Soon, you’ll be able to use Apple Intelligence with the Vision Pro. That includes a mix of features we’ve seen before, as well as a new feature called Create Memory Movie that’s exclusive to the headset.

Apple has been keen to position the Vision Pro as a unique tool for viewing memories, and that’s the whole goal of the Create Memory Movie feature, which is built into the Photos app. To use it, you’ll enter in a description or a voice prompt, and Apple Intelligence will then find a photo or video that best matches that description. That “memory movie” can then be blown up to be viewed on a large-scale virtual screen or inside a virtual environment.

Other Apple Intelligence features for Vision Pro include writing tools with ChatGPT. That means Vision Pro owners will be able to dictate memos or emails, create bulleted summaries, or edit the tone of a draft using AI. This is a fairly typical AI feature these days, but it does address how writing within the headset isn’t always the easiest thing unless paired with a Bluetooth keyboard. Smart replies are also coming to visionOS, where you’ll be able to use Apple Intelligence to automatically respond to messages with a tap.

Other features include things like Genmoji and Image Playground, which is Apple Intelligence’s prompt-based image generator. Priority notifications and summaries will also be available, along with Image Wand, which lets you create more polished images based off rough sketches. Natural language search will also be available in the Photos app. You can view the full list of Apple Intelligence features for visionOS on Apple’s website.

Apple Intelligence will be part of the visionOS 2.4 update, which is available in developer beta today and arrives for the general public in April. Apple Intelligence for visionOS will first be available only in US English, with more features and languages slated to roll out throughout the year.

visionOS 2.4 will also bring a few other features that address some major pain points with using the headset. That includes an improved, easier-to-use Guest Mode, as well as two new discovery apps for discovering content: one for the iPhone, and the other acting as an Apple-curated content guide within the headset itself.

When I received my OnePlus Watch 3 review unit, part of me wondered, “What’s gonna be wrong with this one?” Now, I know. On the backplate, permanently engraved in stainless steel, is a typo. Instead of reading “Made in China,” it reads “Meda in China.”

To be fair, this is a minuscule error. I didn’t even notice it on my review unit until I spied an Android Police article in my feed pointing it out. But, in the history of OnePlus’ many smartwatch sins, this unfixable typo both makes complete sense — and is a major relief.

To understand why, you have to remember that the original OnePlus Watch was an unmitigated disaster. An abomination of a smartwatch, riddled with software errors and personally, the worst product I have ever tested in my career. In my review, I wrote that it’s health and fitness tracking was so inaccurate, it deserved the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The only smartwatch that could be conceivably worse is will.i.am’s Puls smartwatch, but I was fortunate enough to dodge that bullet. So traumatized was I by the OnePlus Watch, I was wary of the OnePlus Watch 2 when it launched last year.

That fear was compounded when OnePlus mistakenly sent me eleven review units of the OnePlus Watch 2 — a watch that also broke the sacred, nerdy covenant that a rotating crown on a smartwatch must scroll.

But aside from that one cardinal sin and a sike of a delivery snafu, the OnePlus Watch 2 ended up being a redemption story. Not only was it a smartwatch that worked, it ended up becoming an excellent alternative to Google and Samsung smartwatches for Android users. I’m still testing the OnePlus Watch 3, but so far I have little to complain about, especially since the company finally introduced a proper rotating crown. And, if anything, I’m heartened to see that OnePlus’ signature oops this time around is a minor typo that most users will never really see. One could also argue that the misprint makes this first edition batch a collector’s item. That’s progress.

Besides, as far as typos go, it could’ve been far worse. At least OnePlus didn’t do a Mattel and accidentally misprint a link to a porn site on the product packaging. Compared to that, a “Meda in China” typo is actually kind of adorable.

Last month, Fitbit Versa 3 and Sense owners started getting notifications to download a mandatory firmware update. The problem? Overheating batteries. In an official consumer notice, Google (which owns Fitbit) notes that the firmware update would “reduce the risk of battery overheating and reduce battery capacity.” Affected users, of which Google says there is a “limited number,” were also eligible to apply for a $50 credit.

Technically, fixing this kind of problem is a good thing. You don’t want batteries to overheat and burn a customer — and the official notice also notes that this issue doesn’t impact all Versa 3 or Sense devices. However, affected users have reported on Fitbit’s forums and subreddit that the update dramatically reduced their devices’ battery life.

Multiple users have complained that devices that used to last anywhere between 2-6 days now barely last a single day after updating to the new firmware. Some have said the reduction has now made their devices useless. Others are upset that Fitbit is only offering $50 as an appeasement.

In its notice, Google does note that the firmware update will result in the battery lasting “for shorter periods between charges and [users] may need to charge [their] devices more frequently.” However, to smartwatch users, there’s a big difference between charging more frequently and charging daily. Many people who opt for Fitbits do so precisely because the brand’s smartwatches are known to last longer than a single day. The Verge reached out to Google for further details, but the company declined to add any additional commentary beyond the official notice.

It’d be one thing if this was a rare one-off. However, Fitbit was just fined $12 million after its Ionic watches’ batteries overheated and burned 78 users. And while it’s unrelated to overheating wearables, it certainly doesn’t help that Google recently issued a similar firmware update capping battery performance tied to a $100 credit for its Pixel 4A phones.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in 2022 alleges that Fitbit’s problem wasn’t limited to the Ionic. The plaintiffs claimed the issue also impacted the Versa Lite and a Versa 2. The lawsuit also included photos of burns that people said came from their Fitbit Blaze, Inspire, Inspire 2, Sense, and Versa 3 devices. The latest firmware update seems to validate that battery overheating at least was a problem with the Versa 3 and Sense.

