Month: August 2022

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It's Wednesday, which means it's time for another Dealmaster. Today's roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes the return of the lowest price we've seen for Google's Pixel 6 Pro. As of this writing, Amazon subsidiary Woot has the 128GB unlocked version of the phone available for $700, which is $200 off Google's MSRP and matches the discount we saw during Amazon's Prime Day sale last month.

We broadly recommend the $449 Pixel 6a as the best value for those in need of an Android phone these days, and it's worth noting that Google has already shown off its upcoming Pixel 7 phones, which are likely to launch in a couple of months. If you need a higher-end Android phone right now, though, this is still a good price for a device we continue to like. The 6a still gets you most of the way there for less, but by comparison, the 6 Pro offers a bigger display (6.7 inches instead of 6.1) with a faster 120 Hz refresh rate (instead of 60 Hz), more RAM (12GB instead of 6GB), and better battery life (5000 mAh instead of 4410). Both devices—as well as the base mid-tier Pixel 6—get you capable cameras and a clean take on Android with update support through fall 2026, though.

Besides Google phones, our roundup also includes a relatively rare discount on Microsoft's Xbox Series S, which is currently down to $250 at Adorama. This deal again matches the lowest price we've seen and should be reflected after adding the console to your cart. The Series S remains the weaker of the two current-gen Xbox consoles—it's usually good for playing in 1080p (and sometimes 1440p) at 60 fps, not the 4K output and more stable frame rates of the brawnier Xbox Series X. It also lacks a disc drive, and its 512GB of storage is relatively paltry. That said, it's still capable of playing everything the Series X can, it's physically much smaller, and most importantly, it's much cheaper. As your primary "next-gen" console, it's not an ideal (or especially future-proof) choice, but as a secondary device to cover Xbox exclusives, pair with an Xbox Game Pass subscription, or stick in a kid's bedroom, it's a decent value at this deal price. A recent game devkit update is expected to give a slight boost to the device's performance, too.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

As part of its Windows 11 design push, Microsoft also published fun redesigns for all of its emoji characters that added more character and texture than the older Windows 8- and 10-era versions. Today, the company is going one step further, open-sourcing the vast majority of these new "Fluent" emoji designs and publishing them to Github for anyone to modify and use.

Each open-sourced emoji has three iterations: the fully 3D version, complete with texture and color gradients; a flat "color" version that retains the basic color but removes textures and gradients (these are the ones you'll see if you open Windows 11's emoji menu); and a monochromatic "high contrast" version. All files are being made available as .svg vector graphics files so that they can be resized and otherwise manipulated without any loss of quality.

There are just a couple of Microsoft's designs that it hasn't open-sourced, including the paperclip that looks like Clippy (the character is apparently copyrighted). A couple of other emoji were excluded because Microsoft's versions exclude the Windows logo. There is no generic version of the paperclip emoji listed among the emoji Microsoft has published.

Enlarge / Photo illustration by Chesnot/Getty Images

Within weeks of the Twitter board's approval of Elon Musk's unsolicited bid to take the company private, the South African-born billionaire came down with a severe case of buyer's remorse. Twitter was not happy, and after Musk decided not to go through with the purchase, the social media company quickly sued him. In advance of the trial, set for October despite Musk's attempts to push it back to 2023, Elon Musk is apparently preparing for the worst-case scenario of being forced to consummate the deal.

With Tesla stock on a rebound, Musk has just sold $6.9 billion worth of shares in his electric car company, a move disclosed in regulatory filings on Tuesday. Musk got an average of $869 for the shares, which is significantly more than the $628 that TSLA shares were trading at in late May. TSLA had hit its 2022 peak of $1,145 on April 4, the day after Musk revealed his purchase of 9.2 percent of Twitter's outstanding shares.

In late April, after announcing his plans to buy Twitter, Musk unloaded $8.5 billion in Tesla stock, saying at the time that there were "no further TSLA sales planned after today."

