Zombies, Run! maker Six to Start has laid off nearly its entire staff. | Image: Six to Start
Six to Start, the company behind Zombies, Run! and Marvel Move, has laid off all but two of its staff, TheVerge has learned. The news was delivered last week to staffers in a Zoom call, in which they were told that parent company OliveX could no longer afford to keep Six to Start afloat and would shut down the company if they can’t find a buyer. Laid-off staffers were also served redundancy notices, which The Verge has confirmed.
The ZRX: Zombies, Run! app is an immersive fitness game that plops walkers and runners into audio-based storytelling. When enemies, be they the undead or Marvel villains, “chase” you, you’re encouraged to pick up speed. At the end of an episode, you can also collect items to trade for badges or in-game buildings. First founded in 2012, the app says it has about 10 million users worldwide.
Such immersive storytelling games, especially Marvel Move, are expensive to produce. They involve writing storylines, hiring voice actors to perform the material, and artists to create graphics. One source with knowledge on the matter noted that it’s unlikely the app will completely shut down for now, as there are plenty of loyal Zombies, Run! players and subscribers. Instead, it’s likely OliveX is trying to massively lower costs by slashing or completely pausing new content, relying on the hundreds of episodes still in the archive. OliveX is apparently actively looking for buyers, and there may already be interested parties, the source says.
OliveX first acquired Six to Start in 2021, but another source, speaking on condition of anonymity, claims Six to Start staffers clashed with both OliveX and its owner, Animoca Brands. The games’ anti-capitalist themes were at odds with the parent companies’ aims to create crypto and NFT projects. The source claims that working under OliveX was “agony.” To date, there have been no NFTs within any of Six to Start games.
It’s unclear what will happen for ZRX: Zombies, Run! subscribers in the short-term. While there is an extensive library of content, part of the draw was regular releases of new episodes. The Verge reached out to OliveX and Six to Start for comment, but did not immediately receive responses.
Briefly, here’s what’s up with Tesla over the past few weeks: its stock is down more than 50 percent since December; Tesla sales in California are plummeting; Cybertruck deliveries are reportedly paused because the vehicles are falling apart; protesters are demonstrating outside Tesla showrooms across the country; and Tesla owners are selling their cars to avoid getting called Nazis.
But that’s not all. According to data from YouGov, a market research firm, the public’s impression of the company has never been worse, reaching its lowest point since YouGov began tracking Tesla in 2016. YouGov asks members of the public daily questions about Tesla to gauge overall sentiment. (Sherwood first reported the data.)
As of March 12th, the net impression for respondents across the political spectrum is -12.8. “Impression” measures whether consumers have a positive or negative impression of a given brand. The company fares even worse with liberals, with a -35.5 net impression. Moderates sit at a -9.2 net impression. Conservatives are the only group with a positive net impression of Tesla, measured at 7.5.
YouGov also asks whether respondents would consider purchasing a Tesla. According to YouGov data, around 8 percent of liberals indicated they would consider purchasing a Tesla, down from 12 percent at the beginning of 2022. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the percentage of conservatives who say they would consider buying a Tesla has increased from 6.7 percent to 8.4 percent. Even those numbers are lagging: when looking at the average response rate for all car makers, 10 percent of the general population say they would consider buying a vehicle.
As his company is in free fall, billionaire owner Elon Musk is attempting to cash in on his close relationship to the White House. On Tuesday, in what can only be described as an advertising event, Donald Trump turned the White House driveway into a pop-up Tesla showroom, reading from a Tesla sales pitch and vowing to purchase a vehicle. Musk’s proximity to the Trump administration follows the hundreds of millions of dollars he poured into getting Trump elected. On the same day as the Tesla stunt, The New York Timesreported that Musk has indicated he wants to throw in another $100 million into other Trump groups.
Ford has hired a former Twitch, PlayStation, and Lululemon executive to lead the automaker’s digital services business. Mike Aragon, who previously led as CEO of Lululemon’s defunct Mirror home workout machine, is joining Ford as president of “integrated services.”
The company says Aragon will lead a team “responsible for building out and marketing a suite of services and experiences” across Ford Pro (business and fleet), Ford Blue (core passenger vehicles), and Ford Model e (electric vehicles). The company says it has more than 800,000 paid subscriptions across its lineup, including for services like its BlueCruise hands-free driving system and fleet management software.
