Eliana Willis

There are only a few things to change here, mostly around battery and data usage, in addition to little annoyances.Go to Settings > App Store. Under Automatic Downloads, turn off App Downloads if you have multiple devices and don’t want apps you downloaded on one to appear on all of them. Next, under Cellular Data, you have options here to reduce data usage. If you don’t want apps downloaded over cellular, turn off Automatic Downloads. If you do want them downloaded, but not the huge apps weighing in at many hundreds of megabytes, change from Always Allow to either Ask If Over 200 MB or Always Ask. Also: iOS 18 is bricking some iPads. Here’s what to know before you install itAs a bonus: want to stop apps from hassling you for a five-star review? Go back to the App Store and turn off In-App Ratings & Reviews.  More

gremlin/Getty Images Welcome to ZDNET’s Innovation Index, which identifies the most innovative developments in tech from the past week and ranks the top four, based on votes from our panel of editors and experts. Our mission is to help you identify the trends that will have the biggest impact on the future. In first place this […] More

Kerry Wan/ZDNETZDNET’s key takeawaysAt $899, the iPhone 16 Plus More

June Wan/ZDNETWhether you are an iOS or Android user, Google Photos is a great photo storage and sharing service with features such as Magic Editor and Ask Photos. However, one very basic feature was missing until this week — a photo flip option. First spotted by Android Police, users can now flip or mirror their photos from the Google Photos app. Although that may sound like a fundamental feature, the basic edit functions only allowed users to crop, rotate, or adjust a picture’s aspect ratio before this update. Also: Gemini Live is finally hitting Android phones – how to access it for freeSome helpful instances of mirroring an image include taking a selfie on an iPhone, which is automatically set to invert your selfie camera, keeping the real orientation of the photo. This is a personal pet peeve of mine because I generally want my selfies to look like what I see in the mirror. However, I can’t get myself to turn on the “mirror font camera” setting because, sometimes, having the actual orientation is better.  More

Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNETPhone accessory brand Anker is issuing a recall for three of its power banks: the 334 MagGo Battery (PowerCore 10K), the Power Bank pack, and the MagGo Power Bank. The impacted power banks sport model numbers A1642, A1647, and A1652, respectively. Also: The best power banks you can buy: Expert testedAccording to the recall notice, these devices “may pose a fire risk.” The lithium-ion batteries inside reportedly have a “manufacturing defect” that could cause the power banks to overheat and melt components. Because of the high temperatures, the hardware may begin to smoke and fumes from lithium-ion batteries are toxic.Anker states the battery defect is only present on a batch of products sold “from January 3, 2024, to September 17, 2024”. Although only “a small number of batteries” are affected, the company is asking customers to enroll in its Recall program “out of an abundance of caution.”  More

Prakhar Khanna/ZDNETiPhone owners eager to check out Apple Intelligence can now download a public beta of iOS 18.1. Packed with Apple’s first round of AI-powered features, the new release was previously available only for developers but is now ready for the general public.That’s the good news. So what’s the bad news?Also: 6 AI features iPhone users can expect first on iOS 18 (and what’s coming later)Well, you’ll need the right type of iPhone to try out Apple Intelligence. For now, that means either an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max. Starting tomorrow, though, anyone who snags one of the four new iPhone 16 models will also be able to install iOS 18.1 and take Apple’s AI for a spin.Though Apple plans to release Apple Intelligence in stages, you will find an array of AI features in iOS 18.1. Writing tools will help you rewrite, proofread, and summarize text in Mail, Notes, and other supported apps. New photo tools will help you search for photos using natural language, while a Clean Up Tool will try to seamlessly remove unwanted elements from an image. More

John Lund/Getty Images Even the smartest AI models are prone to hallucinations, which can be amusing when provoked. May I remind you of glue pizza? However, if you try to induce hallucinations in OpenAI’s advanced o1 reasoning models, you may lose access to the model altogether.  OpenAI unveiled its o1 models last week, which were […] More