Why the Pixel 9a Is Still the Best Google Phone for Most People

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Late last month, Google launched the Pixel 10 and the Pixel 10 Pro. They’re the latest big releases in the Android world, which might carry more weight given the muted response to the iPhone 17 from some corners of the internet. But even if you are thinking of making the move to a new operating system, I wouldn’t recommend either flavor of Pixel 10 as your first port of call.

Instead, I think the Pixel 9a is easily Google’s best phone for almost everyone. It’s technically got the Pixel 9 name, but it’s also Google’s most recent budget variant, so it’s as current-generation as anything else. And while it does make some concessions to bring the price down, they’re fairly minor—and the device actually offers a few unique benefits of its own.

You don’t need the Pixel 10’s AI

“But what about all the fancy new Pixel 10 AI features?” you might ask. I’ve tried both the base Pixel 10 and the Pixel 10 Pro, and here’s the truth: You don’t need them.

Google’s announcement for the Pixel 10 series went hard on AI, and it’s true that the search giant is ahead of Apple and other smartphone makers on this front. But even with its head start, it’s clearly starting to run into diminishing returns. Existing AI features like the Gemini assistant and the Screenshots app are available on the Pixel 9, but most of the Pixel 10 exclusives focus on the camera app, and I don’t see most people sticking with any of them for long.

Case in point: 100x zoom. This Pixel 10 Pro exclusive feature sounds handy on the surface, supposedly letting you zoom in by 100x while still getting hi-res photos in return. But in truth, it just uses the same blurry digital zoom as other phones, then runs your shots through an AI to try to fix them up. It’s not really a reason to buy the Pixel 10 Pro—you can now get a similar result by just posting a photo to Gemini’s free, browser-based AI image generator as a prompt—and it frequently served me up photos with dreamy, unreal imagery that I wouldn’t feel comfortable posting. Just look what it did to my beloved Chrysler Building, and ask yourself if you would want to take a photo of a famous landmark only to get back a half-melted bizarro version instead. If you ask me, it’s firmly in the realm of novelty, at best.

Chrysler building using Pixel 10 Pro 100x zoom

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

I had a similar reaction to the other big camera AI developments this year, like using Gemini to edit photos or getting an AI to coach you while trying to frame a shot. Gemini image editing, which lets you use natural language to alter your photos, is handy, but also wrests control from you, and doesn’t tell you when it’s doing a simple job like a crop versus a more hallucination-prone one like generative fill. You can check the metadata of your new photo to know for sure, but frankly, the results aren’t good enough to be worth the time for me.

Photos taken on the Pixel 10 (left) vs. those same photos edited by Gemini (right)
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

The same is true of Camera Coach, which uses AI to help you take shots. This has the benefit of not actively putting AI imagery into your photo, but the advice it gave me was rarely more complex than, “make sure the subject is in frame” and “follow the grid lines the previous generation Pixels could already put on your phone for you anyway.” It’s mostly unobtrusive—even when you’re using Camera Coach, you can take your final shot whenever—but it’s so inconsequential that I doubt most people will even take the extra time needed to boot it up.

To Google’s credit, there are a few AI additions unrelated to the camera that sound a bit more handy, like Magic Cue and Voice Translate. But you’re unlikely to run into these often. Magic Cue will use AI to pull information from Google apps like your Gmail to display when it might be relevant in other Google apps, like a phone call. For instance, it could display a boarding pass from an upcoming flight while you’re calling to check on it. But it doesn’t work with third-party apps, and since that’s how I use my phone most of the time, I actually didn’t see it pop up while I was testing either the Pixel 10 or Pixel 10 Pro.

I also didn’t get Voice Translate to work during my testing. This uses AI to translate both your voice and the person you’re calling’s voice if you’re speaking to each other in different languages, using what sounded like some pretty impressive voice cloning during its Made by Google demo. But it also needs both callers to have a Pixel 10, and since you can’t count on having a lot of multilingual friends that all use the same phone, that means it won’t be much more than a tech demo for most people.

Basically, Google’s new AI makes big claims, but the features are either so niche or so unreliable that they aren’t a major selling point save for a very specific type of user. It could be fun to toy with, but is it $300 to $500 worth of fun?

The Camera is thinner and not much weaker

But even if the Pixel 10 and 10 Pro aren’t worth it on their AI alone, the hardware still gets a bump, right? Well, in the case of the base Pixel 10, it actually got a little worse in one specific way, putting it in range of the Pixel 9a.

One of the things I dislike most about Google’s Pixel phones is the camera bar, which is the long horizontal bump across the entire top width of the device. This houses the camera sensor, but personally, I’d much prefer a weaker camera that’s flush with the device instead.

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

With the Pixel 9a, Google granted my wish. This phone is the first Pixel in a long time to omit the camera bar, instead putting a single and much thinner pill in one corner of the device and leaving it at that. With the camera bar returning on both the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro, that alone makes the Pixel 9a worth considering as an alternative to me.

