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Samsung’s summer Unpacked event, traditionally the company’s annual unveiling of its big-screen Galaxy Note line of phones, brought us the Galaxy Note 10. We went into the event with some big expectations for it.

The event took place just weeks after the company announced that the Galaxy Fold will relaunch sometime in September after fixing problems with the screen. But the Note, which used to be the flagship in which Samsung debuted the latest and greatest technologies, has some work to do to get out of the shadow of the Fold. And as frequently happens when newer, pricier models are announced, it may make the Note 9 more attractive to some people. 

Google may lean on considerably more than touch-free gestures to reel in would-be Pixel 4 buyers. Sources for 9to5Google claim that both the base Pixel 4 and the larger Pixel 4 XL will include fast 90Hz OLED displays marketed under a “Smooth Display” name. Much like the OnePlus 7 Proand a few other devices, you’d get a silkier, more responsive screen that could be ideal for playing games and watching high frame rate videos.

There might also be more camera tricks in store. It’s no secret that the Pixel 4 line will have dual rear cameras (a 12MP standard shooter and a 16MP telephoto, according to this leak), but the sources also talk of work on a “DSLR-like attachment” for the phones. It’s not certain if this is simply an add-on lens or something more sophisticated.

Both Pixels will reportedly have stereo speakers as well as Google Assistant features that are (initially, at least) exclusive to the lineup. Other specs are relatively familiar. The two would run on Snapdragon 855 chips with 6GB of RAM, carry at least 64GB of storage and ditch the display notch for the sake of both the gesture radar and face detection sensors.

There’s a chance Google might confirm the 90Hz display soon given that it has been willing to tease Pixel 4 features as they leak. If it’s real, it further reflects the sharp change in strategy for the Pixel line. As a rule, Pixel phones haven’t had much more than their cameras and software to help distinguish them from the pack. A Pixel 4 with a 90Hz display, secure face detection and hands-off gestures would be another story. While you’ve seen variants of those features before, having them all in one device could make the Pixel more alluring even if you don’t particularly care about Google’s usual software tricks.

Not once during Samsung’s Unpacked event for the new Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10 Plusdid anyone on stage say the word “Bixby.” Samsung’s virtual assistant — positioned as an alternative to Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri — was never directly brought up over the course of the Note’s introduction and several other product sequences featuring the Galaxy Watch Active 2, Galaxy Tab S6, and other devices. Bixby wasn’t included in any demonstrations of the Note 10’s many new software tricks, productivity enhancements, and features designed with convenience in mind.

It was a remarkable exclusion from Samsung after years of trying to establish Bixby as central to Samsung’s in-house software efforts and AI advancements. The absence was particularly noticeable since at this time last year, Samsung was showcasing Bixby 2.0 on stage in the very same room, listing off all the improvements it had made to the assistant’s smarts and voice command processing. Surely a “Hey Bixby” voice command could’ve been squeezed into the presentation somewhere, right? It never came.

There are other signs that Bixby might be less of a priority for Samsung in 2019. Unlike its last several flagship phones, the Galaxy Note 10 does not include a dedicated Bixby button. Instead, users will be able to trigger Bixby with the power button. But you wouldn’t know it, because this was never shown on stage.

By default, pressing and holding the power button will bring up Bixby — no matter how long you hold it down for. If you thought a standalone Bixby button was annoying before, this out-of-box behavior could be considered even worse. If you want to use the power button to, you know, turn the phone off, you’ll have to disable Bixby altogether. There might be a power/volume button combo that lets you turn off the phone more easily (Apple does this on the iPhone X and later), but Samsung’s default is going to result in more unwanted Bixby interactions and customer frustration.

So Bixby is still alive and well on phones. It’s also on Samsung smartwatches, TVs, and refrigerators. But the Galaxy Home (a Bixby-powered smart speaker similar to the Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod) remained absent from the keynote a year after being introduced at Barclays Center in 2018. Samsung missed the Home’s April release target, and most recently the company has claimed it will ship sometime in the third quarterof this year. Maybe so, but this product is taking a long time to the point that it risks turning into Samsung’s AirPower. Having remained a no-show at the Note event, it’s possible we’ll finally hear more about the Galaxy Home at next month’s IFA conference in Berlin. If nothing more is known by then, well…

Bixby was featured during the pre-event videos that were running in the arena even if it didn’t earn a keynote mention. And in fairness, Samsung had a lot of ground to cover: in addition to hardware and buzzy industry topics like 5G, the company discussed a number of partnerships with Microsoft, Under Armour, Discord, and even the UN.