In a press release, Ford CEO Jim Farley says Aragon will help build the company’s early success with integrated services and has “a proven track record of helping great hardware companies create valuable digital ecosystems.” That track record includes the PlayStation Network service and leading Twitch’s content teams.
Aragon is filling a role previously held by Peter Stern, a former Apple services vice president, who helped build Apple’s paid subscription offerings including Apple TV Plus, Fitness Plus, News Plus, and more. Farley had hyped Stern’s hiring in 2023 and mentioned that the industry’s “biggest change” is getting into “digital product and physical services.” Paid subscriptions have become the biggest revenue drivers for companies such as Apple. Stern is now CEO of Peloton, whose key product is a bike with a subscription service.
Newsmax has paid $20 million to Smartmatic so far, with plans to pay off the remainder by July. The settlement also includes the option to buy shares in Newsmax, which plans to list on the NYSE on March 31. Smartmatic sued Newsmax in 2021 after the network aired false allegations that its voting machines helped Joe Biden win the 2020 presidential election. It claimed Newsmax “deliberately disseminated a continuous stream of falsehoods,” harming Smartmatic’s business.
Newsmax still faces another lawsuit from the voting machine company Dominion. “While Newsmax Media is vigorously defending the Dominion suit, an unfavorable outcome in the matter could have a material adverse effect on the Company’s financial position, results of operations and cash flows,” Newmax’s filing reads.
After a season 3 finale that left open plenty of possibilities for a return, it’s now confirmed: Ted Lasso is coming back. The Apple TV Plus sitcom is getting a fourth season, though it appears to be still fairly early in development.
In an interview on the New Heights podcast, star Jason Sudeikis confirmed that season 4 is being written now, and that it will follow the eponymous coach as he leads a new women’s soccer team. Aside from Sudeikis, there’s no other word on what characters might be returning, although much of the creative team will be back, including writer (and Roy Kent actor) Brett Goldstein.
“As we all continue to live in a world where so many factors have conditioned us to ‘look before we leap,” Sudeikis said in a statement. “In season 4, the folks at AFC Richmond learn to ‘leap before they look,’ discovering that wherever they land, it’s exactly where they’re meant to be.”
Ted Lasso remains one of the biggest hits for Apple TV Plus, so the return isn’t too surprising. And the news comes as Apple is on a steady run of returning series, including the second seasons of both Silo and Severance, alongside the fourth season of Mythic Quest.
There’s a lot to explore in Google Maps, but you may not always know where to look. Itâs great if you’re trying to drive through a crowded city or find out which local coffee shop has the best-rated bagels, but there are also other, lesser-known features worth investigating. These include historical imagery on Google Street View.
Google Maps actually makes it easy to switch between different time periods. On either desktop or mobile, you can go back to when Google’s Street View cars first started patrolling the streets â in some areas, you can go back as far as 2007 â and see how roads and places looked years ago.
So whether you have a practical purpose or just want to take a nostalgia trip, here’s how to go about it. These instructions apply to the latest versions of Google Maps for the web, Android, and iOS.
Street View on desktop
If you’re using Google Maps in a desktop browser, you can get to Street View by clicking anywhere on the map where Street View is available (which is most roads and famous landmarks), then clicking the Street View panel at the bottom. (It will look like a small square photo with a curved arrow.)
Alternatively, select a specific destination …
Apple Intelligence is technically lots of things, but thereâs only one feature with the potential to actually meaningfully change the way you use your phone. That would be Siri, which Apple said last year it had turned from a quasi-helpful voice assistant into an AI-powered helper that could understand everything about you and accomplish things on your behalf. Sounds cool, right? It was one of the flagship features of the iPhone 16 lineup, a big part of the way Apple promoted its new devices. Except it doesnât exist. And it wonât anytime soon.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about exactly where things went wrong with Siri â and with the whole gadget industry, which became so enraptured with the promise of AI that it sort of forgot to make good gadgets. Nilay and David discuss the problems and promise with Alexa, the still-enticing ideas behind âambient computing,â and what itâll take for Apple to make things right. (Side note: if you havenât read John Gruberâs essay on the subject at Daring Fireball, you should â we recorded this episode before it published, but itâs an excellent summary of the situation.)
iPhone and Android users will be able to exchange end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) RCS messages in the near future thanks to newly updated RCS specifications. The GSM Association announced that the latest RCS standard includes E2EE based on the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, enabling interoperable encryption between different platform providers for the first time.
