Category: Technologies

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After seven weeks of high-octane rucking action, it all comes down to this, as New Zealand and South Africa battle it out in the Rugby World Cup final at the Stade de France.

New Zealand cruised into today’s final with an assured 44-6 victory over Argentina. South Africa, meanwhile, had to scrap their way back from 15-6 down to eventually see off England 16-15 thanks to Handré Pollard’s late penalty in their dramatic semifinal.

The match brings together the two most successful teams in Rugby World Cup history, with both teams having won the sport’s biggest prize on three previous occasions and South Africa entering this year’s tournament as defending champs following their triumph in Japan back in 2019.

The last meeting between these two sides saw the Springboks stun New Zealand in their final warm-up for this tournament with a crushing 35-7 victory back in August, but we suspect a far closer encounter in Paris today.

Below, we’ll outline the best live TV streaming services to use to watch South Africa vs. New Zealand, no matter where you are in the world.

New Zealand vs. South Africa: When and where?

The All Blacks take on the Springboks in the final at the Stade de France in Paris on Saturday, Oct. 27. Kickoff is set for 9 p.m. CET local time in France — that’s 8 p.m. BST in the UK and Ireland, 10 p.m. SAST in South Africa and 3 p.m. ET or 12 p.m. PT in the US. In New Zealand it’s a 9 a.m. NZDT start on Sunday morning, and a 7 a.m. AEDT kick-off in Australia.

How to watch the 2023 Rugby World Cup Final online from anywhere using a VPN

If you find yourself unable to view the final locally, you may need a different way to watch this match — that’s where using a VPN can come in handy. A VPN is also the best way to stop your ISP from throttling your speeds on game day by encrypting your traffic, and it’s also a great idea if you’re traveling and find yourself connected to a Wi-Fi network, and you want to add an extra layer of privacy for your devices and logins.

With a VPN, you’re able to virtually change your location on your phone, tablet or laptop to get access to the game. Most VPNs, like our Editors’ Choice, ExpressVPN, make it really easy to do this.

Using a VPN to watch or stream sports is legal in any country where VPNs are legal, including the US, UK and Australia, as long as you have a legitimate subscription to the service you’re streaming. You should be sure your VPN is set up correctly to prevent leaks: Even where VPNs are legal, the streaming service may terminate the account of anyone it deems to be circumventing correctly applied blackout restrictions.

Looking for other options? Be sure to check out some of the other great VPN deals taking place right now.

Livestream New Zealand vs. South Africa in the US

The Rugby World Cup 2023 final can be watched live in the US via streaming service Peacock, which is showing the final live. You’ll need a Peacock Premium or Premium Plus account to catch games live.

Stream the All Blacks vs. South Africa for free in New Zealand

Freeview channel Sky Open (formerly Prime), will be showing this huge showdown with the Springboks live, which means you’ll be able to stream for free online and on smart devices.

Stream South Africa vs. New Zealand in South Africa

Springboks can also cheer on their side at home for free, with free-to-air broadcaster SABC showing the big game live. That also means you’ll be able to stream for free via the network’s streaming service and website.

Watch Ireland vs. New Zealand for free in Ireland

Rugby fans in Ireland looking to watch the tournament’s climax can watch the final live and for free via terrestrial broadcaster Virgin Media 1 and its online service Virgin Media Player.

Watch New Zealand vs. South Africa for free in the UK

The Rugby World Cup final will be shown live on free-to-air channel ITV1 in the UK. This means viewers in the region will also be able to stream the big game for free via the ITVX online service. Live coverage for this game is on ITV1 and is set to get underway at 7 p.m. BST.

Stream New Zealand vs. South Africa in Australia for free

Rugby fans Down Under can watch the World Cup climax for free via terrestrial broadcaster 9Gem and its 9Now streaming service.

Stream New Zealand vs. South Africa in Canada

Comprehensive live coverage of the 2023 Rugby World Cup final will be available in Canada via TSN. Cord cutters can watch via the network’s streaming service TSN Plus.

Quick tips for streaming the 2023 Rugby World Cup using a VPN

• With four variables at play — your ISP, browser, video streaming provider and VPN — your experience and success when streaming the Rugby World Cup action live may vary.
• If you don’t see your desired location as a default option for ExpressVPN, try using the “search for city or country” option.
• If you’re having trouble getting the game after you’ve turned on your VPN and set it to the correct viewing area, there are two things you can try for a quick fix. First, log into your streaming service subscription account and make sure the address registered for the account is an address in the correct viewing area. If not, you may need to change the physical address on file with your account. Second, some smart TVs — like Roku — don’t have VPN apps you can install directly on the device itself. Instead, you’ll have to install the VPN on your router or the mobile hotspot you’re using (like your phone) so that any device on its Wi-Fi network now appears in the correct viewing location.
• All of the VPN providers we recommend have helpful instructions on their main site for quickly installing the VPN on your router. In some cases with smart TV services, after you install a cable network’s sports app, you’ll be asked to verify a numeric code or click a link sent to your email address on file for your smart TV. This is where having a VPN on your router will also help, since both devices will appear to be in the correct location.
• And remember, browsers can often give away a location despite using a VPN, so be sure you’re using a privacy-first browser to log into your services. We normally recommend Brave.