These sorts of battery complaints with Fitbits aren’t new. Peruse the r/Fitbit subreddit, and you’ll find years’ worth of Fitbit owners questioning if their devices are burning them or just causing skin irritation. There are also numerous threads of users pondering sudden, rapid battery drain. Almost all these threads also highlight difficult experiences with customer support. In other words, this most recent case just underscores how this has been a problem for quite some time — an issue exacerbated for longtime Fitbit users by a messy transition period since Google acquired Fitbit.

I’ve had the $329.99 OnePlus Watch 3 for a few days, and so far, this isn’t an Android watch that flips the script. Instead, it’s a story about refinement (and playing a bit of catch-up), rather than pushing boundaries. And you know what? If it means a strong Google / Samsung alternative with a rotating crown that finally scrolls, I’m totally fine with that.

On the design front, the Watch 3 is quite similar to the OnePlus Watch 2, with a few key changes. The OLED display is a smidge larger and brighter at 2,200 nits, and the bezels are notably smaller, though that’s partially because of a slight design tweak. The screen is spiffy to look at, especially with the new video watchface where you can upload your own clips. (I, of course, have uploaded one of my cat asking for belly rubs.) The casing is still stainless steel, but there’s a new titanium physical bezel, too. It gives it a more classic analog look, but otherwise, this isn’t a dramatic change. My big design gripe is that the Watch 3 still only comes in a single 47mm size. It’s not horrible, but I have smaller wrists, and the lug gaps are notable. Offering just one size excludes folks with smaller wrists from comfortably using the Watch 3, and that feels like a missed opportunity.

You can see the difference between the new physical bezel and screen size from the OnePlus Watch 3 (right) to the previous OnePlus Watch 2 (left).

I’ll forgive OnePlus this oversight now that there’s a proper rotating crown. This time, you can actually use it to scroll through screens — a baffling omission from the last watch. There are delightful haptics that go along with it, and while this isn’t a groundbreaking addition, it soothes my inner curmudgeon that OnePlus has seen the errors of its ways and now upholds the nerdy wearable covenant that a rotating crown must also scroll.

Battery life has also been improved from 100 hours to 120 hours — or five days with regular use and the always-on display turned off. Turning on the AOD shortens that to roughly three days. That’s fairly typical for all flagship smartwatches these days. In a power-saving mode, you can get up to 16 days. OnePlus says it’s managed to stuff a larger 631mAh battery in the Watch 3 using the same silicon nanostack battery as the OnePlus 13. Since it runs Wear OS 5, that should add some extra battery mileage. I haven’t been testing the watch long enough to definitively comment on battery life just yet, but I always appreciate faster charging. You can get a full day’s worth in about 10 minutes.

OnePlus says it changed the sensor layout and made tweaks to the materials to improve tracking accuracy. Speaking of sensors, the Watch 3 adds one for wrist temperature, an eight-channel optical heart rate sensor, and a 16-channel blood oxygen sensor. It’s also revamped the GPS with a “circular polarized antenna,” which it claims will help improve GPS maps in areas with tall buildings. I’m getting over a cold, so I haven’t had the chance to test this on a run yet, but I’ll see whether it makes a dramatic difference. Technically, the Watch 3 can also take EKGs, but that functionality won’t be available for users in the US or Canada. In a briefing, OnePlus spokesperson Spenser Blank said that’s because OnePlus hasn’t received FDA clearance but that, for “business reasons,” the company doesn’t plan on pursuing FDA clearance.

That’s disappointing given some of the new health features. The big one is OnePlus’ 60S Health Check-In, where you touch the side button and get a quick scan of your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, mental wellness, wrist temperature, sleep quality, and vascular age. European users will get EKGs included in Q2 2025. Also new is a vascular health test, which measures your arterial stiffness. It’s similar to a feature Oura introduced last year, and it’s meant to gauge your circulatory system’s overall state. (Mine is “normal.”)

With the Watch 3, OnePlus is refocusing a bit on sleep tracking and wellness. The company says sleep tracking has been overhauled, and you’ll now be able to use the watch to track snoring patterns to assess your breathing disruptions. Stress tracking has also been rebranded as “360 Mind and Body,” and it uses heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and activity intensity to approximate how you’re doing… with emoji. Depending on how it evaluates your stress, you might get recommendations for guided breathing. I’ve been running a beta version of the OHealth app with these updates, and so far, I have received more insights into sleep tracking — though I’m not entirely sold on the emoji. So far, all I’ve been is roasted for my “moderate” wellness.

A lot of these updates are things other competitors already have. They just have a OnePlus twist to them, and it’ll take me some more time to really put subtler software tweaks through the testing gauntlet. So far, though, wearing the Watch 3 is a pleasant reminder of how OnePlus has surprisingly emerged as a competitive alternative to Samsung and Google. But one change I know I don’t love is the Watch 3 is $30 more expensive than its predecessor — though Blank told me that the price increase has nothing to do with tariffs.

The OnePlus Watch 3 is available for preorder starting today and will begin shipping on February 25th.

Apple announced today it’s launching a brand-new research study — the Apple Health Study. But this one is different from its previous efforts in the space. Case in point: there’s no specific area of focus. Instead, the study will gather data from iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods to try and discover new relationships between different areas of health, both physical and mental.

From a research perspective, this is all well and good. But for gadget nerds, Apple also has a good track record of actually shipping several features out of its health research. The most recent example is the new hearing test feature in AirPods. According to Sumbul Desai, Apple’s vice president of health, that feature was born out of research from Apple’s Hearing Study.

