Information Technology

Kerry Wan/ZDNETOnePlus is holding a new Back to School sales event for its most recent flagship phone, the OnePlus 13. Right now, you can buy the 256GB OnePlus 13 More

Kerry Wan/ZDNETZDNET’s key takeawaysUnplug at 100%, keep battery between 20% and 80%.Avoid draining to 0%; store unused tablets at 50%.Use certified chargers to prevent stress and overheating.As someone who uses a tablet daily, I’m constantly looking for ways to make its battery last longer. However, some habits you don’t think twice about could actually be hurting your battery over time. There are ways to extend your tablet’s battery life, and there are some things you should avoid that do the opposite.Also: These 7 common household items were draining power all day – until I pulled the plugMost tablets offer six to eight hours of use on a single charge, though battery life diminishes with age and continued use. While there are many things you can do to conserve battery life, here are the ones you should avoid to ensure your battery’s longevity. 1. Leaving your tablet plugged in overnight This isn’t always a problem with newer tablets, but most tablets on the market will suffer from being left plugged in overnight. Tablets typically charge to 100% and stop using electricity. However, leaving your tablet plugged in can cause it to continue trickle-charging to keep the battery full, which can stress the battery over time and diminish its lifespan. Instead, unplug your tablet when its battery reaches 100%. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to keep your battery charged between 20% and 80%. Also: Why I recommend this Samsung tablet over pricier models – especially the UltraLike all the common charging mistakes we make with our tablets, leaving it plugged in overnight once or twice won’t permanently damage it. Battery damage happens when these incorrect practices become a habit and are followed often. 2. Letting the battery drain to 0% (and forgetting it) More

Kerry Wan/ZDNETSamsung phones are well known for One UI, one of the most functional and intuitive Android interfaces. While it’s highly customizable, these phones often come with preinstalled bloatware. Some built-in Samsung apps, such as Wearable and Wallet, are useful within the Samsung ecosystem. However, there are at least five first-party apps that even dedicated Samsung users rarely touch.The preinstalled bloatware apps can vary by device, price, and lineup, but many are common across all Galaxy phones. While you might not be able to uninstall all of them, they’re easy to disable and can be re-enabled if you ever need them.Also: Samsung makes new $120 offer to Galaxy Z Fold and Flip 7 users – how to redeem for freeWhile these apps aren’t necessarily useless or mindless bloatware, every user’s needs differ. If you’re not using them, it’s a good idea to uninstall or disable such Samsung apps to save memory and reduce background battery usage. More

Pakpoom Makpan/Getty Images ZDNET’s key takeaways GitHub Copilot Pro now supports GPT-5 in VS Code. A 30-day trial lets you test premium models for free. Add your OpenAI key to bypass Copilot restriction. GPT-5 is now available for use with Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot in VS Code. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps […] More

Vaselena/Getty Images ZDNET’s key takeaways OpenAI’s new GPT-5 flagship failed half of my programming tests. Previous OpenAI releases have had just about perfect results. Now that OpenAI has enabled fallbacks to other LLMs, there are options. So GPT-5 happened. It’s out. It’s released. It’s the talk of the virtual town. And it’s got some problems. […] More

Jada Jones/ZDNETIn the past few years, Bose, Sony, Sonos, and Beats have released premium headphones to compete with each other and Apple’s AirPods Max More

ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable <!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 is available now, starting at $3,300. The 120Hz, OLED, portrait-style 16.7-inch display delivers an expansive workspace, supported by a haptic touchpad. It has limited I/O, has some visible creasing on the rollable display, and has a sky-high price. –> Lenovo unveiled […] More

Manufacturers typically offer different runtimes for lamps, refrigerators, CPAP machines, and so on, but if you want to work this out for yourself, you may need two figures, and a bit of math!First, you need the power rating of the device you plan on running, which can usually be found on a label on the device and is measured in Watts (W). You also need to know the capacity of the power station, measured in Watt hours (Wh), which should be printed somewhere on the device. Let’s say you have a device that consumes 200W and a power station that has a capacity of 2,048Wh, you can get a ballpark runtime for the device using the following equation:(2048 x 0.85)/200 = 8.7 hoursNote that the capacity of the power station is multiplied by 0.85 to account for efficiency losses that happen. More