Arsenal will look to heap more pressure on rock bottom Sheffield United on Saturday as these two unevenly matched sides meet at the Emirates Stadium.

After a confidence boosting 2-1 win away to Seville in the Champions League in midweek, the Gunners will be hoping to keep up the pressure on local rivals and league leaders Tottenham Hotspur as they return to domestic action.

The pressure, meanwhile, is mounting on Blades boss Paul Heckingbottom after a run of five straight defeats, including an 8-0 mauling at home to Newcastle United.

Below, we’ll outline the best live TV streaming services to use to watch all of the action live wherever you are in the world.

Arsenal vs. Sheffield United: When and where?

Arsenal host Sheffield United at the Emirates Stadium in north London on Saturday, Oct. 27. Kickoff is set for 3 p.m. BST (10 a.m. ET, 7 a.m PT, 1 a.m. AEDT).

How to watch the Arsenal vs. Sheffield United game online from anywhere using a VPN

If you find yourself unable to view the game locally, you may need a different way to watch — that’s where using a VPN can come in handy. A VPN is also the best way to stop your ISP from throttling your speeds on game day by encrypting your traffic, and it’s also a great idea if you’re traveling and find yourself connected to a Wi-Fi network, and you want to add an extra layer of privacy for your devices and logins.

With a VPN, you’re able to virtually change your location on your phone, tablet or laptop to get access to the game. So if your internet provider or mobile carrier has stuck you with an IP address that incorrectly shows your location in a blackout zone, a VPN can correct that problem by giving you an IP address in your correct, non-blackout area. Most VPNs, like our Editors’ Choice, ExpressVPN, make it really easy to do this.

Using a VPN to watch or stream sports is legal in any country where VPNs are legal, including the US, UK and Canada, as long as you have a legitimate subscription to the service you’re streaming. You should be sure your VPN is set up correctly to prevent leaks: Even where VPNs are legal, the streaming service may terminate the account of anyone it deems to be circumventing correctly applied blackout restrictions.

Looking for other options? Be sure to check out some of the other great VPN deals taking place right now.

Livestream Arsenal vs. Sheffield United in the US

Saturday’s Arsenal vs. Sheffield United match is on USA Network, which you can access as part of your cable package or at the NBC Sports website with a valid login, and can be streamed via Sling TV and other more expensive streaming TV services.

Can I livestream the Arsenal vs. Sheffield United game in the UK?

No broadcaster has the rights to show this game live in the UK, due to the traditional Saturday 3 p.m. kick-off blackout, which prohibits matches being shown in the region at that time in order to protect attendances throughout the English football pyramid.

That also means that if you’re in the UK traveling for pleasure or for work, you’re unlikely to be able to watch the game like you normally would at home thanks to geo-blocking.

There is one option to get around this, however. By using a VPN, as explained above, you can set your location to a country where the match is being broadcast and go from there.

Livestream the Arsenal vs. Sheffield United game in Canada

If you want to stream Arsenal vs. Sheffield United live in Canada, you’ll need to subscribe to Fubo Canada. The service has exclusive rights for this Premier League season.

Livestream the Arsenal vs. Sheffield United game in Australia

Football fans Down Under can watch this EPL fixture on streaming service Optus Sport, which is showing every single Premier League game live in Australia this season.

Quick tips for streaming the Premier League using a VPN

• With four variables at play — your ISP, browser, video streaming provider and VPN — your experience and success when streaming EPL matches may vary.
• If you don’t see your desired location as a default option for ExpressVPN, try using the “search for city or country” option.
• If you’re having trouble getting the game after you’ve turned on your VPN and set it to the correct viewing area, there are two things you can try for a quick fix. First, log into your streaming service subscription account and make sure the address registered for the account is an address in the correct viewing area. If not, you may need to change the physical address on file with your account. Second, some smart TVs — like Roku — don’t have VPN apps you can install directly on the device itself. Instead, you’ll have to install the VPN on your router or the mobile hotspot you’re using (like your phone) so that any device on its Wi-Fi network now appears in the correct viewing location.
• All of the VPN providers we recommend have helpful instructions on their main site for quickly installing the VPN on your router. In some cases with smart TV services, after you install a cable network’s sports app, you’ll be asked to verify a numeric code or click a link sent to your email address on file for your smart TV. This is where having a VPN on your router will also help, since both devices will appear to be in the correct location.
• And remember, browsers can often give away a location despite using a VPN, so be sure you’re using a privacy-first browser to log into your services. We normally recommend Brave.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I knew what HDR was. Boy, was I ever wrong. When I saw the detail, depth and color this technology brings to my own photos, HDR photography blew my mind.