The GSM Association said it had started working to enable E2EE on messages sent between Android and iPhone in September last year. E2EE is a privacy and security feature that prevents third parties, such as messaging providers or cell carriers, from viewing the content of your texts. The GSMA says the new RCS standard was developed in collaboration with “mobile operators, device manufacturers, and technology providers,” including Apple.
“End-to-end encryption is a powerful privacy and security technology that iMessage has supported since the beginning, and now we are pleased to have helped lead a cross industry effort to bring end-to-end encryption to the RCS Universal Profile published by the GSMA,” said Apple spokesperson Shane Bauer. “We will add support for end-to-end encrypted RCS messages to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS in future software updates.”
Apple introduced RCS support to iPhones as part of an iOS 18 update in September. While Apple’s proprietary iMessage system already supported E2EE, this wasn’t extended to RCS messaging because the previous RCS standard didn’t provide cross-platform support. Google Messages also enabled E2EE by default for RCS texts, but only conversations between Google Messages users were E2EE, and not those exchanged with iMessage users or users of other RCS clients on Android.
“We’ve always been committed to providing a secure messaging experience, and Google Messages users have had end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) RCS messaging for years,” Google spokesperson Ed Fernandez told The Verge. “We’re excited to have this updated specification from GSMA and work as quickly as possible with the mobile ecosystem to implement and extend this important user protection to cross-platform RCS messaging.”
T-Mobile is letting some legacy plan customers know that a price increase is coming, 9to5Google reports. Many Reddit users on r/tmobile said the carrier sent them text messages that their plans will raise by $5 per month per line starting on April 2nd.
In an internal memo obtained by CNET, T-Mobile consumer group president Jon Freier says the price increase addresses “rising costs” for the company. The memo noted that affected customers would be notified by the end of the day today.
CNET says it’s unclear which legacy plans will be affected but notes that Go5G, Go5G Plus, and Go5G Next subscribers won’t be subject to the price hikes. T-Mobile had already increased the rates of some of these older plans by $2 to $5 last year, and Freier apparently notes in the memo that “no line that received a prior increase will receive an additional adjustment as part of this initiative.”
“While most customers are not included, we’re wrapping up the price adjustments that began last year in response to rising costs,” T-Mobile says on its support account on X. “We are still committed to providing low prices and the most value across all plans.” The account also says that these changes should not affect customers with Price Lock.
Apple’s AirPods 4 are down to the lowest price ever on Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy, where you can pick them up starting at $99.99. That’s about 22 percent off the $129 list price.
These are the newest version of Apple’s base AirPods, launched in September with the iPhone 16. They support spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, which is a weird effect that makes it sound like audio is coming out of the device you’re listening to instead of just pumping stereo sound into your ear drums. I usually turn it off.
I like the open design of the AirPods 4, though, which sometimes feels more comfortable than the silicone tips on my second-gen AirPods Pro. I also dig the compact case and solid battery life. Pro tip, though: if you want to splurge just a little bit, you should probably get the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation. They’re on sale at Amazon and Walmart for $148.99 (17 percent off), which is about $10 shy of their all-time low. The higher-end model also adds Adaptive Audio and a transparency mode, along with a case that juices up via an Apple Watch puck or any Qi-compatible charger.
Are they worth the extra $50? Maybe. I think the active noise cancellation is a good option when you find yourself on a rowdy NJ transit train heading to a NY Jets game. Just kidding, nobody does that.
Apple is planning to bring live translation to AirPods, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The feature, which will let users translate conversations in real time, will be “tied” to the forthcoming iOS 19, Gurman says.
As noted by Gurman, the feature can help translate a conversation from, for example, Spanish to English by playing a translated version of the speech into the English-speaker’s AirPods. When the English speaker responds, their iPhone will then play the Spanish translation from its speakers. Apple didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
Opus, A24âs new horror-tinged thriller from writer / director Mark Anthony Green, has a lot to say about the symbiotic (and sometimes parasitic) relationship between entertainment journalists and celebrities. In the filmâs story about reporters tripping over themselves just to be close to an eccentric music icon, you can feel Green reflecting on how the media landscape has changed with the rise of modern Content⢠empires built on parasocial relationships. Many of Opusâ ideas are right on the money, and the film is so stylish that itâs easy to get swept up in its visual splendor. But aside from its excellent original songs, the movie often feels like a flimsy rehash of glam-forward features that have come before it.
