For instance, ChatGPT and Gemini each added tens of millions of new downloads after releasing their respective image models, Appfigures found.
For Google’s Gemini, the release of its image model Nano Banana drove an additional 22+ million downloads in the 28 days following the introduction of the Gemini 2.5 Flash image model last August. This launch lifted the app’s downloads by more than 4x over that period, the data showed.
Image Credits:Appfigures
Meanwhile, ChatGPT added more than 12 million incremental installs in the 28 days after the introduction of its GPT-4o image model in March of last year. That’s roughly 4.5x more downloads than it saw for its GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, and GPT-5 model releases, Appfigures pointed out.
Other model releases followed similar trends, though on a smaller scale. Meta AI’s introduction of its AI video feed Vibes added an estimated 2.6 million incremental downloads in the 28 days after its September 2025 release. (Yes, technically, this is a video model, but it’s ultimately about visual content, not just text.)
Image Credits:Appfigures
Still, the report cautioned, additional downloads don’t always translate into increased mobile revenue.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA|October 13-15, 2026
Instead, new image model releases give people a reason to install the app and try out its improved image-generation capabilities. That doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily convert to paying subscribers. For example, Appfigures noted that Nano Banana drove only $181,000 in estimated gross consumer spending during the 28-day window following its release, even though it produced a larger spike in downloads than ChatGPT’s 4o image model release.
Meta AI’s launch of Vibes also led to additional downloads, but no meaningful revenue.
Among the three, only ChatGPT turned the increased attention into actual dollars.
OpenAI’s 4o image-generation model led to an estimated $70 million in gross consumer spending over the 28 days after its launch, compared with its prior baseline, Appfigures said.
Image Credits:Appfigures
The company also looked at DeepSeek in its analysis, but it didn’t fit the pattern.
While DeepSeek R1 drove 28 million downloads after its January 2025 release, it wasn’t a typical model comparison event. This was DeepSeek’s breakout moment, when it went from being relatively unknown to an overnight sensation as the tech industry learned about the techniques it used to train its AI models at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. This case highlights how curiosity can drive downloads — though in this instance, the interest wasn’t tied to an image model.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
For instance, ChatGPT and Gemini each added tens of millions of new downloads after releasing their respective image models, Appfigures found.
For Google’s Gemini, the release of its image model Nano Banana drove an additional 22+ million downloads in the 28 days following the introduction of the Gemini 2.5 Flash image model last August. This launch lifted the app’s downloads by more than 4x over that period, the data showed.
Image Credits:Appfigures
Meanwhile, ChatGPT added more than 12 million incremental installs in the 28 days after the introduction of its GPT-4o image model in March of last year. That’s roughly 4.5x more downloads than it saw for its GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, and GPT-5 model releases, Appfigures pointed out.
Other model releases followed similar trends, though on a smaller scale. Meta AI’s introduction of its AI video feed Vibes added an estimated 2.6 million incremental downloads in the 28 days after its September 2025 release. (Yes, technically, this is a video model, but it’s ultimately about visual content, not just text.)
Image Credits:Appfigures
Still, the report cautioned, additional downloads don’t always translate into increased mobile revenue.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA|October 13-15, 2026
Instead, new image model releases give people a reason to install the app and try out its improved image-generation capabilities. That doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily convert to paying subscribers. For example, Appfigures noted that Nano Banana drove only $181,000 in estimated gross consumer spending during the 28-day window following its release, even though it produced a larger spike in downloads than ChatGPT’s 4o image model release.
Meta AI’s launch of Vibes also led to additional downloads, but no meaningful revenue.
Among the three, only ChatGPT turned the increased attention into actual dollars.
OpenAI’s 4o image-generation model led to an estimated $70 million in gross consumer spending over the 28 days after its launch, compared with its prior baseline, Appfigures said.
Image Credits:Appfigures
The company also looked at DeepSeek in its analysis, but it didn’t fit the pattern.
While DeepSeek R1 drove 28 million downloads after its January 2025 release, it wasn’t a typical model comparison event. This was DeepSeek’s breakout moment, when it went from being relatively unknown to an overnight sensation as the tech industry learned about the techniques it used to train its AI models at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. This case highlights how curiosity can drive downloads — though in this instance, the interest wasn’t tied to an image model.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Image model releases are driving growth for AI mobile apps, generating 6.5x more downloads than traditional model updates, according to a new report from app intelligence provider Appfigures.
For instance, ChatGPT and Gemini each added tens of millions of new downloads after releasing their respective image models, Appfigures found.
For Google’s Gemini, the release of its image model Nano Banana drove an additional 22+ million downloads in the 28 days following the introduction of the Gemini 2.5 Flash image model last August. This launch lifted the app’s downloads by more than 4x over that period, the data showed.
Image Credits:Appfigures
Meanwhile, ChatGPT added more than 12 million incremental installs in the 28 days after the introduction of its GPT-4o image model in March of last year. That’s roughly 4.5x more downloads than it saw for its GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, and GPT-5 model releases, Appfigures pointed out.
Other model releases followed similar trends, though on a smaller scale. Meta AI’s introduction of its AI video feed Vibes added an estimated 2.6 million incremental downloads in the 28 days after its September 2025 release. (Yes, technically, this is a video model, but it’s ultimately about visual content, not just text.)
Image Credits:Appfigures
Still, the report cautioned, additional downloads don’t always translate into increased mobile revenue.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA|October 13-15, 2026
Instead, new image model releases give people a reason to install the app and try out its improved image-generation capabilities. That doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily convert to paying subscribers. For example, Appfigures noted that Nano Banana drove only $181,000 in estimated gross consumer spending during the 28-day window following its release, even though it produced a larger spike in downloads than ChatGPT’s 4o image model release.
Meta AI’s launch of Vibes also led to additional downloads, but no meaningful revenue.
Among the three, only ChatGPT turned the increased attention into actual dollars.
OpenAI’s 4o image-generation model led to an estimated $70 million in gross consumer spending over the 28 days after its launch, compared with its prior baseline, Appfigures said.
Image Credits:Appfigures
The company also looked at DeepSeek in its analysis, but it didn’t fit the pattern.
While DeepSeek R1 drove 28 million downloads after its January 2025 release, it wasn’t a typical model comparison event. This was DeepSeek’s breakout moment, when it went from being relatively unknown to an overnight sensation as the tech industry learned about the techniques it used to train its AI models at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. This case highlights how curiosity can drive downloads — though in this instance, the interest wasn’t tied to an image model.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Image model releases are driving growth for AI mobile apps, generating 6.5x more downloads than…
buy Razer Gold online show how funding a wallet can help unlock exclusive game items, bonus points, or discounted content across many platforms.
Traditional payment routes come with friction. Waiting on transfers, dealing with surprise foreign transaction fees, and entering card information again for each new site can stretch a simple moment into a tedious process. Digital wallets cut this down to a few taps or clicks. They unify purchase histories, hold multiple payment options, and mask your actual card number, drastically reducing fraud risk. These perks are not only attractive, they’re quickly becoming essential for buyers who value both privacy and speed.
When looking for digital games, players often do a quick search only to find that platform stores like the PlayStation Store may have high prices or regional restrictions. Eneba gives those shopping for new titles or DLC a much wider range of game keys, often below standard store prices. Game keys are unique codes that can be redeemed for full games or content, buy a PlayStation code on Eneba, redeem it in your account, and the game appears in your library instantly. The catalog is vast, with instant code delivery, clear info about global versus region-locked content, and a support system in place. Gift cards for Xbox, PSN, and Steam are also available, turning top-ups into a hassle-free option. Crucially, Eneba verifies its merchants and maintains compliance checks so the buying experience is safe and reliable.
Digital wallets don’t just serve gamers, though. They unlock new ways to handle subscriptions, buy digital art, or access streaming services. Their real appeal is in how they make every transaction less of a process and more of a click. This shift in user expectation is subtle but profound, echoing through every part of digital commerce.
Security has become a hot topic. Payment fraud, identity theft, and data breaches drive demand for alternatives to typing out full card details. Digital wallets blend strong encryption with multi-factor authentication. These layers of protection help users manage risk without adding complexity to already busy lives. For those spending on unfamiliar sites, using a wallet adds an extra safeguard, keeping personal details out of harm’s way.
The integration of reward systems is another reason digital wallets have become staples for online buyers. Topping up with game-specific currency or third-party credits can give you cashback, bonus points, or early access offers. This builds loyalty without forcing users to stick to just one shop or ecosystem.
Digital wallets continue to grow by adapting to what users want next: more currencies, more integrations, and fewer barriers between platforms and regions. Their evolution keeps driving innovation, not just for gaming but for all forms of online spending.
Digital marketplaces like Eneba offering deals on all things digital have helped refine what buyers now expect from every online purchase: instant, secure, and tailored to their needs. As competition heats up, it’s clear that digital wallets are here to shape the future of online transactions.
buy Razer Gold online show how funding a wallet can help unlock exclusive game items, bonus points, or discounted content across many platforms.
Traditional payment routes come with friction. Waiting on transfers, dealing with surprise foreign transaction fees, and entering card information again for each new site can stretch a simple moment into a tedious process. Digital wallets cut this down to a few taps or clicks. They unify purchase histories, hold multiple payment options, and mask your actual card number, drastically reducing fraud risk. These perks are not only attractive, they’re quickly becoming essential for buyers who value both privacy and speed.
When looking for digital games, players often do a quick search only to find that platform stores like the PlayStation Store may have high prices or regional restrictions. Eneba gives those shopping for new titles or DLC a much wider range of game keys, often below standard store prices. Game keys are unique codes that can be redeemed for full games or content, buy a PlayStation code on Eneba, redeem it in your account, and the game appears in your library instantly. The catalog is vast, with instant code delivery, clear info about global versus region-locked content, and a support system in place. Gift cards for Xbox, PSN, and Steam are also available, turning top-ups into a hassle-free option. Crucially, Eneba verifies its merchants and maintains compliance checks so the buying experience is safe and reliable.
Digital wallets don’t just serve gamers, though. They unlock new ways to handle subscriptions, buy digital art, or access streaming services. Their real appeal is in how they make every transaction less of a process and more of a click. This shift in user expectation is subtle but profound, echoing through every part of digital commerce.
Security has become a hot topic. Payment fraud, identity theft, and data breaches drive demand for alternatives to typing out full card details. Digital wallets blend strong encryption with multi-factor authentication. These layers of protection help users manage risk without adding complexity to already busy lives. For those spending on unfamiliar sites, using a wallet adds an extra safeguard, keeping personal details out of harm’s way.
The integration of reward systems is another reason digital wallets have become staples for online buyers. Topping up with game-specific currency or third-party credits can give you cashback, bonus points, or early access offers. This builds loyalty without forcing users to stick to just one shop or ecosystem.
Digital wallets continue to grow by adapting to what users want next: more currencies, more integrations, and fewer barriers between platforms and regions. Their evolution keeps driving innovation, not just for gaming but for all forms of online spending.