High-dynamic range endows photos and videos with a broader tonal range so you can see details in both bright and shadowy areas. I understood that intellectually, but when Adobe shipped a new version of its Lightroom software that let me edit HDR photos on higher-end computers and phones, I actually saw them for the first time. A gulf separated what I thought HDR is and what it actually offers.

By clicking that “HDR” button in Lightroom, flat-toned highlight areas in my photos suddenly take on vibrant life. Bright yellow flames leap out of my screen. Washed-out skies turn a rich blue. Clouds show previously hidden billows and contours. New Mexico aspen leaves in the autumn explode with golden color. After the recent annular eclipse, I see sunspots and structural details on the sun’s face that I hadn’t realized my camera could even capture.

But there’s a dark side to HDR, so to speak, and it’s a doozy. Most people don’t have hardware or software capable of showing this glorious imagery. I can’t even publish a comparison photo at the top of this story to illustrate how marvelous HDR photos are.

Such is the way of technology. As sci-fi author William Gibson observed, the future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed. I hope HDR spreads as rapidly as possible, because I love it.

Here’s a look at the glories and the complications of HDR photography and how it might start showing up in your own photography adventures.

What is HDR?

First, for those of you who may have heard the term but don’t know exactly what it is, HDR is a technology designed to capture high-contrast scenes and bring them to our eyeballs more convincingly.

Many scenes with only a modest span of bright and dark elements are no big deal for ordinary cameras and displays. But when you combine bright sunsets with dark foregrounds, or sunlit faces next to shadowed storefronts, technology often can’t match the full tonal range that your eyes see.

Cameras have improved, in particular with smartphones that composite many frames into a single shot to capture shadow details without blowing out blue skies into a wash of white. Now the challenge is to build an entire image-handling pipeline for editing, publishing and displaying HDR, not just the standard-dynamic range we’ve used for decades.

Translating a wide dynamic range into something narrower for display occurs through a process called tone mapping. Early days of HDR tone mapping experimentation produced some surreal, otherworldly and sometimes postapocalyptic photo styling, but that’s not what I’m talking about now.

Today’s HDR is all about showing a scene more as it truly was so you can see details in bright clouds at the same time there are textured leaves in the shadow. The bright parts are actually brighter than the regular full white of your display, like the blank areas around this article. Sometimes it reminds me of adding bright highlights in drawings.

Holy wow, these HDR images are amazing

When I say HDR blew my mind, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve looked at millions of photos, thousands of them up close and in great detail, whether my own or from photographers I respect on sites like Flickr and Instagram. I haven’t been this excited about a new photography technology in years.

As soon as I saw the blog post about HDR in Lightroom by Adobe engineer and photo guru Eric Chan, I tried it with my own photos. Over and over I’d open a photo in Lightroom’s develop module, click the HDR button, and marvel at the transformation as detail and color bloomed out of previously flat, washed-out bright areas.

And the information is there in thousands of photos I already took. That’s because I shoot raw — a photo format that can preserve more detail and offer more editing flexibility than “baked” formats like JPEG or HEIC. (JPEG and HEIC can accommodate HDR data, and indeed Apple HEIC and Google Pixel JPEG photos include it, but raw photos are more flexible.)

It’s hard to describe the improvements, and it’s really hard to show them visually since hardware and software support is spotty right now. For a good illustration of what’s possible I recommend photographer Greg Benz’s detailed HDR photo examination, helpfully packaged as an HDR YouTube video that bypasses some display compatibility problems, but you’ll have to watch on an HDR-compatible device like most reasonably good smartphones from recent years.

HDR doesn’t change or improve all photos. I’m not excited about the prospect of creating two versions of each of my photos, though Lightroom has a mechanism designed to ease that labor. There’s no question in my mind that the technology is an improvement, though, as over and over I saw photos take on more of the realism I remember.

It’s already changed my photographic style, too, easing my aversion to some high-contrast scenes and backlighting that often have produced unsatisfying results.