“We use these research studies not only to learn, but to drive and inform our decisions about what things to add to the product roadmap when we see that there’s science that supports building up this work,” says Desai, noting that the company has passed on implementing features where the science didn’t hold up.

The virtual study will appear in the Research app and is being conducted in conjunction with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. (Apple also partnered with the hospital for its Heart & Movement study.) Users who opt in to the study will not only contribute their data but also answer periodic survey questions about their at-home life and habits. The study will encompass topics including activity, aging, cardiovascular health, circulatory health, cognition, hearing, menstrual health, metabolic health, mobility, neurological health, respiratory health, and sleep. To start, the study is set to last about five years and could potentially be extended further.

If the goals seem nebulous, that’s partly because the scope and potential scale are much, much bigger than what you’d find in traditional clinical research studies. Apple’s first research project, the Apple Heart Study, amassed 400,000 participants. By contrast, most traditional studies have much smaller sample sizes, with larger ones having participants in the hundreds, maybe thousands — but not hundreds of thousands. Fewer studies still are able to track participants over long periods of time. Widening the scope and scale has the potential to uncover heretofore unknown connections. On the flip side, it’s hard to say what will come out of the Apple Health Study because this is one of the first times researchers will get to cross-examine such extensive and disparate datasets together.

“We anticipate we will likely find some signals that have previously just been missed because we haven’t had studies that are this broad, or we haven’t had studies that are this continuous. We haven’t looked longitudinally or at this level of granularity,” says Calum MacRae, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, who will serve as principal investigator on the Apple Health Study.

According to MacRae, insights from traditional research can often take a long time to become applicable in everyday life because researchers go in with a specific goal in mind. Meaning, they pick a population and a topic to study on day one and then are stuck with those decisions for potentially decades, even if the field of research itself changes within that time. Conversely, access to a huge and diverse cohort — basically, in this case, anyone who owns an Apple product — opens the door to the acceleration of discovery and progress.

“The more diverse and broad the age range, demographics, and other criteria, the better. We can find an initial signal, test and validate it, and associate it with more events. The more people that are in the study, the more events occur, and suddenly, we’re in a position to be able to really dramatically change the pace at which these things happen.”

Another potential benefit, says MacRae, is that the Apple Health Study’s broad scale could help researchers identify and fill in information gaps. One challenge of traditional clinical studies is that they tend to have a more limited pool of participants. For example, if a health study primarily consists of young, white men, the findings may not apply to women, children, older adults, or people of color. One real-life example is how women were rarely included in clinical trials between 1977 and 1993, leading to a massive gap in what we know about women’s health and serious disparities in healthcare. In this case, such information gaps wouldn’t necessarily be limited to sex. They could, MacRae says, include things like how time zones influence sleep patterns or even loneliness during specific seasons.

One hope is that the study may uncover ways to build more proactive features. For instance, detecting if an early change in hearing could reduce the risk of cognitive decline down the line. Desai also noted that features may not be limited to hardware, pointing to Focus modes as an example of software that users may not immediately consider to be health-related.

Desai noted that it’ll be a while before we see anything tangible from the Apple Health Study.

“I wouldn’t expect anything this year, just because that wouldn’t be scientifically possible,” she says, noting product development can also take two or three years on its own. The company’s sleep apnea feature for the Apple Watch, she says, took roughly five years. “It’s probably going to take a few years before these hit, but I definitely think the pipeline will be full.”

After an epic wait, the Powerbeats Pro 2 are finally here. No, seriously. The original Powerbeats Pro released nearly six years ago, roughly an ice age as far as gadgets go. Turns out, it was worth it thanks to new active noise canceling, a transparency mode, and heart rate monitoring. None of these features are new to the category, but they are fresh to the Powerbeats. The only things unchanged with the Pro 2 are its IPX4 rating and the $249.99 price tag — which, given the state of things, is frankly a miracle. 

They’re more compact. The comically large case is 33 percent smaller. The buds are 20 percent lighter, and the ear hooks are 50 percent tinier. There’s a new H2 chip, upgraded microphones and amplifier, and improved sound. Battery life is longer, with 10 hours on the buds and 3.5 extra charges from the case for a total of 45 hours. Fast charging is supported, with a five-minute top-up netting 90 minutes of playback.

Let’s get into it.

Comfy fit

As a Beats Fit Pro lover, I was skeptical of the Powerbeats Pro 2’s ear hook. I wear glasses, and ear hooks tend to crowd and weigh down my ears. Apple says the hooks have been redesigned to be more ergonomic, but I j …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A common reader request I get goes something like this: what should I buy if I don’t want a smartwatch but want basic fitness tracking? When I suggest alternatives like budget fitness bands or smart rings, I get an unsure hmm and a displeased scrunch of the nose. After a few more back-and-forths, I usually find that many people do want a smartwatch. They just don’t want one from Apple, Samsung, Garmin, or Google. They want something more akin to ye olde Pebble or this retro-chic $56 Casio. For those folks, consider the humble Amazfit Active 2.

Amazfit’s shtick is delivering an outsized bang for your buck. The Active 2 starts at $99.99. For $30 more, you get a fancier version with an extra leather strap and a more durable sapphire crystal lens. There’s a 2,000-nit OLED touch display, upgraded health sensors, new sleep and heart rate algorithms, offline maps, and the Zepp Flow AI assistant. There’s also the Zepp Coach for personalized training plans and a mini app from Wild.AI, which gives diet and workout recommendations based on your hormonal and menstrual cycles. You won’t find dual-frequency GPS on this watch, but it has built-in GPS with access to five satellite sy …

Read the full story at The Verge.