And the best part? The smaller camera on the Pixel 9a isn’t actually any weaker than the camera on the base Pixel 10. It’s just missing a lens.

Yep, while Google added a new telephoto lens to the Pixel 10 that allows it an up to 5x optical zoom, it also downgraded that phone’s ultrawide lens down from 48MP to 13MP, which is the same as on the Pixel 9a. And because both phones also have the same main lens, that means for everything but zoomed shots, you don’t lose anything by going with Google’s budget phone.

A close up photo taken on the Pixel 9a
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

To be fair, the Pixel 10 Pro is stronger than both phones on all fronts, but I’d argue that’s overkill for most users. If you never or rarely touch the zoom lens on your camera, whether to zoom in or out, you’ll actually get a similar experience across all three devices. So why pay more? Especially when the Pixel 9a’s camera is so much sleeker. If you’re a casual photographer, it could give you the same results, while taking up less space. A hidden upgrade.

Better battery life and a smooth OLED display

If the Pixel 9a’s camera is arguably on par with the more expensive Pixel 10 phones, then its battery life just straight up surpasses them. Packing a 5,100 mAh capacity, it puts both the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro to shame. To put that into more everyday terms, Google promises 30 hours of battery life on the 9a, but only 24 hours of battery life on either Pixel 10 model.

That held up in my testing. While the Pixel 10 died after about 18 hours of watching a video at 50% brightness (my standard test), the Pixel 9a was only a little under 50% capacity at the same time. And it was actually closer to half capacity when the Pixel 10 Pro died, which was after 16 hours of viewing. I actually haven’t had a full day to dedicate to draining this thing yet, but I assume that’s what it would take based on my tests, which easily puts the other Pixels to shame.

Granted, 50% brightness on the Pixel 9a isn’t quite as bright as on the other phones, since it only hits 2,700 nits of peak brightness as opposed to 3,000 nits on the Pixel 10 and 3,300 nits on the Pixel 10 Pro. But 2,700 nits is still plenty bright—the iPhone 16 maxes out at 2,000 nits. And on all other fronts, the display doesn’t compromise: The Pixel 9a has the exact same size (6.3-inches) and resolution (1,080 x 2,424) as the Pixel 10, and also works with Smooth Display for a responsive 120Hz refresh rate. It’s even an OLED, so you’re not making any compromises by going cheaper here.

Half the cost of a Pixel 10 Pro

Perhaps the biggest reason to opt for a Pixel 9a over a Pixel 10 is the same reason it was worth it compared to the other Pixel 9s—it’s just cheaper.

While the Pixel 10 starts at $799 and the Pixel 10 Pro starts at $999, the Pixel 9a is a mere $500. Given how closely it compared to even Google’s current-generation flagships, that’s a heck of a deal. And that doesn’t even come with any cuts to storage space, since both the Pixel 9a and all models of the Pixel 10 Pro begin with 128GB of storage. The cost to upgrade storage is also the same here—a simple $100 markup—although the Pixel 10 Pro does uniquely offer capacities over 256GB.

I’ll miss Pixelsnap, but the Pixel 10a is probably months away

I’ve been pretty high on the Pixel 9a so far, but I will make one concession—it doesn’t have PixelSnap, and I will miss that.

While the iPhone has had MagSafe since the iPhone 12, it took until this year for the Pixel to get its own version. Called Pixelsnap, it allows you to magnetically connect your phone right to compatible accessories and chargers on their own, with no need for cables or adhesive metal circles.

The Pixel 10 resting on a Pixelsnap Carger with Stand
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

I won’t lie, it’s convenient. It works with Qi2 charging for faster wireless top-offs, and while Google has its own official Pixelsnap accessories, it also worked fine with my Belkin iPhone charger, as well as a third-party MagSafe wallet I bought for my iPhone.

I’d miss that convenience by opting for the Pixel 9a instead of the Pixel 10, but I don’t know if I’d miss it enough to spend another $300 to $500. If there’s one reason to get a Pixel 10 model phone instead of a Pixel 9a, I think this would be it.

But what about the Pixel 10a?

As it did with the 9a, Google is sure to release a budget version of the Pixel 10 series down the line, and at that point, this article will probably become irrelevant. Granted, it’s not guaranteed to have Pixelsnap, but given how close the 9a already is to the 10, I bet it will—it’ll be an easy way to set the 10a apart from its predecessor.

However, the 9a didn’t come out until this April, and you can bet the 10a will follow a similar pattern. That means waiting over half a year from now, and frankly, I don’t like to prognosticate quite that much. Better tech is always on the horizon, but when making purchasing decisions, we have to live in the here and now. And right now, the Pixel 9a is still the best Google phone for most people.

The Little Bean Guy in Your Focus Friend App Now Has Two Rooms in His House

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For the first time since the Focus Friend app overtook ChatGPT on the App Store, there’s a major addition that lets you unlock a new set of rewards. Previously, setting your phone down gave your bean time to knit socks, and you could trade those socks for decorations for the bean’s room. Now, there’s a whole new room to unlock.