Some examples of photo improvements

I spent a few hours digging through my archive, and scads of photos were dramatically improved:

• The burst of flame from a burner at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta turned from washed-out white to vivid yellow, with the structure of the flames visible.
• The glittering lights of the store displays in Paris’ Galeries Lafayette sparkled into view, adding sprinkles of light that punctuated otherwise unremarkable bright areas.
• New patterns and tracks showed up in pictures with snow.
• In a photo of a misty sunrise, I was no longer forced to choose between the dark details of a shadowed field that filled most of the frame and the colorful sky behind the trees.
• With both bright skies and overcast weather, clouds became rich three-dimensional shapes instead of flat white blobs or gray smears.
• Neon lights, LEDs, Christmas tree lights and glowing nighttime Halloween decorations pop vividly.
• In the Sagrada Familia, a spectacular basilica in Barcelona, entirely new colors emerged from photos of the stained-glass windows. I hadn’t even realized there was any purple present!

That last case was particularly notable. Even when I created a regular SDR version, Lightroom produced better colors. That’s because the HDR editing pipeline brings a new recipe to how it handles the full gamut of color and brightness.

“Even for low- to moderate-contrast photos, you may see a significant visual benefit to editing in HDR,” Adobe told me.

HDR and the displays that can or can’t show it

But here’s the downside. I can’t just share these glorious new photos with you. Because you need not only new software to see HDR photos, but also higher-end hardware that can crank its pixels up to sufficient brightness.

MacBook Pro laptops from 2021 or later are good, but earlier ones and countless Windows laptops and external displays aren’t. Apple’s $4,999 Pro Display XDR can handle HDR photos.

“I have a Mac Studio monitor, but unfortunately, even though it cost an arm and a leg, it’s not an HDR monitor,” said pro photographer Jeremy Garretson, referring to the Apple Studio Display that costs $1,599 and up. “I’m a little annoyed.”

Though it’ll likely be years before a lot of mainstream computers can show HDR photos to full effect, the situation is improving. HDR-capable displays, which need to be able to show brighter pixels in some areas, are becoming more common.

Adobe expects HDR hardware will become as ubiquitous as now-commonplace HD TVs and the high-resolution screens on all flagship smartphones these days.

Supporting the high brightness — 1,000 nits or more — adds expense that might be too high for low-budget devices. “I think [HDR] will be limited to the high end and midrange for TVs and the high end for smartphones and IT products,” said Ross Young, a longtime display analyst at Display Supply Chain Consultants.

As a photographer, this matters a lot to me. I’m never buying another phone, TV or laptop or monitor that can’t handle HDR.

Software support for HDR

Software is gradually improving, too. Lightroom’s support is somewhat preliminary, with HDR imagery showing only while editing a photo and not when viewing your photo library, but Adobe said it’ll expand support.

Only Google Chrome and Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge can show HDR photos on the web, so Firefox and Safari are SDR-only for now. Because Apple’s rules restrict browsers on iPads and iPhones to Apple’s web rendering technology, Chrome can’t display HDR photos on those devices despite newer models’ hardware capability to do so.

Just storing the photo file is tricky. There are file formats that can handle HDR imagery, like AVIF, JPEG XL and HEIC, but a tweak to good old JPEG is a likely starting point. That’s Google’s approach with a format it calls Ultra HDR, which adds HDR-specific metadata called a gain map to a traditional JPEG photo. Adobe developed gain map technology, Apple supports it, and companies are now working to standardize gain maps for HDR imagery through an industry standardization process.

Gain maps let older products show regular images and newer ones add the extra HDR spiciness.

“If we switch to AVIF today, you break thousands of applications, and then no one gets HDR,” said Isaac Reynolds, who leads camera development for Google. Ultra HDR is a good “on ramp” to HDR photography, a useful step for three or four years until more advanced formats catch on, he said.

The allure of HDR photography

HDR is a complicated transition, as the drawn-out adoption of HDR video in smartphones, TVs and streaming video services has shown. But I’m hopeful that support will arrive. The benefit is just too strong to ignore.

There are lots of improvements to digital photography, like mirrorless cameras with eye-tracking autofocus, image sensors with many megapixels and smartphones that approach the abilities of traditional cameras more closely every year.

I find HDR photography as exciting as any of those developments. I imagine other photographers will, too, and soon most if not all of us will be able to appreciate all the realism and spectacle of HDR.

The smartphone is about to evolve in a big way. For years, industry leaders pegged the arrival of 5G and foldable displays as being the technological advancements that would mark a turning point for the smartphone.

Now in 2023, that excitement has shifted to generative AI, a technology that moguls like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai believe could be as monumental as the dawn of the smartphone and the internet itself.