We were whizzing down the slopes, screaming because it is sort of ridiculous to go flying down a snowy hill in an inflatable tube. There was a friendly family competition going on to see who could get down the hill the fastest. Other snowtubers had their phones out — my spouse had planned to record everything on their Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. They got partway through a video when their fully charged smart glasses abruptly died. We never did find out who truly won.

That’s been an unexpected discovery this past winter: smart glasses are incredibly susceptible to dying in cold weather. It makes sense when you think about it. Phone batteries are affected by extreme temperatures, as are smartwatches. You might not notice it as much because you keep your phone in a pocket or a bag. Your smartwatch is ostensibly shielded under a sleeve. But a pair of smart glasses? Those tend to house the batteries in the arms, which are much more exposed to the elements around you. (Unless you have one of those fuzzy hats with ear flaps. Then you might stand more of a chance.)

While this wasn’t a surprising revelation, it underscored something I’ve been noticing in my long-term Ray-Ban testing. Aside from style, battery life will make or break whether smart glasses can become a mainstream gadget.

Meta is positioning the Ray-Bans as the ultimate vehicle for AI. And if an ever-present AI companion is the goal, you’re ostensibly wearing the glasses for most hours of the day. (It’s why you can get these with clear or transition lenses.) If the battery dies, it’s no biggie if you don’t actually need glasses to see. But if you do need prescription lenses in your smart glasses, the battery dying before bedtime is a pain. You’re forced to either give up the smart features you paid extra for, or the ability to actually see because you have to take the glasses off to charge.

Right now, the Meta Ray-Bans get an estimated four hours of moderate use. In my own testing — and watching my spouse, a power user who wears them as their main pair of specs — that’s not enough for all-day wear. The other catch is any of the cool smart features zap the battery life you’re trying to preserve. When I wrote about Meta’s Live AI feature, I had blind and low-vision readers reach out to tell me they were excited at the opportunities such a feature could afford their community. Live AI utilizes the Ray-Ban glasses’ camera so you can ask Meta AI real-time questions about the world around you. For folks with visual impairments, I was told this could help them navigate their surroundings, identify objects, and live more independently. It’s an exciting prospect — but my main concern is those possibilities are hampered by the fact that Live AI reduces the glasses’ battery to a mere 30 minutes.

There’s no way to charge the Ray-Bans — or many of the other smart glasses I’ve tried — with an external battery pack. Some glasses utilize stands or cases for charging, while others have proprietary cords that attach to both arms. However they charge, it’s virtually impossible to power and wear them at the same time. Furthermore, I’ve yet to see a pair of smart glasses with repairable or replaceable batteries.

Take the Ray-Bans. A Meta support page clearly states that “it’s not possible to replace the battery inside your glasses or charging case.” If the battery fails under warranty, you should be able to get a replacement free of charge. But once the battery starts degrading over time, as all batteries do, you have no options other than to get a new pair or a replacement case. I get why the batteries aren’t replaceable — trying to reduce the size so the glasses are wearable means soldering components close together. It’s an issue plaguing the entire wearables category, not just these glasses. But it is a problem.

This is something Meta and other smart glasses makers will have to meaningfully address for this gadget category to be as ubiquitous as phones or smartwatches. I’d argue that nailing all-day battery life is more important than figuring out how to incorporate AR displays. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a wearables reviewer, it’s that people hate charging devices.

Meta isn’t shy about its ambitions to make its Ray-Ban smart glasses a mainstream gadget. So much so, it’s made not one but two Super Bowl ads featuring not one, but two Marvel actors. (And Kris Jenner.) And as a little cherry on top, Meta announced it’s creating a limited edition Super Bowl version of the glasses that won’t be for sale to the general public.

You can already watch the first of the two Super Bowl ads, which features Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt causing chaos in Kris Jenner’s personal art collection. The actors are shown asking the Meta AI to identify art pieces, as well as translate foreign languages. Jenner, meanwhile, is shown asking the AI glasses to ring up her lawyer after an incident with a $6.2 million banana.

In a blog about the ads, Meta says the limited edition glasses will be a pair of matte black Wayfarers with either gold, mirror-like lenses or lenses featuring the team colors of the Super Bowl finalists. The glasses will also come with a custom-etched case. However, they won’t be available for purchase, hinting that these will likely be seeded to celebrities and influencers to drum up buzz.

There are a couple things at play here. For starters, smart glasses have come a long way with the public from the debacle that was Google Glass. Meta announced last week that the Ray-Bans have sold over 1 million units in 2024. That’s the type of success for an emerging gadget category that could justify an expensive Super Bowl ad. Second, Meta has recently shown it’s keen on pushing that success further using new styles and limited edition versions, not unlike how Nike or other sneaker companies create hype. Meta will purportedly release Oakley-branded smart glasses later this year for athletes, and last year, it also had a limited-edition translucent model of the Ray-Bans for its Meta Connect event.

Smart rings are in the middle of a renaissance. That’s great because we finally have way more options than just an Oura Ring. The downside is most of Oura’s would-be rivals are launching their first, maybe second-gen smart rings. Meaning, if you want an Oura Ring alternative, there’s a good chance you’ll have to put up with quirks and a distinct lack of polish. The $199.99 Amazfit Helio smart ring is no exception.