Focus Friend is a focus timer app in the same tradition as Forest and Flora. When you start a timer in Focus Friend, the little bean guy begins knitting, and the idea is that you put your phone down and don’t use any other apps until he’s done. When time is up, he’ll happily show you that he knitted some socks! The socks let you buy decorations for his room, so the more you use the app, the cozier you can make his little home.

The timing of the new room is perfect. Like many regular users of the app, I’ve maxed out the little room my bean was initially given. My little guy (his name is Beanie) has a desk and chair, a window, a potted plant, even a garland on the wall. But now, with this update, he can walk (or…teleport via beanstalk, apparently?) into a living room!

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Focus Friend

How to unlock the living room in Focus Friend

You won’t see the new room right away, but here’s how you can access it:

Update the Focus Friend app in the App Store or Google Play store.
In Focus Friend, tap the paintbrush icon.
See it? In the upper right corner? Pinch to zoom out and you’ll reveal a whole ’nother room.
Unlock the room with 1,000 socks.

Yep, it costs socks. Socks are the in-game currency that your bean earns when you leave them alone. (The bean knits socks for free users. Premium subscribers get more socks, plus the bean also knits scarves, which you can exchange for premium versions of the decorations.)

Once you’ve unlocked it, you can then start decorating the addition the same way you decorated the initial room. The new items are more expensive than what was available in the first room, some of which only cost 50 socks. The new items include:

A window with curtains, starting at 500 socks
Three places to hang pictures on the walls, starting at 150-200 socks each
A TV (I almost thought it was a big painting) on the right wall, starting at 300 socks
A lamp in the corner between the two walls, starting at 600 socks
A couch on the left wall, starting at 600 socks
A TV side table on the right wall below the big painting, starting at 300 socks
A “figure box” shelf on the right wall, starting at 200 socks
A set of little bookshelves on the right wall, starting at 500 socks
A coffee table in the middle of the room, starting at 300 socks
A little “entry rug,” starting at 300 socks
An armchair, starting at 500 socks
An end table, starting at 300 socks

Earning all those socks will keep your bean busy for a while! Now, if only the app would give me a way to remove items from Beanie’s room. He’s feeling a bit cluttered.

How to Spot Malicious Two-Factor Authentication Prompts

With hackers looking for any way they can to gain access to your personal information via every form of phishing scheme, it’s critical to take every precaution to protect your data. Multi-factor (MFA) authentication is one way to boost account security, but it has to be employed correctly, and even then, you should be on the lookout for malicious prompts that give bad actors the codes they need to log in easily.

Two-factor authentication can be compromised

First, a reminder that two-factor and multi-factor authentication are not necessarily made equal. 2FA uses exactly two factors to verify a user’s login, and both can be something the user knows, such as their password plus a PIN or SMS code. MFA, meanwhile, requires at least two independent factors, like a password (a knowledge factor) plus a biometric ID (an identity factor) or a time-based, one-time password (a possession factor) from an authenticator app.

Knowledge factors (and some possession factors) can be phished relatively easily, which is why 2FA codes sent via SMS are the worst option for authentication, especially if you have alternatives. Bad actors may also try to trick you into engaging with fake 2FA prompts.

How to identify malicious 2FA prompts

One way hackers get past 2FA is by wearing you down with repeated authentication requests, a tactic known as prompt bombing. You may get dozens, even hundreds of push notifications to your phone in a short amount of time or late at night when you’re less likely to be thinking clearly. Threat actors are counting on the fact that if you get annoyed enough, you’ll eventually approve one of them. Don’t. If you get a 2FA prompt when you’re not trying to log into one of your accounts, that’s an instant red flag.

Another sign of a malicious prompt is that the attempted login is coming from an unfamiliar device or region—for example, a Google notification for a Windows machine when you’re a Mac user or a location in an entirely different country. You should also be wary of prompts with pop-ups that request permissions unrelated to the app or service itself, like the ability to access all of the contacts on your device.

Hackers may also contact you by phone, text, or email to request your 2FA SMS codes. It is easy to spoof phone numbers and email addresses, so you shouldn’t trust caller ID or a sender even if it looks legitimate. Companies won’t call unsolicited to demand your password or authentication code, so hang up or ignore these messages.

Bottom line: If you receive suspicious 2FA requests via push notification, text, or other method, ignore them, and change the password on the related account by going directly to the website or app, never via the prompt itself, as this may lead you to a phishing site that could further compromise your information. If you do accidentally interact with malicious prompts, look for signs of a scam, such as sneaky or lookalike characters in web addresses and poor spelling or grammar.

Which New iPhone 17 Has the Best Battery Life?