Though Opus is fictional, Green â a former style editor at GQ â has clearly poured a lot of his personal experiences into overworked, under-appreciated music journalist Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri). Conceptually, Ariel loves her job covering pop culture and the way it gives her opportunities to dig deep into the lives of well-known artists. But she also knows that no matter how strong her pitches are, her obnoxiously self-involved editor Stan (Murray Bartlet …
Google is rolling out a fix for Chromecast device issues that left many users with “untrusted device” errors that disabled casting.
The issue, which appeared over the weekend, seemed to widely affect Chromecast 2nd generation and Chromecast Audio devices. Google has not said what caused the errors, but a user on Reddit claimed it could be because the certificate baked into the devices expired.
“We have started to roll out a fix for the problem with Chromecast (2nd gen) and Chromecast Audio devices, which will be completed over the next few days,” Google says in a support post. “Your device must be connected to receive the update.”
However, if you attempted a factory reset, Google says that “you may still be experiencing an issue where you cannot re-setup your device.” The company says that it’s “working to resolve this as soon as possible” and to watch the support post for updates. If you’re in this situation, a user on Reddit has shared steps you can try while you wait for Google’s official fix.
Microsoft is testing AI-powered summaries in Notepad. In an update rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels, you’ll be able to summarize information in Notepad by highlighting a chunk of text, right-clicking it, and selecting Summarize.
Notepad will then generate a summary of the text, as well as provide an option to change its length. You can also generate summaries by selecting text and using the Ctrl + M shortcut or choosing Summarize from the Copilot menu.
As is the case with other AI features in Windows 11, you must be signed into a Microsoft account to use Notepad’s AI summaries. You can also disable AI features completely from the app settings menu. Microsoft first started testing an AI-powered Rewrite tool in Notepad last year.
Besides AI summaries, Microsoft is testing the ability to view your recently closed files in Notepad. It’s also bringing a new feature to the Snipping Tool called “draw & hold.”
When marking up a screenshot using the app, you can hold your cursor for just a little longer when drawing a line, arrow, rectangle, or oval, and it will automatically straighten out your lines. You can then resize, move, or adjust the shape. It sounds pretty similar to a feature Apple offers, too.
America’s favorite low poly electric truck is facing a new set of problems that don’t have anything to do with people spray painting swastikas or crude comments about Elon Musk on them. Deliveries of the Tesla Cybertruck are on hold while the company addresses issues with reports that the trim is becoming detached and flying off, Electrek reports.
Tesla service representatives are telling customers awaiting deliveries that there is a “containment hold” on their trucks, according to several posts in the Cybertruck Owners Forum, as noted by Electrek. The customers are not being told it has anything to do with the vehicle’s trim, though. A containment hold is a proactive measure taken by automakers to address a quality issue or defect with a vehicle before it reaches customers.
Electrek also shared a screenshot of direct messages between a customer and a Tesla service rep that mentioned an issue with the truck’s cantrail, or the decorative trim that covers the roof ledge above the door. The delay could take several weeks to address, depending on the severity of the loose trim.
The problem is likely related to a handful complaints filed with the federal government earlier this year, which noted that the trim above the truck’s windows appeared to be attached by glue.
A video on YouTube posted over a month ago goes into greater detail about the issues with the cantrail trim.
The Cybertruck has been recalled seven times since its official launch December 2023. Tesla sold an estimated 40,000 trucks in 2024, despite over 1 million reservations. There were anecdotal reports of Cybertrucks piling up on used car lots. Tesla Cybertruck factory workers in Austin were told to stay home for three days in December. And since Elon Musk’s elevation as a special advisor to the Trump administration, the Cybertruck has become a target of graffitti and vandalism from people opposed to Musk’s takeover of the federal government.
On Tuesday morning, some PC gamers woke up to discover their computers were seeminglyunder threat. A âHackToolâ called WinRing0 had suddenly started triggering a Windows Defender alert, as if their PCs were under attack. Some of those computers even began behaving oddly âââ like blasting their fans at high speed â once the HackTool had been quarantined. I know, because it happened to me.