Generative artificial intelligence, or AI that can create new content, engulfed the tech world this year, shaping the trajectory of new products from Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, Instagram and Facebook owner Meta, and other major tech companies. In the last quarter of 2023, we’re getting a better idea of how that shift is extending to the smartphone.

AI was at the center of Google’s Pixel 8 launch earlier this month as the company flaunted how its algorithms can pick out the best facial expressions in batches of group photos and easily paste them into a different image. The next smartphone processor from leading mobile chipmaker Qualcomm is designed to speed up AI processing tasks, as the company detailed during its Snapdragon Summit in late October. And Apple is said to be developing a bevy of new features for the iPhone and other products that lean on AI, according to a recent report from Bloomberg.

“AI is the future of the smartphone experience,” Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm’s mobile, compute and XR division, said during the company’s event. “And when it comes to mobile technology, it’s what we’ve been building toward for over a decade.”

ChatGPT and new AI-powered search tools from Microsoft and Google may have been the jumping-off point for generative AI in late 2022 and the first half of 2023. But it didn’t take long for the tech to impact the direction of current and future smartphones. AI isn’t new to mobile devices; features like voice dictation, language translation and facial recognition already leverage the technology. Apple’s iPhones, for example, have had a neural engine for handling machine learning-related tasks since 2017 starting with the iPhone X and iPhone 8 generation.

Generative AI is different. It’s not necessarily about AI working passively to detect a person in a photo or unlock your phone as soon as you raise it to your face. Instead, it enables use cases that feel new, whether that’s generating fresh wallpapers on demand or adjusting someone’s expression in a photo.

“It’s really about giving users control over the use of AI and how they want to use it, how they want to apply it to their daily lives,” said Subhashish Dasgupta of analytics firm Kantar, who specializes in the technology and health industries.

Google’s Pixel 8 and 8 Pro are the biggest examples of this yet. While both phones include routine upgrades like a new processor and slightly improved camera hardware, it’s the phones’ new AI-powered tricks that make them stand out.

A photo editing feature called Best Take can analyze group selfies you’ve recently snapped and swap facial expressions between images. In other words, Google’s AI can create the perfect photo in which everyone was smiling — even if that moment never happened.

Magic Editor similarly uses AI to let you manipulate photos in myriad ways: You can make yourself larger or smaller, create the illusion that you’re jumping superhumanly high, or even replace the ground itself.

Those are just the latest examples of how Google is trying to give AI a more prominent presence in our phones. Another feature, called Magic Compose, which Google announced at its developer conference in May, uses generative AI to craft suggested responses to text messages or rewrite responses in a different tone within the company’s messaging app. Google’s AI wallpaper creator can conjure up new backgrounds for your phone from scratch based on prompts.

In 2024 and beyond, AI is poised to play an even greater role in our smartphones. Qualcomm, which creates chips that power phones from companies like Samsung, Xiaomi and OnePlus, clearly had AI in mind when developing its new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile processor. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon showcased the company’s vision for how AI will change smartphones at its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii on Oct. 24.

The chipmaker sees AI as being another layer that runs alongside the phone’s operating system and apps that can understand voice, text and image inputs and provide suggestions. That’s much different from the virtual assistants we’ve come to know over the last decade, like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant. Rather than thinking about AI at the individual feature level, Qualcomm sees it as being a fundamental part of your phone’s daily operations in the future.

“It’s really kind of voice assistants 2.0,” said Luke Pearce, a senior analyst at tech research and advisory firm CCS Insight. “And it’s much more conversational, it’s much more natural.”

During its keynote, Qualcomm provided a glimpse at what this future could look like. A teaser video demonstrated a virtual assistant that can extract key topics from a phone call, summarize them into bullet points and then provide recommendations. Another example showed an AI helper picking out keywords from a text messaging thread between two friends to proactively provide recommendations for their meetup. A photography tool powered by the company’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor will let you zoom out on a photo you’ve already captured and generate more details beyond the frame to make it look like it was taken on a wide-angle lens.

“It changes how we think about the devices, the [operating system] and the apps, and how you actually define a user experience,” Amon said on stage.

Qualcomm is wasting no time getting started. It’s working with Google so that the search giant’s AI models will be able to run locally on future Snapdragon-powered phones. Xiaomi also unveiled its new Xiaomi 14 phone, which will be one of the first devices to run on Qualcomm’s new chip, at the event. But other brands like Oppo, OnePlus, Honor and Vivo will also adopt the chip, likely next year. Samsung typically puts Qualcomm’s latest processor in the US version of its flagship Galaxy S and foldable Galaxy Z phones, although the Galaxy S23, Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5 devices run on a customized version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Not to be outdone, Motorola is also working to bring more AI features to its smartphones. Lenovo, which owns Motorola, is developing an AI assistant for PCs and phones that learns from your behavior and can accomplish tasks on your behalf, such as writing messages and scheduling tasks.