Digital marketplaces like Eneba offering deals on all things digital have helped refine what buyers now expect from every online purchase: instant, secure, and tailored to their needs. As competition heats up, it’s clear that digital wallets are here to shape the future of online transactions.
#Digital #Wallets #Ultimate #GameChanger #Online #PurchasesAndroid Gaming,console gaming,desktop gaming">Are Digital Wallets the Ultimate Game-Changer for Online Purchases?
Trust in online payments has never been as important as it is right now. For anyone who spends money across digital platforms, the tools we use to pay can shape the entire experience. Digital wallets stand out as more than a payment method, they’re a foundation for how fast, safe, and convenient every transaction can feel. Convenience might look like a buzzword, but for online shoppers, it’s the difference between an immediate purchase and a drawn-out checkout that breaks the flow.
Speed and flexibility are at the center of this shift. Today’s gamers, content subscribers, and e-commerce buyers have come to expect instant access, not just to their products, but to funds as well. Digital wallets answer the call, letting users transfer, store, and spend money in ways that traditional cards or slow bank payments can’t match. For those looking to stretch their value further, methods to buy Razer Gold online show how funding a wallet can help unlock exclusive game items, bonus points, or discounted content across many platforms.
Traditional payment routes come with friction. Waiting on transfers, dealing with surprise foreign transaction fees, and entering card information again for each new site can stretch a simple moment into a tedious process. Digital wallets cut this down to a few taps or clicks. They unify purchase histories, hold multiple payment options, and mask your actual card number, drastically reducing fraud risk. These perks are not only attractive, they’re quickly becoming essential for buyers who value both privacy and speed.
When looking for digital games, players often do a quick search only to find that platform stores like the PlayStation Store may have high prices or regional restrictions. Eneba gives those shopping for new titles or DLC a much wider range of game keys, often below standard store prices. Game keys are unique codes that can be redeemed for full games or content, buy a PlayStation code on Eneba, redeem it in your account, and the game appears in your library instantly. The catalog is vast, with instant code delivery, clear info about global versus region-locked content, and a support system in place. Gift cards for Xbox, PSN, and Steam are also available, turning top-ups into a hassle-free option. Crucially, Eneba verifies its merchants and maintains compliance checks so the buying experience is safe and reliable.
Digital wallets don’t just serve gamers, though. They unlock new ways to handle subscriptions, buy digital art, or access streaming services. Their real appeal is in how they make every transaction less of a process and more of a click. This shift in user expectation is subtle but profound, echoing through every part of digital commerce.
Security has become a hot topic. Payment fraud, identity theft, and data breaches drive demand for alternatives to typing out full card details. Digital wallets blend strong encryption with multi-factor authentication. These layers of protection help users manage risk without adding complexity to already busy lives. For those spending on unfamiliar sites, using a wallet adds an extra safeguard, keeping personal details out of harm’s way.
The integration of reward systems is another reason digital wallets have become staples for online buyers. Topping up with game-specific currency or third-party credits can give you cashback, bonus points, or early access offers. This builds loyalty without forcing users to stick to just one shop or ecosystem.
Digital wallets continue to grow by adapting to what users want next: more currencies, more integrations, and fewer barriers between platforms and regions. Their evolution keeps driving innovation, not just for gaming but for all forms of online spending.
Digital marketplaces like Eneba offering deals on all things digital have helped refine what buyers now expect from every online purchase: instant, secure, and tailored to their needs. As competition heats up, it’s clear that digital wallets are here to shape the future of online transactions.
From Lego, the new tie-in hotness is the “Hutt Palace Sentry Droid Showdown” set. With 415 pieces, owners can pit Din and Grogu against the Hutt Cartel’s three-armed sentry and its stud shooter. Once the beat the sentry and open the palace doors, they’ve got one other obstacle in Embo, everyone’s favorite Clone Wars-era bounty hunter. Along with his bowcaster, Embo’s got his own backup in his anooba Keibu.
In his earliest appearances, Embo had another named Marrok, but we know from the Aftermath: Empire’s End novel that one had died before the New Republic era. Canonically, it makes sense that Embo would get a new pet, but this probably also comes from other Star Wars projects like Ahsoka and Maul: Shadow Lord—which, like this movie, count Dave Filoni as a key creative—having an Inquisitor with the same name among their casts.
Newly named space dog aside, the set takes inspirartion from a fight we’ve seen in the final trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu wherein Din fights two sentry droids and Grogu tries to shut one of them down. Fans of the movie could recreate that fight beat for beat, or do their own version—maybe one where Din and Embo are buds, or Grogu solos everyone else. The choice is yours, but you’ll be waiting for a while to make it happen: the movie’s out on May 22, but the set’s available beginning August 1 for £44.99 (or roughly $53).
From Lego, the new tie-in hotness is the “Hutt Palace Sentry Droid Showdown” set. With 415 pieces, owners can pit Din and Grogu against the Hutt Cartel’s three-armed sentry and its stud shooter. Once the beat the sentry and open the palace doors, they’ve got one other obstacle in Embo, everyone’s favorite Clone Wars-era bounty hunter. Along with his bowcaster, Embo’s got his own backup in his anooba Keibu.
In his earliest appearances, Embo had another named Marrok, but we know from the Aftermath: Empire’s End novel that one had died before the New Republic era. Canonically, it makes sense that Embo would get a new pet, but this probably also comes from other Star Wars projects like Ahsoka and Maul: Shadow Lord—which, like this movie, count Dave Filoni as a key creative—having an Inquisitor with the same name among their casts.
Newly named space dog aside, the set takes inspirartion from a fight we’ve seen in the final trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu wherein Din fights two sentry droids and Grogu tries to shut one of them down. Fans of the movie could recreate that fight beat for beat, or do their own version—maybe one where Din and Embo are buds, or Grogu solos everyone else. The choice is yours, but you’ll be waiting for a while to make it happen: the movie’s out on May 22, but the set’s available beginning August 1 for £44.99 (or roughly $53).
#Legos #Mandalorian #Grogu #Set #Confirms #Silly #ChangeLego,Star Wars,The Mandalorian and Grogu">Lego’s New ‘Mandalorian & Grogu’ Set Confirms a Very Silly Name Change
From Lego, the new tie-in hotness is the “Hutt Palace Sentry Droid Showdown” set. With 415 pieces, owners can pit Din and Grogu against the Hutt Cartel’s three-armed sentry and its stud shooter. Once the beat the sentry and open the palace doors, they’ve got one other obstacle in Embo, everyone’s favorite Clone Wars-era bounty hunter. Along with his bowcaster, Embo’s got his own backup in his anooba Keibu.
In his earliest appearances, Embo had another named Marrok, but we know from the Aftermath: Empire’s End novel that one had died before the New Republic era. Canonically, it makes sense that Embo would get a new pet, but this probably also comes from other Star Wars projects like Ahsoka and Maul: Shadow Lord—which, like this movie, count Dave Filoni as a key creative—having an Inquisitor with the same name among their casts.
Newly named space dog aside, the set takes inspirartion from a fight we’ve seen in the final trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu wherein Din fights two sentry droids and Grogu tries to shut one of them down. Fans of the movie could recreate that fight beat for beat, or do their own version—maybe one where Din and Embo are buds, or Grogu solos everyone else. The choice is yours, but you’ll be waiting for a while to make it happen: the movie’s out on May 22, but the set’s available beginning August 1 for £44.99 (or roughly $53).
The Mandalorian and Grogu comes out this month, and new toys for it will keep on…
The performance boost on Geekbench is particularly striking, with the A16 scoring 50 to 100 percent faster than competing systems from AMD and Intel. It’s even faster than the Apple MacBook M4 Pro, the last Mac for which I have comparable benchmark scores. However, that Mac did beat the Asus on the Cinebench benchmark, but not by much, and the Asus now stands solidly in second place in my testing archive.
Graphics performance is much better than in previous generations of Snapdragon X chips, with frame rates quadrupling on average, depending on the test. That’s a dramatic and much-needed improvement for the CPU, and while no one will accuse the A16 of being a gaming rig, it does at least make for a workable experience with less taxing games and graphics-heavy workloads.
Beige Belies Performance
Photograph: Chris Null
I’m happy enough with how the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme performs to sign off on its performance claims, but there’s a lot more to the Zenbook A16 than its CPU.
Under the hood, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E94100 CPU is complemented by 48 GB of RAM and a 1-TB SSD. The 16-inch touchscreen offers a solid resolution of 2880 x 1800 pixels, and it’s incredibly bright. A weight of 2.9 pounds is impressive (if not unheard of) for the 16-inch category, and at 0.65 inches (at its thickest), it has a svelte, quite portable carrying experience. Asus’s Ceraluminum technology (now with added magnesium) is used in the machine’s lid, base, and keyboard frame. That helps keep it thin and light, though when adjusted or touched, the screen shimmied more than I expected.
The performance boost on Geekbench is particularly striking, with the A16 scoring 50 to 100 percent faster than competing systems from AMD and Intel. It’s even faster than the Apple MacBook M4 Pro, the last Mac for which I have comparable benchmark scores. However, that Mac did beat the Asus on the Cinebench benchmark, but not by much, and the Asus now stands solidly in second place in my testing archive.
Graphics performance is much better than in previous generations of Snapdragon X chips, with frame rates quadrupling on average, depending on the test. That’s a dramatic and much-needed improvement for the CPU, and while no one will accuse the A16 of being a gaming rig, it does at least make for a workable experience with less taxing games and graphics-heavy workloads.
Beige Belies Performance
Photograph: Chris Null
I’m happy enough with how the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme performs to sign off on its performance claims, but there’s a lot more to the Zenbook A16 than its CPU.
Under the hood, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E94100 CPU is complemented by 48 GB of RAM and a 1-TB SSD. The 16-inch touchscreen offers a solid resolution of 2880 x 1800 pixels, and it’s incredibly bright. A weight of 2.9 pounds is impressive (if not unheard of) for the 16-inch category, and at 0.65 inches (at its thickest), it has a svelte, quite portable carrying experience. Asus’s Ceraluminum technology (now with added magnesium) is used in the machine’s lid, base, and keyboard frame. That helps keep it thin and light, though when adjusted or touched, the screen shimmied more than I expected.
#Asus #Zenbook #Delivers #Great #Performance #Mediocre #Laptopasus,laptops,shopping,reviews,review,computers,qualcomm,windows">The Asus Zenbook 16 Delivers Great Performance in an Otherwise Mediocre Laptop
So, what’s not to like? Well, early compatibility problems slowed the initial uptake of Snapdragon X, and the CPU’s integrated graphics performance turned out to be pretty terrible. And to date, powerful onboard AI features just haven’t proven important, as most AI workloads are still being done in the cloud. With the second-generation X2, Qualcomm set out to deliver on the original promise of faster performance.
But what exactly does “faster” mean? As with most claims in the PC computing space, it’s all about the benchmarks. On the Zenbook A16, the tests I ran indeed showcased exemplary performance from the X2 Elite Extreme, in some of the most widely used benchmarking tools, namely Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024. (I don’t have enough competitive Cinebench 2026 results to make wide comparisons yet on that benchmark.)
