Kalakshar US

Chalk one up for prison telecoms — and against inmates’ family members — courtesy of Trump’s FCC. On Monday, the agency said (via The Verge) it would delay enforcement of a 2024 action aimed at capping prison phone call fees. The rules are now scheduled to take effect in April 2027.

FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez criticized the agency’s move in a statement. “Today, the FCC made the indefensible decision to ignore both the law and the will of Congress,” she wrote.

Prison phone call fees vary dramatically by state. Last year, the FCC said rates for large jails could reach as high as $11.35 for a 15-minute audio call. Meanwhile, family members calling smaller jails could pay as much as $12.10 for the same period. The rates in other states are much lower, and some have passed laws capping fees.

The fees collected from the families and friends of inmates often include kickbacks to jails and local governments. In 2021, Business Insider reported (via The Verge) that the prison phone call industry raked in $1.4 billion annually. And it’s a system that disproportionately affects women and people of color.

Brendan Carr with Donald Trump in 2024.

The FCC’s history of regulating those rates is… all over the place. In 2013, the agency capped state-to-state fees. It later tried to limit within-state rates, but a federal court blocked the move. Former FCC Chair Ajit Pai, Trump’s first-term appointee, chose not to appeal that decision.

Then, a new administration brought about another shift. Under Jessica Rosenworcel’s leadership, the FCC again moved toward capping the fees. In 2023, former President Biden signed legislation clarifying that the FCC indeed has the authority to regulate them. Last year, the FCC adopted the order establishing the details of those rate caps. It seemed as though the book was about to be closed.

And then, Donald Trump returned to office. That brings us back to today, with current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr issuing the two-year delay. He cited “negative, unintended consequences” from the 2024 order. He claimed that the rate caps were too low to cover the cost of safety measures. Carr said the delay would allow local and state governments to explore alternative funding sources.

FCC Commissioner Gomez painted her colleagues’ decision as a flagrant attempt to evade the law. “Rather than enforce the law, the Commission is now stalling, shielding a broken system that inflates costs and rewards kickbacks to correctional facilities at the expense of incarcerated individuals and their loved ones,” she wrote. “Instead of taking targeted action to address specific concerns, the FCC issued a blanket two-year waiver that undercuts the law’s intent and postpones meaningful relief for millions of families. This is a blatant attempt to sidestep the law, and it will not go unchallenged in court.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-fcc-delays-enforcement-of-prison-call-rate-caps-165452257.html?src=rss 

The wait is over. Nothing has officially announced the Phone 3, its first flagship smartphone since entering the market in 2022. Nothing CEO Carl Pei said the company would go “all-in” on the Phone 3 with “premium materials, major performance upgrades and software that really levels things up,” and the device Nothing showed off at its launch event in London certainly seems like it will be competitive with the best from Samsung and other Android OEMs.   

In a departure from the company’s previous handsets, the Phone 3 has a new “Glyph Matrix” instead of the usual Glyph Interface. The Glyph Matrix trades the bright LEDs of its predecessors for a small, micro-LED screen that occupies the top right corner of the phone. Nothing says it designed the feature to reduce user screen time. The idea here is that you’ll be able to see app alerts, contact notifications and real-time progress indicators from the back of your phone, without the need to wake the Phone 3’s primary display. 

The Glyph Matrix also comes with a software feature Nothing is calling Glyph Toys. These essentially act like widgets. For instance, the micro-LED can act as as a digital clock, stopwatch or battery indicator. It’s also possible to play simple games like Spin the Bottle on the display with the help of a dedicated button on the back of the handset. Nothing is releasing a public SDK to allow people to create their own widgets and games for the Glyph Matrix. In the near future, the company also plans to release a caller ID feature that will allow people to long-press on Glyph Button to show the name of a contact or a phone number during calls.  

As for the primary display, it’s a 6.67-inch AMOLED with a 1.5K resolution and 4,500 nits of peak brightness on tap. It also offers a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. Those specs make it the brightest and sharpest screen Nothing has shipped on one of its phones.   

For photos and video, the Phone 3 comes with a triple rear camera setup and a single selfie camera. All four cameras come with 50-megapixel sensors, and there’s optical image stabilization on the main and periscope cameras too. For video nerds, it’s possible to shoot footage at 4K and 60FPS across all of the Phone 3’s lenses. 

Internally, the phone comes with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 system-on-a-chip that includes a eight-core CPU capable of running at 3.21GHz. The processor is 36 percent faster than the one found inside the Phone 2’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. GPU performance is also improved, with Nothing promising a 88 percent uplift over the Phone 2’s graphics processor. 

