Tech

If you find yourself face to face with the TCL 30 V 5G, chances are you’re at a Verizon store or on Verizon’s website contemplating its prospects as a “free” phone. Free is nice! But free may even be too steep for the 30 V 5G. The 30 V 5G’s full retail price, which few people will opt to pay upfront, is $299. That gets you a nice, big full HD display, a healthy 128GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, and a 4,500mAh battery that easily lasts over a day. Those specs are just fine — even good for a budget phone where lower-res 720p…

Instagram’s testing out a new feature, called Templates, that will let creators make Reels by borrowing formats from other videos on the platform, according to a report from Insider (via TechCrunch). The feature appears somewhat similar to TikTok’s own templates tool, which allows creators to drop their own content into a premade sequence. Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi spotted an early version of Templates in January, while marketing manager and influencer Josephine Hill has already gotten to experience the…

Twenty-one Raven Software QA employees have until May 20th to submit their ballots in a historic video game industry union vote. Today the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decreed that voting for the union would commence and that the voting unit would be composed of those 21 employees, against Activision Blizzard’s argument that the voting unit should be opened to all Raven employees. In a statement to The Verge, Activision Blizzard spokesperson Rich George said: While we respect the NLRB process, we are…

Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries is targeting a “late August” launch for the game’s long-awaited network co-op campaign mode, the game’s head of creative Joseph Staten says in a new Halo Waypoint blog post. As part of a new roadmap included in the post, Staten also shared that 343 is targeting an open beta for Halo Infinite’s Forge mode in September. 343 Industries announced months ahead of Halo Infinite’s December release that co-op and Forge mode wouldn’t be available at launch. The developer then said it was…