The performance boost on Geekbench is particularly striking, with the A16 scoring 50 to 100 percent faster than competing systems from AMD and Intel. It’s even faster than the Apple MacBook M4 Pro, the last Mac for which I have comparable benchmark scores. However, that Mac did beat the Asus on the Cinebench benchmark, but not by much, and the Asus now stands solidly in second place in my testing archive.
Graphics performance is much better than in previous generations of Snapdragon X chips, with frame rates quadrupling on average, depending on the test. That’s a dramatic and much-needed improvement for the CPU, and while no one will accuse the A16 of being a gaming rig, it does at least make for a workable experience with less taxing games and graphics-heavy workloads.
Beige Belies Performance
Photograph: Chris Null
I’m happy enough with how the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme performs to sign off on its performance claims, but there’s a lot more to the Zenbook A16 than its CPU.
Under the hood, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E94100 CPU is complemented by 48 GB of RAM and a 1-TB SSD. The 16-inch touchscreen offers a solid resolution of 2880 x 1800 pixels, and it’s incredibly bright. A weight of 2.9 pounds is impressive (if not unheard of) for the 16-inch category, and at 0.65 inches (at its thickest), it has a svelte, quite portable carrying experience. Asus’s Ceraluminum technology (now with added magnesium) is used in the machine’s lid, base, and keyboard frame. That helps keep it thin and light, though when adjusted or touched, the screen shimmied more than I expected.
So, what's not to like? Well, early compatibility problems slowed the initial uptake of Snapdragon…
AI companions are quietly becoming a staple across the industry, and OpenAI is now joining the trend. The company has launched Codex Pets, an optional animated companion baked into its AI coding tool.
Like most AI companions, it isn’t doing any heavy lifting. But Codex Pets earns its keep as a floating overlay that surfaces project status updates in real-time, so you don’t have to switch tabs. Users can monitor active threads and track whether Codex is running, waiting on input, or ready for review, all without ever leaving whatever they’re working on.
Getting started is straightforward. Head to Settings, select Appearance, then choose Pets to pick from the built-in options. Once activated, the floating overlay can be toggled on or off by typing /pet in the composer, using Wake Pet or Tuck Away Pet in Settings > Appearance, or by pressing Cmd+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows.
Mashable Light Speed
The feature ships with eight built-in variations — including a cat and dog — but the more interesting play is the custom pet creator. Users can prompt Codex directly to generate their own companion, then share it online. A quick scroll through the homepage reveals the community has already gotten to work. Current creations include Goku, Patrick Star, Microsoft’s long-retired Clippy, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and — naturally — a goblin.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
AI companions are quietly becoming a staple across the industry, and OpenAI is now joining the trend. The company has launched Codex Pets, an optional animated companion baked into its AI coding tool.
Like most AI companions, it isn’t doing any heavy lifting. But Codex Pets earns its keep as a floating overlay that surfaces project status updates in real-time, so you don’t have to switch tabs. Users can monitor active threads and track whether Codex is running, waiting on input, or ready for review, all without ever leaving whatever they’re working on.
Getting started is straightforward. Head to Settings, select Appearance, then choose Pets to pick from the built-in options. Once activated, the floating overlay can be toggled on or off by typing /pet in the composer, using Wake Pet or Tuck Away Pet in Settings > Appearance, or by pressing Cmd+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows.
Mashable Light Speed
The feature ships with eight built-in variations — including a cat and dog — but the more interesting play is the custom pet creator. Users can prompt Codex directly to generate their own companion, then share it online. A quick scroll through the homepage reveals the community has already gotten to work. Current creations include Goku, Patrick Star, Microsoft’s long-retired Clippy, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and — naturally — a goblin.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
#OpenAI #adds #pets #Codex #coding #tool">OpenAI adds AI pets to its Codex coding tool
AI companions are quietly becoming a staple across the industry, and OpenAI is now joining the trend. The company has launched Codex Pets, an optional animated companion baked into its AI coding tool.
Like most AI companions, it isn’t doing any heavy lifting. But Codex Pets earns its keep as a floating overlay that surfaces project status updates in real-time, so you don’t have to switch tabs. Users can monitor active threads and track whether Codex is running, waiting on input, or ready for review, all without ever leaving whatever they’re working on.
Getting started is straightforward. Head to Settings, select Appearance, then choose Pets to pick from the built-in options. Once activated, the floating overlay can be toggled on or off by typing /pet in the composer, using Wake Pet or Tuck Away Pet in Settings > Appearance, or by pressing Cmd+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows.
Mashable Light Speed
The feature ships with eight built-in variations — including a cat and dog — but the more interesting play is the custom pet creator. Users can prompt Codex directly to generate their own companion, then share it online. A quick scroll through the homepage reveals the community has already gotten to work. Current creations include Goku, Patrick Star, Microsoft’s long-retired Clippy, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and — naturally — a goblin.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
#Reggie #FilsAimé #Amazon #asked #Nintendo #break #lawAmazon,Gaming,News,Nintendo,Tech">Reggie Fils-Aimé says Amazon once asked Nintendo to break the law
“Literally, we stopped selling to Amazon, and it’s because I wasn’t going to do something illegal. I wasn’t going to do something that would put at risk the relationship we have with other retailers. But it also set the stage to say, look, you’re not going to push me around. This is the way we do business. And so that’s how, over time, you build respect.”
The study was published this week in Science and comes from a research team led by physicians and computer scientists at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The researchers said they conducted a variety of experiments to measure how OpenAI’s models compared to human physicians.
In one experiment, researchers focused on 76 patients who came into the Beth Israel emergency room, comparing the diagnoses offered by two internal medicine attending physicians to those generated by OpenAI’s o1 and 4o models. These diagnoses were assessed by two other attending physicians, who did not know which ones came from humans and which came from AI.
“At each diagnostic touchpoint, o1 either performed nominally better than or on par with the two attending physicians and 4o,” the study said, adding that the differences “were especially pronounced at the first diagnostic touchpoint (initial ER triage), where there is the least information available about the patient and the most urgency to make the correct decision.”
In Harvard Medical School’s press release about the study, the researchers emphasized that they did not “pre-process the data at all” — the AI models were presented with the same information that was available in the electronic medical records at the time of each diagnosis.
With that information, the o1 model managed to offer “the exact or very close diagnosis” in 67% of triage cases, compared to one physician who had the exact or close diagnosis 55% of the time, and to the other who hit the mark 50% of the time.
“We tested the AI model against virtually every benchmark, and it eclipsed both prior models and our physician baselines,” said Arjun Manrai, who heads an AI lab at Harvard Medical School and is one of the study’s lead authors, in the press release.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA|October 13-15, 2026
To be clear, the study didn’t claim that AI is ready to make real life-or-death decisions in the emergency room. Instead, it said the findings show an “urgent need for prospective trials to evaluate these technologies in real-world patient care settings.”
The researchers also noted that they only studied how models performed when provided with text-based information, and that “existing studies suggest that current foundation models are more limited in reasoning over nontext inputs.”
Adam Rodman, a Beth Israel doctor who’s also one of the study’s lead authors, warned the Guardian that there’s “no formal framework right now for accountability” around AI diagnoses, and that patients still “want humans to guide them through life or death decisions [and] to guide them through challenging treatment decisions.”
In a post about the study, Kristen Panthagani, an emergency physician, said this is an “an interesting AI study that has led to some very overhyped headlines,” especially since it was comparing AI diagnoses to those from internal medicine physicians, not ER physicians.
“If we’re going to compare AI tools to physicians’ clinical ability, we should start by comparing to physicians who actually practice that specialty,” Panthagani said. “I would not be surprised if a LLM could beat a dermatologist at an neurosurgery board exam, [but] that’s not a particularly helpful thing to know.”
She also argued, “As an ER doctor seeing a patient for a first time, my primary goal is not to guess your ultimate diagnosis. My primary goal is to determine if you have a condition that could kill you.”
This post and headline have been updated to reflect the fact that the diagnoses in the study came from internal medicine attending physicians, and to include commentary from Kristen Panthagani.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
The study was published this week in Science and comes from a research team led by physicians and computer scientists at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The researchers said they conducted a variety of experiments to measure how OpenAI’s models compared to human physicians.
In one experiment, researchers focused on 76 patients who came into the Beth Israel emergency room, comparing the diagnoses offered by two internal medicine attending physicians to those generated by OpenAI’s o1 and 4o models. These diagnoses were assessed by two other attending physicians, who did not know which ones came from humans and which came from AI.
“At each diagnostic touchpoint, o1 either performed nominally better than or on par with the two attending physicians and 4o,” the study said, adding that the differences “were especially pronounced at the first diagnostic touchpoint (initial ER triage), where there is the least information available about the patient and the most urgency to make the correct decision.”
In Harvard Medical School’s press release about the study, the researchers emphasized that they did not “pre-process the data at all” — the AI models were presented with the same information that was available in the electronic medical records at the time of each diagnosis.
With that information, the o1 model managed to offer “the exact or very close diagnosis” in 67% of triage cases, compared to one physician who had the exact or close diagnosis 55% of the time, and to the other who hit the mark 50% of the time.
“We tested the AI model against virtually every benchmark, and it eclipsed both prior models and our physician baselines,” said Arjun Manrai, who heads an AI lab at Harvard Medical School and is one of the study’s lead authors, in the press release.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA|October 13-15, 2026
To be clear, the study didn’t claim that AI is ready to make real life-or-death decisions in the emergency room. Instead, it said the findings show an “urgent need for prospective trials to evaluate these technologies in real-world patient care settings.”
The researchers also noted that they only studied how models performed when provided with text-based information, and that “existing studies suggest that current foundation models are more limited in reasoning over nontext inputs.”
Adam Rodman, a Beth Israel doctor who’s also one of the study’s lead authors, warned the Guardian that there’s “no formal framework right now for accountability” around AI diagnoses, and that patients still “want humans to guide them through life or death decisions [and] to guide them through challenging treatment decisions.”
In a post about the study, Kristen Panthagani, an emergency physician, said this is an “an interesting AI study that has led to some very overhyped headlines,” especially since it was comparing AI diagnoses to those from internal medicine physicians, not ER physicians.
“If we’re going to compare AI tools to physicians’ clinical ability, we should start by comparing to physicians who actually practice that specialty,” Panthagani said. “I would not be surprised if a LLM could beat a dermatologist at an neurosurgery board exam, [but] that’s not a particularly helpful thing to know.”
She also argued, “As an ER doctor seeing a patient for a first time, my primary goal is not to guess your ultimate diagnosis. My primary goal is to determine if you have a condition that could kill you.”
This post and headline have been updated to reflect the fact that the diagnoses in the study came from internal medicine attending physicians, and to include commentary from Kristen Panthagani.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
#Harvard #study #offered #accurate #emergency #room #diagnoses #human #doctors #TechCrunchbeth israel,harvard medical school,OpenAI">In Harvard study, AI offered more accurate emergency room diagnoses than two human doctors | TechCrunch
A new study examines how large language models perform in a variety of medical contexts, including real emergency room cases — where at least one model seemed to be more accurate than human doctors.
