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Where to buy the new iPhone 17E

Apple’s downpour of March product announcements kicked off with the iPhone 17E, a phone designed for those who don’t want to spend north of $700 on their next upgrade. The iPhone 16E follow-up is now available online and in stores, and those who preordered should have their units in-hand soon.

Like last year’s budget option, the 6.1-inch 17E starts at $599. It checks more off our wishlist than the 16E, though, with an expanded 256GB of base storage and built-in magnets, ensuring compatibility with the entire range of MagSafe accessories (including Qi2 chargers). What’s more, it’s powered by the same A19 chip found in the iPhone 17. Its Ceramic Shield 2 display is also as durable as the iPhone 17’s, so it won’t scratch as easily as previous models, and the phone offers a 48-megapixel “fusion” camera.

We recently published a review of the 17E, and indeed, it’s everything we wanted the 16E to be. However, it’s still easy to see the shortcomings of the 17E compared to the iPhone 17. For example, it lacks an ultrawide camera, and its display is locked at 60Hz without always-on display functionality (the iPhone 17 can go up to 120Hz). Those features may be worth spending an extra $200 for you, but maybe they’re not.

We’ve pulled together more spec details in our recent comparison post if you want to compare the latest model with the last-gen version. But if you just want to buy it, we’ve rounded up where you can easily do so.


Where to buy the iPhone 17E

You can buy the iPhone 17E from Apple and Best Buy in black, pink, or white with 256GB of storage starting at $599. If you need additional space, both Apple and Best Buy are also selling it with 512GB of storage for $799.


US carrier deals and incentives

  • T-Mobile is offering the iPhone 17E for free via 24 monthly bill credits when you trade in an eligible device on an Experience More plan (or a Go5G Plus if you’re an existing customer), or when you trade in and add a line on most plans. If you’re switching from another carrier, T-Mobile is also offering the 17E for free (or for up to $630 off) with no trade-in required. Essentials customers, meanwhile, can get four iPhone 17E devices and four new lines for $25 per line per month with eligible trade-ins.
  • Verizon is also offering the entry-level iPhone 17E for free. To get the offer, you’ll need to add a new line on an Unlimited Welcome, Unlimited Plus, or Unlimited Ultimate plan. The discount is applied as monthly bill credits over 36 months. Alternatively, the promo allows you to take $600 off the 512GB model, bringing it down to $5.55 per month, so you’ll only pay $200 over the same time frame.
  • AT&T is offering the iPhone 17E for as low as $5.99 per month for 36 months when you buy the phone on a qualifying plan and activate a new line or upgrade an existing one on an eligible unlimited plan. The carrier is offering up to $384.36 in bill credits for the 256GB model and up to $404.36 for the 512GB variant. If you switch from another carrier, you could also get up to $800 in Visa rewards cards, along with up to $200 in additional bill credits when you activate a new line online.

Update, March 11th: This post now reflects that the iPhone 17E is available to purchase online and in stores.

ChatGPT, Gemini, and other chatbots helped teens plan shootings, bombings, and political violence, study shows

AI companies have repeatedly promised safeguards to protect younger users, but a new investigation suggests those guardrails remain woefully deficient. Popular chatbots missed warning signs in scenarios involving teenagers discussing violent acts, in some cases even offering encouragement instead of intervening.

The findings come from a joint investigation by CNN and the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The probe tested 10 of the most popular chatbots commonly used by teens: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Snapchat My AI, Character.AI, and Replika. With the lone exceptio …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Lego Smart Brick review: my kids are not impressed

Lego Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker minifigures duel with their lightsabers, attached to platforms with the Lego Smart Brick

I was about to be the coolest dad ever. I'd prepared the magic words: "Do you want to help daddy test the new Lego Smart Bricks? I can pick you up from school early!" It worked. My kids literally jumped for joy.

When The Lego Group announced in January that a tiny computer brick would be the company's "most significant evolution" in nearly 50 years, even Lego fans were skeptical. Why buy bricks that make pew-pew sounds that kids should make with their own mouths? My first reaction was to explain that the Lego Smart Bricks have so much more potential than that: The bricks in these kid toys could lend their smarts to adult robots, too.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Intel announces Core Ultra 270K Plus and 250K Plus, its ‘fastest gaming desktop processors ever’

A slide for the Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus shows the company’s biggest brags, like the fastest desktop gaming processor it’s yet made.

Intel hasn't made it easy to buy a flagship desktop chip. The company's 2022 and 2023 Raptor Lake chips ran hot, power-hungry, and had those infamous crashes, while 2024's Arrow Lake-based Core Ultra 9 285K had lackluster gaming performance that the company has tried to address with updates.

