and PS5. Li

Generative AI, we are repeatedly told, is a transformative and complicated technology. So complicated that its own creators are unable to explain why it acts the way it does, and so transformative that we'd be fools to stand in the way of progress. Even when progress resembles a machine for undressing strangers without their consent on an unprecedented scale , as has been the case of late with Elon Musk's Grok chatbot. UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer seems to have so fully bought into the grand l

Look, virtual private networks are great I wouldn't have made a list of the best VPNs if I didn't recommend using them. But being able to control your own technology is also important. A VPN can provide protection and peace of mind when used properly , but you may not want it active on your phone all the time. For example: Are your Google search results suddenly in German? Thats one example of what can happen if you leave your virtual location set to Berlin or Vienna. Or maybe a VPN you install

Have a hankering for some audiobooks? Audible is holding one heck of a sale right now, giving users three months of access for $3 . That's a dollar per month. This is something of a winter tradition for the Amazon-owned platform and the promotion ends on January 21. An Audible subscription grants one audiobook per month to keep. This can be selected from a massive catalog of new releases and bestsellers. The collection here has just about everything. However, it's easy to plow through a single b

The first-generation Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones are on sale right now for $280, marked down from $430. That 35 percent savings is an even steeper discount than we saw last year Black Friday. In our review of the first-generation Ultras, we gave them a score of 86 out of 100, noting their best-in-class active noise cancellation (ANC) and comfort. Bose improved its stock tuning for these headphones, which we could immediately tell sounded warmer and clearer. Bose has typically lagged behin

For a number of very obvious reasons, we dont want to roll back the clock to early 2020. No thank you. But if there was a feel-good lockdown story, it was the perfectly timed arrival of Animal Crossing: New Horizons , which allowed friends who could no longer meet up IRL to do so virtually on their carefully pruned islands. The game will almost certainly never be as popular as it was back then again, but Nintendo is hoping a good chunk of lapsed islanders will return for its latest DLC drop, whi

The holiday season may be behind us, but that doesn't mean you can't still find good deals on some of our favorite tech. Take the Apple Mac mini M4 , which is on sale for $100 off. The 17 percent discount gives you 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD for $499, which is only about $20 more than its Black Friday sale price. Its beefier models are also on sale: opting for 512GB of SSD will cost you $689, down from $799, while also upping your RAM to 24GB is available for $890, dropping from $999. We gave

Gemini is adding a feature thats designed to feel more tailored to individual users. Once enabled, Personal Intelligence can pull context from across your Google ecosystem, including Gmail, Google Photos, Search and YouTube History, to gain specific insight that will shape its answers and recommendations. Personal Intelligence is available starting today in the US for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. The feature is opt-in only and is off by default. Google Google says users will have the abi

YouTube is rolling out some additional parental controls, including a way to set time limits for viewing Shorts on teen accounts. In the near future, parents and guardians will be able to set the Shorts timer to zero on supervised accounts. This is an industry-first feature that puts parents firmly in control of the amount of short-form content their kids watch, Jennifer Flannery O'Connor, YouTube's vice president of product management, wrote in a blog post . Along with that, take-a-break and be

You can easily spruce up your nightstand or desk by decluttering a bit, replacing some of those annoying charging cables with a good wireless charging setup. One of our favorites that can handle three devices at once is the UGREEN MagFlow Qi2 3-in-1 Charger Station 25W . Normally $140, it's on sale right now for $95; that's 32 percent off and only about $5 more than its record-low price. This is our top pick for a 3-in-1 charging pad thanks to its versatility. The UGREEN can work equally well as