The study was published this week in Science and comes from a research team led by physicians and computer scientists at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The researchers said they conducted a variety of experiments to measure how OpenAI’s models compared to human physicians.
In one experiment, researchers focused on 76 patients who came into the Beth Israel emergency room, comparing the diagnoses offered by two internal medicine attending physicians to those generated by OpenAI’s o1 and 4o models. These diagnoses were assessed by two other attending physicians, who did not know which ones came from humans and which came from AI.
“At each diagnostic touchpoint, o1 either performed nominally better than or on par with the two attending physicians and 4o,” the study said, adding that the differences “were especially pronounced at the first diagnostic touchpoint (initial ER triage), where there is the least information available about the patient and the most urgency to make the correct decision.”
In Harvard Medical School’s press release about the study, the researchers emphasized that they did not “pre-process the data at all” — the AI models were presented with the same information that was available in the electronic medical records at the time of each diagnosis.
With that information, the o1 model managed to offer “the exact or very close diagnosis” in 67% of triage cases, compared to one physician who had the exact or close diagnosis 55% of the time, and to the other who hit the mark 50% of the time.
“We tested the AI model against virtually every benchmark, and it eclipsed both prior models and our physician baselines,” said Arjun Manrai, who heads an AI lab at Harvard Medical School and is one of the study’s lead authors, in the press release.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA|October 13-15, 2026
To be clear, the study didn’t claim that AI is ready to make real life-or-death decisions in the emergency room. Instead, it said the findings show an “urgent need for prospective trials to evaluate these technologies in real-world patient care settings.”
The researchers also noted that they only studied how models performed when provided with text-based information, and that “existing studies suggest that current foundation models are more limited in reasoning over nontext inputs.”
Adam Rodman, a Beth Israel doctor who’s also one of the study’s lead authors, warned the Guardian that there’s “no formal framework right now for accountability” around AI diagnoses, and that patients still “want humans to guide them through life or death decisions [and] to guide them through challenging treatment decisions.”
In a post about the study, Kristen Panthagani, an emergency physician, said this is an “an interesting AI study that has led to some very overhyped headlines,” especially since it was comparing AI diagnoses to those from internal medicine physicians, not ER physicians.
“If we’re going to compare AI tools to physicians’ clinical ability, we should start by comparing to physicians who actually practice that specialty,” Panthagani said. “I would not be surprised if a LLM could beat a dermatologist at an neurosurgery board exam, [but] that’s not a particularly helpful thing to know.”
She also argued, “As an ER doctor seeing a patient for a first time, my primary goal is not to guess your ultimate diagnosis. My primary goal is to determine if you have a condition that could kill you.”
This post and headline have been updated to reflect the fact that the diagnoses in the study came from internal medicine attending physicians, and to include commentary from Kristen Panthagani.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
If Apple were ever going to make an Android phone, then they’d probably design something like the Xiaomi 17. I wouldn’t describe the build as flashy, but it’s super elegant and reminiscent of past Xiaomi flagships. I talked about this in my X300 Pro review, as creating a brand identity to compete against Samsung and Apple is super important, and Xiaomi has listened. While I was using it daily, many of my friends and family asked me what Xiaomi phone I was using—note the wording: “Xiaomi phone,” meaning they knew it was a particular brand, and that’s important. The Chinese smartphone maker said they thought of every curve, and I’ll just say it straight: the 17 is the best-feeling compact phone I’ve held this year.
The corners are crafted to perfection, the width is spot on, and even the way the aluminum frame blends into the glass without an abrupt edge makes carrying the phone a very enjoyable experience. Beyond that, the back glass is frosted to prevent the phone from slipping off glass surfaces, and the side frame doesn’t let go of its color inside a case.
Speaking of color, you get plenty of options, but my favorite is definitely the blue variant, as it has that breezy summer vibe. The buttons are tactile and positioned where your hand would naturally rest.
Moving to the camera module, Xiaomi has taken the iPhone route of individual stove-top camera cutouts. There are four of them (one houses the flash), and aside from the fact that dust is difficult to get out from between, I do quite like them. The ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is positioned at a comfy place where your thumb would naturally rest. I used it on the beach with wet hands, and it worked perfectly fine. Besides, the phone is IP69-rated for dust and water resistance, meaning it should technically withstand a swim. Did I dare take it inside the water on the beach? Absolutely not, because the IP rating is only for fresh water, and seawater can cause irreversible damage.
Display
I’ve said this before that all flagship displays are essentially the same, and that holds true for the Xiaomi 17, too. The phone features a 6.3-inch 1220 x 2656 OLED display, with an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. This time, Xiaomi has trimmed the bezels even more for a more premium look, and I’m a fan. The panel is exceptionally color-accurate and vibrant for content consumption, as evidenced by my 3-hour run of The Pitt season 2 on the flight to Thailand. Even the HDR performance is exceptional.
Xiaomi claims a peak brightness number of 3,500 nits. Sadly, I don’t have a light meter to put the claim to the test, but from my experience using the panel in the 12 noon sun at Phi Phi Island, it’s plenty bright for outdoor use. The texts were legible, and I could use the phone for GPS navigation without squinting.
When it comes to durability, I usually don’t like to test that part myself and instead rely on user reports. However, I accidentally dropped the Xiaomi 17 on a concrete floor. The result was surprisingly good. I dropped it, without a case, from a tripod at chest height, meaning that, while the phone was in the air, all sorts of scary thoughts came to mind, including how much this repair was going to cost me. Thankfully, the phone escaped with only minor damage to the frame.
Performance & Software
Performance is what makes or breaks the smartphone experience, and it’s no surprise to anyone that the Xiaomi 17 delivers top-of-the-line performance. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the best Android processor in the market, and it’s coupled with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 4.1 internal storage. The results? The Xiaomi 17 is an absolute joy to use. It flies through the UI like nothing, and there’s ample headroom for literally any task. That being said, the phone runs on HyperOS 3, which, for the uninitiated, is a very altered version of Android that resembles more like iOS.
I don’t have a problem with the look, especially since HyperOS is one of the smoothest Android skins, with silky animations and a lot of customization. My issue is that, unlike other Chinese skins that allow you to tone down the iOS-ness, Xiaomi doesn’t.
For example, the notification shade is divided into two sections: the quick control and the panel. I don’t like that, but when I went digging in the settings to find a way to merge them, there wasn’t. Also, the back gesture is enabled in the keyboard, so when I tried deleting long text, it would often send me back instead.
There are a few silver linings I wish others would copy from HyperOS, one major one being the lockscreen customizations. There are so many options, and every one of them looks gorgeous. As this is 2026, there’s a host of AI features, such as object eraser, image upscaling, and inpainting. I tried them all, and they work exactly as you’d expect. The company also promises about six years of major software updates and security patches. This is better than vivo’s five years.
Benchmarks & Gaming
As this is a review, I also ran a series of benchmarks to test the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s limits. The phone scored 3,415 in Geekbench’s single-core test and 10,008 in the multi-core test. These are insane numbers, especially when compared with the likes of the vivo X300 Pro and the Find X9, which score about 20%-30% lower in multi-core tests. The story remained similar on AnTuTu, where the Xiaomi 17 handsomely beat its Chinese rivals, scoring 3,423,349.
As expected, this performance translates extremely well in gaming. I’m a former PUBG (BGMI) eSports player, and my results were exceptional. The phone maintained 120 FPS gameplay even at high settings without a hint of stutter. I also like Xiaomi’s thermal management, which kept the phone from overheating during both gaming and photo capture in Thailand’s hot summer.
Battery Life & Charging
After all the chatter about the small form factor, you may expect the Xiaomi 17 to compromise on the battery life, just as other Apple and Samsung phones do. Well, you can’t be more wrong, as the Xiaomi 17 packs an even bigger battery, 6,330mAh to be precise, than the 17 Ultra. And the results are just fantastic. On the morning of my Thailand flight, I unplugged the phone at 5 am. I then continued using the phone for the rest of the day, including the three hours of The Pitt on the flight and map navigation when reaching Phuket airport. I ended the day with 20% remaining, and at 3 am the next morning, I had 20% remaining. For a more typical person, you’d be looking more at two days of usage without a hitch.
When it was finally time to charge, Xiaomi, unlike Samsung, bundles a 100W fast charger in the box that charges the phone from 20% to 80% in just 30 minutes. You also get 50W of reverse wireless charging, though that requires a specific charger.
Cameras
If a phone doesn’t fold in half or has dual screens, the only way to differentiate itself is through the cameras. They are the main reason why people lean towards a certain brand, and recently, both OPPO and vivo have been killing it. However, I think there’s room for a third king: the Xiaomi 17. Like others, it also houses a triple-sensor array, led by the 50MP LightFusion 950 sensor, a 50MP JN1 60mm telephoto, and another 50MP OV50M ultrawide lens. Colors are handled by Leica, and that’s the main strength of the Xiaomi 17. The photos it takes, with the different Leica filters, have a certain character you won’t find anywhere else. Every phone takes similar photos these days, and it’s these color profiles that matter the most.
Still, if you’re not a fan of poking around with the cameras, the default Leica Authentic profile produces colors that are very close to natural, with highlights and shadows handled extremely well. The details are crisp and plenty, the HDR performance is mostly spot on, and the contrast is slightly on the boosted side, which is what I like. Beyond the default camera profile, there are a myriad of filters, such as Negative, Positive, Sepia, Natural, Vibrant, and Blue. Each has a different style of capturing the colors and subject, and I really did find myself going through each and every one of them to decide which actually serves the scene the best. And the results speak for themselves. Every photo tells a different story, and that’s the Xiaomi 17’s biggest strength.
The telephoto lens is 2.5x, and I’d say the same about it, too. It serves as the main portrait camera, and the images deliver stellar detail, with excellent foreground separation and improved natural skin tones without the infamous beautification. Xiaomi doesn’t rely much on AI processing, so zooming past 5x-6x will result in blurry photos. Keep that in mind. The ultrawide hasn’t changed from the previous generation, so it still doesn’t have autofocus for macro photography. While it works great when the light is ample, I saw a significant drop in quality at night.
Speaking of the night, both the main and telephoto sensors benefit from Xiaomi’s mature image processing, which retains detail in shadows without making the image muddy or introducing noise. Videos, which can be shot at up to 8K, carry similar details in all lighting conditions, and I’m a fan. Sadly, it’s not all perfect. In Thailand’s heat, some of the videos I captured were choppy, even when I was in the hotel. This problem then carried over to India, where the first few seconds of every video would stutter. I’ve communicated this issue with the Xiaomi team, so a fix could be imminent. Overall, I love the Xiaomi 17’s cameras.