Does a lack of stage time mean Bixby is going anywhere? No, not at all. But it might indicate that Samsung’s assistant is taking a back seat and will become something that’s just sort of there — once you free your Note 10’s power button from it, that is. The people who actually enjoy using Bixby for its deep integration with phone settings and multi-step actions will still have it at their disposal. But for everyone else, Bixby has always felt disposable. Today, it felt like Samsung got the message.

Other things Samsung didn’t mention on stage today:

Why it got rid of the headphone jack on the Note 10. Apple’s “courage” explanation didn’t go over very well, so maybe it’s best to just avoid the subject under the stage lights.

The aforementioned Galaxy Home.

An exact release date for the Galaxy Fold.

“Android.”

Every year, Apple needs to whip up something exciting if it wants to get people hyped about the next iPhone. The same holds true especially for this year. With iPhone sales falling 12% in the fiscal third quarter, profits expected to dip to $9.6 billion and more people trading in their iPhones for Androids, the company needs to make sure its iPhone 11, 11R and 11 Max (or whatever they’ll be called) will be compelling enough to draw new customers or keep current customers updating.

So when will Apple officially announce the 2019 iPhones? The company hasn’t sent out invitations to any iPhone events yet, but based on previous years, I predict Apple will unveil the next iPhones on Tuesday, Sept. 10. Keep in mind this is just an educated guess, and we have no confirmation from Apple itself if this date is correct (Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request to comment.) However, there are a few reasons why this is the likeliest date.

For the past seven years Apple has announced iPhones either in the same week as Labor Day, which is on the first Monday in September, or the following week. In the past, if the US holiday occurred on Sept. 3 or earlier, Apple announced its iPhone the following week. When Labor Day landed on the Sept. 5 or later, as it did in 2015 and 2016, Apple announced the iPhone the following Wednesday (two days after Labor Day).

This year, Labor Day is on Monday, Sept. 2. Keeping with the pattern, Apple would announce its new iPhones the following Tuesday or Wednesday: Sept. 10 or Sept. 11. Either date fits the pattern, but since the news cycle on Sept. 11 is best avoided for obvious reasons, I’d go with Sept. 10 as the safer bet. I also predict preorders will kick off that Friday, Sept. 13.

The date also aligns with the expected in-store release and shipping dates too, which I expect to both fall on Friday, Sept. 20. For the last seven years, you could purchase the regular flagship iPhones on a Friday, around the third week of September, about a week and a half after Apple makes its announcements. Specialty iPhones, like the iPhone XR, iPhone X and iPhone SE shipped out on their own timelines. Because the iPhone XR was available in October, there’s a chance the iPhone 11R will be in users’ hands in October too.

There you have it. I believe Apple will announce the new iPhone 11s on Sept. 10, with preorders on Sept. 13 and shipping starting Sept. 20. Again, without Apple’s confirmation these are just predictions, but we’ll find out soon enough if I’m correct. Last year I wagered a can of Coke if I turned out to be right, which I was. (I’m still waiting for that soda BTW.) If I’m correct this year I shall wager… a box of Pocky.

CVE-2019-1125 was made public today or also referred to as the “SWAPGS” vulnerability as a new variant of Spectre V1 affecting Windows and Linux with Intel (and according to mixed information, AMD – though the current Linux kernel patches at least seem to only apply to Intel) x86_64 processors.

The SWAPGS vulnerability allows attackers to gain read access to privileged memory and builds off existing Spectre fixes. Red Hat has a great write-up on the technical side of this new vulnerability. There is also the CVE text.

Microsoft has already patched Windows 10 quietly for this vulnerability while Linux kernel patches already landed in Git. Linux distribution vendors are working on relevant kernel updates to push out for existing distribution kernels. No CPU microcode updates are required.

Fortunately it looks quite difficult to be able to exploit the SWAPGS vulnerability in practice but upgrading to a patched kernel is certainly recommended.

And, yes, it does look like it will impact performance… Benchmarks being worked on.

Although the Google Pixel 3 camera is one of the best you can get in a smartphone, it appears there could be a substantial issue plaguing the handset at the moment. According to numerous reports on the internet, the camera gets shaky when capturing photos or video.

You can read the complaints on places such as Reddit and Google’s own product support forums (as spotted by Android Police). The general consensus seems to be that the Google Pixel 3 camera issue is a hardware problem which could be related to either the optical image stabilization (OIS) or autofocus hardware. It does not appear to be a software issue.