For memory, Nothing plans to offer two configurations of the Phone 3, with the base model offering 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. For those who want more storage, the 512GB model also comes with 16GB of RAM. Powering everything is a 5,150mAh battery that supports 65W wired and 15W wireless charging. Nothing claims people will be able to get up to 80 hours of uptime out of the battery, and with the right power adapter, it’s possible to charge the phone to full in under an hour. 

Like the Phone 3a and 3a Pro, the Phone 3 comes with a button Nothing calls the Essential Key, which you can use to launch the company’s Essential Space app. Think of it as a notes app that comes with a few nifty AI features. With the Phone 3, Nothing is adding a few new features to the software, including a shortcut called “Flip to Record.” When you long press the Essential Key and turn your phone over, it will start recording and later transcribe what was said so you have a summary for later use. Out of the box, the Phone 3 comes with Android 15. Nothing plans to support the phone with five years of platform updates and seven years of security patches.    

Pre-orders for the Nothing Phone 3 open on July 4, with global availability to follow on July 15. In the US, the 12GB model will cost $799, while the 16GB variant will set you back $899. That puts the Phone 3 in same price range as a the Galaxy S25. This time around, Nothing plans to sell its new handset through Amazon, in addition to its own website.  

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/the-799-nothing-phone-3-has-four-50mp-cameras-and-a-secondary-micro-led-display-173014537.html?src=rss 

After numerous waves of similar (and not-so-similar) wireless buds, Nothing is debuting its first pair of over-ear headphones. The Headphone 1 combines the company’s recognizable see-through aesthetic with an intriguing array of controls and up to 35 hours of listening with active noise cancellation (ANC). Handily, for its most premium audio launch yet, the $299 headphones accompany the launch of Nothing’s new flagship smartphone: the Phone 3.

First impressions are everything, and these look like Nothing headphones. Once again, the company has incorporated a transparent design element. There’s also an oval shape that showcases a portion of the hardware inside, layered atop an aluminum rectangle with curved corners. The two metal dots on each oval are part of the acoustic chambers, not button inputs as you might think. While the white option looks more “Nothing,” I think I prefer the black, which makes the company’s design choices slightly more subtle.

Nothing eschews touch sensors for buttons, paddles and a roller. The roller is a nice touch, offering a more sensitive way to adjust the volume, rather than abrupt level jumps. It can also be pressed to play and pause tracks. Long presses here switch the headphone between active noise cancellation and transparency mode. One unusual aspect is that the roller moves side to side, even when the volume fluctuates up and down. It feels a little weird.

Just below that, the paddle control acts as a track skipper, but also includes the ability to scrub both forward and backward, similar to an old-school rewind. The latter feature depends on support from third-party apps to work.

On the same headphone cup, there’s also a traditional button that acts as a shortcut to voice assistants and my favorite bit of Nothing software, Essential Space. Nothing has added a further boon when paired with Nothing phones, allowing it to seamlessly switch between recent audio apps without requiring you to touch your phone. (Naturally, you’re hostage to whatever was playing last or is cued up.) This feature will first be compatible with the Phone 3 before being rolled out to older Nothing devices. There’s already support from the likes of Audible, Soundcloud and Patreon in addition to the usual music streaming suspects.

There’s also an almost secret Bluetooth pairing button on the inner side of the same ear cup. It’s nice that this is a dedicated button as you’re unlikely to unpair from using the primary buttons and controls.

Nothing has put work into comfort and fit, and as a mostly wireless earbud listener, I was pleasantly surprised at how the sub-12-ounce (329 grams) headphones felt. They’re almost two ounces lighter than the AirPods Max, which seems to be the product that Nothing is aiming to compete with. However, there are lighter over-ear headphones, including several Bose models and the Sony WH-1000XM6, which weigh under nine ounces.

There’s ample PU leather padding around the ear cushions and the headband, and the company says it should resist oils and makeup. In my testing so far, any sweaty residue was easy to wipe off. (I do wish the ear cushions were replaceable, however.) The adjustable arms also held onto the length I preferred while I was wearing them. I haven’t tested them yet while working out at the gym — they were under embargo after all — but over-ear headphones are an acquired taste for those who sweat it out while listening to music.

Sound-wise, Nothing has built custom 40mm dynamic drivers, with support for Hi-Res Audio, spatial audio with head tracking and ANC with four feedback mics. The cans also support dual device connection, allowing you to hop between your new Nothing Phone (3) and your laptop.

