The Fairphone 6 Plus is the midrange phone we desperately needed
The Fairphone 6 Plus feels like an extremely average midrange Android phone and I couldn't be more thrilled.
The mission has always been admirable. Fairphone seeks out ethically sourced materials and offers a high degree of repairability for its devices. But the phones themselves required a lot of sacrifices, like putting up with underpowered processors and bad cameras, in order to embrace the sustainability mission. The latest generations of Fairphone have inched toward closing that gap, and the 6 Plus achieves two huge milestones: It feels very much like using a middling Android phone, and it's actually on sale in the US.
The 6 Plus is a …
Competitive Pokémon is on phones now, but you still need a Switch to become a champion
To get started with competitive Pokémon battles, all you need is your phone. But to compete at the highest level, like at the Pokémon World Championships, you're going to need a Switch. And there doesn't seem to be a good reason why.
Battle simulator Pokémon Champions originally launched on the Switch and Switch 2 in April, with the mobile version following in June. The experience is nearly identical across the game's versions; since it's cross-platform, the choice really comes down to what devices you own and whether you prefer tapping or using a controller. I find myself playing Champions on my phone more often just because it's always in …
DIY plug-in solar gains momentum in the US
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on e-bikes, power stations, and how to work anywhere, follow Thomas Ricker. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
With a deep breath, I took the cable seething with 800W of solar power and plugged it directly into a standard wall jack in my home. Nothing sparked, nothing smoked, and by the end of that sunny summer day, my electricity bill had dropped to nearly $0.
As unnerving as it sounds to treat a common household power outlet as a power input, these DIY plug-in sol …
Explore the globe in field recordings
I love field recordings. I love making them. I love them when they're incorporated into my ambient music. They're great background noise for working or sleeping. But they're also great for active listening, focusing in on the fine nuances of burbling brooks or urban chaos. Earth Garden gives you a globe to explore with real field recordings taken from various locations. Earth Garden is inspired by Radio Garden (which you should also check out) except, instead of exploring the world via radio, it's environmental sounds. There are waves lapping at the shores of remote islands in the Atlantic, a chorus of crickets in Tanzania, and rainfall on …
iPhone Handoff will seamlessly share one number between two phones
When iOS 27 lands later this month, it will have a feature called iPhone Handoff that lets you switch between two phones using the same number. It was briefly mentioned during the WWDC keynote back in June, but there were no details at the time. Now there's a demo clip showing how to set up the feature running in Xcode 27's Device Hub. It lets you pair two iPhones, using one as your main device and the other as its "companion."
Launching the feature now makes sense with the expected launch of the foldable iPhone Ultra right around the corner. People might not always want to take a chunky and extremely expensive device out with them. So Han …
CD sales are booming as physical media continues its resurgence
According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), CD sales exploded in the first half of 2026. A new report from the organization says 17.5 million CDs were sold in the first six months of the year, up from just 12 million during the same period in 2025. That's a jump of 45.7 percent, and 58.6 percent in dollars, which reached $171.1 million. What makes this all the more shocking is that CD sales actually shrank 22 percent from 2024 to 2025.
The RIAA isn't the only one to notice the boom in CD sales. In July, research firm Luminate released a report saying that 16.3 million units were sold in the first half of 2026. It sug …
Fantasy Footballers’ Andy Holloway is a dedicated zero-inbox kinda guy
Andy Holloway cohosts the Fantasy Footballers podcast with his friends Jason Moore and Mike Wright. The show is one of the premier fantasy sports podcasts, netting over 2 million monthly listeners and numerous awards, including Best Sports Podcast from iHeartRadio and People's Choice at the Podcast Awards four years in a row.
Holloway's goal has always been about bringing fantasy football to a wider audience, not just hardcore nerds. With the NFL season starting next week and fantasy drafts in full swing, now seemed like a great time to see how Holloway stays focused during what is probably the busiest part of the year for a serious fantasy …
Content creators drop the ball
During Naomi Osaka's match against Anastasia Zakharova at this year's US Open earlier this week, a gaggle of ring light-wielding influencers who were packed in a luxury suite became enough of a distraction that the umpire paused the match and repeatedly asked them to quiet down. Elsewhere in the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, other creators could be seen asking US Open staffers to take full-flash photos of them while Osaka and Zakharova were playing.
Last month, United States Tennis Association (USTA) media operations director Jeanmarie Daly said that the US Open was "almost doubling" the number of content creators it was app …
The weird and wonderful headphones of CanJam 2026
I've been reviewing headphones for a long time, and I've listened to everything from the barely serviceable to multi-thousand-dollar open-back headphones. But recently I've been uninspired by the state of mainstream options. Most are perfectly good - great, even - but they lack a distinct character. Something to remind me why I fell in love with headphones to begin with, landing me in this crazy career. I needed some revitalization. I needed to see something cool. I needed to be around other people with an emotional connection to headphones. I needed to go to CanJam.
CanJam is a small audio show produced by Head-Fi.org, the largest audio-fo …
OpenAI admits to German wiki ‘incident’
OpenAI says it needs to overhaul how and when it reports instances of AI models attacking real-world targets. The acknowledgement comes as the company manages the fallout from reports that a swarm of its out-of-control agents hijacked a German wiki site.
Regarding the "'wiki incident,' where our agents wrote to several internet sites," OpenAI wrote in a post on X on Saturday morning, "it's past time for us to define standards for when and how we share misalignment incidents, not just misalignment properties of our models."
OpenAI said it has typically treated cases of AI agents acting in unintended ways as a "research question," but that r …