The problem also seems to be mostly plaguing the vanilla Pixel 3 and not the Google Pixel 3 XL (or Pixel 3a or 3a XL). However, it might be worth testing those devices out as well just in case.

To test your handset for the problem, prop up your phone using a stand or dock of some kind and open up the camera. If your viewfinder image looks stable in both photo and video capturing mode while the phone is completely motionless, you don’t have the problem!

However, if your viewfinder looks erratic you are one of the unlucky ones.

Unfortunately, if your Google Pixel 3 camera has the problem as shown above, there doesn’t appear to be much you can do about it outside of hardware replacement. As of now, Google has been silent on the issue, so it’s not clear if the company will replace or repair your phone if you can prove this problem is happening on your device.

Let us know in the comments below if you have (or don’t have) this camera issue!

If you’re browsing Google Image search results today, you might notice a new interface element: A sticky side panel that displays any images you click on, providing a closer look at the specific image you want to see, including related images, additional info like ratings, price and in-stock status, ingredients and cooking times, depending on whether you’re searching for products, recipes or something else.

The new sidebar replaces a full-width, in-column interface element, with the advantage that the new interface allows you to continue to browse the image result thumbnails returned on the left. Clicking on any other images will replace the one in the sidebar, but you can easily navigate back and forth with your browser’s built-in navigation features, or you can page through the results in sequence using the right and left arrow keys.

These work already for a lot of existing results and products, but developers who want to ensure their product image results likewise provide this info in a way that means Google’s search engine will pick them up can reference this developer documentation to find out how.

Overall, even though this is not a massive change from what came before, it feels directionally like a big deal: Google has been iterating in a very Pinterest-like direction with image search in general, but this feels functionally like a mature product aimed squarely at comparison shopping, hobbyist cooks, decorators and designers. It’s a very different product from what Images used to be, and that probably affords Google a lot more opportunity in terms of how it monetizes image search in the future.

If you live in the United States and you own a Samsung, chances are that you are enjoying much better download speeds than people using iPhones. That’s one of the findings from independent network analysis firm Opensignal.

According to the company’s latest report — published this month under the title “How the smartphone affects mobile network experience” — Samsung users in the United States “experience download speeds 8.2 Mbps faster than iPhone users” on average. In Norway, if you have a Galaxy you will enjoy a whooping 14 Mbps advantage over iPhone users and 12 Mbps more than Huawei users.

In total, Opensignal found that Samsung had faster download speeds in 35% of the 40 countries analyzed. Apple bested the rest of the manufacturers in 17.5% of the countries, including Taiwan and United Arab Emirates. The remaining 48% countries didn’t have a clear winner although “Huawei users,” the firm says, “were joint-fastest in seven countries.”

Globally, the latest Samsung top flagships experienced faster speeds than Apple and Huawei’s — the average download speeds clock at 26.6 Mbps, 25.1 Mbps, and 24.4 Mbps respectively. But if you go for the mid-range, Opensignal claims that Apple wins that race, while the low-end is dominated by Huawei smartphones.

The company also found differences in latency, which measures the responsiveness of the mobile network and can deliver a smoother experience when playing multiplayer games like Fortnite. High-tier smartphones were 14% faster than mid-tier phones and 18% faster than lower-tier phones.

Opensignal claims that it analyzes the status of mobile networks worldwide based on real user experiences on 18,000 unique smartphone models from hundreds of smartphone manufacturers. The company measures factors like download speed and latency, gathering and analyzing that data to help operators on their network optimization strategies. In the presentation of this research results, the company says that, because the latest flagships have the best network technologies, they are “a leading indicator of what the mobile experience will be in the future.”

The analysis firm says that several things can affect the user experience. The mobile network is one of them but especially it is the technologies inside of each handset, from the number of frequency bands you can connect to, carrier aggregation abilities connecting to more than one radio band at the same time, modulation type and use of multiple simultaneous antennas, and the modem supplier.

With 5G networks now being deployed and Apple not expected to launch a 5G phone until 2020, the company risks falling further behind Samsung over the next year.

Google Assistant has quietly received a major upgrade to its messaging features, giving the AI helper the ability to read messages from third-party apps.

The lack of official announcement for the new feature is odd, especially considering Android users have wanted this functionality for some time. Previously, Google Assistant could only read messages from Android Messages and Google Hangouts aloud—and not very well, either. Now, the sky is the limit: Google Assistant can read your messages from third-party apps such as Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, and even Google’s own finicky apps like Google Voice.

