Last week, Apple announced an iPhone unlike any it has made in the past. An iPhone that has seemingly already led several other phone manufacturers to pursue entirely different designs for their flagship products. A remarkably distinct device with the kind of "I can't believe they did that" software touches that Apple sometimes pulls off when it's at the top of its game.

That phone is not the iPhone 18 Pro.

The 18 Pro and Pro Max are in the unusual position of being the second-most interesting iPhones that Apple is launching this year. The foldable iPhone Duo stole the show at Apple's launch event, but it's not arriving until next month. …

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It's not just time for any old Apple event, but one that's expected to usher in a new era for the company. This is the first iPhone keynote to be led by Apple's newly anointed CEO John Ternus, and all signs and rumors have been pointing to it being the one that also debuts a foldable iPhone. Ternus has already billed this as "a huge launch . . . that's going to be phenomenal." What bigger and flashier way to step into the limelight than with a new halo product of an iPhone?

We're also likely to hear about OS updates, Apple Watches, and possibly some AirPods. But this might be an unconventional event in more ways than one. It's also possible …

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The Nex Playground is the family-centric, Kinect-like game console that made one Verge editor’s kids laugh, cry, and ask for more playtime, even when they were sick. The motion-based game play isn’t perfect, but it has won over plenty of parents — and it’s on sale for $239 at Amazon, down from its current MSRP of $299. That’s a healthy discount, though only slightly better than the Nex’s original $250 price.

Nex Playground

What if the dream of Microsoft’s Kinect lived on? It does in the Nex Playground, an all-in-one, motion-controlled console filled with kid-friendly games. Exhaust and entertain your little ones. You’re welcome.

Where to Buy:

• $299 $239 at Amazon
• $299 $239 at Walmart
• $299.99 $239 at Best Buy

Like so many other gadgets, the Nex Playground became a victim of RAMageddon when its price went up in April. It got a $60 discount shortly after for Amazon’s week of gaming deals — and again with this Prime Day deal — but it’s nothing like the $199 prices we saw before the RAM crisis hit. This is the new normal, I guess.

Still, any discount is welcome, especially when you’ll need a subscription if you want to play more than a few starter games. You can get a 3-month Play Pass for $49 to access a much deeper catalog of games, or pay $89 for a 12-month pass. The subscription economy and RAMageddon come for us all, but at least a sale can take a little bit of the sting out of it.

AI is pretty reliable at putting things on your calendar these days, but it hasn't quite cracked answering the related and all-important question of "What should I do this weekend?" Meta's new AI Mode in search could be a useful tool - if it ever learns to stop getting stuff wrong.

AI Mode is a new option when you hit the search bar in the Facebook app. It's designed to tackle complex queries - much like AI Mode in Google Search. But Meta's version draws on public posts across Meta apps - including Facebook Groups and Instagram Reels - to inform its results. That could be useful, considering the neighborhood groups and local organizations a …

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When I returned to my computer five minutes after giving Gemini a lengthy prompt, I had two things: a functional app in a preview window, and a message about a bug.

"~ Channel is unrecoverably broken and will be disposed!" Sounded bad! But right below it was a button to fix the bug. Pretty weird that I just instructed a computer to build a whole app for me with a single prompt, but it needed me to click a button to fix a bug. I did anyway, and in 233 seconds Gemini reported back that it had succeeded, using words like "blockages" and "race conditions." I didn't understand a bit of it. It was thrilling.

This was my second or third attempt a …

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The most popular camera in the world just got its first set of serious AI photo editing features, and I don't think any of us are ready.

As far as AI photo editing goes, the new features in iOS 27 are pretty tame compared to what you can do on, say, Google's Pixel phones. But for the iPhone, they represent a tipping point in what the native photos app allows you to do to your photos. I mean memories. I mean, I don't know anymore.

These new features are part of the iOS 27 developer beta right now, so bear in mind that Apple may continue making tweaks to them before they're released to the general public. There are three, or maybe two and a …

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Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. We don't have the phones we preordered yet, but this week included an unexpected in-person encounter with the T1.

You see a lot of interesting phones when you're among tech journalists.

I'm thinking of two in particular that I held this past week: One was solid gold, with ornate engravings. It was elaborately embellished, heavy - an actual work of art. The other was the Trump phone.

I know. The Trump phone. The one announced almost a year ago that has shipped to almost nobody. But when you asso …

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