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Apple didn’t necessarily make it easy to pick a new iPhone this year. The $799 iPhone 17 comes with features previously exclusive to the Pros, without raising the price; the iPhone 17 Pros, once again, have the best and most varied camera system of the bunch; and the iPhone Air is just cool.

There are a lot of reasons to consider any one of these new iPhones over the others, but things get a little clearer if you zero in on one metric in particular: battery life. Whether you care about taking the best possible photos, or having the thinnest iPhone ever made, you’re impacted by the size and longevity of the battery inside your iPhone of choice. As such, many of us are absolutely obsessed with battery life and battery health.

Comparing the battery life of all four new iPhones

Apple doesn’t share technical battery stats for its iPhones, so we’ll need to wait until certain reviews teardown these new devices to see how large these batteries really are. But what we can pull from is Apple’s odd battery claims for each device. For iPhones, Apple focusing on video playback time as a measure of overall battery life. When using this comparison tool, we can see the following timelines for each new iPhone:

iPhone 17: Up to 30 hours (27 hours streamed)
iPhone Air: Up to 27 hours (22 hours streamed)
iPhone 17 Pro: Up to 33 hours (30 hours streamed)
iPhone 17 Pro Max: Up to 39 hours (up to 35 hours streamed)

Solely based on these numbers, if you need the device with the longest possible battery life, you need to go with the 17 Pro Max. It crushes all other iPhone 17 models, especially the iPhone Air. As cool as it is, my guess is this is not the iPhone for people who hate worrying about battery life. While 27 hours isn’t bad by any means, that’s just for video playback. If you’re running more demanding tasks, including taking photos or videos, video calling, streaming, or gaming, that’s going to eat into the battery much faster. According to Apple, the Air has roughly the same battery life as the iPhone 15 Plus or iPhone 13 Pro Max, so if you’re coming from one of those iPhones, you can expect similar battery performance here.

I picked up on the Air’s smaller battery during Apple’s announcement, when the company said the Air still had “all-day battery life,” but didn’t actually share any numbers. You can see why. The company did share numbers when discussing the Air’s new MagSafe Battery accessory, which, when used with the Air, nets 40 hours of video playback, or 35 hours when streaming. Technically, an Air with the MagSafe Battery pack has the best battery life out of all four iPhones, but add a battery pack to any of the other three above, and that advantage is instantly erased. As such, I’m not counting that.

Zooming out, however, these iPhones do have pretty great battery life across the board—at least compared to last-generation’s iPhones. Here’s how the iPhone 16 series compares:

iPhone 16: 22 hours (18 hours streamed)
iPhone 16 Plus: 27 hours (24 hours streamed)
iPhone 16 Pro: 27 hours (22 hours streamed)
iPhone 16 Pro Max: 33 hours (29 hours streamed)
iPhone 16e: 26 hours (21 hours streamed)

Apple managed to squeeze an extra eight hours of video playback on the base model this year compared to last year’s iPhone 16, while the iPhone Air matches the iPhone 16 Plus’ battery life. The iPhone 17 Pro has the same battery life as the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and the whole comparison clearly shows how large the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s battery is.

Things to consider before buying an iPhone for battery life

If you’re only buying your new iPhone based on battery life, you have no other choice than the 17 Pro Max. However, if you have other qualifications to consider, or if the 17 Pro Max is a bit too large for your taste, my recommendation is to use Apple’s comparison tool to see what the battery life of your current iPhone is. Then, consider that against the new iPhones to see how it fares. If you’re coming from an iPhone 14, for example, your phone is rated for just 20 hours of video playback when it was new. Unless you replaced the battery recently, it’s likely not reaching those highs, so any of the new iPhones will likely last longer. But if you’re coming from a 15 Pro Max, with 29 hours of video playback potential, the Air is going to die a bit sooner than you might be used to.

Spotify’s Newest Features Might Make Me Ditch Apple Music

I’ve been an Apple Music user since the day the service launched a decade ago. However, I still like to try Spotify from time to time to see if it’s worth switching. Now that Spotify has lossless audio as well, I gave it another shot and discovered some fun new features that are worth trying out. Note that some of these are Spotify Premium exclusive features, so you won’t be able to use them without a paid subscription. I’m not sure if they’re enough to sway me yet, but you might be different—try these newer Spotify features to make the most of the service.

Hide songs you don’t want to hear

Credit: Pranay Parab

Sometimes, Spotify likes to play songs I’ve heard way too many times already, or a song that I’m just not in the mood for. Luckily, when this happens, I can now quickly hide the song from the playlist. This is easy enough. In the Now Playing view, tap the three-dots button up top, and select the Hide in this playlist button. This will stop the song from playing when you listen to that playlist again, and you’ll see a red minus icon next to its name. You can tap the three-dots button again and hit Show in this playlist to undo this, if you no longer want to hide the song.

Snooze a song for 30 days

Credit: Pranay Parab

While it is a bit of a shame that Spotify doesn’t allow you to block certain songs entirely, you do get the chance to snooze them for a month at a time. I found this feature when Spotify played Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls way too many times over the same weekend for me. I like that song, but not so much that I can listen to it on repeat. Fortunately, I was able to hide it quickly.