Between Google’s Pixel 8 launch and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit, there’s no doubt the Android landscape in 2024 will be all about AI. But what about the iPhone? Apple rarely, if ever, discusses future products. However, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is developing a slew of AI upgrades for its family of products, including the iPhone.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, is reportedly spearheading an effort to bring AI to the next major iPhone update, likely to be called iOS 18. Apple wants to sprinkle its large language learning model into the software, the report says, which could show up in Siri and Apple’s messages app. Apple’s suite of apps may also get an AI makeover according to Bloomberg, with the company reportedly looking to bring auto-generated playlists to Apple Music and AI-assisted features to Pages and Keynote.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment.

But to get the personalized experiences that companies like Google and Qualcomm envision, you’ll have to give tech giants an even bigger window into your life. After all, how can these devices provide recommendations based on your text messages or sum up your phone calls without the AI being dialed into your communications?

“What the AI is trying to do, is trying to predict you,” Amon said during Qualcomm’s keynote.

That’s a key reason why Qualcomm is pushing the benefits of its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, which it claims is powerful and efficient enough to execute AI tasks on the device locally without relying on the cloud. Doing so means your information wouldn’t have to leave your phone, which is better for privacy and security. It can also make more personal suggestions based on your behavior, frequently visited locations and other lifestyle patterns without sending that highly individual information through the cloud.

Apple takes a similar approach to personal data. Since the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 can process verbal requests on-device thanks to Apple’s new S9 processor, Siri will be able to answer health-related questions on those devices.

“The more sensitive the data, the more personal the data, the more that will be processed on device,” Pearce said.

There’s also the question of whether AI will toe the line between fact and fiction when it comes to images and videos created on our phones, as my colleague Sareena Dayaram recently pointed out. Tools like Magic Editor and Best Take go a step beyond polishing and editing photos. They change what’s happening in a picture.

“Now you’re putting a lot more power into the hands of a lot more people,” said Dasgupta. “And hence the opportunity exists for it to be misused in many more ways.”

Qualcomm and Google have thought about this. The chipmaker partners with Truepic to verify the authenticity of images and signal whether they were taken with AI. Google also recently launched an “About this image” tool that provides more context about the origin of images that appear in search results.

It’s unclear whether those protections will be enough to prevent AI from being used in misleading or malicious ways. But what is clear is that AI will change the way we use what has become the most important device in our lives, for better and hopefully not for worse.

“There may be a killer use case that doesn’t exist yet,” said Pearce. “But that will come around the corner and surprise us all and become completely indispensable.”

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are defined by their refinements and represent one of the most compelling Apple releases in years. When I initially reviewed both phones, I was impressed with the lighter build, new shortcut button, cameras and the A17 Pro chip. Like the regular iPhone 15, the Pro models have a USB-C charging port instead of Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector, making charging more convenient.

But a lot has happened over the past month. Widespread reports of phones overheating made for a somewhat controversial launch, but Apple has since addressed the issue.

Over the past four weeks, I further tested the iPhone 15 Pro’s cameras, ran CNET’s battery drain test, evaluated performance and conducted charging tests. And I had more time to use the iPhone 15 Pro as my everyday smartphone. Here are my findings.

iPhone 15 Pro-gate(s)

Since the iPhone 15 Pro launched, there have been a few controversies including reports of the iPhone 15 Pro easily bending or experiencing screen burn-in. I have not encountered any of these issues, nor have my CNET colleagues. According to MacRumors, the beta version of iOS 17.1 alleviates the burn-in problem, and the final version, which just came out this week, could do the same. It’s difficult to judge how widespread the burn-in issue is based on these reports alone.

Then there was FineWoven case-gate. Apple announced it would no longer continue to make its own line of leather cases and accessories to help reduce its impact on the environment. As a replacement, Apple launched a new line of FineWoven cases that aren’t made from animal products.

While the cases protected my 15 Pro and Pro Max just fine, the FineWoven cases showed wear and tear after just a week. Dirt and scuffs easily remain; the case on my 15 Pro had scuff marks and indents despite not having used it much the first week. The case’s MagSafe magnet left a circular imprint on the cases for my 15 Pro and Pro Max.

Apple’s support page on taking care of FineWoven cases and accessories includes instructions on how to clean them. I tried this on one of my FineWoven cases, and it got most of the dirt out. But I don’t want a phone case that I have to clean every couple of weeks.

