The finest smartphone images of the yr

Hi, associates! Welcome to Installer No. 49, your information to the perfect and Verge-iest stuff on this planet. (If you’re new right here, welcome, hope you want podcasts, and in addition you’ll be able to learn all of the outdated editions on the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been studying about upstart baseball groups and canceled comics and Francis Ford Coppola, watching Logan Lucky, binging Teo Crawford’s digital camera movies,  listening to The Mess Around and thus rewatching New Girl for the millionth time, attempting to plan a visit to the Nintendo Museum this fall, and giving Capacities one other whirl since Casey Newton really helpful it this week. 

I even have for you a bunch of recent podcasts that each one launched this week for some cause, some superb smartphone images, a cause to hit the movie show this weekend, and a brand new doorbell to interchange your outdated doorbell.

And within the spirit of this unexpectedly podcast-filled week, I’ve a query: who’s your favourite lesser-known creator? We all know and love Veritasium and MKBHD, however I wish to hear about all those that deserve simply as a lot shine. YouTube, podcast, Instagram, take your choose — in the event that they’re tech-y and Verge-ish, nice, but when not, that’s nice, too! Hit me with one or two of your faves that you just guess most of us don’t know. I’ll share a few of my faves, too.

All proper, large week of enjoyable stuff. Let’s go.

(As all the time, the perfect a part of Installer is your concepts and ideas. What do you wish to know extra about? What superior tips have you learnt that everybody else ought to? What app ought to everybody be utilizing? Tell me every thing: installer@theverge.com. And if another person who would possibly take pleasure in Installer, inform them to subscribe right here.)

• The iPhone Photography Awards winners. The IPPA’s photographer of the yr shoots on an iPhone 11! These successful images are all the time an incredible supply of inspiration (and wallpapers, simply saying), and it’s notably cool on this AI-heavy second to see how superior photographers nonetheless are. 
• The Hollywood Hack. The Sony hack was 10 years in the past, and the entire leisure enterprise remains to be feeling the ramifications. Love this pod to this point, which is to this point roughly equal components about what occurred and what it did to Hollywood. 
• Blink Twice. Channing Tatum. Playing a tech billionaire. In a murder-y thriller. I’m getting large Glass Onion vibes from this one, and I couldn’t be extra excited.
• Apple Podcasts for net. Apple made a very good net app! I sort of nonetheless can’t imagine it! Apple Podcasts is a superb platform, and this goes a good distance towards making it really feel rather less locked to your particular gadgets. This plus the automated transcripts has me genuinely contemplating switching.
• OceanXplorers. This NatGeo present appears like a mixture of Planet Earth and the scene in each James Bond film the place Bond will get to check out a bunch of wildly futuristic new devices. I’m having fun with studying in regards to the high-tech ship and submarines as a lot as I’m seeing the superb footage they’re capturing.
• “Flip Video Was Successful! So They Killed It?” I had straight-up forgotten in regards to the Flip digital camera, and I had no concept what number of unusual twists and turns this product — and the corporate that made it — went by. An excellent enjoyable tech time capsule, this one.
• The Wirecutter Show. I’ve been a loyal Wirecutter shopper endlessly, and the brand new pod matches the positioning’s vibe completely. Lots of ideas and tips, a lot of behind-the-scenes testing stuff — I wound up taking livid notes throughout each of the primary two episodes.
• “Why Everything is a Monopoly… Again.” We’re in a reasonably wild antitrust second, proper? This is a brisk, broad take a look at the way it all works and the way we bought to the purpose the place it doesn’t matter what you’re doing or utilizing or shopping for, you’re most likely encountering a monopoly. 
• The Ring Battery Doorbell. Longer battery, simpler set up, wider body of video, night time imaginative and prescient in colour — it’s not a ground-breaking new concept about video doorbells, however it certain seems to be like a greater video doorbell. If solely I might persuade myself to let me set up one…

I speak to Liam James extra than simply about anyone aside from my spouse — and actually, it’s a detailed name between the 2 of them. As The Verge’s supervising producer for podcasts, we do a ton of labor togetber on The Vergecast, and he’s additionally only a large big tech nerd in one of the best ways. He likes to brag about his Plex server, appears to be always tweaking his selfmade climate station, and just lately described a brand new to-do checklist app to me as “simply OmniFocus for dummies.” What I’m saying is, he’s our folks.

I requested Liam to share his homescreen with us as a result of if I do know one factor about Liam, it’s that each single icon and site has been exhaustively thought by and rigorously examined for optimum efficiency. Liam additionally simply purchased a Pixel 9 Pro Fold, which implies he’s about to endure a giant swap — so I figured it’d be good to seize the tip of his iPhone run.

Here’s Liam’s homescreen, plus some data on the apps he makes use of and why:

The cellphone: iPhone 15 Pro.

The wallpaper: I’ve used the identical wallpaper for about 10 years now. It’s a foolish portray of my first canine, August, within the fashion of Kehinde Wiley.

The apps: Photos, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Apple News, Phone, Mail, Safari, Messages.