When you’re playing a song, expand the mini player and tap the X button next to the song’s name. On the pop-up that shows up, tap Don’t suggest this song anywhere for 30 days. It’ll still take Spotify some time to fully purge it from your algorithmic playlists and feed, but once that’s done, you won’t see the song for the rest of the month.

Premium users get better player controls

Credit: Pranay Parab

If you use Spotify Premium, you have access to better playback controls. The song queue now show buttons to quickly shuffle, repeat, or add a sleep timer to your listening. I love having big buttons for these features, as it makes it easy to access them.

Separately, if you’re on Spotify’s free plan, there’s a good chance that the service automatically enables Smart Shuffle and Autoplay for you. Smart Shuffle looks at the songs in your queue and adds recommended songs to your list, which I’m not a big fan of because it makes the queue twice as long by adding random music. Autoplay is the feature that adds recommended songs to the end of the queue, so that music keeps playing even after the queue ends.

On the free plan, you can’t get rid of Smart Shuffle, but you can disable Autoplay if you dislike it. Premium users can disable Smart Shuffle, too. Tap the profile icon in the top-left in Spotify and go to Settings and privacy > Playback, and scroll to the bottom. You can disable both Autoplay and Smart Shuffle here.

Tweak playlists to your liking

Making cover art for playlists in Spotify.

Credit: Pranay Parab

On Apple Music, I have lots of long playlists that I’ve painstakingly curated. Spotify has made managing its playlists a little easier now. You can use the Add, Edit, and Sort buttons to quickly build your own playlists. I enjoy the Add feature because it shows suggested songs, and as you add them, it updates the list to suggest similar music. This has made creating initial drafts of my playlists a lot faster.

In some regions, Spotify also now supports creating new playlists from your Liked Songs playlist. It lets you filter these new playlists by genre or mood, so you can match the mood of a specific track in your Liked Songs, and generate a whole new playlist for it. It goes without saying that you can also rename your playlists easily and add custom cover art, too. For cover art, you can try Spotify’s free playlist art maker, but I like using the excellent Denim app to get the job done.

Try smart filters for your song library

Credit: Spotify

Spotify Premium users also get to use smart filters to listen to certain types of music. I haven’t tried this feature yet because it’s still rolling out, but it sounds quite interesting. If you’re using Spotify Premium on mobile or tablet in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, or the US, you’ll get this feature soon.

Spotify says you can try it by tapping the filter icon in the top-left corner of the Your Library tab. Here, you’ll see a Smart Filters menu. Select a filter, and the Your Library tab will update to show only those types of music. You can filter music by a specific mood, genre, or activity. The good news is that Smart Filters includes options for music, podcasts, and audiobooks, so you can try it with all types of content.

Talk to your Spotify DJ

Credit: Spotify

Spotify has a built-in “AI DJ” that can find and play songs for you. This year, Spotify has begun rolling out the ability to talk to your DJ to request specific songs. I’m still waiting for this to be rolled to my region, but it’s available in 60 countries at time of writing, so you should try it out. In Spotify’s search tab, look for “DJ,” press play, and the AI DJ will play a mix of music and commentary. You can then press and hold the DJ button on the right, and talk to the DJ to send in your music requests.

Fix your Discover Weekly playlist

Refreshing the Discover Weekly playlist.

Credit: Pranay Parab

If you are unhappy with what Spotify’s been serving up in your Discover Weekly playlist, you can easily refresh it. At the top of Discover Weekly, Premium users will see genre buttons, and tapping any button will create a new 30-song playlist of music from that genre.

The Apple Watch’s Newest Health Feature Has Been Cleared by the FDA

When Apple announced the Apple Watch Series 11 earlier this week, one of its headlining new features was “hypertension notifications.” Since then, it’s been revealed that these will actually be coming to some older Apple watches as well, but regardless, everyone was set to wait a bit. That’s because Apple was still waiting on FDA approval for the new feature, even as it announced the new watch. Now, though, it seems that’s been taken care of.

While Apple initially only promised the feature sometime “this month,” in a statement sent to press just last night, Apple said that its hypertension notifications have now been approved by the FDA and will be releasing alongside watchOS 26 when it launches to the public on Monday. That means no delay for the update—it’ll be ready for the Apple Watch Series 11 at launch, and owners of the Series 9 and Series 10 will get a chance to play with it before then. If your tastes skew a bit fancier, then yes, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is also set to get the notifications at launch, and the Ultra 2 will be among the older watches getting them on Monday.

This is all great news for my family, which does have a history of heart problems. While these notifications aren’t set to replace a full-on blood pressure cuff, the idea is that they’ll help tip you off to potential issues early, so you can know to bring them up to your doctor or pay more attention to them. According to Apple, the way it works is that the watch will use its existing optical heart rate sensor to passively check “how your blood vessels respond to the beats of the heart” over a 30-day period, and then will send you a warning if it detects signs of high blood pressure. After that, it’ll encourage you to log your blood pressure for a week using a third-party cuff, and set up an appointment with your doctor.