Verdict
Sure, the ₹89,999 price tag of the Xiaomi 17 might feel a bit much, considering it’s more than the vivo and OPPO competition. But the Xiaomi 17 brings a lot of things to the table. You get the best-in-class performance that’s miles ahead of the competition. A design that’s understated yet premium. Battery life that can easily last two full days, and cameras that, instead of being same same but different, induce a character to each and every photo that makes them more memorable. Of course, it’s not perfect. I’d like the camera bugs fixed and ultrawide performance improved, but overall, the Xiaomi 17 gets my recommendation.
If Apple were ever going to make an Android phone, then they’d probably design something like the Xiaomi 17. I wouldn’t describe the build as flashy, but it’s super elegant and reminiscent of past Xiaomi flagships. I talked about this in my X300 Pro review, as creating a brand identity to compete against Samsung and Apple is super important, and Xiaomi has listened. While I was using it daily, many of my friends and family asked me what Xiaomi phone I was using—note the wording: “Xiaomi phone,” meaning they knew it was a particular brand, and that’s important. The Chinese smartphone maker said they thought of every curve, and I’ll just say it straight: the 17 is the best-feeling compact phone I’ve held this year.
The corners are crafted to perfection, the width is spot on, and even the way the aluminum frame blends into the glass without an abrupt edge makes carrying the phone a very enjoyable experience. Beyond that, the back glass is frosted to prevent the phone from slipping off glass surfaces, and the side frame doesn’t let go of its color inside a case.
Speaking of color, you get plenty of options, but my favorite is definitely the blue variant, as it has that breezy summer vibe. The buttons are tactile and positioned where your hand would naturally rest.
Moving to the camera module, Xiaomi has taken the iPhone route of individual stove-top camera cutouts. There are four of them (one houses the flash), and aside from the fact that dust is difficult to get out from between, I do quite like them. The ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is positioned at a comfy place where your thumb would naturally rest. I used it on the beach with wet hands, and it worked perfectly fine. Besides, the phone is IP69-rated for dust and water resistance, meaning it should technically withstand a swim. Did I dare take it inside the water on the beach? Absolutely not, because the IP rating is only for fresh water, and seawater can cause irreversible damage.
Display
I’ve said this before that all flagship displays are essentially the same, and that holds true for the Xiaomi 17, too. The phone features a 6.3-inch 1220 x 2656 OLED display, with an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. This time, Xiaomi has trimmed the bezels even more for a more premium look, and I’m a fan. The panel is exceptionally color-accurate and vibrant for content consumption, as evidenced by my 3-hour run of The Pitt season 2 on the flight to Thailand. Even the HDR performance is exceptional.
Xiaomi claims a peak brightness number of 3,500 nits. Sadly, I don’t have a light meter to put the claim to the test, but from my experience using the panel in the 12 noon sun at Phi Phi Island, it’s plenty bright for outdoor use. The texts were legible, and I could use the phone for GPS navigation without squinting.
When it comes to durability, I usually don’t like to test that part myself and instead rely on user reports. However, I accidentally dropped the Xiaomi 17 on a concrete floor. The result was surprisingly good. I dropped it, without a case, from a tripod at chest height, meaning that, while the phone was in the air, all sorts of scary thoughts came to mind, including how much this repair was going to cost me. Thankfully, the phone escaped with only minor damage to the frame.
Performance & Software
Performance is what makes or breaks the smartphone experience, and it’s no surprise to anyone that the Xiaomi 17 delivers top-of-the-line performance. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the best Android processor in the market, and it’s coupled with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 4.1 internal storage. The results? The Xiaomi 17 is an absolute joy to use. It flies through the UI like nothing, and there’s ample headroom for literally any task. That being said, the phone runs on HyperOS 3, which, for the uninitiated, is a very altered version of Android that resembles more like iOS.
I don’t have a problem with the look, especially since HyperOS is one of the smoothest Android skins, with silky animations and a lot of customization. My issue is that, unlike other Chinese skins that allow you to tone down the iOS-ness, Xiaomi doesn’t.
For example, the notification shade is divided into two sections: the quick control and the panel. I don’t like that, but when I went digging in the settings to find a way to merge them, there wasn’t. Also, the back gesture is enabled in the keyboard, so when I tried deleting long text, it would often send me back instead.
There are a few silver linings I wish others would copy from HyperOS, one major one being the lockscreen customizations. There are so many options, and every one of them looks gorgeous. As this is 2026, there’s a host of AI features, such as object eraser, image upscaling, and inpainting. I tried them all, and they work exactly as you’d expect. The company also promises about six years of major software updates and security patches. This is better than vivo’s five years.
Benchmarks & Gaming
As this is a review, I also ran a series of benchmarks to test the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s limits. The phone scored 3,415 in Geekbench’s single-core test and 10,008 in the multi-core test. These are insane numbers, especially when compared with the likes of the vivo X300 Pro and the Find X9, which score about 20%-30% lower in multi-core tests. The story remained similar on AnTuTu, where the Xiaomi 17 handsomely beat its Chinese rivals, scoring 3,423,349.
As expected, this performance translates extremely well in gaming. I’m a former PUBG (BGMI) eSports player, and my results were exceptional. The phone maintained 120 FPS gameplay even at high settings without a hint of stutter. I also like Xiaomi’s thermal management, which kept the phone from overheating during both gaming and photo capture in Thailand’s hot summer.
Battery Life & Charging
After all the chatter about the small form factor, you may expect the Xiaomi 17 to compromise on the battery life, just as other Apple and Samsung phones do. Well, you can’t be more wrong, as the Xiaomi 17 packs an even bigger battery, 6,330mAh to be precise, than the 17 Ultra. And the results are just fantastic. On the morning of my Thailand flight, I unplugged the phone at 5 am. I then continued using the phone for the rest of the day, including the three hours of The Pitt on the flight and map navigation when reaching Phuket airport. I ended the day with 20% remaining, and at 3 am the next morning, I had 20% remaining. For a more typical person, you’d be looking more at two days of usage without a hitch.
When it was finally time to charge, Xiaomi, unlike Samsung, bundles a 100W fast charger in the box that charges the phone from 20% to 80% in just 30 minutes. You also get 50W of reverse wireless charging, though that requires a specific charger.
Cameras
If a phone doesn’t fold in half or has dual screens, the only way to differentiate itself is through the cameras. They are the main reason why people lean towards a certain brand, and recently, both OPPO and vivo have been killing it. However, I think there’s room for a third king: the Xiaomi 17. Like others, it also houses a triple-sensor array, led by the 50MP LightFusion 950 sensor, a 50MP JN1 60mm telephoto, and another 50MP OV50M ultrawide lens. Colors are handled by Leica, and that’s the main strength of the Xiaomi 17. The photos it takes, with the different Leica filters, have a certain character you won’t find anywhere else. Every phone takes similar photos these days, and it’s these color profiles that matter the most.
Still, if you’re not a fan of poking around with the cameras, the default Leica Authentic profile produces colors that are very close to natural, with highlights and shadows handled extremely well. The details are crisp and plenty, the HDR performance is mostly spot on, and the contrast is slightly on the boosted side, which is what I like. Beyond the default camera profile, there are a myriad of filters, such as Negative, Positive, Sepia, Natural, Vibrant, and Blue. Each has a different style of capturing the colors and subject, and I really did find myself going through each and every one of them to decide which actually serves the scene the best. And the results speak for themselves. Every photo tells a different story, and that’s the Xiaomi 17’s biggest strength.
The telephoto lens is 2.5x, and I’d say the same about it, too. It serves as the main portrait camera, and the images deliver stellar detail, with excellent foreground separation and improved natural skin tones without the infamous beautification. Xiaomi doesn’t rely much on AI processing, so zooming past 5x-6x will result in blurry photos. Keep that in mind. The ultrawide hasn’t changed from the previous generation, so it still doesn’t have autofocus for macro photography. While it works great when the light is ample, I saw a significant drop in quality at night.
Speaking of the night, both the main and telephoto sensors benefit from Xiaomi’s mature image processing, which retains detail in shadows without making the image muddy or introducing noise. Videos, which can be shot at up to 8K, carry similar details in all lighting conditions, and I’m a fan. Sadly, it’s not all perfect. In Thailand’s heat, some of the videos I captured were choppy, even when I was in the hotel. This problem then carried over to India, where the first few seconds of every video would stutter. I’ve communicated this issue with the Xiaomi team, so a fix could be imminent. Overall, I love the Xiaomi 17’s cameras.
Verdict
Sure, the ₹89,999 price tag of the Xiaomi 17 might feel a bit much, considering it’s more than the vivo and OPPO competition. But the Xiaomi 17 brings a lot of things to the table. You get the best-in-class performance that’s miles ahead of the competition. A design that’s understated yet premium. Battery life that can easily last two full days, and cameras that, instead of being same same but different, induce a character to each and every photo that makes them more memorable. Of course, it’s not perfect. I’d like the camera bugs fixed and ultrawide performance improved, but overall, the Xiaomi 17 gets my recommendation.
#Xiaomi #Review #Thailand #Real #Camera #TestXiaomi">Xiaomi 17 Review: I Took It to Thailand for a Real Camera Test
Xiaomi phones are a little tough to judge. After all, these guys do everything, from making phones to laptops and sometimes even record-breaking electric SUVs. The Xiaomi 17 is a bit like the quiet kid that never gets noticed, simply because its bigger brother, the 17 Ultra, is on a streak of collecting all the best smartphone camera awards. But here’s the thing: most people won’t ever splurge that much money on a non-Samsung or Apple Ultra flagship. The main sales driver will always be the base model, and that’s the question I had in mind. Can the Xiaomi 17 go head-to-head with the OPPO Find X9 and the vivo X300, especially since it’s more expensive than both? You can thank AI for that.
To answer this very question, I got the Xiaomi 17 for review and took it with me on a work trip to Phuket, Thailand. Here, I used the phone to capture about 500 photos in the summer heat, with temperatures soaring to 40 degrees, and constant GPS navigation to put the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC through its paces. Spoiler alert, I really do love this phone, but there are a few quirks, too. Here’s why.
Xiaomi 17 Review
Hisan Kidwai
Summary
The Xiaomi 17 brings a lot of things to the table. You get the best-in-class performance that’s miles ahead of the competition. A design that’s understated yet premium. Battery life that can easily last two full days, and cameras that, instead of being same same but different, induce a character to each and every photo that makes them more memorable. Of course, it’s not perfect. I’d like the camera bugs fixed and ultrawide performance improved, but overall, the Xiaomi 17 gets my recommendation.
Design & Hardware
If Apple were ever going to make an Android phone, then they’d probably design something like the Xiaomi 17. I wouldn’t describe the build as flashy, but it’s super elegant and reminiscent of past Xiaomi flagships. I talked about this in my X300 Pro review, as creating a brand identity to compete against Samsung and Apple is super important, and Xiaomi has listened. While I was using it daily, many of my friends and family asked me what Xiaomi phone I was using—note the wording: “Xiaomi phone,” meaning they knew it was a particular brand, and that’s important. The Chinese smartphone maker said they thought of every curve, and I’ll just say it straight: the 17 is the best-feeling compact phone I’ve held this year.