• I’m a giant fan of the massive widget carousel that mechanically flips to no matter iOS thinks is most related to me. I solely preserve 3 widgets inside: Fantastical — which I’ll sorely miss once I transfer to a Pixel — Apple News, and Carrot Weather.
• I’m always deleting apps I not use to be able to keep a single-screen format. I’ve 4 folder buckets: social, buying, finance, and work. I do, nevertheless, fall again to the App Library display screen for hardly ever used apps like Plex throughout journey days.
• I’m SO feeling the label-less icon choice within the iOS 18 beta. Looks a lot cleaner.  

I additionally requested Liam to share just a few issues he’s into proper now. Here’s what he despatched again:

• My job has pressured me to make use of Apple Podcasts to be able to preserve a detailed eye on our exhibits, and what? It has actually come a good distance. In my opinion, it’s the solely podcast app that’s able to recommending exhibits you’d truly wish to check out. And the brand new transcript and search options are very helpful for locating that second you needed to return to.
• Since I’m operating the iOS 18 public beta, I’ve been attempting out the native Mail app. I needed to see if any of the Apple Intelligence stuff may very well be helpful to me, however that hasn’t precisely proven up but. Instead, it’s largely nonetheless the identical outdated barebones, slow-to-update app it all the time was.
• Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus is my newest podcast obsession. Like many a star podcast, it comes and goes in seasons, however not like all of the others, this one has zero filler. I extremely advocate beginning with the episode that includes award-winning writer Isabel Allende. Some of Allende’s life classes will stick in your head for days afterward.

Here’s what the Installer neighborhood is into this week. I wish to know what you’re into proper now as nicely! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — together with your suggestions for something and every thing, and we’ll characteristic a few of our favorites right here each week. For much more nice suggestions, take a look at the replies to this submit on Threads.

“I’ve discovered Dola indispensable. It’s free — what’s free anymore? It can write to Apple Calendar and is out there on iMessage and WhatsApp; it’s extremely helpful as my productiveness and process tracker and superb for reminders.” — Andrew

“The Serpent Queen. This Starz present is about sixteenth century Queen Catherine de’ Medici of France and her travails and triumphs. There is far courtroom intrigue, maybe murdering, maybe poisoning, maybe a very good time for the viewer. It is at present in its 2nd season and stars Samantha Morton in the principle position and brings in Minnie Driver as Queen Elizabeth I. Hilarity ensues.” — Romeo

“I’ve been utilizing this app known as SAOViVO that’s free and open supply, and what it does is: it takes movies in your YouTube Channel, makes a queue out of them, and sends them again to YouTube as a stay feed. An instance: I work as a marketing consultant for newsrooms, they usually have a giant archive, so when the anniversary of occasions comes, we will make stay streams with the factor they did in earlier years, or when somebody well-known dies, we will take a look at the YouTube channel and stay stream the tales about that particular person.” — Nicolas

“I’ve to advocate a fantastic new YouTube channel known as Graindead. A really deadpan channel about movie cameras. “Buying The Cheapest Cameras In Japan” is a must-watch. Full of Classic British self-deprecating humor. “A $1000 Lens Cap” can be an attention-grabbing watch.” — Owen

“Dress to Impress on Roblox. It is like Among Us within the pandemic period, however for WFH ‘gurlies.’” — Sam 

“I’m headed on a 5.5-hour flight to Hawaii, and I’m very a lot wanting ahead to bringing the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 to, await it… play EA Sports FC the entire manner! Was impressed by a podcast I had listened to just lately, I feel…” — Richard

“People fear about Chinese EVs coming to America, however folks ought to regulate Chinese recreation builders as a result of Black Myth: Wukong simply got here out, and it has over 2 million gamers on Steam, shattering Elden Ring and Cyberpunk’s information.” — John

“Add Eddie is a straightforward app for creating QR codes to your social profiles, messengers, vCards, cost companies, web sites, and extra. It is a godsend for networking in actual life, particularly as a widget on my cellphone’s homescreen and on the Apple Watch.” — Dewa

“One of a number of causes I couldn’t use the rest in addition to Apple Music is that it’s the one one with a music locker. I’ve uploaded tons of stuff: Commodore 64 remixes, lacking KLF, Brian May and Jean-Michel Jarre albums, bootlegs, and so on. The integration is nice, too (when you’ve got Apple stuff). It uploads after which syncs to all gadgets automagically like another music.” — Mathias

”I’ve been studying The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and I’m shocked I didn’t learn it sooner! It’s so good, and I’m so to see the way it’s going to finish!” — Flávio

It’s fantasy soccer season, which implies an alarming quantity of my persona is about to get replaced by opinions on NFL gamers’ weekly efficiency. I’m in two leagues, each of them in Yahoo’s app, which is… wonderful. And this yr, I’m realizing how a lot of a full-time job these items actually is; information is unfold round so many locations, all people has rankings and knowledge about these rankings and podcasts in regards to the knowledge about these rankings, and it’s all simply exhausting. 

Ironically, I feel I get the case for AI now? If I might simply say, “What’s occurring with my fantasy crew this week,” and ChatGPT might inform me, I’d be there in a heartbeat. Some of the apps try to mimic this — together with Yahoo — however now that Twitter’s gone, all of it feels extra chaotic than ever. If you’ve gotten an incredible supply for all this, inform me about it! No matter how a lot consideration I pay, although, I all the time appear to come back in sixth… so perhaps I’ll simply go away it alone.

(Also, subsequent yr: Installer fantasy league? Should we? I really feel like we should always. It’d be superior.)