In other words, it won’t give you exact numbers, but might let you know if you’re at risk. Given that high blood pressure often goes undiagnosed until it’s too late, Apple is hoping these notifications will help change that.

Personally, I’m inclined to believe it. Earlier this year, my husband actually had surgery to treat a separate heart condition called AFib, and his Apple Watch Series 10 played a big part in detecting and tracking it before it became a problem. As part of his treatment, he’s had to regularly check his blood pressure with a cuff, but we’re both looking forward to the extra data his watch will now give him.

Apple says its hypertension notifications were developed using data from over 100,000 testing participants, and then validated using data from 2,000 additional patients. While I can’t guarantee that they’ll work perfectly for you out of the box, that’s a good sign, even if Apple warns that the new feature “will not detect all instances of hypertension.” Interestingly, this follows the FDA’s rejection of a similar feature from Whoop, although that feature purports to provide more data than Apple’s.

If you want to try Apple’s hypertension notifications for yourself, there’s nothing you need to do for now. Simply ensure you have a compatible Apple Watch, then allow it to update to watchOS 26 on Monday and try to wear it as often as you can over the next 30 days to give it ample opportunities to collect data.

USDA to Provide $1 Billion to Flood and Wildfire-Impacted Livestock Producers

(Washington, D.C., September 12, 2025) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins today announced eligible livestock producers will receive disaster recovery assistance through the Emergency Livestock Relief Program for 2023 and 2024 Flood and Wildfire (ELRP 2023 and 2024 FW) to help offset increased supplemental feed costs due to a qualifying flood or qualifying wildfire in calendar years 2023 and 2024. The program is expected to provide approximately $1 billion in recovery benefits. Sign-up begins on Monday, September 15.

Four Ways Airline and Travel Booking Websites Can Deceive You

There are approximately 45,000 flights every day in the U.S., all of them filled with people heading off to adventure, relaxation, or business. If you were one of them at any time recently, there’s a very good chance you booked your tickets online, possibly by going directly to an airline’s website. And after buying those tickets, you probably relied on the airline’s website for real-time updates about your flight—and that means you have to be able to trust the information on an airline’s website and trust that the airline is being above board with you regarding pricing, seat availability, and everything else to do with your desired flight. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Here are some of the ways your airline’s website is built to deceive you.

Fake customers

If you’ve ever spent some time on an airline’s website or a booking site, playing with dates, seat choices, and other logistics, you’ve probably seen a little graphic showing you that X number of people are looking at those tickets. The implication being that several dozen (or more) folks are also sitting at their computers or on their phones, about to click BUY and steal those tickets out from under you.

This is an example of “social proof,” a technique used in sales that leverages our desire for communal validation to push us to buy something. Seeing that all those invisible strangers are mulling those plane tickets makes the decision seem valid and correct—why else would so many other people be considering pulling the trigger on that purchase? But there’s no way to know if there are actually dozens or hundreds of people looking at those precise tickets or if it’s a randomly generated number or a vague approximation. Either way, it’s there just to pressure you into buying.

Deceptive scarcity

Another way airline and booking sites lie to you is with deceptive language around scarcity. If you’ve ever put together an itinerary and the sites tells you that there are only two seats left, so you’d better get a move on, you might reasonably assume that this means only two sets left on that flight, and you’ll be scrambling to find a different flight unless you decide immediately (this is often combined with a timer counting down the minutes that you can hold those tickets and deliberate. Combined with the constant fluctuation of ticket prices as the plane capacity and demand change, this can push you to click BUY before you’ve completely thought it through.

But what that language often actually means is that there are two seats left … at that price. That’s useful information, of course, but omitting the pricing aspect changes the stakes. There’s a huge difference between having to pay a little more and not being able to book the flight at all.

Check-in fees

You might assume that if you want to check in for your flight in-person at the airport, or have a printed boarding pass instead of a code displayed on your phone, that it’s no big deal. But many budget airlines will charge you a fee for that—and it’s usually not made clear on their website. There is often also a fee if you don’t check in online early enough, usually at least two hours before your flight, and those fees are also typically buried in FAQs and fine print instead of clearly displayed, so don’t assume you’ve got flexibility there.

Convenient weather

It’s smart to track your flights as your departure day approaches, right up until you need to leave for the airport. Better to know that your flight is going to be delayed before you’re trapped in an airport for hours. But unexpected delays can have a ripple effect on the rest of your travel plans, so when a flight is delayed and you have to spend extra money to rebook other aspects of your trip, you might want to ask for some compensation. After all, it wasn’t your fault the plane or flight crew wasn’t there when they were supposed to be.