I carry my iPhone 15 Pro Max without a case and use Peak Design’s slim wallet, which is also fabric, but I can touch it without worrying about scuffs. The wallet works with Peak Design’s cases or MagSafe to magnetically attach to the back of my phone. After three weeks of use, the Peak Design slim wallet still looks new, surviving harrowing hours next to keys in my pocket.

Read more: 1 Month Later, the iPhone 15 Is Still an Excellent Upgrade

Perhaps the biggest iPhone 15 scandal involved reports of phones overheating. Apple told CNET that there were four causes that made an iPhone feel warmer than normal, none of which were specifically tied to Pro models, their titanium design or the iPhone 15 series specifically.

When you use a power adapter higher than 20 watts, the phone can feel warm to the touch. This holds true if you’re using a Lightning cable on the iPhone 14 series or a USB-C cable on the iPhone 15 series. I used my MacBook Pro’s 140-watt charger over USB-C to charge the 15 Pro and noticed it was warm to the touch after 30 minutes.

Read more: I Upgraded to an iPhone 15 Pro Max From an 11. Here’s What Happened

According to Apple’s support page, restoring from a backup file or setting up a new phone from scratch can also cause the iPhone to get warmer than normal, as can playing graphic intensive games. When I played Resident Evil Village on the iPhone 15 Pro, it was noticeably warm after 30 minutes.

Certain apps like Instagram and Uber as well as bugs in iOS 17 caused iPhones old and new to overheat. Apple worked with app developers to fix the problem (both Instagram and Uber have updated app versions) and released the iOS 17.0.3 update to solve the issue.

iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max charging tests

One of the biggest changes to the iPhone 15 series was the inclusion of a USB-C port instead of Lightning. Despite the change, charging speeds are identical to iPhone 14 series models.

I ran several charging tests on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. I used a 20-watt charger for the first test and noted how the battery percentage increased after 30 minutes. As you can see in the chart below, both the 15 Pro and Pro Max recharged more of their respective batteries than the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max.

The iPhone caps its max charge speed to 27 watts, so using a power brick that supports a higher wattage won’t make the phone charge any faster. So I ran the same test a couple of more times, using my MacBook Pro’s 140-watt charger. I ran it before and after installing iOS 17.0.3, and the charging speeds were identical. That means the software fix doesn’t throttle charging speeds. Results were nearly the same as those from my 20-watt charging test.

I ran a 30-minute wireless charging test via MagSafe on both phones, and the results were almost exactly the same. The 15 Pro added 22% over a half hour period, and the 15 Pro Max added 21%.

iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max battery tests

In my experience, the 15 Pro averages a full day on a single charge, while the 15 Pro Max gets between a day and a half to two days. Battery life can vary depending on how you use your phone, so I also ran two additional CNET battery tests.

The first was an endurance test. Over the course of 45 minutes, I played games, watched YouTube videos, made a FaceTime video call, and scrolled my Instagram and TikTok feeds. As you can see in the results below, both new Pro models did better than the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, as well as Samsung’s Galaxy S23 series. The less battery percentage lost, the better.

The second test I ran involves streaming a video over the course of three hours with the battery starting at 100%. I checked the battery level at every hour to see how much the battery percentage dropped. The results show that the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max last longer than the Galaxy S23 Ultra did in the same test. The less battery percentage lost, the better.

iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max performance tests

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max have the A17 Pro chip, meaning they can support console video games. I was blown away when I played Resident Evil Village on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. The only sign that the phone was working hard was that the back of the device felt warm after 30 minutes.

I also ran several performance benchmark tests to see just how powerful Apple’s new A17 Pro chip is. I ran the Geekbench 6 CPU test, which measures general performance, and 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme for testing graphics performance.

As you can see in these results below, the A17 Pro chip enabled the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max to score higher than any phone we’ve ever tested. They not only outperformed the iPhone 14 Pro Max but every Android phone we’ve tested this year, including the Galaxy S23 Ultra. All of the 15 Pro and Pro Max’s power is kind of overkill now, but should help their longevity as new features and versions of iOS come out.

In terms of graphics, the 15 Pro and Pro Max’s performance is on par with the Samsung Galaxy S23 series, which runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chip.

Other iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max standout features

After spending one month with the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, a few features stood out to me. At the top of that list is the 15 Pro Max’s 5x optical zoom. It captures beautiful images with great detail and a wide dynamic range. Check out the photo above that I took of the Manhattan Bridge just after sunrise.

I’m also impressed with the new 24-megapixel resolution option. It basically combines pixel binning image data and resolution image data into a single higher resolution photo that has more detail than photos taken on the 14 Pro or Pro Max.

