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If you’re an iPhone user, then you know your phone’s display brightness can automatically adjust depending on the amount of light in your environment. While it’s a useful feature that is supposed to combat eyestrain and make your screen easier to see, that’s not always the case.

The problem can be that your display automatically dims down even when you’re out in the sun. If you’re partially in the shade, your phone can get tricked into automatically dimming your screen, even if it doesn’t need to. This can make it difficult to see what’s on your screen. If you manually increase the brightness, it’ll just go back down again because of auto-brightness. Unfortunately, fixing this issue isn’t always as easy as toggling off the necessary settings — but that’s a good place to start.

We’ll show you two settings you need to disable to help prevent your iPhone from automatically dimming. But be careful — your iPhone might adjust its brightness, even when those two settings are disabled.

While you’re here, you should also check out everything we know about the iPhone 15, and what you need to know about the iOS 17 Beta.

First, disable auto-brightness

Yes, this may seem a bit obvious, but the first thing you want to do is to make sure that you have automatic brightness disabled in your settings. The feature is pretty self-explanatory — it automatically adjusts your brightness depending on the light in your environment. But if you want to prevent your display from always trying to adjust, you must disable this feature.

In the Settings application, go to Accessibility > Display & Text Size and toggle off Auto-Brightness at the bottom of the page. You would think that this setting would exist in Display & Brightness, so it’s not uncommon that auto-brightness would be enabled without you really knowing, since it’s tucked away in Accessibility.

If your brightness continues to automatically adjust, there’s another setting you need to disable.

You also need to turn off True Tone

If you have an iPhone SE (2nd generation) and later, the True Tone feature has the ability to measure the color temperature and brightness in your environment and then adjust its display to match it. True Tone is useful — it not only helps show more accurate colors across various lighting situations, it’s also easier on the eyes, which you need if you’re constantly reading on your phone.

Again, if you don’t care about the feature, don’t use it or are simply annoyed that your brightness continues to automatically adjust, you need to disable it. In Settings, go to Display & Brightness and toggle off True Tone under the Brightness header. As long as auto-brightness is also disabled, turning True Tone off should prevent your iPhone from automatically adjusting your brightness.

There is one exception though.

Don’t let your iPhone overheat

Your iPhone has several ways of protecting its internal components, and that includes automatically dimming your display. Even if you have both auto-brightness and True Tone turned off, if your iPhone is overheating it will automatically adjust the display intensity.

According to Apple, to help prevent this from happening, you should use your iPhone in temperatures between 32 to 95 degrees F (zero and 35 degrees C) and store it in temperatures between 4 and 113 degrees F (between 20 below zero and 45 degrees C). If you leave your iPhone in your car or on the sidewalk on a hot day, there’s a good chance that it will overheat, thus causing your display to automatically dim.

However, overheating doesn’t occur only because of a sunny day. A faulty battery could cause your iPhone to overheat: Go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health and check if your battery needs to be replaced. Another reason could be buggy software: Go to Settings > General > Software Update and more sure to always be on the latest update to deal with any software bugs and issues.

We’ve seen Motorola show off rollable phone concepts and raise its game with foldable phones in recent years. But this time around it’s come out with one that bends.

The Lenovo-owned brand has created a concept phone display that can literally wrap around your wrist. The device, which Motorola unveiled on Tuesday and which it refers to as an adaptive display, is designed to showcase future phone possibilities allowed by a flexible screen. The company says the screen can be “bent and shaped into different forms” depending on what you want.

When laid flat, its 6.9-inch screen can be used just like a standard phone with a full Android experience. From there, it can be adjusted to various stand modes. In the upright position, for instance, it offers a “more compact form of full Android” since it’s running on a 4.6-inch display. Motorola envisions people using the device for video calls in the upright position. Alternatively, Motorola says you can wrap the device around your wrist to mimic the experience of the Razr Plus’s cover screen.

Motorola isn’t the first to unveil a bendable or flexible concept phone. In fact, CNET Senior Editors, Andrew Lanxon and David Lumb each got hands-on time with Motorola’s Rizr rollable-screen concept phone as well as Samsung’s foldable display concepts from CES 2023 and CES 2022. The idea of a flexible screen you can wear on your wrist might date as far back as 2016, if not earlier. And the idea of bendable displays has been around since the 1960s, when the first flexible solar cell arrays appeared.