The corners are crafted to perfection, the width is spot on, and even the way the aluminum frame blends into the glass without an abrupt edge makes carrying the phone a very enjoyable experience. Beyond that, the back glass is frosted to prevent the phone from slipping off glass surfaces, and the side frame doesn’t let go of its color inside a case.
Speaking of color, you get plenty of options, but my favorite is definitely the blue variant, as it has that breezy summer vibe. The buttons are tactile and positioned where your hand would naturally rest.
Moving to the camera module, Xiaomi has taken the iPhone route of individual stove-top camera cutouts. There are four of them (one houses the flash), and aside from the fact that dust is difficult to get out from between, I do quite like them. The ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is positioned at a comfy place where your thumb would naturally rest. I used it on the beach with wet hands, and it worked perfectly fine. Besides, the phone is IP69-rated for dust and water resistance, meaning it should technically withstand a swim. Did I dare take it inside the water on the beach? Absolutely not, because the IP rating is only for fresh water, and seawater can cause irreversible damage.
Display
I’ve said this before that all flagship displays are essentially the same, and that holds true for the Xiaomi 17, too. The phone features a 6.3-inch 1220 x 2656 OLED display, with an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. This time, Xiaomi has trimmed the bezels even more for a more premium look, and I’m a fan. The panel is exceptionally color-accurate and vibrant for content consumption, as evidenced by my 3-hour run of The Pitt season 2 on the flight to Thailand. Even the HDR performance is exceptional.
Xiaomi claims a peak brightness number of 3,500 nits. Sadly, I don’t have a light meter to put the claim to the test, but from my experience using the panel in the 12 noon sun at Phi Phi Island, it’s plenty bright for outdoor use. The texts were legible, and I could use the phone for GPS navigation without squinting.
When it comes to durability, I usually don’t like to test that part myself and instead rely on user reports. However, I accidentally dropped the Xiaomi 17 on a concrete floor. The result was surprisingly good. I dropped it, without a case, from a tripod at chest height, meaning that, while the phone was in the air, all sorts of scary thoughts came to mind, including how much this repair was going to cost me. Thankfully, the phone escaped with only minor damage to the frame.
Performance & Software
Performance is what makes or breaks the smartphone experience, and it’s no surprise to anyone that the Xiaomi 17 delivers top-of-the-line performance. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the best Android processor in the market, and it’s coupled with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 4.1 internal storage. The results? The Xiaomi 17 is an absolute joy to use. It flies through the UI like nothing, and there’s ample headroom for literally any task. That being said, the phone runs on HyperOS 3, which, for the uninitiated, is a very altered version of Android that resembles more like iOS.
I don’t have a problem with the look, especially since HyperOS is one of the smoothest Android skins, with silky animations and a lot of customization. My issue is that, unlike other Chinese skins that allow you to tone down the iOS-ness, Xiaomi doesn’t.
For example, the notification shade is divided into two sections: the quick control and the panel. I don’t like that, but when I went digging in the settings to find a way to merge them, there wasn’t. Also, the back gesture is enabled in the keyboard, so when I tried deleting long text, it would often send me back instead.
There are a few silver linings I wish others would copy from HyperOS, one major one being the lockscreen customizations. There are so many options, and every one of them looks gorgeous. As this is 2026, there’s a host of AI features, such as object eraser, image upscaling, and inpainting. I tried them all, and they work exactly as you’d expect. The company also promises about six years of major software updates and security patches. This is better than vivo’s five years.
Benchmarks & Gaming
As this is a review, I also ran a series of benchmarks to test the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s limits. The phone scored 3,415 in Geekbench’s single-core test and 10,008 in the multi-core test. These are insane numbers, especially when compared with the likes of the vivo X300 Pro and the Find X9, which score about 20%-30% lower in multi-core tests. The story remained similar on AnTuTu, where the Xiaomi 17 handsomely beat its Chinese rivals, scoring 3,423,349.
As expected, this performance translates extremely well in gaming. I’m a former PUBG (BGMI) eSports player, and my results were exceptional. The phone maintained 120 FPS gameplay even at high settings without a hint of stutter. I also like Xiaomi’s thermal management, which kept the phone from overheating during both gaming and photo capture in Thailand’s hot summer.
Battery Life & Charging
After all the chatter about the small form factor, you may expect the Xiaomi 17 to compromise on the battery life, just as other Apple and Samsung phones do. Well, you can’t be more wrong, as the Xiaomi 17 packs an even bigger battery, 6,330mAh to be precise, than the 17 Ultra. And the results are just fantastic. On the morning of my Thailand flight, I unplugged the phone at 5 am. I then continued using the phone for the rest of the day, including the three hours of The Pitt on the flight and map navigation when reaching Phuket airport. I ended the day with 20% remaining, and at 3 am the next morning, I had 20% remaining. For a more typical person, you’d be looking more at two days of usage without a hitch.
When it was finally time to charge, Xiaomi, unlike Samsung, bundles a 100W fast charger in the box that charges the phone from 20% to 80% in just 30 minutes. You also get 50W of reverse wireless charging, though that requires a specific charger.
Cameras
If a phone doesn’t fold in half or has dual screens, the only way to differentiate itself is through the cameras. They are the main reason why people lean towards a certain brand, and recently, both OPPO and vivo have been killing it. However, I think there’s room for a third king: the Xiaomi 17. Like others, it also houses a triple-sensor array, led by the 50MP LightFusion 950 sensor, a 50MP JN1 60mm telephoto, and another 50MP OV50M ultrawide lens. Colors are handled by Leica, and that’s the main strength of the Xiaomi 17. The photos it takes, with the different Leica filters, have a certain character you won’t find anywhere else. Every phone takes similar photos these days, and it’s these color profiles that matter the most.
Still, if you’re not a fan of poking around with the cameras, the default Leica Authentic profile produces colors that are very close to natural, with highlights and shadows handled extremely well. The details are crisp and plenty, the HDR performance is mostly spot on, and the contrast is slightly on the boosted side, which is what I like. Beyond the default camera profile, there are a myriad of filters, such as Negative, Positive, Sepia, Natural, Vibrant, and Blue. Each has a different style of capturing the colors and subject, and I really did find myself going through each and every one of them to decide which actually serves the scene the best. And the results speak for themselves. Every photo tells a different story, and that’s the Xiaomi 17’s biggest strength.
The telephoto lens is 2.5x, and I’d say the same about it, too. It serves as the main portrait camera, and the images deliver stellar detail, with excellent foreground separation and improved natural skin tones without the infamous beautification. Xiaomi doesn’t rely much on AI processing, so zooming past 5x-6x will result in blurry photos. Keep that in mind. The ultrawide hasn’t changed from the previous generation, so it still doesn’t have autofocus for macro photography. While it works great when the light is ample, I saw a significant drop in quality at night.
Speaking of the night, both the main and telephoto sensors benefit from Xiaomi’s mature image processing, which retains detail in shadows without making the image muddy or introducing noise. Videos, which can be shot at up to 8K, carry similar details in all lighting conditions, and I’m a fan. Sadly, it’s not all perfect. In Thailand’s heat, some of the videos I captured were choppy, even when I was in the hotel. This problem then carried over to India, where the first few seconds of every video would stutter. I’ve communicated this issue with the Xiaomi team, so a fix could be imminent. Overall, I love the Xiaomi 17’s cameras.
Verdict
Sure, the ₹89,999 price tag of the Xiaomi 17 might feel a bit much, considering it’s more than the vivo and OPPO competition. But the Xiaomi 17 brings a lot of things to the table. You get the best-in-class performance that’s miles ahead of the competition. A design that’s understated yet premium. Battery life that can easily last two full days, and cameras that, instead of being same same but different, induce a character to each and every photo that makes them more memorable. Of course, it’s not perfect. I’d like the camera bugs fixed and ultrawide performance improved, but overall, the Xiaomi 17 gets my recommendation.
Xiaomi phones are a little tough to judge. After all, these guys do everything, from…
Magic: The Gathering will continue expanding this year—both for fans of its crossover sets, and those all in on the primary game.
At Friday’s Magic Con, Wizards of the Coast announced several new sets, with the main course being Reality Fracture. Releasing in October, the set will wrap up the game’s current arc wherein Planeswalker Jace has created an alternate universe so he can undo damage previously caused by the Phyrexians and Eldrazi. The Echoverse introduces new versions of popular Magic characters, like Chandra having ice magic rather than her usual fire.
Fracture’s creative and narrative lead Meris Mullaley told Polygon the new versions of Chandra and other mainstays like Ajani and Garruk are born from Jace’s goal to make “the perfect multiverse, [which] comes with some of his own biases. Chandra’s impulsiveness was something he bumped up against a lot. Where did that come from, what in her life shaped her to be that way? As Jace is crafting his multiverse, he’s like, ‘What if her dad didn’t die? What if he and Chandra were helping run Avishkar?’”
On the crossover front, Wizards is going back to Middle-earth with a Hobbit set for Magic: The Gathering. Following the Lord of the Rings set from 2023, the characters and locations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s prequel will get their own cards, with legacy characters like Gandalf and Bilbo receiving updates. If that weren’t enough, some cards have artwork similar to book covers, and others are done in the dwarven language.
Wizards of the Coast will bring The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering on August 14, and Reality Fracture will hit stores on October 2. You can read about Wizards’ upcoming, fully new game Mood Swingshere.
Magic: The Gathering will continue expanding this year—both for fans of its crossover sets, and those all in on the primary game.
At Friday’s Magic Con, Wizards of the Coast announced several new sets, with the main course being Reality Fracture. Releasing in October, the set will wrap up the game’s current arc wherein Planeswalker Jace has created an alternate universe so he can undo damage previously caused by the Phyrexians and Eldrazi. The Echoverse introduces new versions of popular Magic characters, like Chandra having ice magic rather than her usual fire.
Fracture’s creative and narrative lead Meris Mullaley told Polygon the new versions of Chandra and other mainstays like Ajani and Garruk are born from Jace’s goal to make “the perfect multiverse, [which] comes with some of his own biases. Chandra’s impulsiveness was something he bumped up against a lot. Where did that come from, what in her life shaped her to be that way? As Jace is crafting his multiverse, he’s like, ‘What if her dad didn’t die? What if he and Chandra were helping run Avishkar?’”
On the crossover front, Wizards is going back to Middle-earth with a Hobbit set for Magic: The Gathering. Following the Lord of the Rings set from 2023, the characters and locations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s prequel will get their own cards, with legacy characters like Gandalf and Bilbo receiving updates. If that weren’t enough, some cards have artwork similar to book covers, and others are done in the dwarven language.
Wizards of the Coast will bring The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering on August 14, and Reality Fracture will hit stores on October 2. You can read about Wizards’ upcoming, fully new game Mood Swingshere.
#Big #Magic #Gathering #Set #Multiverse #AdventureMagic: The Gathering,The Hobbit,Wizards of the Coast">The Next Big ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Set Is a Multiverse Adventure
Magic: The Gathering will continue expanding this year—both for fans of its crossover sets, and those all in on the primary game.