But my computer wasn’t actually under attack â at least, not yet.
When I checked where Windows Defender had actually detected the threat, it was in the Fan Control app I use to intelligently cool my PC. Windows Defender had broken it, and that’s why my fans were running amok. For others, the threat was detected in Razer Synapse, SteelSeries Engine, OpenRGB, Libre Hardware Monitor, CapFrameX, MSI Afterburner, OmenMon, FanCtrl, ZenTimings, and Panorama9, among many others.
Thatâs because all these programs have something in common, eight of their developers tell The Verge. They do (or did) all contain a piece of kernel-level software that is …
NBC will continue airing the Olympics in the US for the foreseeable future. Its parent company, Comcast, just announced a deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that will keep the games on NBC’s platforms, including Peacock, through 2036.
As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, NBC’s previous agreement with the IOC gave it the rights to stream the Olympics through 2032. This new deal will take its place, with the extended media rights for the 2033 to 2036 Olympics cycle valued at $3 billion. The next Olympic games will take place in Italy next year.
Flatiron Books, the publisher of a new book by an ex-Meta staffer alleging misconduct and harassment at the company, says in a statement that a recent arbitration order demanding that the book no longer be published has “no impact” on Macmillan.
The ruling instructs Sarah Wynn-Williams, the author of Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, to stop making “disparaging” remarks against Meta and, where possible, cease promoting or publishing the book. Meta appears to have been able to bring the case to arbitration because of an agreement Wynn-Williams signed when she left the company in 2017.
“We are appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence our author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement,” Flatiron says in the statement, which was also shared with The New York Times. “To be clear, the arbitrator’s order makes no reference to the claims within Careless People. The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this. We will absolutely continue to support and promote it.”
Meta didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Macmillan Publisher’s response to the arbitration order filed by Meta regarding our book Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which released Tuesday.
The Mercedes CLA will be the debut of the company’s new MMA platform. | Image: Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz’s electric vehicles aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes. The EQS, EQE, and EQB have largely flopped, forcing the company to make significant changes to its electrification plans.
While the automaker has scaled back its ambitions, it’s not abandoning them altogether. As Mercedes-Benz Group CEO Ola Källenius said during the company’s Tech Day in Stuttgart, Germany, last month, “The clock starts again” on the company’s EV plans. And that starts with a newly developed platform, called MMA, that will underpin both internal combustion, hybrid, and electric vehicles going forward.
“We’re in an era where we’re going towards electrification, but in the year 2025 obviously, we’re not 100 percent electrification. So for many years to come we will have a duality,” Källenius said.
An ‘electric-first’ platform
The MMA platform makes its debut on the company’s entry-level sedan, the CLA, which debuted as a sub $30,000 Mercedes in 2013. Typically, automakers introducing new platforms start with their priciest models, which would be the S- and G-Class models in Mercedes’ case. Since both of those vehicles were recently updated, it will be a while before they get the MMA treatment.
Mercedes is also bucking the traditional method of introducing a new platform as an ICE vehicle and then wedging the design into an EV platform. Instead, the company is going “EV first,” launching the CLA as an EV first and then later as an internal combustion with a mild hybrid in 2026.
The new platform makes both the hybrid and EV vehicles larger than the previous generation. The wheelbase is 6.1 cm longer (2.4 inches) to accommodate the battery pack and taller by 2.8 cm (1.1 inches), giving rear passengers slightly more legroom and height. Källenius acknowledged the old CLA was a tight fit in the rear, but at 6-foot-4, he was able to slide into the new CLA with ease. As Källenius said, “You’re buying what feels like a sports car, but at the same time you have a fully functional three-box sedan.”
‘This is the EQXX on the road’
The new CLA owes its design and tech to the EQXX, a concept car introduced by Mercedes in 2022 with an emphasis on efficiency that could roll for more than 1,000 miles on a single charge. Mercedes engineers spent three years leveraging what they learned from the EQXX to develop the revamped CLA.
However, the biggest deal about the new CLA is its massive range. There will be two battery options for the global market, a 58.4 kWh version and a larger 85.5 kWh battery. The US will only get the larger of the two, giving the CLA an estimated range of 792 km (492 miles) based on the generous WLTP standards. If the EPA-estimated range comes in around 350 miles, the CLA will rank among other long-range EVs like Lucid, Rivian, and Tesla.