However, perhaps a flexible display makes more sense now than it did several years ago, as major phone companies such as Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo and Motorola prove they can successfully release polished foldable phone products. Even the retro flip phone appears to be staging a comeback into the mainstream.

That said, don’t expect a phone with a bendable display like the one Motorola just showed off to appear in stores anytime soon. This is more of an experiment. Companies tend to go slowly and cautiously with radical new designs. Given some of the hurdles foldable phones are facing, such as durability and price, it might be a while before that happens — if it happens at all.

Apple fans have been bombarded with a slew of new features this fall, from a flurry of Apple hardware and software upgrades to brand-new Apple Watches, iPhones, Apple Pencils and new editions of all of Apple’s flagship software.

And while we were all busy getting lost in a sea of NameDrops, Double Taps and Telephoto Lenses, Mac OS Sonoma brought some interesting, albeit smaller, updates that didn’t get the pomp and circumstance that they deserved this year.

Most excitingly, Mac OS Sonoma’s update brings features that iPhone users have enjoyed for several years (and some that iPhone users first saw in iOS 17).

Here are a few exciting Mac features I was most intrigued by that make my phone and computer work better together. For more, check out how to fix the most annoying iOS 17 features and the Mac keyboard shortcuts you need to know.

Widgets come to your desktop

While widgets aren’t an earth-shattering productivity feature, or even new to Apple fans, having them on your desktop is pretty helpful. For instance, some of my co-workers work on the west coast, while I work on the east coast, so I have a clock widget that displays what the current time is in Pacific Standard Time that makes coordinating with my coworkers a bit simpler.

The widgets are also super simple to use — all you have to do is right-click with your mouse or double-click your trackpad on your desktop, and a menu will pop out. You can select Edit Widgets and a widget menu will appear where you can select small, medium, or large widgets for a variety of applications. If you want to remove a widget, you can either right-click or use two fingers to click your trackpad and select Remove Widget, or you can click the small red button that appears after selecting Edit Widget to remove your widget.

You can also drag and drop widgets from your Notification Center to your desktop. If you want to add widgets to your notification center, all you need to do is scroll to the bottom of your notification center and click Edit Widgets. You remove widgets from your notification center in the same way you would from your desktop.

You can also add your iPhone widgets to your Mac’s desktop, even if you don’t have the widget’s corresponding app downloaded to your computer. To enable this, you will need to go to System Settings, then scroll down to Desktop and Dock,. and from there scroll to the Widgets section. Once in the widgets section, simply toggle the Use iPhone Widgets option on. Your iPhone widgets will be available from the widget browser that appears when selecting Edit Widget on your desktop or notification center.

Auto-sorting grocery lists

I’m a pretty organized person, but to be honest, I’ve never turned to Apple’s Reminders app for help with this. The app didn’t make much sense to me and I traditionally have opted for third-party organization apps. While these new reminders features aren’t enough to sway me away from my preferred organization apps, there are some additions that have gotten me to make use of the app.

The changes to reminders are pretty easy to take advantage of. The most major update is the auto-sorting grocery list feature. To make use of this feature, click the Add List button at the bottom of the reminders page. Give your list a name (and change the color of the list and the icon if you’d like). Then, under the List Type drop-down menu, select Groceries.

Once in the list, create the categories you want for your list. For example, my list had three categories: meats, produce and miscellaneous. After you create your categories, you should be able to start putting your list together, and the items you add should be automatically sorted. Be warned — this feature seems to be a bit buggy. My best advice is to keep trying the feature, and you can always drag and drop your items to their correct category if nothing else works.

Messages that mirror your phone

One of my favorite things about having an Apple family of products is that I can text from my computer. This sounds small, but this has proven super-helpful in my day-to-day life. When I’m working on my computer, I can put my phone completely away so I can focus, but it’s nice to still be able to be reached.