Ah, but then the airline website informs you that the flight was delayed due to weather, and since weather is outside the airline’s control, you’re not entitled to any kind of compensation. Weather delays are very common excuses for airlines—but Federal Aviation Administration data shows that weather delays account for just a tick more than 1% of flight delays, so the chances that the airline is using weather as an excuse to not deal with your compensation claims are actually pretty good.

Nine of the Best Apps and AI Tools for Home Gardeners

Whether it’s a thumbnail-sized urban oasis or intended to get you through the zombie apocalypse (or something in between), keeping a home garden is a lot of fun—and a lot of work. It’s worth it, of course—aside from the natural beauty and the fresh veggies you can get from a personal garden, there are a host of physical, emotional, and mental health benefits associated with gardening. That assumes your garden is a success, of course.

If you have a brown thumb and your gardening efforts always turn into a floral graveyard, you might not be experiencing those benefits. If that describes you, the missing ingredient to your gardening triumph might be technology: There are a lot of apps and AI tools out there that can help you with everything from planning to maintaining your garden. If you’re struggling to keep things green, check out these apps and AI-powered tools you can use in your own home garden.

Planning tools

If you’ve never seriously gardened before, or just need some assistance planning it all out in terms of space, species, and layout, there are several tools that can make this process simpler for you:

VegPlotter is a simple, straightforward app ideal for folks who find complex, feature-packed tools to be difficult to use. You create a simple layout of your garden, select what you’re growing there, and the app tracks a calendar of growth and harvest times for you. It will even warn you if you don’t have enough space for your chosen plants. Cost: Free for up to 40 plantings; $22 or $35 per year for more options.
Planter is an alternative garden planner that’s easy to use—you just drag cute little pictures of plants onto a grid representing your garden. Planter automatically decides how many “squares” of your grid each plant needs, which makes it easier to lay everything out. Cost: Free, $24.99 per year, or $99 for a lifetime plan.
Garden Planner is a good choice if you need to plan out more than just plants, as it allows you to include pathways, fencing, and other landscaping features in your garden plan. It’s not as user-friendly as VegPlotter or Planter, but it’s relatively straightforward. Cost: $48 after a 15-day free trial.
Smart Gardener is a great tool if you want to feed yourself and your family from your own vegetable garden, as it will quiz you on how many people are in the household, what zones you live in, and other basic info to help you plan what to grow and when you’ll be able to harvest it. Cost: $15 for 90 days; $40 for a year.

Reference

Seed to Spoon offers a lot of tools for planning and caring for a garden, including a robust companion plant reference that makes it stand out. The app shows you which plants will thrive together, making it simple to fill up your garden with a harmonious selection. Cost: Free version includes 10 free plants, $4.99 for 1 month, $24.99 for 6 months, and $46.99 for a year.
PictureThis is a simple, but powerful, plant ID tool. With just a quick photo of any plant, you’ll find out what you’re looking at, an assessment of its relative health, and information about its care. This is a necessity if you’re taking over an existing garden, if you’re “ungardening,” or if you wake up to discover invader plants insinuating themselves into your planned space. Cost: Free.

Journaling

A garden is a living thing, and all living things change over time. Keeping a garden journal is a crucial aspect of gardening, as it lets you track what you’ve grown, what yields were like, and what works and what doesn’t in your specific little spot. While you can certainly keep track of all this using a variety of tools (some of the other apps listed here include this feature, and there’s always old-fashioned pen and paper), Gardenize is a simple garden journal tool that makes it easy to input information about your garden. It automatically timestamps everything and makes it easy to see the impact of your choices over time. Cost: $8.99 for one month, $3.74 per month for 12 months, or $6.66 per month for three months.

All-in-one

Sometimes you don’t want a bunch of apps that do specific things—you want a single app that does everything:

Seedtime is a comprehensive gardening app that many gardeners swear by. It includes just about everything you need, from a harvest and planting calendar generated from a list of what you want to grow to planning, layout, and journaling tools. It even tracks your inventory of seeds, fertilizer, and other supplies and lets you know when they expire or need replenishing. Cost: Free for the limited version, $7 per month for a basic subscription, or $9 for an unlimited subscription.
Growbot AI is a general AI tool—it’s basically ChatGPT but specifically for gardening. You can ask it anything you need to know and get an answer back in natural language, including specific numbers and timelines, if applicable. It’s only available on iOS, however, so if you’re an Android user, you might be stuck using a more generic AI chatbot for your questions. Cost: Free, or $29.99 annual subscription.

We Already Know How Much Faster the iPhone 17 Is

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The iPhone 17 series has left the realm of mere rumor. Apple announced its four new iPhones at yesterday’s “Awe Dropping” event—the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max.

All four use the company’s new A19 chip, though different models come equipped with different versions of it: The iPhone 17 uses the base model A19, while the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max use the A19 Pro. The iPhone Air has an A19 Pro, but it’s a “binned” chip. There’s a lengthy explanation of what that means, but in short, the Air uses a weaker version of the A19 Pro, so it isn’t quite as powerful as the version you’ll find on the Pros.