At Friday’s Magic Con, Wizards of the Coast announced several new sets, with the main course being Reality Fracture. Releasing in October, the set will wrap up the game’s current arc wherein Planeswalker Jace has created an alternate universe so he can undo damage previously caused by the Phyrexians and Eldrazi. The Echoverse introduces new versions of popular Magic characters, like Chandra having ice magic rather than her usual fire.
Fracture’s creative and narrative lead Meris Mullaley told Polygon the new versions of Chandra and other mainstays like Ajani and Garruk are born from Jace’s goal to make “the perfect multiverse, [which] comes with some of his own biases. Chandra’s impulsiveness was something he bumped up against a lot. Where did that come from, what in her life shaped her to be that way? As Jace is crafting his multiverse, he’s like, ‘What if her dad didn’t die? What if he and Chandra were helping run Avishkar?’”
On the crossover front, Wizards is going back to Middle-earth with a Hobbit set for Magic: The Gathering. Following the Lord of the Rings set from 2023, the characters and locations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s prequel will get their own cards, with legacy characters like Gandalf and Bilbo receiving updates. If that weren’t enough, some cards have artwork similar to book covers, and others are done in the dwarven language.
Wizards of the Coast will bring The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering on August 14, and Reality Fracture will hit stores on October 2. You can read about Wizards’ upcoming, fully new game Mood Swingshere.
And nutrition is where Toval runs aground a little. The nutritional notes on that chicken parm meal betray 2,300 milligrams of sodium per serving, pretty much the entire daily allowance for an adult human. This is also on par with comparable servings of Stouffer’s meat lasagna. The Tovala meal also carried about 10 times the cholesterol as Stouffer’s.
Many other meals followed a similar pattern, loading up on fats and salt in order to make meals tasty. The net effect is that it’s a lot more like rich restaurant food than what most people prepare at home. Whether this is a good or a bad quality is up to you.
Only one meal of the seven I tried failed utterly: I flagged a teriyaki chicken dinner to my editor as a possible cultural crime against Japan. The meal was sweet soy drenching pale and steaming chicken, with an implausible side of thick egg rolls and some loose, unseasoned broccoli. It felt like the “Japanese” food you’d get at a mall food court in the ’90s. But again, this was a rare major misstep.
A more pernicious issue, in meals designed for the whole family, is the near-universal high-fat, cholesterol, and sodium content. Many with the income and inclination to eat hearty, low-effort meals like the ones from Tovala are either parents with children, or people in the retirement bracket. Each has their own reason to desire a little more nutrition, and less fat and salt.
By the end of a couple of weeks of testing recipes, I’ll admit I felt a little relieved. I was grateful to feel my arteries slowly reopen. Tovala’s culinary model makes a lot of sense to me, as a smart way of splitting the difference between prepared meals and fresh food. And the company has proven it can cook well. It might be nice if they’d also cook a diet that felt more sustainable.
And nutrition is where Toval runs aground a little. The nutritional notes on that chicken parm meal betray 2,300 milligrams of sodium per serving, pretty much the entire daily allowance for an adult human. This is also on par with comparable servings of Stouffer’s meat lasagna. The Tovala meal also carried about 10 times the cholesterol as Stouffer’s.
Many other meals followed a similar pattern, loading up on fats and salt in order to make meals tasty. The net effect is that it’s a lot more like rich restaurant food than what most people prepare at home. Whether this is a good or a bad quality is up to you.
Only one meal of the seven I tried failed utterly: I flagged a teriyaki chicken dinner to my editor as a possible cultural crime against Japan. The meal was sweet soy drenching pale and steaming chicken, with an implausible side of thick egg rolls and some loose, unseasoned broccoli. It felt like the “Japanese” food you’d get at a mall food court in the ’90s. But again, this was a rare major misstep.
A more pernicious issue, in meals designed for the whole family, is the near-universal high-fat, cholesterol, and sodium content. Many with the income and inclination to eat hearty, low-effort meals like the ones from Tovala are either parents with children, or people in the retirement bracket. Each has their own reason to desire a little more nutrition, and less fat and salt.
By the end of a couple of weeks of testing recipes, I’ll admit I felt a little relieved. I was grateful to feel my arteries slowly reopen. Tovala’s culinary model makes a lot of sense to me, as a smart way of splitting the difference between prepared meals and fresh food. And the company has proven it can cook well. It might be nice if they’d also cook a diet that felt more sustainable.
#Tovala #Oven #Meal #Kit #Robot #Chef #Futurekitchen,food and drink,cooking,review,meal kits,shopping">The Tovala Oven and Meal Kit Is Like a Robot Chef of Future Past
A garlic-herb salmon with risotto was probably the best among the family meals I tried. The chopped asparagus was less than visually appealing when drizzled in garlic butter, but still tasty and a bit crisp. The salmon was tender and flaky. And the sweet pea risotto had no choice but to be delicious. There was so much cheese, butter, and lemon it was pretty much a concert of fats and acid.
That chicken parm was likewise a mountain of cheese and salt. It reminded me, pleasantly, of countless family meals I had as a child in the 1980s: cheese-topped chicken, garlic bread, shells stuffed with ricotta and topped with even more cheese. The big difference is that there is simply no way my mother would have cooked this meal without a vegetable.
Toval app via Matthew Korfhage
And nutrition is where Toval runs aground a little. The nutritional notes on that chicken parm meal betray 2,300 milligrams of sodium per serving, pretty much the entire daily allowance for an adult human. This is also on par with comparable servings of Stouffer’s meat lasagna. The Tovala meal also carried about 10 times the cholesterol as Stouffer’s.
Many other meals followed a similar pattern, loading up on fats and salt in order to make meals tasty. The net effect is that it’s a lot more like rich restaurant food than what most people prepare at home. Whether this is a good or a bad quality is up to you.
Only one meal of the seven I tried failed utterly: I flagged a teriyaki chicken dinner to my editor as a possible cultural crime against Japan. The meal was sweet soy drenching pale and steaming chicken, with an implausible side of thick egg rolls and some loose, unseasoned broccoli. It felt like the “Japanese” food you’d get at a mall food court in the ’90s. But again, this was a rare major misstep.
A more pernicious issue, in meals designed for the whole family, is the near-universal high-fat, cholesterol, and sodium content. Many with the income and inclination to eat hearty, low-effort meals like the ones from Tovala are either parents with children, or people in the retirement bracket. Each has their own reason to desire a little more nutrition, and less fat and salt.
By the end of a couple of weeks of testing recipes, I’ll admit I felt a little relieved. I was grateful to feel my arteries slowly reopen. Tovala’s culinary model makes a lot of sense to me, as a smart way of splitting the difference between prepared meals and fresh food. And the company has proven it can cook well. It might be nice if they’d also cook a diet that felt more sustainable.
![In Harvard study, AI offered more accurate emergency room diagnoses than two human doctors | TechCrunch
A new study examines how large language models perform in a variety of medical contexts, including real emergency room cases — where at least one model seemed to be more accurate than human doctors.
The study was published this week in Science and comes from a research team led by physicians and computer scientists at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The researchers said they conducted a variety of experiments to measure how OpenAI’s models compared to human physicians.
In one experiment, researchers focused on 76 patients who came into the Beth Israel emergency room, comparing the diagnoses offered by two internal medicine attending physicians to those generated by OpenAI’s o1 and 4o models. These diagnoses were assessed by two other attending physicians, who did not know which ones came from humans and which came from AI.
“At each diagnostic touchpoint, o1 either performed nominally better than or on par with the two attending physicians and 4o,” the study said, adding that the differences “were especially pronounced at the first diagnostic touchpoint (initial ER triage), where there is the least information available about the patient and the most urgency to make the correct decision.”
In Harvard Medical School’s press release about the study, the researchers emphasized that they did not “pre-process the data at all” — the AI models were presented with the same information that was available in the electronic medical records at the time of each diagnosis.
With that information, the o1 model managed to offer “the exact or very close diagnosis” in 67% of triage cases, compared to one physician who had the exact or close diagnosis 55% of the time, and to the other who hit the mark 50% of the time.
“We tested the AI model against virtually every benchmark, and it eclipsed both prior models and our physician baselines,” said Arjun Manrai, who heads an AI lab at Harvard Medical School and is one of the study’s lead authors, in the press release.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
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October 13-15, 2026
To be clear, the study didn’t claim that AI is ready to make real life-or-death decisions in the emergency room. Instead, it said the findings show an “urgent need for prospective trials to evaluate these technologies in real-world patient care settings.”
The researchers also noted that they only studied how models performed when provided with text-based information, and that “existing studies suggest that current foundation models are more limited in reasoning over nontext inputs.”
Adam Rodman, a Beth Israel doctor who’s also one of the study’s lead authors, warned the Guardian that there’s “no formal framework right now for accountability” around AI diagnoses, and that patients still “want humans to guide them through life or death decisions [and] to guide them through challenging treatment decisions.”
In a post about the study, Kristen Panthagani, an emergency physician, said this is an “an interesting AI study that has led to some very overhyped headlines,” especially since it was comparing AI diagnoses to those from internal medicine physicians, not ER physicians.
“If we’re going to compare AI tools to physicians’ clinical ability, we should start by comparing to physicians who actually practice that specialty,” Panthagani said. “I would not be surprised if a LLM could beat a dermatologist at an neurosurgery board exam, [but] that’s not a particularly helpful thing to know.”
She also argued, “As an ER doctor seeing a patient for a first time, my primary goal is not to guess your ultimate diagnosis. My primary goal is to determine if you have a condition that could kill you.”
This post and headline have been updated to reflect the fact that the diagnoses in the study came from internal medicine attending physicians, and to include commentary from Kristen Panthagani.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Harvard #study #offered #accurate #emergency #room #diagnoses #human #doctors #TechCrunchbeth israel,harvard medical school,OpenAI](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/GettyImages-104509077.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 "In Harvard study, AI offered more accurate emergency room diagnoses than two human doctors | TechCrunch
A new study examines how large language models perform in a variety of medical contexts, including real emergency room cases — where at least one model seemed to be more accurate than human doctors.
The study was published this week in Science and comes from a research team led by physicians and computer scientists at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The researchers said they conducted a variety of experiments to measure how OpenAI’s models compared to human physicians.
In one experiment, researchers focused on 76 patients who came into the Beth Israel emergency room, comparing the diagnoses offered by two internal medicine attending physicians to those generated by OpenAI’s o1 and 4o models. These diagnoses were assessed by two other attending physicians, who did not know which ones came from humans and which came from AI.
“At each diagnostic touchpoint, o1 either performed nominally better than or on par with the two attending physicians and 4o,” the study said, adding that the differences “were especially pronounced at the first diagnostic touchpoint (initial ER triage), where there is the least information available about the patient and the most urgency to make the correct decision.”
In Harvard Medical School’s press release about the study, the researchers emphasized that they did not “pre-process the data at all” — the AI models were presented with the same information that was available in the electronic medical records at the time of each diagnosis.