One thing that has always frustrated me about iMessage on my computer is that it feels years behind my phone. For the longest time, I couldn’t use tap-back reactions or even reply to messages like I could when I would text on my phone. Sonoma has changed this for the better — there is finally parity between phone and computer when it comes to the messages experience.

The biggest feature that I had been missing was the reply function. Essentially, this function allows you to swipe across on a message and reply directly to that specific message. I’ve found this feature particularly helpful when making complicated plans or in noisy group chats.

All you have to do to use the reply function is swipe two fingers to the right until you can reply to the message. If you don’t want to swipe, you can click the message you wish to reply to with two fingers and select Reply from the drop-down menu.

For more, here’s the best MacBook of 2023.

Until now, the chips powering your computer have largely come from Intel, AMD or Apple. But Qualcomm, a company whose chips have primarily been for phones, believes its chips will start powering your computers soon too.

The reason is generative AI, which brings new creative clout to tasks like producing text, editing photos and concocting illustrations, and which is the buzz in Silicon Valley thanks to ChatGPT, Bing and other attention-grabbing tools. Generative AI is now being built into Qualcomm’s most powerful chips, starting with the new Oryon CPU. It won’t run enormous AI models like ChatGPT, but other AI models do, and Qualcomm hopes that’ll give your next computer a leg up when accelerating other AI tasks.

To make its ambition a reality, Qualcomm has partnered with HP and other PC makers revealed at Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. It expects you’ll be able to buy computers running its new chips in the middle of 2024.

The new processors could be a major force in improving personal computing. Apple’s M series of computer processors demonstrated compelling speed and battery life, and Qualcomm could help bring similar advantages to Windows machines. Its processors, like Apple’s, are members of the Arm technology family that has branched out from phones to tablets, cars and even some supercomputers. Qualcomm’s previous Arm-based laptop chips have been lackluster, but the Oryon design is an entirely new design.

Qualcomm is touting big performance upgrades, too, for its Snapdragon X Elite, a new processor that incorporates the Oryon (pronounced like “Orion”) CPU, a graphics processing unit (GPU), and a neural processing unit (NPU) for AI. With dual processing cores that can run at up to 4.3GHz for shorter bursts, and it delivers up to twice the performance of competing Intel i7 10-core and 12-core processor-powered laptops while consuming a third of the power, Qualcomm says. The company also says the Snapdragon X Elite outpaces Intel’s 14-core i7.

On stage, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon showed a graph stating that the Qualcomm Oryon outperformed Apple’s M2 and Intel’s i9-13980HX silicon in single-threaded CPU performance, and matched their peak performance at 30% and 70% less power, respectively. The Oryon is capable of 50% faster peak multithreaded CPU performance over the Apple M2 chip.

“The Oryon CPU is the new CPU leader in mobile computing. It’s been designed by Qualcomm from the ground-up to have an unprecedented level of performance at extremely low power,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on stage here. “There’s a new sheriff in town.”

Including AI accelerators is now tables stakes for processors makers. Apple’s M series of laptop chips already have AI acceleration technology. Intel is touting its Meteor Lake processors, due in laptops shipping in December, are the brains of a new generation of “AI PCs,” Intel says.

The Snapdragon X Elite’s Adreno GPU is capable of up to 4.6 teraflops of graphics processing power, and it supports external displays up to 4K at 120Hz in HDR10 with either three UHD or two 5K external displays.

But Qualcomm’s big swing is for on-device AI, and the Snapdragon X Elite — combining an NPU, CPU and GPU — can reach 75 trillion operations per second in bursts and can run at 45 TOPS for sustained calculations.

The benefit of all this AI hardware depends on support from software makers, too. Adobe software like Lightroom and Photoshop use AI, and Microsoft and Meta are working on their own improvements.

Qualcomm had already announced it’s teaming up with Microsoft and Meta on the Llama 2 generative AI, and the X Elite chip supports 13 billion parameters for Llama 2 at up to 30 tokens per second, as well as support for the more common 7 billion parameter AI. As Qualcomm GM of mobile compute and XR Alex Katouzian pointed out, humans can only read about 200 to 300 words per minute which corresponds to five to seven tokens per second.

“Our on-device AI can write faster than you can read,” Katouzian said.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.