The new CLA also gets a unique brake-by-wire setup called OneBox that calculates the right amount of braking power and recuperation to maximize efficiency. Like the technology BMW developed for its VDX test vehicle, most braking will primarily be handled by the regeneration system in normal conditions. The new system claims to recuperate up to 200 kW of power.
The new CLA’s 800-volt architecture will enable ultra-fast charging, adding 300 km (186 miles) of range in 10 minutes. The EV will come in front-wheel and all-wheel drive trims, with a 268-hp drive unit on the rear axle and a 107-hp drive unit on the front in the all-wheel drive version. The front motor can be disengaged automatically when it is not needed to help increase efficiency. As Källenius noted, “This is the EQXX on the road.”
A new OS and smarter driving
With the CLA, Mercedes is launching a new software stack called MB.OS. The infotainment MBUX system will run on MB.OS and offers a new “AI-enhanced” user experience that can control everything from the sensors to various actuators. The new MB.OS system will be connected to the cloud to enable over-the-air updates for everything from driver assistance features to semi-autonomous driving.
Källenius said the CLA will feature “Level 2 ++” driving – nearing Level 3 autonomy where the driver is still kept in the loop to take over when needed. (Mercedes already offers a Level 3 system in a handful of states called Drive Pilot.) Consumers can purchase or “unlock” these ADAS features as an upgrade after purchase, which will be delivered via OTA update.
“It will age like a good French wine,” Källenius said of the new software stack. “It will get better with age, because we will add capabilities to it. Some things we will give you for free, some things we may charge you for, depending on what it is, and depending on what the market allows.”
The new CLA gets Mercedes’ Superscreen, which stretches from pillar to pillar in the front. Under that glass sits a 10.25-inch gauge cluster and a 14-inch center display, with an optional 14-inch screen for passengers. That passenger screen can play movies from platforms like YouTube and RideVu by Sony. And if you’re worried about distracted driving, the passenger screen is not viewable from the driver’s position.
Google and Microsoft systems help power the AI, which can be used to determine a driver’s mood (which it then uses to change the color of the lighting in the car) or help find parking. I got a demonstration of the new Mercedes voice assistant, which is powered by Google Gemini, and found it to be much more conversational than the previous generation, handling basic requests like navigation or finding a nice restaurant. For general knowledge, the system uses OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, Microsoft’s Azure, and Bing. The system will remember previous conversations and recall context. All the predictive learning is done on board the vehicle, not in the cloud.
“It will age like a good French wine.”
Mercedes will launch the electric CLA (the base version is awkwardly named the CLA 250+ with EQ Technology) first in China and Europe, with the US launch in the fall. For an upgrade, customers can get the even more awkwardly named CLA 350 4MATIC with EQ Technology, with all-wheel drive. The 1.5-liter four-cylinder hybrid ICE version, which Mercedes didn’t share many details about in Stuttgart, won’t make its debut until sometime in 2026.
Mercedes hasn’t announced pricing yet, but in the current economic environment, it’s likely that the new CLA will be priced above that old $30,000 marker. With increased hostility toward EVs in the US and an administration that’s determined to roll back EV benefits, we’ll have to wait and see which version Mercedes customers choose for their future entry-level luxury sedan, and whether this new electric strategy will turn the company’s flagging sales around.
Auracast support for hearing aids is on the way to Android phones.
Android phones will soon support Auracast with Bluetooth LE hearing aids, letting people tune in to audio broadcasts in places where it’s otherwise hard to hear. Auracast is a Bluetooth Audio LE feature, and it allows one broadcaster to connect to a virtually unlimited number of Bluetooth LE devices. Among other things, the technology can help people who use hearing aids connect directly to audio streams like the public announcement system at an airport, or to an audio feed at a concert venue. At launch, Samsung Galaxy phones running One UI 7 and Google Pixel 9 phones with the Android 16 beta will support it.
Auracast has been around since the Bluetooth LE spec was completed in 2022. Samsung’s recent Galaxy phones already support sharing audio to other devices via Auracast, and it looks as though Google will add similar audio sharing capabilities in Android 16. Hearing aid support adds another layer of functionality, and on Pixel 9 phones connecting to a broadcast will be as simple as scanning a QR code. Otherwise, you can access a public broadcast through your settings menu in basically the same way you connect to a Wi-Fi network.