Amazfit isn’t a household name but is well-known among wearable bargain hunters. It’s a compelling brand because its gadgets get you a lot of bang for your buck. That’s the case with the Helio ring, the brand’s first foray into smart rings. It’s primarily a sleep tracker, but it comes with an AI chatbot called Zepp Flow, an AI coaching feature, and it has an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor for monitoring stress, a blood oxygen sensor, a temperature sensor, and period tracking. It also syncs with popular third-party fitness apps like Adidas Running, Strava, and Komoot, as well as  Apple Health and Google Fit. Like the Samsung Galaxy Ring, it works with Amazfit’s other smartwatches so you can double up on data sources — or switch between the two …

Read the full story at The Verge.

While Mark Zuckerberg and Meta press forward with augmented glasses projects buoyed by its million-selling set of smart Ray-Bans, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman says that Apple just pulled the plug on an AR glasses project. Codenamed N107, they’re described as something that would’ve looked similar to regular glasses but with added displays in the lenses that could connect to a Mac.

With features that sound similar to devices like the Xreal One AR glasses, the glasses could’ve delivered on the Vision Pro feature that’s closest to being any kind of a killer app (popping up a huge virtual monitor anywhere) without the $3,499 price and heavy design that required a head strap. The glasses also would’ve had tint-changing lenses that, like the Vision Pro’s Eye Sight, could signal to onlookers whether the wearer was busy or not. While other details are fuzzy, it doesn’t appear as if the N107 glasses would’ve had a camera or any of the mixed-reality features of the Vision Pro.

A big problem, according to Gurman, was developing something that worked well while being cost-effective proved to be a challenge. Apple initially wanted the N107 to connect to an iPhone, but it proved to be a battery-guzzler, and the iPhone itself didn’t have enough juice to power the glasses — hence the shift to a Mac. Unfortunately, that switch purportedly didn’t seem to go over well with executives in testing.

This most recent cancellation puts a big question mark over Apple’s future AR and XR plans. Apple purportedly canceled a separate AR glasses project in 2023, and rumor has it that work on a Vision Pro 2 has been put on hold in favor of trying to create a cheaper Vision Pro. Meanwhile, the Vision Pro itself has struggled to find a foothold.

The cancellation also means Apple is falling further behind the competition. CES 2025 was a playground for all sorts of smart glasses, and Google recently entered the fray with Android XR. Samsung has also thrown its hat in the ring with its Project Moohan headset. Last year, Meta showcased its Orion glasses, an AR glasses prototype with advanced Micro LED displays and a neural wristband for controls. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also been bullish on smart glasses as an ultimate vehicle for AI assistants, and the company is expected to release both Oakley-branded smart glasses for athletes and a higher-end version of its current Ray-Ban glasses with a display this year.

Apple has agreed to a $20 million settlement in a class action lawsuit over battery swelling in early Apple Watch models. If you experienced the issue and owned an Apple Watch Series 0, 1, 2, or 3, you may be eligible for a small payout.

The lawsuit, Smith et al. v. Apple Inc, was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In both the settlement agreement and claim website, Apple explicitly denies that its smartwatches ever had battery swelling issues and “denies all allegations of wrongdoing” and liability. Instead, it says that Apple is choosing to settle to “avoid further costs of litigation.”

In a statement sent to The Verge, Apple spokesperson Aushawna Collins says the company “strongly disagree[s] with the claims made against these early generation Apple Watch models.”

To be eligible for a payout, you have to have owned an eligible watch model and have reported any potential battery swelling issues to Apple between April 24th, 2015 and February 6th, 2024. Anyone who fits those criteria has until April 10th to confirm or update their payment information to receive a payout. According to the settlement’s FAQ site, the payment is estimated to be roughly $20 to $50 per covered watch. Accepting a payment means you also give up any future action regarding battery issues on these particular watches. Those who do not wish to be part of the settlement have until February 24th, 2025 to exclude themselves or object to the settlement.

Update, January 31st: Added comment from Apple.

Dell is the latest tech company to announce it’s ending its hybrid and remote work policy. Starting March 3rd, Dell employees will have to show up in person five days a week.

In an email obtained by Business Insider, CEO Michael Dell writes that “all hybrid and remote team members who live near a Dell office will work in the office five days a week. We are retiring the hybrid policy effective that day.”

“What we’re finding is that for all the technology in the world, nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction. A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days,” Dell writes.

Despite this mandate, Dell also continues to sell remote work solutions, noting that remote work offers “benefits such as flexibility, reduced commute times, and cost savings for employees, while employers can access a broader talent pool, reduce overhead costs, and increase productivity.”

Technically, Dell had already required its sales, manufacturing, and lab engineers to return to office. The email cites the “new speed, energy, and passion” from those teams as a reason for implementing it company-wide globally. For previously remote workers who don’t live near an office, Dell says they can continue to work remotely.

Dell is not the only company to issue return-to-office mandates in recent months. AT&T, Amazon, Stellantis, and JP Morgan have all either started or announced return-to-work policies this month. Meanwhile, President Trump also issued an executive order last week requiring all federal employees to return to office, noting that all government departments “terminate remote work arrangements.”

Live AI is neat, but the problem is knowing when (and why) you’d want to use it.

Read the full story at The Verge.

I was in middle school the last time I took a Spanish class. I remember enough for toddler talk — phrases like “Donde está el baño?” and “mi gato es muy gordo” — but having a meaningful conversation in Spanish without a translator is out of the question. So I was genuinely surprised the other day when, thanks to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, I could have a mostly intelligible conversation with a Spanish speaker about K-pop.

Live translations were added as part of a feature drop last month, alongside live AI and Shazam. It’s exactly what it sounds like. When you turn the feature on, you can have a conversation with a Spanish, French, or Italian speaker, and the glasses will translate what’s being said directly into your ears in real-time. You can also view a transcript of the conversation on your phone. Whatever you say in English will also be translated into the other language.