Samsung may have cornered the foldable phone market with its unique Z Series lineup, but it’s officially got some competition. Google’s new Pixel Fold earned a spot on our list of the best foldables for 2023, and now a smaller brand is throwing its hat in the ring as well. Preorders for the new OnePlus Open officially went live last week, and the device has already sold out at the few places it was available — including OnePlus directly. So while they’re aren’t any savings to be had quite yet, the sleek new phone officially hits shelves on Oct. 26, and we’re expecting to find it available at plenty of new carriers and retailers — along with a handful of new deals to help you get your hands on one for less. Check back later this week for our full roundup of the best places to find the new OnePlus Open in stock and on sale.

The OnePlus Open comes equipped with the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor as its flagship OnePlus 11, but also boasts a blistering 16GB of RAM and a substantial 512GB of storage. Its 7.8-inch 2K AMOLED internal display is larger than both the Google Pixel Fold and the Samsung Z Fold 5, and the Open is still thinner overall. You can read all about the specs and hardware in our full review.

What colors does the OnePlus Open come in?

The OnePlus Open is only available in two colors: emerald dusk and voyager black.

How much does the OnePlus Open cost?

There’s only one configuration of the OnePlus Open, which is equipped with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM. Pricing starts at $1,700 before any deals or discounts are applied.

Best OnePlus Open preorder deals

Preorders for the OnePlus Open officially went live last week, but unfortunately it’s already sold out at Amazon and OnePlus directly, and you won’t find it in stock at any other carriers or retailers quite yet. However, we’re expecting more availability — along with a handful of new deals — when the phone the phone officially hits shelves on Thursday, Oct. 26. Check back later this week for the best ways to get one of these sleek foldables in your pocket for less.

And if you’re looking to save on phones from Apple, Samsung and Google, you can check our full roundup of all the best phone deals for even more bargains.

Generative AI has been all the rage in 2023, with folks using ChatGPT, Midjourney and other tools to create text, images and more. But all those solutions have relied on cloud computing to tap into billions of conditions called parameters that answer queries. At its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, Qualcomm announced on Tuesday that its next line of Snapdragon mobile chips will enable smartphones to use generative AI wherever they are — even offline.

Qualcomm hasn’t been shy about bringing gen AI to its chips, and now the company has revealed details on how that will change what everyone’s phones can do. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will power next year’s top Android phones, likely starting with the Samsung Galaxy S24 series in January or February. Those phones will be capable of using on-device generative AI offline, and since they won’t be connected to the cloud, they can take personal data into consideration when making recommendations.

But the world won’t have to wait to see what the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is capable of. At the Summit, Xiaomi Group president William Lu revealed that the Xiaomi 14, which uses the chipset, will launch on Thursday.

Phones running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 won’t natively be able to access generative AI features — their manufacturers will have to work with Qualcomm in integrating AI into their devices. Brands including ASUS, Honor, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, realme, Sony, Xiaomi and ZTE have committed to adopting the chip into their forthcoming premium phones, though it remains to be seen how many of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s AI capabilities will be integrated into the devices being sold next year. As it stands, it will be available only on top-end phones anyway and could take years before the AI features trickle down to more affordable models — and therefore seeded out into the worldwide population of phones.

But Qualcomm is still bullish about the potential of AI on phones to change how we use them — which the company believes will be a generational shift in possibility.

“In the 4G era, we started to see [phones] become computers, and smartphones have become the largest developer platform created by mankind,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said Tuesday on stage at Snapdragon Summit. “We’re beginning to see the next transition [in phones], and it’s going to be as profound.”

Qualcomm had already announced it was teaming up with Microsoft and Meta on the Llama 2 generative AI. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 supports over 10 billion parameters in AI, and is capable of running language learning models at up to 20 tokens per second. Qualcomm says the chip will have over 20 language learning models supported at launch.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s performance speeds up on-device AI. At Mobile World Congress back in February, Qualcomm showed off an on-device demonstration for getting Stable Diffusion to generate an image in around 15 seconds — and the new mobile chipset speeds that up to under a second.