Now, Intel claims it has finally surpassed both predecessors with "Intel's fastest gaming desktop processors ever": the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and 250K Plus, shipping March 26th.

While we don't have every detail today, the company claims the 24-core, 5.5GHz turbo Core Ultra 7 270K Plus can beat both the Raptor Lake i9-14900K and the Arrow Lake U …

Read the full story at The Verge.

You can soon listen to Apple Music inside of TikTok — and artists get paid for it

Three mobile screenshots showing the Play Full Song and Listening Party features release by TikTok and Apple Music.
Apple Music subscribers are getting new music discovery tools on TikTok. | Image: Apple / TikTok

Apple Music subscribers will soon be able to listen to full-length music tracks on TikTok without having to leave the TikTok app. The platforms have teamed up to launch two new features - Play Full Song and Listening Party - that allow users to connect their accounts and open an Apple Music player directly within TikTok. The features are rolling out worldwide over the coming weeks, according to Apple.

Together, Play Full Song and Listening Party aim to help Apple Music subscribers to discover new music on TikTok without jumping between platforms, and ensure that artists are fairly compensated. Because full-length song playback is built on …

Read the full story at The Verge.

How Trump’s war on Iran stranded a million fliers — and plunged the Gulf’s favorite playground into chaos

It was a little after 1PM on Friday, February 28th, and Samantha Lujano was about to board her flight from Dubai to Colombo, Sri Lanka, when the drone attacks began.

She had already received her boarding pass and gone through customs. Her flight was at the gate and her bags were loaded. She was simply waiting for the gate agents to open the flight for boarding. So she opened TikTok and started scrolling.

But instead of relieving her boredom, the algorithm fed her anxiety. It showed her dozens of videos of explosions that purported to be from around the Persian Gulf - including a few in Dubai itself. She knew better than to believe everyt …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Nvidia’s head of autonomous driving opens up about his plan to beat Waymo and Tesla

Nvidia DRIVE Hyperion
Nvidia is offering its DRIVE Hyperion platform to automakers who want to enable a range of autonomous features. | Image: Nvidia

Every six months or so, Nvidia's head of automotive, Xinzhou Wu, invites CEO Jensen Huang to go for a ride in a vehicle equipped with the company's hands-free autonomous driving system. But only when Wu has "good confidence" in the system's driving capabilities.

Recently, the two went for a drive from Woodside, California, to downtown San Francisco in a Mercedes CLA sedan with MB.Drive Assist Pro, a hands-free driver-assist system partly designed by Nvidia that's similar to Tesla's Full Self-Driving. The mood was light, even if the traffic was pretty heavy.

"Let me know when you're in autonomous mode," Huang said to Wu, according to a vid …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus review: This again

Photo of white Samsung Galaxy S26 and blue Galaxy S26 Plus side by side
The S26 phones feel awfully familiar.

While Samsung has treated its Flips and Folds to a few major hardware upgrades over recent years, the Galaxy S flagships have often felt like a long, unbroken line of minor spec refreshes. The S26 and S26 Plus do nothing to change that trend.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra at least benefits from the company's new privacy display, but the two smaller S26 phones lack a killer hardware feature. They both have new chipsets, and the S26 gets a bigger battery while the Plus has faster wireless charging, but these are tiny tweaks, not wholesale upgrades. Perhaps most disappointingly, Samsung hasn't followed Google in adding magnetic Qi2 charging to the phon …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger get new ways to protect users from scams

An illustration of various security-themed objects against a blue background.

Meta is adding more scam detection tools to Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp that can help users protect their accounts. In its announcement, Meta says the new features aim to alert users about suspicious activities before they engage with them, such as unrecognized friend requests and device linking notifications, because "we know that scammers try to avoid our detection and may not immediately use accounts maliciously."

WhatsApp users will now receive a warning when red flags are detected in the behavioral signals for device linking requests, helping to prevent scammers from linking other WhatsApp accounts to their own device. Meta says …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Anthropic is launching a new think tank amid Pentagon blacklist fight

An illustration of a brain surrounded by safety barriers

Amid a weekslong conflict with the Pentagon, resulting in a blacklist and a lawsuit, Anthropic is shaking up its C-suite and research initiatives. The company announced Wednesday that it's launching a new internal think tank, called the Anthropic Institute, that combines three of Anthropic's current research teams. It will focus on researching AI's large-scale implications, such as "what happens to jobs and economies, whether AI makes us safer or introduces new dangers, how its values might shape ours, and whether we can retain control," per the company.

The news comes with C-suite changes, too. Anthropic cofounder Jack Clark is moving int …

Read the full story at The Verge.