Screenshot: Meta

Full disclosure, my conversation was part of a Meta-facilitated demo. That’s not truly the same thing as plopping these glasses on, hopping down to Barcelona, and trying it in the wild. That said, I’m a translation tech skeptic and intended to find all the cracks where this tech could fail.

The glasses were adept at translating a basic conversation about K-pop bands. After my conversation partner was done speaking, the translation would kick in soon after. This worked well if we talked in measured, medium-speed speech, with only a few sentences at a time. But that’s not how people actually speak. In real life, we launch into long-winded tirades, lose our train of thought, and talk much faster when angry or excited.

To Meta’s credit, it considered the approach to some of these situations. I had my conversation partner speak at a faster speed and a longer duration. It handled the speed decently well, though there was understandably some lag in the real-time transcript. For longer speech, the glasses started translating mid-way through before my partner was done talking. That was a bit jarring and awkward, as you, the listener, have to recognize you’re a bit behind. The experience is similar to how live interpreters do it on international news or broadcasts.

I was most impressed that the glasses could handle a bit of Spanglish. Often, multilingual speakers rarely stick to just one language, especially when in mixed-language company. In my family, we call it Konglish (Korean-English), and people slip in and out of each language, mixing and matching grammar that’s chaotic and functional. For example, my aunt will often speak several sentences in Korean, throw in two sentences in English, do another that’s a mix of Korean and English, and then revert to Korean. I had my conversation partner try something similar in Spanish and... the results were mixed.

Screenshot: Meta

On the one hand, the glasses could handle short switches between languages. However, longer forays into English led to the AI repeating the English in my ear. Sometimes, it’d also repeat what I’d said, because it started getting confused. That got so distracting I couldn’t focus on what was being said.

The glasses struggled with slang. Every language has its dialects, and each dialect can have its unique spin on colloquialisms. You need look no further than how American teens have subjected us all to phrases like skibidi and rizz. In this case, the glasses couldn’t accurately translate “no manches.” That translates to “no stain,” but in Mexican Spanish, it also means “no way” or “you’re kidding me!” The glasses chose the literal translation. In that vein, translation is an art. In some instances, the glasses got the correct gist across but failed to capture some nuances of what was being said to me. This is the burden of all translators — AI and human alike.

You can’t use these to watch foreign-language movies or TV shows without subtitles. I watched a few clips of Emilia Pérez, and while it could accurately translate scenes where everyone was speaking loudly and clearly, it quit during a scene where characters were rapidly whispering to each other in hushed tones. Forget about the movie’s musical numbers entirely.

You wouldn’t necessarily have these issues if you stuck to what Meta intended with this feature. It’s clear these glasses were mostly designed to help people have basic interactions while visiting other countries — things like asking for directions, ordering food at a restaurant, going to a museum, or completing a transaction. In those instances, you’re more likely to encounter people who speak slower with the understanding that you are not a native speaker.

It’s a good start, but I still dream of the babel fish from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — a little creature that when plopped in your ear, can instantly and accurately translate any language into your own. For now, that’s still the realm of science fiction.

Samsung dropped some wearable news ahead of its Unpacked event later today: parents can now use the cellular Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 as a smartwatch for their kids.

With a new Galaxy Watch for Kids mode, children can use the smartwatch to call and text trusted contacts, while parents can also track their kids’ locations via GPS. The option starts rolling out today and will work on Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T networks.

The good news is parents won’t need a separate smartphone for this to work. Instead, it’s similar to Apple Family Setup, where parents use their phone to pair and set up the smartwatch before programming guardrails through the Google Family Link app. Parents can control which apps can be downloaded to the device, locate misplaced watches, and specify their children’s contacts for texting and calling. In an emergency, kids can also access emergency SOS features by pressing the side button five times. As with other children’s smartwatches, there’s a School Time mode that limits features during school hours.

In a keyword blog, Google also notes that kids can download 20 “teacher approved” apps and watchfaces from the kids section of the Google Play store. They include Barbie, Marvel, and Rubik’s Cube-themed watchfaces and educational games from PBS Kids and Crayola. Other third-party apps are available for download but require parental approval.

Samsung isn’t reinventing the wheel here — it’s playing catch-up. Apple first introduced Apple Watch For Your Kids (formerly Family Setup) for its smartwatches in 2020, and last year, Google launched the Fitbit Ace LTE, a revamped kids GPS tracker with Pixel Watch hardware and a focus on educational gaming.

Meanwhile, this has been a feature that parents have been asking for in subreddits and Samsung customer forums. Previously, it was possible to set up Galaxy Watches as standalone devices with cellular service for kids, but it required parents to be a bit more tech-savvy in figuring out location tracking, phone setup, and parental controls. This new mode streamlines everything into a more accessible format, though it is only limited to the Watch 7.

We’ve asked Samsung if it plans to introduce the feature to LTE version of the budget Galaxy Watch FE but did not immediately receive a response.

Update, January 22nd: A previous version of this article referred to “Apple Watch For Your Kids” by its former name Family Setup. It has been updated to reflect the new name.

Meta may be releasing new Oakley-branded smart glasses later this year, according to a new Bloomberg report.