More uniquely, Qualcomm uses what it calls “on-device personalization” to combine user data from a Sensing Hub (cameras, sensors, modem, Wi-Fi and other components) that uses favorite activities, fitness levels, location and other behaviors to make smarter suggestions. Qualcomm didn’t have specific examples for how this could be implemented, but given how much generative AI has been used on images, it’s no surprise that the company has tangible applications for producing photos.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s AI capabilities extend to the camera, which can be set to always be checking for QR codes and your face to unlock with facial recognition. Real-time video editing through the new Vlogger View feature can shoot from front and rear cameras simultaneously while automatically trimming out what’s behind the user and tucking them into the bottom corner of the video, giving the vlog-style effect. And much like Adobe’s recently revealed cloud-based tool to expand a photo beyond its original borders, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can generate content around a photo to generatively expand it.

And as much as generative AI is important, asserting what is and isn’t produced with AI is just as crucial. Phones with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 have Truepic, which watermarks photos users shoot with the C2PA standard, giving them a cryptographic seal to prove images are real and not AI-generated.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.

Let’s face it — gaming is an expensive hobby. That’s why it’s a good idea to take advantage of deals when they roll around. Right now, Amazon has one of the best Xbox controllers you can buy — the Razer Wolverine V2 Chroma — on sale for just $110. That’s $40 less than it typically lists for and the third-lowest price we’ve seen. Best Buy is price-matching this deal as well. We don’t know how long this offer will last, so we recommend making your purchase sooner rather than later.

For gamers who want a serious edge during gameplay, the Wolverine V2 Chroma delivers. It’s our favorite Xbox wired pro controller thanks to its numerous features, including six additional remappable buttons that you can customize, a hair-trigger mode that enables two slide locks on the underside of the controller for ultrafast firing, tactile action buttons and a D-pad for quicker actuation, interchangeable thumbstick caps for better accuracy in different types of gameplay and more.

You can even customize RGB lighting on your controller to your preference. It works with the Xbox Series X and Series S, as well as Xbox One and PC. And because the controller is wired, you won’t have to worry about interrupting your gaming session to charge or deal with lag during gameplay.

With Halloween right around the corner, what better way to get in the mood for all things spooky than taking a blunt object to a zombie’s head? You’ll do that and much more if you take advantage of this deal that makes the hit game Dying Light 2 just $25 on PS5. It’s also the same bargain price on PS4, with that version also offering a free upgrade to the PS5 version, as well.

This particular discount is available thanks to a Best Buy discount that slashes the normal $60 price by $35, if you take advantage of the deal now. Best Buy isn’t saying how long this special price will be available, which means that it could disappear at any moment.

Dying Light 2 is the hotly anticipated sequel to the equally popular Dying Light, and it’s a title that should probably be in every self-respecting gamer’s collection. The game takes place 20 years after the first one, but it’s difficult to say more without spoiling anything, especially if you haven’t already played the first game.

All we will say is that this game, and the one that came before it, is popular for a reason and that reason is that they’re great fun. They’re open world, to a point, with plenty of exploration to be done. And plenty of zombies to take on, too.

There are a ton of monitor options out there, but if you’re looking for a budget-friendly gaming monitor, the HP Omen 27s is a solid option worth considering — and right now Amazon has slashed the price by $150, which means you’ll pay just $200 to bring one home. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen. We don’t know how long this offer will last, so we recommend making your purchase sooner rather than later.

This 1080p monitor offers full high-definition resolution and has an impressive 240Hz refresh rate, making it a great choice for e-sports and action-oriented gameplay. It also comes with Nvidia G-Sync to minimize lag and stutter. And because this monitor allows for 100mm height adjustments and has pivot and tilt capabilities, you can customize your experience to your comfort. Plus, this monitor has integrated dual 3W speakers that deliver clear audio when you don’t want a headset. It also has two HDMI 2.0 ports, a DisplayPort 1.4 and two USB-A ports so you can plug in everything you need.

Note that this product may take up to two months to ship, so keep that in mind if you are in a hurry to receive a new monitor. You can check your Amazon account to see the delivery estimate for your area.

And if this monitor isn’t the right option for you, be sure to check out our roundup of the best monitor deals currently available.