KEF assisted with the acoustic engineering and proprietary tuning tools, apparently aiming to create a sound profile that reproduces music as the artist intended. According to Nothing, the team worked to achieve this across normal playback, ANC and Spatial Audio modes.

The Headphone (1) sounds a little bass-forward, but the soundscape is much richer than Nothing’s collection of wireless buds. Compared to the most premium headphones, though, vocals sometimes sound a little muddy. (In Nothing’s defense, these are pre-release units and software. If things improve, I’ll update this story.)

The updated version of the Nothing X app adds an 8-band EQ and the ability to remap the “Button” (an additional control, separate to the paddle and roller) to channel hopping, AI voice assistants, Noise control, Spatial audio and even switching to your favorite EQ preset.

Nothing says the Headphone (1) will offer up to 80 hours of audio playback, and up to 35 hours with ANC enabled. With ANC on — the mode I use the most for quiet middle-of-the-office listening — I got around that amount of time. You’ll be able to get over two and a half hours of listening from a five-minute quick charge.

The Headphone 1 has a divisive look. Ahead of the launch, I showed them to other editors at Engadget and some were baffled by the mixed use of square aluminum and circular elements. But, it’s different, and that’s Nothing’s MO. Its new headphones will be available for pre-order starting July 4, with sales kicking off July 15. They arrive in black and white color options, priced at $299 (£299/€299).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/nothing-headphone-1-over-ear-headphones-price-release-date-173018845.html?src=rss 

With the third generation of its smartphone series, Nothing made the unusual move to launch the cheaper ‘a’ line first, unveiling the Phone 3a and 3a Pro in March. Now, it’s time for its latest flagship. The Nothing Phone 3, starting at $799 (with a $899 option with 16GB of RAM) goes up against giants like the Google Pixel 9 and Samsung Galaxy S25 — a competitive slice of the smartphone world. Once again, though, there’s nothing in the market that quite resembles a Nothing, as the company attempts to balance distinctive design with flagship (and some not-quite-flagship) components.

The big change this time around is that Nothing is swapping the flashing lights of its Glyph Interface for a tiny dot-matrix display on the rear of the device and is calling it the Glyph Matrix.

It’s the shiny design lynchpin of Nothing’s Phone 3. The matrix is made of 489 LEDs, and offers more utility than a light show. Nothing says it’s an evolution of the flashing lights of the Glyph Interface into something more practical. With that aim, there’s a Glyph button that sits under the glass back. Another benefit of this shift, according to Nothing’s head of design Adam Bates, is that removing the Glyph lights freed up more space within the phone.

Instead of having the lights on the back flash in patterns to indicate when certain contacts are calling, the Phone 3’s new tiny screen can display monochromatic images instead. At first, these will be preset shapes, but eventually, you’ll be able to customize your own animation (or static dot-matrix image — it’s unclear) for each of your contacts. Ahead of launch, Nothing shared a web portal that lets people take photos and turn them into Glyph patterns, but it’s like a very, very small Gameboy camera (but worse). The one I took kinda looks like my head? I guess? At least there’s a contrast, and gives a glimpse of what users might be able to show on the matrix screen

That’s me?

Alongside Glyph-style notifications, the matrix will be able to display simple widgets, such as weather and battery levels. It can be a stopwatch, and even a low-res mirror (more on that later). It can also be used as a visual countdown when using a timer with the camera, too. And there will even be games, like rock-paper-scissors and er, spin the bottle. Thankfully, Nothing didn’t make the assembled media test this at its big global launch. You’ll be able to make your own Glyphs through an SDK being released by Nothing. It’ll be interesting to see how difficult it is to program your own glyphs. You know what I want, already? A tamagotchi.

My first impression is that it’s a little more restrained than the light show of the Glyph Interface on previous phones. Additionally, a dot-matrix design really aligns with the era of design inspirations that Nothing is drawing from. You can lightly interact with the matrix through the Glyph button, which is intriguingly built under the rear cover of the Nothing Phone 3. It’s a single button, so learning the quirks of a long-press and a short-press, especially when there’s no tactile response, takes a bit of time.

Flanked by other eager photographers, YouTubers and media, I took a little too much time making the Glyph mirror work. Weirdly, you can’t use it as a selfie guide with the primary cameras, or at least I didn’t figure out how to during my hands-on.