While Apple frequently touts how powerful its newest iPhones are, they’re never all that specific about it, especially during their big keynote announcements. The company likes to compare the new iPhones to random older iPhones, like saying the iPhone 17’s A19 chip is 1.5 times faster than the A15 Bionic in the iPhone 13. But Apple doesn’t usually put up the raw numbers to compare performance directly. For that, we turn to benchmarking.

Benchmarking tests offer a standardized way of testing a chips’ CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processing unit), and comparing their performance against other chips. Geekbench is a popular option for benchmarking, and tests a few different things: the performance of tasks that require one core of the CPU; performance of tasks that require multi-cores; and the “Metal” test, that benchmarks GPU performance.

When you run a benchmark through Geekbench, your results are posted to the site’s database. That means whenever a new device is announced, it’s only a matter of time before benchmarking data appears there for those devices. As GSMArena reports, it seems some A19 and A19 Pro tests have already been run. These tests give us an early look at the performance of the new chips, and an idea of how much Apple has improved them over previous generations—at least on paper.

As the phones, and iOS 26 itself, are not officially out yet, take these numbers with a grain of salt. With that said, here are the preliminary results.

iPhone 17

The A19, again found in the iPhone 17, scored a 3,608 in the single-core test, and 8,810 in the multi-core test. That represents an 8% jump over the iPhone 16’s single-core score of 3,317, and a 7% jump over its multi-core score of 8,198. The A19’s GPU scored a 37,014 on the Metal test, a more than 33% increase when compared to the iPhone 16’s score of 27,702. The test results show that the iPhone 17 has 8GB of RAM.

iPhone Air

The iPhone Air runs an A19 with a six-core CPU and a five-core GPU—one less than the iPhone 17 Pro, as this is a binned chip. GSMArena reports that it scored a 3,674 in the single-core test and 8,824 in multi-core. That’s not much higher than the standard A19, though the results show Apple included four extra gigabytes of RAM in the Air over the iPhone 17.

Turning to the GPU, the Air scored a 37,743 on the Metal test. That represents an improvement of just under 2% over the A19. While you’ll likely notice some gains if you’re coming from the iPhone 16, or even the 16 Pro (more on that below) the Air isn’t going to outperform the 17 much—even with its binned A19 Pro.

iPhone 17 Pro

While the iPhone Air’s binned A19 Pro chip seems barely improved over the iPhone 17’s A19 chip, the 17 Pro starts to show some advantage—at least in GPU. The A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro scored 3,523 in single-score and 9,028 in multi-core. That’s a lower single-core score, and only a slightly higher multi-core score, which is certainly interesting. In theory, the lower-performing A19 and A19 Pro chips could yield slightly faster results in single-core tasks, while the Pro could beat the bunch a bit in multi-core tasks.

However, things get more interesting when it comes to the A19 Pro’s GPU—The chip achieved a Metal score of 44,342, 17% over the iPhone Air, and nearly 20% better than the iPhone 17. That’s not all that surprising, seeing as the Pro has six GPU cores compared to the Air’s five. Compare all that to the iPhone 16 Pro’s scores of 3,447 in single-core, 8,576 in multi-core, and 32,673 in Metal. It’s only a 2% bump in single-core and 5% in multi-core, but more than 35% in Metal. Not a bad gain.

iPhone 17 Pro Max

If you want the best possible performance in an iPhone, the Pro Max is usually the model to get. It seems the 17 Pro Max is no exception: According to these initial Geekbench results, the 17 Pro Max’s A19 Pro chip received a 3,781 single-core score, 9,679 multi-core score, and 45,657 Metal score. Those, of course, are the highest scores of any of the iPhone 17 series. The single-core score is not dramatically higher than the other phones, and the multi-core score isn’t a huge jump: The most dramatic difference there is between the iPhone 17 and the 17 Pro Max at just under 9%.

That said, the Metal score is pretty impressive. It’s less than 3% better than the 17 Pro, but it’s nearly 21% higher than the Air, and over 23% higher than the iPhone 17. We can see improvements from the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s 3,430 single core, 8,502 multi-core, and 32,665 Metal scores. That’s 10% improvement in single-core, nearly 14% in multi-core, and nearly 40% in Metal. There’s no denying the 17 Pro Max is the phone to beat when it comes to graphics processing potential.

You can look up any iPhone model you want on Geekbench’s database and compare its scores to the iPhone 17 series’ early scores listed here. Obviously, the older you go, the better the gains are going to be. For what it’s worth, comparing the iPhone 17 to the iPhone 13 shows a 71% gain in single-core and 79% gain in multi-core—not quite the 150% improvement Apple advertises. Perhaps there’s something missing from the early scores here, or maybe Apple is using a different internal metric. We’ll just have to see when testers benchmark the released iPhones running the public build of iOS 26.