With that information, the o1 model managed to offer “the exact or very close diagnosis” in 67% of triage cases, compared to one physician who had the exact or close diagnosis 55% of the time, and to the other who hit the mark 50% of the time.
“We tested the AI model against virtually every benchmark, and it eclipsed both prior models and our physician baselines,” said Arjun Manrai, who heads an AI lab at Harvard Medical School and is one of the study’s lead authors, in the press release.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
To be clear, the study didn’t claim that AI is ready to make real life-or-death decisions in the emergency room. Instead, it said the findings show an “urgent need for prospective trials to evaluate these technologies in real-world patient care settings.”
The researchers also noted that they only studied how models performed when provided with text-based information, and that “existing studies suggest that current foundation models are more limited in reasoning over nontext inputs.”
Adam Rodman, a Beth Israel doctor who’s also one of the study’s lead authors, warned the Guardian that there’s “no formal framework right now for accountability” around AI diagnoses, and that patients still “want humans to guide them through life or death decisions [and] to guide them through challenging treatment decisions.”
In a post about the study, Kristen Panthagani, an emergency physician, said this is an “an interesting AI study that has led to some very overhyped headlines,” especially since it was comparing AI diagnoses to those from internal medicine physicians, not ER physicians.
“If we’re going to compare AI tools to physicians’ clinical ability, we should start by comparing to physicians who actually practice that specialty,” Panthagani said. “I would not be surprised if a LLM could beat a dermatologist at an neurosurgery board exam, [but] that’s not a particularly helpful thing to know.”
She also argued, “As an ER doctor seeing a patient for a first time, my primary goal is not to guess your ultimate diagnosis. My primary goal is to determine if you have a condition that could kill you.”
This post and headline have been updated to reflect the fact that the diagnoses in the study came from internal medicine attending physicians, and to include commentary from Kristen Panthagani.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Harvard #study #offered #accurate #emergency #room #diagnoses #human #doctors #TechCrunchbeth israel,harvard medical school,OpenAI")
![The Next Big ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Set Is a Multiverse Adventure
Magic: The Gathering will continue expanding this year—both for fans of its crossover sets, and those all in on the primary game. At Friday’s Magic Con, Wizards of the Coast announced several new sets, with the main course being Reality Fracture. Releasing in October, the set will wrap up the game’s current arc wherein Planeswalker Jace has created an alternate universe so he can undo damage previously caused by the Phyrexians and Eldrazi. The Echoverse introduces new versions of popular Magic characters, like Chandra having ice magic rather than her usual fire. Fracture’s creative and narrative lead Meris Mullaley told Polygon the new versions of Chandra and other mainstays like Ajani and Garruk are born from Jace’s goal to make “the perfect multiverse, [which] comes with some of his own biases. Chandra’s impulsiveness was something he bumped up against a lot. Where did that come from, what in her life shaped her to be that way? As Jace is crafting his multiverse, he’s like, ‘What if her dad didn’t die? What if he and Chandra were helping run Avishkar?’” On the crossover front, Wizards is going back to Middle-earth with a Hobbit set for Magic: The Gathering. Following the Lord of the Rings set from 2023, the characters and locations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s prequel will get their own cards, with legacy characters like Gandalf and Bilbo receiving updates. If that weren’t enough, some cards have artwork similar to book covers, and others are done in the dwarven language. Wizards of the Coast will bring The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering on August 14, and Reality Fracture will hit stores on October 2. You can read about Wizards’ upcoming, fully new game Mood Swings here. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Big #Magic #Gathering #Set #Multiverse #AdventureMagic: The Gathering,The Hobbit,Wizards of the Coast](https://i3.wp.com/gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/05/magic-gathering-reality-1280x853.jpg?ssl=1 "The Next Big ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Set Is a Multiverse Adventure
Magic: The Gathering will continue expanding this year—both for fans of its crossover sets, and those all in on the primary game. At Friday’s Magic Con, Wizards of the Coast announced several new sets, with the main course being Reality Fracture. Releasing in October, the set will wrap up the game’s current arc wherein Planeswalker Jace has created an alternate universe so he can undo damage previously caused by the Phyrexians and Eldrazi. The Echoverse introduces new versions of popular Magic characters, like Chandra having ice magic rather than her usual fire. Fracture’s creative and narrative lead Meris Mullaley told Polygon the new versions of Chandra and other mainstays like Ajani and Garruk are born from Jace’s goal to make “the perfect multiverse, [which] comes with some of his own biases. Chandra’s impulsiveness was something he bumped up against a lot. Where did that come from, what in her life shaped her to be that way? As Jace is crafting his multiverse, he’s like, ‘What if her dad didn’t die? What if he and Chandra were helping run Avishkar?’” On the crossover front, Wizards is going back to Middle-earth with a Hobbit set for Magic: The Gathering. Following the Lord of the Rings set from 2023, the characters and locations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s prequel will get their own cards, with legacy characters like Gandalf and Bilbo receiving updates. If that weren’t enough, some cards have artwork similar to book covers, and others are done in the dwarven language. Wizards of the Coast will bring The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering on August 14, and Reality Fracture will hit stores on October 2. You can read about Wizards’ upcoming, fully new game Mood Swings here. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Big #Magic #Gathering #Set #Multiverse #AdventureMagic: The Gathering,The Hobbit,Wizards of the Coast")
![The Next Big ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Set Is a Multiverse Adventure
Magic: The Gathering will continue expanding this year—both for fans of its crossover sets, and those all in on the primary game. At Friday’s Magic Con, Wizards of the Coast announced several new sets, with the main course being Reality Fracture. Releasing in October, the set will wrap up the game’s current arc wherein Planeswalker Jace has created an alternate universe so he can undo damage previously caused by the Phyrexians and Eldrazi. The Echoverse introduces new versions of popular Magic characters, like Chandra having ice magic rather than her usual fire. Fracture’s creative and narrative lead Meris Mullaley told Polygon the new versions of Chandra and other mainstays like Ajani and Garruk are born from Jace’s goal to make “the perfect multiverse, [which] comes with some of his own biases. Chandra’s impulsiveness was something he bumped up against a lot. Where did that come from, what in her life shaped her to be that way? As Jace is crafting his multiverse, he’s like, ‘What if her dad didn’t die? What if he and Chandra were helping run Avishkar?’” On the crossover front, Wizards is going back to Middle-earth with a Hobbit set for Magic: The Gathering. Following the Lord of the Rings set from 2023, the characters and locations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s prequel will get their own cards, with legacy characters like Gandalf and Bilbo receiving updates. If that weren’t enough, some cards have artwork similar to book covers, and others are done in the dwarven language. Wizards of the Coast will bring The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering on August 14, and Reality Fracture will hit stores on October 2. You can read about Wizards’ upcoming, fully new game Mood Swings here. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Big #Magic #Gathering #Set #Multiverse #AdventureMagic: The Gathering,The Hobbit,Wizards of the Coast](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/05/magic-gathering-reality-1280x853.jpg "The Next Big ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Set Is a Multiverse Adventure
Magic: The Gathering will continue expanding this year—both for fans of its crossover sets, and those all in on the primary game. At Friday’s Magic Con, Wizards of the Coast announced several new sets, with the main course being Reality Fracture. Releasing in October, the set will wrap up the game’s current arc wherein Planeswalker Jace has created an alternate universe so he can undo damage previously caused by the Phyrexians and Eldrazi. The Echoverse introduces new versions of popular Magic characters, like Chandra having ice magic rather than her usual fire. Fracture’s creative and narrative lead Meris Mullaley told Polygon the new versions of Chandra and other mainstays like Ajani and Garruk are born from Jace’s goal to make “the perfect multiverse, [which] comes with some of his own biases. Chandra’s impulsiveness was something he bumped up against a lot. Where did that come from, what in her life shaped her to be that way? As Jace is crafting his multiverse, he’s like, ‘What if her dad didn’t die? What if he and Chandra were helping run Avishkar?’” On the crossover front, Wizards is going back to Middle-earth with a Hobbit set for Magic: The Gathering. Following the Lord of the Rings set from 2023, the characters and locations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s prequel will get their own cards, with legacy characters like Gandalf and Bilbo receiving updates. If that weren’t enough, some cards have artwork similar to book covers, and others are done in the dwarven language. Wizards of the Coast will bring The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering on August 14, and Reality Fracture will hit stores on October 2. You can read about Wizards’ upcoming, fully new game Mood Swings here. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Big #Magic #Gathering #Set #Multiverse #AdventureMagic: The Gathering,The Hobbit,Wizards of the Coast")
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.PNG?ssl=1 "The Tovala Oven and Meal Kit Is Like a Robot Chef of Future PastA garlic-herb salmon with risotto was probably the best among the family meals I tried. The chopped asparagus was less than visually appealing when drizzled in garlic butter, but still tasty and a bit crisp. The salmon was tender and flaky. And the sweet pea risotto had no choice but to be delicious. There was so much cheese, butter, and lemon it was pretty much a concert of fats and acid.That chicken parm was likewise a mountain of cheese and salt. It reminded me, pleasantly, of countless family meals I had as a child in the 1980s: cheese-topped chicken, garlic bread, shells stuffed with ricotta and topped with even more cheese. The big difference is that there is simply no way my mother would have cooked this meal without a vegetable.Toval app via Matthew KorfhageAnd nutrition is where Toval runs aground a little. The nutritional notes on that chicken parm meal betray 2,300 milligrams of sodium per serving, pretty much the entire daily allowance for an adult human. This is also on par with comparable servings of Stouffer’s meat lasagna. The Tovala meal also carried about 10 times the cholesterol as Stouffer’s.Many other meals followed a similar pattern, loading up on fats and salt in order to make meals tasty. The net effect is that it’s a lot more like rich restaurant food than what most people prepare at home. Whether this is a good or a bad quality is up to you.Only one meal of the seven I tried failed utterly: I flagged a teriyaki chicken dinner to my editor as a possible cultural crime against Japan. The meal was sweet soy drenching pale and steaming chicken, with an implausible side of thick egg rolls and some loose, unseasoned broccoli. It felt like the “Japanese” food you’d get at a mall food court in the ’90s. But again, this was a rare major misstep.A more pernicious issue, in meals designed for the whole family, is the near-universal high-fat, cholesterol, and sodium content. Many with the income and inclination to eat hearty, low-effort meals like the ones from Tovala are either parents with children, or people in the retirement bracket. Each has their own reason to desire a little more nutrition, and less fat and salt.By the end of a couple of weeks of testing recipes, I’ll admit I felt a little relieved. I was grateful to feel my arteries slowly reopen. Tovala’s culinary model makes a lot of sense to me, as a smart way of splitting the difference between prepared meals and fresh food. And the company has proven it can cook well. It might be nice if they’d also cook a diet that felt more sustainable.Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting that’s too important to ignore. Includes unlimited digital access and exclusive subscriber-only content. Subscribe Today.#Tovala #Oven #Meal #Kit #Robot #Chef #Futurekitchen,food and drink,cooking,review,meal kits,shopping")