Elsewhere, the design is inspired by the lines and shapes of the New York City subway map, while the see-through back of the Phone 3 has a three-column design that divides the component curves, camera modules and glyph matrix.

The Phone 3 is Nothing’s thinnest phone yet and is 18 percent thinner than the Phone 2. The new Nothing flagship also lacks the chonky camera unit that’s on the Phone 3a Pro. This is because, this time, Nothing has the budget to do so: the Phone 3 costs $350 more, so it can use smaller (even custom-made) components to shrink the footprint.

Instead, the three-camera layout reminds me a lot of the latest Galaxy S24 Ultra, with only slightly protruding camera lenses. It’s not flush, but perhaps I’m asking for too much — the only contemporary smartphone with an entirely flat camera unit is the Pixel 9a.

Despite its slimmer profile, the device still features a periscope zoom on a 50-megapixel sensor. It goes up to 3x optical zoom, 6x digital zoom and a 60x AI Super Res Zoom. (Yes, we all blame Google and Samsung for this nonsense.) This will also serve as a macro camera, allowing for clearer close-up shots.

The main camera is also 50MP, with an f/1.68 aperture (Nothing says it’s 70 percent faster at capture than the Phone 2) and even includes a lossless 1.5x zoom. There’s also an ultrawide camera with a 114-degree field of view and, you might have guessed, a 50MP sensor. Even the front-facing camera is 50MP. Expect the usual Android array of shooting features across the camera system, including Auto Tone, Portrait Optimizer, Night Mode Macro Mode and Action Mode. There are also several shooting presets to browse for your favorite shooting aesthetic, which I enjoyed playing with on a demo unit.

I’m hopeful that the Phone 3 will be a capable enough smartphone camera. Taking some early shots, during a hectic hands-on session at the launch event, the camera app seemed faster than past Nothing devices and low-light processing seemed pretty close to the likes of Google’s Pixel.

Imaging has typically been the weakest part of Nothing’s phone strategy, but each iteration it gets better. It’s something I’m looking forward to putting to the test. Nothing has added an LED light that flashes red to indicate video recording. This can still be disabled in settings, but it’s a nice touch that taps into the red splashes you’ll see throughout Nothing’s hardware and software.

The Phone 3 also packs the company’s brightest display yet, reaching up to 1600 nits at its maximum brightness settings, peaking at 4,500 nits with compatible HDR content, The 6.67-inch screen has a higher 1.5K resolution than the Phone 2. There’s also IP68-rated protection against dust and water.

Rounding out the spec sheet, the phone has a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor, marking the biggest compromise this year. Nothing told me that the Phone 3 wasn’t chasing specs like phones that cost several hundred dollars more. However, the Galaxy S25 has the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite, and it’s also $800.

The good news is that the Phone 3 shouldn’t be perceptibly slow or laggy — the company says it’s five times faster than the Phone 3a. Nothing added there should be a 60 percent improvement on AI performance compared to the Phone 2. I’m intrigued to see how battery life fares, but not too worried. The OnePlus 13 Pro had the same processor and performed very well in our battery rundown test.

The 5,150mAh silicon-carbon battery can be charged to 50 percent in 20 minutes with a compatible 65W charger, and up to 100 percent in under an hour. It’s one of the first phones to arrive in the West with a silicon-carbon cell, adding further intrigue to how well the battery life will perform. There’s also 15W wireless charging, which Nothing seems to be keeping exclusive to its most premium phones.

The Phone 3 runs Android 15 out of the box, but with Nothing’s spin on things, featuring custom icons and native apps. That includes Essential Space, which works with a hardware button launcher first introduced on the 3a. While there were rumors that Nothing might fold the feature into a subscription, it’ll be free for the foreseeable future. However, Smart Collections, which was meant to collate screenshots and other files is still being worked on and won’t be available at launch.

The focus, software-wise, may be the new Glyph Matrix, but you can expect some of the typical AI-assisted features like natural language search that Nothing calls Essential search. It will be able to tap into everything on the Nothing Phone 3. Nothing’s cheaper 3a devices leaned into software too, but with the Phone 3 there’s more importance on the specs. The question is: Is this flagship enough?

The Phone 3 is priced at $799 with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. An $899 model will also launch with 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage. Both black and white versions will be available to pre-order on July 4, with sales starting July 15 on its own store at nothing.tech. The company plans to launch its own drops in select physical locations on July 10.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/nothing-phone-3-hands-on-dot-matrix-glyph-flagship-phone-173019742.html?src=rss