Start by calling up up the Google Assistant with a “Hey, Google,” “Okay, Google,” or by pressing the Google Assistant button/icon on your device if it has one. Then, tell it to “read my messages.”

The assistant will then dictate all unread messages you have, in order, and will even swap between different apps if you have a backlog across multiple messaging services. The only exception is media messages, where Google Assistant simply says that the message contains media but doesn’t open the attached file.

In addition to the reading the messages itself, you can also request to hear who the sender is and which app it was sent from. And once Google Assistant has read the message out loud, it’s removed from your notifications.

To respond to any of your messages, you can use Google Assistant to reply via voice or by typing your response. Once you’ve sent your response, you can continue listening to your lingering unread messages.

The $79 Razer Viper is the lightest wired gaming mouse I’ve ever used. It weighs just 69 grams, which I learned is the weight of two standard-sized light bulbs. What are the benefits of such a feather-light gaming mouse? It depends on who you ask. Those who prefer a hefty mouse with added weights won’t want much to do with it, but during my week with the Viper, I really liked how easy it was to flick along the mouse pad whenever the in-game moment demands some brisk, twitchy movement.

The relative weightlessness — at least compared to the Logitech G502 Lightspeed I’ve been using, which weighs 130 grams with all of its added weight installed — doesn’t come at the expense of ergonomics. The Viper molds well to my hand, and its ambidextrous design accommodates both left- and right-handed people with two macro buttons on each of its sides. It also doesn’t come at the expense of innovative hardware features.

The Viper uses optical switches in place of mechanical ones under its main left and right mouse buttons. These improve on standard mechanical switches in some important ways. Physical switches have to hit a metallic contact to send a signal to your PC, and that signal is inherently slower and sometimes more prone to accidental misfires due to the fact that they bounce several times when you press them. Optical switches are more responsive, says Razer, and more reliable than their physical counterparts.

This is Razer’s first mouse with optical switches, though it’s not the first to market on the technology. Razer says that it helps to boost the Viper’s lifespan to an impressive 70 million clicks, which is 20 million more than the mechanical switches in Razer’s DeathAdder Elite (which is featured in our best gaming mice roundup) are capable of, and generally, well ahead of where its competitors are.

Razer is also making a big deal of its new braided “Speedflex” cable leading off of the mouse. It’s lightweight, like the mouse, and its smooth texture aids in preventing snags as it glides along your mouse pad. Razer says that it’s especially useful if you use a low DPI setting and really like to make large, sweeping arm movements when you play. The fabric that wraps around the cable looks similar to what’s used on most other braided cables, but the Viper’s cable is far more bendy, and it feels more like actual fabric than other braided cords that I’ve used.

The Viper is lean in terms of features, but, unsurprisingly, Razer squeezed a Chroma LED inside. The color and lighting pattern of the Razer logo on its top can be customized in Razer’s Synapse companion app, and it’s easy enough to find a setting that looks subdued, or if you want, the complete opposite of that. The only other LED on this mouse is on the bottom where you’ll find a textured button next to it that switches DPI settings. I’m accustomed to this button being on the top of most mice that I use, but Razer said that the overwhelming majority of professional gamers wanted it on the bottom to avoid accidental toggling it during a match.

The five DPI levels default at 400, 800, 1,200, 1,800, 2,400, and 3,200 DPI, though each can be customized in Synapse (up to 16,000 DPI). Reaching for this button might take some getting used to, but Synapse helps you stay focused on the screen with a small pop-up window that tells you what DPI selection that’s been made.

Personally, I do miss having the button on top, since I don’t play games with thousands of dollars at stake (or any dollars, for that matter), but Synapse lets me remap the buttons to my liking. Since I’m right-handed, the side buttons reserved for left-handed players are perfect candidates to handle DPI switching. It’s still a little cumbersome, but Razer’s software mostly solved this problem for me.

Like most gaming PC peripherals, the new Razer Viper is built with professional gamers, and those who aspire to be one, in mind. But this one isn’t built for all gamers. For some, its lack of a customizable weight and a small selection of macro buttons might be deal-breakers. Though, if you’re not in that crowd, the Viper’s lightweight, ambidextrous build makes it a fun addition to Razer’s lineup. And, with its optical switches advertised 70-million click limit, the $79.99 investment should last you quite some time.