Enlarge / The Galaxy Watch 5 has a notably flat-front screen, so it's good Samsung has upgraded the display to sapphire crystal. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung announced the Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro on Wednesday, giving its round, semi-rotating Wear OS watches new looks, a tougher screen material, and—for reasons the company can only vaguely explain—an infrared temperature sensor.

Neither the $280 Watch 5, available in 40 or 44 mm sizes, nor the 44 mm $450 Watch 5 Pro has a physically rotating bezel, a distinguishing Galaxy Watch feature that was limited in the last generation to the higher-end Watch 4 "Classic" (which is still available). Instead, both models have capacitive touch bezels, so you can run your finger around the edge to scroll.

Both Galaxy Watch 5 models look just like the official 3D rendering leaks scooped up by Evan Blass at 91Mobiles. Their displays have been upgraded to sapphire crystal, which should help bolster the Watch 5's flat-front display. Samsung says this material is "60 percent harder" than prior watch displays.

Enlarge / All images in this review were personally captured by Sam Machkovech on various PCs, unless otherwise specified. (The game's handy "photo mode" helps on this front, though such images are still representative of real-time gameplay.) (credit: Sony / Insomniac / Nixxes)

In two days, the 2018 hit game Marvel's Spider-Man will break out of its console exclusivity and land on Windows (Steam, EGS) as arguably Sony's biggest PC port yet. We knew Sony was bullish about selling more games on PC in the current fiscal year, but we didn't expect a critically acclaimed gem like Spider-Man, which previously drove console sales as a PlayStation exclusive, to make the transition.

The thing about PC ports, of course, is that they have to work on a wide range of machines. As of press time, the Spider-Man version we tested doesn't necessarily surpass the mix of stability and impressive technical performance that developer Insomniac delivered on dated PlayStation 4 architecture.

Such complaints might be moot when Spider-Man launches on Friday, August 12—and we sure hope so. At its best, this game does whatever a PC rig can, delivering ultra-wide ratios, super-charged graphical settings, higher frame rates, and increased ray tracing depth. But while it looks great on a super-charged PC and impresses on hardware as weak as a Steam Deck, it's tough for me to comfortably recommend Spider-Man on midrange gaming rigs.

Enlarge / Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 4. (credit: Samsung)

It's time for a new round of Samsung foldables. The Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 are official. Both devices hit stores on August 26, and the prices haven't changed from last year: It's $1,799 for the Fold 4 and $999 for the Flip 4.

The Z Fold 4—the one that opens up like a tablet—is getting a few millimeters wider this year, and it has a 6.2-inch, 120 Hz, 2316×904 outer OLED display. The Z Fold 3's outer display had a skinny 25:9 aspect ratio, but the Fold 4's is at 23.1:9, getting closer to a normal 19:9 aspect ratio. The inner display is wider, too—it's a 7.6-inch, 2176×1812, 120 Hz OLED display. The device's thickness hasn't really changed—when open, the phone is 6.3 mm thick, and it's 15.8 mm thick when folded up, thanks to the hinge gap.

Other specs include a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 4400 mAh battery with 25 W charging. Samsung puts the dust and water ingress rating at "IPX8," meaning there's no dust resistance, but the device is submergible in fresh water for 30 minutes. There's a side fingerprint reader on the power button, and the phone supports Wi-Fi 6E.

Enlarge / SpaceX conducts a hot fire test of the Booster 7 rocket on Tuesday, August 9, 2022. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX ignited engines on both the first and second stages of its Starship launch system on Wednesday, signaling that it is getting closer to a test flight of the massive rocket later this year.

On Monday evening at 5:20 pm local time in South Texas, engineers ignited a single Raptor engine on the Super Heavy booster that serves as the rocket's first stage. This is the first time the company has ever conducted a static fire test of the booster, which will ultimately be powered by 33 Raptor rocket engines.

About three hours later, on a separate mount at its "Starbase" facility in Texas, SpaceX ignited two engines on the Starship upper stage of the rocket. The company later shared a short video on Twitter of the evidently successful test.