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Allison Johnson

Allison Johnson

Allison reviews smartphones and covers wireless carriers for The Verge. Previously, she wrote about digital cameras and mobile photography at DPReview. She's a small phone enthusiast, home barista in training, and a roller derby retiree. You can find her on Threads most hours of the day at @allisonjo1.

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra photography kit is a beaut.

I’m busy testing the Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s camera but please take a minute to appreciate this gorgeous photography accessory kit. It updates last year’s version with a beefier battery that can power the phone. Just feast your eyes on that gorgeous two-stage shutter button!

One thing I’m noticing so far? It’s heavier than the previous version. That’s not so hot.


Xiaomi 14 Ultra with photography kit.

1/5

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
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Please don’t pet the toxic cat.

Residents of Fukuyama City are looking for a cat that fell into a vat of toxic chemicals at a metal plating factory. After reviewing security footage, officials believe it fell in the tank containing hexavalent chromium on Sunday night, crawled out, and ran off.

Locals are keeping an eye out but are urged not to touch the potentially highly toxic cat. Personally, I’m rooting for the cat’s eventual rise as the greatest supervillain the world has ever seen.


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Merry Dexmas, Pixel 8 owners.

Okay, it’s not exactly Dex, but Mishaal Rahman reports that the latest Android 14 beta allows Pixel 8 phones to use DisplayPort over USB-C for screen mirroring. Plug your phone into a monitor or TV and you’ll be able to output your phone’s display to the big screen — no adapter required. You can’t run a whole desktop environment ala Dex just yet, but that might be in the works.


The Pixel 8 won’t get Gemini Nano because of “reasons.”

Google is hosting its quarterly show for Android developers and the ever-watchful Mishaal Rahman caught the response to a great question: will the regular Pixel 8 be able to run Google’s mobile-optimized language model? Google’s answer: No, because of “hardware limitations.”

The thing is, the Pixel 8 uses the very same chipset as the Pixel 8 Pro, which can run Gemini Nano. What the heck, Google?


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It’s the end of the (software support) road.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite were the final two members of the S10 series still getting security updates — until now. 9to5Google notes that their promised four years of updates are up, and they’re no longer on Samsung’s security scope page; just last month they were still listed for quarterly updates. It was a good run, guys.