The Oakley-branded glasses, internally referred to as “Supernova 2”, would be based on the brand’s Sphaera glasses. Instead of housing the cameras on the side, the Supernova 2 would shift the camera to the center of the frame. The idea is to appeal to cyclists and other outdoor athletes. The report didn’t detail any other potential features, though the Oakley glasses would ostensibly have similar features to the current Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

Oakley, like Ray-Bans, are a subsidiary of eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. The move to expand Meta’s tech to other brands under EssilorLuxottica’s umbrella is a savvy one. While the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are good for discreet, everyday wear, they’re a bit heavy for endurance sports and lack certain features like polarized lenses for better visibility. Oakleys are also considered stylish and popular among professional athletes. Conceptually, they’re similar to the now discontinued Bose Frames Tempo, which allowed athletes to have open-ear audio with polarized lenses in a relatively light form factor. That said, if the goal is to appeal to athletes, Meta and Oakley will likely have to address factors like weight, sweat resistance, and battery life.

The report also notes that Meta plans on launching a higher-end version of its current Ray-Ban glasses that include a display capable of delivering notifications, running simple apps, and previewing photos.

Every January, fitness tech and wearable companies love to remind us about New Year’s Resolutions. For a small number of people, New Year’s features, challenges, and marketing campaigns will be exactly the push they need. For everyone else, they’re another reason to feel bad about yourself.

The start of the new year is when Peloton Bikes go on sale, Apple trots out its annual Ring in the New Year Challenge badge and new Fitness Plus content, and anecdotally, it’s when I see a lot of friends suddenly start logging miles in Strava. But this year, I saw a new marketing tactic: Quitter’s day.

Quitter’s day is the second Friday in January — the day when most people throw in the towel on New Year’s Resolutions, fitness related or otherwise. Apple rolled out an Apple Watch commercial around it, encouraging people to “quit quitting” with a little extra wrist-based motivation. Popular strength training app Ladder also jumped on the trend with a humorous ad hinting that, if you just have Ladder coaches in your ear, you too can avoid quitting.

I was on the ground at the giant CES trade show during this year’s Quitter’s day. CES is a week where I’m lucky if I get one workout in, eat three...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Las Vegas is punishingly dry. The arid winter air means I woke up on Day 3 of CES 2025 with a nosebleed, chapped lips, and ashy legs. This in spite of the fact I slathered myself with two pumps of a fermented bean essence, eye cream, moisturizer, and a lip mask. Staring at my face in the hotel mirror, I wonder if any of those products were doing what they’re supposed to — and if maybe, I should try something different.

This is why I was so eager to try L’Oréal’s Cell BioPrint.

For anyone who’s struggled with their complexion, the Cell BioPrint feels like a holy grail gadget. The device is a mini-lab setup that analyzes a skin sample to generate a report about your skin’s current condition. It’ll also “grade” your skin with regard to oiliness, wrinkles, skin barrier function, pore size, and uneven skin tone. Based on the proteins in your skin, you’ll also see whether you’re more likely to be susceptible to those issues down the line — even if they aren’t issues now. The test also determines whether you’re responsive to retinol, a popular and well-studied skincare ingredient that nevertheless causes a ton of confusion online.

Read the full story at The Verge.

At CES, the next generation of eyewear was everywhere. It’s just no one seems to agree on why we want it or what the best approach is.

It’s the second day of CES, and I’m waiting in a line to see my 10th pair of smart glasses. I honestly don’t know what to expect: I’ve seen glorified sunglasses with dubious ChatGPT clones. I’ve sidled up to several booths where the glasses were almost carbon copy clones of the pairs a booth over. I’ve seen all manner of “displays” tacked onto the lenses: some washed out, others so tedious to calibrate as to make me walk away.

So when I slipped on the Rokid Glasses, I felt my brows raise. I could see what looked like a mini desktop. I swiped the arm and a horizontal list of apps appeared. Green writing appeared in front of me a bit like a monitor in The Matrix. A Rokid staffer began speaking to me in Chinese, and despite the surrounding din, I could see a text translation of what she was saying float in front of me. After a brief conversation — she asked whether I ate lunch, she hadn’t — she prompted me to try taking a picture. The display shifted to what looked like a camera’s viewfinder. I hit the multifunction button. An animation flashed. On her phone, I saw the picture I took.

“Holy crap,” I thought. “So this is what the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses would be like with a display.” And then — “If this is possible, why doesn’t it have one yet?”

The three types of smart glasses

It seems that everyone is still trying to figure out what makes the perfect pair of smart glasses. I must have tried out 20 pairs over the course of the last week, but they all seemed to fall into one of three different buckets in how they balanced wearability and functionality.

The first bucket is the simple and stylish glasses. The more stylish and comfortable smart glasses are, the fewer features they tend to have. But for this group, that’s often a good thing.

Take the unassuming Nuance Audio. These smart glasses — made by EssilorLuxottica, Meta’s partner in making the Ray-Ban Meta eyewear — discreetly function as over-the-counter hearing aids. When you wear them, you can dampen some of the noise around you as well as amplify the voice of the person you’re speaking to. This would sound like science fiction if I hadn’t tried it myself.

But at a glance, you’d never know the Nuance Audio glasses can alter how you hear the world — and that’s precisely the point. They look like any pair of stylish glasses and come in two colors and three shapes. By “hiding” their smarts in a normal-looking pair of glasses, they’re essentially helping to reduce the discomfort some people feel when wearing visible hearing aids. It’s not flashy, but it’s a precise and clear use case.

The Chamelo glasses take a similar tack. The “smart” part of these electrochromic sunglasses can, depending on the model, change the color or tint with the swipe of a finger. Some models also have Bluetooth audio. Chamelo’s glasses aren’t new, and at CES, they weren’t suddenly adding in AI assistants, displays, or anything wild. This year’s update? Adding support for prescriptions so more people can use the device.

Neither of these glasses is trying to reinvent the wheel. They saw a simple problem worth fixing and decided to fix it. Nothing more, nothing less.