I Took 600+ Photos With the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Look at My Favorites

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As I mentioned before, I don’t use a case on the phones and love the way they feel in my hand. Apple found a good balance between the weight and the size of the phone, especially the 15 Pro Max model. The slightly curved edges make the phones enjoyable to hold.

Apple’s iOS 17 software has been a blast to use, especially Check-In and Stickers in iMessage. I get so much joy from turning live photos into animated stickers and peppering them in message threads to the delight and annoyance of my friends.

StandBy mode is also nice and turns the 15 Pro and Pro Max into a mini heads up display for time, photos and other widgets when charging. I use a Belkin BoostCharge Pro dock for StandBy mode at work and a Twelve South HiRise 3 Deluxe dock at home. The StandBy screen looks contemporary, and I like being able to switch between the widgets. I do hope Apple adds more functionality to StandBy mode in iOS 18.

But there are some software bugs in iOS 17. For example, I had Safari freeze and become unresponsive when trying to navigate or reordering tabs. These hang-ups only happened a few times and don’t seem too problematic, but they are annoying.

My CNET colleague Bridget Carey experienced a weird bug in which black borders appeared to the right and underneath photos she took. She said quitting the Camera app and reopening it resolved the issue, even though the pictures she took before the app reset still show up in the Photos app with black borders. There is a MacRumors forum post showing someone else experiencing the same thing.

What’s next for the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max? Well, we’re still waiting for Apple to add the ability to record 3D videos (Apple calls them spatial videos), which you’ll be able to watch in 3D on the new Vision Pro headset. The Journal app in iOS 17 still hasn’t launched, though it does appear in the beta version of iOS 17.2. Apple didn’t say exactly when the new app would be released, but I’m keen to try it out. The app uses AI prompts to get you started writing.

After a month with the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, I’m still enamored. And I’m excited to continue testing them for months to come.

Joining the passwordless movement, Amazon announced earlier this week that you’ll now be able to use passkeys to log in to your Amazon accounts. The tech giant joins a slew of companies who are saying goodbye to passwords and opting for passkeys instead.

Switching to passkeys isn’t mandatory for Amazon customers, the shopping giant said, so if you’re not ready to make the switch, you can keep using your passwords. But if you’re interested in ditching your passwords for good, you can go ahead and set up your Amazon passkey right now.

Here’s what to know about Amazon’s adoption of the password alternative. For more, here’s how Apple’s adopting passkeys and what Google is doing to ditch passwords.

What is a passkey?

Passkeys are a new, secure and easier way to log in to a service or website using biometric authentication like a fingerprint or face scan (or other methods, like a PIN) instead of a password. You might already have a bit of experience with passkeys. For example, if you have Face ID set up on your iPhone, some apps allow you to to use Face ID to sign in instead of typing your account password.

According to backers of passkeys, it’s a more secure method of logging into your accounts than with traditional passwords and is much less susceptible to phishing attacks. Passkeys can be more convenient than keeping track of all of your passwords, let you log in usually with just a click instead of several taps and eliminate the need for two-factor authentication codes, which can clog up your inbox or messages app.

Who else is implementing passkeys?

Amazon is the latest in a string of tech companies that have either axed passwords or given customers the option to use a passkey instead of a password. In adopting passkeys, the online retailer joins the likes of Google, Nintendo and Apple in passwordless support.

Which Amazon services work with passkeys now?

Right now, Amazon has only rolled out passkeys to its primary retail website.

In a response to CNET’s request for comment on where users could take advantage of passkeys, Amazon said “Passkey support is available globally today for all Amazon customers using browsers.” The company indicated that more support would be rolling out to the iOS Amazon Shopping app and that the Android Amazon Shopping app would be receiving passkey support in the near future.

The company also said that it “will be adding passkeys to more apps in the future,” so users of Amazon-owned companies like Goodreads and Twitch could expect to see passkey support at some point in their future, too.

How to set up a passkey on your Amazon account

If you’re interested in ditching your password and opting to use a passkey for your Amazon account, it’s easy to set up. Again, passkeys aren’t mandatory for Amazon customers, so if you feel more comfortable using your password, you won’t have to worry about changing over right away.

To set up a passkey, all you have to do is go to your Account page and select Login & Security.

Once in the Login & Security menu, scroll down to the Passkeys tab and select the Set Up button.

This should bring you to another screen, where you will select Set Up again.

After selecting Set Up a second time, follow the onscreen instructions that are specific to your device or browser to set up your passkey.

After completing these steps, you can say goodbye to your passwords and use your passkey to log in to your Amazon account.

For more, here’s how to use passkeys to login to your Google account and the best password manager for 2023.