The face screens

On the other end of the spectrum, you’ll find longtime CES veterans Xreal and Vuzix.

When I arrive at Xreal’s booth, it’s jam-packed. There’s a station where people wear Xreal glasses as they “drive” in a BMW. (The car doesn’t move, but you can pretend you’re moving the wheel and tilt your head on a race course.) I don a pair of last year’s Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses while seated at a desk with only a keyboard in front of me. The Air 2 Ultra are a bit like chunky sunglasses, with miniature screens hovering beneath the lenses. From afar, they look pretty normal. Up close, you can feel their bulk — and on the face, they protrude further than looks natural.

Inside the glasses, I see football players on a football field, information popping up over their heads. The virtual display switches to a panoramic video with avatars of friends watching alongside me. In another window, I’m prompted to type in a description of a fictional creature. I pick “monstrously fat cat with unicorn wings” and lo, it appears. I can pinch and pull with my hands to make it even bigger. The more recently launched Xreal One are also here, though it admittedly gets hard to tell which pair of Xreal glasses is which while elbowing past other eager onlookers.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

When I mosey on over to Vuzix’s booth, it’s less packed, but that’s likely because folks are gawping at a bizarre karaoke contest a few booths over. I, on the other hand, am wearing a pair of the company’s latest Ultralite Pro glasses. The glasses look a bit clunkier, but when you put them on, you can see an array of rainbow lights that culminate in a 3D display. I’m looking at a picture of nature, and there’s actual depth.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’d wear glasses like these walking down the street. They look like glasses, sure, but they can also be bulky and sometimes have cords dangling for battery packs. These glasses show hints of what augmented reality is capable of — but they aren’t meant to be things you wear all day, every day.

The spyglasses

This divide between form and function isn’t new. What’s new is that there are far more smart glasses that lie somewhere in the middle. And they have some funky ideas.

Sharge’s Loomos.AI glasses, for example, look similar to the Meta glasses except they use ChatGPT and can shoot 4K photos and 1080p videos. They also add a bizarre neckband battery to account for the massive battery drain. Rayneo was back with smaller, more refined X3 Pro AR glasses. I could list dozens more, but to be frank, they were mostly iterations of the Meta glasses.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Of the myriad smart glasses I saw, three stood out: Halliday, Even Realities G1, and the Rokid Glasses. All three feature a discreet design, with a hidden green monochrome heads-up display. Halliday projects its single display from the frame by shining a green light into your eye; the other two feature microetched displays on both lenses that are nigh invisible when viewed from the front. (All three companies told me they use green light because it’s easiest on the eyes, has the best contrast, and is less likely to get washed out in bright ambient lighting.)

There are slight hardware differences between all three, but in my demos, it was clear that, philosophically, they’re much more geared toward all-day productivity. They have AI assistants, can be used as teleprompters, and offer live translation. The Rokid Glasses even have a 12MP camera for taking photos and video.

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

In this vision of the smart glasses revolution, these devices are more like all-day companions that help you use your phone less. The display is something that’s only occasionally glanced at when it’s relevant and is done mostly in a productivity context. They offer more smarts than the very use-specific Chamelo and Nuance Audio glasses, but they offer more practicality (and wearability) to the average person than what Xreal and Vuzix are pursuing.

The smart glasses era

The more I talk to the people behind these products, the more it becomes clear that everyone believes smart glasses are the future. It’s also apparent that no one agrees on the best way to get to that future.

“We’ve chosen to optimize for something that is, we think, a great feature geared towards the actual use case of glasses,” says Chamelo CEO and cofounder Reid Covington. “You’re wearing them to see. You’re wearing them to block out light. A lot of the more forward-looking smart glasses have interesting features, but they’re not optimized for, you know, actual usability.”

But even among companies pursuing simpler smart glasses, function isn’t always the reason they choose more discreet or stylish designs. Smart glasses are “something that you need to feel are part of yourself,” says Davide D’Alena, global marketing director for Nuance Audio. Function is nice, but doing all the things isn’t worth it if you have to wear something hideous on your face. “For us, it’s just not enough to put out an ugly product, even if it’s working perfectly from a functional point of view. It must be something that is also a self-expression.”

Meanwhile, some longtime veterans in the space contend it isn’t a choice of form and function. It’s a split between AR and AI.

“I actually see two different directions going forward. One is AR glasses which will handle a lot of the XR content. The other one will be the AI glasses as a major kind of all-day wearable smart glasses,” says Chi Xu, Xreal founder and CEO. Xu says that everything will converge at some point — though we’ll be waiting a good while before it does. Right now, it’s a matter of every option being developed at once as companies try to figure out the best way to draw people in.

Xu isn’t wrong. While some companies like EssilorLuxottica and Chamelo are committed to one approach, others are happy to dabble. Rokid, for example, may have come out with AI-first smart glasses this year, but its array of more Xreal-like AR glasses was actually the bigger portion of its booth. Meta, apparently, is working on glasses with a display, too, targeting later this year — my colleague Alex Heath reports that the company will add its own twist to the formula by shipping a neural wristband that can be used to control them.

But for all the fragmentation, every company I spoke to said the same thing: they’ve seen renewed interest in this space within the last year and a half — and with that comes investors aplenty with deep wallets. The vast majority emphasized how rapid advancements in technology and AI have made things possible today that were impossible just two or three years ago. And every single one said that interest from the general public, not just first adopters, is also higher than in previous years.

This, they all say, proves that smart glasses are inevitable. It’s just a matter of getting everyone else to see the vision. And that’s sort of the problem. With smart glasses, you have to see it to believe it.